Orestes Brownson

IN 1873, Orestes Brownson, the New England intellectual, wrote that the theory of evolution, “like the modern theory of progress, is untenable, and must be dismissed.” According to Brownson, Darwin had committed a crime worse than murder by presenting his conjectures as science:

“We have read Mr. Darwin’s books with some care, and, though not an absolute stranger to the subject he treats, or to the facts he narrates, we are a little surprised that even a professed scientist could put forth such a mass of unwarranted inductions and unfounded conjectures as science. Not one nor all of the facts he adduces, prove the species originate in natural or artificial selection. In all his inductions he is obliged to assume the progress of the species as the principle of his induction, while he ought to know that the assumption of the progress of the species negatives the origin of species in selection. But, and this is fatal to his theory, he nowhere adduces a single fact that proves the species is progressive, or a single instance in which a lower species by its struggles for life, as he pretends, approaches a higher species, or in which the individuals of a lower species lose any of the characteristics of their species, and acquire those of a higher or a different species.

The theory of natural selection assumes the Malthusian principle, that population has a tendency to outrun the means of subsistence, and applies the principle to every species, vegetable, animal and human. Hence, follows with individuals of every species a struggle for life, in which the weaker go to the wall, and only the stronger survive. Well, be it so: what then? Why, these the stronger individuals give rise, or the struggle for life, in which only the stronger survive, going on for a long series of ages, gives birth to a new and higher species. Is it so? What is the proof? We have found no proof of it, and Mr. Darwin offers no proof of it. Because only the stronger survive, it by no means follows that these in any series of ages give rise to a new and distinct species, that these stronger individuals acquire any new characteristics, or that they lose any of the characteristics of their original species.

The gardener knows that plants and flowers are affected by climate, soil, and cultivation; but he knows also that the changes or improvements produced in this way, if they give rise to new varieties in the same species, do not, so far as known, give rise to a new species. Mr. Darwin compares domestic animals with what he assumes to be wild animals of the same original species, or the species from which he assumes they have descended. But this proves nothing to his purpose; for it is impossible for him to say which is the primitive, which the derivative, whether the domestic races have sprung from the wild, or the wild from the domestic, or whether the differences noted are the result of development of the primitive type, or of reversion to it.”

 [……]

“Say what you will, the ape is not a man; nor, as far as our observations or investigations can go, is the ape, the gorilla, or any other variety of the monkey tribe, the animal that approaches nearest to man. The rat, the beaver, the horse, the pig, the raven, the elephant surpass the monkey in intelligence, if it be intelligence, and not simply instinct; and the dog is certainly far ahead of the monkey in moral qualities, in affection for his master and fidelity to him, and so is the horse when kindly treated. But let this pass. There is that, call it what you will, in man, which is not in the ape. Man is two-footed and two-handed; the ape is four-handed, or, if you choose to call the extremity of his limbs feet, four-footed. In fact, he has neither a human hand nor a human foot, and, anatomically considered, differs hardly less from man than does the dog or the horse. I have never been able to discover any of the simian tribe a single human quality. As to physical structure, there is some resemblance. Zoologists tell us traces of the same original type may be found running through the whole animal world; and, therefore, the near approach of the ape to the human form counts for nothing in this argument. But here is the point we make; namely, the differentia of man, not being in the ape, cannot be obtained from the ape by development.

This sufficiently refutes Darwin’s whole theory. He does not prove the origin of a new species either by natural or artificial selection; and, not having done that, he adduces nothing that does or can warrant the induction, that the human species is developed from the quadrumanic or any other species. In reading Mr. Darwin’s books before us, while we acknowledge the vast accumulation of facts in the natural history of man and animals, we have been struck with the feebleness of his reasoning powers.”

— Comments —

Timothy D. writes:

What Brownson accuses Darwin of: a teleological perspective, namely “progress”, is exactly what Darwin does not do.

There are plenty of reasons to find Darwin inadequate, partial, materialist. I could think of a few. Darwin certainly thought so too, because he came up with a wholly different theory of selection13 years after the Origin of Species in a book called the Descent of Man, or Selection in relation to sex, with whose arguments few seem to have dealt with until recently

However, Brownson is talking through his hat. Either wrong, or not even wrong.

Sorry to disagree on my first communication with your excellent blog.

 Laura writes:

Oh, please don’t hesitate to disagree. That’s what I’m here for! : – )

So you’re saying Darwin does not argue progress even though he contends lower life forms became human over time?

By the way, Brownson is specifically responding to The Descent of Man.

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