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Darwin and la Difference
 I
have never been able to believe in Darwin. He tried to deny the essential difference
between man and beast, a difference I can only regard as irreducible, and I
have known plenty of both.
 To
put it simply, animals have brains,
but man also has a mind, a very distinct kind of soul. Man can calculate,
imagine, moralize, form abstract concepts, and perform many other mental
operations of which no animal is capable. Animals have sensation and memory
— the power of association — and not much else. They may be
very beautiful, but they lack the sense of beauty.
The difference is so vast and profound that Western man
used to take it for granted. Of course man was immeasurably superior to
any animal! Each had its own excellence, but man had no rival for intelligence
in any “beast that wants discourse of reason,” as Shakespeare
puts it: he was indeed “the paragon of animals.” If our furry and
scaly friends were still evolving, none of them appeared to be gaining on us.
It was only in fairly recent times, in an age of revolt
against the divine, that a materialist philosophy arose to argue that the
human and the subhuman are the same in principle, that life emerged from
raw matter by sheer chance, and that over eons the simple amoeba
developed (or “evolved”) into “higher” life forms.
Charles Darwin found a receptive audience for this dubious idea among
educated humans who were weary of the Christian faith.
Darwin’s theory of evolution, of man’s
descent from more or less simian ancestors, now has a stranglehold on
Western intellectual life despite its obvious falsity. The notion of a continuity
betwixt man and beast has a powerful appeal to people who seek the false
but clear explanation for countless phenomena.
Like its contemporary fallacy, Marxism, Darwinism had a
mighty impact on history, except that Marxism has all but expired and its
Darwinist twin is still going strong. The Marxists made the fatal error of
predicting events in the (historically) short term; whereas most of
Darwin’s avatars wisely confine themselves to making prophecies over
such long periods as to be virtually unfalsifiable.
![[Breaker quote for
Darwin and la Difference: The beasts and beauty]](2008breakers/080205.gif) So it
is that Christopher Hitchens, a verbally brilliant man, has managed to
prosper in two separate careers: first as a highly plausible Marxist, and then,
when the Marxist creed bit the dust in our time, as an equally facile apostle
of Darwinism. I respect his rare genius and have no doubt that he could
flourish just as well in any other environment — Muslim or Mormon, let
us say.
In his classic Everlasting Man, To put it another way, why is there an absolute and
impassable gulf between creatures who get a collective kick out of Red
Skelton and Benny Hill, and those who just don’t? I know of no signs
that clams have even the most rudimentary sense of humor. Correct me if
I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve missed something. It wouldn’t be
the first time.
And by the way, do the females of other species, some of
which are monogamous, point out their mates’ annoying errors,
foibles, and bad habits, or is this too a human trait? And do they take hours
getting ready for a big night, such as an anniversary? Do any of them have
the equivalent of a beauty shop or a manicure salon? I didn’t think so.
Other animals’ females, frankly, are not very feminine. Ours are.
Only ours are, if you ask me. We are, after all, the only species
that bellows, “Vive la difference!”
Iguanas and snails may know, and in their way enjoy, la
difference, but not the way we do. Even chimps, supposedly our
evolutionary next of kin, don’t seem to cultivate the gallantry that for
us (excepting feminists, of course) is normative.
I could go on and on, but let’s just say that Darwin
was, well, out of his tree.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2008 by the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation. This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation |
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