Darwin and the Complexity of History

History is always pretty complicated.
The word complex is probably scribed into every history book known to man because no history is ever easy.
Many major figures in history are usually a mix of good and bad... often contradictory. 

I did not know anything really about Charles Darwin prior to this semester, one of the reasons I found an entire class based upon his work and its relation to the Victorian Era so interesting....

Now that I know him...he is pretty complex lol.

Darwin was a huge humanitarian, he loathed slavery and it pained him to see people abused, animals abused for that matter.

His whole family, a mix of the Wedgwoods (yea the tea pot and dinner china people) and Darwins were HUGE abolitionists and very anti-cruelty to a high degree...


When Darwin was a child and he would fish at his Wedgwood relations home, they taught him to soak worms in brine prior to hooking them so they would not feel the metal hook going into them.  Let us think about this for a second... he did not want the worm to feel pain.

This did not stop Darwin from being a HUGE hunter, he was a hunting enthusiast and also... when he was on his trip to the Galapagos... he captured, killed, and preserved hundreds of specimens, shooting tons of game to eat.  I am sure he tried to do it in the most humane way as possible, but still... does not want to make that worm suffer.

One of the books I am reading attributes Darwin's entire exploration into the origin of species and man to his hatred of slavery and in defiance of the normal excuse that somehow those enslaved by other men were lesser...not in the same species. As disgusting and horrible as it sounds, that horrible excuse was pretty prominent and others all the way through until the Civil Rights movement used those kind of disgusting and dim witted excuses to deny people the vote, rights, or even human dignity. 

Darwin witnessed the harsh treatment of slaves on some of his trips and it devastated him... and so he wanted to prove that regardless of skin, people came from the same stock.

I already liked Darwin, I just like him a lot more now.