208 life
Joseph LeConte (1823–1901)
Joseph LeConte was arguably the most influential—and certainly one of the
most interesting—American harmonizers of evolution and religion in late-
nineteenth-century America. His widely quoted definition of evolution as “(1)
continuousprogressive change, (2)according to certain laws, (3) and by means of
resident forces” served for years as a standard. More of a popularizer than an
original investigator, he took great pride in showing that “evolution is entirely
consistent with a rational theism.” But this achievement did not come without
a struggle; for decades, he repeatedly “wrestled in agony...with [the] demon
of materialism.”^11
Young LeConte grew up in an “intensely religious” community in rural
Georgia. His pious Presbyterian mother died when he was a toddler; his father,
a medically trained plantation owner and unbeliever, passed away when Joseph
was 14. The death of his father “outside the pale of the church” distressed him
greatly and precipitated “a very great crisis,” followed by a classic conversion
to orthodox Christianity. For a time, while attending the University of Georgia,
he considered becoming a Presbyterian minister. Instead, he studied medicine,
then apprenticed himself to Louis Agassiz at Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific
School. Early in his career, he taught at both the universities of Georgia and
South Carolina.^12
About the mid-1850s LeConte encountered the “dragon of materialism,”
in the form of August Comte’s positivism, which held that only physical phe-
nomena were knowable, that God-talk was meaningless. As an ardent believer
in the reliability of human reason, LeConte stood briefly on the “brink of the
edge of materialism,” only to pull back in horror when he recognized the full
implications of this “degrading” philosophy, “which destroys [man’s] spiritu-
ality, his immortality, every noble upward striving of his nature.” For the rest
of his life, he shunned materialism, a term he used synonymously with athe-
ism and agnosticism.^13
In 1861, LeConte experienced a life-altering loss: the death of his 2-year-
old daughter, Josie, from whooping cough. During her last hours, he cuddled
her small body, wracked by spasms. So traumatic was her passing, it left him
“prostrated” for several days. Decades later he still felt the raw pain:
Little Josie, dear little Josie! I can not even mention her name with-
out the tenderest emotions. She was the most beautiful child we
ever had, with that rare combination of flaxen hair and dark eyes.
Alas! We lost her just two years later. The light, the sunlight, the
spiritual light seemed to have gone out of my house.As we have seen, Darwin’s loss of his unbelieving but Christlike physician
father and of his favorite daughter had destroyed his faith in Christianity. Vir-