Vol 457|12 February 2009 BOOKS & ARTS Darwin and his family would have celebrated the end of colonial slavery, depicted in this 1834 illustration. BODLEIAN LIBRARY OXFORD/THE ART ARCHIVE ARCHIVE ART OXFORD/THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY A vision of humanity united A controversial new reconstruction of Charles Darwin’s life suggests his family’s campaign against slavery influenced his belief that all humans evolved from a single ancestor, explains W. F. Bynum. Lewis Carroll wrote of this new reading of Darwin’s life and values. of Researches, later known as Voyage of the a mythical island whose They will not be disappointed. In Darwin’s Beagle, without realizing how much human inhabitants made a pre- Sacred Cause, Desmond and Moore assimilate slavery affected his sensitivities. He feared carious living by taking in the relevant secondary literature, but also go that his book might be censored in the United each other’s laundry. Most much further. They offer us a new reading of States, where slavery was a major political and books on Charles Darwin Darwin’s life and scientific work, based on two economic issue. in his bicentennial year well-known facts about him: he felt physical Desmond and Moore have reconstructed will probably follow suit, repackaging what a revulsion when con- Darwin’s life and sci- troop of Darwin scholars have uncovered from fronted by cruelty and Darwin’s Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and ence through the his extensive archives and writings. The more he loathed slavery. the Quest for Human Origins lenses of these two books that have been written on a subject, the Darwin’s hasty exit by Adrian Desmond and James Moore themes. This approach easier it seems to be to write a new one. But from the surgical thea- Allen Lane/Houghton Mifflin: 2009. has many pay-offs. Darwin’s Sacred Cause is an exception. tre, while a student in 512 pp/448 pp. £25/$30 First, it enlarges our Readers of Adrian Desmond and James Edinburgh, is a classic knowledge of Dar- Moore’s earlier biography, Darwin (Michael anecdote of his early years. Even necessary win’s circle. He came from a family with ardent Joseph, 1991) — and of Desmond’s subsequent pain, such as that caused by operations before anti- slavery sentiments. Darwin’s grandfather, Huxley: From Devil’s Disciple to Evolution’s High anaesthetics were available, was more than he Josiah Wedgwood, produced the most power- Priest (Penguin, 1998) — will expect much from could bear. And no one can read his Journal ful image of the British anti-slavery campaign: 792 © 2009 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved NATURE|Vol 457|12 February 2009 DARWIN 200 OPINION a jasperware medallion of 1787, depicting a Darwin certainly owned and read carefully of the two men were famously presented slave in chains, which bore the motto ‘Am I many of Prichard’s books, especially his together at a meeting of the Linnean Society in not a Man and a Brother?’ (pictured, right). Researches into the Physical History of Man- 1859. The authors provide good evidence for Darwin’s sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins all kind, a monumental work of erudition that was this, although there is rather more on sexual wholeheartedly supported the ‘sacred cause’ transmuted from his University of Edinburgh selection in the first edition of On the Origin of with their energies and their money. The MD thesis (1808) to a single volume (1813), Species than the uninitiated reader would con- authors mine correspondence, pamphlets and and finally, in its last incarnation, into a five- clude from Darwin’s Sacred Cause. monetary contributions to dissect this fam- volume encyclopaedic compendium of biology, ily concern in a detail never before achieved, linguistics, ethnology and physical anthropol- Back to his roots and demonstrate convincingly that Darwin ogy. Prichard was a Quaker-turned-Evangelical The ‘analogy of nature’ presupposes that all absorbed these family values. Anglican, and certainly no evolutionist. Never- domestic plants and animals — humans as well This concentration on Darwin’s abiding belief theless, he was an ardent believer in the unity as pigeons, dogs and sheep — are varieties of in the unity of the human races, in the wake of of mankind, marshalling all the evidence he a single original species. Prichard assumed it a rising tide of polygenism — the belief that could that all human races were derived from was true, and Darwin strove manfully to fol- humans were divided into different races with a single stock. Prichard invoked what he low in his footsteps. Darwin’s researches separate origins — encourages us to rethink called the ‘analogy of nature’, by on pigeons were a tour de force, his relationships with his acquaintances and which he meant that humans, and never written about with colleagues. The doughty Harriet Martineau, similar to domestic animals more force than here. The his brother Erasmus’s friend, becomes not (dogs, sheep, cattle), vary case for dogs was more just a source of Malthusian commentary, but far more than species complicated, and his an ardent critic of the iniquities of American in the wild. Man- conclusion, in On the slavery, based on first-hand experience during kind, like the dog, is Origin of Species, that a long visit to the United States. Darwin’s com- domesticated, and our domestic dogs plex association with Charles Lyell is shown therefore capable of are descended from to have very deep and complicated roots. We wide variation. more than one spe- know that Darwin was extremely disappointed Given the impor- cies, was a problem with Lyell’s reception of On the Origin of Species. tance Darwin placed — especially given Desmond and Moore dissect correspondence on domestication as the importance of his during Lyell’s first two trips to North America, a model of biological notion of descent with where the patrician geologist was wined and variation, the symmetry variation. On Desmond dined by aristocratic slaveholders in the Ameri- of their arguments is stark. and Moore’s reading of can South. Their analysis of these years in the Darwin noted at the back of his values, with its commit- 1840s is both amusing and moving, as Darwin one of his volumes of Prichard, ment to human unity, dogs goaded Lyell to see beyond the polite trappings ‘How like my Book all this will be’. presented a real difficulty. of southern society to the harsh realities on The comment is famous and has been var- The natural culmination of this vol- which it was based. iously interpreted by historians. Desmond and ume is Darwin’s Descent of Man and Selection Moore argue that Darwin intended his treat- in Relation to Sex (Murray, 1871). Desmond A personal evolution ment of human variation, albeit within an evo- and Moore reinforce their point that Dar- LIBRARY GALLERIES, UK/BRIDGEMAN ART HOUSE, HULL CITY MUSEUMS AND ART WILBERFORCE Desmond and Moore also invite us to recon- lutionary context, to read much like Prichard’s. win’s concern with sexual selection had some sider Darwin’s attitude to the naturalist Louis The extensive documentation contained in their of its origins in his abiding belief in the fun- Agassiz. His rejection of Darwin’s central mes- book makes this interpretation plausible. Cer- damental unity of the human races, but even sage in On the Origin of Species is well known, tainly Darwin found in his ethnological reading these authors cannot rehabilitate Darwin’s but we can now see the deep roots of Darwin’s much appeal to the ‘analogy of nature’ among disappointing discussion of human descent. antipathy to this Harvard apostle of polygenism, those wanting to account for human variation as During the 1850s and 1860s, evidence for who wrote an introduction to the most promi- being on a par with the variation still produced the antiquity and early history of humans nent racist tract in antebellum America, Types among domestic animals. had been established. Too many of Darwin’s of Mankind by J. C. Nott and G. R. Gliddon Prichard argued that skin colour varies with leading ideas were still grounded in his own (1854). According to Desmond and Moore, the degree of ‘civilization’, and proposed that amazingly creative period in the late 1830s. Darwin canvassed first the zoologist James Adam was black. He also had a notion of sexual After On the Origin of Species, much of Dar- Dana at Yale, and then, when Dana proved too selection, whereby ideas of beauty, different in win’s innovative research was in botany; it is much in Agassiz’s shadow, the botanist Asa specific cultural contexts, would have reinforced as if he wanted most of all simply to be in his Gray at Harvard, to act as his undercover agent racial variations. Darwin, too, in Desmond and own garden. ■ in Agassiz’s America. They argue that Agassiz’s Moore’s account, saw sexual selection as the W. F. Bynum is emeritus professor of the history polygenism, rather than his espousal of con- key to varieties of mankind. They suggest that of medicine at University College London, Gower tinental, idealist modes of thinking, was what Darwin abandoned a chapter on the races of Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK. He is author of The Darwin found especially odious. man in his planned book on natural selection History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction and This account of Darwin’s personal evolu- because he felt he needed more information editor of a new edition of On the Origin of Species. tion also alters the focus on the important on sexual selection. In the event, the planned e-mail: [email protected] influences on his thinking.