Despite minoring in it in college, I have never found human history very interesting. I’ve never been able to fully account for this. I think I’m an intelligent person, in possession of a robust, inquisitive mind. I ought to be curious about things like the signing of Magna Carta or the causes and consequences of the Spanish-American War, but I’m just not. I think it’s because I have a hard time resolving one so-called watershed event from the next. I struggle to detect any lasting change across decades or even centuries. It’s too granular. It’s only when I zoom out to the scale of millennia and beyond, when human history begins to dissolve into anthropology, that things start getting interesting.

Because while I don’t much like human history, I do love natural history. It feels like I spend a lot more time thinking about the ancient past or imagining the distant future than I do living in the present. I realize this makes me a poor dharma practitioner, but that’s a different discussion.

All this to say I’ve put fiction aside for now and have begun reading Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man. I’m only about 100 pages in, but I thought I’d share some thoughts while the enthusiasm is still fresh.

A tiny bit of background: Darwin first introduced his theory of evolution by means of natural selection in 1859 when he published On the Origin of Species. In Origin he never explicitly states—although he implies—that his theory extends to humans and mankind shares an ancestry with the other animals. The Descent of Man is where he makes the argument explicit. So far I’m finding The Descent of Man more accessible than Origin, though that might change as I get deeper in.

Darwin drew from the work of a great many naturalists and other scientists to shape his ideas. This first struck me when reading On the Origin of Species just how much of his renown Darwin owes to other researchers—most notably Alfred Russel Wallace, the definitive co-discoverer of natural selection. Darwin readily acknowledges this throughout his work, humbly stating in the intro to Descent of Man,

“This work contains hardly any original facts in regard to man; but as the conclusions at which I arrived, after drawing up a rough draught, appeared to me interesting, I thought that they might interest others.”

In fact, Thomas Huxley published on the same subject eight years earlier in Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature. The myth of the lone genius seems to appeal to our affinity for the hero narrative, but it always seems the hero had a lot of help.

Threaded throughout Descent of Man is Darwin’s notion that mankind lies along a spectrum of development, with the lowest barbarians on one end and civilized man on the other. He presents this as evidence that human intelligence could have evolved from a lower state:

“Nor is the difference slight in moral disposition between a barbarian . . . and a Howard or Clarkson; and in intellect, between a savage who uses hardly any abstract terms and a Newton or Shakespeare. Differences of this kind between the highest men of the highest races and the lowest savages are connected by the finest gradation. Therefore it is possible that they might pass and be developed into each other.”

I will admit I find Darwin’s frankness refreshing. It’s not that I wish to return to a time when such a hierarchy was the default take on human diversity. On the contrary, I prefer to live in the light of subsequent reasoning, such as is argued in The Mismeasure of Man, in which Stephen Jay Gould discredits the conclusions of 18th and 19th century craniometry and polygeny—the idea that humans evolved from separate independent ancestors. But one gets a sense of Darwin’s sincerity in this book. He doesn’t seem to be mincing his words, a defect so common in contemporary writing. Perhaps this is why I’m enjoying this book more than Origin. In his earlier work he intentionally omits humans from the theory, shying away from the topic because he was worried it would “only add to the prejudices against my views.” Perhaps by 1871 he was secure enough in his reputation to tell us what he really thought. He was probably also emboldened by Huxley’s Man’s Place in Nature, maybe even feeling a bit scooped.

Darwin’s chapters on animal intelligence are quite touching. He argues that there’s nothing fundamentally special about human intelligence, beyond degree, and gives numerous examples of nonhuman animals displaying complex thoughts and emotions. He even argues that a sense of beauty, of morality, and even of god are not solely human characteristics and gives examples of other animals exhibiting at least a semblance of these traits. To me this is obvious. Animal sentience is a continuum. The space separating humans from other higher animals is not the vast gulf people imagine. I have a hard time relating to humans who feel set apart from the rest of the animal world. I find it jarring when people lump dogs and cats with tarantulas and lizards under the label “pet.” Or when people use the term “animal” to refer to all non-human mammals, as if an elephant has more in common with a chimpanzee than a man.

The value Darwin places on morality is apparent. On the point of sympathy and its evolution, he states,

“This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honored and practiced by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually becomes incorporated into public opinion.”

This is a big book that will take me some time to finish. Thus I’ve decided to abandon my goal of finishing 30 books this year. My purpose in setting the goal was to establish a solid reading habit, and I think I’ve succeeded. No need to cling to my original plans like zealot. Onward, then.