A.N. Wilson’s biography Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker was
released here in America on December 12, 2017. It first came out in Britain
back in September and I put up my review on this blog in October. I have since
posted an abridged version on Amazon.
What I find most puzzling about
the book is that Wilson clearly wants to point out Darwin’s failures, yet he
passes over Darwin’s two biggest faults: his racist ideas about Indigenous
peoples and his commitment to genocide. I understand why idolizers of Darwin
omit these things from their discussions, but why does Wilson let Darwin off
the hook for his unscientific assessment of non-European people? I cannot think
of any reason, unless it is that Darwin’s defects reflect the wider problems in
his society and perhaps it is that society that Wilson wants to protect.
Wilson’s discussion of Darwin’s
ideas occupies a smaller portion of the book. The larger portion is devoted to
straightforward biography, and as a biography, there seems little to justify
why Wilson wrote another one. Other than criticizing Darwin’s theory of natural
selection, there is little purpose in again going over the well-known details
of his career and life. But there is one biographical detail Wilson offers
which still bothers me because it offers an incomplete picture of the issue. I
did not bring it up in my review, so I will do so now.
Wilson mentions that Darwin had
one daughter’s cat destroyed because it had mauled one of his pigeons. I
suppose Wilson means to imply that Darwin had a cruel streak in him. But this
raises the issue of Darwin’s attitude towards animals and here Wilson fails to
deliver.
Generally, Darwin is remembered
for his hatred of cruelty to animals. There are a number of anecdotes about this
which I relate in my long book Darwin’s
Racism: The Definitive Case (in my other book A Short but Full Book on Darwin’s Racism, I skip this issue). But
the other side of Darwin is that he believed animals served human beings. He
was opposed to any efforts to end experimentation on live animals, if these
were necessary to advance medical research. Restrictions, yes. He believed
experiments should be performed with anesthetics when possible. But if that
were not possible without ruining the experiment, then he was fully in favor of
going ahead with it, no matter the pain to the animal. Even when anesthetics
were used, Darwin does not seem to have given any thought to how the animal
would feel in recovery.
It is not the most important
issue in Darwin’s life (which is why I did not bring it up in my review or in
my short book), but to drop one detail about killing a cat, as Wilson does,
without telling the fuller story is not really fair.
© 2017 Leon Zitzer
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