Page 24 - The Disasters Darwinism Brought To Humanity

24 T T H E D I S A S T E R S D A R W I N I S M B R O U G H T T O H U M A N I T Y Y
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Barzun evaluates the scientific, sociological,
and cultural causes of the terrible moral
breakdown of the modern world. These
comments from Barzun's book are striking
from the point of view of Darwinism's influ-
ence on the world:
… in every European country between 1870 and
1914 there was a war party demanding arma-
ments, an individualist party demanding ruth-
less competition, an imperialist party demanding
The author of "Darwin, Marx,
a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist
Wagner," professor of histo-
ry Jacques Barzun. party demanding the conquest of power, and a
racialist party demanding internal purges
against aliens–all of them, when appeals to greed
and glory failed, or even before, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to
say, science incarnate… Race was biological, it was sociological, it was Dar-
winian. 6
th
In the 19 century, when Darwin put forward his claim that living
things had not been created, that they had emerged by coincidence, and
that the human being had a common ancestor with animals and had
emerged as the most highly developed organism as the result of coinci-
dence, perhaps most people could not imagine what the results of this
claim would be. But in the 20 century the end result of the claim was
th
lived out in terrible experiences. Those who saw human beings as a devel-
oped animal, did not hesitate to rise by treading on the weak, to find a
way of disposing of the sick and weak, and to carry out massacres to get
rid of races which they saw as different and inferior. Because their theory
with a mask of science told them that this was a "law of nature."
The disasters Darwinism brought to the world began in this way, and
gathering speed, spread over the whole world. Whereas in the 19 centu-
th
ry, until materialism and atheism grew stronger through the support they
received from Darwinism, the great majority of people believed that God
created all living things and that human beings, unlike other living crea-