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The Mis-portrayal of Darwin as a
Racist
By
 - June 24, 2006
There is a growing effort among opponents of evolution to portray Charles
Darwin as a racist, and evolutionary theory as morally reprehensible, even
to claim that Darwinism "provided Hitler and the Nazis with a scientific
justification for the policies they pursued once they came to power."
These accusations are not merely from fringe radicals, but have indeed been
made by elected officials and published in books by university professors,
as we shall see.
Most disturbing, however, is the lack of significant rebuttal to these
charges. Many people in fact, including some evolutionary biologists, find
it easy to believe that perhaps Darwin was a racist, and perhaps
evolutionary theory did contribute to Nazi ideology.
In 2001 African American State Representative Sharon Broome of Louisiana
sponsored a resolution to condemn "Darwinist ideology" as racist and liken
it to Nazism.
WHEREAS, empirical science has documented an indisputable commonality
among all people groups, or races, and has demonstrated that normal
variations in the human gene pool account for our differences, of which
racial differences are a trivial portion; and
WHEREAS, the writings of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution,
promoted the justification of racism, and his books On the Origin of Species
by Means of Natural Selection: or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the
Struggle for Life and The Descent of Man postulate a hierarchy of superior
and inferior races; and
WHEREAS, Adolf Hitler and others have exploited the racist views of
Darwin and those he influenced, such as German zoologist Ernst Haekel, to
justify the annihilation of millions of purportedly racially inferior
individuals.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislature of Louisiana does hereby
deplore all instances and ideologies of racism, does hereby reject the core
concepts of Darwinist ideology that certain races and classes of humans are
inherently superior to others, and does hereby condemn the extent to which
these philosophies have been used to justify and approve racist practices.
source: HOUSE
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION NO. 74 BY REPRESENTATIVE BROOME
In 2004 Dr. Richard Weikart of the Discovery Institute published
From Darwin to
Hitler, Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany, which
concludes that "Darwinism played a key role not only in the rise of
eugenics, but also in euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial
extermination, all ultimately embraced by the Nazis." Weikart's work
has garnered significant attention from both opponents and supporters of
evolution alike.
So what about these accusations? Was Darwin a racist? Has evolutionary
theory served as a support for everything from abortion to the Holocaust?
Far from it. Darwin was an abolitionist whose scientific work refuted the
commonly held racist beliefs of his time and opposed already existing
eugenic concepts. It is, in fact, evolution that overturned the widely held
belief in the divine superiority of the "white race".
So-called "scientific racism" emerged around the same time that Darwin
published his theory of evolution, but from a completely different group of
people and for completely different reasons. In the mid-1800s both American
slavery and European imperialism were coming under increasing criticism.
During this time the idea of white supremacy became popular among those
seeking to justify slavery and imperialism. Prior to Darwin, and after
Darwin by opponents of evolution, biology was a theologically based field.
The primary "scientific racists" were creationists who believed that science
supported Biblical scripture, and that scripture supported slavery and the
domination of one group over another.
Before we address Darwin and evolution directly, however, we must first
examine the history of slavery, racism, and genocide prior to Darwin. Some
anti-evolutionists would have us believe that prior to "Darwinism" the world
was a place free from racism, oppression, infanticide, abortion, etc. These
anti-evolutionists have claimed that racism, Nazism, and the Holocaust are
all products of a divergence from "traditional Judeo-Christian ethics."
What, then, of the world before Darwin?
Racism, Slavery, and Genocide before Darwin
Infanticide, rape, genocide, slavery, abortion, and "racism" have all been
prevalent from the earliest of times. We even see these behaviors in
animals, so we know that these behaviors predate even humanity. It is safe
to say that these things have probably been practiced by virtually all human
societies. There are records from the Egyptians, for example, ridiculing the
Nubians as inferiors, some of the earliest records of racism. The Bible
itself records the not only the idea of "a chosen people", but indeed
records genocide, slavery, and infanticide at the "command of God".
Exodus 11:
4 So Moses said, "This is what the LORD says: 'About midnight I will go
throughout Egypt. 5 Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the
firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of
the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle
as well. 6 There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt-worse than there has
ever been or ever will be again. 7 But among the Israelites not a dog will
bark at any man or animal.' Then you will know that the LORD makes a
distinction between Egypt and Israel.
Exodus 12:
So the people of Israel did just as the LORD had commanded through Moses
and Aaron. And at midnight the LORD killed all the firstborn sons in the
land of Egypt, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to
the firstborn son of the captive in the dungeon. Even the firstborn of their
livestock were killed. Pharaoh and his officials and all the people of Egypt
woke up during the night, and loud wailing was heard throughout the land of
Egypt. There was not a single house where someone had not died.
Deuteronomy 7:
1 When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to
possess and drives out before you many nations-the Hittites, Girgashites,
Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations
larger and stronger than you- 2 and when the LORD your God has delivered
them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them
totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. 3 Do not
intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their
daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your sons away from following
me to serve other gods, and the LORD's anger will burn against you and will
quickly destroy you. 5 This is what you are to do to them: Break down their
altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn
their idols in the fire. 6 For you are a people holy to the LORD your God.
The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the
earth to be his people, his treasured possession.
Numbers 31
1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 "Take vengeance on the Midianites for the
Israelites. After that, you will be gathered to your people."
3 So Moses said to the people, "Arm some of your men to go to war against
the Midianites and to carry out the LORD's vengeance on them.
...
13 Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to
meet them outside the camp. 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the
army-the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds-who returned
from the battle.
15 "Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them. 16 "They were
the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the
Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague
struck the LORD's people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who
has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never
slept with a man.
1 Samuel 15:
3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that
belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and
infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.' "
...
7 Then Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur, to
the east of Egypt. 8 He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his
people he totally destroyed with the sword. 9 But Saul and the army spared
Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs,
everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely,
but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.
10 Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel: 11 "I am grieved that I have
made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out
my instructions."
These are only a few examples from the Bible that demonstrate the genocide,
racism, and infanticide that not only preceded Darwin by thousands of years,
but that became deeply integrated into the so-called "Judeo-Christian"
ethic. These ideas, the idea of a "chosen people", the idea of "God
sanctioned" conquest, and the rationalization of genocide, have played
important roles in Western Civilization for centuries. Civilizations
throughout the world have rationalized and engaged in similar behavior for
as long as history has been recorded, but the specific sanctioning of these
actions in the Bible has been cited repeatedly in Western Civilization from
the time of the Christian Emperors of Rome to the conquest of the Americas,
and indeed even by the Fascists and Nazis of World War II.
The maintenance of the integrity of the government depends upon two
things, namely, the force of arms and the observance of the laws: and, for
this reason, the fortunate race of the Romans obtained power and precedence
over all other nations in former times, and will do so forever, if God
should be propitious; since each of these has ever required the aid of the
other, for, as military affairs are rendered secure by the laws, so also are
the laws preserved by force of arms.
- The Code of Justinian;
529-534 CE
The very idea that the theory of evolution is responsible for the idea that
certain races or groups of people are superior to others is so historically
inaccurate that it is almost impossible to believe that anyone today could
even make such a claim. As we shall see, however, "God" has been the primary
justification for the concept of the superiority of one group over another
throughout history, not "Darwinism".
When Christopher Columbus and the Spanish Conquistadores engaged in the
conquest of the Americas, they did do so under the direction of the Pope,
and their slaughter and subjugation of all natives was justified through
Christian theology. When Spanish conquerors came into contact with new
groups of people they were required to read an article to them, in Spanish,
called the Requerimiento. The Requerimiento stated that
all men were descended from Adam and Eve, that the Catholic Church had
been granted the right by God to rule all people, and that there was no way
to deny the authority of the Pope. Those who resisted would be slaughtered
or enslaved.
Of all these nations God our Lord gave charge to one man, called St.
Peter, that he should be Lord and Superior of all the men in the world, that
all should obey him, and that he should be the head of the whole human race,
wherever men should live, and under whatever law, sect, or belief they
should be; and he gave him the world for his kingdom and jurisdiction.
And he commanded him to place his seat in Rome, as the spot most fitting
to rule the world from; but also he permitted him to have his seat in any
other part of the world, and to judge and govern all Christians, Moors,
Jews, Gentiles, and all other sects. This man was called Pope, as if to say,
Admirable Great Father and Governor of men. The men who lived in that time
obeyed that St. Peter, and took him for Lord, King, and Superior of the
universe; so also they have regarded the others who after him have been
elected to the pontificate, and so has it been continued even till now, and
will continue till the end of the world.
...
Wherefore, as best we can, we ask and require you that you consider what
we have said to you, and that you take the time that shall be necessary to
understand and deliberate upon it, and that you acknowledge the Church as
the Ruler and Superior of the whole world, and the high priest called Pope,
and in his name the King and Queen Doña Juana our lords, in his place, as
superiors and lords and kings of these islands and this Tierra-firme by
virtue of the said donation, and that you consent and give place that these
religious fathers should declare and preach to you the aforesaid.
...
But, if you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it, I certify
to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your
country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can,
and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their
Highnesses; we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall
make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their
Highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you
all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey, and
refuse to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him;
and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from
this are your fault, and not that of their Highnesses, or ours, nor
of these cavaliers who come with us. And that we have said this to you and
made this Requisition, we request the notary here present to give us his
testimony in writing, and we ask the rest who are present that they should
be witnesses of this Requisition.
- Requerimiento, 1510
When colonists first came to the Americas they viewed it as their "promised
land", a land that was "granted to them by God".
In 1634 John Winthrop, governor of the pious Massachusetts Bay Colony,
wrote, "for the natives, they are near all dead of the smallpox, so as
the Lord hath cleared our title to what we possess." His comments
clearly hearken back to the Old Testament scriptures, of which he was such a
devout believer. Many of the early American settlers and explorers believed
that the diseases that befell the natives were proof of God's "Divine
Providence" helping them to conquer the land. In fact, however, Europeans
carried many diseases because they had lived in such a filthy culture for
over a thousand years. Europeans lived in close quarters with many domestic
animals such as pigs, chickens, etc., as well as with rats, they rarely
bathed, and lived with open sewers and raw human waste. All of this
contributed, of course, to the many plagues that wracked the Europeans over
the centuries, but nevertheless led to the evolution of a high level of
immunity to many diseases, of which they became carriers.
Over a hundred million natives died under European occupation throughout
North and South America between the 1500s and the 1900s, millions of these
being directly killed by enslavement and war. The killing of natives and the
taking of their land was sanctioned by both the Catholic Church in South
America and the many Protestant sects in North America. "Divine Providence"
and "God's Will" were almost always invoked as the justifications for the
extermination of "savages".
In addition to the sanctioning of genocide, the Christian religion was used
to justify slavery as well. Not only was slavery sanctioned in the Old
Testament, but it is sanctioned in the New Testament also. The founding
fathers of The Church also supported slavery.
The prime cause, then, of slavery is sin, which brings man under the
dominion of his fellow -- that which does not happen save by the judgment of
God, with whom is no unrighteousness, and who knows how to award fit
punishments to every variety of offence. ... Moreover, when men are
subjected to one another in a peaceful order, the lowly position does as
much good to the servant as the proud position does harm to the master. ...
This servitude is, however, penal, and is appointed by that law which
enjoins the preservation of the natural order and forbids its disturbance;
- St. Augustine; City of God, 410
Here Saint Augustine established the principle that slavery and servitude
are part of a "natural order", created by God.
Slavery was repeatedly defended as being in accordance with the "Holy
Scriptures" throughout history.
" .. full and free permission to invade, search out, capture and
subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of
Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties,
principalities and other properties and to reduce their persons into
perpetual slavery."
- Pope Alexander VI; Bull Eximiae Devotionis,
1493
It is certainly a matter of faith that this sort of slavery in which a
man serves his master as his slave, is altogether lawful. This is proved
from Holy Scripture. It is also proved from reason for it is not
unreasonable that just as things which are captured in a just war pass into
the power and ownership of the victors, so persons captured in war pass into
the ownership of the captors. All theologians are unanimous on this.
- Leander; Quaestiones Morales Theologicae,
1668 - 1692
In 1705 the Virginia Slave Codes were
passed in America, which were quickly followed by similar laws in other
states.
All servants imported and brought into the Country...who were not
Christians in their native Country...shall be accounted and be slaves. All
Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion...shall be held to be
real estate. If any slave resist his master...correcting such slave, and
shall happen to be killed in such correction...the master shall be free of
all punishment...as if such accident never happened.
Of course not all Christian groups embraced slavery, the liberal groups
such as the Quakers and Unitarians were opposed to the practice (they were
also harassed and even killed by more conservative Protestant sects), but
among those who sanctioned it, scripture was often the basis of their
justification.
On the lawfulness of holding slaves ... the right of holding slaves is
clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example.
- Rev. Richard Furman; President, Baptist State
Convention, 1822
It is my privilege then, to name certain passages from the bible, and
examine the teachings of the ancients upon this nature, as the fact is
incontrovertible, that the first mention we have of slavery is found in the
holy bible, pronounced by a man who was perfect in his generation and walked
with God. And so far from that prediction's being averse from the mind of
God it remains as a lasting monument of the decree of Jehovah, to the shame
and confusion of all who have cried out against the South, in consequence of
their holding the sons of Ham in servitude! "And he said cursed be Canaan; a
servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be
the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge
Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem and Canaan shall be his
servant." -Genesis 9:25-27 Trace the history of the world from this notable
event down to this day, and you will find the fulfillment of this singular
prophecy. What could have been the design of the Almighty in this wonderful
occurrence is not for me to say; but I can say that the curse is not yet
taken off the sons of Canaan, neither will be until it is affected by as
great power as caused it to come; and the people who interfere the least
with the decrees and purposes of God in this matter, will come under the
least condemnation before him; and those who are determined to pursue a
course which shows an opposition and a feverish restlessness against the
designs of the Lord, will learn, when perhaps it is too late for their own
good, that God can do his own work without the aid of those who are not
dictate by his counsel.
- Joseph Smith Jr.; Messenger and Advocate,
1836
Why all this rant about Negro equality, seeing that neither nature or
nature's God ever established any such equality?
- John Campbell; Negro-Mania, 1851
The manifest moral intellectual and physical inferiority of the Negro
issues from the decree of God which no efforts of man can either alter or
abrogate. Even modification must be but partial at least. It is the destiny
of the Negro if by himself to be a savage; if by the white to be a serf.
- John Campbell; Negro-Mania, 1851
But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of
the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself
the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters.
Many of its most eloquent Divines, who stand as the very lights of the
church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the
whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave;
that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back
an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of
the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the
world for Christianity.
- Frederick Douglass; The Meaning of July Fourth
for the Negro July 5th, 1852
We must, of course, acknowledge that Adam is the ancestor of the white
race. The scriptures are evidently meant to be so understood, for the
generations deriving from him are certainly white. This being admitted there
is nothing to show that, in the view of the first compilers of the Adamite
genealogies, those outside the white race were counted as part of the
species at all.
- Arthur de Gobineau; An Essay on the Inequality
of the Human Races, 1853
The great Architect had framed them [negroes] both physically and
mentally to fill the sphere in which they were thrown, and His wisdom and
mercy combined in constituting them thus suited to the degraded position
they were destined to occupy. Hence, their submissiveness, their obedience,
their contentment.
- Thomas R. Cobb; An Inquiry into the Law of
Negro Slavery in the United States of America, 1858
There was a growing movement in America shortly before the Civil War, as
pressure against slavery was increasing, to justify slavery not just with
scripture, but also with so-called "science". At this time, however, most
biologists, known then as naturalists, were theologically trained. Biology
was still considered to be a Biblically based study of "the creation" before
Darwin came along.
In 1853 the Frenchman Arthur de Gobineau published An Essay on the
Inequality of the Human Races, in which he proposed that humans were
composed of three races, the most advanced of which was the "Aryan Race". In
An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races Gobineau stated that
civilizations collapsed due to race mixing. This work was highly influential
in Europe and America and is widely acknowledged today as the foundation of
so-called scientific racism.
In 1857, two years before Charles Darwin pushed The Origin of Species,
Josiah C. Nott and George Gliddon, creationists who argued that science
supported the Biblical account of creation, published Indigenous Races
of the Earth. Dr. Nott, from South Carolina, had been writing and
giving lectures on race for years and his works were highly influential. All
of the copies of Indigenous Races of the Earth were pre-sold before
they were even printed. The book went on to be published in many languages
and was one of the best selling books of the time. An illustration in
Indigenous Races of the Earth compared the skulls of "Greeks",
"Negroes", and Chimpanzees.
From Indigenous Races of the Earth (1857)
Nations and races, like individuals have each an especial destiny: some
are born to rule, and others to be ruled. And such has ever been the history
of mankind. No two distinctly marked races can dwell together on equal
terms.
- Josiah Nott, M.D.; Types of Mankind,
1854
In The Social History
of the American Negro the following was said about Dr. Nott:
It is evident from what has been said already that the idea of the Negro
current about 1830 in the United States was not very exalted. It was
seriously questioned if he was really a human being, and doctors of divinity
learnedly expounded the "Cursed be Canaan" passage as applying to him. A
prominent physician of Mobile 151 gave it as his opinion that
"the brain of the Negro, when compared with the Caucasian, is smaller by a
tenth and the intellect is wanting in the same proportion," and finally
asserted that Negroes could not live in the North because "a cold climate so
freezes their brains as to make them insane." About mulattoes, like many
others, he stretched his imagination marvelously. They were incapable of
undergoing fatigue; the women were very delicate and subject to all sorts of
diseases, and they did not beget children as readily as either black women
or white women. In fact, said Nott, between the ages of twenty-five and
forty mulattoes died ten times as fast as either white or black people;
between forty and fifty-five fifty times as fast, and between fifty-five and
seventy one hundred times as fast.
Footnote 151: "Two Lectures on the Natural History of the Caucasian and
Negro Races. By Josiah C. Nott, M.D., Mobile, 1844."
- Benjamin Brawley; A Social History of the
American Negro, 1921
The year of 1858 was both the year in which Abraham Lincoln engaged in the
famous Lincoln - Douglas debates and the year that Charles Darwin first published
his theory of evolution in a scientific paper. The the discussions that
took place during those debates are very instructive in understanding views
on race in America at the time, because race was a major topic of their
senate
campaigns and the their views can surely be seen as
representative of the general views of the American public. The candidates
were campaigning to attract voters, and were thus doing their best to both
represent themselves and to cater to the desires of the public.
As we know, Abraham Lincoln won the senate seat and went on to win the presidential election and become one of the most honored men in American history. His name is
synonymous with the ending of slavery in America and he is championed in
schools across America as one of our greatest and most progressive leaders.
So, what was Abraham Lincoln saying about race the year that Charles Darwin
first published his theory of evolution?
"While I was at the hotel today, an elderly gentleman called upon me to
know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between
the negroes and white people. [Great Laughter.] While I had not proposed to
myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was
asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something
in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor
of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white
and black races, [applause]-that I am not nor ever have been in favor of
making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office,
nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that
there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I
believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social
and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do
remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I
as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position
assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that
because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be
denied every thing. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro
woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and
laughter.]"
- Abraham Lincoln; Fourth Debate with
Stephen Douglas, September 18, 1858
It is important to note here that the views of Lincoln's opponent, Stephen
Douglas, were even more racist than Lincoln's, and that both men enjoyed
popular support for their racist views. Note that Lincoln received applause
for his remarks. The fact is that essentially all Europeans were racist in
the 1800s by today's standards.
"For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every form.
[Cheers.] I believe this Government was made on the white basis. ["Good."] I
believe it was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their
posterity forever, and I am in favor of confining citizenship to white men,
men of European birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes,
Indians, and other inferior races. ["Good for you!" "Douglas forever!"]
...
Now, I do not believe that the Almighty ever intended the negro to be the
equal of the white man. ["Never, never!"] If he did, he has been a long time
demonstrating the fact. [Cheers.] For thousands of years the negro has been
a race upon the earth, and during all that time, in all latitudes and
climates, wherever he has wandered or been taken, he has been inferior to
the race which he has there met. He belongs to an inferior race, and must
always occupy an inferior position."
- Stephen Douglas; First Debate with
Abraham Lincoln, August 21, 1858
Not only was the "negro race" an issue, but the "redskins" were and issue
as well. All manner of wars had already been waged against the "savages" by
American settlers, to say nothing of the much larger genocides against the
South American natives led by Catholics.
It is quite clear that racism had already been well established and
supported on theological grounds long before Darwin came on the scene.
When the Civil War broke out, the racial inferiority of African slaves was
widely declared among the Confederate states as a permanent barrier to any
possibility of the integration of blacks into American free society. The
Texas articles of secession clearly state the inferiority of "the African
race" and hold that slavery is the revealed will of God.
We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various
States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by
the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African
race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully
held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that
condition only could their existence in this country be rendered
beneficial or tolerable.
That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to
be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude
of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial
to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the
experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as
recognized by all Christian nations;
-
Texas Ordinance of Secession; February 2, 1861
In 1862, during the Civil War, the abolitionist Pastor William Aikman from
Delaware gave a speech in favor of emancipation that is considered one of
the most favorable speeches of the period regarding Africans. Even in this
speech Pastor Aikman stated that negroes were inferior to whites. He also,
interestingly enough, laid out concepts similar to "natural selection" when
describing how slaves were acquired, though this was, presumably, by no
influence from the work of Darwin.
But the abler tribes are the warriors and the conquerors, while the
weaker and the lower are the captives. Thus at the outset the slave declares
by the fact of his servitude his inferiority of lineage.
...
The statistics of this country show that the free black does not and cannot
mingle with the white race. No elevation or freedom can produce such an
intermixture. Here and there, but so seldom as to present but perhaps a
single case only in widely separated communities, there is an
inter-marriage. This seeming want of inclination, coupled with a natural and
insuperable repugnance on the part of the white, must ever keep the two
races apart when they stand on an equal footing of freedom.
The often repeated argument against emancipation, founded on the notion
that it would be necessarily followed by amalgamation, is the product of the
grossest ignorance and thoughtlessness, while at the same time it betrays a
shameful want of confidence in the white race itself. It surely argues no
great power or stability in a people when they are not able to keep
themselves from being mixed up with a confessedly inferior race. But facts
point in a wholly different direction: so far from freedom promoting this
intermixture, the only condition in which these two races are found mingling
is where the negro is in a state of servitude. Here the process goes on
freely and under the working of natural causes. The influences which on
either side under other circumstances make it impossible, here become
inoperative, and are overborne by other and more powerful ones. The close
intimacies, beginning with infancy and extending over the whole life,
destroying what under other circumstances might seem to be a natural
separation; a servile desire to please on the part of the slave, lust and
cupidity on the part of the master, all combine to make the blood of the two
races flow in the same veins. Slavery is the source of amalgamation. The
mulatto and the quadroon tell you unerringly of a present or a former
servitude.
...
The inferiority of a race can hardly be shown to be a valid reason for its
banishment from the presence of the superior, and by its power; the
inability of a people to care for or to elevate themselves, does not seem a
precisely good argument for sending them to a new land, and to a naked
dependence on their own resources; the invincible prejudice of the white
does not at once give a very potent, at least a very just reason why the
black should be expatriated.
- William Aiakman; The Future of the Colored
Race In America, 1862
The views expressed above can be considered among the least racist views in
America at the time, and even in this view the inferiority of non-white
races was assumed. The separation of races was also seen as natural and
desirable.
In 1854 Archbishop Richard Whately, a renowned theological scholar, had
published Origin of Civilization, in which he argued that God
originally created mankind as perfect and in a state of civilization with
technology and laws, but that since the "fall of man" different races of
people have fallen away from God and have thus degenerated into "savages".
He, and others, argued that progress is unnatural and that it was impossible
for inferior races to ever improve themselves and be capable of living among
whites. A discussion of his views can be seen in the review below, from
1869:
source:
Cornell University Archive
This argument continued to be made after Darwin had published The
Origin of Species and was used as an attack on "Darwinism". Darwin
later responded to this line of thought in his book The Descent of Man:
The arguments recently advanced by the Duke of Argyll and formerly by
Archbishop Whately, in favour of the belief that man came into the world as
a civilised being, and that all savages have since undergone degradation,
seem to me weak in comparison with those advanced on the other side. Many
nations, no doubt, have fallen away in civilisation, and some may have
lapsed into utter barbarism, though on this latter head I have met with no
evidence.
...
The evidence that all civilised nations are the descendants of
barbarians, consists, on the one side, of clear traces of their former low
condition in still-existing customs, beliefs, language, &c.; and on the
other side, of proofs that savages are independently able to raise
themselves a few steps in the scale of civilisation, and have actually thus
risen. The evidence on the first head is extremely curious, but cannot be
here given: ... According to a large and increasing school of philologists,
every language bears the marks of its slow and gradual evolution. So it is
with the art of writing, for letters are rudiments of pictorial
representations. It is hardly possible to read Mr. M'Lennan's work and not
admit that almost all civilised nations still retain traces of such rude
habits as the forcible capture of wives. What ancient nation, as the same
author asks, can be named that was originally monogamous? The primitive idea
of justice, as shewn by the law of battle and other customs of which
vestiges still remain, was likewise most rude. Many existing superstitions
are the remnants of former false religious beliefs. The highest form of
religion-the grand idea of God hating sin and loving righteousness-was
unknown during primeval times.
...
In all parts of Europe, as far east as Greece, in Palestine, India,
Japan, New Zealand, and Africa, including Egypt, flint tools have been
discovered in abundance; and of their use the existing inhabitants retain no
tradition. There is also indirect evidence of their former use by the
Chinese and ancient Jews. Hence there can hardly be a doubt that the
inhabitants of these countries, which include nearly the whole civilised
world, were once in a barbarous condition. To believe that man was
aboriginally civilised and then suffered utter degradation in so many
regions, is to take a pitiably low view of human nature. It is apparently a
truer and more cheerful view that progress has been much more general than
retrogression; that man has risen, though by slow and interrupted steps,
from a lowly condition to the highest standard as yet attained by him in
knowledge, morals and religion.
- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871
In 1871 Archbishop Whately's line of argument was again defended by The
Catholic Church in a July publication of "Catholic World".
He, of course, adopts the modern theory of progress, and maintains that
the savage is the type of the primitive man, and that he has emerged from
his original barbarism and superstition to his present advanced civilization
and religious belief and worship by his own energy and persevering efforts
at self-evolution or development, without any foreign or supernatural
instruction or assistance.
...
We have no patience with such men as Herbert Spencer, Huxley, and Darwin.
We are hardly less impatient with the scientists who in our own country hold
them up to our admiration and reverence as marvelous discoverers, and as the
great and brilliant lights of the age. We love science, we honor the men who
devote their lives to its cultivation, but we ask that it be science, not
hypothesis piled on hypothesis, nor simply a thing of mere conjectures or
guesses.
The modern doctrine of progress or development, which supposes a man
began in the lowest savage, if not lower still, is not a doctrine suggested
by any facts observed and classified in men's history, nor is it a logical
induction from any class of known facts, but a gratuitous hypothesis
invented and asserted against the Biblical doctrine of creation, of
Providence, of original sin, and of the supernatural instruction,
government, redemption, and salvation of men. The hypothesis is suggested by
hostility to the Christian revelation, prior to the analysis and
classification of any facts to sustain it, and the scientists who defend it
are simply investigating nature, not in the interests of science properly
so-called, but, consciously or unconsciously, to find facts to support an
hypothesis which may be opposed to both.
...
Their hypothesis of progress, evolution, or development is unquestionably
repugnant to the whole Christian doctrine and order of thought. If it is
true, Christianity is false. They must then, before urging it, either prove
Christianity untrue or an idle tale, or else prove absolutely, beyond the
possibility of a rational doubt, the truth of their hypothesis. It is enough
to prove that it may, for aught you know, be true; you must prove that it is
true, and cannot be false. Christianity is too important a fact in the
world's history to be set aside by an undemonstrated hypothesis.
...
Let the question be understood. Christianity teaches us that in the
beginning God created heaven and earth, and all things therein, visible and
invisible, that he made man after his own image and likeness, placed him in
the garden of Eden, gave him a law, that is, made him a revelation of his
will, instructed him in his moral and religious duty, established him in
original justice, in a supernatural state, under a supernatural providence,
on the plane of a supernatural destiny; that man prevaricated, broke the law
given him, lost his original justice, the integrity of his nature attached
thereto, and communion with his Maker, fell under the dominion of the flesh,
became captive to Satan, and subject to death, moral, temporal, and eternal;
that God, of his own goodness and mercy, promised him pardon and
deliverance, redemption and salvation, through his own Son made man, who in
due time was born to the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was
crucified, was dead and buried, and on the third day rose again, ascended
into heaven, whence he shall come again, to judge the living and the dead.
This doctrine, in substance, was made to our first parents in the garden,
was preserved in the tradition of the patriarchs, in its purity in the
synagogue, and in its purity and integrity in the Christian church founded
on it, and authorized and assisted by God himself to teach it to all men and
nations.
According to this doctrine, the origin of man, the human species, as well
as of the universe and all its contents, is in the creative act of God, not
in evolution or development. The first man was not a monkey or a tadpole
developed, nor a savage or barbarian, but was a man full-grown in the
integrity of his nature, instructed by his Maker, and the most perfect man
of his race, and as he is the progenitor of all mankind, it follows that
mankind began not in "utter barbarism," as Sir John asserts, but in the full
development and perfection of manhood, with the knowledge of God and
providence, of their origin and destiny, and of their moral and religious
duty. Ignorance has followed as the penalty or consequence of sin, instead
of being the original condition in which man was created; and this ignorance
brought on the race by the prevarication of Adam, the dominion of the flesh,
and the power of Satan acquired thereby, are the origin and cause of
barbarism of individuals and nations, the innumerable moral and social evils
which have afflicted mankind in all times and places.
...
The Biblical history explains the origin of the barbarous superstitions
of heathendom in a very satisfactory way, and shows us very clearly that the
savage state is not the primitive state, but has been produced by sin, and
is the result of what we call the great gentile apostasy, or falling away of
the nations from the primitive or patriarchal religion. When language was
confounded at Babel, and the dispersion of mankind took place, unity of
speech or language was lost, and with it unity of ideas or of faith, and
each tribe or nation took its own course, and developed a tribal or national
religion of its own. Gradually each tribe or nation lost the conception of
God as creator, and formed to itself gods made in its own image, clothed
with its own passions, and it bowed down and worshipped the work of its own
hands.
...
We see this deterioration going on in our midst and right before our
eyes, as the effect of apostasy from our holy religion. This proves that
apostasy is sufficient to explain the existence of the savage races, without
supposing the human race began in "utter barbarism." If apostasy in modern
times, as we see it does, leads to "utter barbarism," why should it not have
done so in ancient times?
...
Yet the traditions of the heathen nations do not in general favor the
main point of Sir John's hypothesis, that men come out of barbarism by their
own spontaneous development, natural progressiveness, or indigenous and
unaided efforts. They rise, according to these traditions, to the civilized
state only by the assistance of the gods, or by the aid of missionaries or
colonies from nations already civilized.
...
The chief characteristic of the savage state is in fact its immobility.
The savage gyrates from age to age in the same narrow circle- never of
himself advances beyond it. Whether a tribe sunk in what Sir John calls
"utter barbarism," and which he holds is the original state of the human
race, has ever been or ever can be elevated to a civilized state by any
human efforts, even of others already civilized, is, perhaps, problematical.
As far as experience goes, the tendency of such a tribe, brought in contact
with a civilized race, is to retire the deeper into the forest, to waste
away, and finally become extinct. Certain it is, no instance of its becoming
a civilized people can be named.
...
Sir John's theory of progress is just now popular, and is put forth with
great confidence in the respectable name of science, and the modern world,
with socialists, accept it, with great pomp and parade. Yet it is manifestly
absurd. Nothing cannot make itself something, nor can any thing make itself
more than it is. The imperfect cannot of itself perfect itself, and no man
can lift himself by his own waistbands.
- Origin of Civilization; Catholic
World, July 1871
By this reasoning the "savages" were guilty of their own condition by sin,
they had degenerated from the original "perfect" human archetype, which was
now preserved only among the white races, and these savages, as sinners
against God, were thus deserving of any punishment or genocide brought
against them by the "armies of God".
In 1878 John T. Roberts published a theological essay on race called
Adamites and Preadamites: or, A Popular Discussion Concerning the Remote
Representatives of the Human Species and their Relation to the Biblical Adam.
In this work Roberts stated:
I maintain, against the narrow and pernicious dogma that the Bible is
sufficient everywhere to interpret itself, that, on the contrary, it was
ordained to be interpreted under the concentrated light of all the learning
which has been created by a God-given intelligence in man. I believe
that the Bible was written for all time, and that its meaning is so deep and
so rich that the accumulated learning of the latest generation of men will
be unable to exhaust it.
...
THE NEGRO PREADAMIC.
In the attempt to ascertain whether the biblical Adam was the progenitor of
all mankind, or only of the White and Dusky races, I pointed out the fact
that literal interpretation renders the name Adam inapplicable to races
whose complexion displays no noticeable tinge of "red." But in the attempt
to make Adam the father of the Black races, I find myself beset by other and
graver difficulties. The Adam of Genesis is supposed to date from an epoch
less than two thousand years before Noah. There have been almost six
thousand years for the posterity of Adam to attain their present amount of
divergence, as exemplified in different families and races of man, This has
not perceptibly increased since the Christian era. I suppose all will admit,
on the evidence of history and monuments, that the Semitic, Hamitic and
Aryan features were not perceptibly less marked two thousand years ago than
at present. If any one doubts this, he can be easily satisfied by turning
over the pages of any work illustrated from the monuments of Egypt and
Assyria. (For accessible American digests, see Nott and Gliddon's
Types of Mankind and Indigenous Races of the Earth.)
Better, let him visit the Assyrian and Egyptian departments of the Louvre
and the British and Berlin Museums. It is equally true that delineations of
Negro features, executed at a date not less remote, are exactly as
pronounced as the realities of today. Now, I think we may fairly take 2,000
years as the measure of 4,000. if these races and families have not sensibly
diverged in 2,000 years, will the reader believe that all the marked
divergence which actually exists took place during the previous 4,000 years?
But the negative argument is much stronger. The Egyptian and Assyrian
monuments which testify to the distinctness of races and families date back
one or two thousand years farther than our era; In these sculptures and
mural paintings the stately Semite with his aquiline nose is instantly
distinguished from the nimble Hamite with his straight nose, full lips and
oblique and languishing eyes. Amongst the other figures the Negro is often
discovered by his thick lips, projecting jaws and wooly hair. For at least
half of the recognized interval between Adam and us, the Negro has been a
Negro; the Hamite, a Hamite; the Semite, a Semite. Archaeology and
ethnology, therefore, force this alternative conclusion upon us : If human
beings have existed but 6,000 years, then the different races had separate
beginnings, as Agassiz long since maintained each race in its own
geographical area. But if all human beings are descended from one stock,
then the starting point was more than 6,000 years back; as Huxley and the
evolutionists generally maintain; and the Duke of Argyll and other
anti-evolutionists equally maintain. Accordingly, if the reader insist that
Adam was absolutely the first creature which could be called a man, he must
admit first that "red," in Hebrew, means "black," and secondly, that the
biblical chronology between Adam and Noah omits at least nine-tenths of the
time. In such an admission, he will have the excellent company of the Duke
of Argyll, (Primeval Man).
Now, every person remains free to contemn a logical difficulty, and
commiserate the unfortunate facts for being opposed to his belief. But my
training has been such that logic and facts still command a degree of
respect. Nor am I enough of an actor to play the part of an idiot. If I can
avoid a difficulty I shall not dash out my brains against it. Let us
consider Adam the father of the White and Dusky races. These, then, are
Adamites; and have a chronology extending back about 6,000 years perhaps all
the time we require. The Black races, then, are preadamites ; and there is
no objection to allowing all the time requisite for their divergence from
some common stock
- John T. Roberts; Adamites and Preadamites,
1878
The belief in "Adamites" and "Preadamites" essentially comes from the book
of Genesis in the story where Cain is cast out by God and then meets a
woman.
Genesis 4
Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill
him. 16 So Cain went out from the LORD's presence and lived in the land of
Nod, east of Eden.
17 Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to
Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch.
18 To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael
was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.
The "Preadamite" belief was that negroes were the "people" living in the
land of Nod, whom Cain came into contact with. These "people" were not
killed by the Great Flood, the story goes, because they were "sub-human",
and thus were on board the Ark among the "animals" that Noah saved. These
"sub-humans", it was said, did not have souls and thus were not subject to
the same sentiments given towards "white people".
These, of course, were not the only views. Many different views on race had
been put forward and were widely believed by the 19th century.
Various popular beliefs about humans during the 1800s included the beliefs
that:
- Whites, Blacks, American Indians, and Asians are all different species
- The races are static and created by God, and should thus never be mixed
- There are superior and inferior races and the superior whites have the
right to dominate the inferior blacks and Indians
- There are distinct delineations between the races
- Different races are not related to each other
- Interbreeding of races leads to degeneration
- God originally created civilization and whites have stayed true to God,
thus maintaining civilization, but the darker races have degenerated and
lost civilization as they have become more savage and further from the word
of God
- Darker races are descendants of Canaan (Ham's Curse), the darker their
skin the more inherently sinful they are
How, then, do Darwin's views compare to the existing views on race during
his own time?
Darwin's View of Race
In contrast to the existing views on race, Darwin showed that:
- People cannot be classified as different species
- All races are related and have a common ancestry
- All people come from "savage" origins
- The different races have much more in common than was widely believed
- The mental capabilities of all races are virtually the same and there is
greater variation within races than between races
- Different races of people can interbreed and there is no concern for ill
effects
- Culture, not biology, accounted for the greatest differences between the
races
- Races are not distinct, but rather they blend together
One issue that is commonly misunderstood about Darwin is the full title of
his most famous book, On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection: Or
the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. It is
important to note here that "race" was a term that was more often used to
discuss plants and animals at this point in history than it was to describe
people. In fact, Darwin avoided much discussion of people in The Origin
of Species and only used the word "race" a few times, in each of these
cases referring to plants or animals, as in the example below.
Nevertheless, as our varieties certainly do occasionally revert in some
of their characters to ancestral forms, it seems to me not improbable, that
if we could succeed in naturalising, or were to cultivate, during many
generations, the several races, for instance, of
the cabbage, in very poor soil (in which case, however, some effect would
have to be attributed to the direct action of the poor soil), that they
would to a large extent, or even wholly, revert to the wild aboriginal
stock.
- The Origin of Species; Charles Darwin,
1858
It is often pointed out that Darwin frequently used the term "savages" when
discussing the tribal people whom he wrote about. In his use of the term
savages, however, Darwin was simply using the standard lexicon of his time;
it was a term that everyone, from Popes to Presidents, used. It must also be
remembered, of course, that the differences between different groups of
people were really very extraordinary until basically the past 75 to 50
years. Many of the groups that Europeans came into contact with practiced
cannibalism, self-mutilation, human sacrifice, infanticide, had no writing,
and/or were very hostile towards people outside of their own family or
tribe. Most also had no technology beyond stone tools. These are real
substantial differences that were being encountered by many Europeans for
the first time. They were seeking explanations for why this was the case.
Darwin traveled around the world on the HMS Beagle to some of the most
remote and uncivilized places on the planet. Unlike his other European
contemporaries, however, he lived among the tribal people that he came into
contact with as an equal and observed their customs, instead of seeking to
be treated like a superior.
Darwin's most extensive discussion of human race was put forward in his
1871 book The Descent of Man. This book has been greatly misused by
opponents of Darwin because in The Descent of Man Darwin assesses
all of the various ideas about race that existed at the time, presenting
many ideas of other people, which he later goes on to refute. In The
Descent of Man Darwin takes questions such as "Are people composed of
different species?" and he puts forwards all of the arguments for each
position. He puts forward the evidence and claims of those who argued in
favor of the position that humans are in fact separate species, and then he
puts forward his own position, which is that humans are all one species. It
is quite easy, however, to takes quotes from The Descent of Man out
of context and make it appear that Darwin held positions which were in fact
the exact opposite of his beliefs, and this is what many opponents of Darwin
have done.
What then are Darwin's views on race, as put forward in The Descent of
Man?
Our naturalist would likewise be much disturbed as soon as he perceived
that the distinctive characters of all the races were highly variable. This
fact strikes every one on first beholding the negro slaves in Brazil, who
have been imported from all parts of Africa. The same remark holds good with
the Polynesians, and with many other races. It may be
doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race
and is constant. Savages, even within the limits of the same tribe,
are not nearly so uniform in character, as has been often asserted.
Hottentot women offer certain peculiarities, more strongly marked than those
occurring in any other race, but these are known not to be of constant
occurrence. In the several American tribes, colour and hairiness differ
considerably; as does colour to a certain degree, and the shape of the
features greatly, in the Negroes of Africa. The shape of the skull varies
much in some races; and so it is with every other character. Now all
naturalists have learnt by dearly bought experience, how rash it is to
attempt to define species by the aid of inconstant characters.
But the most weighty of all the arguments against treating the races of
man as distinct species, is that they graduate into each other,
independently in many cases, as far as we can judge, of their having
inter-crossed. Man has been studied more carefully than any other animal,
and yet there is the greatest possible diversity amongst capable judges
whether he should be classed as a single species or race, or as two (Virey),
as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven
(Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent),
sixteen (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or as
sixty-three, according to Burke. This diversity of
judgment does not prove that the races ought not to be ranked as species,
but it shews that they graduate into each other, and that it is hardly
possible to discover clear distinctive characters between them.
- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871
Although the existing races of man differ in many respects, as in colour,
hair, shape of skull, proportions of the body, &c.,
yet if their whole structure be taken into
consideration they are found to resemble each other closely in a multitude
of points. Many of these are of so unimportant or of so singular a
nature, that it is extremely improbable that they should have been
independently acquired by aboriginally distinct species or races. The same
remark holds good with equal or greater force with respect to the numerous
points of mental similarity between the most distinct races of man. The
American aborigines, Negroes and Europeans are as different from each other
in mind as any three races that can be named; yet I was incessantly
struck, whilst living with the Feugians on board the "Beagle," with the many
little traits of character, shewing how similar their minds were to ours;
and so it was with a full-blooded negro with whom I happened once to be
intimate.
He who will read Mr. Tylor's and Sir J. Lubbock's interesting works can
hardly fail to be deeply impressed with the close similarity between the men
of all races in tastes, dispositions and habits. This is shown by the
pleasure which they all take in dancing, rude music, acting, painting,
tattoing, and otherwise decorating themselves; in their mutual comprehension
of gesture-language, by the same expression in their features, and by the
same inarticulate cries, when excited by the same emotions. This similarity,
or rather identity, is striking, when contrasted with the different
expressions and cries made by distinct species of monkeys. There is good
evidence that the art of shooting with bows and arrows has not been handed
down from any common progenitor of mankind, yet as Westropp and Nilsson have
remarked, the stone arrow-heads, brought from the most distant parts of the
world, and manufactured at the most remote periods, are almost identical;
and this fact can only be accounted for by the various races having
similar inventive or mental powers. The same observation has been
made by archeologists with respect to certain widely-prevalent ornaments,
such as zig-zags, &c.; and with respect to various simple beliefs and
customs, such as the burying of the dead under megalithic structures. I
remember observing in South America, that there, as in so many other parts
of the world, men have generally chosen the summits of lofty hills, to throw
up piles of stones, either as a record of some remarkable event, or for
burying their dead.
Now when naturalists observe a close agreement in numerous
small details of habits, tastes, and dispositions between two or more
domestic races, or between nearly-allied natural forms, they use this fact
as an argument that they are descended from a common progenitor who was thus
endowed; and consequently that all should be classed under the same species.
The same argument may be applied with much force to the races of man.
As it is improbable that the numerous and unimportant
points of resemblance between the several races of man in bodily structure
and mental faculties (I do not here refer to similar customs) should all
have been independently acquired, they must have been inherited from
progenitors who had these same characters.
- The Descent of Man; Charles Darwin; 1871
The points that Darwin made here clearly reflected a view that races were
more alike than what was commonly believed at the time.
As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger
communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to
extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same
nation, though personally unknown to him. This point
being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his
sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed,
such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or
habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is, before we look at
them as our fellow-creatures. Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is,
humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral
acquisitions. It is apparently unfelt by savages, except towards their pets.
How little the old Romans knew of it is shewn by their abhorrent
gladiatorial exhibitions. The very idea of humanity, as far as I could
observe, was new to most of the Gauchos of the Pampas. This virtue, one of
the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our
sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are
extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honoured and
practised by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the
young, and eventually becomes incorporated in public opinion.
The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognise that we
ought to control our thoughts, and "not even in inmost thought to think
again the sins that made the past so pleasant to us." Whatever makes any bad
action familiar to the mind, renders its performance by so much the easier.
As Marcus Aurelius long ago said, "Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such
also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the
thoughts."
- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871
These are hardly the words of a racist. Darwin makes it clear that the
propensity for sympathy exists in all people, and that its extension to
others among people is a matter of cultural evolution, not race. The closing
remarks in The Descent of Man, however, provide an example Darwin's
"disparaging" attitude toward "savages".
The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely, that man is
descended from some lowly organised form, will, I regret to think, be highly
distasteful to many. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended
from barbarians. The astonishment which I felt on first seeing a party of
Fuegians on a wild and broken shore will never be forgotten by me, for the
reflection at once rushed into my mind-such were our ancestors. These men
were absolutely naked and bedaubed with paint, their long hair was tangled,
their mouths frothed with excitement, and their expression was wild,
startled, and distrustful.
They possessed hardly any arts, and like wild animals lived on what they
could catch; they had no government, and were merciless to every one not of
their own small tribe. He who has seen a savage in his native land will not
feel much shame, if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some more humble
creature flows in his veins. For my own part I would as soon be descended
from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to
save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon, who descending from
the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of
astonished dogs-as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers
up bloody sacrifices, practises infanticide without remorse, treats his
wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest
superstitions.
Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not
through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the
fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed
there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future.
- The Descent of Man; Charles Darwin; 1871
Darwin was hardly alone in this attitude towards tribal people however, and
his observations of "savages" are indeed accurate. The cultures that he came
into contact with did engage in these practices, and it can hardly be
surprising that he felt displeasure towards these qualities. Virtually
everyone in Western Civilization was repulsed by these traits in other
cultures, as they should have been. Just one small example of how others
discussed "savages" comes from an 1897 article in the popular magazine
The Great Round World:
Missionaries are, as you know, holy and devoted men who go to far
countries to spread the knowledge of the Gospel among heathen and
unenlightened people.
These good men have always suffered much for their faith. They go
wherever their duty calls, and even carry their message of peace to the
terrible cannibals who kill and eat men.
In the early annals of our own country we have records of the terrible
sufferings endured by these good men in their missionary work among the
redskins.
Missionaries count their perils and their privations as nothing if they
can but do the work of God.
Every government is particularly careful to do all that it can to protect
its missionaries, and if ignorant savages do them harm, an attempt is always
made to punish the wrongdoers, to teach them that these servants of God are
well protected.
- The Great Round
World; December 9, 1897
It is certainly not the case that all tribal cultures exhibited these
qualities, indeed Darwin made special notes of the many positive qualities
that he observed among various tribal cultures as well, but there is a
historical fact that greatly influenced the views of those who came into
contact with tribal peoples in the 1800s and early 1900s. By the 19th
century most of the remaining tribal cultures in the world were either
highly isolated, and thus tended to be more "primitive" and suspicious of
outsiders, or they were the more militant of tribal cultures, or they had
become militant and defensive in the face of aggression by Europeans. Though
the early explorers of the 16th through 17th centuries frequently came into
contact with peaceful and accommodating natives, most of those cultures had
either been exterminated or had adopted Western customs to an extent by the
1800s. When Darwin was coming into contact with tribal people most of the
remaining tribal cultures were the more aggressive or isolated ones.
What is most important about Darwin's views on race and primitive cultures,
however, is that Darwin drew distinctions between race and culture.
Significantly, Darwin did not believe that "savages" were savage by birth,
as many people did believe in his time, but rather that all people were
relatively equal, and that the vast differences between civilized Europeans
and tribal peoples were due to knowledge and instruction.
The western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their
former savage progenitors, and stand at the summit of civilization, owe
little or none of their superiority to direct inheritance from the old
Greeks, though they owe much to the written works of that wonderful people.
...
The more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education
during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of
excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws,
customs and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion. It
should, however, be borne in mind, that the enforcement of public opinion
depends on our appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of others;
and this appreciation is founded on our sympathy, which it can hardly be
doubted was originally developed through natural selection as one of the
most important elements of the social instincts.
- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871
Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet
as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned there are other
agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either
directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the
reasoning powers, instruction, religion, &c., than through natural
selection;
- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871
The moral faculties are generally and justly esteemed as of higher value
than the intellectual powers. But we should bear in mind that the activity
of the mind in vividly recalling past impressions is one of the fundamental
though secondary bases of conscience. This affords the strongest argument
for educating and stimulating in all possible ways the intellectual
faculties of every human being.
- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871
Darwin always came back to sympathy as one of the most important aspects of
mankind, but more importantly Darwin points out here that Europeans were
previously savages themselves and that it was not any biological inheritance
from the Greeks that led to the progress of Europeans, but rather it was the
transfer of knowledge from the Greeks that bolstered European success.
Darwin noted the importance of social institutions to humanity on many
occasions.
Darwin's Views on Slavery and Africans
Slavery existed long before Darwin, and America's race based slave system
was well entrenched before Darwin was even born. Darwin was a member of
several abolitionist organizations and he wrote frequently about the
injustices of slavery. Darwin also defended the intelligence of Africans and
other non-whites on several occasions.
I will not even allude to the many heart-sickening atrocities which I
authentically heard of; -- nor would I have mentioned the above revolting
details, had I not met with several people, so blinded by the constitutional
gaiety of the negro as to speak of slavery as a tolerable evil. Such people
have generally visited at the houses of the upper classes, where the
domestic slaves are usually well treated, and they have not, like myself,
lived amongst the lower classes. Such inquirers will ask slaves about their
condition; they forget that the slave must indeed be dull, who does not
calculate on the chance of his answer reaching his master's ears.
...
It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of
slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not
by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how
this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the
thumb-screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land
suffered from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave
owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into
the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope
of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your
wife and your little children -- those objects which nature urges even the
slave to call his own -- being torn from you and sold like beasts to the
first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to
love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his
Will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to
think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful
cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty:
- The Voyage of the Beagle; Charles
Darwin, 1839
In a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who formed and led the first
black regiment in the American Civil War, Darwin wrote:
My wife has just finished reading aloud your 'Life with a Black
Regiment,' and you must allow me to thank you heartily for the very great
pleasure which it has in many ways given us. I always thought well of the
negroes, from the little which I have seen of them; and I have been
delighted to have my vague impressions confirmed, and their character and
mental powers so ably discussed. When you were here I did not know of the
noble position which you had filled. I had formerly read about the black
regiments, but failed to connect your name with your admirable undertaking.
Although we enjoyed greatly your visit to Down, my wife and myself have over
and over again regretted that we did not know about the black regiment, as
we should have greatly liked to have heard a little about the South from
your own lips.
Your descriptions have vividly recalled walks taken forty years ago in
Brazil. We have your collected Essays, which were kindly sent us by Mr.
Conway, but have not yet had time to read them. I occasionally glean a
little news of you in the 'Index'; and within the last hour have read an
interesting article of yours on the progress of Free Thought.
- Letter from Darwin to Thomas Higginson,
February 27, 1873
While on the voyage of the HMS Beagle Darwin wrote:
I was told before leaving England that after living in slave countries
all my opinions would be altered; the only alteration I am aware of is
forming a much higher estimate of the negro character. It is impossible to
see a negro and not feel kindly towards him; such cheerful, open, honest
expressions and such fine muscular bodies. I never saw any of the diminutive
Portuguese, with their murderous countenances, without almost wishing for
Brazil to follow the example of Haiti; and, considering the enormous
healthy-looking black population, it will be wonderful if, at some future
day, it does not take place.
- Letter from Darwin to J.S. Henslo, March 1834
In Haiti the African slaves rebelled and formed their own democratic
government in 1803. For Darwin to have endorsed the idea of negro slaves
rebelling and taking control of countries is quite extraordinary and was
definitely an extreme minority position among Europeans.
When Darwin was eighteen he recorded his acquaintances with a black man in
the UK, whom he had spent time with. His notes were later published in his
autobiography.
By the way, a negro lived in Edinburgh, who had travelled with Waterton,
and gained his livelihood by stuffing birds, which he did excellently: he
gave me lessons for payment, and I used often to sit with him, for he was a
very pleasant and intelligent man.
- Charles Darwin; The Life and Letters of
Charles Darwin, 1887
In the autobiographical chapter of The Life and Letters of Charles
Darwin, Darwin recalled the following about the conflicts that arose
during his voyage on the HMS Beagle over the issue of slavery.
Fitz-Roy's temper was a most unfortunate one. It was usually worst in the
early morning, and with his eagle eye he could generally detect something
amiss about the ship, and was then unsparing in his blame. He was very kind
to me, but was a man very difficult to live with on the intimate terms which
necessarily followed from our messing by ourselves in the same cabin.
We had several quarrels; for instance, early in the voyage at Bahia, in
Brazil, he defended and praised slavery, which I abominated, and told me
that he had just visited a great slave-owner, who had called up many of his
slaves and asked them whether they were happy, and whether they wished to be
free, and all answered "No." I then asked him, perhaps with a sneer, whether
he thought that the answer of slaves in the presence of their master was
worth anything? This made him excessively angry, and he said that
as I doubted his word we could not live any longer together. I thought that
I should have been compelled to leave the ship; but as soon as the news
spread, which it did quickly, as the captain sent for the first lieutenant
to assuage his anger by abusing me, I was deeply gratified by receiving an
invitation from all the gun-room officers to mess with them. But after a few
hours Fitz-Roy showed his usual magnanimity by sending an officer to me with
an apology and a request that I would continue to live with him.
- Charles Darwin; The Life and Letters of
Charles Darwin, 1887
With all of this, however, opponents of evolution would have us believe
that Darwin and evolutionary theory are responsible, at least in part, for
the racism of the early 20th century. Yet 20th century racism was strongest
in America in the South, where evolution was least accepted and barely even
taught. The Ku Klux Klan, which reached its height in the 1920s, was both
the leading institution of violent racism and also an opponent of evolution.
Ku Klux Klan meeting, 1925
The KKK was (and still is) a Protestant based organization.
In 1915 D.W. Griffith's silent film, The Birth of a Nation, was
released and it quickly became a national hit. The film did cause
controversy, but went on to become the highest grossing silent film of all
time.
The Birth of a Nation described how Abraham Lincoln had undermined
state sovereignty and created a powerful federal government. It depicted
Northern blacks and freed slaves as monstrous villains who were destroying
white civilization and abusing their new-found power after the Civil War.
The major villain of the film is a mulatto, a man of "mixed white and
black race".
Near the final climax of the film, where the Ku Klux Klan unites to save a
town from "Negro anarchy", the film's protagonists retreat to a cabin that
is occupied by a Union Civil War veteran and the following scene commences:
The final scene of the film shows Jesus appearing as an apparition among a
group of celebrating white people, signifying his protection of the nation.
To be sure racism has many causes and it would not be accurate to place all
of the blame on religion, but clearly racism and hatred of blacks was
strongest among the opponents of evolution. It is not mere coincidence that
both the Scopes Trial and the height of the KKK movement took place in the
1920s.
In the Journal of American History Jeffrey P. Morgan writes the
following about racism and the Scopes trial:
In the year after the 1924 Democratic convention, where [William
Jennings] Bryan [the prosecutor of the Scopes trial] had thrown his weight
against a resolution condemning the Ku Klux Klan, Pickens lumped Bryan
together with the Klan as a matter of course. Bryan's offense, suggested J.
A. Rogers in the Messenger, A. Philip Randolph's radical journal, was
the same hypocrisy that tainted Fundamentalists throughout the South: "Bryan
from the pulpit preaches the domination of Christ; in politics he practices
Ku Kluxism and white domination, the bulwarks of which are lynching, murder,
rape, arson, theft, and concubinage." ... And Bryan was one of the more
racially benign antievolutionists. One of his allies, South Carolina's
former governor and current U.S. senator, Cole Blease, not only endorsed a
rigid antievolution law but also virulently and publicly supported the
extralegal lynching of black men. Blease had earned notoriety by planting
the severed finger of a lynched African American in the gubernatorial
garden.
...
Secular black commentators charged that the goad to the antievolution
movement, from the top on down, was fear of Darwinism's racial implications.
If black and white had a common ancestry, as evolutionary theory suggested,
then the South's elaborate racial barriers might seem arbitrary rather than
God-given.
...
Most black writers discerned a more direct connection between racial
prejudice and the antievolution movement. In their view white southerners
opposed evolution because it implied a common heritage for the races and
therefore threatened white supremacy. In the volatile racial atmosphere of
the 1920s South, the logic of evolutionary thought seemed to point in the
direction of racial kinship and intermarriage. Black observers interpreted
antievolutionism as a white attempt to quash such implications and thereby
to preserve the campaign for racial separation that had begun in the 1880s.
Evolution did imply an uncomfortable kinship between the descendants of
Africans and of Europeans. The Chicago Defender maintained that Tennessee's
legislators were suppressing evolution because of the Darwinian implication
"that the entire human race is supposed to have started from a common
origin." "Admit that premise," the editorialist continued, "and they will
have to admit that there is no fundamental difference between themselves and
the race they pretend to despise." Echoing "Cimbee's Ramblings," William N.
Jones in his "Day by Day" column for the Baltimore Afro-American asserted
emphatically that white Tennesseans believed God had "CREATED SOME HUMAN
BEING[S] DIFFERENT AND DISTINCT FROM OTHERS." Evolution clearly contradicted
such a belief. Nor were black critics the only ones who claimed to see a
strong racial component in antievolutionism. The southern white journalist
W. J. Cash, who observed the controversy at close range, recalled later,
"One of the most stressed notions which went around was that evolution made
a Negro as good as a white man-that is, threatened White Supremacy."
Although the race question did not arise explicitly in the Scopes trial
itself, African American intellectuals believed that the white South was
seriously troubled by evolution's destabilizing implications for Anglo-Saxon
supremacy.
...
For the secular black elite, science did more than merely contradict the
Nordic dogma; it promised a way out of the stagnation and parochialism of
life in the South. In another cartoon commenting on the Scopes trial, under
the caption "Where Sunshine Reaches Darkness," Wilbert Holloway of the
Pittsburgh Courier presented a map of the United States east of the
Mississippi River. Upon the northern states and the upper South, the sun
pours down rays of enlightenment labeled "Science," "Research,"
"Development," "Progress," and "Intelligence." Only the states of the Deep
South, below what Holloway denotes "The New Mason and Dixon Line," remain in
a darkness that science and its allies cannot penetrate. Given the context,
it is odd that Holloway allowed the sun to shine on Tennessee, but the
accompanying article, entitled "Ignorance vs. Science," made clear the
author's opinion that science was indeed fighting a war against the
dominance of ignorance in Tennessee and the South in general. "For the sake
of those yet to be born in the South," concluded the author, "we hope
science wins."
...
Scientific progress and the evolutionary hypothesis held particular
meanings for the African American elite. Black leaders embraced the racial
implications of evolution-the common origins of humanity and the importance
of environment as well as heredity-and they believed that evolutionary
science itself embodied the spirit of progress that would lift the race
higher. In a series of columns for the Baltimore Afro-American
during spring 1925, William N. Jones found two reasons to appreciate
evolutionary progress. First, the lessons of evolution had created greater
racial sympathy in the short term. As he celebrated the hundredth
anniversary of T. H. Huxley's birth, Jones claimed that few white men had
done as much as Huxley to help race relations, for Huxley had followed
Darwin's scientific line of reasoning to question the idea that some men "by
Divine right" were born kings, while others "by Divine curse" were born
slaves. "Science won," Jones asserted, "and as a result the world, in spite
of hidebound and narrow dogmas, is heading towards real brotherhood."
...
Not surprisingly, during the Scopes trial many African American leaders
identified with the scientific elite in opposition to the white southerners
who were prosecuting the young science teacher.
- Jeffrey P. Morgan; Reading Race into the
Scopes Trial: African American Elites, Science, and Fundamentalism,
Journal of American History, Vol. 90. No. 3; 2003
While there certainly were both Christians who preached the doctrine that
God had created all men equal, and those who used evolutionary concepts to
support their racist views, on the whole evolutionary views came down
solidly on the side of breaking down racial barriers and promoting a view of
progress for all, while many people used Christianity to support ideas of
racial segregation, "purity of race", and the legitimization of subordinates
and masters.
Anti-Semitism, Genocide, Eugenics, and Nazism
Anti-Semitism and eugenics are not directly related subjects, but they are
both heavily associated with the Nazi movement. Anti-Semitism really has
nothing to do with evolution whatsoever, so I will deal with the subject of
eugenics first.
Eugenics is defined as:
The study of hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled
selective breeding.
Eugenics is not, in any way, reliant on evolutionary theory. Eugenic type
behavior has been present in human civilization for thousands of years.
Indeed, traditional arranged marriages are a form of eugenics, a practice
that dates into pre-history. One of the cultures with the most firmly
established traditions of selective marriage is the Hindu culture of India,
with its cast system and long history of arranged marriage. Traditional
Indian culture is a culture of eugenics.
Selective marriage, and even arranged marriage based strictly on physical
and mental traits, was practiced among the ancient Greeks as well, and
indeed it has been documented in many instances among tribal people. Many of
the Native American and African tribes selected brides by lining them up and
choosing based on their physical features.
So, certainly, eugenics is not reliant on evolutionary theory. What
scientific eugenics is reliant on is genetics, not evolution. The science of
eugenics is the science of heredity, which is not denied by anyone today, at
least not any reasonable person.
Eugenics is sometimes also taken to mean, however, not only selective
breeding, but also selective killing or sterilization of "unfit"
individuals. It is this concept that is most often associated with the
Nazis. This practice too, however, has been employed by many different
cultures for thousands of years.
When Darwin was publishing his works on evolution, eugenic concepts did
come up and he did address them. What then did Darwin have to say about
eugenic ideas?
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 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.
- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871
The advancement of the welfare of mankind is a most intricate problem:
all ought to refrain from marriage who cannot avoid abject poverty for their
children; for poverty is not only a great evil, but tends to its own
increase by leading to recklessness in marriage. On the other hand, as Mr.
Galton has remarked, if the prudent avoid marriage, whilst the reckless
marry, the inferior members tend to supplant the better members of society.
Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high
condition through a struggle for existence consequent on his rapid
multiplication; and if he is to advance still higher, it is to be feared
that he must remain subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise he would sink
into indolence, and the more gifted men would not be more successful in the
battle of life than the less gifted. Hence our natural rate of increase,
though leading to many and obvious evils, must not be greatly diminished by
any means. There should be open competition for all men;
and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding
best and rearing the largest number of offspring.
Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is,
yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned there are other
agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either
directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the
reasoning powers, instruction, religion, &c., than through natural
selection; though to this latter agency may be safely attributed the social
instincts, which afforded the basis for the development of the moral sense.
- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871
Clearly there was an acknowledgment of the implications of inheritance, and
this was framed in the light of evolution, however, Darwin's main
conclusions were that:
- Neglecting the weak, much less killing them, would be an unallowable
"evil"
- Cultural factors played a more important role in the advancement of
mankind than selection
- The most that could be hoped for was that people living in poverty would
not bring children into poverty
- Progress was open to all people, and there should be no laws to give
favoritism to specific groups
In From Darwin to Hitler, however, Dr. Weikart asserts that:
In Hitler's mind Darwinism provided the moral justification for
infanticide, euthanasia, genocide, and other policies that had been (and
thankfully still are) considered immoral by more conventional moral
standards. Evolution provided the ultimate goals of his policy: the
biological improvement of the human species.
- Dr. Richard Weikart; From Darwin to Hitler,
2004
Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without Darwinism,
especially in its social Darwinist and eugenics permutations, neither Hitler
nor his Nazi followers would have had the necessary scientific underpinnings
to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the world's
greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy. Darwinism - or at
least some naturalistic interpretations of Darwinism - succeeded in turning
morality on its head.
- Dr. Richard Weikart; From Darwin to Hitler,
2004
It must be noted that in all of Hitler's writings he never mentions Darwin
or even Ernst Haeckel, Dr. Weikart just reads his interpretation of
Darwinism into Hitler views.
What, then, were Adolph Hitler's views, and on what did he base his racism
and his strive for "improvement of the human species"?
Everybody who has the right kind of feeling for his country is solemnly
bound, each within his own denomination, to see to it that he is not
constantly talking about the Will of God merely from the lips but that in
actual fact he fulfils the Will of God and does not allow God's handiwork to
be debased. For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain
bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties. Whoever destroys
His work wages war against God's Creation and God's Will.
...
Thus men without exception wander about in the garden of Nature; they
imagine that they know practically everything and yet with few exceptions
pass blindly by one of the most patent principles of Nature's rule: the
inner segregation of the species of all living beings on this earth.
Even the most superficial observation shows that Nature's restricted form
of propagation and increase is an almost rigid basic law of all the
innumerable forms of expression of her vital urge. Every animal mates only
with a member of the same species. The titmouse seeks the titmouse, the
finch the finch, the stork the stork, the field mouse the field mouse, the
dormouse the dormouse, the wolf the she-wolf, etc.
...
This is only too natural.
Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a
medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the offspring will
probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the
higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the
higher level. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher
breeding of all life. The precondition for this does not lie in associating
superior and inferior, but in the total victory of the former. The stronger
must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own
greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all
is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any
conceivable higher development of organic living beings would be
unthinkable.
The consequence of this racial purity, universally valid in Nature, is
not only the sharp outward delimitation of the various races, but their
uniform character in themselves. The fox is always a fox, the goose a goose,
the tiger a tiger, etc., and the difference can lie at most in the varying
measure of force, strength, intelligence, dexterity, endurance, etc., of the
individual specimens. But you will never find a fox who in his inner
attitude might, for example, show humanitarian tendencies toward geese, as
similarly there is no cat with a friendly inclination toward mice.
... The result of all racial crossing is therefore in brief always the
following:
- Lowering of the level of the higher race;
- Physical and intellectual regression and hence the beginning of a
slowly but surely progressing sickness.
 To bring about such a development is,
then, nothing else but to sin against the will of the eternal creator.
...
With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait
for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her
from her people. With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations
of the people he has set out to subjugate. Just as he himself systematically
ruins women and girls, he does not shrink back from pulling down the blood
barriers for others, even on a large scale. It was and it is Jews who bring
the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and
clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily resulting
bastardization, throwing it down from its cultural and political height, and
himself rising to be its master.
For a racially pure people which is conscious of its blood can never be
enslaved by the Jew. In this world he will forever be master over bastards
and bastards alone.
...
We must bear in mind that in the time when the American continent was
being opened up, numerous Aryans fought for their livelihood as trappers,
hunters, etc., and often in larger troops with wife and children, always on
the move, so that their existence was completely like that of the nomads.
But as soon as their increasing number and better implements permitted them
to clear the wild soil and make a stand against the natives, more and more
settlements sprang up in the land.
- Mein Kampf; Adolph Hitler, 1925
During his time as leader of Germany Hitler worked on a sequel to Mein
Kampf, which was later published under the title Hitler's Secret
Book. In this manuscript Hitler had written:
Sparta must be regarded as the first folkish state. The exposure of the
sick, weak, deformed children, in short their destruction, was more decent
and in truth a thousand times more humane than the wretched insanity of our
day which preserves the most pathological subject.
...
Neither Spain nor Britain should be models of the German expansion, but
the Nordics of North America, who had ruthlessly pushed aside an inferior
race to win for themselves soil and territory for the future.
- Adolph Hitler; "Hitler's Secret Book"
Just in the same way Cortez or Pizarro annexed Central America and the
northern states of South America, not on the basis of any claim of right,
but from the absolute inborn feeling of the superiority of the white race.
The settlement of the North American continent is just as little the
consequence of any claim of superior right in any democratic or
international sense; it was the consequence of a consciousness of right
which was rooted solely in the conviction of the superiority and therefore
of the right of the white race.
- Adolph Hitler; Dusseldorf Speech, 1932
Hitler and Nazi ideology held that race was sacred. Darwin's evolutionary
theory was about much more than simply inheritance and "survival of the
fittest" (a term that was coined by the economist Herbert Spencer to
defend capitalism in 1851, but then latter became associated with Darwin's
theory of evolution). Darwin took away the scared view of race and species, he showed
that there were no significant distinctions between races and between
species. Hitler viewed his eugenic policies as being rooted in ancient
practices, not evolutionary theory, and he viewed the extermination of
natives in America as a model for his actions in Europe. Compare the above
views espoused by Hitler to the statements of Darwin:
Hereafter we shall be compelled to acknowledge that the only distinction
between species and well-marked varieties is, that the latter are known, or
believed, to be connected at the present day by intermediate gradations,
whereas species were formerly thus connected. Hence, without quite rejecting
the consideration of the present existence of intermediate gradations
between any two forms, we shall be led to weigh more carefully and to value
higher the actual amount of difference between them. It is quite possible
that forms now generally acknowledged to be merely varieties may hereafter
be thought worthy of specific names, as with the primrose and cowslip; and
in this case scientific and common language will come into accordance.
In short, we shall have to treat species in the same manner as those
naturalists treat genera, who admit that genera are merely artificial
combinations made for convenience. This may not be a cheering prospect; but
we shall at least be freed from the vain search for the undiscovered and
undiscoverable essence of the term species.
- Charles Darwin; The Origin of Species,
1858
It is certain that distinct species of birds occasionally pair in a state
of nature and produce hybrids. Many instances could be given: thus
Macgillivray relates how a male blackbird and female thrush "fell in love
with each other," and produced offspring. Several years ago eighteen cases
had been recorded of the occurrence in Great Britain of hybrids between the
black grouse and pheasant; but most of these cases may perhaps be accounted
for by solitary birds not finding one of their own species to pair with.
With other birds, as Mr. Jenner Weir has reason to believe, hybrids are
sometimes the result of the casual intercourse of birds building in close
proximity. But these remarks do not apply to the many recorded instances of
tamed or domestic birds, belonging to distinct species, which have become
absolutely fascinated with each other, although living with their own
species.
- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871
[T]he distinctive characters of all the races [are] highly variable. ...
It may be doubted whether any character can be named
which is distinctive of a race and is constant.
...
This diversity of judgment ... shews that they [races]
graduate into each other, and that it is hardly possible to discover clear
distinctive characters between them.
- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871
There should be open competition for all men; and the
most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best
and rearing the largest number of offspring.
- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871
He who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of nature
as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a
separate act of creation.
- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871
As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger
communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to
extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same
nation, though personally unknown to him. This point
being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his
sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.
- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871
Hitler stated that "racial purity" was "God's Will". Darwin showed that
there is no such thing as racial purity in the first place, and that
secondly, races and species are not formed by God.
Hitler said that segregation of species and races is a "rigid law" of
nature. Darwin showed that there are no such rigid laws in nature.
Hitler said that species only naturally mate with members of their same
species. Darwin showed that many species naturally hybridize (in fact,
research now shows that more than 10% of "species" hybridize in the wild).
Hitler said that species are uniform in character. Darwin showed that there
is a high degree of variation within species.
Hitler advocated the use of race laws to favor only "Nordic" peoples.
Darwin stated that no such laws should be made.
Hitler despised sympathy and said that sympathy should not extend to all
races. Darwin stated that sympathy was the highest moral value, that indeed
sympathy was an important attribute for human success, and that we should
extend our sympathy to all people.
Clearly, Hitler's views reflected the traditional "pre-Darwinian" views of
nature. Hitler viewed race as sacred, he viewed the Germans as "God's chosen
people", and he justified racism, genocide, and eugenics through his sacred
views. The sacredness of race is what made race worth fighting for to the
Nazis.
Hitler's views are more appropriately reflected by the views of the
American creationist Josiah Nott:
Nations and races, like individuals have each an especial destiny: some
are born to rule, and others to be ruled. And such has ever been the history
of mankind. No two distinctly marked races can dwell together on equal
terms.
- Josiah Nott, M.D.; Types of Mankind,
1854
This is further evidenced by many other pieces of Nazi literature.
In 1936 Dr. Gerhard Wagner gave a speech titled Race and
Population Policy at the Nuremberg Nazi Party Rally. In his speech he
stated:
We can only say to these learned critics that our genetic and racial
thinking stems in the end not from our scientific, but rather from our
National Socialist convictions, and that it was not learned scientists, but
rather our Führer Adolf Hitler, and he alone, who made genetic and racial
thinking the center of our National Socialist worldview and the foundation
of the rebuilding of our people's state. The doctrines of blood and race are
not first of all an important and interesting piece of biological science to
us, but rather above all else a political-ideological attitude that
fundamentally determines our attitudes to things and to the questions of
life.
More important than these two groups, however, are those who reject or
oppose us because they hold to another worldview.
Those who base their materialist image of the world on the doctrines of a
liberal or Marxist era cannot understand how we can have dethroned their
idols of "the economy and Mammon," replacing them at the center of our
National Socialist process of construction and renewal with the German man,
with the German people.
...
"Only racial comrades may be citizens. A racial comrade can only be
someone of German blood, without regard to religious confession. No Jew can
therefore be a citizen."
...
Finally, a word to those who reject our racial policy as "unchristian."
God has chosen to create humanity in the form of various races, as he has
done in all of the rest of nature. Those who ignore race and its laws are
not acting in a Christian manner, but rather we claim to be following the
will of God, who has created the various racial types of this world so that
each may maintain the greatest possible racial purity that will enable to
develop its particular strengths.
...
To those who claim that we act in an unchristian way, sinning against the
will of God, we reply that we are convinced that we are acting consistent
with the will of the creator when we prevent unhealthy life from being
propagated, saving children and their children from new and enormous misery.
The creator himself established the laws of life, which harshly and brutally
let all that is unworthy of life to perish to make room for the strong and
healthy to whom the future belongs. This is necessary for the preservation
and development of all that lives on this earth.
Obviously there was controversy within Germany about their racial policies,
which this speech was meant to address, but it is significant that Dr.
Wagner stated that Nazi racial policy was not based on science, but rather
on the will of the Fuhrer and their view of the will of God.
The Nazis published many educational materials on their beliefs and
policies. One of these popular works was a book called Faith and Action,
which states:
You carry in your blood the holy inheritance of your fathers and
forefathers. You do not know those who have vanished in endless ranks into
the darkness of the past. But they all live in you and walk in your blood
upon the earth that consumed them in battle and toil and in which their
bodies have long decayed. Your blood is therefore something holy. ... But if
your blood has traits that will make your children unhappy and burdens to
the state, then you have the heroic duty to be the last. The blood is the
carrier of life. You carry in it the secret of creation itself. Your blood
is holy, for in it God's will lives.
...
Race means to be able to think in a certain way. He who has courage,
loyalty and honor, the mark of the German, has the race that should rule in
Germany, even if he does not have the physical characteristics of the
"Nordic" race. The unity of the noble and a noble body is the goal to which
we strive. But we despise those whose noble body carries an ignoble soul.
... But the Nordic race must dominate in Germany and shape the soul of each
German. It must win out in the breast of each individual. Today our ideal is
not the artist or the citizen, but the hero. Our highest treasure is the
soul that we have been given. He who mixes his blood with that of foreign
inferior races ruins the blood and soul that have been given to him to pass
on impurity to his children. He makes his children impure and miserable, and
commits the greatest crime that he as a National Socialist can commit.
From beginning to end, the basis of Nazi ideology was the idea of sanctity
of race. Nazi ideology was not based on any kind of scientific view of
evolution. Nazi ideology did embrace ideas such as the struggle for
survival, but "struggle for survival" is an ancient concept that has long
been recognized, and evolutionary theory is about much more than simply the
role of competition in the development of life.
In a 1943 pamphlet on racial policy the Nazis specifically cited the works
of Arthur de Gobineau. As is usual with Nazi literature, there is no
mention of Darwin or evolution. This pamphlet was an anti-Christian and
pro-scientific work, which, in typical Nazi fashion, unified spiritual and
pseudo-scientific concepts.
Warning voices were raised in the 18th and 19th centuries when Liberalism
began to destroy the peoples of Europe. Gobineau recognized with
sure perceptiveness the danger of race mixing. H. St. Chamberlain
followed him, as did many others, above all F. K. Günter, who wrote The
Racial Nature of the German People.
We owe to these Nordic scientists this revolutionary knowledge: Humanity
is not equal. Just as plants and animals are of different types, so too are
people. Each of these types inherits certain characteristics, which
distinguish it from all other types, from all other races. Racial
differences are physical, spiritual, and intellectual. The most important
differences are in the spiritual and intellectual areas, in life styles.
Racial science is further supported by advances in genetics. Nordic
scientists probed ever deeper into the secrets of life and nature.
Gregor Mendel was the first to discover the laws of genetics,
opening the way to understanding one of God's greatest secrets, the nature
and continuation of life.
Genetics tells us that characteristics are passed unaltered from
generation to generation, and that spiritual and other characteristics are
inherited along with physical ones. The environment can only influence what
is already present in the genes. Unlike animals, a person does not have a
single environment, but also lives in the cultural world of his race and
people. This too determines the development of his inherited traits. His
culture comes from his inheritance. Therefore, the race to which we belong
determines the life we are born into, and the life we pass on.
- Der Reichsführer SS/SS-Hauptamt,
Rassenpolitik, 1943
As stated earlier, eugenics is not reliant on evolutionary theory, it is
reliant on genetics. That some people would seek to abuse this science for
racist purposes is not a fault of the science however.
During the Nuremberg trials the influences on German racial thinking were
openly discussed. In all of the Nuremberg trials there was no mention of
Darwin. During the proceedings of
July 29, 1946 the influences on Alfred Rosenberg, one of the leading
intellectuals of the Nazi Party, were reviewed.
When, at the Trial, Rosenberg was asked: "Were you not one of Hitler's
closest collaborators?" he did not even speak-he shouted in reply: "That is
not true, I never was." But however hard Rosenberg tried to deny his
"Fuehrer," he has not succeeded in washing away the stigma of being "one of
the oldest and the most faithful of Hitler's comrades-in-arms." For 25 years
Rosenberg, first acting as Hitler's collaborator and afterward under his
direction, worked out and assisted in the realization of the fantastic plan
for world supremacy, having chosen, for the justification of this criminal
plan, the misanthropic theory of racism.
The fact that Rosenberg utilized for his purposes garbled science
and borrowed theories from Karl Lueger and Paul Lagarde, Count [Arthur de]
Gobineau, Oswald Spengler, and Arthur Moeller cannot affect the
question of Rosenberg's guilt and responsibility. The important fact is that
Rosenberg, having assembled all these "scientific excrete," raised the
racial theories to a degree of racial fanaticism and educated in this spirit
the members of the Nazi Party and the youth of Germany. And when the
representatives of the "master race" elaborated and committed acts of
aggression, when the German occupation troops enslaved and exterminated
nations and peoples, when the factories of death were created at Maidanek
and Auschwitz, Treblinka and Chelmno, Rosenberg's share in all these crimes
was not insignificant. All this was the outcome of the fascist racial
ideology, the essence of which consists in the idea that the 'Aryan, North
Germanic" race is a "master race," and that all other races and nations
belong to "lower strata."
There are, however, even more examples of the influences on Nazi racial and
eugenic policies. The archives of the Nuremberg Trials lists as a piece of
evidence a book titled Eugenics and Christianity: Questions of
sterilization, northernization, euthanasia, marriage. This book was in
the possession of Dr. Karl Brandt, the personal physician of Adolph Hitler.
Excerpts from the book, taken from the trial transcripts (there is no
English publication of this book), are given below:
Sterilization:
In England too, eugenics have already been recognized by a part of the
Church. A comprehensive work has been published by Hinton. We consider it a
sin against the idea of personality and conscience "to insist upon the
propagation of degenerate and sick life, if means are available to oppose
such a calamity. It seems blasphemy to imagine that the birth of sick
children could be at all God's will and Divine providence".
Hinton J.P. and Caloutt Josefine: Sterilization, A
Christian Approach, London 1935.
The exercise of immediate pressure is naturally excluded. Thus the
Anglican bishop of Birmingham publicly defined his attitude in favor of
sterilization, expressing his regret that the various proposals concerning
voluntary sterilization had not been considered by the British Government.
...
Health as a Standard:
...
A Protestant clergyman, Hans Schmidt, emphatically declares: "It appears
to us to be a direct affront against the faith in God, the benign Creator,
to regard the misery wards of the patients in Neuendettelsau and Bethel as a
revelation of God's Will, and to declare that these people are forever
predestinated by God to this form of misery! Also Catholic theologians
mostly agree with these points of view. Muckermann considers it wrong to
regard inferiority as valuable in itself. All efforts in the long run must
serve the elimination of inferiority."
...
Death and Sin:
Death as the end of the life of the individual has therefore nothing to
do with sin. It does not belong to the category of moral but of natural
evaluation. In the compass of natural evaluation death is a relative
evaluation. It is judged by the life of the person concerned. If the natural
evaluation has been positive, death is a negative solution, because it
destroys something that is good.
If the natural evaluations have been negative (incurable painful
disease), death is a positive solution, because it does away with something
that is bad. Ethical evaluation is not affected by the disintegration of the
body. If a man led an evil life he has been spiritually dead already before
his physical death. If he has lived a moral life he will have a share in
eternal life, more or less in proportion to the standard of his morality.
...
The Church and Euthanasia:
...
[Martin] Luther also advocated the killing of imbecile children. In his
time they were called "Wechselbalg" or "Kielkroof" (both words not
translatable). People believed they were exchanged by Satan in the place of
robed normal children or were begotten by Satan himself. Luther's standpoint
was prompted by a case in Dressau. There he saw a 12 years old "Wechselbalg"
which outwardly looked like a normal child. Its life, however, was limited
to reception - and elimination - of food. It only laughed and cried
incoherently at everything happening around it. Luther expressed his opinion
that - if he had to decide - he would have killed the child by drowning.
Such creatures were only a lump of human flesh without a real human soul.
The Church in these days also acknowledged euthanasia in some individual
cases. (Vid. Meltzer: "The Problem of Shortening Worthless Life")
- Wolfgang Stroothenke; Eugenics and
Christianity, 1940
Dr. Karl Brandt was the leading physician of the Nazi Party and the head of
the euthanasia program. It would not be correct to characterize the views of
the Nazis as being in line with the majority views of Christians around the
world at the time, certainly not. The Nazis defined their own brand of
Christianity, which they called "Positive Christianity". They claimed that
many Christians of the 20th century had become corrupted by liberalism, but
that Positive Christianity was active in supporting and defending its core
principles, instead of bowing to the liberalism of the day. Nazi documents
themselves repeatedly indicate that their views were known to be in the
minority, but they did, however, repeatedly use calls to religion to support
their ideology and policies. They did seek out religious justifications,
both Christian and non-Christian, for their policies. What you don't find
among the documents of the Nazis are arguments appealing to Darwin,
Darwinism, or evolution. In the rare cases that evolution or evolutionary
concepts are mentioned, their comments on the subject show a complete
misunderstanding of the science, as is indicated in the comments made by
Hitler in Mein Kampf.
The Nazi regime was a highly religious regime that viewed everything in
terms of sacred and holy meaning. Faith was, again and again, touted as the
foundation of Nazism. One of the very first actions of the Nazis when they
came to power was to wage a campaign against atheism.
"We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We
have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that
not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out."
-Adolph Hitler, 1933 Berlin Speech
"The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral
purification of our public life, is creating and securing the conditions
necessary for a really profound revival of religious life.
The advantages of a personal and political nature that might arise
from compromising with atheistic organizations would not outweigh the
consequences which would become apparent in the destruction of general moral
basic values. The national Government regards the two Christian confessions
as the weightiest factors for the maintenance of our nationality. It will
respect the agreements concluded between it and the federal States. Their
rights are not to be infringed. But the Government hopes and expects that
the work on the national and moral regeneration of our nation which it has
made its task will, on the otherhand, be treated with the same respect."
- Adolph Hitler, 1933 Reichstag speech
"God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and
unshakeable faith, that he [Hitler] was sent to us by God to save Germany.
"
-Hermann Göring
"We believe that the Fuhrer is fulfilling a divine mission to German
destiny! This belief is beyond challenge."
-Rudolf Hess, speech, 20 June 1934
"Bolshevism denies religion as a principle, fundamentally and
entirely. It recognizes religion only as an "opium for the people". For the
help and support of religious belief, however, National Socialism absolutely
places in the foreground of its program a belief in God and that
transcendental idealism which has been destined by Nature to bring to
expression the racial soul of a nation."
-Joseph Goebbels, 1935
Life comes from God and returns to God. All life and all races follow
God's ordinances. No people and no race can ignore them. We want the German
youth to again recognize the religious nature of life. They must realize
that God wants the individual as well as the whole people, and that they
lose contact with life when they lose contact with God! God and nation are
the two foundations of the life of the individual and the community. We want
no shallow and superficial piety, but rather a deep faith that God guides
the world, that he controls it, and a consciousness of the relationship
between God and each individual, and between God and the live of the people
and the fatherland. The National Socialist state will promote such a deeply
religious educational system. We want parents to support and strengthen this
by honesty and by good example.
Race, military training, leadership, religion! These are the four
unshakable foundations of the new German National Socialist education!
- Educational Principles of the New
Germany; What Schools and Parents Need to Know About the Goals of National
Socialist Education, 1937
We can see that the Nazi concepts about race and euthanasia are not rooted
in Darwin's evolutionary theory, and certainly have nothing in common with
the ethics of Charles Darwin.
So where does this leave Dr. Weikart's claim that, "[i]n Hitler's mind
Darwinism provided the moral justification for infanticide, euthanasia,
genocide, and other policies that had been (and thankfully still are)
considered immoral by more conventional moral standards. Evolution provided
the ultimate goals of his policy: the biological improvement of the human
species."
Well, even Dr. Weikart admits that there is no direct support for this
whatsoever.
[No one] has pursued the thesis of a single dominating influence on
Hitler more relentlessly than Daniel Gasman with his Haeckel-to-Hitler
hypothesis. […] However, Gasman's approach is too blinkered, ignoring the
huge disparities between Haeckel and Hitler. In many respects Haeckel
lined up with liberal progressives of his time, promoting the peace movement
and homosexual rights, among other liberal causes. Gasman makes
altogether too much ado about Haeckel's anti-Semitism, which, though
misguided, was not a likely source for Hitler's anti-Semitism. For one
thing, Haeckel's anti-Semitic utterances are extremely rare, and they are
much milder than Hitler's. Also, there were many anti-Semitic thinkers
in the early twentieth century whose views are much closer to Hitler's.
Even many socialists, including some Marxists, jumped on the eugenics
bandwagon.
Also, Gasman cannot prove that Hitler ever actually read any of Haeckel's
works, so whatever influence Haeckel allegedly exerted on Hitler may have
been mediated by others. Indeed Haeckel's works were widely read in
the early twentieth century, and it would not be surprising if Hitler read
one or more of them. However, many eugenicists, racists, and
anti-Semites peddled Haeckel's ideas, too, and they were widely discussed in
the popular press, so it is not at all unlikely that Hitler imbibed them
through others. Thus, Gasman is right to point out that Haeckel's
ideas were an important influence on Hitler, but they by no means provided
the ideological foundation for facism, and Haeckel was by no means a
proto-fascist.
- Dr. Richard Weikart; From Darwin to Hitler,
2004
The entire claim that "Darwin inspired the Holocaust" rests on conjecture
and a reading of one set of ideas into another, while also, obviously,
ignoring an entire body of facts. The claims of so-called "scientific
racism" predate Darwin and were in fact refuted by Darwin.
The Darwin to Hitler claim rests first on a Darwin to Haeckel connection
which ignores other influences on Haeckel, though Haeckel himself was
influenced by the works of many other people than Darwin, and then on an
imagined Haeckel to Hitler connection, which is not concrete. Yet, here I
have presented direct connections between several thinkers, including Martin
Luther, and Nazi ideology. The connection between Martin Luther and Nazi
eugenic policy is not the only connection between the founder of
Protestantism and the Nazis however. An even more significant connection
between Martin Luther and Nazi policy is in regard to anti-Semitism.
In fact, the basis of anti-Semitism is Christianity. Hatred of Jews has
been endemic in European culture for the past 2,000 years.
Despite the fact that Christians inherited their religion from Jews,
Christians quickly turned against their Jewish predecessors and enacted
fierce punishments against them for having "killed the Son of God." From the
time that Christians gained power in Rome until the Holocaust itself,
Christians passed laws against Jews, persecuted Jews, and often blamed Jews
for the ills of society.
367 - 376: St. Hilary of Poitiers referred to Jews as a perverse people
who God has cursed forever. St. Ephroem refers to synagogues as brothels.
380: The bishop of Milan was responsible for the burning of a synagogue; he
referred to it as "an act pleasing to God."
393: "No Jew shall retain the customs of his race relating to marriage; nor
shall he marry in accordance with his religion; nor shall he contract
several marriages at the same time."
- Given during the Consulate of the Emperor
Theodosius
415: St. Augustine wrote "The true image of the Hebrew is Judas Iscariot,
who sells the Lord for silver. The Jew can never understand the Scriptures
and forever will bear the guilt for the death of Jesus."
As you can see from the timeline of Jewish persecution linked below, Jews
have been consistently persecuted by Christians from the 3rd century until
the Holocaust: A
History of Anti-Semitism
In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council decreed that Jews had to be
distinguished from Christians in order to prevent sexual intercourse between
the two.
In several provinces, a difference in vestment distinguishes the Jews or
the Saracens from the Christians; but in others, the confusion has reached
such proportions that a difference can no longer be perceived.
Hence, at times it has occurred that Christians have had sexual intercourse
in error with Jewish or Saracen women and Jews or Saracens with Christian
women. That the crime of such a sinful mixture shall no longer find evasion
or cover under the pretext of error, we order that they [Jews and Saracens]
of both sexes, in all Christian lands and at all times, shall be publicly
differentiated from the rest of the population by the quality of their
garment, especially since this is ordained by Moses.
Throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance Jews were forced to
wear yellow badges in order to distinguish themselves from Christians, as
shown below:
Man and woman wearing the Jewish badge.
Drawings, Germany, 16th century.
source:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/heritage/episode4/presentations/4.3.6-2.html
The marking of Jews by yellow badges in Nazi Germany was not a new policy,
it was the re-enactment of old laws.
The mass murder of Jews at the command of Christian authorities took place
several times between the 13th and 19th century in Europe, with several
occasions where thousands of Jews were killed in less than a years time.
In 1543 Martin Luther of Germany, the founder of Protestantism, wrote a
book titled
The Jews and Their Lies. In The Jews and Their Lies Luther
outlined seven points of action to take against Jews:
"First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and
to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever
again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of
our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians,
and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and
blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in
the past unknowingly and I myself was unaware of it will be pardoned by
God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a
house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie
about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard
above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse
ourselves, as we very well know.
Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and
destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their
synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the
gypsies. This will bring home to them that they are not masters in our
country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity,
as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.
Third, I advise that all their prayer books and
Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are
taught, be taken from them. (remainder omitted)
Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to
teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. For they have
justly forfeited the right to such an office by holding the poor Jews
captive with the saying of Moses (Deuteronomy 17 [:10 ff.]) in which he
commands them to obey their teachers on penalty of death, although Moses
clearly adds: "what they teach you in accord with the law of the Lord."
Those villains ignore that. They wantonly employ the poor people's obedience
contrary to the law of the Lord and infuse them with this poison, cursing,
and blasphemy. In the same way the pope also held us captive with the
declaration in Matthew 16 {:18], "You are Peter," etc, inducing us to
believe all the lies and deceptions that issued from his devilish mind. He
did not teach in accord with the word of God, and therefore he forfeited the
right to teach.
Fifth, I advise that safeconduct on the highways be
abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the
countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like.
Let they stay at home. (...remainder omitted).
Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and
that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put
aside for safekeeping. The reason for such a measure is that, as said
above, they have no other means of earning a livelihood than usury, and by
it they have stolen and robbed from us all they possess. Such money should
now be used in no other way than the following: Whenever a Jew is sincerely
converted, he should be handed one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred
florins, as personal circumstances may suggest. With this he could set
himself up in some occupation for the support of his poor wife and children,
and the maintenance of the old or feeble. For such evil gains are cursed if
they are not put to use with God's blessing in a good and worthy cause.
Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a
spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and
Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow,
as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen 3[:19]}. For it is not fitting
that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while
they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and
farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over
the Christians by means of our sweat. No, one should toss out these lazy
rogues by the seat of their pants."
It is significant that the anti-Semitism of Martin Luther was heavily used
in Nazi propaganda and heavily believed among the Nazi Party. The actions
taken by the Nazis against the Jews were the fulfillment of Luther's seven
points.
In Hitler's Willing Executioners Daniel Goldhagen wrote:
One leading Protestant churchman, Bishop Martin Sasse, published a
compendium of Martin Luther's antisemitic vitriol shortly after
Kristallnacht's orgy of anti-Jewish violence. In the foreword to the volume,
he applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day:
'On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in
Germany.' The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words 'of the
greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.'
In Why Aryan Law?,
published in 1934, Dr. E. H. Schulz and Dr. R. Frercks stated:
Martin Luther wrote this of the Jews in his book "The Jews and their
Lies": "They hold we Christians captive in our own land. They have seized
our goods by their cursed usury, they mock and insult us because we work.
They are our lords, and we and our goods belong to them." If in the coming
days the Jewish race is driven out of the non-Jewish world, it will have at
least this consolation: It has made clear to them for all time the value of
maintaining the purity of race and blood in clear, understandable and
unforgettable ways.
National Socialist racial legislation has reduced the influence of Jewry
in all professions, and above all excluded them from the leading offices of
the nation. That is an important step in the relationship between Germans
and Jews, but one cannot ignore the fact that we have not yet fully
eliminated the influence of the Jewish foreign body in German national life.
In John Conway's discussion of the role of Protestantism and Martin Luther
in Nazi society, he commented on a 1946 study into the issue of Luther's
legacy after Nazism:
Nazi propaganda had made much use of Luther's anti-Jewish writings, but
as Lehmann showed, postwar Protestants found ways to avoid confronting that
stain on their hero.
In 1848 Pope Pius IX, who stated that Jews were "dogs of which there
are too many present in Rome, howling and disturbing us everywhere,"
forced Jews back into the ghettos from which they had only recently been
allowed to leave.
In 1910 the award winning American author Reverend Arthur T. Abernethy
published The Jew a Negro, Being A Study of the Jewish Ancestry from an
Impartial Standpoint, in which he sought to show, using "Scriptural
proofs", that Jews were in fact the descendants of negroes.
In the 1920s Henry Ford, a Protestant, started an anti-Semitic periodical
called
The Dearborn Independent, went on to publish The Protocols of the Learned
Elders of Zion, a fraudulent writing which was claimed to be the secret
hidden agenda of Jews to rule the world, and then published
The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem.
The International Jew outlined a brief history of Jewish
involvement in America and labeled New York City as the "center of the
Jewish population." Articles in The International Jew
stated:
WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT?
Simply identify the source and nature of the influence which has
overrun our schools and universities. Let the students know that their
choice is between the Anglo-Saxons and the Tribe of Judah. Let the students
decide, in making up their allegiance, whether they will follow the Builders
or those who seek to tear down. It is not a case for argument. The only
absolute antidote to the Jewish influence is to call college students back
to a pride of race.
We often speak of the Fathers as if they were the few who happened to
affix their signatures to a great document which marked a new era of
liberty. The Fathers of our nation were the men of the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic
race. The men who came from Europe with civilization in their blood and in
their destiny. The men who crossed the Atlantic and set up civilization on a
bleak and rock-bound coast; the men who drove north to Alaska and west to
California; the men who opened up the tropics and subdued the arctics; the
men who mastered the African veldt; the men who peopled Australia and seized
the gates of the world at Suez, Gibraltar and Panama; men who have given
form to every government and a livelihood to every people and an ideal to
every century. They got neither their God nor their religion from Judah, nor
yet their speech nor their creative genius- they are the Ruling People.
Chosen throughout the centuries to Master the world, by building it ever
better and better, and not by breaking it down.
Into the camp of this race, among the sons of the rulers, comes a
people that has no civilization to point to, no aspiring religion, no
universal speech, no great achievement in any realm but the realm of "get,"
cast out of every land that gave them hospitality, and these people endeavor
to tell the Sons of the Saxons what is needed to make the world what it
ought to be!
If our sons follow this counsel of dark rebellion and destruction, it
is because they do not know whose sons they are, of what race they are the
scions. Let there be free speech to the limit in our universities and free
intercourse of ideas, but let Jewish thoughts be labeled Jewish, and let our
sons know the racial secret...
NAME THE ENEMY!
...
Judah has begun the struggle. Judah has made the invasion. Let it come.
Let no man fear it. But let every a man insist that the fight be fair. Let
college students and leaders of thought know that the objective is the
regnancy of the ideas and the race that have built all the civilization we
see and that promises all the civilization of the future; let them also know
that the attacking force is Jewish.
That is all that will be necessary. It is against this that the Jews
protest. "You must not identify us," they say, "You must not use the term
'Jew'." Why? Because unless the Jewish idea can creep in under the
assumption of other than Jewish origin, it is doomed. Anglo-Saxon ideas dare
proclaim themselves and their origin. A proper proclamation is all that is
necessary today. Compel every invading idea to run up its flag!
It is known that Adolph Hitler ordered many copies of The International
Jew and he awarded Henry Ford with a Grand Cross of the Order of the
German Eagle. At the Nuremberg Trials Baldur Von Schirach, a Nazi Youth
leader, claimed that Henry Ford was the primary inspiration for his
anti-Semitism.
The transcripts of Von Schirach's trial, in which he was convicted of
crimes against humanity, reads:
VON SCHIRACH: I shall only say in one sentence that these were works
which had no definite anti-Semitic tendencies, but through which
anti-Semitism was drawn like a red thread. The decisive anti-Semitic book
which I read at that time, and the book which influenced my comrades...
DR. SAUTER: Please...
VON SCHIRACH: ... was Henry Ford's book, The International Jew;
I read it and became anti-Semitic. In those days this book made such a deep
impression on my friends and myself because we saw in Henry Ford the
representative of success, also the exponent of a progressive social policy.
In the poverty-stricken and wretched Germany of the time, youth looked
toward America, and apart from the great benefactor, Herbert Hoover, it was
Henry Ford who to us represented America.
During the Nazi Holocaust 12 million people were killed (this does not
count the military deaths, only those who were put to death or died in
concentration camps). Half of these people were Jews, the primary target of
Nazi aggression. The other half consisted of various other ethnic
minorities, such as gypsies, in addition to homosexuals, atheists,
Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and general enemies of the State.
One can easily see that the targets of Nazi aggression were the traditional
"enemies" of Christianity. The Bible calls for putting homosexuals to death.
Atheists have always been despised by Christians. Communists, of course,
were enemies of Christianity, and it is significant that Jehovah's Witnesses
were targeted, because no one in the world would care anything about
Jehovah's Witnesses except for Christians. Jehovah's Witnesses are
considered a heretical pseudo-Christian sect. They deny the doctrine of the
trinity, believing that Jesus is subordinate to God, they don't believe
Jesus was killed on a cross, they reject ties between church and state, and,
critically, they believe in the significance of using the Hebrew name for
God - Jehovah.
It is very clear that violent anti-Semitism has a long history in Europe,
and that this history is inextricably linked to Christianity.
Abortion
Opponents of both abortion and evolution try to associate abortion, as it
is practiced in America and Europe today, with abortion as it was practiced
in Nazi Germany.
In Nazi Germany, however, abortion was not a legal personal choice. Healthy
German women in Nazi Germany had a duty to have children, and were not
allowed to have abortions by their own choice. Other women, however, could
be forced to have an abortion if they were deemed inferior or unwanted for
some reason.
The right to abortion and birth control today is very different from the
abortion policy of the Nazis, where abortion decisions were made by the
State.
Margaret Sanger, the legendary American women's rights advocate who founded
Planned Parenthood, had this to say about a women's right to reproductive
choice:
Eugenists imply or insist that a woman's first duty is to the state; we
contend that her duty to herself is her first duty to the state. We maintain
that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions
is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be
brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless
of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or
not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother.
- Margaret Sanger; The Birth Control Review,
1919
The widespread legalization of abortion in the 20th
century is not a product of "Darwinism", it is a product of several
different factors, including the recognition of a women's right to control
her own body, the increased demand for people to regulate birth due to
changes in society brought about by capitalism and industrialization, and
the fact that the human population of the earth has increased dramatically.
Human population over the last 10,000 years
The explosion of the human population over the past 100 years has put
extraordinary new pressures on societies and resources that never existed
before. In addition to that, capitalism has transformed societies from
home-based and agricultural economies, where large families lived and worked
together at home, to societies were children go to school and remain
economically unproductive until after age 18 and adults work separately
outside of the home. Under these conditions raising large numbers of
children is no longer economically viable or personally desirable to most
people.
None of these factors are impacted by "Darwinism"; these are practical
concerns that influence policy irrespective of any given ideology, science,
or philosophical framework.
Social Darwinism
"Social Darwinism" is perhaps one of the most misused and misunderstood
terms in the political sciences. The term is most often used today in a
defamatory way to describe a callous approach to social policy, and it is
typically also assumed that Charles Darwin had something to do with the
development of this term and that Darwin was a "Social Darwinist".
Pretty much all of these things are incorrect.
The biggest irony, perhaps, is when American Christian conservatives such
as Dr. Weikart use the term "Social Darwinism" in an attempt to tie Nazism
and Charles Darwin together, because the term "Social Darwinism" was
originally developed by an atheist Marxist who used it to discuss a variety
of ways in which people had employed evolutionary concepts in their
political and economic ideologies, the most well known of these cases being
the economic ideology of Herbert Spencer in his defense of laissez-faire
capitalism. So, in reality, the term "Social Darwinism" was originally a
term that was most widely used to describe the policies of laissez-faire
capitalism by a Marxist opponent of capitalism, yet today American
conservatives flock to the term simply because it has a negative connotation
to it and it has Darwin's name in it.
The term "Social Darwinism" made its debut in 1944 with the publication
of Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915, by Richard
Hofstadter. When Hofstadter joined the Communist Party in 1938, because of
his opposition to Nazism and his interest in fighting against fascism, he
did so with the following remark, "My fundamental reason for joining is that I don't like capitalism and want to
get rid of it." He left the Communist Party shortly afterwards when
the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was announced, creating a temporary alliance
between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
The overall thrust of Hofstadter's work, however, was that evolutionary
concepts were employed by many different groups of political and economic
thinkers during the period after the publication of Darwin's work, from
those like Herbert Spencer, who argued for a "survival of the fittest"
capitalism, to Karl Marx who applied evolutionary concepts to communism, to
others who appealed to evolutionary concepts in support of moderate
government regulation and cooperative social paradigms. Hofstadter did not
claim in his book that all of these applications were bad or that there was
anything inherently wrong with applying evolutionary concepts to political
theories. Ironically, despite
being written by an anti-fascist Jew in 1944, right at the end of World War
II, the Nazis and Nazism are not mentioned in the book.
None of these political and economic theoreticians, however, who employed
evolutionary concepts, strictly adhered to the known evolutionary science of
the time, or to the ideas and ethics of Charles Darwin. In addition to that,
many of the ideas held by these various thinkers, especially Herbert
Spencer, have since been proven wrong by evolutionary science. These
political theoreticians were typically not men of science. They instead
gleaned generalities from popular evolutionary notions and applied them in
arguments that furthered their pre-existing ideas, sometimes rightly, but
often in ways that really contradicted even the known science of the time.
Again, the term "Social Darwinism" was employed most critically by
Hofstadter against capitalism, and specifically against American style
capitalism. This term never even existed during the lifetime of Charles
Darwin, and we can plainly see from Darwin's own writings that his social,
political, and economic ideas have nothing in common with the ideas that
have come to be associated with the term "Social Darwinism", which is a term
that reflects really a tremendous misunderstanding of evolution, not an
application of evolutionary science.
Conclusion and Summary
Opponents of evolution, in desperation, use any means to try to slander
Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. No doubt many of these people
truly believe their own accusations, but they do so out of a desire to see
evolutionary theory in a negative light and out of a desire to believe that
it is harmful to society.
The underlying idea, however, that Nazism and the Holocaust were products
of a divergence from "traditional Judeo-Christian values",
influenced by the rise of "Darwinian thinking", is not only completely
false, but completely the opposite of the truth. The belief that Nazi policy
was a product of "new Darwinian thinking" can only exist when people are
ignorant of the history of anti-Semitism, racism, slavery, and genocide in
Western Civilization, often associated with Christianity.
Indeed, Nazism and the Holocaust were expressions of traditional
values with the use of modern technology. The Holocaust follows a clear
pattern of events in European civilization. The Holocaust shows us the
tragic results of traditional human behavior empowered by powerful new
technology. The immorality of the Holocaust was not new, rather the ability
to carry it out is what was new.
As Albert Einstein stated, "[i]t has become appallingly obvious that
our technology has exceeded our humanity."
Indeed the ethics of Darwin are the exact opposite of the ethics of the
Nazis. Darwin can be counted among the secular humanist philosophers who
promoted the breaking down of racial barriers and the expansion of sympathy
as essential for continued human success. Darwin provided not only a
philosophical appeal to sympathy, but indeed a scientific basis to view
sympathy as a primary social value.
With mankind, selfishness, experience, and imitation, probably add, as
Mr. Bain has shown, to the power of sympathy; for we are led by the hope of
receiving good in return to perform acts of sympathetic kindness to others;
and sympathy is much strengthened by habit. In however complex a manner this
feeling may have originated, as it is one of high importance to all those
animals which aid and defend one another, it will have been increased
through natural selection; for those communities, which included the
greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best, and
rear the greatest number of offspring.
...
The moral faculties are generally and justly esteemed as of higher value
than the intellectual powers. But we should bear in mind that the activity
of the mind in vividly recalling past impressions is one of the fundamental
though secondary bases of conscience. This affords the strongest argument
for educating and stimulating in all possible ways the intellectual
faculties of every human being.
...
As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger
communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to
extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same
nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached,
there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to
the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from
him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately
shews us how long it is, before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. ...
This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise
incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely
diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this
virtue is honoured and practised by some few men, it spreads through
instruction and example to the young, and eventually becomes incorporated in
public opinion.
- The Descent of Man; Charles Darwin, 1871
These views were later echoed by Albert Einstein as the basis for his views
on ethics and humanity.
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy,
education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man
would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of
punishment and hope of reward after death.
- Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science" New
York Times Magazine, 1930
Yes, the language of some of Darwin's work on race is crude by today's
standard, but it was revolutionary in its opposition to the established
ideas of the day, which held that the "savages" were inferior and had no
hope of ever living in a state of equality with whites.
Instead of being criticized as a racist, Darwin should rightfully be
honored as one of the leaders of opposition to racism, who showed through
his careful study, and through his theory of evolution, that we are indeed
all related and that the key to social success as a species lies in
extending our cooperation, sympathy, and assistance to people of all races
and all nations. If Darwin had any social message, that, certainly, was it.
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