Nicholas Hirsch HIST404; Midterm Essay 9.30.

10

A Letter from the Anglican Pastor Huxtable Greeneway to His Grandson

Dear Daniel;

Your father has informed me of your recent fascination with natural history and the work of this

fellow Charles Darwin. Being good Anglicans, your parents are justifiably concerned; you put yourself

in danger, Daniel, both spiritually and intellectually, with these studies. Nevertheless, I am hesitant to

discourage you in your pursuit of understanding the world around you, which God in his unfathomable

grace has given us to live. You might be surprised to know that you come by your curiosity naturally,

but for most of my many years I have made it a point to read the latest works of the natural historians,

not just so that I may “know my enemy”, but also because there is some merit to be found in the study

of the natural world. So believe me when I say that I am well aware of the attraction therein.

I write to you now, at the end of my life, to share what I have seen, so that hopefully you can

progress forewarned against the pitfalls of Godlessness and secularism that have tainted education in

this country in recent decades, thanks to the influence of the French, the Unitarians and the atheists

who've tried to take over our civilized world. I have read Darwin's Origin of Species, and understand

how you might mistake the dangerous ideology that can be found there for some profound revelation of

the order of things. However, I know of Darwin's heretical ancestry, and where the bulk of his ideas

come from. Nothing he has written is truly original, except perhaps that he has managed to finally put

forth a mechanism by which God can be extricated entirely from His own Creation, supplanting

scripture with lust and violence. These ideas will be the downfall of right-thinking science.

You are young, still, but you may recall the publication of a book called Vestiges of the Natural
Nicholas Hirsch HIST404; Midterm Essay 9.30.10

History of Creation. You were a child, then, and lucky to have been living here in the countryside, far

from the filth of Liverpool. The Church (then as now) was under constant siege, fighting back against

the tide of Unitarianism and deism, atheism and all the other perversions of human reason that were

infecting the city. Children were in danger, not just from living stacked like so much cord wood

without proper air to breath, but also from the intellectual degredations of the time1.

You must understand, the Unitarians were everywhere trying to pull God from the world, and

replace Him with blind mechanism, the so-called “natural law” (as if any Law could proceed without

divine oversight, as laid forth in scripture). Nevertheless, we fought them on every front, and it was in

the heart of this struggle that Vestiges was published in 1844, so named, perhaps, because it tried to

show Man inverted, the nadir rather than the pinnacle of God's creation. In it, the author attempts to

claim that man is the descendant of animals (barely better), that animals in kind are merely less trained

in their intellect than men. He speaks of “clever dogs and wicked horses”2, and takes this all as

evidence that the French are correct in reducing the state of man to a mere extension of some “natural”

order which developed from a kind of idiotic material world, lacking guidance. The author, perhaps in

shame or cowardice, has yet to this day to reveal his identity.

Before this, there was an interesting piece of writing by one Georges Cuvier, called The Animal

Kingdom, in which that Frenchman rightfully followed a more traditional approach to the study of

natural history, which you should read. Cuvier, though not often enough, allowed for God's Law, and

treated the study of nature with respect as a “great catalogue, in which all created beings have suitable

names”3. In this, you should pay attention, for note that he does not bother with this notion of

1 James Secord, “Prologue: Devils or Angels,” and “Science in the City,” in Victorian
Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the
Natural History of Creation (Chicago, 2000): 1-6, 191-221.
2 Anonymous, “Mental Constitution of Animals,” in Vestiges of the Natural History of
Creation, 1st ed., 1844, reprinted in James Secord, ed. (Chicago, 1994): 351.
3 Georges Cuvier, “Introduction,” in The Animal Kingdom: Arranged in Conformity with its
Organization, trans. and abridged by H. M’Murtrie (G&C&H Carvill, 1833): 12.
Nicholas Hirsch HIST404; Midterm Essay 9.30.10

“transformation” which so fascinated his predecessor in the field, Georges-Louis LeClerc, Comte de

Buffon . Buffon did not believe in creation as a constant under God's ministration, but rather put forth

a theory more in line with the deists, in whose estimation Creation is nothing more than a great clock

work mechanism, unwatched and perhaps even un-created. Buffon believed that animals and plants all

change over time (without explaining how, or why), and that the way we classify living things should

therefore be understood at all times as an arbitrary system. You can see, I am sure, how the author of

Vestiges derives his conclusions from this argument.

As for your Charles Darwin, the heretical instinct runs deep in his family – his grandfather, you

see, was an early Unitarian of the lowest order (that is to say, strong in his convictions), with a

penchant for corrupting the study of natural history with his own perverted verses. Worse yet, this was

no stylish affectation; in a poem published in 1805, after his death, Erasmus Darwin used some of the

“findings” of the natural historians of his day to compose a poetic work called The Temple of Nature,

which it was my misfortune to read soon after. With barely a nod to the Heavenly Father, Darwin

launched into some bizarre creation story, and without quoting directly I will tell you that some of his

descriptions of the natural history are downright erotic4! The verses are so sensual, I would never hope

to see a woman read them, lest she be overcome by emotion and fall directly into sin.

That old scoundrel's own ideas were not even original to himself; rather, he borrowed heavily

from an earlier perversion of the study of nature, written by one Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis

almost thirty years before even I was born (and this may tell you how heresies proliferate across the

ages, tempting each new generation of good Christian with the same old lies!). Maupertuis, in his ego,

wrote a then-famous book called The Earthly Venus, in which he attempted to apply Isaac Newton's

4 Erasmus Darwin, The Temple of Nature: Or, the origin of society: A Poem, with philosophical notes

(1803): “Canto I. Production of Life.”

: for a particularly rousing example of Darwin's eroticized “nature”, see his description of the origin of Organic Life on
pages 14-15, lines 269 to 280.
Nicholas Hirsch HIST404; Midterm Essay 9.30.10

theory of gravitation to living organisms. He imagined a “force of attraction” which draws creatures

together inexorably, and also envisioned a world in which, like your young Darwin, God's creatures

have changed their essential forms over time according to these attractions5.

The line between heresy and study is thin, my child, and easily crossed. These men (with the

possible exception of the elder Darwin) have never believed themselves to be evil or sinful in their

intellectual pursuits, but they have tended to forget God, or to assign Him some lesser role in the

ordering of His Creation. They have tried to make Man no better than an animal, to give reason to the

animals, and to blur the clear lines of distinction between the two. They have attempted to show a

world in which God does not have an active part, and while they themselves might believe in His

teachings (expect, again, Erasmus Darwin), their own works pave a broad avenue for the unwary into

atheistic ways of thinking.

So I leave you with this advice, and beg you at the beginning of your own young life to heed to

words of an old man at the end of his: study what you will, and learn all that you can of the World, of

Nature and her History, but be aware of the traps that have led so many others astray. Do not be

tempted by theories about the “Origin” of species – their only true origin is in the will of God! Be open

to new knowledge, but remember to test it always against Scripture and your own faith. Failing that,

you are lost indeed. Finally, remember that your grandfather loves you and wants only the best for

you.

Fondest Regards,

Huxtable Greeneway

5 Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, “Concerning

the Origins of Animals,” The Earthy Venus [1753],
translated by Simone Boas (Johnson Reprint
Corporation, 1966): 32-47.
Nicholas Hirsch HIST404; Midterm Essay 9.30.10

Timetable:

1744 - Abraham Trembley, “Memoirs Concerning Natural History of the Polyp”

1753 - Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, “Concerning the Origins of Animals,” The Earthy

Venus

1781 - “Huxtable” born

1803 – Erasmus Darwin, The Temple of Nature

1833 - Georges Cuvier, “Introduction,” in The Animal Kingdom: Arranged in Conformity with

its Organization

1844 – Anonymous, Vestiges

1859 – Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

1861 – Huxtable's letter