THREE CENTURIES' PERSPECTIVES
chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual
faculties. Every one who has had the opportunity of comparison, must have
been struck with the contrast between the taciturn, even morose, aborigines
of S. America and the lighthearted, talkative negroes.
The most striking passage occurs in a different context. Darwin is
arguing that discontinuities in nature do not speak against evolu-
tion, because most intermediate forms are now extinct. Just think,
he tells us, how much greater the gap between apes and humans
will become when both the highest apes and the lowest people are
exterminated:
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civi-
lized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout
the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes... will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider,
for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope,
than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present
between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.
The common (and false) impression of Darwin's egalitarianism
arises largely from selective quotation. Darwin was strongly at-
tracted to certain peoples often despised by Europeans, and some
later writers have falsely extrapolated to a presumed general atti-
tude. On the Beagle voyage, for example, he spoke highly of African
blacks enslaved in Brazil:
It is impossible to see a negro and not feel kindly towards him; such cheer-
ful, open, honest expressions and such fine muscular bodies; I never saw
any of the diminutive Portuguese with their murderous countenances, with-
out almost wishing for Brazil to follow the example of Hayti.But toward other peoples, particularly the Fuegians of southern-
most South America, Darwin felt contempt: "I believe if the world
was searched, no lower grade of man could be found." Elaborating
later on the voyage, Darwin writes:
Their red skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discor-
dant, their gesticulation violent and without any dignity. Viewing such men,
one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow creatures placed in
the same world. ... It is a common subject of conjecture, what pleasure in
life some of the less gifted animals can enjoy? How much more reasonably
it may be asked with respect to these men.