We should be so powerful! (Read this sentence with my New York accent as a derisive statement about our false sense of might, not as a literal statement of desire.) For all our mental and technological wizardry, I doubt that we can do much to derail the earth’s history in any permanent sense by the proper planetary time scale of millions of years. Nothing within our power can come close to conditions and catastrophes that the earth has often passed through and beyond. The worst scenario of global warming under greenhouse models yields an earth substantially cooler than many happy and prosperous times of a prehuman past. The megatonnage of the extraterrestrial impact that probably triggered the late Cretaceous mass extinction has been estimated at 10,000 times greater than all the nuclear bombs now stockpiled on earth. And this extinction, wiping out some 50 percent of marine species, was paltry compared to the granddaddy of all—the Permian event some 225 million years ago that might have dispatched up to 95 percent of species. Yet the earth recovered from these superhuman shocks, and produced some interesting evolutionary novelties as a result (consider the potential for mammalian domination, including human emergence, following the removal of dinosaurs).
But recovery and restabilization occur at planetary, not human, time scales—that is, millions of years after the disturbing event. At this scale, we are powerless to harm; the planet will take care of itself, our puny foolishnesses notwithstanding. But this time scale, though natural for planetary history, is not appropriate in our legitimately parochial concern for our own species, and the current planetary configurations that now support us. For these planetary instants—our millennia—we do hold power to impose immense suffering (I suspect that the Permian catastrophe was decidedly unpleasant for the nineteen of twenty species that didn’t survive).
We certainly cannot wipe out bacteria (they have been the modal organisms on earth right from the start, and probably shall be until the sun explodes); I doubt that we can wreak much permanent havoc upon insects as a whole (whatever our power to destroy local populations and species). But we can surely eliminate our fragile selves—and our well-buffered earth might then breathe a metaphorical sigh of relief at the ultimate failure of an interesting but dangerous experiment in consciousness. Global warming is worrisome because it will flood our cities (built so often at sea level as ports and harbors), and alter our agricultural patterns to the severe detriment of millions. Nuclear war is an ultimate calamity for the pain and death of billions, and the genetic maiming of millions in future generations.
Our planet is not fragile at its own time scale, and we, pitiful latecomers in the last microsecond of our planetary year, are stewards of nothing in the long run. Yet no political movement is more vital and timely than modern environmentalism—because we must save ourselves (and our neighbor species) from our own immediate folly. We hear so much talk about an environmental ethic. Many proposals embody the abstract majesty of a Kantian categorical imperative. Yet I think that we need something far more grubby and practical. We need a version of the most useful and ancient moral principle of all—the precept developed in one form or another by nearly every culture because it acts, in its legitimate appeal to self-interest, as a doctrine of stability based upon mutual respect. No one has ever improved upon the golden rule. If we execute such a compact with our planet, pledging to cherish the earth as we would wish to be treated ourselves, she may relent and allow us to muddle through. Such a limited goal may strike some readers as cynical or blinkered. But remember that, to an evolutionary biologist, persistence is the ultimate reward. And human brainpower, for reasons quite unrelated to its evolutionary origin, has the damnedest capacity to discover the most fascinating things, and think the most peculiar thoughts. So why not keep this interesting experiment around, at least for another planetary second or two?
1 | History in Evolution
1 | George Canning’s Left Buttock and the Origin of Species
I KNOW the connection between Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. They conveniently contrived to enter the world on the same day, February 12, 1809, thus providing forgetful humanity with a mnemonic for ordering history. (Thanks also to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson for dying on the same momentous day, July 4, 1826, exactly fifty years after our nation’s official birthdate.)
But what is the connection between Charles Darwin and Andrew Jackson? What can an English gentleman who mastered the abstractions of science hold in common with Old Hickory, who inaugurated the legend (later exploited by Lincoln) of the backwoodsman with little formal education fighting his way to the White House? (Jackson was born on the western frontier of the Carolinas in 1767, but later set up shop in the pioneer territory of Nashville.) This more difficult question requires a long string of connections more worthy of Rube Goldberg than of logical necessity. But let’s have a try, in nine easy steps.
1. Andy Jackson, as a result of his military exploits in and around the ill-fated War of 1812, became a national figure, and ultimately, on this basis, a presidential contender. In a conflict conspicuously lacking in good news, Jackson provided much solace by winning the Battle of New Orleans, our only major victory on land after so many defeats and stalemates. With help from the privateer Jean Lafitte (who was then pardoned by President Madison but soon resumed his old ways), Jackson decisively defeated the British forces on January 8, 1815, and compelled their withdrawal from Louisiana. Cynics often point out, perhaps ungenerously, that Jackson’s victory occurred more than two weeks after the war had officially ended, but no one had heard the news down in the bayous because the treaty had been signed in Ghent and word then traveled no faster than ship.
2. When we were about to withdraw from Vietnam and acknowledge (at least privately) that the United States had lost the war, some supporters of that venture (I was not among them) drew comfort from recalling that, patriotic cant aside, this was not our first military defeat. Polite traditions depict the War of 1812 as a draw, but let’s face it, basically we lost—at least in terms of the larger goal espoused by hawks of that era: the annexation of Canada, at least in part. But we did manage to conserve both territory and face, an important boon to America’s future and a crucial ingredient in Jackson’s growing reputation. Washington, so humiliated just a few months before when British troops burned the White House and the Capitol, rejoiced in two items of news, received in early 1815 in reverse order of their actual occurrence: Jackson’s victory at New Orleans, and the favorable terms of the Treaty of Ghent, signed on December 24, 1814.
3. The Treaty of Ghent restored all national boundaries to their positions before the war; thus, we could claim that we had lost not an inch of territory, even though expansion into Canada had been the not-so-hidden aim of the war’s promoters. The treaty provided for commissions of arbitration to settle other points of dispute between the United States and Canada; all remaining controversies were negotiated peacefully under these provisions, including the establishment of our unfortified boundary, the elimination of naval forces from the Great Lakes, and the settlement of the Saint Lawrence boundary. Thomas Boylston Adams, descendant of John Quincy Adams (who negotiated and signed the treaty), recently wrote of that exemplary document (in his wonderful column “History Looks Ahead,” appearing twice a month in the Boston Globe): “The treaty…ended a war that never should have been begun. Yet its consummation was unbounded good. The peace then confirmed…has never been broken. Its bounty has been the cheerful coexistence of two friendly nations divided by nothing more tangible than an invisible line that runs for 3,000 miles undefended by armed men or armaments.”
4. If the war had not ended, fortunately for us, on such an upbeat, Andy Jackson’s belated victory at New Orleans might have emerged as a bitter joke rather than a symbol of (at least muted) success—and Jackson, deprived of status as a military hero, might never have become president. But why did Britain, in a fit of statesmanship, agree to such a conciliatory treaty, when they held the upper hand militarily? The reasons are complex and based, in part, on expediency
(the coalition that had exiled Napoleon to Elba was coming apart, and more troops might soon be needed in Europe). But much credit must also go to the policies of Britain’s remarkable foreign secretary, Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh. In a secret dispatch sent to the British minister in Washington in 1817, Castlereagh set out his basic policy for negotiation, a stance that had guided the restructuring of Europe at the Congress of Vienna, following the final defeat of Napoleon: “The avowed and true policy of Great Britain in the existing State of the World is to secure if possible, for all states a long interval of repose.”
Three years earlier, Castlereagh had put flesh on these brave words by helping to break the deadlock at Ghent and facilitate a peace treaty that did not take all that Britain could have demanded, thereby leaving the United States with both pride and flexibility for a future and deeper peace with Britain. Negotiations had gone badly at Ghent; anger and stalemate ruled. Then, on his way to Vienna, Castlereagh stopped for two days in Ghent, where, in secret meetings with his negotiators, he advocated conciliation and helped to break the deadlock.
5. We must thank the fortunate tides of history that Castlereagh, rather than his counterpart and rival, the hawkish and uncompromising George Canning, was presiding over Britain’s foreign affairs in 1814. (And so you see, dear reader, we are finally getting to Mr. Canning’s rear end, as promised in the title.) The vagaries of a key incident in 1809 led to this favorable outcome. Canning, then foreign secretary, had been pushing for Castlereagh’s ouster as secretary of war. Castlereagh had sent a British expedition against Napoleon’s naval base at Antwerp, but nature had intervened (through no fault of Castlereagh’s), and the troops were boxed in on the island of Walcheren, dying in droves of typhoid fever. Canning used this disaster to press his advantage.
Meanwhile (this does get complicated), the prime minister, the duke of Portland, suffered a paralytic stroke and eventually had to resign. In the various reshufflings and explanations that follow such an event, Perceval, the new prime minister, showed Castlereagh some of Canning’s incriminating letters. Castlereagh did not challenge Canning’s right to lobby for his removal, but he exploded in fury at Canning’s apparent secrecy in machination. Canning, for his part (and not without justice), replied that he had urged open confrontation of the issue, but that higher-ups (including the king) had imposed secrecy, hoping to paper over the affair and somehow preserve the obvious talents of both men in government.
Castlereagh, to say the least, was not satisfied and, in the happily abandoned custom of his age, insisted upon a duel. The two men and their seconds met on Putney Heath at 6 A.M. on September 21. They fired a first round to no effect, but Castlereagh insisted on a second, of much greater import. Castlereagh was spared the fate of Alexander Hamilton by inches, as Canning’s bullet removed a button from his coat but missed his person. Canning was not so fortunate; though more embarrassed than seriously injured, he took Castlereagh’s second bullet in his left buttock. (Historians have tended to euphemism at this point. The latest biography of Castlereagh holds that Canning got it “through the fleshy part of the thigh,” but I have it on good authority that Canning was shot in the ass.) In any case, both men subsequently resigned.
As the world turns and passions cool, both Canning and Castlereagh eventually returned to power. Canning achieved his burning ambition (cause of his machinations against Castlereagh) to become prime minister, if only briefly, in 1827. Castlereagh came back in Canning’s old job of foreign secretary, where he assured the Treaty of Ghent and presided for Britain at the Congress of Vienna.
6. Suppose Canning had fired more accurately and killed Castlereagh on the spot? Canning, or another of his hawkish persuasion, might have imposed stiffer terms upon the United States and deprived Andy Jackson of his hero’s role. More important for our tale, Castlereagh would have been denied the opportunity to die as he actually did, by his own hand, in 1822. Castlereagh had suffered all his life from periods of acute and debilitating “melancholy” and would, today, almost surely be diagnosed as a severe manic depressive. Attacked by the likes of Lord Byron, Shelley, and Thomas Moore for his foreign policies, and suffering from both overwork and parliamentary reverses, Castlereagh became unreasonably suspicious and downright paranoid. He thought that he was being blackmailed for supposed acts of homosexuality (neither the blackmail nor the sexual orientation has ever been proved). His two closest friends, King George IV and the duke of Wellington, failed to grasp the seriousness of his illness and did not secure adequate protection or treatment. On August 12, 1822, though his wife (fearing the worst) had removed all knives and razors from his vicinity, Castlereagh rushed into his dressing room, seized a small knife that had been overlooked, and slit his throat.
7. Yes, we are getting to Darwin, but it takes a while. Point seven is a simple statement of genealogy: Lord Castlereagh’s sister was the mother of Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle and host to Charles Darwin on a five-year voyage that bred the greatest revolution in the history of biology.
8. Robert FitzRoy took command of the Beagle at age twenty-three, after the previous captain had suffered a mental breakdown and shot himself. FitzRoy was a brilliant and ambitious man. He had been instructed to take the Beagle on a surveying voyage of the South American coast. But FitzRoy’s own plans extended far beyond a simple mapping trip, for he hoped to set a new standard of scientific observation on a much broader scale. To accomplish his aim, he needed more manpower than the Admiralty was willing to supply. As a person of wealth, he decided to take some extra passengers at his own expense, to beef up the Beagle’s scientific mettle.
A popular scientific myth holds that Darwin sailed on the Beagle as official ship’s naturalist. This is not true. The official naturalist was the ship’s surgeon, Robert McKormick. Darwin, who disliked McKormick and did eventually succeed him as naturalist (after the disgruntled McKormick “invalided out,” to use the euphemism of his time), originally sailed as a supernumerary passenger at FitzRoy’s discretion.
Why, then, did FitzRoy tap Darwin? The obvious answer—that Darwin was a promising young scientist who could aid FitzRoy’s plans for improved observation—may be partly true, but does not get to the heart of FitzRoy’s reasons. First of all, Darwin may have possessed abundant intellectual promise, but he had no scientific credentials when he sailed on the Beagle—a long-standing interest in natural history and bug collecting to be sure, but neither a degree in science nor an intention to enter the profession (he was preparing for the ministry at the time).
FitzRoy took Darwin along primarily for a much different, and personal, reason. As an aristocratic captain, and following the naval customs of his time, FitzRoy could have no social contact with officers or crew during long months at sea. He dined alone and conversed with his men only in an official manner. FitzRoy understood the psychological toll that such enforced solitude could impose, and he remembered the fate of the Beagle’s previous skipper. He decided on a course of action that others had followed in similar circumstances: He decided to take along, at his own expense, a supernumerary passenger to serve, in large part, as a mealtime companion for conversation. He therefore advertised discreetly among his friends for a young man of appropriate social status who could act as both social companion and scientific aid. Charles Darwin, son of a wealthy physician and grandson of the great scholar Erasmus Darwin, fitted the job description admirably.
But most captains did not show such solicitude for their own mental health. Why did FitzRoy so dread the rigors of solitude? We cannot know for sure, but the answer seems to lie, in good part, with the suicide of his uncle, Lord Castlereagh. FitzRoy, by Darwin’s own account, was fearful of a presumed hereditary predisposition to madness, an anxiety that he embodied in the suicide of his famous uncle, whom he so much resembled in looks as well as temperament. Moreover, FitzRoy’s fears proved well founded, for he did break down and temporarily relinquish his command in Valparaiso during a period of overwork and tension. On November 8
, 1834, Darwin wrote to his sister Catherine: “We have had some strange proceedings on board the Beagle…Capt. FitzRoy has for the last two months, been working extremely hard and at the same time constantly annoyed…. This was accompanied by a morbid depression of spirits, and a loss of all decision and resolution. The Captain was afraid that his mind was becoming deranged (being aware of his hereditary predisposition)…. He invalided and Wickham was appointed to the command.”
Late in life, and with some hindsight, Darwin mused on the character of Captain FitzRoy in his autobiography:
FitzRoy’s character was a singular one, with many very noble features: he was devoted to his duty, generous to a fault, bold, determined, indomitably energetic, and an ardent friend to all under his sway…. He was a handsome man, strikingly like a gentleman, with highly courteous manners, which resembled those of his maternal uncle, the famous Lord Castlereagh…. FitzRoy’s temper was a most unfortunate one. This was shown not only by passion but by fits of long-continued moroseness…. He was also somewhat suspicious and occasionally in very low spirits, on one occasion bordering on insanity. He was extremely kind to me, but was a man very difficult to live with on the intimate terms which necessarily followed from our messing by ourselves in the same cabin. [Darwin does mean “eating,” and we find no sexual innuendo either here or anywhere else in their relationship.]
I am struck by the similarity, according to Darwin’s description, between FitzRoy and his uncle, Lord Castlereagh, not only in physical characteristics and social training, but especially in the chronicle of a mental history so strongly implying a lifelong pattern of severe manic depression. In other words, I think that FitzRoy was correct in his self-diagnosis of a tendency to hereditary mental illness. Castlereagh’s dramatic example had served him well as a warning, and his decision, so prompted, to take Darwin on the Beagle was history’s reward.