When it comes to sorting out the moral implications, those who champion evolutionary theory present a decidedly disunited front. Richard Dawkins believes that evolutionary theory rests on the assumption that the universe is utterly devoid of good and evil, and that we are free to construct our own Ten Commandments. Steven Pinker has suggested that infanticide is natural, and that we therefore ought not to be so morally censorious to those who kill their young. Some like Francis Fukuyama and Larry Arnhart have even tried to make an argument that evolutionary theory is fundamentally conservative, supporting marriage and the family as essential evolutionary structures.

What did Darwin think? Perhaps he might help us sort things out. After all, if anyone knows the real implications of evolutionary theory for morality, it should be the man himself. We find Darwin's account of morality in his Descent of Man, a work published about a decade after his more famous Origin of Species.

As the Descent makes crystal clear, Darwin himself considered morality—or more accurately, the stunning variety of moralities—to be mere byproducts of evolution. Nature did not aim at creating any particular type of morality, any more than nature intended to create different types of claws or differently colored plumage on birds. Whatever works best in the struggle to survive of these particular human beings at this particular place and time is selected. I emphasize whatever to wake up "conservatives" like Fukuyama and Arnhart who believe that they can harness evolution in service to "traditional" morality. Since the particulars vary, moralities vary.

For Darwin, our "moral faculties" were not original and inherent. Morality has its roots in our evolved social nature. Pre-humans who lived in groups survived better than loners. Any traits that contributed to social cohesiveness in particular groups were kept in the winners' gene pool.

These "traits" are what we call morality. Not abandoning children is "moral" because those pre-humans that didn't abandon their children, obviously had a greater number of children to hand on a complex of feelings and behaviors that we could call collectively "not abandoning children" genes. We consider marriage moral territory because long ago males happened to stick with females and that enhanced the survival rate of females and offspring. Heterosexuality was selected over homosexuality because only heterosexuals leave offspring. Not lying added to social cohesiveness, so the instinct to tell the truth prevailed.

That might look like the moral implications of evolutionary theory are "conservative," until we look a little more closely.

As I said above, the problem with evolutionary theory lies in the "whatever." Let's look at Darwin's evolutionary account of  "conscience." For Darwin, conscience wasn't a divine voice within, but one more result of natural selection. He described it as a "feeling of dissatisfaction which invariably results . . . from any unsatisfied instinct." Our social instincts are deeper and older than our evolved "moral" traits. Deeper and older means a stronger need to be satisfied, so that we "feel" bad when we try to do something that goes against our original social instincts. 

But don't forget the "whatever." The kind of conscience you develop depends upon the particular society you happened to have evolved within. In Darwin's lovely example,

"If . . . men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering. Nevertheless the bee, or any other social animal, would in our supposed case gain, as it appears to me, some feeling of right and wrong, or a conscience. . . . In this case an inward monitor would tell the animal that it would have been better to have followed one impulse rather than the other. The one course ought to have been followed: the one would have been right and the other wrong."

For human beings, then, there are as many "consciences" as there are particular societies. They aren't right or wrong, well-formed or perverted. Just different, like bird plumage. Moral relativism therefore has a natural foundation.

So, Darwin reminds us, the "murder of infants has prevailed on the largest scale throughout the world, and has met with no reproach." In many societies, "infanticide, especially of females, has been thought to be good for the tribe, or at least not injurious." Suicide is no different. In "former times" it was "not generally considered as a crime, but rather from the courage displayed as an honorable act. . . . For the loss to a nation of a single individual is not felt." Monogamy? A fairly recent, but entirely transitory evolutionary phenomenon. If the conditions change so that polygamy gives an edge to evolutionary survival, so be it.

Interestingly enough, Darwin tried to steer away from the implications he himself drew by ranking evolved moral traits. But to do so, he not only violated a principle of evolutionary theory (evolution doesn't aim at any result) but stepped right into the justification of racism and eugenics.

If there are better and worse evolved moral traits among different peoples, then you can rank the races or "sub-species" of human beings accordingly.  As Darwin stated matter-of-factly, the "western nations of Europe immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors and stand at the summit of civilization."

That wasn't just an assertion about ancient ancestors. The "lesser" races around today were less developed evolutionary varieties—that is, far closer than the white Europeans to the "former savage progenitors." Since natural selection must be the cause of the existence of these different races, Darwin asserted quite frankly that the various races must necessarily have different intellectual and moral capacities. The "American aborigines, Negroes, and Europeans differ as much from each other in mind as any three races that can be named." As we have seen, the Europeans came out on top.

But as with all of nature, the different human races created by natural selection were necessarily and beneficially locked in the severest struggle for survival. This argument translated directly to his assessment of the evolutionary history of human races, and the necessary and beneficial extinction of the "less favored" races. How blunt could he be?

"The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous [i.e., more human-looking] apes . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope . . . the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla."

Darwin's evolutionary prediction: the European race will inevitably emerge as the distinct species "human being," and all the transitional forms, like the gorilla and the Negro—will be extinct.

No reason to shed tears. Natural selection naturally picks off all the weak. That's how evolution goes forward. The strong survive. The weak are eliminated, whether weak races or weak individuals.

That meant for Darwin, that when we tender-hearted human beings interfered with evolution, we dragged humanity back down the evolutionary slope. In Darwin's cold words,

"We civilized men . . . do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. . . . Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."

What should be done to prevent the European race from unwinding evolution, allowing the gene pool to be flooded by the unfit? Let the principles of natural selection be applied without obstruction. "Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence, and if he is to advance still higher he must remain subject to a severe struggle."

While he didn't call for direct extermination of the weak, Darwin did believe that the unfit shouldn't be allowed to breed at all. As for the fit, "there should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring."

What does this mean? Forced sterilization? The end of monogamy? Breeding camps for the hyper-fit and concentration camps for the unfit? Darwin was purposely vague, but ended with the ominous remark: "All do good service who aid toward this end." Well, that's morality according to Darwin. Again, it ain't pretty, but all must agree on one thing. Darwin correctly drew the logical moral implications from his evolutionary theory. It's hard for the most adamant advocates of Darwin to recall the horrors of the 20th century—to bring to mind all those who thought they were doing "good service" by the eugenic elimination of the unfit—and not squirm a bit.