by Janet Browne
Descent 1871, vol. 1, 88–89
As soon, however, as marriage, whether polygamous or monogamous, becomes common, jealousy will lead to the inculcation of female virtue; and this being honoured will tend to spread to the unmarried females. How slowly it spreads to the male sex we see at the present day. Chastity eminently requires self-command; therefore it has been honoured from a very early period in the moral history of civilised man. As a consequence of this, the senseless practice of celibacy has been ranked from a remote period as a virtue.
Descent 1871, vol. 1, 96
I believe that any such practices [contraception] would in time spread to unsound women & would destroy chastity, on which the family bond depends; & the weakening of this bond would be the greatest of all possible evils to mankind.
Darwin to Charles Bradlaugh,
6 June 1877, quoted in Peart and Levy 2008, 348
Intellect
There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties.
Descent 1871, vol. 1, 35
There can be no doubt that the difference between the mind of the lowest man and that of the highest animal is immense.
Descent 1871, vol. 1, 104
The mental powers in some early progenitor of man must have been more highly developed than in any existing ape, before even the most imperfect form of speech could have come into use; but we may confidently believe that the continued use and advancement of this power would have reacted on the mind by enabling and encouraging it to carry on long trains of thought.
Descent 1871, vol. 1, 57
At the present day civilised nations are everywhere supplanting barbarous nations, excepting where the climate opposes a deadly barrier; and they succeed mainly, though not exclusively, through their arts, which are the products of the intellect. It is, therefore, highly probable that with mankind the intellectual faculties have been gradually perfected through natural selection.
Descent 1871, vol. 1, 160
We may conclude that the greater size, strength, courage, pugnacity, and even energy of man, in comparison with the same qualities in woman, were acquired during primeval times, and have subsequently been augmented, chiefly through the contests of rival males for the possession of the females. The greater intellectual vigour and power of invention in man is probably due to natural selection combined with the inherited effects of habit, for the most able men will have succeeded best in defending and providing for themselves, their wives and offspring.
Descent 1871, vol. 2, 382–83
Woman seems to differ from man in mental disposition, chiefly in her greater tenderness and less selfishness; and this holds good even with savages…. Man is the rival of other men; he delights in competition, and this leads to ambition which passes too easily into selfishness. These latter qualities seem to be his natural and unfortunate birthright. It is generally admitted that with woman the powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilisation.
Descent 1871, vol. 2, 326–27
The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain—whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands. If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music—comprising composition and performance—history, science, and philosophy, with half-a-dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison.
Descent 1871, vol. 2, 327
In order that woman should reach the same standard as man, she ought, when nearly adult, to be trained to energy and perseverance, and to have her reason and imagination exercised to the highest point; and then she would probably transmit these qualities chiefly to her adult daughters. The whole body of women, however, could not be thus raised, unless during many generations the women who excelled in the above robust virtues were married, and produced offspring in larger numbers than other women.
Descent 1871, vol. 2, 329
I do not think I ever in all my life read anything more interesting & original [F. Galton Hereditary Genius, 1869]…. You have made a convert of an opponent in one sense, for I have always maintained that, excepting fools, men did not differ much in intellect, only in zeal & hard work; & I still think there is an eminently important difference. I congratulate you on producing what I am convinced will prove a memorable work
Darwin to Francis Galton,
23 December [1869], DCP 7032
I hope that it will not bore you to read the few accompanying pages, and in the middle you will find a few sentences with a sort of definition of, or rather discussion on, intelligence. I am altogether dissatisfied with it. I tried to observe what passed in my own mind when I did the work of a worm. If I come across a professed metaphysician, I will ask him to give me a more technical definition, with a few big words about the abstract, the concrete, the absolute, and the infinite; but seriously, I should be grateful for any suggestions, for it will hardly do to assume that every fool knows what “intelligent” means.
Darwin to G. J. Romanes,
7 March 1881, More Letters, vol. 2, 213–14
I am inclined to agree with Francis Galton in believing that education and environment produce only a small effect on the mind of any one, and that most of our qualities are innate.
Autobiography, 43
Instincts
If it can be shown that instincts do vary ever so little, then I can see no difficulty in natural selection preserving and continually accumulating variations of instinct to any extent that may be profitable. It is thus, as I believe, that all the most complex and wonderful instincts have originated.
Origin 1859, 209
By what steps the instinct of F. sanguinea [the slave-making ant] originated I will not pretend to conjecture. But as ants, which are not slave-makers, will, as I have seen, carry off pupæ of other species, if scattered near their nests, it is possible that pupæ originally stored as food might become developed; and the ants thus unintentionally reared would then follow their proper instincts, and do what work they could. If their presence proved useful to the species which had seized them—if it were more advantageous to this species to capture workers than to procreate them—the habit of collecting pupæ originally for food might by natural selection be strengthened and rendered permanent for the very different purpose of raising slaves.
Origin 1859, 223–24
Thus, as I believe, the most wonderful of all known instincts, that of the hive-bee [in constructing hexagonal cells in honeycombs], can be explained by natural selection having taken advantage of numerous, successive, slight modifications of simpler instincts; natural selection having by slow degrees, more and more perfectly, led the bees to sweep equal spheres at a given distance from each other in a double layer, and to build up and excavate the wax along the planes of intersection. The bees, of course, no more knowing that they swept their spheres at one particular distance from each other, than they know what are the several angles of the hexagonal prisms and of the basal rhombic plates. The motive power of the process of natural selection having been economy of wax; that individual swarm which wasted least honey in the secretion of wax, having succeeded best, and having transmitted by inheritance its newly acquired economical instinct to new swarms, which in their turn will have had the best chance of succeeding in the struggle for existence.
Origin 1859, 235
No one supposes that one of the lower animals reflects whence he comes or whither he goes,—what is death or what is life, and so forth. But can we feel sure that an old dog with an excellent memory and some power of imagination, as shewn by his dreams, never reflects on his past pleasures in the chase? and this would be a form of self-consciousness. On the other hand, as [Georg] Büchner ha
s remarked, how little can the hard-worked wife of a degraded Australian savage, who uses hardly any abstract words and cannot count above four, exert her self-consciousness, or reflect on the nature of her own existence.
Descent 1871, vol. 1, 62
The very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason.
Descent 1871, vol. 1, 100
Some intelligent actions, after being performed during several generations, become converted into instincts and are inherited, as when birds on oceanic islands learn to avoid man…. The greater number of the more complex instincts appear to have been gained in a wholly different manner, through the natural selection of variations of simpler instinctive actions. Such variations appear to arise from the same unknown causes acting on the cerebral organisation, which induce slight variations or individual differences in other parts of the body; and these variations, owing to our ignorance, are often said to arise spontaneously.
Descent 1874, 67
Expression of the Emotions
My first child was born on December 27th, 1839, and I at once commenced to make notes on the first dawn of the various expressions which he exhibited, for I felt convinced, even at this early period, that the most complex and fine shades of expression must all have had a gradual and natural origin.
Autobiography, 131–32
Give Mrs Huxley the enclosed [a questionnaire on facial expressions] & ask her to look out (for no 5) when one of her children is struggling & just going to burst out crying. A dear young lady near here, plagued a very young child for my sake, till it cried, & saw the eyebrows for a second or two beautifully oblique, just before the torrent of tears began.
Darwin to T. H. Huxley,
30 January [1868], DCP 5817
When the Callithrix sciureus screams violently does it wrinkle up the skin round the eyes like a Baby always does? When thus screaming do the eyes become suffused with moisture? Will you ask Sutton [a keeper at the Zoological Gardens, London] to observe carefully.—Could you make it scream without hurting it much?
Darwin to Abraham D. Bartlett
5 January [1870], DCP 7072
Most of the more complex emotions are common to the higher animals and ourselves. Every one has seen how jealous a dog is of his master’s affection, if lavished on any other creature; and I have observed the same fact with monkeys. This shows that animals not only love, but have the desire to be loved. Animals manifestly feel emulation. They love approbation or praise; and a dog carrying a basket for his master exhibits in a high degree self-complacency or pride. There can, I think, be no doubt that a dog feels shame, as distinct from fear, and something very like modesty when begging too often for food. A great dog scorns the snarling of a little dog, and this may be called magnanimity.
Descent 1871, vol. 1, 41–42
I had intended to give only a chapter on the subject in the Descent of Man, but as soon as I began to put my notes together, I saw that it would require a separate Treatise.
Autobiography, 131
A young female chimpanzee, in a violent passion, presented a curious resemblance to a child in the same state. She screamed loudly with widely open mouth, the lips being retracted so that the teeth were fully exposed. She threw her arms wildly about, sometimes clasping them over her head.
Expression, 140
As the lacrymal glands are remarkably free from the control of the will, they would be eminently liable still to act, thus betraying, though there were no other outward signs, the pathetic thoughts which were passing through the person’s mind.
Expression, 175
Many years ago, in the Zoological Gardens, I placed a looking-glass on the floor before two young orangs, who, as far as it was known, had never before seen one. At first they gazed at their own images with the most steady surprise, and often changed their point of view. They then approached close and protruded their lips towards the image, as if to kiss it, in exactly the same manner as they had previously done towards each other, when first placed, a few days before, in the same room. They next made all sorts of grimaces, and put themselves in various attitudes before the mirror; they pressed and rubbed the surface; they placed their hands at different distances behind it; looked behind it; and finally seemed almost frightened, started a little, became cross, and refused to look any longer.
Expression, 142
With one of my own infants, from his eighth day and for some time afterwards, I often observed that the first sign of a screaming-fit, when it could be observed coming on gradually, was a little frown, owing to the contraction of the corrugators of the brows; the capillaries of the naked head and face becoming at the same time reddened with blood. As soon as the screaming-fit actually began, all the muscles round the eyes were strongly contracted, and the mouth widely opened in the manner above described; so that at this early period the features assumed the same form as at a more advanced age.
Expression, 151–52
I have endeavoured to show in considerable detail that all the chief expressions exhibited by man are the same throughout the world. This fact is interesting, as it affords a new argument in favour of the several races being descended from a single parent-stock, which must have been almost completely human in structure, and to a large extent in mind, before the period at which the races diverged from each other…. it seems to me improbable in the highest degree that so much similarity, or rather identity of structure, could have been acquired by independent means.
Expression, 361
Human Society
It is necessary to leave England, & see distant Colonies of various nations, to know what wonderful people the English are.
Darwin to E. C. Darwin,
14 February 1836, DCP 298
The perfect equality among the individuals composing these [Fuegian] tribes, must for a long time retard their civilization. As we see those animals, whose instinct compels them to live in society and obey a chief, are most capable of improvement, so is it with the races of mankind. Whether we look at it as a cause or a consequence, the more civilized always have the most artificial governments.
Journal of Researches 1839, 142
Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal. We may look to the wide extent of the Americas, Polynesia, the Cape of Good Hope, and Australia, and we shall find the same result…. The varieties of man seem to act on each other; in the same way as different species of animals—the stronger always extirpating the weaker.
Journal of Researches 1839, 520
On the whole, as a place of punishment [New South Wales, Australia] the object is scarcely gained; as a real system of reform it has failed, as perhaps would every other plan: but as a means of making men outwardly honest,—of converting vagabonds most useless in one hemisphere into active citizens of another, and thus giving birth to a new and splendid country—a grand centre of civilization—it has succeeded to a degree perhaps unparalleled in history.
Journal of Researches 1839, 532
You have an immense, incalculable advantage in living in a country [Australia] in which your children are sure to get on if industrious. I assure you that, though I am a rich man, when I think of the future I very often ardently wish I was settled in one of our Colonies, for I have now four sons (seven children in all, and more coming), and what on earth to bring them up to I do not know. A young man may here slave for years in any profession and not make a penny. Many people think that Californian gold will half ruin all those who live on the interest of accumulated gold or capital, and if that does happen I will certainly emigrate.
Darwin to Syms Covington,
23 November 1850, DCP 1370
I have received in a Manchester Newspaper a rather a good squib, showing that I have proved “might is right”, & therefore that Napoleon [Emperor Napoleon III of France] is right & every cheating Tradesman is also right.
Darwin to Charles Lyell,
4 May [1860], DCP 2782
Obscure as is the problem
of the advance of civilisation, we can at least see that a nation which produced during a lengthened period the greatest number of highly intellectual, energetic, brave, patriotic, and benevolent men, would generally prevail over less favoured nations.
Descent 1871, vol. 1, 180
The primary or fundamental check to the continued increase of man is the difficulty of gaining subsistence and of living in comfort. We may infer that this is the case from what we see, for instance, in the United States, where subsistence is easy and there is plenty of room. If such means were suddenly doubled in Great Britain, our number would be quickly doubled. With civilised nations the above primary check acts chiefly by restraining marriages. The greater death rate of infants in the poorest classes is also very important; as well as the greater mortality at all ages, and from various diseases, of the inhabitants of crowded and miserable houses. The effects of severe epidemics and wars are soon counterbalanced, and more than counterbalanced, in nations placed under favourable conditions. Emigration also comes in aid as a temporary check, but not to any great extent with the extremely poor classes.
Descent 1871, vol. 1, 131–32
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.