And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?
Several distinct theories of evolution or “transmutation” were developed in the 19th century. A notable position taken by some natural philosophers at the time was the belief in a transmutative force that pushed lifeforms to evolve to the “ideal state” (white, European humans). Natural philosophy fed into and was fed by preexisting biases of the 19th and 20th centuries, leading to a form of racism that was ostensibly backed by the science of the day.
One belief that was prevalent in early evolutionary theory was the belief that human races evolved separately as different species at different levels of advancement, instead of as a single species with a variety of traits (though it’s important to note that the view was contested– Darwin did not believe this, though his writing still features racist implications about nonwhite humans in various parts of the world.) An aspect of “scientific” racism that many people today might still recognize was the practice of phrenology, which involves the association of skull size and shape with intelligence and was used as a way to separate “races” during this time.
We see a literary take on Darwinian ideas of evolution in HG Wells’ The Time Machine, where the Time Traveler discovers that in the far future the ruling class of humans have lost their intelligence and are beautiful, but docile, while the working class have become increasingly monstrous due to being confined underground. Wells was a (self-described) socialist, his political views distinctly more radical than many of the upper-class natural historians at the time. In The Time Machine, the placidity of the Eloi is played in part for horror, as is the horror of the transformation of the subterranean Morlocks. At the same time, however, the Morlocks are never considered sympathetic, only threatening in the implication that they will become an issue in the future of humanity if it continues to follow the current path.
Wells’ commentary on contemporary ideas of race and evolution also appears in his science fiction in War of the Worlds, quoted at the beginning of this blog post, where he very much plays for horror the colonization of England by a more “advanced” race. Characters repeatedly compare the English humans being killed by the Martians to dodos, already known for having been devastated by contact with human sailors. The book provides a recontextualization of the English worldview of the time in its horror and invasion elements.
Period science fiction is a fascinating way to look at scientific advancements, and certainly merits further study. Wells' political views, not discussed in depth here, also provide interesting insights into how members of different political movements interacted with new knowledge about humanity and evolution.
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