The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
Encyclopedia
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex is a book on evolution
ary theory by English
naturalist
Charles Darwin
, first published in 1871. It was Darwin's second great book on evolutionary theory, following his 1859 work, On The Origin of Species. In The Descent of Man, Darwin applies evolutionary theory to human evolution
, and details his theory of sexual selection
. The book discusses many related issues, including evolutionary psychology
, evolutionary ethics
, differences between human races, differences between sex
es, the dominant role of women in choosing mating partners, and the relevance of the evolutionary theory to society.
Charles Darwin's Origin of Species had been met with a firestorm of controversy in reaction to Darwin's theory
, largely because it was clear that it implied that human beings were evolved from animals, contradicting the biblical story in the Book of Genesis and implying an animal nature. Darwin chose not to make the link explicit in Origin, and although he first thought of the idea in 1837, he put off publishing it for a generation. A single line hinted at such a conclusion: "light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history". But the conclusion was obvious to his contemporaries, and became the subtext if not the center of many debates over his theory (such as those between T.H. Huxley and Richard Owen
over the brains of apes). When writing The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication
in 1866, Darwin intended to include a chapter including man in his theory, but the book became too big and he decided to write a separate "short essay" on ape ancestry, sexual selection
and human expression, which became The Descent of Man.
Darwin's writing on the subject in The Descent of Man came twelve years after his work on Origin, and was by no means the first work on human evolution. As such, the book is a response to various debates of Darwin's time far more wide-ranging than the questions he raised in Origin. It is often erroneously assumed that the book was controversial because it was the first to outline the idea of human evolution and common descent
. Coming out so late into that particular debate, while it was clearly Darwin's intent to weigh in on this question, his goal was to approach it through a specific theoretical lens (sexual selection), which other commentators at the period had not discussed, and consider evolution of morality
and religion
. The theory of sexual selection was also needed to counter the argument that beauty with no obvious utility, such as exotic birds' plumage, proved divine design, which had been put strongly by the Duke of Argyll in his book The Reign of Law (1868).
, the "co-discoverer" of evolution by natural selection
, believed that the human mind was too complex to have evolved gradually, and began over time to subscribe to a theory of evolution that took more from Spiritualism than it did the natural world. Darwin was deeply distressed by Wallace's change of heart, and much of the Descent of Man is in response to opinions put forth by Wallace. Darwin focuses less on the question of whether humans evolved than he does on showing that each of the human faculties considered to be so far beyond those of animals—such as moral reasoning, sympathy for others, beauty, and music—can be seen in kind (if not degree) in other animal species (usually apes and dogs).
The questions of what "race" was, how many human races there were, and whether they could be "mixed", were key debates in the nascent field of anthropology
in Darwin's time. After the American Civil War
(1861-1865), the questions of race and slavery were brought to the forefront in anthropology in the United States and Europe. Some scientists from the Southern U.S. published long monographs on "Why the "Negro is inferior" and would soon be driven to extinction by newfound freedom, with an implication that slavery had been not only "beneficial" but "natural." Darwin was a long-time abolitionist who had been horrified by slavery
when he first came into contact with it in Brazil while touring the world on the Beagle voyage
many years before (slavery had been illegal in the British Empire since 1833). He considered the "race question" one of the most important of his day.
Darwin opposed the polygenism
theory, developed by scientific racist discourse, which postulated that the different human races were distinct species ("polygenism
") and were likely separately "created
". To the contrary, Darwin considered that all human beings were of the same species, and that races, if they were useful markers at all, were simply "sub-species" or "variants." This view (known as "monogenism") was in stark contrast with the majority view in anthropology at the time. Polygeny was supported by thinkers of many backgrounds, such as the zoologist, glaciologist, and geologist Louis Agassiz
, and by later thinkers who interpreted Darwin's theory to imply that races evolved at different times or stages. Darwin viewed the differences between human races as superficial (he discusses them only in terms of skin color and hair type). Aside from the aforementioned encounter with slavery on the Beagle, Darwin also was perplexed by the "savage races" he saw in South America at Tierra del Fuego
, which he saw as evidence of a man's more primitive state of civilization. During his years in London, his private notebooks were riddled with speculations and thoughts on the nature of the human races, many decades before he published Origin and Descent.
When making his case that human races were all closely related and that the apparent gap between humans and other animals was due to closely related forms being extinct, Darwin drew on his experiences on the voyage showing that "savages" were being wiped out by "civilised" peoples. As he wrote in Descent,
When Darwin referred to "civilised races" he was almost always describing European cultures, and apparently drew no clear distinction between biological races and cultural races in humans. Few made that distinction at the time, an exception being Alfred Russel Wallace
. However, Darwin also emphasised the similarities of the human races, stating:
Since the publication of Origin, a wide variety of opinions had been put forward on whether the theory had implications towards human society. One of these, later known as Social Darwinism
, had been put forward by Herbert Spencer
before publication of Origin, and argued that society would naturally sort itself out, and that the more "fit" individuals would rise to positions of higher prominence, while the less "fit" would succumb to poverty and disease. He alleged that government-run social programmes and charity hinder the "natural" stratification of the populace, and first introduced the phrase "survival of the fittest
" in 1864. Spencer was primarily a Lamarckian evolutionist; hence, fitness could be acquired in a single generation and that in no way did "survival of the fittest" as a tenet of Darwinian evolution predate it.
Another of these interpretations, later known as eugenics
, was put forth by Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton
, in 1865 and 1869. Galton argued that just as physical traits were clearly inherited among generations of people, so could be said for mental qualities (genius and talent). Galton argued that social mores needed to change so that heredity was a conscious decision, in order to avoid over-breeding by "less fit" members of society and the under-breeding of the "more fit" ones. In Galton's view, social institutions such as welfare and insane asylums
were allowing "inferior" humans to survive and reproduce at levels faster than the more "superior" humans in respectable society, and if corrections were not soon taken, society would be awash with "inferiors." Darwin read his cousin's work with interest, and devoted sections of Descent of Man to discussion of Galton's theories. Neither Galton nor Darwin, though, advocated any eugenic policies such as those undertaken in the early 20th century, as government coercion of any form was very much against their political opinions.
, "with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration" might at first appear "absurd in the highest possible degree," but nevertheless, if "numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist", then it seemed quite possible to account for
within his theory.
More difficult for Darwin were highly evolved and complicated features that conveyed apparently no adaptive advantage to the organism. Writing to colleague Asa Gray in 1860, Darwin commented that he remembered well a "time when the thought of the eye made me cold all over, but I have got over this stage of the complaint, & now small trifling particulars of structure often make me very uncomfortable. The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!" Why should a bird like the peacock develop such an elaborate tail, which seemed at best to be a hindrance in its "struggle for existence"? To answer the question, Darwin had introduced in the Origin the theory of sexual selection
, which outlined how different characteristics could be selected for if they conveyed a reproductive advantage to the individual. In this theory, male animals in particular showed heritable features acquired by sexual selection, such as "weapons" with which to fight over females with other males, or beautiful plumage with which to woo the female animals. Much of Descent is devoted to providing evidence for sexual selection in nature, which he also ties in to the development of aesthetic instincts in human beings, as well as the differences in coloration between the human races.
Darwin had developed his ideas about sexual selection for this reason since at least the 1850s, and had originally intended to include a long section on the theory in his large, unpublished book on species. When it came to writing Origin (his "abstract
" of the larger book), though, he did not feel he had sufficient space to engage in sexual selection to any strong degree, and included only three paragraphs devoted to the subject. Darwin considered sexual selection to be as much of a theoretical contribution of his as was his natural selection, and a substantial amount of Descent is devoted exclusively to this topic.
Darwin's approach to arguing for the evolution of human beings is to outline how similar human beings are to other animals. He begins by using anatomical
similarities, focusing on body structure, embryology
, and "rudimentary organs
" that presumably were useful in one of man's "pre-existing" forms. He then moves on to argue for the similarity of mental characteristics.
In particular, Darwin argues that even moral and social instincts are evolved, comparing religion in man to fetishism in "savages" and his dog's inability to tell whether a wind-blown parasol was alive or not. Darwin also argues that all civilizations had risen out of barbarism, and that he did not think that barbarism is a "fall from grace" as many commentators of his time had asserted.
and eugenics
. Darwin notes that, as had been discussed by Alfred Russel Wallace
and Galton, natural selection seemed to no longer act upon civilized communities in the way it did upon other animals:
Darwin felt that these urges towards helping the "weak members" was part of our evolved instinct of sympathy, and concluded that "nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature." As such, '"we must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind." Darwin did feel that the "savage races" of man would, like it or not, be subverted by the "civilised races" at some point in the near future, as stated in the Human races section above. He did show a certain disdain for "savages," professing that he felt more akin to certain altruistic tendencies in monkeys than he did to "a savage who delights to torture his enemies." However, Darwin is not advocating genocide
, but clinically predicting, by analogy to the ways that "more fit" varieties in a species displace other varieties, the likelihood that indigenous peoples will eventually die out from their contact with "civilization", or become absorbed into it completely.
His political opinions (and Galton's as well) were strongly inclined against the coercive, authoritarian forms of eugenics that became so prominent in the twentieth century. Note that even Galton's ideas about eugenics were not the compulsory sterilization
or genocidal programs of Nazi Germany
, but he instead hoped that by encouraging more thought in hereditary reproduction, human mores could change in a way that would compel people to choose better mates.
For each tendency of society to produce negative selections, Darwin also saw the possibility of society to itself check these problems, but also noted that with his theory "progress is no invariable rule." Towards the end of Descent of Man, Darwin said that he believed man would "sink into indolence" if severe struggle was not continuous, and thought that "there should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring," but also noted that he thought that the moral qualities of man were advanced much more by habit, reason, learning, and religion than by natural selection. The question plagued him until the end of his life, and he never concluded fully one way or the other about it.
Darwin reasoned that most of the visual differences between human races were superficial—issues of skin color and hair type—and that most of the mental differences were merely cases of "civilization" or a lack of it. It was important to Darwin to relay the arguments of whether or not all races were of the same species—he had spent much of the preceding book tracing humans back to the Paleolithic
age, and now he had to bring them back to the present time again. If the "savages" like those he met while on his Beagle voyage
were not of the same species as civilized Englishmen, he would not be able to draw the complete continuum he felt necessary. Darwin concluded that the visual differences between races were not adaptive to any significant degree, and were more likely simply caused by sexual selection—different standards of beauty and mating amongst different people—and that all of humankind was one single species.
He concludes that "...when the principle of evolution is generally accepted, as it surely will be before long, the dispute between the monogenists and the polygenists will die a silent and unobserved death." In one sense he was correct: few people would maintain that different races were actually distinct species of animals for very much longer—among other things, the mounting evidence of their ability to interbreed and have fertile young could not be ignored. However, many found it easy to take a similar view to the old polygenism
: that the races were indeed one species, but had diverged so long ago that significant differences between the races still existed.
Part II of the book begins with a chapter outlining the basic principles of sexual selection. This is followed by a detailed review of many different taxa of the kingdom Animal
ia. The ninth chapter surveys the lower classes of the animal kingdom, such as molluscs, crustaceans etc. The tenth and eleventh chapters are both devoted to insect
s, the latter specifically focusing on the order Lepidoptera
, the butterflies and moths. The remainder of the book shifts to the vertebrate
s, beginning with cold blooded vertebrates (fish
es, amphibian
s and reptile
s) and then four full chapters on bird
s. Two chapters on mammal
s precede those on humans. Darwin explained sexual selection as a combination of "female choosiness" and "direct competition between males".
Darwin's theories of evolution by natural selection were used to show women's place in society was the result of nature. One of the first women to critique Darwin, Antoinette Brown Blackwell published The Sexes Throughout Nature
in 1875. She was aware she would be considered presumptuous for criticizing evolutionary theory but wrote that "disadvantages under which we [women] are placed...will never be lessened by waiting". Blackwell's book answered Darwin and Herbert Spencer
, who she thought were the two most influential living men. She wrote of "defrauded womanhood" and her fears that "the human race, forever retarding its own advancement...could not recognize and promote a genuine, broad, and healthful equilibrium of the sexes".
In the Descent of Man, Darwin wrote that by choosing tools and weapons over the years, "man has ultimately become superior to woman" but Blackwell's argument for women's equality went largely ignored until the 1970s when feminist
scientists and historians began to explore Darwin. As recently as 2004, Griet Vandermassen, aligned with other Darwinian feminists of the 1990s and early 2000s, wrote that a unifying theory of human nature should include sexual selection. But then the "opposite ongoing integration" was promoted by another faction as an alternative in 2007. Nonetheless, Darwin's explanation of sexual selection continues to receive support from both social and biological scientists as "the best explanation to date".
.
were opposed strongly by his co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace
, though much of his "debate" with Darwin took place after Darwin's death. Wallace argued against sexual selection
, saying that the male-against-male fighting aspects were simply forms of natural selection
, and that the notion of "female choice" was attributing the ability to judge standards of beauty to animals far too cognitively undeveloped to be capable of aesthetic feeling (such as beetle
s).
Wallace also argued that Darwin too much favored the bright colors of the male peacock as adaptive without realizing that the "drab" peahen's coloration is itself adaptive, as camouflage
. Wallace more speculatively argued that the bright colors and long tails of the peacock were not adaptive in any way, and that bright coloration could result from non-adaptive physiological development (for example, the internal organs of animals, not being subject to a visual form of natural selection, come in a wide variety of bright colors). This has been questioned by later scholars as quite a stretch for Wallace, who in this particular instance abandoned his normally strict "adaptationist" agenda in asserting that the highly intricate and developed forms such as a peacock's tail resulted by sheer "physiological processes" that were somehow not at all subjected to adaptation.
, which was then besieged by French troops. The Times
condemned the Communards, and accused Darwin of undermining authority and principles of morality, opening the way to "the most murderous revolutions". A "man incurs a grave responsibility when, with the authority of a well-earned reputation, he advances at such a time the disintegrating speculations of this book." Darwin was able to shrug this off as from a "windbag full of metaphysics and classics".
In January 1871, Thomas Huxley
's former disciple, the anatomist St. George Mivart, had published On the Genesis of Species as a devastating critique of natural selection. In an anonymous Quarterly Review article, he claimed that the Descent of Man would unsettle "our half educated classes" and talked of people doing as they pleased, breaking laws and customs. An infuriated Darwin guessed that Mivart was the author and, thinking "I shall soon be viewed as the most despicable of men", looked for an ally. In September, Huxley wrote a cutting review of Mivart's book and article and a relieved Darwin told him "How you do smash Mivart's theology... He may write his worst & he will never mortify me again". As 1872 began, Mivart politely inflamed the argument again, writing "wishing you very sincerely a happy new year" while wanting a disclaimer of the "fundamental intellectual errors" in the Descent of Man. This time, Darwin ended the correspondence.
for editing to ensure that damaging inferences could not be drawn, and also took advice from his wife Emma
. The corrected proofs were sent off on 15 January 1871 to the publisher John Murray
.
The book was initially published in two separate volumes, though Darwin himself insisted that it was indeed one complete and coherent work. The two 450-page volumes together were priced at £
1 4 shilling
s, and The Descent of Man was published on 24 February 1871.
Within three weeks of publication, a reprint had been ordered; and 4,500 copies were in print by the end of March 1871, netting Darwin almost £1,500. Darwin's name created demand for the book, but the ideas were old news. "Everybody is talking about it without being shocked," which he found, "...proof of the increasing liberality of England" (see the 1871 book review in External links).
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
ary theory by English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
, first published in 1871. It was Darwin's second great book on evolutionary theory, following his 1859 work, On The Origin of Species. In The Descent of Man, Darwin applies evolutionary theory to human evolution
Human evolution
Human evolution refers to the evolutionary history of the genus Homo, including the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species and as a unique category of hominids and mammals...
, and details his theory of sexual selection
Sexual selection
Sexual selection, a concept introduced by Charles Darwin in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, is a significant element of his theory of natural selection...
. The book discusses many related issues, including evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
, evolutionary ethics
Evolutionary ethics
Evolutionary ethics could be either a form of descriptive ethics or normative ethics.Descriptive evolutionary ethics consists of biological approaches to ethics based on the role of evolution in shaping human psychology and behavior...
, differences between human races, differences between sex
Sex
In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...
es, the dominant role of women in choosing mating partners, and the relevance of the evolutionary theory to society.
Darwin's background issues and concerns
Reaction to Darwin's theory
The immediate reaction to Darwin's theory followed closely on his publication of On the Origin of Species, and Charles Darwin's book sparked off international debate, though the heat of controversy was less than that over earlier works such as Vestiges of Creation...
, largely because it was clear that it implied that human beings were evolved from animals, contradicting the biblical story in the Book of Genesis and implying an animal nature. Darwin chose not to make the link explicit in Origin, and although he first thought of the idea in 1837, he put off publishing it for a generation. A single line hinted at such a conclusion: "light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history". But the conclusion was obvious to his contemporaries, and became the subtext if not the center of many debates over his theory (such as those between T.H. Huxley and Richard Owen
Richard Owen
Sir Richard Owen, FRS KCB was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and palaeontologist.Owen is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria and for his outspoken opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...
over the brains of apes). When writing The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication
The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication
The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication is a book written by Charles Darwin that was first published in January 1868.A large proportion of the book contains detailed information on the domestication of animals and plants but it also contains in Chapter XXVII a description of...
in 1866, Darwin intended to include a chapter including man in his theory, but the book became too big and he decided to write a separate "short essay" on ape ancestry, sexual selection
Sexual selection
Sexual selection, a concept introduced by Charles Darwin in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, is a significant element of his theory of natural selection...
and human expression, which became The Descent of Man.
Darwin's writing on the subject in The Descent of Man came twelve years after his work on Origin, and was by no means the first work on human evolution. As such, the book is a response to various debates of Darwin's time far more wide-ranging than the questions he raised in Origin. It is often erroneously assumed that the book was controversial because it was the first to outline the idea of human evolution and common descent
Common descent
In evolutionary biology, a group of organisms share common descent if they have a common ancestor. There is strong quantitative support for the theory that all living organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor....
. Coming out so late into that particular debate, while it was clearly Darwin's intent to weigh in on this question, his goal was to approach it through a specific theoretical lens (sexual selection), which other commentators at the period had not discussed, and consider evolution of morality
Evolution of morality
The evolution of morality refers to the emergence of human moral behavior over the course of human evolution. Morality can be defined as a system of ideas about right and wrong conduct. In everyday life, morality is typically associated with human behavior and not much thought is given to the...
and religion
Evolutionary origin of religions
The evolutionary origin of religions theorizes about the emergence of religious behavior during the course of human evolution.- Nonhuman religious behavior :...
. The theory of sexual selection was also needed to counter the argument that beauty with no obvious utility, such as exotic birds' plumage, proved divine design, which had been put strongly by the Duke of Argyll in his book The Reign of Law (1868).
Human faculties
The major sticking point for many in the question of human evolution was whether human mental faculties could have possibly been evolved. The gap between humans and even the smartest ape seemed too large, even for those who were sympathetic to Darwin's basic theory. Alfred Russel WallaceAlfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...
, the "co-discoverer" of evolution by natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
, believed that the human mind was too complex to have evolved gradually, and began over time to subscribe to a theory of evolution that took more from Spiritualism than it did the natural world. Darwin was deeply distressed by Wallace's change of heart, and much of the Descent of Man is in response to opinions put forth by Wallace. Darwin focuses less on the question of whether humans evolved than he does on showing that each of the human faculties considered to be so far beyond those of animals—such as moral reasoning, sympathy for others, beauty, and music—can be seen in kind (if not degree) in other animal species (usually apes and dogs).
Human races
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
in Darwin's time. After the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
(1861-1865), the questions of race and slavery were brought to the forefront in anthropology in the United States and Europe. Some scientists from the Southern U.S. published long monographs on "Why the "Negro is inferior" and would soon be driven to extinction by newfound freedom, with an implication that slavery had been not only "beneficial" but "natural." Darwin was a long-time abolitionist who had been horrified by slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
when he first came into contact with it in Brazil while touring the world on the Beagle voyage
The Voyage of the Beagle
The Voyage of the Beagle is a title commonly given to the book written by Charles Darwin and published in 1839 as his Journal and Remarks, bringing him considerable fame and respect...
many years before (slavery had been illegal in the British Empire since 1833). He considered the "race question" one of the most important of his day.
Darwin opposed the polygenism
Polygenism
Polygenism is a theory of human origins positing that the human races are of different lineages . This is opposite to the idea of monogenism, which posits a single origin of humanity.- Origins :...
theory, developed by scientific racist discourse, which postulated that the different human races were distinct species ("polygenism
Polygenism
Polygenism is a theory of human origins positing that the human races are of different lineages . This is opposite to the idea of monogenism, which posits a single origin of humanity.- Origins :...
") and were likely separately "created
Special creation
In Creationism, special creation is a theological doctrine which states that the universe and all life in it originated by unconditional fiat or divine decree....
". To the contrary, Darwin considered that all human beings were of the same species, and that races, if they were useful markers at all, were simply "sub-species" or "variants." This view (known as "monogenism") was in stark contrast with the majority view in anthropology at the time. Polygeny was supported by thinkers of many backgrounds, such as the zoologist, glaciologist, and geologist Louis Agassiz
Louis Agassiz
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz was a Swiss paleontologist, glaciologist, geologist and a prominent innovator in the study of the Earth's natural history. He grew up in Switzerland and became a professor of natural history at University of Neuchâtel...
, and by later thinkers who interpreted Darwin's theory to imply that races evolved at different times or stages. Darwin viewed the differences between human races as superficial (he discusses them only in terms of skin color and hair type). Aside from the aforementioned encounter with slavery on the Beagle, Darwin also was perplexed by the "savage races" he saw in South America at Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of a main island Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego divided between Chile and Argentina with an area of , and a group of smaller islands including Cape...
, which he saw as evidence of a man's more primitive state of civilization. During his years in London, his private notebooks were riddled with speculations and thoughts on the nature of the human races, many decades before he published Origin and Descent.
When making his case that human races were all closely related and that the apparent gap between humans and other animals was due to closely related forms being extinct, Darwin drew on his experiences on the voyage showing that "savages" were being wiped out by "civilised" peoples. As he wrote in Descent,
When Darwin referred to "civilised races" he was almost always describing European cultures, and apparently drew no clear distinction between biological races and cultural races in humans. Few made that distinction at the time, an exception being Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...
. However, Darwin also emphasised the similarities of the human races, stating:
Social implications of Darwinism
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...
, had been put forward by Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
before publication of Origin, and argued that society would naturally sort itself out, and that the more "fit" individuals would rise to positions of higher prominence, while the less "fit" would succumb to poverty and disease. He alleged that government-run social programmes and charity hinder the "natural" stratification of the populace, and first introduced the phrase "survival of the fittest
Survival of the fittest
"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase originating in evolutionary theory, as an alternative description of Natural selection. The phrase is today commonly used in contexts that are incompatible with the original meaning as intended by its first two proponents: British polymath philosopher Herbert...
" in 1864. Spencer was primarily a Lamarckian evolutionist; hence, fitness could be acquired in a single generation and that in no way did "survival of the fittest" as a tenet of Darwinian evolution predate it.
Another of these interpretations, later known as eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
, was put forth by Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton
Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton /ˈfrɑːnsɪs ˈgɔːltn̩/ FRS , cousin of Douglas Strutt Galton, half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian polymath: anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician...
, in 1865 and 1869. Galton argued that just as physical traits were clearly inherited among generations of people, so could be said for mental qualities (genius and talent). Galton argued that social mores needed to change so that heredity was a conscious decision, in order to avoid over-breeding by "less fit" members of society and the under-breeding of the "more fit" ones. In Galton's view, social institutions such as welfare and insane asylums
Psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...
were allowing "inferior" humans to survive and reproduce at levels faster than the more "superior" humans in respectable society, and if corrections were not soon taken, society would be awash with "inferiors." Darwin read his cousin's work with interest, and devoted sections of Descent of Man to discussion of Galton's theories. Neither Galton nor Darwin, though, advocated any eugenic policies such as those undertaken in the early 20th century, as government coercion of any form was very much against their political opinions.
Apparently non-adaptive features
In Darwin's view, anything that could be expected to have some adaptive feature could be explained easily with his theory of natural selection. In On the Origin of Species, Darwin had admitted that to use natural selection to explain something as complicated as a human eyeHuman eye
The human eye is an organ which reacts to light for several purposes. As a conscious sense organ, the eye allows vision. Rod and cone cells in the retina allow conscious light perception and vision including color differentiation and the perception of depth...
, "with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration" might at first appear "absurd in the highest possible degree," but nevertheless, if "numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist", then it seemed quite possible to account for
Evolution of the eye
The evolution of the eye has been a subject of significant study, as a distinctive example of a homologous organ present in a wide variety of taxa. Certain components of the eye, such as the visual pigments, appear to have a common ancestry – that is, they evolved once, before the animals radiated...
within his theory.
More difficult for Darwin were highly evolved and complicated features that conveyed apparently no adaptive advantage to the organism. Writing to colleague Asa Gray in 1860, Darwin commented that he remembered well a "time when the thought of the eye made me cold all over, but I have got over this stage of the complaint, & now small trifling particulars of structure often make me very uncomfortable. The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!" Why should a bird like the peacock develop such an elaborate tail, which seemed at best to be a hindrance in its "struggle for existence"? To answer the question, Darwin had introduced in the Origin the theory of sexual selection
Sexual selection
Sexual selection, a concept introduced by Charles Darwin in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, is a significant element of his theory of natural selection...
, which outlined how different characteristics could be selected for if they conveyed a reproductive advantage to the individual. In this theory, male animals in particular showed heritable features acquired by sexual selection, such as "weapons" with which to fight over females with other males, or beautiful plumage with which to woo the female animals. Much of Descent is devoted to providing evidence for sexual selection in nature, which he also ties in to the development of aesthetic instincts in human beings, as well as the differences in coloration between the human races.
Darwin had developed his ideas about sexual selection for this reason since at least the 1850s, and had originally intended to include a long section on the theory in his large, unpublished book on species. When it came to writing Origin (his "abstract
Abstract (summary)
An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject or discipline, and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper's purpose. When used, an abstract always appears at the beginning of a...
" of the larger book), though, he did not feel he had sufficient space to engage in sexual selection to any strong degree, and included only three paragraphs devoted to the subject. Darwin considered sexual selection to be as much of a theoretical contribution of his as was his natural selection, and a substantial amount of Descent is devoted exclusively to this topic.
Evolution of physical traits
In the introduction to Descent, Darwin lays out the purpose of his text:- "The sole object of this work is to consider, firstly, whether man, like every other species, is descended from some pre-existing form; secondly, the manner of his development; and thirdly, the value of the differences between the so-called races of man."
Darwin's approach to arguing for the evolution of human beings is to outline how similar human beings are to other animals. He begins by using anatomical
Anatomy
Anatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy , and plant anatomy...
similarities, focusing on body structure, embryology
Embryology
Embryology is a science which is about the development of an embryo from the fertilization of the ovum to the fetus stage...
, and "rudimentary organs
Vestigial structure
Vestigiality describes homologous characters of organisms that have seemingly lost all or most of their original function in a species through evolution. These may take various forms such as anatomical structures, behaviors and biochemical pathways. Some of these disappear early in embryonic...
" that presumably were useful in one of man's "pre-existing" forms. He then moves on to argue for the similarity of mental characteristics.
Evolution of mental traits
Based on the work of his cousin Galton, Darwin is able to assert that human character traits and mental characteristics are inherited the same as physical characteristics, and argues against the mind/body distinction for the purposes of evolutionary theory. From this Darwin then provides evidence for similar mental powers and characteristics in certain animals, focusing especially on apes, monkeys, and dogs for his analogies for love, cleverness, religion, kindness, and altruism. He concludes on this point that "Nevertheless the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind." He additionally turns to the behavior of "savages" to show how many aspects of Victorian England's society can be seen in more primitive forms.In particular, Darwin argues that even moral and social instincts are evolved, comparing religion in man to fetishism in "savages" and his dog's inability to tell whether a wind-blown parasol was alive or not. Darwin also argues that all civilizations had risen out of barbarism, and that he did not think that barbarism is a "fall from grace" as many commentators of his time had asserted.
Natural selection and civilized society
In this section of the book, Darwin also turns to the questions of what would after his death be known as social DarwinismSocial Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...
and eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
. Darwin notes that, as had been discussed by Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...
and Galton, natural selection seemed to no longer act upon civilized communities in the way it did upon other animals:
Darwin felt that these urges towards helping the "weak members" was part of our evolved instinct of sympathy, and concluded that "nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature." As such, '"we must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind." Darwin did feel that the "savage races" of man would, like it or not, be subverted by the "civilised races" at some point in the near future, as stated in the Human races section above. He did show a certain disdain for "savages," professing that he felt more akin to certain altruistic tendencies in monkeys than he did to "a savage who delights to torture his enemies." However, Darwin is not advocating genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
, but clinically predicting, by analogy to the ways that "more fit" varieties in a species displace other varieties, the likelihood that indigenous peoples will eventually die out from their contact with "civilization", or become absorbed into it completely.
His political opinions (and Galton's as well) were strongly inclined against the coercive, authoritarian forms of eugenics that became so prominent in the twentieth century. Note that even Galton's ideas about eugenics were not the compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization also known as forced sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization...
or genocidal programs of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, but he instead hoped that by encouraging more thought in hereditary reproduction, human mores could change in a way that would compel people to choose better mates.
For each tendency of society to produce negative selections, Darwin also saw the possibility of society to itself check these problems, but also noted that with his theory "progress is no invariable rule." Towards the end of Descent of Man, Darwin said that he believed man would "sink into indolence" if severe struggle was not continuous, and thought that "there should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring," but also noted that he thought that the moral qualities of man were advanced much more by habit, reason, learning, and religion than by natural selection. The question plagued him until the end of his life, and he never concluded fully one way or the other about it.
The race debate
Darwin lastly applied his theory to one of the more controversial scientific questions of his day: whether the different races of human beings were of the same species or not:- "The question whether mankind consists of one or several species has of late years been much agitated by anthropologists, who are divided into two schools of monogenists and polygenists. Those who do not admit the principle of evolution, must look at species either as separate creations or as in some manner distinct entities; and they must decide what forms to rank as species by the analogy of other organic beings which are commonly thus received."
Darwin reasoned that most of the visual differences between human races were superficial—issues of skin color and hair type—and that most of the mental differences were merely cases of "civilization" or a lack of it. It was important to Darwin to relay the arguments of whether or not all races were of the same species—he had spent much of the preceding book tracing humans back to the Paleolithic
Paleolithic
The Paleolithic Age, Era or Period, is a prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools discovered , and covers roughly 99% of human technological prehistory...
age, and now he had to bring them back to the present time again. If the "savages" like those he met while on his Beagle voyage
The Voyage of the Beagle
The Voyage of the Beagle is a title commonly given to the book written by Charles Darwin and published in 1839 as his Journal and Remarks, bringing him considerable fame and respect...
were not of the same species as civilized Englishmen, he would not be able to draw the complete continuum he felt necessary. Darwin concluded that the visual differences between races were not adaptive to any significant degree, and were more likely simply caused by sexual selection—different standards of beauty and mating amongst different people—and that all of humankind was one single species.
He concludes that "...when the principle of evolution is generally accepted, as it surely will be before long, the dispute between the monogenists and the polygenists will die a silent and unobserved death." In one sense he was correct: few people would maintain that different races were actually distinct species of animals for very much longer—among other things, the mounting evidence of their ability to interbreed and have fertile young could not be ignored. However, many found it easy to take a similar view to the old polygenism
Polygenism
Polygenism is a theory of human origins positing that the human races are of different lineages . This is opposite to the idea of monogenism, which posits a single origin of humanity.- Origins :...
: that the races were indeed one species, but had diverged so long ago that significant differences between the races still existed.
Part II and III: Sexual selection
Animal
Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...
ia. The ninth chapter surveys the lower classes of the animal kingdom, such as molluscs, crustaceans etc. The tenth and eleventh chapters are both devoted to insect
Insect
Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...
s, the latter specifically focusing on the order Lepidoptera
Lepidoptera
Lepidoptera is a large order of insects that includes moths and butterflies . It is one of the most widespread and widely recognizable insect orders in the world, encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies...
, the butterflies and moths. The remainder of the book shifts to the vertebrate
Vertebrate
Vertebrates are animals that are members of the subphylum Vertebrata . Vertebrates are the largest group of chordates, with currently about 58,000 species described. Vertebrates include the jawless fishes, bony fishes, sharks and rays, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds...
s, beginning with cold blooded vertebrates (fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
es, amphibian
Amphibian
Amphibians , are a class of vertebrate animals including animals such as toads, frogs, caecilians, and salamanders. They are characterized as non-amniote ectothermic tetrapods...
s and reptile
Reptile
Reptiles are members of a class of air-breathing, ectothermic vertebrates which are characterized by laying shelled eggs , and having skin covered in scales and/or scutes. They are tetrapods, either having four limbs or being descended from four-limbed ancestors...
s) and then four full chapters on bird
Bird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
s. Two chapters on mammal
Mammal
Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...
s precede those on humans. Darwin explained sexual selection as a combination of "female choosiness" and "direct competition between males".
The Sexes Throughout Nature
The Sexes Throughout Nature is a book written by Antoinette Brown Blackwell, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1875.-Overview and print history:...
in 1875. She was aware she would be considered presumptuous for criticizing evolutionary theory but wrote that "disadvantages under which we [women] are placed...will never be lessened by waiting". Blackwell's book answered Darwin and Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
, who she thought were the two most influential living men. She wrote of "defrauded womanhood" and her fears that "the human race, forever retarding its own advancement...could not recognize and promote a genuine, broad, and healthful equilibrium of the sexes".
In the Descent of Man, Darwin wrote that by choosing tools and weapons over the years, "man has ultimately become superior to woman" but Blackwell's argument for women's equality went largely ignored until the 1970s when feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
scientists and historians began to explore Darwin. As recently as 2004, Griet Vandermassen, aligned with other Darwinian feminists of the 1990s and early 2000s, wrote that a unifying theory of human nature should include sexual selection. But then the "opposite ongoing integration" was promoted by another faction as an alternative in 2007. Nonetheless, Darwin's explanation of sexual selection continues to receive support from both social and biological scientists as "the best explanation to date".
Later debates
While debates on the subject continues, in January 1871 Darwin started on another book, using left over material on emotional expressions, which became The Expression of the Emotions in Man and AnimalsThe Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals is a book by Charles Darwin, published in 1872, concerning genetically determined aspects of behaviour. It was published thirteen years after On The Origin of Species and is, along with his 1871 book The Descent of Man, Darwin's main consideration...
.
Sexual selection
Darwin's views on sexual selectionSexual selection
Sexual selection, a concept introduced by Charles Darwin in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, is a significant element of his theory of natural selection...
were opposed strongly by his co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...
, though much of his "debate" with Darwin took place after Darwin's death. Wallace argued against sexual selection
Sexual selection
Sexual selection, a concept introduced by Charles Darwin in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, is a significant element of his theory of natural selection...
, saying that the male-against-male fighting aspects were simply forms of natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
, and that the notion of "female choice" was attributing the ability to judge standards of beauty to animals far too cognitively undeveloped to be capable of aesthetic feeling (such as beetle
Beetle
Coleoptera is an order of insects commonly called beetles. The word "coleoptera" is from the Greek , koleos, "sheath"; and , pteron, "wing", thus "sheathed wing". Coleoptera contains more species than any other order, constituting almost 25% of all known life-forms...
s).
Wallace also argued that Darwin too much favored the bright colors of the male peacock as adaptive without realizing that the "drab" peahen's coloration is itself adaptive, as camouflage
Camouflage
Camouflage is a method of concealment that allows an otherwise visible animal, military vehicle, or other object to remain unnoticed, by blending with its environment. Examples include a leopard's spotted coat, the battledress of a modern soldier and a leaf-mimic butterfly...
. Wallace more speculatively argued that the bright colors and long tails of the peacock were not adaptive in any way, and that bright coloration could result from non-adaptive physiological development (for example, the internal organs of animals, not being subject to a visual form of natural selection, come in a wide variety of bright colors). This has been questioned by later scholars as quite a stretch for Wallace, who in this particular instance abandoned his normally strict "adaptationist" agenda in asserting that the highly intricate and developed forms such as a peacock's tail resulted by sheer "physiological processes" that were somehow not at all subjected to adaptation.
Effect on society
The book was printed just as an insurrection led by socialists and republicans took over Paris and set up the Paris CommuneParis Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...
, which was then besieged by French troops. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
condemned the Communards, and accused Darwin of undermining authority and principles of morality, opening the way to "the most murderous revolutions". A "man incurs a grave responsibility when, with the authority of a well-earned reputation, he advances at such a time the disintegrating speculations of this book." Darwin was able to shrug this off as from a "windbag full of metaphysics and classics".
In January 1871, Thomas Huxley
Thomas Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley PC FRS was an English biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution....
's former disciple, the anatomist St. George Mivart, had published On the Genesis of Species as a devastating critique of natural selection. In an anonymous Quarterly Review article, he claimed that the Descent of Man would unsettle "our half educated classes" and talked of people doing as they pleased, breaking laws and customs. An infuriated Darwin guessed that Mivart was the author and, thinking "I shall soon be viewed as the most despicable of men", looked for an ally. In September, Huxley wrote a cutting review of Mivart's book and article and a relieved Darwin told him "How you do smash Mivart's theology... He may write his worst & he will never mortify me again". As 1872 began, Mivart politely inflamed the argument again, writing "wishing you very sincerely a happy new year" while wanting a disclaimer of the "fundamental intellectual errors" in the Descent of Man. This time, Darwin ended the correspondence.
Publication
As Darwin wrote, he posted chapters to his daughter HenriettaDarwin — Wedgwood family
The Darwin–Wedgwood family is actually two interrelated English families, descended from the prominent 18th century doctor, Erasmus Darwin, and Josiah Wedgwood, founder of the pottery firm, Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, the most notable member of which was Charles Darwin...
for editing to ensure that damaging inferences could not be drawn, and also took advice from his wife Emma
Emma Darwin
Emma Darwin was the wife and first cousin of Charles Darwin, the English naturalist, scientist and author of On the Origin of Species...
. The corrected proofs were sent off on 15 January 1871 to the publisher John Murray
John Murray (publisher)
John Murray is an English publisher, renowned for the authors it has published in its history, including Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Byron, Charles Lyell, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Herman Melville, and Charles Darwin...
.
The book was initially published in two separate volumes, though Darwin himself insisted that it was indeed one complete and coherent work. The two 450-page volumes together were priced at £
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
1 4 shilling
Shilling
The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...
s, and The Descent of Man was published on 24 February 1871.
Within three weeks of publication, a reprint had been ordered; and 4,500 copies were in print by the end of March 1871, netting Darwin almost £1,500. Darwin's name created demand for the book, but the ideas were old news. "Everybody is talking about it without being shocked," which he found, "...proof of the increasing liberality of England" (see the 1871 book review in External links).
Editions and reprints
Descent went through a large number of revised editions, many of which Darwin edited himself (and some edited by his children). Some edits were minor, and some extensive. In late 1873, Darwin tackled a new edition of the Descent of Man. Initially, he offered the self-employed Wallace the work of assisting him, for which Wallace quoted a rate of seven shillings an hour. But, when Emma found out, she had the task given to their son George, so Darwin had to write apologetically to Wallace. Huxley assisted with an update on ape-brain inheritance, which Huxley thought "pounds the enemy into a jelly... though none but anatomists" would know it. The manuscript was completed in April 1874. Murray planned a 12-shilling half-price edition to replicate the success of the cheap revision of the Origin. The second edition was published on 13 November 1874 with the price cut to the bone at 9 shillings. It was generally the edition most commonly reprinted after Darwin's death and to the present.External links
- The Descent of Man (Volume 1) and (Volume 2) (from The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online)
- An 1871 book review of Descent of Man, which appeared in the Annual RegisterAnnual RegisterThe Annual Register is a long-established reference work, written and published each year, which records and analyses the year’s major events, developments and trends throughout the world...
.