Darwin's Response to Gaskell Was Not a Rejection of Negative Eugenics

Aside from the "aid we feel impelled to give" paragraph from The Descent of Man which I discussed at the end of  my post "The People,"  one of the more common life preservers thrown to the eugenics-free Darwin is his answer to G. A. Gaskell's  eugenic proposal, sent to Darwin in a long letter.   Most often I've seen a short section of Darwin's letter, closely clipped,  with a claim that this proves he rejected eugenics.  I don't think I've ever seen any of G. A. Gaskell's letter or Darwin's entire response used in his defense.

However, if the entire correspondence is read, it becomes clear that Gaskell's proposal that people held to be unfit  be taught and required to use birth control, was what Darwin was objecting to.  And it's not because he thinks preventing them from procreating is a terrible violation of their rights.  That's quite clear in his letter, especially as, other than that, he encourages Gaskell.

I am glad that you intend to continue your investigations, and I hope ultimately may publish on the subject.

But when it comes to birth control (the subject heading in the book change to "Artificial Birth Control" on the page that Gaskel responds to Darwin) here's what Darwin said:

If it were universally known that the birth of children could be prevented, and this was not thought immoral by married persons, would there not be great danger of extreme profligacy amongst unmarried women, and might we not become like to "arreois" societies in the Pacific?

It's clear that Darwin was scandalized by birth control.  In his official biography of Francis Galton,  Karl Pearson confirms that interpretation.

"Darwin strongly supported Galton's opinion" [against birth control] "Life Letters and Labours of Francis Galton", volume 2,  p.111]

Darwin does say that he is skeptical that the time is ripe for Galton's proposals for marriage restriction.  What the difference between Galtons and George Darwin's proposals he had supported five years earlier, isn't specified in anything I've yet found.

Other than that, Darwin's letter, read in light of his belief that "civilised men" are bound to dominate the earth upon the extinction of the "savages", as he explicitly states in The Descent of Man, tis fully on display.

Suppose that such checks had been in action during the last two or three centuries, or even for a shorter time in Britain, what a difference it would have made in the world, when we consider America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa ! No words can exaggerate the importance, in my opinion, of our colonization for the future history of the world.

Notice the phrase "such checks".   In the context of the correspondence, that can only mean that the unfit had been kept from having children for the "last two or three centuries or even a shorter time in Britain".   Short of outright extermination, some kind of eugenics program or infanticide (which I will write on) must have been what Darwin had in mind.   And notice that he believes that the "future history of the world" would  rest on "our colonization", meaning the Brits.

In Gaskell's first letter, he notes that his proposal, negative eugenics though it would be, is considerably less violent than the struggle for existence that is the alternative contemplated by Darwin and his followers:

In conclusion, I submit, the birth of the fittest offers a much milder solution of the population difficulty, than the survival of the fittest and the destruction of the weak.

Note that Darwin seems to make reference to his "aid" paragraph in Descent of Man, here:

I just alluded to it in my remarks to the effect (as far as I remember) that the evils which would follow by checking benevolence and sympathy in not fostering the weak and diseased would be greater than by allowing them to survive and then to procreate.

As I pointed out before, Darwin undercut the case for not checking benevolence three or four times as he made a show of asserting it.  Only to continue to undercut it in page after page of that long book after he made that gesture.  Clearly Gaskell didn't find that sufficiently reassuring, as no rational person who believed Darwin would.

While it's clear that Darwin wants to blow off Gaskell, clearly not wanting to deal with birth control,  Gaskell is entirely justified in pointing out that Darwin, himself, has stated that the alternative is "survival of the fittest and the destruction of the weak".   Eugenicist that he is, you've got to grant that Gaskell said it, outright.   And it's clear that Darwin found it easier to contemplate a violent and desperate struggle in which the "weak" would be destroyed than that single women might enjoy having sex without fear of pregnancy.  I suppose I should pretend I'm surprised that he isn't so worried about the virtue of single men, but I won't.

Here is the entire correspondence as published in:

Scientific Meliorism and the Evolution of Happiness by Jane Hume Clapperton 
Appendix to Chapter XVIII,  p337

I AM enabled to place before my readers the following interesting correspondence.

November 13th 1878.

Charles Darwin, Esq.,
Sir,

You have so often invited correspondence on the subjects treated of in your most valuable books, that I trust you will pardon this liberty I, a perfect stranger to you, venture to take, of offering for your consideration some thoughts mainly originated by your writings.

For many years I have been accustomed to think sadly of the present condition and probable future of the human race. The works of Malthus and J. S. Mill, your own works, and some others, have so clearly pointed out the evils under which man strives, and how slow and cruel in their action are various forces that tend to better his condition, that it is with a great feeling of relief I have quite recently been brought to believe that there are forces at work of which I had previously little conception, which will in a comparatively short time, and in a wholly admirable manner, bring about that state of things which is so earnestly to be desired.

You say (in " The Descent of Man "), " It is impossible not to regret bitterly, but whether wisely is another question, the rate at which man tends to increase ; " and further, that man " has no right to expect an immunity from the evils consequent on the struggle for existence." In regard to this last, with all respect, I am glad to be able to say, I, in great part, differ from you. I think, from the advance of civilization, which is so much a conquest over nature, and the growth of altruism, we have reason to hope for this immunity ; and as I now think we can have it without any deterioration of race and decline of virtue, I am free to think it wise to
regret the continuance of the pressure of population on comfort and subsistence.

It is my duty to be concise in what I have to say, in order to take up as little of your time as possible, in case my ideas should be worthless ; but I hope in the very short statement of the main results at which I have arrived, I shall still be able to make myself understood.

I believe I can point out, as now in action, two important laws of Race, to add to the one already so fully displayed by yourself. They are both naturally destructive of the action of the first law which is Natural Selection ; and the last, which is now in the first stages of evolution, annuls as it grows the action of the two
preceding ones.

They each have existence for the same reason, viz. that they tend to greater adaptability of race with conditions, or greater strength against the forces which environ. I summarize these laws as follows : —

The three great laws of Race Preservation in their natural order of sequence in evolution are —

First, the Organological Law — Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest

Second, the Sociological Law — Sympathetic Selection, or Indiscriminate Survival

Third, the Moral Law — Social Selection, or the Birth of the Fittest.

These three laws arise naturally and gradually out of the conditions which precede each.

The first is the Physical Law, which governs all organisms in which no form of sympathy is yet developed ; it tends to greater strength in the unit or more adaptability of the individual to its conditions.

The second is the Psychological Law, which necessarily arises with the growth of sympathy, and is the natural opponent of the first, which it gradually supersedes. It tends to greater strength and adaptability in the aggregate, but to less strength and health in the unit.

The third is the Judicial Law, evolved as a rule of conscience for well-being. It gradually annuls the preceding laws while combining their beneficial results, on the basis of tending to greater strength and health, both in the aggregate and in the unit. It is the final outcome of Human Evolution in the order of forces governing race propagation. It is necessarily evolved in the mind by the interaction of reason and sympathy, and its development proceeds on the fact of artificial birth-control, unopposed to the force of sexual passion which otherwise would, with the weaker individuals, most certainly be too powerful to permit its action.

Of the first of these laws I need say nothing, except that I have been so bold as to name it " Organological."

Of the second I may say, I have formulated it from a consideration of much in your writings, especially of chapters iii., iv., and v., in the " Descent of Man," of portions in the writings of Mr. Herbert Spencer, Mr. A. R. Wallace, Mr. F. Gallon, Mr. W. R. Greg, and others. Natural Selection was evidently defeated, and yet species continued to flourish ; so it seemed evident to me that a new law had been evolved, and this I set myself to discover. The word sympathy I have used in a wide sense, and as the quality meant has, as you point out, been most probably developed through natural selection, it exists in varying degrees of strength.

Of the reality of the third law there will be most dispute. That its evolution is proceeding, I cannot myself see reason to doubt; and that it is destined to act a most beneficent part in the future of mankind, I firmly believe.

As instance of its solution I may mention the growing opinion that it is wrong for consumptive people and persons inclined to insanity and epilepsy to marry ; the opinion, becoming more and more prevalent, that it is wrong to have more children than can be brought up well ; the opinion that celibacy is an evil, and that
asceticism is absurd ; that the sexual passion is at the spring of much that is noble in life, and is nothing to be ashamed of, but requires only to be regulated ; the inference that in no case is it wrong to apply knowledge to guard against natural evils, so long as no injury devolves on others by so doing ; the conclusion that
procreation is perhaps of all social actions the most important, and ought therefore to be most seriously regarded, and effected only under moral conditions ; the opinion that tendency to vice is hereditary, and that it would be best for society if confirmed criminals were "put compendiously under water." And finally I may
refer to the present painful conflict betweeh reason and sympathy relative to the preservation of the weak and incompetent while they propagate their stock to the injury of posterity.

I think the extending force of the practice of the arts preventive of conception is in proportion to the capability in these arts of increasing adaptation to conditions within and without the human organism.

If it is a fact that they do increase this adaptability, it appears to me certain that their practice will increase to the extent of society.

The prejudice against them founds itself on the belief that they are in themselves immoral, or of immoral tendency, because social instinct is against them. But social instinct has, as you justly point out, been developed in favour of the general good of the species; it follows, then, that if the general good conflicts eventually with an instinct, instinct will in time have to adjust itself to the new conditions.

A physiological fact having relation to man and society is one among other factors in the determination of morals. The concealment cannot be defended ; and if the knowledge of it is of use, it is hopeless to expect any attempt at concealment to be effectual.

If it be true that these arts do not increase adaptability to conditions, I see not how their manifest spread can be accounted for.

I think their action is rapidly becoming a sociological fact of the gravest importance, which cannot be left out of consideration in any speculation on social tendencies. I need but refer to France and its extraordinary statistics of births in relation to marriages.

I gather that you fear mach reduced social pressure would result in indolence. I submit that indolence is more a physical weakness than an acquired habit, and cannot, I think, be increased under ** Birth of the Fittest" To those who love children will be left the task of bringing them up. This love is hereditary, and will increase
by survival, and become a presiding force. It may not be Utopian to expect that some day a medical certificate may be required to define the rectitude of adding a new member to society. The weak in body or mind may be cared for and protected so long as they conform to the social mandate not to continue their race. They may, to use Professor Mantegazza's* words, "love, but must not have offspring."

In conclusion, I submit, the birth of the fittest offers a much milder solution of the population difficulty, than the survival of the fittest and the destruction of the weak.

I feel I take a liberty in speaking of any subject about which you must know so much more than I do. If I have been so fortunate as to make a true generalization, you will see it as such without many words from me.

My present intention is to further develop these ideas as long as I think them true.

I am, sir, with much esteem.

Yours truly,

G. A. Gaskell.

Down, Beckenham, Kent,


November 15th, 1878.
Dear Sir,

Your letter seems to me very interesting and clearly expressed and I hope that you are in the right

Your second law appears to be largely acted on in all civilized countries, and I just alluded to it in my remarks to the effect (as far as I remember) that the evils which would follow by checking benevolence and sympathy in not fostering the weak and diseased would be greater than by allowing them to survive and then to procreate.

With respect to your third law, I do not know whether you have read an article (I forget when published) by F. Galton, in which he proposes certificates of health, etc., for marriage, and that the best should be matched.

I have lately been led to reflect a little (for now that I am growing old, my work has become merely special) on the artificial checks to increase, and I cannot but doubt greatly, whether such would be advantageous to the world at large at present, however it may be in the distant future.

Suppose that such checks had been in action during the last two or three centuries, or even for a shorter time in Britain, what a difference it would have made in the world, when we consider America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa ! No words can exaggerate the importance, in my opinion, of our colonization for the future history of the world.

If it were universally known that the birth of children could be prevented, and this was not thought immoral by married persons, would there not be great danger of extreme profligacy amongst unmarried women, and might we not become like to "arreois" societies in the Pacific?

In the course of a century, France will tell us the result in many ways. We can already see that the French nation does not spread or increase much.

I am glad that you intend to continue your investigations, and I hope ultimately may publish on the subject.

I beg leave to remain, dear Sir,

Yours faithfully,

Ch. Darwin.

P.S. — This note is badly expressed and written, but I have not time or strength to re-write it


November 20rh, 1878.
Dear Sir,

I beg to thank you for your most courteous and encouraging letter. I shall devote particular attention to the points you raise, which are most important, though extremely difficult to deal with.

The very strength of the popular fear lest these new checks should lead to immorality, gives me some confidence that the human mind, so long trained in favour of that which tends to social order, will be able to withstand the greater license of new conditions without relapse.

Social change being evolutional is gradual ; such disorder as may be prompted must therefore arise in detail, while social order obtains in the mass ; disorder is disorganization, destruction of itself. I cannot conceive of the present order not being able to withstand the small corroding tendencies of disorder met in detail
surely it will outlive them.

The " arreois " societies are societies for death, not life ; they are social suicides. The libertine and selfish natures, in furthering their own ends, will, I trust, further their own destruction, and so be eliminated from society, while order survives.

If I could conceive disorder to arise at one time from numerous centres, and grow in corrosive power until the combination of order should be destroyed by it, then would I fear the extinction of the human race ; but disorder is of fitful growth and crumbles as it grows.

Without, I hope, overlooking the importance of colonization, there is much, I think, in what Mr. W. R. Greg says in his essay on " The Obligations of the Soil."

Colonization if slower would have one advantage — that it would be less painful. There is something about colonization at present, which reminds me of a panic in an assembly, where the people get jammed in the doorway. Subsistence is so difficult, that is, food is so dear, that emigrants may often view the fertile land they cannot
cultivate for want of capital, or a year's provisions, and so be forced to turn away and starve. High pressure sometimes defeats its own ends.

There is certainly one great danger in lessened fertility of some races, viz. that the pressure of other races upon them might extinguish them. The lessened fertility commences in the races which are stronger socially ; I trust they will endure. The nations guided by reason, could not long submit to having their standard of com-
fort lowered or their means lessened by the influx of an inferior race. I trust little to legislation, but its most useful action may some day be to preserve a civilized nation against the social encroachments of an uncivilized.

It was only that I could not find that what I call the law of sympathetic selection was formulated, that I ventured to draw attention to it. It is, as you point out, alluded to in your writings, and I am glad of the confirmation you give me.

The sympathetic are protective of their kind : the unsocial are left less protected. The law which might be called the survival of the sympathetic (the fittest socially) is a law oi protection and survival, conducing to the compactness of the social organism, and therefore to existence. Natural selection is a law of destruction
and survival.

I am hopeful that dispassionate study may help us to the resolution of several important questions. What I submit to you, I submit with much diffidence. I beg you will not let any feeling of courtesy lead you to reply to this letter ; I should be sorry to seem to give you this trouble, and much regret the state of your health.

I beg to remain, dear Sir, Yours truly,

G. A. Gaskell.

Charles Darwin, Esq.

*  Paolo Mantegazza, another eugenicist and correspondent of Darwin who attributed his eugenics to him.

Note:  Many of those who currently have a mythical conception of Charles Darwin as some kind of freethinking radical, oppressed by Victorian society and the church (the guy's buried in Westminster Cathedral) might want to read how he failed to come to the aid of Charles Bradlaugh when he and Annie Besant were arrested and prosecuted for publishing a pamphlet advocating birth control.   Darwin claimed ill health but it's pretty clear he wanted nothing to do with something considered as icky as birth control.  In a letter answering Bradlaugh's plea for help Darwin said he'd have to testify for the prosecution:

"I have not seen the book in question but for notices in the newspaper. I suppose that it refers to means to prevent conception. If so I should be forced to express in court a very decided opinion in opposition to you & Mrs. Besant…I believe that any such practices would in time lead to unsournd women & would destroy chastity, on which the family bond depends; & the weakening of this bond would be the greatest of all possible evils to mankind." [To Charles Bradlaugh, 6 June 1877, Darwin manuscript collection, #202, partly printed in Charles Bradlaugh: a record of his life and work, by Hypatia B. Bradlaugh, 2nd ed. 2 vols. London, 1894.


Bradlaugh was the most famous English atheist of his time.

Darwin and Haeckel 2

Darwin and Haeckel 1 

This last naturalist, besides his great work, 'Generelle Morphologie' (1866), has recently (1868, with a second edition in 1870), published his 'Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte,' in which he fully discusses the genealogy of man. If this work had appeared before my essay had been written, I should probably never have completed it. Almost all the conclusions at which I have arrived I find confirmed by this naturalist, whose knowledge on many points is much fuller than mine. Wherever I have added any fact or view from Prof. Haeckel's writings, I give his authority in the text; other statements I leave as they originally stood in my manuscript, occasionally giving in the foot-notes references to his works, as a confirmation of the more doubtful or interesting points.    

Charles Darwin:  Introduction,  The Descent of Man

While arguing about the role Charles Darwin played in the beginning of eugenics in both English speaking countries and Germany,  I was accused of cribbing from creationists.  My answer to that is there is no better road map to the sources proving my case than the citations of Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man with confirmatory material found in the letters and elsewhere.

In the related matter of Charles Darwin's influence on, encouragement of and promotion of Ernst Haeckel, it's really not necessary to move past those citations to establish the relationship.   Charles Darwin's endorsement of Ernst Haeckel's statements on "the genealogy of man"  in "Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte" couldn't have been more definitive.  He said, "If this work had appeared before my essay had been written, I should probably never have completed it."   In other words, Darwin would have considered what he had to say on that topic as having been said by Ernst Haeckel.  If anyone takes Haeckel as speaking for Darwin in that book, they can justify that assumption from that endorsement.  If Darwin wanted to distance himself from it, he would have chosen different words.  By what he said, Darwin owns it.

[Note:  I  will be using the translation of Naturliche Sschopfungsgeschichte, "The History of Creation", translated by E. Ray Lankester , first published in 1876.  Most of the  material relevant to this discussion is contained in chapters 22 and 23, about origin of human beings, Haeckel's division of people into races and ranking those supposed races by ascending rank from lowest to highest, largely based on skin color and ethnicity.  I will refer to the book as "The History of Creation" that name instead of the German from here on.]*

By the time Darwin wrote The Descent of Man,  much of what would make Ernst Haeckel infamous to later times was already present.   His racism is fully developed and given the authority of science, with the reliability that label is supposed to guarantee.  His general devaluation of humans, his  blatant ranking of groups of people according to their "value" by race and ethnicity, his assumptions of hierarchy within human socieity.   Even what would become infamous as his weird materialistic mysticism, his brand of "monism" is there.    And he attributes that to Charles Darwin in his first chapter, calling  the "triumph" of  "monism" "the highest and most general merit of the Theory of Descent, as reformed by Darwin."

This final triumph of the monistic conception of nature constitutes the highest and most general merit of the Theory of Descent, as reformed by Darwin.

Later in the book, Haeckel goes into considerable detail  about what is this monism he attributes to Darwin.  Which is important but other than to point out that Haeckel's ideas that would be  expressed for the rest of his life and which have made his name infamous were present in the book Darwin endorsed, I will not go into it.

As an aside, the political effect of that situation in 2012 is explosive.   Direct quotes, which I have yet to find, from Charles Darwin might be able to slightly mitigate his responsibility for promoting Haeckel and the book in which he said these things and the ideas contained in it,  they can never overcome it, at least not if the facts of the evidence are at issue instead of mythological smoke screens.  Since his endorsement was in his second most substantial book purporting to be science,  I don't think anything short of a similarly grave repudiation of that endorsement suffices to get him off the hook for having made it.

Instead, I will cite a few of the statements directly related to Darwin's endorsement of what Haeckel says about "the genealogy of man" and issues related to The Descent of Man.   Note that in the translation of the book,  the word "species" is frequently used to mean what is commonly referred to as "race" today.   This can be a little confusing to a modern reader but I will give the text as Lankester translated it.

The Caucasian, or Mediterranean man (Homo Mediterraneus), has from time immemorial been placed at the head of all races of men, as the most highly developed and perfect. It is generally called the Caucasian race, but as among all the varieties of the species, the Caucasian branch is the least important, we prefer the much more suitable appellation proposed by Friedrich Müller, namely, that of Mediterranean, or Midland men. For the most important varieties of this species, which are moreover the most eminent actors in what is called “Universal History,” first rose to a flourishing condition on the shores of the Mediterranean. For the most important varieties of this species, which are moreover the most eminent actors in what is called “Universal History,” first rose to a flourishing condition on the shores of the Mediterranean. The former area of the distribution of this species is expressed by the name of “Indo-Atlantic” species, whereas at present it is spread over the whole earth, and is overcoming most of the other species in the struggle for existence. In bodily as well as in mental qualities, no other human species can equal the Mediterranean. This species alone (with the exception of the Mongolian) has had an actual history; it alone has attained to that degree of civilization which seems to raise man above the rest of nature. 
Haeckel History of Creation

Given his endorsement of the book, it's not unfair to compare this with Darwin's statements about "Caucasians", especially in relation with other racial groups in The Descent of Man.  But,  to save time, here is more of what Haeckel said, mixing his racial hierarchy with assumptions of natural selection:

Within the tropical regions, Negroes, Kaffres, and Nubians, as also the Malays and Dravidas, are in some measure protected against the encroachments of the Indo-Germanic tribes by their being better adapted for a hot climate; the case of the arctic tribes of the polar regions is similar. But the other races, 325 which as it is are very much diminished in number, will sooner or later completely succumb in the struggle for existence to the superiority of the Mediterranean races. The American and Australian tribes are even now fast approaching their complete extinction, and the same may be said of the Papuans and Hottentots.  
Haeckel  History of Creation


Reading those passages, it's impossible not to remember one of the most infamous passages in The Descent of Man:

The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae—between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked (18. 'Anthropological Review,' April 1867, p. 236.), will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

Some of Darwin's defenders will be quick to eagerly read that to mean that Darwin is looking forward to an inconvenient gap in the fossil record being filled by the extinction of "the savage races" and the "antropomorphous apes", and not merely that   " The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."

Whether or not there's much of a difference between whether Darwin's hope is hoped for because it will add weight to natural selection or because he favors the anticipated further demarcation between species he and probably most other scientists already held were absolutely separated, might be a question worth considering. If one is better than the other, it's not by much.  Especially as Darwin presents all of the extinctions as a scientifically determined outcome, not to be avoided.   I've been unable to find Schaaffhausen's article so I don't know if it addressed that situation or if he merely merely talked about the future extinction of the great apes, as it would seem from where Darwin places the citation.  If including entire races into this extinction prophesy was Darwin's doing seems to be a question in need of an answer. As is the similarity between the prediction and Haeckel's

Haeckel explicitly lists Australians as among the most primitive, ape like of humans.

In other places Darwin presents the extinction of entire races of humans with stunning easiness.   A section of Chapter Seven is listed as "On the extinction of races".   The account of the genocide by the English of the Tasmanians is among the most horrifyingly repulsive examples of this:


When Tasmania was first colonised the natives were roughly estimated by some at 7000 and by others at 20,000. Their number was soon greatly reduced, chiefly by fighting with the English and with each other. After the famous hunt by all the colonists, when the remaining natives delivered themselves up to the government, they consisted only of 120 individuals (37. All the statements here given are taken from 'The Last of the Tasmanians,' by J. Bonwick, 1870.), who were in 1832 transported to Flinders Island. This island, situated between Tasmania and Australia, is forty miles long, and from twelve to eighteen miles broad: it seems healthy, and the natives were well treated. Nevertheless, they suffered greatly in health. In 1834 they consisted (Bonwick, p. 250) of forty-seven adult males, forty-eight adult females, and sixteen children, or in all of 111 souls. In 1835 only one hundred were left. As they continued rapidly to decrease, and as they themselves thought that they should not perish so quickly elsewhere, they were removed in 1847 to Oyster Cove in the southern part of Tasmania. They then consisted (Dec. 20th, 1847) of fourteen men, twenty-two women and ten children. (38. This is the statement of the Governor of Tasmania, Sir W. Denison, 'Varieties of Vice-Regal Life,' 1870, vol. i. p. 67.) But the change of site did no good. Disease and death still pursued them, and in 1864 one man (who died in 1869), and three elderly women alone survived. The infertility of the women is even a more remarkable fact than the liability of all to ill-health and death. At the time when only nine women were left at Oyster Cove, they told Mr. Bonwick (p. 386), that only two had ever borne children: and these two had together produced only three children!

With respect to the cause of this extraordinary state of things, Dr. Story remarks that death followed the attempts to civilise the natives. "If left to themselves to roam as they were wont and undisturbed, they would have reared more children, and there would have been less mortality." Another careful observer of the natives, Mr. Davis, remarks, "The births have been few and the deaths numerous. This may have been in a great measure owing to their change of living and food; but more so to their banishment from the mainland of Van Diemen's Land, and consequent depression of spirits" (Bonwick, pp. 388, 390).


Note the transition from the extermination of an entire population by intentional murder "the famous hunt**" to the genocide being presented as if it was a description of the natural decline of a rare species. "As they continued rapidly to decrease, and as they themselves thought that they should not perish so quickly elsewhere, they were removed in 1847 to Oyster Cove in the southern part of Tasmania".   It is a passage that it would be hard to top for depravity with anything I've read by Haeckel.  If it is different in tone or content from Haeckel it is a difference too subtle for me to see.   Darwin goes on to report on the Maoris and other existing human populations in the region as dispassionately.   Where I'd expect most people to note the effects of invasion, murder, enslavement, intentional genocide, the theft of lands and the displacements to uninhabitable regions - until something valuable is discovered there as well,  Darwin sees all of that as the action of nature, determined, inevitable.   As Darwin begins that section:

"When civilised nations come into contact with barbarians the struggle is short, except where a deadly climate gives its aid to the native race."  

To be continued.

*Lankester was naturalist, a  long time member of Darwin's circle, a correspondent during that period, someone Darwin lobbied to get into the Linnean Society during the time Lankester was translating and publishing his translation, and  a close associate of Thomas Huxley.   I'm certain that translation would have been known to and likely read by Darwin, who seems to have read the material he cited from the German original.  As a close associate of Darwin, if there was anything questionable mentioning Darwin in Haeckel's book,  I am certain he would have drawn Darwin's attention to it, seeking confirmation of its accuracy.

Most of the  material relevant to this discussion is contained in chapters 22 and 23, about origin of human beings, Haeckel's division of people into races and ranking those supposed races by ascending rank from lowest to highest, largely based on skin color and ethnicity.

**  Why not even "the infamous "hunt"?   The friends of Charles Darwin are always presenting him as a great humanitarian but, other than a few instances that could fall into the category of noblesse oblige which I know of,  he seems remarkably callous and indifferent to human suffering and death in the majority of the population.   Contrast his tone in those passages to his at times gushy concern for the work of Haeckel, Galton and other professional associates.   The answer to why he doesn't chide Haeckel for his excesses would lie in those passages in which he calmly, cooly, contemplates the alleged benefits of countless people dying as children and where he talks about things like that with studied indifference.

I'm not pretending I don't see what's on the page right in front of me.

It’s A Dirty Political Brawl. Adapt or Die.

With a note about the ScienceBlogs.

This is a post I wrote in April, 2008, after the furor over what I said about Charles Darwin in January.  I'm posting it because I need a day off and because it developed some of the ideas I've been dealing with here.  I've left out the links from the first posting but may restore them if I have the time.  You can see those where it was first posted.

I don’t remember when it was that someone broke the news to me that Ben Stein was going to be in an anti-evolution movie to be released this election year. “Oh, jickit”, I said, “Not the damned Darwin wars again, already”. I’m afraid I really did say “jickit”.

But in following up on other blogs and reading things about the current go round on the issue, I think I’ve figured out something that has puzzled me for a long time. How can the side for evolutionary science, the side with all the scientific facts, so consistently lose the political argument. I think it is because they so consistently mistake this for a scientific fight when it is, in fact, a political fight. You can’t fight a political fight expecting the same rules as you use in science, or even in a criminal court. If you try to win the evolution argument using those tools, arrogantly refusing to face the nature of the fight, you will lose and lose badly.

It’s one of the great disabilities found on the left that so many of us take refuge in the comforting myth that our opponents are stupid. Well, unfortunately, they aren’t. They’re dishonest crooks and like all successful crooks they’re smart and they’re crafty. They knew that they could possibly rally an effective part of the religious right during an election year by waving a paper mache head of Darwin on a pike with little cost to themselves. That was the smart part. And they knew that when they dissed Darwin that they could count on a knee jerk reaction from a side they could pin on Democrats and that reaction might, as well, encourage the Republican right to come out and vote. That was the crafty part.

How many times does it take for them to play this kind of trick before the left catches on that they’re not playing by the standard rules printed up so nice and fair in Hoyle?

Well, they’ve released the movie and they’ve gotten many knees to twitch in sync. While, I gather, there are other things in the movie, it’s the reputation of Darwin I’ve heard most talked about. The slights against the sacred name of Darwin can always get some of our side going and once they’re started there’s no reasoning with them. It’s a sort of St. Vitus dance of political death. If it was an important issue you might stomach it better. But it’s always something vastly unimportant, like the mythic Darwin, or something unattainable. You can name your pick of those hard fought for futilities.

Knowing from experience that an inoculation attempt* won’t stop the disease from spreading I’m not going into it here again. I’m going to only talk about the politics of it because that is all this is, a matter of politics.

Read the creationists’ websites, the more literate ones, and you’ll see they’ve got scads of material, much of it taken directly from Charles Darwin himself as well as his closest associates. Look up their citations if you think they made it up. You will probably find some are inventions but probably no more than you will find in any blog community dedicated to polemics. They’ve read their Darwin, all of him, not pretending that he stopped writing in 1859 like so many of his most devoted fans seem to believe. And, like everyone, they take what they need and they leave the rest.** The assumption, that in the past 90 years, the side which uses Charles Darwin as the major figure in their war against evolution wouldn’t have gotten around to reading and taking detailed notes on his complete works - as well as on everyone associated with him - only allows you to deceive yourself into complacency. And its surprisingly unobservant of the self-defined, “science side” of things.

One thing you have to understand is that they don’t care about evolution, not at all. They don’t care about your arguments for it and they don’t mind lying about the subject. They certainly don’t intend to observe scientific methods any more than they do basic rules of honesty about the written record. That doesn’t mean that they’ve got nothing they can use when they fight dirty on this issue. Most people either can’t or won’t master the science, but they can understand the historical record quite separately from that. Not knowing what that consists of is a big mistake.

In the arguments I got into on the subject at Orac’s blog this week I got the feeling that many of the staunch defenders of Darwin re eugenics were unaware that Francis Galton, the inventor of the word “eugenics”, who is customarily presented by the Darwin fan club as an evil distorter*** of the great man, was actually a life long colleague, friend, confidant and the cousin of Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin, far from discouraging the path to eugenics, encouraged his cousin’s work at its inception and and cited and lauded it in his own published work. When Darwin died, Galton and Thomas Huxley were the ones who planned his grandiose funeral*. Francis Galton was the first president of the British Eugenics Society and the author of some pretty awful and bigoted junk but he wasn’t the figure from outside the Darwin circle that he’s generally presented to be in modern myth. Galton was a Darwin circle insider as he was building his eugenics and after he first used the word. Galton names Darwin as his great inspiration.

I was encouraged by the new views (Darwin’s) to pursue many inquiries which had long interested me, and which clustered round the central topics of Heredity and the possible improvement of the Human Race.

How are you going to say Galton was wrong about who inspired him? Read Chapter XX in his memoir (found at this site), it’s mandatory reading for those wanting to understand the political issue. Especially notice Darwin’s glowing letter to Galton about "Hereditary Genius" and then look at "The Descent of Man" to see that Darwin didn’t change his mind about it.

To complicate things for the effort to beat the eugenics rap, when Galton stepped down from the presidency of the British Eugenics Society his place was taken by Leonard Darwin, Charles’ son. How can you beat the charge that Leonard Darwin followed his father’s legacy in his eugenics? I mean how can you beat it so as to be politically effective, not how to take the twists, gyrations and turns necessary to support the incredible claim that he didn’t understand his own father as well as you, who have never met or talked with him. You would need contemporary condemnations from people closer to Darwin for eugenics to counter the political weight that this unpleasant fact has.

There are letters and documents from and to Leonard Darwin that make some very disturbing reading including communications with the infamous Charles Davenport, but I am not going to go into those here. Believe me, the creationists already know about them.

A lot of people who believe themselves to be on the left who are taking umbrage over Ben Stein’s lies, distort history as much in defense of what they mistakenly believe to be the truth. Well, surprise, Ben Stein is a big liar, a Dick Morris who can fake gravitas, and so is annoying. But hearing people distort and deny the historical record in a refutation attempt can be kind of grating too. Most aggravating of all, though, is to see them falling for the bait yet another time and risk getting us hooked into a transparent election year set-up job.

It would be nice if this was not a potentially effective political tool for the Republican right because I’d really rather deal with things that were important, like global warming, nutrition programs, universal health care and the neo-imperialist wars the Republicans are waging and planning to wage. But enough leftists might fall for the bait for this to be a political issue for us during a crucial election. All the Republicans need to successfully use this distraction is to get out a small number of religious-right voters who would have stayed home to come out and vote. They don’t need to covert the entire population to creationism. We are not their intended marks.

Charles Darwin has been dead for well over a hundred years. His importance in evolutionary science now is dwarfed by the scientific work that has happened in those years, he is only a brand name today. As a brand name he is used by those who sell fish pins and the such but he is also a trademark of the anti-evolution industry. And he’s worked a lot better for them than for the Darwin fish peddlers. The effort to protect his reputation has failed politically.

Claiming that they haven’t got a smoking gun won’t help. The evidence doesn’t support the defense on a standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Insisting on that hasn’t worked for most of a century, it’s not going to work in the future. Even lesser standards of evidence in the trial of the mythic Charles Darwin won’t help because the creationists have pretty well demolished that for a majority of the population. Getting all arrogant and condescending about The People being stupid and ignorant isn’t going to do much but help the creationists increase their majority in the opinion polls.

You would think that looking at the political environment that the ultra-Darwinists would be the first to understand that their choice is to adapt to the real, political environment they work in or face extinction. If they want to save the teaching of evolution in the public schools and the funding of the science, they are going to have to give up the “one great man of evolution” story that the public promotion of evolution has relied so heavily on up till now. The mythic Darwin that PR campaign depends on has been a political failure, it was always condescending. The public relations of evolution should have relied on the hard science of evolution and not on myths of the melding of evolution with the muck of the social sciences. That’s just Social Darwinism in modern dress.

The promotion of evolution should have moved on with the science and left Charles Darwin as increasingly less common footnotes in little read books. The real Charles Darwin, as seen in his writing and the writings of those around him, was always going to be a public relations problem. And the record was there to be seen as the social and political climate changed and the more appalling parts of those dealing with gender, ethnicity and class stood out. That record will always be there to cause problems, it hasn’t decisively won the case for evolution after a hundred years of effort, it has been a millstone around the neck of science. Evolution in 2008 doesn’t need the Charles Darwin of myth, it’s going to have to deal with the Charles Darwin of fact. That is if promoting evolution was their real priority.

Note: I’ve decided to stop laying out the fact of my accepting evolution in posts about these subjects from now on. It’s demeaning to have to keep doing it and it will be ignored by those who don’t like what is said, anyway. Anyone who is interested can read the archive at Echidne’s or my blog to see what I believe on the subject.

* You will remember the inoculation attempt earlier this year.

** Call it “quote mining” if that makes you feel any better about it, though the charge won’t keep them from doing it and it will not prevent those quotations from being politically effective. It’s certainly worked for them, so far.

I’m kind of tired of hearing “quote mining” in this debate. Show me someone on any side who doesn’t choose those quotes that are most useful to their arguments and to de-emphasize those they don’t care for. No side in the Darwin dialectic is innocent of it, neither side is honest about it.

*** Herbert Spenser too. Unfortunately, Charles Darwin called him “Our great philosopher, Herbert Spencer” as he cited him favorably in his work in The Descent of Man. Clearly the distance between Darwin and Spenser is a lot less than today’s myth presents. Please understand, there was a time not too long ago when both eugenics and “Social Darwinism” were respectable and people didn’t automatically assume that these connections didn’t exist.

**** A rather grandiose one for Darwin, who the romantics think was some kind of shunned radical figure in Victorian times. Odd, for a radical instigating a “spirit of rebellion against all ancient authorities “ (as Galton said) overturning the very firmament of the establishment. How many geographic features, towns, etc. got named after him?

It’s just as odd how quickly eugenics took off, became an established part of university curricula, organizations, public policy and even Supreme Court law. Only it’s not odd since eugenics complimented the most powerful elites, especially the Anglo-Saxon elite, and that its costs were borne entirely by the underclass and powerless ethnic groups. Eugenics “science”, flowing from the Darwin circle, was tailor made for popularity with a self-interested elite. Also not odd was that it was born and nurtured within that privileged elite which just about all of its figures were part of.

I’ve been looking for the contemporary fans of Darwin who tried to distance him from eugenics in the period before the Second World War became inevitable and am not having much success. If anyone knows of Darwinists, from the period when eugenics was still reputable science, without the quotes around science, who successfully made the case that the eugenics movement, including Darwin’s own son, were distorting his work, I’d love to have citations.

This is politically important only because the other side has already got the goods eugenicswise. I’m afraid that to be politically effective, you’ll have to present citations from associates as intimate as Francis Galton and Leonard Darwin, who, unlike anyone alive today, had access to the private, certainly more candid, Charles Darwin. Otherwise, I’m afraid that they are going to be accepted as more reliable authorities in the matter of his inspiration for their own eugenics. You going to prove they didn’t know who they relied on, themselves?

Post Script: There are bloggers who post at the ScienceBlogs who I like, though I seldom go over there. I don’t like the coercive Sci-jocks who infest the comment threads, enforcing a rigid set of orthodox boundaries beyond which no one is allowed to speak. I resent it when they bleed over into the generally better informed and more realistic leftist political blogs and try to enforce their thought code on us.

It was especially infuriating this week to see one of the more realistic Science Bloggers, Chris Mooney, the author of one of our most important books about the Republican suppression of science, viciously attacked for just pointing out that Stein’s movie wasn’t doing a bad business at the box office. It was, pardon the expression, ScienceBlog McCarthyism at its worst.

As I mentioned indirectly here last week, I had one of the readers of the ScienceBlogs tell me that even though I’d made a strong argument, with citations, in this area that I shouldn’t talk about it because it would be “bad for the promotion of the institution of science”. Science that relies on the suppression of evidence. If you thought you’d heard it all before.

I never agreed to follow the Sci-jock’s Index of Prohibited Thoughts and if they don’t like that they can go to hell.

Darwin and Haeckel 1.

Charles Darwin wrote a letter to Ernst Haeckel on the 9th of March, 1864 in which he said,

Dear & Respected Sir

You must permit me to thank you sincerely for the present of your paper & for the Stettin Newspaper. I am delighted that so distinguished a Naturalist should confirm & expound my views, and I can clearly see that you are one of the few who clearly understand Natural Selection.

I feel sure that you do good service by boldly expressing how far you agree with me.

Many men in this country elsewhere really go nearly or quite as far as I do on the modification of Species, but are afraid openly to express such views. I have been particularly struck & interested by your remarks on the individual variability of Sapphirina. This sentence will be remembered by me & quoted hereafter.

With sincere respect I remain dear Sir | yours very faithfully | Charles Darwin

In this early letter to Ernst Haeckel, Charles Darwin confirmed that Ernst Haeckel understood him, "one of the few who clearly understands Natural Selection".  It endorses his "boldly expressing how far you agree with me".  He also indicated that Darwinists, five years after On the Origin of Species were already deriving conclusions from it that they were hesitant to make public.

Many men in this country elsewhere really go nearly or quite as far as I do on the modification of Species, but are afraid openly to express such views.

That letter is one in a long correspondence between Haeckel and Darwin,  The Darwin Correspondence Project apparently holds 96, most of which it has not transcribed, many of those are held in the original at Haeckel Haus,.   The earliest collection of Darwin letters published was "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin" by his son,  Francis Darwin (another of the Darwin children involved with eugenics).  In volume 2,  he warmly testifies to the closeness of his father with Ernst Haeckel.

The earliest letter which I have seen from my father to Professor Haeckel, was written in 1865, and from that time forward they corresponded (though not, I think, with any regularity) up to the end of my father's life. His friendship with Haeckel was not nearly growth of correspondence, as was the case with some others, for instance, Fritz Muller. Haeckel paid more than one visit to Down, and these were thoroughly enjoyed by my father. The following letter will serve to show the strong feeling of regard which he entertained for his correspondent—a feeling which I have often heard him emphatically express, and which was warmly returned. The book referred to is Haeckel's 'Generelle Morphologie,' published in 1866, a copy of which my father received from the author in January 1867.

From this we have his son's evidence that the correspondence with Haeckel lasted the rest of Charles Darwin's life, though perhaps not frequent.  It's possible that there were letters Francis Darwin didn't have when he put together the book.

Francis Darwin said that Darwin and Haeckel's relationship was far more than a mere correspondence, that Darwin hosted Haeckel at his home more than once,  and that he heard him "emphatically experess- "warm feeling of regard"  for Haeckel, "which was warmly returned".  Obviously, Francis Darwin was witness to conversations between his father and Ernst Haeckel.  That is something that no one denying a connection between Darwin and Haeckel can overcome  They never heard the man, never mind lived with him and heard him privately, off the record.   We also learn that Haeckel gave him a copy of "Generelle Morphologie".  The record shows that Charles Darwin was very familiar with Ernst Haeckel's writing up till the time he died.   Of course, Darwin couldn't know what Haeckel wrote after his death but he is known to have read Haeckel through his own words, reaction, commentary and enthusiastic citations.

Francis Darwin consults Thomas Huxley to provide a description of "Generelle Morphologie":

Mr. Huxley, writing in 1869, paid a high tribute to Professor Haeckel as the Coryphaeus of the Darwinian movement in Germany. Of his 'Generelle Morphologie,' "an attempt to work out the practical application" of the doctrine of Evolution to their final results, he says that it has the "force and suggestiveness, and... systematising power of Oken without his extravagance." Professor Huxley also testifies to the value of Haeckel's 'Schopfungs-Geschichte' as an exposition of the 'Generelle Morphologie' "for an educated public."

 Francis Darwin continues about a later letter:

In the following letter my father alludes to the somewhat fierce manner in which Professor Haeckel fought the battle of 'Darwinismus,' and on this subject Dr. Krause has some good remarks (page 162). He asks whether much that happened in the heat of the conflict might not well have been otherwise, and adds that Haeckel himself is the last man to deny this. Nevertheless he thinks that even these things may have worked well for the cause of Evolution, inasmuch as Haeckel "concentrated on himself by his 'Ursprung des Menschen-Geschlechts,' his 'Generelle Morphologie,' and 'Schopfungs-Geschichte,' all the hatred and bitterness which Evolution excited in certain quarters," so that, "in a surprisingly short time it became the fashion in Germany that Haeckel alone should be abused, while Darwin was held up as the ideal of forethought and moderation."]

Despite what is currently believed by some, Haeckel, as early as  "Generelle Morphologie" established himself as the leading representative of Darwinism in Germany, with the approval of Darwin and his foremost English representative.  As Francis Darwin put it:

Mr. Huxley, writing in 1869, paid a high tribute to Professor Haeckel as the Coryphaeus of the Darwinian movement in Germany. Of his 'Generelle Morphologie,' "an attempt to work out the practical application" of the doctrine of Evolution to their final results, he says that it has the "force and suggestiveness, and... systematising power of Oken without his extravagance." Professor Huxley also testifies to the value of Haeckel's 'Schopfungs-Geschichte' as an exposition of the 'Generelle Morphologie' "for an educated public."

Again, in his 'Evolution in Biology' (An article in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' 9th edition, reprinted in 'Science and Culture,' 1881, page 298.), Mr. Huxley wrote: "Whatever hesitation may, not unfrequently, be felt by less daring minds, in following Haeckel in many of his speculations, his attempt to systematise the doctrine of Evolution, and to exhibit its influence as the central thought of modern biology, cannot fail to have a far-reaching influence on the progress of science."


Haeckel could hardly have concluded that he was getting Darwin wrong, between Darwin's confirmation and approval of his aggressive interpretation and Thomas Huxley appointing him the "Coryphaeus [chorus leader] of the Darwinian movement in Germany."  He retained that status for the rest of his life. Charles Darwin never declared him as having gone off the tracks in any document I've seen.

In the letters that follow,  Darwin expresses some reservations about the case Haeckel made for Darwinism, though it's clear that was due to the possibility that it would incite opposition instead of with the scientific validity of what Haeckel said:

CHARLES DARWIN TO E. HAECKEL. Down, May 21, 1867.
Dear Häckel

Your letter of the 18th has given me great pleasure, for you have received what I said in the most kind & cordial manner.  You have in part taken what I said much stronger than I had intended. It never occurred to me for a moment to doubt that your work with the whole subject so admirably & clearly arranged, as well as fortified by so many new facts & arguments, wd not advance our common object in the highest degree.—

All that I think is that you will excite anger & that anger so completely blinds every one that your arguments wd. have no chance of influencing those who are already opposed to our views. Moreover I do not at all like that you towards whom I feel so much friendship shd unnecessarily make enemies, & there is pain & vexation enough in the world without more being caused. But I repeat that I can feel no doubt that your work will greatly advance our subject, & I heartily wish it cd be translated into English for my own sake &that of others. With respect to what you say about my advancing too strongly objections against my own views, some of my English friends think that I have erred on this side; but truth compelled me to write what I did, & I am inclined to think it was good policy.

The belief in the descent theory is slowly spreading in England, even amongst those who can give no reason for their belief. No body of men were at first so much opposed to my views as the members of the London entomolog. Soc; but now I am assured that with the exception of 2 or 3 old men all the members concur with me to a certain extent.  It has been a great disappointment to me that I have never recd your long letter written to me from the Canary I.s. I am rejoiced to hear that your tour which seems to have been a most interesting one has done yr health much good.  I am working away at my new book, but make very slow progress &the work tries my health, which is much the same as when you were here.

Victor Carus is going to translate it, but whether it is worth translation I am rather doubtful

I am very glad to hear that there is some chance of your visiting England this autumn & all in this house will be delighted to see you here.

Believe me my dear Häckel | yours very sincerely | Charles Darwin

Darwin's early expressed reservations of Haeckel's exposition of Darwinism weren't scientific ones:

"It never occurred to me for a moment to doubt that your work with the whole subject so admirably & clearly arranged, as well as fortified by so many new facts & arguments, wd not advance our common object in the highest degree."

Darwin's reservations are explicitly political, the fear of motivating opposition:

"All that I think is that you will excite anger & that anger so completely blinds every one that your arguments wd. have no chance of influencing those who are already opposed to our views. Moreover I do not at all like that you towards whom I feel so much friendship shd unnecessarily make enemies, & there is pain & vexation enough in the world without more being caused." 

Apparently Haeckel had chided Darwin for responding to his critics seriously.  Darwin says that he was doing so as "good policy".

"With respect to what you say about my advancing too strongly objections against my own views, some of my English friends think that I have erred on this side; but truth compelled me to write what I did, & I am inclined to think it was good policy."

He's afraid that if too much of the meaning of Darwinism is revealed, it will excite opposition in the period during which it was gaining ground in England and elsewhere.   So a letter with which his champions try to distance Darwin from Haeckel shows that his hesitations at Haeckel's exposition of Darwinism were political, not scientific.

In the letter Darwin refers to a previous visit Haeckel made to him and he eagerly anticipates an upcoming visit.

Another letter ofNovember 19, 1868 from which I have seen one phrase extracted from to distance Darwin from Haeckel is another instance of "quote mining" to support a eugenics-free Darwin.  But a reading of more of what Darwin said shows  when he says "Your boldness, however, sometimes makes me tremble, "  he wasn't talking about Haeckel's more troubling writing.  Darwin was troubled about Haeckel's book because because he was going past where there was current fossil evidence to support his contentions.

Your chapters on the affinities and genealogy of the animal kingdom strike me as admirable and full of original thought. Your boldness, however, sometimes makes me tremble, but as Huxley remarked, some one must be bold enough to make a beginning in drawing up tables of descent. Although you fully admit the imperfection of the geological record, yet Huxley agreed with me in thinking that you are sometimes rather rash in venturing to say at what periods the several groups first appeared. I have this advantage over you, that I remember how wonderfully different any statement on this subject made 20 years ago, would have been to what would now be the case, and I expect the next 20 years will make quite as great a difference. Reflect on the monocotyledonous plant just discovered in the PRIMORDIAL formation in Sweden.

Considering other things that Darwin and Huxley could have trembled about, that doesn't seem worth the effort.

I will be dealing with the strong ties between Darwin and Haeckel this week because this is such a crucial issue in the dispute.  As anyone who looks at the record can see, Darwin's own words and acts, citation and promoting Haeckel's books and his encouragement of what Haeckel was doing,  that connection is clear and undeniable to anyone who doesn't resort to misrepresenting the case or avoiding looking at the evidence.  And Haeckel in 1868 was already saying things that Darwin wanted kept quiet to avoid bad publicity for Darwinism, without objecting to the scientific nature of what Haeckel was saying.  I will go into that in future posts.

Note:  As to the matter of how much of Haeckel Darwin understood in the original German, Francis Darwin excerpts this letter to August Weismann in which Darwin demonstrates he could read technical papers in German, albeit, "so slowly".

January 12, 1877.

... I read German so slowly, and have had lately to read several other papers, so that I have as yet finished only half of your first essay and two-thirds of your second. They have excited my interest and admiration in the highest degree, and whichever I think of last, seems to me the most valuable. I never expected to see the coloured marks on caterpillars so well explained; and the case of the ocelli delights me especially...


While less known to those fighting the Darwin wars,  August Weismann is also an important figure tying Darwin to German eugenics at the beginning of its horrific development and in English speaking countries.  As with George Darwin, I have not concentrated on Weismann and other figures in this controversy yet though I may get around to that in the future.   I will point out that if you do a google search of these, looking for online, primary material, you will find that creationists have looked at those sources already and they use them in their polemics against evolutionary science.   That record has always been out there, it has never been as available in the original documents as it is today, it is not going away.   Scientists who want to protect evolutionary science from political attacks will have to deal with that record and face that the Darwin so many of them grew up with is half of the story at best, a near complete fabrication, most commonly.

Unlike the problem of writing about Schallmeyer for an English speaking audience, that so little of his writing is easily available in English translation,the question of Darwin's relationship with Haeckel is well documented in English, both by what Darwin and others close to him wrote in English and in translations of Haeckel that were made during Darwin's lifetime and which he would have known to have read or mentioned.  The champions of the eugenics-free Darwin will grasp onto any straw to avoid the conclusions forced by that record.  Which doesn't,  in any way, change the record or that it's available to be read and understood and it always will be.

Below is a blog post that I wrote after a couple of weeks of intense flaming and misrepresentation of the serial essay I wrote in 2008.   I had  reposted it in order on my other blog after it appeared in serial form at Echidne of the Snakes, where the flaming took place.

The most controversial part was "Early Selections" in which I criticized and began to analyze Darwin's very explicit statement of the premise of eugenics.  That criticism included posts on at least one other blog which misrepresented what I wrote so obviously that it was clear the author hadn't even really read that post, and certainly hadn't read all of them.  It was my first experience of just how dishonest the advocacy for the phony post-War, eugenics  free, Darwin was.   He never lived, he is a fictitious character created to shield the real Darwin from the facts of what he wrote and did.   He was created in the post-war period when  his obvious racism, ethnic bigotry, sexism, eugenics and, yes, Social Darwinism, should have been being admitted and removed from science.  I already knew that when I wrote the essay.  But since it was to be posted on a blog I was writing for on as a guest, I was reluctant to go as far in exposing that as I could have.  That reluctance doesn't apply to my own blogs.  The purpose of these posts is to document that Charles Darwin was, in fact, the inspiration of eugenics, that he approved it as soon as he read the early manifestations of it from Galton, Greg, Haeckel, Fick and others.  Not only did he approve it but in he gave it publicity by filling The Descent of Man with eugenics assertions and arguments, knowingly.  He was, by far, more famous than any of the actual inventors of eugenics or any of its early figures,  Charles Darwin was the inspiration and also its foremost proponent in its earliest period.

The well known, dishonest "aid" paragraph that is used, almost always in truncated form, by those who want to distance him from the horrible things he said throughout the book was obviously put there by Darwin as a means of denying what he was stating in what he clearly meant to be taken as solid science in the rest of the book.  As I've read more into this, one other thing that is clear, Charles Darwin was quite experienced in that kind of politics by the 1870s.   He constantly let other people fight his battles for him,  Huxley, most famously.  The decades after the introduction of natural selection was a struggle to get the idea adopted in science,  it didn't have the absolute place it gained after the 1930s, though it had been adopted by many, from the beginning.   During Darwin's later years he was still campaigning for the adoption of natural selection as well as doing some work in less wide reaching areas that, I'd guess, might turn out to be more durable than natural selection will turn out to be.  Darwin was engaged in the encouragement of eugenics as it was forming, publicizing the idea, lending his greater fame to its inventor and its early proponents,  giving it one of its most succinct articulations in the paragraph for which the "aid" paragraph provides rather transparently insincere deniability.   I will fully analyze that in another post.  The problem isn't that it's hard to make this case, the problem is there is so much confirmation of it.   And that those who have constructed and want to maintain the eugenics free Darwin have thrown up so much obfuscation that has to be answered and debunked.

The most controversial issue of all, Darwin's obvious inspiration of Ernst Haeckel is yet to be dealt with in this series.  I will be doing that this week.  Again, the issue isn't that it's hard to make that association, the problem is that there is so much relevant information to choose from.   And it's indisputable for anyone who looks at the documentary record.  Charles Darwin made that association, himself, during his lifetime, with letters to and visits from Haeckel,  private encouragement and glowing, public  endorsement of books which already had rather devloped versions of the ideas that would make Ernst Haeckel a source of some of the most infamous ideas and, it is indisputable, acts,  in the history of science.   The Descent of Man, the road map I relied on to find evidence in this case, makes Darwin's endorsement of Haeckel clear.  That is coming in posts beginning next week.

Anyway, here, in slightly expanded form, is that post from 2008.

Dissing an Idol and Feeling Better For It


The furor over the essay posted below produced some good points to consider and a lot of silly fun over at Echidne’s blog. I did get too much of the latter by citing Thomas Huxley and Richard Dawkins to refute the instantly arrived at piece of erudition from the Wiki Rangers and Knights of Sagan that “only creationists use the word ‘Darwinism”. Though even that obvious refutation didn’t matter. You wonder at the phenomenon of people who won’t read or think but who frequent blogs that deal with somewhat complicated ideas.

The most ridiculous, though, didn’t come from the post-adolescent Sciblog wannabees but one Word Search able scholar who went into paroxysms of indignation over the use of the word “cull” to describe what Darwin lamented mightn’t happen in ‘civilised’ countries due to the level of charity available to people in the work houses of Victorian England. I got the feeling that the guy didn’t know the word before reading it in the essay. Come to think of it, he probably doesn’t understand the New Poor Law or have the skills to find out what the reference to work houses means so this will probably set him off again.

Darwin used a metaphor to describe the unchecked breeding of the “weaker members” of the human species and the bad results it would have for future generations. He said:

Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

He introduced the idea that it was stupid to allow certain people to have children after lamenting that they would survive to child bearing age. By comparing people to farm animals in this context he was clearly lamenting that people wouldn’t be treated like animals in a commercial breeding operation.

Let me stop here to ask, isn’t that outrageous enough in itself? Not even animals in the wild, but comparing human beings to animals in a commercial breeding operation? Where else have we seen that idea not only posed by carried out?

Darwin’s Defender didn’t seem to realize that animals selected as not to be bred are not kept as pets on a farm but are marked for early slaughter.  Something that would have been known to the squire Darwin, who was a landowner who enjoyed income from tenant farmers and who had observed breeding operations in his research.  I’ll point out that this is entirely in keeping with the earlier part of the paragraph where Darwin laments that human beings will survive long enough to breed.

The mechanism to prevent this happening in the human population, the one he approves of, the one he heartily approves of among the ‘savages’ is through the deaths of the “weaker members”. That the gentleman's son, Charles Darwin, would leave the culling to the 'savages' signifies absolutely nothing.

By the time Darwin wrote The Descent of Man, where the passage comes from, he was a very experienced writer who was used to having his language dissected by both those hostile to science and by scientists. To think he didn’t mean what he wrote is the kind of double-talk you get from idol worshipers, ironically, it is tantamount to saying he was ga-ga when he wrote it. I think he knew what he was writing and that it is clear he knew what happens to animals on the farm, he cited exactly the practices of commercial animal breeding in his work and would have known about its enormous usefulness to his great idea, which isn’t evolution but natural selection. The subsequent and dishonest assertion of his humanity does nothing to dissuade me that he knew the horrible conclusions that had to come from believing what he had just written.

I won’t write down to the level of people who don’t read what they comment on or who won’t look up references they don’t understand. It’s a waste of the time of those readers who do read and do the bother of thinking about what is on the screen in front of them instead of automatically looking to their database of skimpy, pre-fabricated, cliches and prejudices in order to fit in ideas that don’t match any field they’ve got in their heads. Writing down is an insult to people who deserve respect and it’s my experience that the ones who choose to be idiots aren’t going to change no matter how hard you try to explain what you’ve already written.

I will also not hold back because “creationists” might find useful material in what I point out. If it’s there, they’ve got the resources to find it . If the proponents of Darwinism are so worried about ‘science’ that they think covering up the truth will protect it, they care more about their ideology than they do about science. I have no obligation to join in with their cover up efforts.

The People

This is the third and last part of the serial essay I first posted in 2008.   I dedicated it to Marilynne Robinson and I still do, after reading her later novels and essays.   I don't know of a better living writer of the English language or a living intellectual who has addressed important ideas with more integrity and moral erudition. 

The People are the foundation and the ultimate authority of democracy. Democracy assumes that The People will rule themselves better than despots or elites or even “a government of wise men”. Democracy assumes that The People will act more wisely, more justly, more fairly than other authorities. Most of all, including all of these benefits, democracy assumes that the collective actions of The People will be more beneficially effective in the real world than any other form of government.

In order for democracy to be preferable to any other known form of government it has to pass a fairly low test, it must produce a better life than undemocratic governments. The history of the world provides conclusive evidence that The People could hardly do worse than the alternative.

There are several fundamental prerequisites for democracy to exist, The People must be assumed to have political equality, they must have a sufficient grasp of the truth to make the right decisions, and they have to have a sense of fairness, honesty and decency. It must be taken as given that The People possess the inherent rights to govern their lives and their polity. In order for democracy to really exist, these have to be more than assumed, they have to be made real. Without these prerequisites, democracy is a sham.

But the exercise of rights, though they might be said to be unalienable, cannot be exercised outside of a context which will permit it. Democracy is notably rare in the world, it is gained with enormous difficulty and it is difficult to keep. Would be rulers are always endangering it and elites actively despise it even as they appropriate its words as tools of deception. In the modern world one of the dangers to democracy is the propaganda power of mass media and in the United States that media is owned and controlled by the economic elite. We have the example of the media here perverting the concept of democracy to the point where it is to be held as unremarkable that George W. Bush - brought to office by Supreme Court ruling, approving a clearly corrupted election in a state ruled by his brother - claims the right to impose democracy, by unprovoked invasion, on a foreign country. When words become slogans without any coherent substance, the truth can’t be told. We are at a crisis which is destroying democracy and which endangers the entire biosphere.

An even greater danger to Western democracy is the loss of confidence by The People in our own ability to govern, when we doubt our actions can be beneficially effective. That is seen in low voter participation rates, the cynicism with which government and politics is regarded and the ever lower regard in which The People are led to hold ourselves. An apathetic, demoralized, jaded population is set up for subjugation.

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I began with a section about the immense dimensions of EVOLUTION. In the arguments that ensued no one disputed the contention that it was effectively infinite when compared with the capacity of the human population to deal with even those data which could be obtained. Less noticed, since it was unremarked, was the contention that the enormous duration and numbers of EVOLUTION would allow it being known through only as a minute part of the whole. I mentioned that this limit in what was knowable might apply to mechanisms governing the processes of EVOLUTION which the human study of it might devise or even discover. I am going to state that as probable, if not a given.

The “Interlude” mentions, very nontechnically, the Hegelian dialectic, a form of allegedly scientific determinism which has had at least a nominal effect in many countries. It has never been very influential in the United States. Those countries which followed Marx, more in the breach than in the observance, can be said to have followed that form of determinism. I’ll leave it to you to consider the largest of those countries, China, and the results for both The People of China and the Environment in which they will have to try to survive. I will also leave you to consider what it might have to teach about the probability of elites saving the planet.

This “Interlude” was originally meant to be published at the beginning of what became the discussion of Darwinism, but was broken off in a futile attempt at concision. The subject wasn’t specifically Darwinism or the dialectic but political theories which do not start with the assumptions necessary for democracy, but in various forms of determinism, biological, historical, and others. All of these theories begin by aspiring to the objective reliability and prestige of science. Some are more scientific, others take the prestige but make do without the objective reliability. The social sciences are replete with examples.

Darwin, resting on the reality of EVOLUTION, was certainly an important figure in science, no one can deny that just as no serious person can deny EVOLUTION. But from before the publication of The Origins of Species, as that book was incubating, Darwinism was more than just an attempted explanation of EVOLUTION.

We love our pet ideas and in the competitive struggle for attention and professional recognition the promotion of them can outstrip the fact that they are all contingent. The competitive pressures in university departments, the ruthless need for scholars to defend their goods, the need of the would be intellectual descendants of those holding a department or, in the worst cases, entire fields, often lead to the use of less than objective means to render competitors extinct. The desire of elite scholars and their intellectual heirs to promote their ideas to the point of invincibility is, perhaps, a result of scarce resources. I don’t know if it has ever been studied in those terms. It isn’t any surprise that such loudly touted ideas have the potential to leave a cultural legacy that can outlive the position they hold in intellectual life. Freudian psychology is a definite example of that. Such ideas have a life outside of science, They aren’t required to adhere to the requirements of science in the wider culture, though they never give up the pretense to have remained faithful to its exigencies.

It is mentioned in an earlier section that the position of natural selection, like all of the contingencies of science, is open and, in spite of enormous resistance, active. But that isn’t my fight. There is another aspect of natural selection that I believe is more important for democracy and, through it, the survival of the species.

Part Two, analyzed a specimen of thinking which became influential in the general culture. I think any honest observer of evolutionary science and the enormously varied cultural descendants of it would admit that is true. While quotes from other people could have been used, this one encompasses enormous political implications. Since the political implications of this kind of idea are the subject of this essay, that one is entirely fit for the purpose. An idea of science that steps into the mechanics of politics has made itself the proper subject of political analysis. I will finish the analysis begun in Part Two.

Whatever else this application of natural selection* to human populations asserts, it unmistakably holds that not even democratically chosen actions will reliably produce effective beneficial results overriding natural selection.

Darwin clearly didn’t think they would in this case. After Malthus, he warned of dire consequences that were practically certain to result if what he identifies as the “weak members” of the human species happened to leave descendants. He all but guarantees that if they live to reproduce, disaster for the entire population will result. Inequality is assumed as a given, it is assumed to be an intrinsic part of the operation of natural selection, even in its assumed govenance of the political lives of reasoning humans.

Darwin identifies the mechanism of the disaster, the failure of natural selection, and he identifies the cause of the failure, charitable aid and medical care which will allow survival to the point where children are born to these “weak members” . I am sorry if it is difficult to face that analysis but it is inescapable, that is what Darwin said would happen. Unsupported by corroborating data, he confidently expressed that the attempt to take effective beneficial action on behalf of these People would lead to tragic consequences. And notice, he assumes its intended effect, relief to the Wretched of the Earth, would be achieved. Its success was the problem.

After giving his dire forecast in steely, in what I must believe he felt to be, ‘manly’ language of dispassionate science, Darwin looked aside meekly and said that the aid must be given. This subsequent assertion, less vivid in language, that we must give that unwise aid though it lead to disaster, frankly, is irrational unless he pits the interests of the “weaker members” against the good of the rest and opts for the “weaker” ones. You might even say that he opts for them in spite of the good of themselves, since they will also experience the degenerating human population, front row seats, most probably. And in the paragraph, even as he is striking these moral postures, he is continually undermining them. **

That soft insistence on taking cross-starred moral responsibility is not one that all contenders for his mantle would feel it was necessary to observe, despite its having been made by Darwin himself. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the world would know that the demure assertion of moral responsibility would be forgotten while concentrating on the crisis it was clearly stated would result from it. Darwin witnessed the so-called reforms of the New Poor Law. That “reform” slashed aid to the poor, making the lives of the poor of under them even more miserable than before. Yet he condemned it as a too charitable hindrance to natural selection. Like the present “reforms” in the United States, forcing “competition” onto the weakest members of society, producing cohersive misery was its intended result. It is a bitter irony that the party embracing creationism and opposing EVOLUTION, has made this feature of Darwinian-Malthusian morality the dogma and law of the United States.

Though Darwin’s assumption of inequality is corrosive and the callousness infectious, the assumption of the uselessness of reason in the face of natural selection is fatal to democracy. The assumption of the futility of human intelligence to overcome an entirely theoretical “natural force” is the original sin against democracy that virtually every deterministic theory holds. It is in their application to human politics and society that the intended subjects of them have a fully justified skepticism of such theories.

It is one of the strangest features of the writings of many who assert the rational, scientific precision of their thinking, that they discount the effectiveness of human reason to change reality for the better or for humans to govern their lives by reasoning. You wonder how they could put their faith in reason or expect anyone else to care about it, if that is true. As I demonstrated, they tend to hold themselves outside and above the very laws they assert. You wonder how they account for their faith in science if reason is so impotent and it’s application has such notable exceptions.

I think it is because they are trying to force tools that can’t do the job. When Darwin and the rest try to apply science to the effectively infinite complexity of human thoughts and actions, both individual and, especially, collectively, to say they cut corners is one of the greatest understatements made in the history of language.

EVOLUTION is measured in billions of years, the universe of human thought and action is equally measured in the billions, no two People alike, everyone, now and in the past, more than just a variation, changing and dynamic over years of each individual life. The details and infinite variety of behavior, communal interactions, the infinite capacity of human beings to act well or badly, honestly or deceitfully, with hidden motives or little self-reflection, but most of all on the basis of reason and experience, precludes science from ever knowing more than a small fraction of an effectively infinite universe of human life. It is illogical and unreasonable to believe that science can make general laws about it.

Science cannot exist where there is no physical evidence which can be observed, quantified and analyzed. The temptation in scholarship is always to look for the grand unified theory of whatever. In the pursuit of a science of human behavior, of political and economic science, those grand theories have come and they’ve gone. In between, their pretenses of objective reliability are necessary for the professional prestige and funding of these efforts but that is seldom achieved except in studying a small part of the whole. Before they fade from science, they gain currency and have effects that often outlive their reputable lives in science.

Science absolutely depends on the observation of the physical universe, the physical universe is what it was made to study, it can’t study anything else. That is why assertions of intelligent design, even if it was true, have absolutely no place in a science classroom. You would think that religious believers would take it as an act of desecration to assert that science could perceive God who we are told you cannot see and live. If it is an act of blasphemy to put God to the test of statistical analysis, though, isn’t my subject here.

That those trying to subject human beings to the rule of science do not find free will or much in the way of the human rights which are the essential prerequisites for democracy to exist, is a confirmation of the nature of science. In their folly, due to their professional and personal arrogance, they assume and pretend that since they can’t find them they aren’t there. They aren’t alone in doing that, it is the habit of elites of all kinds to deny them, certainly to those less elite than they are. But anyone who seeks after these rights or, most often, the falsification of them, with science in order to make their name as the discoverer of a primary law of the universe is a fool. Unfortunately, their status can make fools of us all.

In The Trial of Socrates, I. F. Stone points out that despite the condescending derision with which the sandal maker is treated by those earliest scholarly enemies of democracy, Socrates and Plato, at least he could make a pair of shoes while Socrates and the entire subsequent 2,500 years of the history of philosophy couldn’t find even one Universal. Not so the world of scholarship has taken all that much notice of the fact.

* With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit*, with an overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind*; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage*, though this is more to be hoped for than expected. The Descent of Man

UPDATE 2012:  Notice that in the first paragraph of the two, Darwin, at no point softens or hedges his "scientific" discourse, laying out, baldly and undeniably, the premise of eugenics.  In the "aid which we feel impelled" paragraph, always grasped onto by those denying Darwin's role in eugenics, notice that Darwin ascribes the desire to give aid to feelings, not reason or science.  The implication of that can only be that the grounds for eugenics have the reliability of hard science while the impulse to give charity is merely a notion, a habit which is a relic of our past, followed against the better judgement of "hard reason".  And the price of that is  a virtual guarantee that what he laid out in the previous paragraph will be the result.   The possibility that will be avoided is "more to be hoped for than expected". 

Over and over again he undercuts his "case" for aid. I have underlined those revealing passages.  I am certain that Darwin consciously gave himself a mechanism of plausible deniability that he'd just said what he said in the second paragraph, that is what the passage has been used to do since WWII.  I am under no obligation to go on with his ruse as I've read the rest of the book and he continues to promote eugenics concepts for pretty much the rest of it, a few lesser escape clauses, more or less.  The points that could be made about this paragraph in reference to other things that Darwin said in The Descent of Man are numerous and they don't count in Darwin's favor.  I'll note one in relation to another passage I've analyzed in this series. 

Note this section:  " but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage", that statement is directly contradicted by the quote of W. R. Greg addressed in another of these posts.  In it Darwin uses Greg to assert that the degenerate Irish "multiplies like rabbits" unlike the virtuous Scot who "marries late and passes his best years in struggle and in celibacy, marries late, and leaves few behind him".  Darwin obviously agreed with Greg that in a dozen generations, given equal numbers of "Celts" and "Saxons (?)" at the start, the degenerate would greatly dominate in numbers, five to one!,  but not in, power property or intelligence, in that case the ratio is in favor of the "Saxons".    Darwin obviously was using Greg to speak for himself, using that passage, curiously elided by Darwin, to assert the case he made in the first of the two paragraphs above. 

And that is hardly the only case in the book where the Darwin of  "science" directly debunks the Darwin of the "aid which we feel impelled to give".   I will be analyzing these two paragraphs again in relationship to other passages in the book at some time in the future.  I will include them with these posts on a blog that presents them and future posts on this subject in a permanent order. 

** Please notice the final note of pessimism and the discouraging, conditional reservations throughout Darwin’s would-be humanitarian demurral.

I would like to thank my sister-in-law who discussed the scope included in EVOLUTION with me. NB. My sister-in-law died three years after this was first posted.

I would also like to thank Marilynne Robinson whose essays provided the missing idea in a piece I’ve been thinking over for a long time.