Lincoln & Darwin

My latest piece in the American News:

On February 12th, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in Hardin County, Kentucky.  On that same day, in Shropshire County, England, Charles Darwin was first exposed to the light of day.  Think of it one of God’s little jokes.  The two were not much alike.  Darwin was born to comfortable wealth and good prospects, among which was a first class education.  Lincoln was famously born in the most modest circumstances to parents of undistinguished families.  He was altogether self-educated.  The two of them managed to make deeper impressions in the hard wax of human history than any of their contemporaries. 

Lincoln saved the United States from the two greatest perils it ever faced.  In 1858 he ran for the position of United States Senator in opposition to Stephen Douglas.  Douglas was prochoice on the question of slavery.  He thought that the way to resolve the controversy over the extension of slavery was to adopt an attitude of moral indifference toward the issue.  Let the people of each state decide for themselves whether they would allow the enslavement of Black Africans, or not.  Democracy and liberty, for White people, is what the United States is all about. 

Lincoln insisted that slavery was in direct contradiction to the principles of the American founding.  Why do the people of Illinois or Missouri, or the people of the United States have a right to govern themselves?  Because all human beings have a right to govern themselves.  That is what the phrase “all men are created equal” means.  Douglas insisted that the people of Kentucky were good enough to govern a few Negroes.  Lincoln replied that no man was good enough to govern another without that other’s consent. 

Lincoln lost the Senate race, but two years later he was elected President.  That meant that the United States would not surrender its commitment to the idea of human liberty.  Thus the first great peril was resolved.  The second, secession, was resolved by war.  Lincoln argued that the United States was created by the whole people and could only be dissolved by the whole people, not by a part of the people living in the South.  By means of intelligence, will, and Ulysses S. Grant, Lincoln managed to save the Union.  Lest one think that his greatness was a merely American matter, ask yourself who would have opposed the great totalitarian menaces of the Twentieth Century if America had been divided, or if it was no longer committed to its democratic and liberal principles. 

Charles Darwin was a scientist, not a statesman.  He achieved the most important advance in human thought in the last two centuries by explaining how the various species came to be and how they are preserved in the forms we know them.  The principle was very simple: an organism that is better adapted to its environment than its siblings and cousins leaves behind more offspring.  As organisms colonize new environments, they slowly diverge into distinct species.  This is what the Biblical phrase “be fruitful and multiply” means, once Darwin points out that all organisms are not equally fruitful, and some multiply faster than others. 

It is true that Darwin’s idea can be abused.  It has been used to justify horrible things like eugenics, the practice of sterilizing less favored people, on the grounds that we are “improving the species.”  But any true idea can be abused, as Stephen Douglas abused the idea of democracy to justify an acceptance of slavery.  In fact, Darwin’s idea supports Lincoln’s principles.  The human species has diverged very far from our nearest simian relatives.  We have achieved a moral and intellectual capacity that dwarfs anything else in nature.  This is the basis of a specific set of human rights.  For that same reason, all human beings, regardless of color or race, share a common descent.  If not brothers and sisters, we are truly cousins at the very least. 

Darwin, like Lincoln, was fiercely opposed to slavery.  If you believe that all human beings are kin, what else can you think?  When the Creator arranged for Lincoln and Darwin to be born on the same day, he was probably chuckling.  But He was also making a serious point.