Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 7:54 pm
He sure was a free thinker... So free that he snuffed out the equality of the races with his theory of evolution.. The basic message of Darwinian evolution was that some humans were 'more evolved', in the sense of their divergence from apes, than others...Smartie of the Soul wrote:Darwin learned taxidermy from John Edmonstone, a freed black slave who told him exciting tales of the South American rainforest. Later, in The Descent of Man, he used this experience as evidence that "Negroes and Europeans" were closely related despite superficial differences in appearance.
I think Darwin was a free thinker and not racist, compared with the typical views of his time.
This is confirmed in one of his books “The Descent of Man."
"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes. . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla. (Darwin; “The Descent of Man”, 2nd ed. P.178)."
Regarding the relative size of the brain of savages, as compared to civilized man, Darwin writes:
“The belief that there exists in man some close relation between the size of the brain and the development of the intellectual faculties is supported by the comparison of the skulls of savage (black people) and civilized races (white people), of ancient and modern people, and by the analogy of the whole vertebrate series. …Professor Broca found that the nineteenth century skulls from graves in Paris were larger than those from vaults of the twelfth century, in the proportion of 1484 to 1426; and that the increased size, as ascertained by measurements, was exclusively in the frontal part of the skull—the seat of the intellectual faculties." According to Darwin, blacks had a smaller skull cavity (or brain size) than the whites.. Because of this genetic trait, whites were ultimately superior to blacks who were thus called the savagerace...
Early on in Descent, Darwin discusses various aspects of man he deems significant. Regarding the shape of the human and sub-human ear Darwin writes:
“It has been asserted that the ear of man alone possesses a lobule; but 'a rudiment of it is found in the gorilla;' and, as I hear from Prof. Preyer, it is not rarely absent in the negro” (p.15).
Of the sense of smell:
“… But the sense of smell is of extremely slight service, if any, even to the dark colored races of men, in whom it is much more highly developed than in white and civilized races”(p.18 )
