416 THREE CENTURIES' PERSPECTIVESarticle, but the dominant theme can surely be summarized in a single
word: paternalism. We know what is good for the primitives—and
thank God they are responding and improving on Tahiti by becom-
ing more European in their customs and actions. Praise the mission-
aries for this exemplary work. One comment, again by FitzRoy,
captures this theme with special discomfort (to modern eyes) for its
patronizing approach, even to royalty:
The Queen, and a large party, passed some hours on board the Beagle.
Their behavior was extremely correct, and their manners were inoffensive.
Judging from former accounts, and what we witnessed, I should think that
they are improving yearly.
Thus, we may return to my opening issue—the theme of juve-
nilia. Shall we place this article on the "Moral State of Tahiti," Dar-
win's very first, into the category of severe later embarrassments?
Did Darwin greatly revise his views on non-Western peoples and
civilizations, and come to regard his early paternalism as a folly of
youthful inexperience? Much traditional commentary in the hagio-
graphical mode would say so—and isolated quotations can be cited
from here and there to support such an interpretation (for Darwin
was a complex man who wrestled with deep issues, sometimes in
contradictory ways, throughout his life).
But I would advance the opposite claim as a generality. I don't
think that Darwin ever substantially revised his anthropological
views. His basic attitude remained: "they" are inferior but redeem-
able. His mode of argument changed in later life. He would no
longer frame his attitude in terms of traditional Christianity and
missionary work. He would temper his strongest paternalistic en-
thusiasm with a growing understanding (cynicism would be too
strong a word) of the foibles of human nature in all cultures, includ-
ing his own. (We see the first fruits of such wisdom in his comment,
cited previously, on why sexually frustrated travelers fail to credit
Tahitian missionaries.) But his basic belief in a hierarchy of cultural
advance, with white Europeans on top and natives of different col-
ors on the bottom, did not change.
Turning to the major work of Darwin's maturity, The Descent of
Man (1871), Darwin writes in summary:
The races differ also in constitution, in acclimatisation, and in liability to
certain diseases. Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct;