When we think of Eugenics and Social Darwinism, the person who comes to our minds immediately is Charles Darwin. Many of us believe that Charles Darwin was behind these movements. Or, to be precise, Charles Darwin's theories were behind them.
Definitions:
Social Darwinism - The idea that believes in the 'Survival of the fittest.' Social Darwinists believe that people become better in society because they are the fitter individuals, i.e., the strong become rich and powerful, while the weak become poor and powerless.
Eugenics - The practice of improving the human race by selectively breeding individuals with desirable characteristics.
'Survival of the fittest'
Most people believe that Darwin's concept of 'Survival of the fittest' helped the 18th and 19th century Europeans justify their ill-treatment of the rest of the world. It provided these people a pedestal on which they could stand and think of themselves as the more fit race of the human species. Moreover, they could easily attribute their cruel behavior to the natural process of human evolution instead of acknowledging it as having learned it during their lifetime. All thanks to Charles Darwin. At least, that's what most people think.
Did Darwin coin the term 'Survival of the fittest'?
But the truth is, Charles Darwin never used the term 'survival of the fittest' as these people understood it. Indeed, he didn't even coin the term.
Initially, when Charles Darwin published his abstract, 'On the Origin of Species,' he had used the term 'Natural Selection.' He had used it to denote the process through which the natural variations occurring in some individuals give them an advantage for survival and reproduction over the other individuals in a species. After all, this process was similar to farmers and pigeon breeders, who artificially selected the individuals to breed.
In 1864, after reading Charles Darwin's abstract, Herbert Spencer, an English biologist, philosopher, and sociologist, coined the term 'Survival of the fittest' in his book 'Principles of Biology.'
Charles Darwin in 1868 - By Julia Margaret Cameron - Reprinted in Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters, edited by Francis Darwin. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1892.Scanned by User:Davepape, Public Domain, Link
In 1866, Alfred Russel Wallace, who had independently created an evolution theory that was similar to Darwin's evolution theory, wrote to Darwin. He argued that Darwin's use of the term 'Natural Selection' might give the readers the impression that nature actively selects the organisms that get to reproduce. He recommended the use of Spencer's term 'survival of the fittest' instead as it would get rid of this ambiguity. Darwin, who had never thought about it before, confessed that Wallace's argument made sense.
What did Darwin think about the term 'Survival of the fittest'?
In the first four editions of his abstract, Darwin had used the term 'Natural Selection.' In his book, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, which Darwin published in 1868, he explains that the term 'Survival of the fittest' might be a better choice, at the same time revealing his reluctance to get rid of the term 'Natural Selection.' He writes,
This preservation, during the battle for life, of varieties which possess any advantage in structure, constitution, or instinct, I have called Natural Selection; and Mr. Herbert Spencer has well expressed the same idea by the Survival of the Fittest. The term “natural selection” is in some respects a bad one, as it seems to imply conscious choice; but this will be disregarded after a little familiarity.
In the fifth edition of 'On the Origin of Species,' published in 1869, Darwin uses the term 'survival of the fittest' as a synonym. He gives full credit to Spencer for this term and writes,
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man’s power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.
What did Darwin use this term for?
But Darwin only intended 'Survival of the fittest' to refer to genetic variations that have the highest rate of reproductive output. But by using the term 'fittest,' Darwin did not refer to the strongest individuals in a species.
Darwin never intended 'survival of the fittest' to mean that only the strongest individuals in a species can thrive, even though the literal meaning is just that. If you think about it, reproduction is the backbone of evolution, and survival is only one aspect of it. Moreover, physical fitness provides no advantage to an individual in an evolutionary sense if it doesn't increase the individual's chances of reproduction. So, when it comes to evolution, the 'fittest' individual in a species is neither the strongest one nor the fastest one, but the one that is better suited or adapted to survive and reproduce in the immediate, local environment. Hence, by putting all these together, one can understand that Darwin used the term 'Survival of the fittest' not to refer to the strongest individuals in a species but to the variations among individuals that produce the highest rate of reproductive output.
Hence, the argument put forth by Social Darwinists and Eugenists that evolution favors the survival of the strongest individuals in a species is ill-founded. And the claim that Darwin himself meant that is baseless.
Darwin neither created the concept of Social Darwinism nor supported it. Indeed, as one could imagine, he didn't even coin the term Darwinism. The term Darwinism was coined by the English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley in 1861 after he read Darwin's abstract.
Just like Darwin did not create the term Darwinism, he had nothing to do with Social Darwinism as well. Indeed, the two people who were instrumental in this movement were Herbert Spencer and Francis Galton, and not Charles Darwin.
In 1798, an English economist called Thomas Robert Malthus wrote an essay called 'An Essay on the Principle of Population.' In it, he puts forth the idea that as the population of a species increases, it would eventually outgrow food production. And when that happens, the weakest individuals will start dying due to starvation. This is the essay that helped Darwin figure out how evolution happens.
Like Darwin, Herbert Spencer, too, read Malthus' essay. Several years later, he read Darwin's theory of evolution as well. Spencer was a polymath who believed that the natural laws discovered by biologists should not be limited to biology alone. He thought that these natural laws revealed an underlying universal order.
Hence, they could be applied to inorganic realms of life as much as to the organic realm. Therefore, the natural laws that are true in biology must also apply to other fields like human society, economy, the human mind, etc.
So, driven by his belief and motivated by Malthus' essay and Darwin's theory of evolution, Spencer started creating parallels between biology and sociology.
In his book called 'The Social Organism,' which he published in 1860, he compares human society to a biological organism. He argues that just like organisms evolve through the process of natural selection, society evolves too. As a result of this evolution, one part of the society becomes rich and powerful, while the other part of the society becomes poor and weak. And it was normal for the rich to become richer at the cost of the poor becoming poorer.
Spencer believed that there was no need to correct society because it evolves automatically. Competition for survival and status was an evolutionary process essential for the betterment of the human race. And even though this evolution process creates unbearable pain for many individuals, it was necessary. So, he believed that the reforms for improving the lives of the weak and the poor actually came in the way of social evolution. Hence, he was against these social reforms and believed that they should be abolished. These beliefs led him to coin the term 'survival of the fittest' in his book 'Principles of Biology' published in 1864. Thus, Spencer contributed greatly to social Darwinism.
Many of the people who read Spencer's books became convinced that the rich exploiting the poor was how nature meant it to be. Thus, Spencer's views became popular, and by the end of the nineteenth century, Spencer had become one of the most influential people in Europe.
Eugenics
As Spencer's concept of Social Darwinism was becoming popular in the late nineteenth century, another man came up with a more outrageous idea. That man was none other than Francis Galton, Charles Darwin's cousin.
Who came up with the concept of eugenics?
Galton argued that institutions like mental asylums and welfare only helped the poor inferior people survive and reproduce at a higher rate than Britain's superior, more-deserving wealthy class.
He thought this went against evolution. So, he proposed to improve the quality of the human race by getting rid of the poor and the weak. He called this elimination process eugenics.
Eugenics is taken from the Greek word eugenes which means well-born.
Francis Galton in the 1850s - Scanned from Karl Pearson's The Life, Letters, and Labors of Francis Galton., Public Domain, Link
Eugenics becomes famous in the USA
Even though eugenics never really got any support in England, it was a huge hit in the USA. During the 1920s and 1930s, books were published, and films were made in the USA promoting eugenics. Throughout the country, exhibitions were held, which conducted 'better baby' and 'fitter family' competitions.
Many eugenicists believed in Lamarck's theory of Acquired Characteristics, which stated that the behavior an organism learns during its lifetime could be passed down to its offspring. So, morality, frugality, etc., could be passed down to children.
Positive and negative eugenics
Eugenicists divided eugenics into two types: positive Eugenics and negative Eugenics.
The goal of Positive Eugenics was to encourage the reproduction of people with desirable traits.
On the other hand, the goal of negative eugenics was to discourage/stop the reproduction of people with non-desirable traits. White people in the upper-middle-class and high-class societies were considered people with desirable traits. The traits of all the other people, like non-whites, poor, disabled, feeble-minded, widowed, criminals, and mentally unstable, became undesirable. Even among the white people, those belonging to Western and Northern European countries were considered desirable, whereas those belonging to Southern and Eastern European countries were considered undesirable.
Eugenics in the USA
The American Eugenics movement mostly focused on negative eugenics. And the US government actively supported it by enacting laws. These laws supported forced sterilization of the undesirables. Between the years 1907 and 1939, almost 30,000 people were sterilized against their will in the USA. Most of them were women, as women were expected to have high standards of morality to bear children. Moreover, in 1913, 29 US States prohibited mixed-race marriages because children born to parents of two different races were deemed inferior.
If you were an undesirable living in the USA at that time, your life was pretty much doomed. To show how terrible those times were for the undesirables, we have to look at a supreme court case. In 1927, a woman of lower economic status called Carrie Buck filed a case claiming that a rich young man had raped her. But instead of investigating the case properly, the supreme court ruled her feeble-minded and sterilized her against her will. It also ruled forced sterilizations as being federally legal.
Thus, the forced sterilizations in the USA devastated the lives of the people who were considered undesirable. But besides that, these forced sterilizations also had an added unexpected effect - They motivated an evil-minded man to take the route of destruction.
Hitler and Eugenics
In 1924, when Hitler was imprisoned after organizing a failed coup, he read about social Darwinism and Eugenics. Influenced by the 'survival of the fittest' concept of social Darwinism, he came to believe that the German master race had become weak because of the non-Aryans in Germany. So, he started forcefully sterilizing people who did not fit his pure-blooded Aryan stereotype - the Jews, Poles, Soviets, homosexuals, people with disabilities, etc. But what initially started out as a sterilization campaign soon turned into a genocide. In his book 'Mein Kampf,' Hilter points out the success of the American Eugenics movement. So, it's obvious that he was at least partly motivated by it.
Eugenics falls out of favor
As the entire world watched Hitler's actions with horror and disgust, eugenics started falling out of favor. Even though eugenics had started becoming irrelevant in the 1930s due to the difficulty in proving Lamarck's theory, its association with Nazi propaganda is what that finally awakened many eugenicists. The same people who had once supported the negative eugenics movement with great vigor started calling for the end of eugenics and started promoting human rights for all citizens of the world instead. Thus, eugenics finally came to an end in the USA and many parts of Europe by the end of the second world war.
Eugenics, now
But sadly, eugenics hasn't completely disappeared from this world. It is not a dead concept from the 19th century and 20th century.
Even in the 21st century, several countries continue to forcefully sterilize their people.
The research into genetics has led to the invention of Germline engineering, which can be used to alter the genes of an unborn baby. Even though it can be used to identify and treat genetic variations associated with particular diseases, it can also introduce desired variations into babies - something which can be misused by people with money to make their children genetically superior. Hence, such a process is not considered legal by law.
After having read the negative impacts of social Darwinism and Eugenics, it is far easier to think that Darwin was behind these. But as pointed out before, the biggest contributor to social Darwinism was not Darwin but Spencer. And the person who invented eugenics was, again, not Darwin, but his cousin Galton.
Darwin's views on slavery
Darwin was actually against the mistreatment of people who were considered inferior by the Europeans at that time. In the second chapter of his first book, 'The Voyage of the Beagle,' published in 1839, Darwin writes about his experience in Rio de Janeiro, in present-day-Brazil:
While staying at this estate, I was very nearly being an eye-witness to one of those atrocious acts which can only take place in a slave country. Owing to a quarrel and a lawsuit, the owner was on the point of taking all the women and children from the male slaves, and selling them separately at the public auction at Rio. Interest, and not any feeling of compassion, prevented this act. Indeed, I do not believe the inhumanity of separating thirty families, who had lived together for many years, even occurred to the owner. Yet I will pledge myself, that in humanity and good feeling he was superior to the common run of men. It may be said there exists no limit to the blindness of interest and selfish habit.
Here one can clearly see that Darwin was strictly against the institution of slavery. But it is not surprising, considering he descended from grandfathers who themselves fought against slavery in England. His forefathers on his mother's side even created their own medallions that portrayed a shackled slave, with the saying, "Am I not a Man and a Brother." So, it is understandable where Darwin gets his virtues from.
But he also adds the sentence,
Yet, I will pledge myself, that in humanity and good feeling he was superior to the common run of men.
Why he adds this sentence is hard to say. It might be because this man provided Darwin with a house to stay in during his travels, and Darwin did not want to tarnish his image completely. It might also be because he was educated, had a good standing in society, and could be considered a gentleman.
Darwin also shares another regrettable incident in this book.
I may mention one very trifling anecdote, which at the time struck me more forcibly than any story of cruelty. I was crossing a ferry with a negro, who was uncommonly stupid. In endeavouring to make him understand, I talked loud, and made signs, in doing which I passed my hand near his face. He, I suppose, thought I was in a passion, and was going to strike him; for instantly, with a frightened look and half-shut eyes, he dropped his hands. I shall never forget my feelings of surprise, disgust, and shame, at seeing a great powerful man afraid even to ward off a blow, directed, as he thought, at his face. This man had been trained to a degradation lower than the slavery of the most helpless animal.
Sometime later in this book, Darwin goes on to add his own feelings on leaving Brazil.
On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate.
Thus, Darwin makes it clear that he was made of a different caliber than many other Europeans of that time, who believed they were superior to other people and hence, had the right to abuse them. He actually hated slavery.
But one could argue that the book was published in 1839, far before social Darwinism became a powerful force. After all, in 1859, Darwin named the Abstract 'On the Origin of Species by the Means of Natural Selection, or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.' So, doesn't the use of the term 'Preservation of Favored Races' suggest that he supported social Darwinism? Well, actually... No.
Today, the term 'Race' is used to refer to a subset of a species. But at the time Darwin wrote the abstract, the terms Race and Species were synonymous. No difference existed between them. Therefore, Darwin wasn't silently supporting social Darwinism, as people are led to believe nowadays. Indeed, he believed the opposite. Social Darwinism was based on the concept of competition among individuals in a species. But Darwin believed that as organisms evolved, they developed a sense of sympathy towards others. He made his beliefs public through his book, 'The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex,' published in 1871. In this book, he writes,
The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man. For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them.
As for Eugenics, Galton came up with the concept only one year after Charles Darwin's death. Moreover, Darwin's theory of evolution also doesn't support social Darwinism or eugenics because Darwin used the concept of survival of the fittest purely in the biological sense of evolution. He never intended it to be applied to the social sense. So, from these pieces of evidence, I am led to believe that Darwin neither supported nor advocated social Darwinism or Eugenics.
