The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology (45 page)

First, Darwin strengthened his argument. While immersed in barnacles, he continued to gather evidence for his theory, partly through the postal interrogation of far-flung experts on flora and fauna. One reason for the
Origin
's ultimate success was Darwin's meticulous anticipation of, and preemptive response to, criticism. Two years before the book's publication, he correctly wrote, "[I] think I go as far as almost anyone in seeing the grave difficulties against my doctrine."

This thoroughness grew out of self-doubt — out of Darwin's
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legendary humility and grave fear of criticism. Frank Sulloway, an authority on both Freud and Darwin, has made this point by comparing the two men: "Although both were revolutionary personalities, Darwin was unusually concerned about personal error and was modest to a fault. He also erected a new scientific theory that has successfully stood the test of time. Freud, in contrast, was tremendously ambitious and highly self-confident — a self-styled 'conquistador' of science. Yet he developed an approach to human nature that was largely a collection of nineteenth-century psychobiological fantasies masquerading as real science."
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In reviewing John Bowlby's biography of Darwin, Sulloway made the point Bowlby failed to make. "[I]t seems reasonable to argue that a moderate degree of lowered self-esteem, which in Darwin was coupled with dogged persistence and unflagging industry, is actually a valuable attribute in science by helping to prevent an over-estimation of one's own theories. Constant self-doubt, then, is a methodological hallmark of good science, even if it is not especially congenial to good psychological health."
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The question naturally arises as to whether such useful self-doubt, however painful, might be part of the human mental repertoire, preserved by natural selection because of its success, in some circumstances, at propelling social ascent. And the question grows only more intriguing in light of Darwin's father's role in forging his son's self-doubt. Bowlby asks: Was Charles "the disgrace to his family his father had so angrily predicted, or had he perhaps made good? ... Throughout his scientific career, unbelievably fruitful and distinguished though it would be, Charles's ever-present fear of criticism, both from himself and from others, and never satisfied craving for reassurance, seep through." Bowlby also notes that "a submissive and placatory attitude towards his father became second nature to Charles" and suggests that his father is at least partly to blame for Charles's "exaggerated" respect for authority and his "tendency to disparage his own contributions."

The speculation is irresistible: perhaps the elder Darwin, in implanting this lifelong source of discomfort, was functioning as designed Parents may be programmed — whether they know it or not — to adjust their children's psyches, even if painfully, in ways that
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promise to raise social status. For that matter, the younger Darwin, in absorbing the painful adjustment, may have been functioning as designed. We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones. (Of course, we're designed to pursue happiness; and the attainment of Darwinian goals — sex, status, and so on — often brings happiness, at least for a while. Still, the frequent absence of happiness is what keeps us pursuing it, and thus makes us productive. Darwin's heightened fear of criticism kept him almost chronically distanced from serenity, and therefore kept him busy trying to reach it.)

Thus, Bowlby may be right about all the painful paternal influence on Darwin's character yet wrong to make it sound so pathological. Of course, even things that aren't pathological in the strict sense may be regrettable, and valid targets of psychiatric intervention. But presumably psychiatrists can more ably intervene once they get clear on what sorts of pain are and aren't "natural."

The second prong of Darwin's three-pronged strategy was to beef up his credentials. It's a commonplace of social psychology that cred ibility grows with prestige. Forced to believe either a college pro fessor or a grade-school teacher on some question of biology, we usually choose the professor. In one sense, this is a valid choice, as the professor is more likely to be right. In another sense, this is just another arbitrary by-product of evolution — a reflexive regard for status.

Either way, an air of mastery is a handy thing when you're trying to change minds. Hence barnacles: even aside from what Darwin learned from the barnacles, he knew that the sheer weight of his four volumes on the subclass Cirripedia would lend prestige to his theory of natural selection.

That, at least, is the suggestion of one biographer, Peter Brent: "[P]erhaps ... Darwin was not training himself with the Cirripede, he was qualifying himself." Brent cites an exchange between Darwin and Joseph Hooker. In 1845, Hooker had offhandedly professed doubts about the grand pronouncements of a French naturalist who "does not know what it is to be a specific Naturalist himself." Darwin, characteristically, took the remark to reflect on his own "presumption in accumulating facts & speculating on the subject of variation, without
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having worked out my due share of species." A year later Darwin went to work on barnacles.

Brent may be right. Several years after the
Origin
was published, Darwin advised a young botanist, "let theory guide your observations, but till your reputation is well established, be sparing in publishing theory. It makes persons doubt your observations."

The third prong of Darwin's strategy was to marshal potent social forces — to meld a coalition that included men of stature, men of rhetorical power, and men who fit both descriptions. There was Lyell, who would bring Darwin's first paper on natural selection before thes Linnean Society of London, lending it his authority (though Lyell was then an agnostic on natural selection); Thomas Huxley, who would famously confront Bishop Wilberforce in the Oxford evolution debate; Hooker, who would less famously confront Wilberforce and would join Lyell in unveiling Darwin's theory; and Asa Gray, the Harvard botanist who, through his writings in the Atlantic Monthly, would become Darwin's chief publicist in America. One by one, Darwin let these men in on his theory.

Was Darwin's assembly of troops really so calculated? Certainly Darwin was aware, by the time the
Origin
was published, that the battle for truth is fought by people, not just ideas. "[W]e are now a good and compact body of really good men, and mostly not old men," he assured one supporter only days after publication. "In the long-run we shall conquer." Three weeks after the
Origin
's publication, he wrote his young friend John Lubbock, whom he had sent a copy, and asked, "Have you finished it? If so, pray tell me whether you are with me on the general issue, or against me." He assured Lubbock in a postscript that "I have got — I wish and hope I might say that we have got — a fair number of excellent men on our side of the question... ." Translation: If you act now, you can be part of a winning coalition of male primates.

Darwin's pleas for Charles Lyell's full support — almost pathetic in their persistence — are similarly pragmatic. Darwin sees that it is the prestige of his allies, not just their number, that will shape public opinion. September 11, 1859: "Remember that your verdict will probably have more influence than my book in deciding whether such
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views as I hold will be admitted or rejected at present. ..." September 20: "[A]s I regard your verdict as far more important in my own eyes, and I believe in the eyes of the world than of any other dozen men, I am naturally very anxious about it."
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Lyell's long delay in granting unequivocal support would bring Oanvin to the point of bitterness. He wrote to Hooker in 1863: "I am deeply disappointed (I do not mean personally) to find that his ti rrnidity prevents him giving any judgment... . And the best of the joke is that he thinks he has acted with the courage of a martyr of old."
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But in terms of reciprocal altruism, Darwin was asking for too much. Lyell was by then sixty-five years old, with an ample intellectual legacy that wouldn't much benefit from his endorsing another man's theory and which could suffer appreciably from identification with a radical doctrine that later proved false. Besides, Lyell had opposed evolutionism in its Lamarckian guise, and thus might be viewed as backtracking. So Darwin's theory wasn't "common ca,xise" for the two men, as Lyell's had been two decades earlier, when Darwin needed a display case for his freshly gathered data. And Lyell, hauving repaid Darwin's support in various ways, had little if any debt outstanding. Darwin seems to have suffered here from a quaintly pre-Darwinian conception of what friendship is. Or, perhaps, he was under the sway of an egocentric accounting system.

That Darwin was urgently recruiting allies as of 1859 does not, of course, prove that he had for years been plotting strategy. The origin of his alliance with Hooker seems ingenuous enough. Their bond matured during the 1840s as a friendship of the classic variety — based on common interests and common values and consecrated by affection.
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As it became clear that one of those common interests was openness to the possibility of evolution, Darwin's affection can only have deepened. But we needn't assume that Darwin then envisioned Hooker becoming an avid defender of his theory. The affect tion inspired by common interests is natural selection's implicit recognition of the political usefulness of friends.

Much the same can be said of the way Darwin warmed to Hooker' s sterling character. ("One can see at once that he is honourable to the back-bone.")
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Yes, Hooker's trustworthiness would prove
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essential; Darwin used him as a confidential sounding board long before natural selection entered public discourse. But no, that doesn't mean Darwin was from the beginning calibrating the value of Hooker's trustworthiness. Natural selection has given us an affinity for people who will be reliable reciprocal-altruism partners. In all cultures, trust joins common interest as the sine qua non of friendship.

Darwin's very compulsion to have a confidant — and, as he comes closer to making the theory public, to have additional confidants in Lyell, Gray, Huxley, and others — can be viewed as the product of evolutionary, and not just conscious, calculation. "I do not think I am brave enough to have stood being odious without support," he wrote days after the
Origin
was published.
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Who would have been? You would have to be just about literally not human to launch a massive attack on the status quo without first seeking social support. In fact, you would almost have to be non-hominoid.

Imagine how many times since our ape days social challenges have hinged on the challenger's success in forging a sturdy coalition. Imagine how many times the challengers have suffered from acting too soon, or from being too open in their machinations. And imagine the ample reproductive stakes. Is it any wonder that mutinies of all kinds, in all cultures, begin with whispers? That even an untutored six-year-old schoolboy feels intuitively the wisdom of discreetly eliciting opinions about the local bully before mounting a challenge? When Darwin confided his theory in a select few, employing his trademark defensiveness (to Asa Gray: "I know that this will make you despise me"),51 he was probably driven as much by emotion as by reason.

The greatest crisis of Darwin's career began in 1858. While trudging along on his epic manuscript, he found he had waited too long. Alfred Russel Wallace had now discovered the theory of natural selection — two decades after Darwin did — and stood poised to preempt him. In response, Darwin fiercely pursued his self-interest, but he pursued it so smoothly, and shrouded it in so much moral angst, that, ever
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since, observers have been calling the episode yet another example of his superhuman decency.

Wallace was a young British naturalist who, like the young Darwin, had set sail for foreign lands to study life. Darwin had known for some time that Wallace was interested in the origin and distribution of species. In fact, the two men had corresponded about the matter, with Darwin noting that he already had a "distinct & tangible idea" on the subject and claiming that "it is really impossible to explain my views in the compass of a letter." But Darwin continued to resist any impulse to publish a short paper outlining his theory. "I rather hate the idea of writing for priority," he had written to Lyell, who had urged him to get his views on the record. "[Y]et I certainly should be vexed if any one were to publish my doctrines before me."
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The vexation hit on June 18, 1858, when the mail brought a letter from Wallace. Darwin opened it and found a precise sketch of Wallace's theory of evolution, whose likeness to his own theory was stunning. "Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters," he observed.
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The panic that must have struck Darwin that day is a tribute to natural selection's resourcefulness. The biochemical essence of the panic probably goes back to our reptilian days. Yet it was triggered not by its primordial trigger — threat to life and limb — but rather by a threat to status, a concern more characteristic of our primate days. What's more, the threat wasn't of the physical sort common among our primate relatives. Instead it came as an abstraction: words, sentences — symbols whose comprehension depended on brain tissue ac quired only within the past few million years. Thus does evolution take ancient raw materials and continually adapt them to current needs.

Presumably Darwin did not pause to reflect on the natural beauty of his panic. He sent Wallace's paper to Lyell — whose opinion of it Wallace had asked Darwin to solicit — and sought advice. Actually, "sought" is a little strong; I'm reading between the lines. Darwin proposed a pious course of action and left it for Lyell to propose .1 less pious one. "Please return me the MS., which he does not say he wishes me to publish, but I shall, of course, at once write and offer to send to any journal. So all my originality, whatever it may amount
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to, will be smashed, though my book, if it will ever have any value, will not be deteriorated; as all the labour consists in the application of the theory."