Page 94 - The Social Weapon: Darwinism

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Perhaps nothing is more certain to create astonishment than the
first sight in his native haunt of a barbarian—of man in his lowest
and most savage state. One's mind hurries back over past cen-
turies, and then asks, could our progenitors have been men like
these?—men, whose very signs and expressions are less intelligi-
ble to us than those of the domesticated animals... I do not believe
it is possible to describe or paint the difference between savage
and civilised man. 48

In a letter to Charles Kingsley, Darwin described the
Fuegian natives he saw:
I declare the thought, when I first saw in Tierra del Feugo a
naked, painted, shivering, hideous savage, that my ancestors
must have been somewhat similar beings, was at that time as re-
volting to me, nay more revolting, than my present belief that an
incomparably more remote ancestor was a hairy beast. Monkeys
have downright good hearts. 49
All these are important indications of Darwin's racism.
Disparaging certain races as much as he can, he humanizes and
praises apes by referring to
them as good-hearted ani-
mals. He openly maintained
that “inferior” races needed
to be eliminated, that this

consequence of natural se-
lection would make a
major contribution to the

Darwin's book The
Voyage of the Beagle

The Social Weapon: Darwinism