"Darwin's Sacred Cause. How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution"

The tandem of Adrian Desmond and James Moore have a lengthy history in deciphering the inner depths of archives, libraries, museums, and literature. Both have contributed with numerous books and journal articles to the workings of science and culture, specifically that one exists in the other. Their latest challenge is no different. "Darwin's Sacred Cause" is also, however, a significant challenge.

The premise is that evolution, particularly human evolution, as Darwin would come to understand it and contribute to, was in part do to his own misgivings of slavery, both in England, but also in America. "We aren't out to prove the uncorrupted purity of Darwin's corpus" they write, "...or indeed deify his corpse." "The real problem" they argue "is that no one understands Darwin's core project, ...No one has appreciated the source of that moral fire that fuelled his strange, out-of-character obsession with human origins."

Thankfully, Darwin provided much of the original material for this project as one of the most notorious note-takers of the 19th century; the authors reviewed over 15,000 letters, plus all the drafts of publications to be, as well as those of his close family. And it is here where it all begins. His family, and later the in-laws, many of whom were abolitionists in their own right, provided an atmosphere of the unity of all men and women. Emma (nee Wedgewood) was a singular force in Darwin's life and with religious piety helped center Darwin (but let's not forget, many of the arguments for the plurality of human origins comes from the same good book).

Much of the evolution of Darwin's abolitionist nature, from boy-hood, through the discomforting trials aboard the Beagle voyage, at times seeing humanity shredded, to his more reclusive days can be documented. The problem the authors face, however, is the certainty of the early influences on Darwin. Too often Desmond and Moore bridge suppositions with 'must haves' and 'likely's". Yet "Sacred Cause" is a thorough going of the relationship between British and American rationality and irrationality. Though racism was an integral part of both countries (the Brits through trade, the Americans, through labor), the sensibility, at least on paper, was born earlier across the pond than on American soil. And on this soil, the challenger to abolitionism (and evolution by natural selection, but more so sexual selection), whose "long arm unsettled Darwin", was in many ways headed by the renowned Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz. And it is this interplay that is the most interested for much of the American 19th century racism rest equally so on the 'science of the day.'

"Darwin's Sacred Cause" is a wonderful tour of 19th century science and how two countries, one emerging, the other at the peak of its colonial game, began to intertwine. That alone is worth reading. How much did Darwin's abolitionism influence his views? The authors show time and again the Darwin spared the public with his views on the unity of humans until he was sufficiently armed with evidence and a mechanism. And the problem is that Darwin, even amongst his thousands of correspondence, never is sufficiently clear. And the problem with 15,000 pieces of authored paper is that it only fuels the need for more. More questions for the few answers.
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