Newsweek has a piece by Malcolm Jones: "Lincoln vs. Darwin: Who Matters More?" It did kinda remind me of those "who's faster: The Flash or Superman" questions. But it's not bad.
I confess it never occurred to me that Lincoln and Darwin were born on the same day in the same year. Jones draws out a lot of similarities (both men were compulsive scribblers), but just as many stark differences (Darwin was born in privilege; Lincoln not so). He argues that both were revolutionaries. In Darwin's case that is undoubtedly true. He revolutionized our understanding of biology. In Lincoln's case it is true also, but only in the sense that he continued the revolution begun in 1776. For that reason Lincoln belongs in the pantheon of Founders, along with Martin Luther King who essentially completed the revolution.
I also think Jones is flat wrong to say that Darwin overturned the idea of man as the crown of creation. It is true that Darwin's theory puts man squarely in the history of natural species; but then a crown is a physical object resting on the head, not hovering above it. Nothing in Darwin's theory prevents me from thinking that the human soul is the most magnificent and astounding thing in all creation. Only human beings can be aware of or conceive of "all creation."
The question Jones asks only seems provocative, as he himself can see. It is almost a no-brainer. Darwin thought of natural selection first, but:
it does no harm to remember that he hurried to publish "The Origin of Species" because he thought he was about to be scooped by his fellow naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who had independently come up with much the same idea of evolution through natural selection. In other words, there was a certain inevitability to Darwin's theory. Ideas about evolution surfaced throughout the first part of the 19th century, and while none of them was as cogent as Darwin's—until Wallace came along—it was not as though he was the only man who had the idea.
The time was ripe for Darwin's dangerous idea. If he hadn't come along when he did, someone else would have done the work.
Lincoln is another story. No one in history, so far as I can tell, better displayed the Aristotelian virtue of prudence. He understood what was going on, and just what to do about it. He realized that the United States was faced with not one but two mortal dangers: disunion, and continuing union at the cost of sacrificing our most sacred principles. He had a command of rhetoric that was unsurpassed, and a talent for poetry that rivaled Shakespeare. He seemed always to know how to navigate whatever political crisis presented itself. I have occasionally thought it an almost sufficient evidence of providence that such men as Lincoln and Washington arise when, and only when, we really need them.
Lincoln was a giant of political action. Darwin was a giant of theory. I won't open up the Straussian problem of politics vs. philosophy now. But Darwin cannot compete with Lincoln on the question of who matters more in human history.
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