Man thinks, man groups in societies at a much higher level than any other species on Earth. Because of this other things became even more important than pure physical traits as man found strength in cohesiveness is much more powerful than strength in physical form. For example, in the animal world the old and infirm are killed. Human societies can continue to receive value from the old and infirm because they can contribute to society in non-physical ways. Stephen Hawking would have been offed long ago in a eugenics-driven society.
I can try to find another quote for you that explains it more concisely. Basically he said that a sympathetic society will be more cohesive, will look out for all in it. Because of this every person in the society has allegiance to whole and will fight as one to protect it. This society will be selected over another society that may be physically superior individually but has no sympathy, one that kills imperfect children, that sterilizes its unwanted. They will die out in the long run.
With a sympathetic society the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts, not so with an unsympathetic one. Darwin makes the perfect argument against eugenics.
Ah. But again, that assumes that you belong to a “society.” In the nineteenth century, that meant you were, for instance, a member of the Celtic/AngloSaxon/Norman amalgamation native to England. The Irish tended to be regarded as “other.” And only Oxford-educated African or Indian gentleman had the slightest chance to be considered part of the society.
Therefore, the implication was that European societies were superior to African, for example, because Africans had a regretable tendency to fight tribal wars and enslave one another.
In other words, maybe Bushmen or Blacks were inferior genetically, maybe they were inferior culturally. More likely a combination of both. In any case, they were inferior, in the Darwinian view.
There’s plenty of obvious racism in Darwin’s own tracts.
I couldn’t immediately find the references I’ve consulted in the past, but here’s one site that contains a number of Darwin’s racist comments from The Descent of Man:
http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2009/02/darwin-reader-darwins-racism.html
It’s a bit of a silly site, but the quotes are genuine enough, and one of them even touches specifically on the social aspect of evolution that you mention. (The negro race is less fully developed than whites because they take pleasure in such tings as shrinking and wearing pieces of their enemies, and think it’s noble to commit suicide.)
So what? You're describing to me some supposed process of historical development, not how things "ought" to be. Is there some moral obligation for society to survive? How do you derive actual moral obligation from a mere description of animal behavior conditioned by the environment for survival? All Darwin gave you was a descriptive account of environmental selection of certain behaviors that tend to conserve species, which tells you nothing about why things ought to be that way.
With a sympathetic society the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts, not so with an unsympathetic one. Darwin makes the perfect argument against eugenics.
Why should anybody feel obligated to obey a blind, impersonal evolutionary force? And how can a physical force or power or an effect of physical forces, such as natural selection, be "sympathetic"? Is there some material force of nature that obligates a whole to be greater than the sum of it's parts? The insurrmountable problem you will continually run up against is that you cannot derive an "ought" merely from what is, by reason alone. Darwinism does not make any argument against eugenics at all because if it is taken to its logical conclusion it eviscerates any foundation for morality.
Cordially,