Famous Quotes and Poems

Charles Darwin – The lower animals, like man, feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery

by Jennie Richards · Published March 28, 2016 · Updated April 30, 2016

Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) was a famous British naturalist who formed the theory of evolution and wrote the legendary book, The Origin of Species by Natural Selection in 1859. Darwin’s theory argues that all species, humans and non-human animals, originate and evolved from a common ancestry, and this branching pattern of evolution is founded on a process he called natural selection. Darwin spent five years traveling around the world at 22 years old collecting and gathering material and conducting extensive research that led to his theory and ultimately established him in the highest scientific circles.

Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection, Not About Survival of the Fittest

Darwin’s theory of natural selection refers to a process where an organism contains the necessary advantageous characteristics to successfully reproduce and adapt to its environment, and leave more of its genes in the gene pool. Darwin’s theory has been associated with the phrase “survival of the fittest,” but Darwin only borrowed and used that phrase as a metaphor for “better adapted for immediate, local environment.” The phrase has been misconstrued and misunderstood to suggest that only the fit prevail over the weak and somehow this is a license to justify subjugating, harming, exploiting or killing other non-human animals because we have the ability to do it—or harming other humans because they are weaker. But this is wrong, and not based in Darwinian theory at all, and “survival of the fittest” is not a phrase used by biologists to mean natural selection. “Survival” means reproduction and “fitness” suggests reproduction that results from organisms that are best adapted to a given environment are more likely to survive and have offspring. It does not refer to being physically stronger or faster, only better adapted. Darwin acknowledged the sentience of animals like humans and recognized their suffering and feeling pain, and emotions, no different than humans. This has moral implications for the value of human and non-human animals being one not superior to another. Here is a quote from Darwin about our relationship to animals:

“There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties…. The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind. The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man. We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention and curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.”

From Darwin’s writings in The Descent of Man, Darwin considered that animals were thinking, feeling, sentient beings:

“… the lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. Happiness is never better exhibited than by young animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, etc., when playing together, like our own children. Even insects play together, as has been described by that excellent observer, P. Huber (7. ‘Recherches sur les Moeurs des Fourmis,’ 1810, p. 173.), who saw ants chasing and pretending to bite each other, like so many puppies.”

And from Darwin’s notebooks, he says,

“Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of a deity, more humble and I believe true to consider him created from animals.”

Quote from “Omniverous or Vegetarian? What Famous Naturalists Think About It,” by Professor Luis Vallejo Rodríguez, Spain, 1996, Darwin wrote:

“The grading of forms, organic functions, customs and diets showed in an evident way that the normal food of man is vegetable like the anthropoids and apes and that our canine teeth are less developed than theirs and that we are not destined to compete with wild beasts or carnivorous animals.”

Quote from an article in the Souvenir book of the 1957 IVU Congress in India

Shows the common and persistent myth that one must eat flesh in order to be strong has no foundation in fact; but the exact contrary is true. Charles Darwin addresses this in one of his letters:

“The most extraordinary workers I ever saw, the labourers in the mines of Chili, live exclusively on vegetable food, including many seeds of leguminous plants.”

“It is usual for the copper miners of Central Chilli to carry loads of ore of two hundred pounds weight up eighty perpendicular yards twelve times a day; and their diet is entirely vegetarian – a breakfast of figs and small loaves of bread, a dinner of boiled beans, and a supper of roasted wheat.”

Quote from his Notebook B: