The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology (46 page)

I yell's reply — which, oddly, has not survived, even though Darwin saved correspondence religiously — seems to have succeeded in checking Darwin's piety. Darwin wrote back: "There is nothing in Wallace's sketch which is not written out much fuller in my sketch, copied out in 1844, and read by Hooker some dozen years ago. About a year ago I sent a short sketch, of which I have a copy, of my views ... to Asa Gray, so that I could most truly say and prove that I take nothing from Wallace."

Then Darwin gets into an epic wrestling match with his conscience, in full view of Lyell. At the risk of sounding cynical, I include in brackets the letter's subtext, as I interpret it: "I should be extremely glad now to publish a sketch of my general views in about a dozen pages or so; but I cannot persuade myself that I can do so honourably. [Maybe you can persuade me.] Wallace says nothing about publication, and I enclose his letter. But as I had not intended to publish any sketch, can I do so honourably, because Wallace has sent me an outline of his doctrine? [Say yes. Say yes.] ... Do you not think his having sent me this sketch ties my hands? [Say no. Say no.] ... I would send Wallace a copy of my letter to Asa Gray, to show him that I had not stolen his doctrine. But I cannot tell whether to publish now would not be base and paltry. [Say nonbase and nonpaltry.]" In a postscript added the next day, Darwin washed his hands of the affair, appointing Lyell arbitrator: "I have always thought you would make a first-rate Lord Chancellor; and I now appeal to you as a Lord Chancellor."

Darwin's anguish was deepened by events at home. His daughter Etty had diphtheria, and his mentally retarded baby, Charles Waring, had just contracted scarlet fever, from which he would soon die.

Lyell consulted with Hooker, whom Darwin had also alerted to the crisis, and the two men decided to treat Darwin's and Wallace's theories as equals. They would introduce Wallace's paper at the next meeting of the Linnean Society, along with the sketch Darwin had sent to Asa Gray and parts of the 1844 draft he had given Emma, and all of this would then be published together. (Darwin had sent
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Gray the 1,200-word sketch only a few months after telling Wallace it would be "impossible" to sketch the theory in a letter. Whether he wanted to produce unimpeachable evidence of his priority, after sensing Wallace gaining on him, will never be known.) Since Wallace was then in the Malay Archipelago, and the next meeting of the society was imminent, Lyell and Hooker decided to proceed without consulting him. Darwin let them.

When Wallace learned what had happened, he was in a position much like Darwin's during the Beagle's voyage, when the thrilling word of Sedgwick's endorsement arrived. Wallace was a young naturalist, eager to make a name for himself, isolated from professional feedback, still not sure if he had much to give science. Suddenly he found that his work was being read by great men before a great scientific society. He wrote proudly to his mother that, "I sent Mr. Darwin an essay on a subject on which he is now writing a great work. He showed it to Dr. Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell, who thought so highly of it that they immediately read it before the Linnean Society. This assures me the acquaintance and assistance of these eminent men on my return home."
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This ranks as one of the most poignant passages in the history of science. Wallace had just been taken to the cleaners. His name, though given equal billing with Darwin's, was now sure to be eclipsed by it. After all, it wasn't news that some young upstart had declared himself an evolutionist and proposed an evolutionary mechanism; it was news that the well-known and respected Charles Darwin had done so. And any lingering doubt about whose name should be attached to the theory would be erased by Darwin's book, which he would now finally produce with due speed. Lest the relative status of the two men escape anyone's attention, Hooker and Lyell, in introducing the papers to the Linnean Society, had noted that, "while the scientific world is waiting for the appearance of Mr. Darwin's complete work, some of the leading results of his labours, as well as those of his able correspondent, should together be laid before the public."
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"Able correspondent" isn't a phrase likely to wind up at the top of a marquee.
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Now, it may be that Darwin's having put the pieces together so many years before Wallace makes Wallace's eventual obscurity just. But the fact is that as of June 1858, Wallace, unlike Darwin, had written a paper on natural selection that he was ready to publish, even if he didn't ask Darwin to publish it. If Wallace had sent his paper to a journal instead of to Darwin — indeed, if he had sent it almost anywhere instead of to Darwin — he might be remembered today as the first man to posit the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin's great book, technically speaking, would have been an extension and popularization of another scientist's idea. Whose name the theory would then have carried will forever be an open question.

However just Darwin's worldwide fame, it seems hard to argue that when given the toughest moral test of his life, he passed with flying colors. Consider the options confronting him, Lyell, and Hooker. They could publish only Wallace's version of the theory. They could write Wallace and offer to thus publish his version, as Darwin had originally suggested — without, perhaps, even mentioning Darwin's version. They could write Wallace and explain the sit-nation, suggesting joint publication. Or they could do what they did. Since Wallace might, for all they knew, have resisted joint publication, the option they pursued was the only one which ensured that natural detection would go down in history as Darwin's theory. And that opt ion entailed publishing Wallace's paper without his expressed permission — an act whose propriety someone with Darwin's king-size scruples might normally question.

Remarkably, observers have time and again depicted this ploy as some sort of testament to human morality. Julian Huxley, Thomas Huxley's grandson, called the outcome "a monument to the natural generosity of both the great biologists." Loren Eiseley called it an example of "that mutual nobility of behavior so justly celebrated in the annals of science." They're both half right. Wallace, ever gracious, would long insist — correctly, but still generously and nobly — that Darwin's length and depth of thought about evolution had earned him the title of premier evolutionist. Wallace even titled a book of his Darwinism.

Wallace defended the theory of natural selection for the rest of
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his life, but he crucially narrowed its scope. He began to doubt that the theory could account for the full powers of the human mind; people seemed smarter than they really had to be to survive. He concluded that although man's body was built by natural selection, his mental capacities were divinely implanted. It may be too cynical (even by Darwinian standards) to suggest that this revision would have been less likely had the theory of natural selection been called "Wallacism." At any rate, the man whose name was synonymous with the theory mourned the weakening of Wallace's faith. "I hope you have not murdered too completely your own and my child," Darwin wrote to him. (This from the man who, after mentioning Wallace in the introduction of the
Origin
, referred to natural selection in subsequent chapters as "my theory.")

The common idea that Darwin behaved like a perfect gentleman throughout the Wallace episode rests partly on the myth that he had some option other than those outlined above — that he could have rushed his theory to press without so much as mentioning Wallace. But unless Wallace was even more saintly than he seems to have been, this would have brought a scandal that left Darwin's name tainted, even to the point of endangering its connection to his theory. In other words: this option was not an option. The biographer who admiringly observes that Darwin "hated losing his priority, but he hated even more the chance of being suspected of ungentlemanly or nonsporting conduct"
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is creating a distinction where none existed; to have been thought unsporting would have threatened his priority. When Darwin wrote to Lyell, on the day he received Wallace's sketch, "I would far rather burn my whole book, than that he or any other man should think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit," he wasn't being conscientious so much as savvy.
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Or rather: he was being conscientious, which, especially in his social environment, was the same as being savvy. Sawiness is the function of the conscience.

The other source of retrospective naivete about Darwin's behavior is his brilliant decision to place the matter in Lyell's and Hooker's hands. "In despair, he abdicated," as one biographer obligingly puts it. Darwin would forever use this "abdication" as moral camouflage. After Wallace signaled his approval of the affair, Darwin wrote to him: "Though I had absolutely nothing whatever to do in leading
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Lyell and Hooker to what they thought a fair course of action, yet I naturally could not but feel anxious to hear what your impression would be... ." Well, if he wasn't sure Wallace would approve, why didn't he bother to check? Couldn't Darwin, having gone two decades without publishing his theory, have waited a few months longer? Wallace had asked that his paper be sent to Lyell, but he hadn't asked that Lyell determine its fate.

For Darwin to say he exerted no influence "whatever" on Hooker and Lyell strains the facts and, anyway, is irrelevant; these were two of his closest friends. Surely Darwin wouldn't have felt he could., appoint his brother Erasmus as a disinterested judge. Yet, there is every reason to believe that evolution, in embedding friendship in the human species, has resourcefully used many of the impulses of affection, devotion, and loyalty that it first used to bind kin.

Darwin didn't know this, of course, but surely he knew that friends tend toward partiality — that the whole idea of a friend is someone who at least partly shares your self-serving biases. For him to depict Lyell as impartial — "a Lord Chancellor" — is remarkable. And it only appears more so in light of Darwin's later appeals to their friendship, when he virtually asks Lyell to endorse the theory of natural selection as a personal favor.

Enough moral outrage. Who am I to judge? I've done things worse than this, Darwin's biggest single crime. In fact, my ability to muster all this righteous indignation, and assume a stance of moral superiority, is a tribute to the selective blindness with which evolution has endowed us all. Now, I'll try to transcend biology and summon enough detachment for a brisk appraisal of the salient Darwinian features of the Wallace episode.

Note, first of all, the exquisite pliability of Darwin's values. As a rule he was gravely disdainful of academic territoriality; for scientists to guard against rivals who might steal their thunder was, he believed, "unworthy of searchers after truth." And though he was too perceptive and honest to deny that fame had a tempting effect on him, he generally held the effect to be minor. He claimed that even without it he would work just as hard on his species book. Yet when his
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turf was threatened, he took steps to defend it — which included producing the
Origin
at a rather stepped-up pace once there was doubt as to whose name would become synonymous with evolutionism. Darwin saw the contradiction. Weeks after the Wallace episode, he wrote to Hooker that, as far as priority goes, he had always "fancied that I had a grand enough soul not to care; but I found myself mistaken and punished."

As the crisis receded into the past, though, Darwin's old pieties resurfaced. He claimed in his autobiography that he "cared very little whether men attributed most originality to me or Wallace."
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Anyone who has read Darwin's distraught letters to Lyell and Hooker will have to marvel at the power of Darwin's self-deception.

The Wallace episode highlights a basic division within the conscience, the line between kin selection and reciprocal altruism. When we feel guilty about having harmed or cheated a sibling, it is, generally, because natural selection "wants" us to be nice to siblings, since they share so many of our genes. When we feel guilty about having harmed or cheated a friend, or a casual acquaintance, it is because natural selection "wants" us to look like we're being nice; the perception of altruism, not the altruism itself, is what will bring the reciprocation. So the aim of the conscience, in dealings with nonkin, is to cultivate a reputation for generosity and decency, whatever the reality. Of course, gaining and holding this reputation will often entail actual generosity and decency. But sometimes it won't.

In this light we see Darwin's conscience working in top form. It made him generally reliable in his bestowal of generosity and decency — in a social environment so intimate that actual generosity and decency were essential to maintaining a good moral reputation. But his goodness turned out not to be absolutely constant. His vaunted conscience, seemingly a bulwark against all corruption, was discerning enough to weaken a trifle just when his lifelong quest for status most needed a slight moral lapse. This brief dimming of the lights allowed Darwin to subtly, even unconsciously, pull strings, employing his ample social connections to the detriment of a young and powerless rival.

Some Darwinians have suggested that the conscience can be viewed as the administrator of a savings account in which moral
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reputation is stored. For decades Darwin painstakingly amassed capital, vast and conspicuous evidence of his scruples; the Wallace episode was a time to risk some of it. Even if he lost a little — even of the affair produced a few suspicious whispers about the propriety of publishing Wallace's paper without his permission — this would still be a risk worth taking, in terms of the ultimate elevation of Darwin's status. Making such judgments about resource allocation is what the human conscience is designed to do, and during the Wallace episode Darwin's did it well.