The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. I
1871
Darwin had avoided the question for years, human evolution was too 'surrounded with prejudices,' he admitted. But in 1871, he finally confronted what Origin of Species had left implicit: we are part of the animal kingdom, descended from lower forms, shaped by the same brutal logic of variation and selection. The Descent of Man is his audacious attempt to answer three questions: whether humans descend from some pre-existing form, how that development occurs, and what explains the variations among human races. Darwin's controversial solution was sexual selection, female choice among competing males driving the diverging characteristics not just of sexes but of populations. Through exhaustive comparative anatomy and psychology, he mapped the shared faculties of humans and lower animals, arguing that mental and moral capacities differ in degree, not kind. The book put apes in our family tree and made the races one family. Some of Darwin's racial hypotheses have not aged well, yet they were fired by his hatred of slavery and aimed against the more insidious polygenist belief that races had separate creations. This is the work that completed Darwin's argument, and still shapes how we think about what makes us human.
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“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.””
— Charles Darwin
“As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.””
— Charles Darwin
“The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable”
— Charles Darwin
“We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.””
— Charles Darwin
“For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs”
— Charles Darwin
“But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. I have given the evidence to the best of my ability; and we must acknowledge , as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his godlike intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system - with all these exalted powers - Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.””
— Charles Darwin
“Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system”
— Charles Darwin
“A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives”
— Charles Darwin
“Man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children, but no child has an instinctive tendency to bake, brew, or write.””
— Charles Darwin
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Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. I. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-descent-of-man-and-selection-in-relation-to-sex-vol-i-07a5bfc3-9cf2-4a6f-a8e0-0ce6d07e03b9.Darwin, C. (1871). The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. I. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-descent-of-man-and-selection-in-relation-to-sex-vol-i-07a5bfc3-9cf2-4a6f-a8e0-0ce6d07e03b9Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. I. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-descent-of-man-and-selection-in-relation-to-sex-vol-i-07a5bfc3-9cf2-4a6f-a8e0-0ce6d07e03b9.
