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Chance and Contingency in the Evolution of Man, Mind and Morals in Charles Kingsley's W

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Chance and Contingency in the Evolution of Man, Mind and Morals in Charles Kingsley's W Journal of the History of Biology Ó Springer 2012 DOI 10.1007/s10739-012-9345-5 Monkeys into Men and Men into Monkeys: Chance and Contingency in the Evolution of Man, Mind and Morals in Charles Kingsley’s Water Babies PIERS J. HALE Department of the History of Science University of Oklahoma 601 Elm Ave, Rm. 610 Norman, OK 73019 USA E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. The nineteenth century theologian, author and poet Charles Kingsley was a notable populariser of Darwinian evolution. He championed Darwin’s cause and that of honesty in science for more than a decade from 1859 to 1871. Kingsley’s interpretation of evolution shaped his theology, his politics and his views on race. The relationship between men and apes set the context for Kingsley’s consideration of these issues. Having defended Darwin for a decade in 1871 Kingsley was dismayed to read Darwin’s account of the evolution of morals in Descent of Man. He subsequently distanced himself from Darwin’s conclusions even though he remained an ardent evolutionist until his death in 1875. Keywords: Charles Kingsley, Evolution, Hipocampus minor, Darwin, British Associa- tion, Water Babies, Nineteenth century, Race, Morant Bay, Eyre affair, Thomas Huxley, Descent of Man, Origin of Species, Biology, England, Politics, Theology, Science and religion Jack (who has been reading passages from the ‘‘Descent of Man’’ to the wife whom he adores, but loves to tease). ‘‘SO YOU SEE, MARY, BABY IS DESCENDED FROM A HAIRY QUADRUPED, WITH POINTED EARS AND A TAIL. WE ALL ARE!’’ Mary. ‘‘SPEAK FOR YOURSELF, JACK! I’M NOT DES- CENDED FROM ANYTHING OF THE KIND, I BEG TO SAY; AND BABY TAKES AFTER ME. SO THERE!’’ (image courtesy of Punch, Ltd., London) PIERS J. HALE Figure 1. A logical refutation of Mr. Darwin’s theory For the Victorians evolution was a moral question as much as it was one of biology. The suggestion that even the most respectable of Victorian ladies might share common ancestry with apes was only a part of the concern, although it was this that most engaged the public – and certainly it was this that most engaged Victorian cartoonists and caricaturists (Browne, 2001; Figure 1). A greater moral challenge was posed by uncertainties about the evolutionary process itself, for although the Victorian era was nothing if not an age of progress, even the most pro- gressive of Victorians were aware that evolution had a darker side, and threatened degeneration just as readily (Chamberlin and Gilman, 1985). Further, the contingent and often capricious nature of adaptation and selection that Darwin had described in Origin raised the question of whether a simple anthropocentric hierarchy of progress and regress was even an appropriate way to think about the world (Mu¨ller-Wille, 2009). Even though Darwin had made little mention of the implications of evolutionformankindinOrigin of Species (1859), noting only that ‘‘light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history’’, the human-ape connection dominated the evolution debates of the 1860s both in the pages of scientific and popular journals and at successive meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Darwin, 1859, p. 488; Hesketh, 2009; Browne, 2001). What made this particular MONKEYS INTO MEN AND MEN INTO MONKEYS taxonomy so controversial was that it raised some of the most pressing questions of the day, regarding religion, race and the nature of humanity. The questions that evolution raised of traditional exegesis and the prevailing views of mankind were significant. Nevertheless, and despite some initial outrage at the suggestion that man might be an evolved animal rather than one of God’s separate and special creations, there were a few notable individuals who embraced a simian ancestry for mankind, and even a capricious and contingent evolutionary process, as quite compatible with a Christian world view. In particular, the Anglican theologian, novelist, naturalist and science populariser Charles Kingsley led the way in theorising a Darwinian natural theol- ogy. Historians have long noted Kingsley’s embrace of evolution. Gillian Beer’s Darwin’s Plots will be the most familiar to historians of biology, but Colin Manlove, Amanda Hodgson and more recently Jessica Straley, John Beatty and Jonathan Conlin have also commented upon this aspect of Water Babies (Beer, 1983; Manlove, 1975; Hodgson, 1999; Straley, 2007; Beatty and Hale, 2008; Conlin, 2011).1 Kingsley was deeply interested in evolution and all it implied. More recently histori- ans have turned to consider Kingsley’s role as a populariser of science, Bernard Lightman has noted Kingsley’s significance in this regard in both Victorian Popularizers of Science (2007) and in his 2010 article ‘‘Darwin and the Popularization of Evolution’’, and I have recently argued elsewhere that Kingsley was one of Darwin’s most important advocates in the early years of the Darwinian revolution (Hale, 2012). In this essay I comment not so much on Kingsley’s role as a popu- lariser, but upon the understanding of evolution that he sought to popularize. This is the result of an ongoing and larger research project on Kingsley that I have been pursuing in collaboration with John Beatty. Here I make the case that Kingsley not only embraced evolu- tion, but appreciated the deeply contingent and capricious nature of adaptation and selection that Darwin had described in Origin. Acknowledging the chanceful nature of evolution, Kingsley argued that the question of whether mankind would undergo an evolutionary pro- gress or degeneration was entirely contingent upon their actions. John C. Hawley has argued that progress and degeneration in Water Babies is the result of the changing moral state of Tom, the main character in the 1 An near-exhaustive bibliography of twentieth-century Kingsley scholarship is available through Boston College’s website: Charles Kingsley: The 20th Century Critical Heritage. Works currently listed include those published between 1900 and 2006. https://www2.bc.edu/rappleb/kingsley/kingsleyhome.html. PIERS J. HALE story. However, the lesson that Kingsley hoped to teach through his fairy tale is more sophisticated than this – he hoped to teach science and the reasons why we should do science, as well as morality. Indeed, a knowledge of science was necessary if one was to understand how to act morally. Kingsley believed that the reason why God had chosen to govern the world by such an apparently chanceful process as natural selection was that He intended mankind to learn about the world He had created and the laws by which He governed. It was only by doing so that mankind could discover God’s intentions for them and, leaving nothing to chance, ensure that their own development was a progressive one – as God surely intended. Evolutionary degeneration was a con- sequence of man following his own will rather than the will of God. As a result Kingsley saw science as the light to the path of human progress – in mind, in body and in spirit, and he championed scientific education accordingly. Importantly, though, he also engaged in arguments about the importance of honesty and integrity in pursuit of the truths that science might reveal about man and his place in the world. I wish to show that Kingsley considered the moral implications of evolution much more deeply than historians have hitherto acknowl- edged. Although Kingsley initially thought the human-ape connection of little moral import, in fact it brought him to reflect upon the sig- nificance of science, and the fundamental importance of scientific integrity; upon the politics of race and empire; and finally upon the origin and nature of morality itself. Kingsley commented upon many of these issues in his fairy tale Water Babies, others only became apparent after the book had been published. In this essay I focus on six episodes. The first episode revolves around the moral significance of an evolu- tionary relationship between man and ape and the debate between the two great men of nineteenth-century English comparative anatomy, Thomas Huxley and Richard Owen. Moral concerns about the implied link between man and ape had a long history, and it was this that had been the crux of the debate between the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley at the 1860 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Owen had pressed the issue later in the week, insisting that there was a significant point of morphological difference between the brain of a man and the brain of an ape, called the hippocampus minor. This point of human exceptionalism was further debated at the 1862 meeting of the British Association. Kingsley witnessed the proceedings and lampooned them, and the protagonists, beautifully in Water Babies. Kingsley thought such a small point of morphology irrelevant to morality. As I have suggested above, MONKEYS INTO MEN AND MEN INTO MONKEYS and in the second episode I discuss here, what Kingsley did think morally relevant, was that mankind should learn about the world and the laws by which it was governed in order to know how to place themselves in such a position as to benefit from them. To this end Kingsley believed that it was important for people to study science and to understand the laws of natural and sexual selection. They would need to understand evolutionary science if they, their nation, and the race were to continue in their progressive development; to fail would lead to an evolutionary degeneration. Kingsley taught this lesson in Water Babies as well through the story he told of ‘the great and famous nation of the Doasyoulikes’. Kingsley’s belief that God meant for man to study nature so that he might discover the place in the world that God in- tended for him was what lay behind his harsh judgment that the many thousands of people killed in the earthquake that destroyed the Chilean city of Arica in 1868 were responsible for their own demise.
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