16.7 Who is Charles Darwin?

What do we know about Charles Darwin: Charles Darwin was a British naturalist best known for proposing the theory of evolution by natural selection, explaining how species change over time through variation and survival of the fittest.

Who Charles Darwin really was: Charles Darwin was probably right about specific topics but he was an enmit too.

Charles Darwin’s views on slavery – 

Charles Darwin’s views on slavery were deeply shaped by what he witnessed during the Beagle voyage (1831–1836), and he became strongly anti-slavery throughout his life — emotionally, morally, and scientifically.

Here’s a clear breakdown of his stance:

1. Upbringing and moral influence

• Darwin came from a liberal, religious family that opposed slavery.
• His grandfather Erasmus Darwin and the Wedgwood side of his family (his mother’s family) were active in the British abolition movement.
• As a child, he grew up seeing the famous Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion that read “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?” — a symbol of abolitionism.

2. Experiences during the Beagle voyage

• While in South America, Darwin saw slavery firsthand — particularly in Brazil.
• He was horrified by the cruelty of slaveowners and the suffering of enslaved Africans. In his Beagle diary, he wrote emotionally about seeing a woman whipped and hearing screams from people being tortured.
• He described slave owners who “talked of slavery as a necessary evil,” but he rejected that completely. He called slavery “a greater evil than the world has ever yet seen.”
• In contrast, he admired freed Black and mixed-race people who lived independently, noting their intelligence, dignity, and capability — challenging racist ideas of his time.

3. Later writings and beliefs

• Darwin’s abhorrence of slavery stayed with him for life. It even influenced his scientific outlook.
• In The Descent of Man (1871), he argued that all humans share a common ancestry, directly opposing the racist pseudoscience that claimed different races were separate species.
• He believed moral sense and sympathy — not race — defined human worth.

4. Private letters

• In his letters, Darwin expressed hatred toward people who defended slavery, calling them “utterly disgusting” and “monsters.”
• He often connected his moral feelings about equality with his scientific belief in human unity.

Summary:

Darwin was consistently anti-slavery, emotionally affected by what he saw, and morally outraged by the institution. His views weren’t just political; they were tied to his broader belief that all life, including all human races, comes from the same natural origin.

The slave owner’s  opinion about continuing the slavery was:

The slaves are not like us and we are superior than the inferior black slaves

They don’t belong to us and the black slaves are from another species.

They are not human like us.

In total, the slave owners’ consideration was that the slaves didn’t belong to the human race and that happened by God’s choice.

Charles Darwin couldn’t accept that thinking, because he was an enmit, betraying its own kind is what an enmit does naturally. So to erase this thought, Darwin wrote a book named The Descent of Man (Released in 1871) where he claimed all humans belong to a single species with shared origins.

That all humans share common ancestry, Darwin was undermining the intellectual foundation of racism and slavery.

In his view, moral instincts — empathy, cooperation, kindness — also evolved in humans and were shared across all races. He saw compassion as a natural product of human evolution, not something limited to any one person or culture.

In The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin connected these early feelings to his belief in human unity:

“The differences between the races of men are less than those between breeds of dogs… All men are descended from one common ancestor.”

My Personal thought: Did Darwin reject the reality that the human species has a variety of races?

Darwin did not reject the idea that the human species has different races, but he knowingly ignored this fact and avoided addressing it. He ignored that humans from different races act, think, behave, speak, and live their lives differently by their own choice and instinctive nature. He did so because he was an enmit. 

Being anti-slavery was not bad, but he was an enmit, that’s what came out from his thought and that cannot be ignored.