The Road to Eugenics

What was it about Darwinian theory that produced a change in thinking about the value of human life?  First, Darwinism implied that humans arose from animals, and many interpreted this to mean that humans did not have the special position accord them in Judeo-Christian thought.  Instead of being made in the image of God and falling from a pristine state of perfection, humans ascended from some kind of simian.  In explaining the evolution of human mental and moral traits from animals, Darwin and most Darwinists denied the existence of an immaterial and immortal soul, a central tenet of the Judeo-Christian worldview that undergirded the sanctity of human life.  Second, Darwinism emphasized variation within species, which implied biological inequality.  Applying this to humans, many biologists, anthropologists, and social thinkers used Darwinism to justify social and racial inequality.  Third, natural selection and the struggle for existence in Darwin’s theory — based on Malthus’s population principle — also implied that death without reproductive success is the norm in the organic world, and that the death of multitudes of “less fit” organisms is beneficial and fosters progress.  Death had previously been viewed by most Europeans as an evil to overcome, not a beneficial force.  But Darwin perceived some good in this evil.  In concluding The Origin of Species he wrote, “Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.”  Darwin’s theory was thus not just about biological change; it was a matter of life and death.

Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler, p.16-17