Letter: Was Darwin really a saint?

N. Saakwa-Mante
Saturday 20 May 1995 23:02 BST
Comments

GALEN Strawson's review of Janet Browne's new biography of Charles Darwin (7 May) and a follow-up letter (14 May) raise important questions about the public understanding of Darwin and the Victorians. Is public culture better served by understanding Darwin's intellectual commitment to the natural superiority of Europeans as a form of patriotism or by seeing it sociologically as a literal acceptance and unintentional rationalisation of racial inequality, alongside his evident gentleness, humanitarianism and anti-slavery conviction? If this seems a paradox, it is only so from the vantage of a late 20th-century post-Holocaust sensibility. We admit that class privilege in Victorian Britain was pervasive. Must we simultaneously deny that racial privilege in the Victorian Empire was made tolerable (and acceptable) by Victorian scientific culture, including by Darwin and his Circle? Don't we turn Darwin into a saint by insisting he was merely explaining the pervasive racial inequalities of the period?

N Saakwa-Mante

London SW9

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in