An interview with James Moore on “Darwin’s Sacred Cause and the Problem of Slavery”

Charles Darwin is often depicted as a wavering man. Again and again he postponed the publication of his theory of evolution. And during a great part of his life he suffered from a mysterious undiagnosed illness, with repeated attacks of heart palpitations and of retching and vomiting. Both his reluctance to go to press as his physical symptoms have mystified many scholars for a long time, but nowadays there is a consensus to ascribe it to one and the same reason: angst. Darwin was simply terrified by the prospect of the stir his theory would cause in society and in his private life.

Young Darwin

From this explanation a new question arises: why did he live so dangerously? Why did he create misery for himself? How or where did Darwin find the nerve and power of will to elaborate his theory, to go on searching for supporting facts, to write it down and finally to publish?

Money had nothing to do with it, Darwin was quite well-off. Was Darwin driven by scientific integrity, an irresistible the urge to reveal the scientific truth about life’s diversity and human origins? Or by scientific ambition – the urge to be the first with a new theory?

Very recently a new interpretation has been put forward on this subject – and it is an amazing one which is shocking Darwin’s enemies and his friends alike. In their new book, Darwin’s Sacred Cause. Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins, the renowned Darwin scholars Adrian Desmond and James Moore argue that Darwin was primarily driven by strong emotions and a moral imperative. Darwin’s scientific work, the theory of evolution and his evolutionary views on mankind, was motivated, not just by rational scientific curiosity, but also by a profound abhorrence of slavery.

Adrian Desmond and James Moore,
authors of Darwin’s Sacred Cause. Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins

Shortly, one of the authors, James Moore, will give a lecture in Maastricht on his and his co-author’s new interpretation, the occasion being the publication of the Dutch translation of their book*. For starters an email-exchange between James Moore and science writer Ludo Hellemans (who in 2000 wrote a new Dutch translation of Darwin’s books On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man).

Ludo Hellemans: What exactly is the core idea of your new theory?

James Moore: Charles Darwin as his wife Emma Wedgwood (his first cousin) belong to families passionately committed to the abolition of the slave trade and slavery itself. Our thesis is that the anti-slavery values instilled in Darwin from youth became the moral premise of his work on evolution. This is perhaps our most radical idea: that there was a moral fire driving Darwin’s research, a brotherhood belief, rooted in anti-slavery, that led to a ‘common descent’ image for human ancestry – an image that Darwin extended to the rest of life, making not just the races, but all creatures kin. This thesis throws Darwin’s whole oeuvre – so often vilified for being morally subversive – into an entirely new light.

L.H.: When translating On the Origin of Species I was struck by Darwin’s choice of vocabulary when describing the behavior of ants. Ants often ‘live together’ with lice. Present-day biologists consider this as a form of symbiosis resulting from mutual adaptation or co-evolution. But in Darwin’s words the ants exhibit ‘slave making instincts’ and in one instance Darwin describes this instinct as ‘odious’.

J.M.: Yes, in On the Origin, Darwin calls the slave-making instinct `odious’. He goes on to discuss slave-making in ants, but his initial statement is general: `so extraordinary and odious an instinct as that of making slaves’. This was no slip of the pen. I believe Darwin intended a moral condemnation. He was showing his anti-slavery colours on the eve of the American Civil War.

Anti-slavery medaillon, produced by Wedgwood (family of Darwin)
and sold for the benefit of anti-slavery action

L.H.: In Darwin’s time cruelty in nature was a hot topic: if God is good, how can he have created such horrible phenomena as the slave-making instinct of ants?

J.M.: The slave-making instinct was just one among many ghastly phenomena that Darwin ascribed to laws of nature rather than God’s particular design. Another example is the larvae of the ichneumon wasp, which eats out the guts of living caterpillars. But I’m not sure that Darwin’s position was thought out coherently. At one point in the Origin, he says that `what applies to one animal will apply throughout all time to all animals’; in other words, what evolution does for one, it can do for all. A hundred pages later, he explains the ant slave-making instinct by natural selection. Why then doesn’t the same explanation apply to slave-making in the human animal? I cannot find an answer. Instead, repeatedly, Darwin calls slavery a `sin’. His position appears to be morally absolutist.

Darwin studied the slave-making instinct in ants

L.H.: Were Darwin’s theories (and good intentions) helpful in putting an end to slavery and racism?

J.M.: Darwin gave his authority to the `monogenist’ theory of racial origins and so reinforced traditional teaching about human brotherhood. This theory stated that all human varieties originate from one and the same stock. But he was not the only one who lent scientific authority to monogenism, nor was his unique theory of racial divergence, `sexual selection’, a resounding success. Slavery ended for different reasons in different places – reasons that had little to do with Darwin’s impact. What his writings did lend credence to was the widespread common belief in an intellectual or civilizational hierarchy of races within the one human species, and competition between these races as the engine of social progress. Tragic as it was, Darwin’s `progress’ cost lives.

L.H.: What will be the subject of your next book?

J.M.: I have been researching the life of Alfred Russel Wallace for a number of years and hope to have a biographical study in print near the time of the centenary of his death in 2013.

Interview by Ludo Hellemans

Ludo Hellemans is a freelance science writer affiliated to Maastricht University. He is the guest curator of the exhibit ‘Darwin & Maastricht‘ (Minderbroedersberg 4, 14 May – 20 November 2009)

Note: *Adrian Desmond and & James Moore (2009): Darwin’s Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins (Allen Lane/Houghton Mifflin); Darwins nobele streven (Uitgeverij Nieuw Amsterdam, sept 2009).

Practical details:

Lecture: James Moore on “Darwin’s Sacred Cause and the Problem of Slavery”/strong>
When: Friday, October 2nd, 16.00 – 18.00
Where: Maastricht, Tongersestraat 53, Aula (Maastricht University, Studium Generale)

James Moore