Charles Darwin is not the only
person in history who has had a great publicity machine working for him, with
some of it being self-publicity. One of
the most cynical and true conclusions you can reach from an in-depth study of
history is that publicity works. Not
only does it succeed in creating a better and undeserved image for certain
people, but it also succeeds at erasing the far more deserving people whose
existence is a threat to the image created for the heroes we endorse.
Darwin was not a great humanitarian,
and he was not the one who came up with evolution, nor was he the first to
prove its greater probability. All these descriptions should go to others, but
we have so lauded Charles Darwin that we have forgotten who these others were.
His contemporaries, Robert Chambers and Georg Gerland, just to name two, did
much more for a humane understanding of evolution, and Chambers promoted and
proved his case for the probability of evolution 15 years before Darwin
published. Darwin had great publicists, the others did not.
But, as I said, Darwin is not the
only example of this. Thomas Jefferson comes to mind. Not only was he not the
great believer in emancipation of slaves, he was not even the great
constitutionalist he is still celebrated as. In one letter, he explained that
obeying the law is only one duty of a public official and not the highest. A
far greater duty, he thought, was to act for the self-preservation of the
country, even if that meant breaking the law. He conceived that acquiring more
land for the United States was for the good of the country, and went ahead with
the Louisiana Purchase without a constitutional amendment to authorize it,
though he thought an amendment was necessary. The Louisiana territory was too
good a bargain to pass up or let constitutional niceties interfere with.
Today we would call it using
national security to justify government actions. We forget how much Jefferson
supported that. But his publicity machine still celebrates him as a man of pure
principles. A better example of devotion to constitutional principle would be
the first John M. Harlan. He was the lone dissenter in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) which established the separate but equal
doctrine for blacks. Harlan was outraged. The Constitution, he argued, is color
blind and does not authorize using laws to sanction race hatred. A few years
later in Downes v. Bidwell (1901) he
again dissented from a decision that exempted the newly acquired territories,
after the Spanish-American War, from constitutional protections. The
Constitution, as Harlan argued, does not envision the United States becoming a
colonial power. But who remembers Justice Harlan today? He does not have that
publicity thing going for him.
There are many more examples one
could give, but I will give just one. The King James translators have always
had the reputation of having made a great translation of the Bible. In the
translators’ introduction to their work, they admitted this was not an original
translation, but no one pays attention to that. They are still praised for
something they never did (which, interestingly, is how someone once summed up
Thomas Jefferson). Nine times out of ten, when the King James New Testament is
quoted, it is William Tyndale who is being quoted. His translation was the main
source the King James Version relied on. He still gets no credit. Tyndale was
executed for his efforts, and the King James was handed all the glory for what
was in reality his accomplishment.
The problem for me is not just
that one person or group falsely gets all the fame. It is even more that we
have been unfair to others and buried some people out of sight who deserve
better. And even more, in some cases like that of Charles Darwin, by our
unrealistic portrait of them, we implicitly condone some of the bad things they
did. In Darwin’s case, by ignoring his racism and support of genocide, we send
a message that these things are acceptable as long as the person who practices
them is eminent enough. It is a terrible legacy to create.
© 2018 Leon Zitzer
