The Lost World

[The following is Episode 12 of my 16-part documentary series entitled Larger than Life, about the role that beliefs play in shaping the events of our civilization.]

            The workmen could not believe what they had found.  Digging in Paris, France, in 1795, they unearthed what should not have been there.  For what they had brought up, deep from the bowels of the earth, were bones – animal bones, but such as did not belong to any animal that was common to France.  For these were the remains of large elephants, and elephants, as any rational man understood, lived only in Asia, or in Africa, not in Paris, France, unless they belonged to the circus.  And yet here was evidence that in Paris’s distant past, elephants roamed the countryside freely, and made it their natural habitat.  But the workmen were about to encounter an even bigger shock.  For when the bones were inspected by Georges Cuvier, a young naturalist employed at the local natural history museum, he announced that they belonged to a species of elephant unlike any that presently existed in the world.  What the workmen had in fact discovered was a lost world, one totally unlike our own, which had existed at some remote age, and had disappeared in the distant mists of time.  It would be the first of many “lost worlds” unearthed and unleashed upon a perplexed generation, who would be forced to reexamine its most cherished beliefs about creation, about life, and about our ancient history.  The legacy of these “lost worlds”, in fact, would be to shake the modern world to its core, forcing its people to rethink their place in the universe, their destiny, and their very reason for existence.

            George Cuvier’s shocking announcement about the existence of an extinct elephant species that had formerly lived in Paris, France would be the first of many in his long, distinguished, and controversial career.  He was not afraid of controversy, or of challenging the orthodox views of the establishment.  He was, after all, working in the employ of one of the most revolutionary figures of modern times, Napoleon Bonaparte.  And Napoleon’s enthusiasm for scientific discovery was nearly as great as his enthusiasm for world conquest.  When Cuvier encountered the remains of reptiles and other species that had been unearthed in a French gypsum quarry, he would also declare that these belonged to creatures that no longer existed on the earth.  And when the army of Revolutionary France shipped to Paris from the Netherlands a pair of fossil jaws more than three feet long, which others had suggested were the jaws of a whale, Cuvier proclaimed instead that they belonged to a huge, extinct marine lizard.  But his most memorable announcement came when the fossil remains of large winged creatures, discovered in Germany, were brought to his attention.  He identified these as belonging to an ancient species of flying reptiles, which he named “Pterodactyls”. 

            The existence of fossils, and of mysterious creatures unfamiliar to the peoples who had discovered their remains, had been known long before Cuvier’s time.  In previous centuries, they were often assumed to be the remains of animals that still existed, in some unknown region of the world, but that no longer lived in the place where they were found.  But around the year 1500, some persons began to suggest that these fossils were evidences of prehistoric plants and animals that had become extinct.  Others contended that they were freaks of nature.  And those with a more religious disposition even argued that fossils had been created by the devil, to confuse the pious.  But in the 1700’s religious authority was breaking down, particularly in France, and as new fossils were being unearthed in the early eighteenth century, these were looked at in a fresh light.  In 1820, an English surgeon and amateur fossil collector named Gideon Mantell was visiting a patient in Sussex.  His wife, who had accompanied him on the trip and shared his hobby of collecting fossils, discovered what appeared to be a large tooth in a piece of sandstone.  Mantell returned to the area many times after this initial discovery, and asked the workmen employed in the local rock quarry to alert him to any unusual fossil finds.  The men discovered more teeth, along with some bones, including parts of a huge one, and Mantell concluded that these belonged to one or more very large reptiles.  Other experts, including Cuvier, disagreed with his conclusions, but Mantell was convinced that he was right.  Comparing the teeth that he had found with those of living reptiles, he found a close match with the Central American iguana.  But based upon the size of his fossilized teeth, Mantell asserted that this extinct reptile must have been over fifty feet long.  Other amateur fossil hunters also took up the art of reconstructing their finds, but many didn’t share Cuvier’s and Mantell’s talent for anatomy.  Thomas Jefferson, for example, upon finding the remains of a very large animal, declared that it belonged to a huge prehistoric lion.  Other experts later realized that what he had actually found was an extinct giant sloth, but they still credited him with the discovery, naming it Megalonyx jeffersoni.

Iguanodon (Lifesize Replica)

            Cuvier set about to explain what had happened to these ancient monsters, and considered three possibilities: 1) they had become extinct, 2) they had evolved over time into some different type of animal, more familiar to the modern world, or 3) they were still around, but had migrated to some other region.  The first two explanations were still controversial to his more religious contemporaries, because they seemed to contradict the Bible, such as Ecclesiastes 3:14 which says, “"I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: Nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it. . . ."  Cuvier tended to favor the extinction idea, which even found some acceptance among believers of the Bible.  After all, they contended, it must have been some terrible catastrophe that killed off these creatures, and what greater catastrophe was known to man than the Biblical Great Flood?  And it was easy to imagine Noah shrinking from the task of dragging some of these monsters aboard the Ark.  But the idea that these animals must still be around was the least controversial to many.  Even Thomas Jefferson considered this explanation: when he dispatched Lewis and Clark to explore the wilds of North America, he fully expected them to find living specimens of at least some of his fossils.

Biblical Extinction Theory?

            Civilization in the nineteenth century was prepared to take a fresh look at the world, its origins, and its place in the universe.  Revolutions in scientific thinking, led by Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton had demonstrated, in the 1500’s and 1600’s, not only that the world was not at the center of the universe, but that the universe itself obeyed fixed, immutable laws.  The motions of the planets, the force of gravity, and other great natural phenomena which had mystified and awed mankind from the earliest times could now be explained in terms of mathematical equations and geometrical relationships.  In the 1700’s, the Age of Enlightenment introduced a new crop of thinkers and revolutionaries, such as Voltaire and Rousseau in France, Jeremy Bentham and David Hume in Great Britain, and Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in America, who sought to build on these scientific advances by creating a whole new outlook based on rational thought, rather than religious faith.  Freedom of thought and expression were championed in political and cultural life, while science was relied upon as the ultimate guide in explaining the workings of nature, and even human behavior itself.  These revolutionary thinkers were impatient for change, and yearned for an understanding of things based on open-minded contemplation and careful experimentation.

            Even long before the Age of Enlightenment, people had contemplated alternative explanations for how the earth began, and how life had arisen on it, which departed from the Creation myths that were traditionally believed and accepted by the population at large.  The Greek philosopher Anaximander, who lived more than two thousand five hundred years ago, suggested that animals change over time in order to adapt to new environments, with new species arising out of old ones, and that even human beings had descended from some different type of animal.  But by the 1700’s, new perspectives, new ideas, and new discoveries came together to produce a more general challenge to orthodox views of creation.  In France, the philosopher Denis Diderot entertained his own ideas of evolution, proposing that life arose spontaneously on earth, and that new animals appeared through random mutations of existing ones.  “Who knows,” he once wrote, “if this is not the nursery of a second generation of beings, separated from this generation by an inconceivable interval of centuries and successive developments?”  The French astronomer Pierre Laplace, building upon Isaac Newton’s theory of gravitation, and his ideas on how stars had been formed through gravitation, produced a model of the universe which explained how the earth and other planets came into being, by condensing out of rotating clouds of hot gases, or nebula.  It is said that Napoleon Bonaparte once listened to Laplace’s theory of creation with great interest, but was moved to ask him where God fit into it.  To this Laplace replied, “I have no need for God in my hypothesis.”  Evolutionary thinking received another spur in the eighteenth century with the birth of modern geology.  The German scientist Abraham Werner, studying rock strata, argued that the earth’s geological features had been formed by the gradual retreat of a worldwide ocean.  While his theory suggested that the earth was much older than theologians believed, it also lent support to those who argued that species had become extinct because of the Great Flood.  But Cuvier, in his studies, had realized that different strata of rocks contained entirely different fossils.  He believed, as had the ancient Egyptians, that there had been more than one great flood.  For Cuvier, however, this was not proof of evolution, only that each age saw the preponderance of different survivors.  His more religious-minded followers went further, arguing that perhaps there had been fresh acts of divine creation after every great deluge, as if God was trying a different design, to replace the one that He had just erased.  But there were challenges to Werner’s view of geologic history.  In 1795, a Scottish geologist, James Hutton, published a book called the Theory of the Earth, which explained its features in terms of continuous and gradual geologic processes, rather than catastrophic ones.  This was a fatal blow to the ideas of Cuvier and his followers, but not to evolutionary thinking.  In fact, it paved the way for a radical new explanation of why different life forms seemed to appear in successive ages of history.

            By the early 1800’s, the idea of evolution was “in the air”, but nobody had been able to make a case compelling enough to win the general approval of scientists and intellectuals, and capture the popular imagination as well.  What was needed was a mechanism: something that explained how new and different kinds of plants and animals could appear on the earth.  A bold attempt at creating such a mechanism was made by one of Cuvier’s own employees at the French natural history museum, the Chevalier de Lamarck.  Lamarck argued that simple organisms were being created all the time by some natural life force, interacting with physical matter on the earth.  And then, these organisms evolved and changed by passing on, to future generations, beneficial characteristics that they had developed during their lifetimes.  Lamarck pointed to the giraffe as a prime example, contending that generations of stretching their necks to reach foliage in tall trees had resulted in long necks being a permanent feature of their descendants.  But Lamarck’s hypothesis was easily refuted by critics.  If one were to cut off the tail of a mouse, for example, all of the mouse’s descendants would still have tails.  What, then, did account for the giraffe’s long neck, or the elephant’s snout, or the ability of birds to fly?  A new, more compelling explanation would come from a British naturalist.

            Born in England in 1809 to a prosperous family, Charles Darwin initially aspired to follow in his father’s footsteps, as a physician.  But while in medical school, he realized that the practice of medicine sickened him: he couldn’t stomach dissection, detested surgery, and cringed at the sight of blood.  He transferred to Cambridge, to prepare for an alternate career as an Anglican minister, where he found himself drawn to the study of natural history.  At the recommendation of his professors, he embarked on a voyage that would change his life, and radically impact his society’s views about the origins of life on earth.  During his five-year voyage, on the Beagle, Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands, and was impressed by what he saw.  For in spite of the fact that there were only a few basic types of plants and animals on these islands, he observed that each type took on a wide variety of forms, as if each variety had branched out from a common ancestor.  And yet, in spite of this evidence for some type of evolutionary process, Darwin still could not explain how it happened.  For years after his return from the voyage, he reflected upon his observations, and searched for an explanation.  The breakthrough came in 1838, after he read an essay by Thomas Malthus, an Anglican clergyman, on population growth.  Malthus’s essay painted a very gloomy picture of human society, which had been influenced by his observations on poverty and destitution in the cities.  Malthus argued that as human population growth outstripped the food supply, which it inevitably did, only the fittest could survive, and the others would be left to die of starvation or squalor.  Darwin applied this idea to his observations on the Galapagos Islands.  He realized that within any species there is always variation among its individual members, and that those who were best adapted to the environment would tend to live long enough to reproduce.  Just as there are a wide variety of domestic dogs and cats, created through careful selective breeding, there is a type of “natural selection” in the wild that encourages the development of specific characteristics which make a species better suited to its environment.  What Darwin had come upon was a practical mechanism that would explain not only how species change over time, but also how new species might evolve out of existing ones.  He would wait for nearly two decades before sharing his ideas in a landmark book, On the Origin of Species, in 1859, but upon its publication, the idea of evolution would take a far-reaching and permanent hold on civilization.

Darwin's Galapagos Finches: A Case Study in Evolutionary Adaptation

            The book became an instant sensation, in Europe and America - what we would call today a “runaway bestseller”.  Even liberal members of the clergy, who had been coming around to the idea that the earth was much older than the Old Testament would lead its readers to believe, and that its account of creation did not necessarily have to be taken literally, gave Darwin’s book a sympathetic reading.  But while the book did not create the firestorm of controversy, at least back then, that many of us today might have expected, it also did not, as many might believe, claim to prove the theory of evolution.  Instead, it merely gave a practical and believable account of how evolution could have happened, and for the more scientifically minded of Darwin’s age, this was good enough.  In the new age of rationalism, science, and technological progress, here was emerging an alternative story of the earth’s creation, of the origin of life, and of the emergence of humanity, that fit right in, with its natural laws, impersonal forces, and logical relationships.  And over the following decades, those mysterious monsters preserved in the fossil record, giant winged lizards, sea serpents, woolly mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, and dinosaurs, took a comfortable place in the popular imagination, as denizens who lived in a land before time. 

            But amidst the euphoria over this new, scientific explanation of life’s origins, which demonstrated to so many the victory of the rational, enlightened mind over myth and superstition, a nagging, uncomfortable question began to emerge.  If human beings were not created by God, and in fact if they were the product of impersonal laws and forces, then did they actually have a purpose for being here?  Science had removed the earth from the center of the universe, and man from the center of the creation story.  What was left?  And was there even a need to believe in God at all?  After all, the events that made up the history of the universe, and of the earth, were beginning to look like the workings of a great mechanism, like a clock, with every part moving in accordance with the physical laws that controlled it.  Was God nothing more than the “watchmaker”, building it, winding it up, and then standing back and letting it run on its own?  Did God occasionally intervene, setting things right when certain events didn’t unfold according to his liking?  And was his presence necessary to build this great mechanism in the first place?  If not, it seemed that if God existed at all, He might be nothing more than a passive observer, who played no significant role in the events of the universe whatsoever.

            The traditional creation story, the drama that gave humanity a central role in the universe, along with a purpose, was under siege, and great thinkers of the day tried to fill the void.  To restore meaning into a lifeless, mechanistic existence, they challenged the ultimate reality of that existence itself.  The German philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that the visible world, the world of time and space, which followed immutable laws of cause and effect, was merely phenomenon, created in large part by the minds that perceived it, and that beyond this apparent reality was something more real, something which transcended physical laws.  Other philosophers, building upon Kant’s insights, suggested that the forces of evolution were actually manifestations of a universal will, or mind, and that human beings, with their unique capabilities of intelligence, represented the culmination of this process, through which the will or universal mind could turn back upon itself with enlightened reflection.  But setting the human mind at the pinnacle of evolution, while seeming to restore a special place for mankind in the history of the world, also generated new controversies.  In the emerging science of psychology, Sigmund Freud, one of its greatest pioneers, demonstrated that the mind is a house divided, and is driven by powerful unconscious drives and desires, which often seem to set it against itself, crippling it with neuroses or compelling it to perform destructive acts.  Freud suggested that civilization - that supposed crowning achievement of human thought - actually exacerbated this internal conflict.  Primal desires: rage, sexual lust, and fear existed side by side with rational thought, and often overpowered or paralyzed it, and even directed it to anti-social ends.  Guilt brought on by internal conflict of basic desires with social conventions and morals was often the catalyst for these internal struggles.  If the human mind was the final product of evolution, then far from transcending what had come before it, the mind only seemed to perpetuate the conflicts, strivings, and struggles that had made evolution possible.

Sigmund Freud

            Nevertheless, evolution became the cornerstone of new worldviews in the nineteenth century.  Philosophers such as G. W. F. Hegel and Herbert Spencer saw the growth of civilization itself as a sort of evolutionary process, and attempted to extract a blueprint based upon it for the destiny of humanity.  At the same time, many scientists recognized, and even embraced, the harsh realities that lay beneath natural selection and survival of the fittest.  As Darwin himself observed, behind the beauty and complexity of nature existed a desperate and often brutal struggle for existence, which entailed competition, the threat of starvation, and the predation of stronger creatures upon weaker ones.  Biologists such as Ernst Haeckl saw these same processes reflected in business competition, the rivalry between nations, and even the relative success of the different races of mankind.  For Haeckl, a German, the white race represented the pinnacle of evolution in the human plane.  He, along with other scientists, attempted to give racial and ethnic prejudice, along with national chauvinism, a scientific pedigree.  In an age of industrialism and nationalism, they lent an air of legitimacy to the predatory and exploitative practices of business capitalists, and to the growing militarism of European nations, such as Germany, as expressions of “social Darwinism”.  And out of views such as these emerged a pernicious new blueprint for the advancement of civilization: eugenics, or selective breeding of human beings to produce a superior stock.  Eugenics would take many different forms in the decades that followed, with some being particularly hideous, and would even influence social policies in the United States in the early twentieth century.  A policy of sexual segregation was imposed upon certain classes of “dysgenic” people, and at one time thirty-five U.S. states had programs of compulsory sterilization targeted to genetically suspect groups such as the mentally retarded, the mentally ill, habitual criminals, and persons who suffered from epilepsy.  American immigration policy also fell under the influence of eugenics for a time, as laws were passed to limit the influx of persons who were not of “Nordic” ancestry.

            But it was in the United States that religion would finally take a stand against evolution.  Although the Catholic Church had been an early opponent, throughout the world, of the science and practice of eugenics, in America, evolutionary thinking would face its most conspicuous opposition from a different religious circle.  In its earliest days, America had been a predominantly liberal Protestant country, and took pride in its enlightened views on religious toleration, the separation of church and state, and an open and conciliatory attitude toward scientific thought.  Ironically, in these first generations, Catholics were feared, because many Protestants believed that if their numbers grew to a significant share of the population, then the laws and policies of the United States would gradually come to be dominated by conservative religious views, which might be dogmatic, intolerant, and hostile to progress.  And yet, in the following generations, among America’s Protestant denominations, a new movement had been emerging that began to play a prominent role in religion by the early twentieth century.  This was fundamentalism, which had grown as a reaction to what was seen as a liberal bias in Protestant churches, a bias which itself seemed to have been created in part by evolutionary thinking.  For many liberal theologians saw the Bible as an evolutionary document, with its earliest chapters dominated by a primitive, mythological view of the world, but maturing with the later writings of the prophets, and reaching its pinnacle of inspirational wisdom with the gospels and New Testament epistles.  This view justified, in the opinion of these theologians, a more critical interpretation of the creation account, and the story of the first generations of mankind.  In the eyes of their more orthodox critics, on the other hand, they were all too ready to abandon the belief that the world had been literally created in seven days, that the earth was only a few thousand years old, and that all species of living things had been fashioned by God, and had remained generally the same ever since.  Fundamentalists contended that the Bible, in its entirety, represented the inspired word of God, and that any view which justified believing only part of the Bible, or reinterpreting it in ways that undermined its accounts of miracles and divine acts, was a form of heresy, because there was no latitude for compromise in matters of faith.

The Roaring '20s

            The opposition of American fundamentalists to evolutionary thinking erupted into open conflict, and a public crusade, in the 1920’s.  Compulsory high school education in this country was becoming a common thing at that time, and religiously conservative parents were angered to see that their children were being taught evolution in the classroom, which to them was nothing less than a form of indoctrination into views hostile to faith.  And in the minds of these Christians, the poisonous effect of Darwin’s influence could already be seen everywhere.  This was, after all, the “Roaring Twenties”, when it seemed that the entire nation was caught up in a tidal wave of greed, vice, moral laxity, and lawlessness.  People of all walks of life were investing their own money, and borrowed money, into the booming stock market, on the hope of finding an easy path to wealth and a life of luxury.  And in this, the “Jazz Age”, young men and women publicly flouted the moral codes that had been so revered by their religious parents.  “Speak-easy’s” flourished, where thirsty patrons happily ignored the national Prohibition against alcohol, and these in turn contributed to the rise of an organized crime empire in the United States, run by flamboyant “gangsters”, such as Al Capone.  For fundamentalists the connection was clear: as the beliefs and traditions that inspired faith in the moral principles of Christianity were undermined by science – and in particular the science that questioned God’s central role in the creation of the earth, and of humanity – an inevitable consequence was a general crumbling of the ethical foundation that supported civilization.  For any who doubted them, they could point to other things that clearly had a connection with Darwinism, like the eugenics movement, the ruthless business practices of industrialists, who often defended their tactics in Darwinist terms, and the militarism of foreign nations, such as Germany, where the influence of Ernst Haeckl and others had inspired its leaders to view international politics as an evolutionary struggle for dominance.

            The focal point for America’s anti-evolution crusade became the teaching of Darwinism in public schools.  After several unsuccessful attempts to have it banned in particular states, the movement scored its first success in Tennessee, where the teaching of human evolution was made a misdemeanor, subject to a penalty of up to $500.  Nobody, including its supporters, really expected anyone to be convicted under the law.  It was a symbolic gesture, warning those who were trying to undermine the basic tenets of Christianity that here was a state where such things would not be tolerated, at least as far as children were concerned.  But for those who believed that this was a return to superstition, a backward step in the progress of civilization, the Tennessee law represented a throwing down of the gauntlet.  They rose to the challenge, encouraging a young teacher named John Scopes to defy the law, and the conflict that ensued would be called by many the trial of the century.  The prosecution was led by William Jennings Bryan: champion of progressive political causes, electrifying public speaker, three-time U.S. presidential candidate, renowned pacifist, and avowed enemy of any science that linked mankind to a brute ancestor.  Leading the defense was America’s most famous trial lawyer, Clarence Darrow, who had risen to national prominence as the champion of the underprivileged, and of those who dared to challenge the power of big business over the common laborer.  The irony of this great contest was that both of it principal combatants, Bryant and Darrow, had gained fame as crusaders against exploitation of the weak by the strong.  But while they had found common cause in many things, when it came to matters of religion, they were sharply divided.  For William Jennings Bryan, science was just another tool of the elite, used to justify their oppression of the less fortunate.  But for Clarence Darrow, religious lawmaking represented one of the most pernicious assaults against individual freedom, which always created more harm than good, just as Prohibition, inspired by high-minded temperance agitators, had contributed to the rise of organized crime.

Clarence Darrow and Williams Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Monkey Trial

            The trial, which lasted for eight days, was one of the most bizarre in American history.  It was a “show trial” in every sense of the word, covered by more than two hundred reporters from the United States and Europe, many of whom sat in a special section reserved for them in the courthouse; it was broadcast live over the radio, and filmed for newsreels that were sent out to theaters daily.  John Scopes, the alleged defendant, had never actually been arrested, and spent most of his time before the hearing giving interviews and making public speaking appearances.  And the climax of the court proceedings came when Clarence Darrow invited his opposing attorney, William Jennings Bryan, to take the stand as an expert witness, to defend the anti-evolution statute.  Darrow held the literal interpretation of the Bible up to ridicule, challenging Bryan to defend, among other things, Old Testament accounts of Eve, the first woman, being created from one of Adam’s ribs, and of the prophet Jonah spending three days and three nights inside the belly of a fish.  It made for an entertaining spectacle, and cast the fundamentalists in an embarrassing light, but in the end it did not lead to victory for Darrow and his allies.  Darrow had actually wanted Scopes to be found guilty, so that he could take the case to the Tennessee Supreme Court and challenge the constitutionality of the law.  But when the case was heard there, the Court overturned the guilty plea on a technicality, enabling it to keep the law intact.  And after the so-called “Scopes Monkey trial” did not lead to a repeal of the anti-evolution law, other states and school districts felt emboldened to pass their own versions of it.

            Although the religious opponents of evolution ultimately failed to ban its teaching in public schools, fundamentalism, as a challenge to the scientific world view, did not pass away.  Because while the proponents of science claimed that they had freed the world of dogma, superstition, and ignorance, what they never succeeded in doing was to give civilization a new destiny and purpose for mankind.  Religion, and myth, offered to every individual a reason for existence, a purpose, and an ultimate goal.  A clockwork universe offered none of these, replacing the design of a beneficent Creator with a lifeless, mechanical machine.  And while evolution seemed to restore the idea of progress to life, and perhaps even an ultimate end, it at times seemed to be an amoral end, achieved through the brute processes of competition, predation, and exploitation.  As many persons looked upon the new age of modernity, they saw confusion, a lack of moral bearings, and the products of scientific invention applied to blatantly immoral ends.  The gains bestowed upon civilization by the light of reason seemed to be more than offset by the horrors of an impersonal technology, turning human beings into factors of production, and giving the few who enjoyed real power awesome and terrifying means of repressing their subjects, and destroying their enemies.  Religious fundamentalism, rather than fading away, has remained with us to this day, and its influence is even more pervasive now than it was a hundred years ago.  It exists as a significant presence among all faiths, Christians, Moslems, and Jews alike, and has become a political force, and in some countries a military force, that has exerted itself in ways that have transformed the international landscape.  We react to the behavior of fundamentalists in other nations and cultures with horror and condescension, while having to acknowledge and contend with their powerful influence in our own.

            During its brief history, America has tried to reconcile two great forces that have defined it as a culture, and shaped it as a society.  On the one hand, there is that persistent strain of religious fundamentalism, obstinately resisting the more secular strains of civilization.  On the other hand, there has been that great example of Darwinian evolution in modern history, the capitalist, the captain of industry.  And in the 1800’s, giants would emerge who would forever link the United States with the awesome power of industrial might and “big business”, and demonstrate the unlimited rewards that come from ingenuity and personal initiative.  These “robber barons”, as they would later be called, would come to display both the glory, and the tragedy, of modern capitalism.

The Revolutionary Warriors: Washington and Napoleon

[The following is Episode 11 of my 16-part documentary series entitled Larger than Life, about the role that beliefs play in shaping the events of our civilization.]

  

            As the eighteenth century drew to a close, two revolutions, one in the New World, and one in the Old, shook the foundations of Western Civilization to the core.  Great Britain, which had emerged victorious in the struggle among European powers for domination in North America, would see victory give way to disaster as its American colonists renounced their loyalty to the crown.  And in Europe, a king and queen of one of the most powerful and long-standing nations on the continent would lose their lives at the hands of a rebellious mob, to the horror of all of the other reigning monarchs.  Established institutions and venerated traditions were overturned virtually overnight, and in their wake, a chaotic force emerged that appeared to be as contagious as it was unrelenting.  This was anarchy: a violent, merciless attack on what had once been the ruling class, and as it spread, no country felt safe from its influence.  To the nobility, this was a plague, as real and deadly as the Black Plague of centuries earlier, but of a much more deadly type.  This was a plague of ideas, a plague that spread not by air or by vermin, but by powerful, unrestrained passions, which were in turn fueled by the common human desire for freedom, and centuries of accumulated resentment against abuses of the rich and powerful.  But in the midst of these two upheavals, on opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean, new leaders emerged, who would attempt to redefine what it meant to be a nation, and a people, and provide a new course, a new direction for their followers.  These leaders were lawgivers, overseeing bold experiments in new forms of government such as had not been tried since the semi-legendary days of Solon and Lycurgus in Ancient Greece.  Each of the revolutions, the one in America, and the other in France, would come to be led by a military man with remarkable qualities.  The British colonists of America, under the protection of their revolutionary leader, would witness the birth of a new nation, but the revolutionary leader in France, after a brief run of glory, would lead his own nation into ultimate disaster.  Both would leave lasting legacies that survived their time in power.  And both would be immortalized as living legends – truly larger than life - the American soldier who became a President, George Washington, and the French soldier who became an emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte.

            In the fifteenth century, Spain and Portugal had launched the continent of Europe into a new age of discovery, as explorers such as Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan, and conquerors such as Francisco Pizarro and Hernan Cortez, opened the new worlds of North and South America to their curious, and greedy, countrymen.  But within a hundred years, the hegemony that these two countries enjoyed in overseas conquest was destroyed by the entry of three rivals, France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands.  Although the French made early inroads into establishing colonies, trading posts, and missionaries in many parts of North America, the British were not far behind, and whatever handicap that a later start might have saddled them with was more than made up for by an aggressive determination to establish a foothold in the New World.  In the sixteenth century, the admirals Francis Drake and John Hawkins, in the service of their monarch, Queen Elizabeth, harassed Spanish shipping at sea.  And in the seventeenth century, on the European continent, a series of general wars resulted in defeat for Spain and France, while they made Britain the undisputed master of the seas, and the dominant commercial power in Europe.  Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, conflicts between the British and the French were waged in the New World by their colonists and native allies.  The final conflict, the French and Indian War, began when a young colonial officer named George Washington led a bold raid on French outposts that were located in disputed territory.  And while this raid, and the subsequent battle that this officer fought in the service of British general Edward Braddock, ended in disaster, the ultimate outcome of the conflict was victory, again, for the British, and a devastating loss for the French.  As a condition of its surrender, France yielded all of its Canadian territories, and all its Louisiana territory east of the Mississippi, to the British.  In a way, the French had been victims of their own colonial success, because while they had held numerous territories throughout the North American continent, British holdings had been concentrated in thirteen well-connected colonies located along the Atlantic coast.  The irony, of course, is that in the success which Britain had enjoyed with the aid of her colonists lay the seeds of her own eventual defeat.  For these well-connected colonies also became well organized ones when their members perceived a common external threat, and at the end of the French and Indian war, that external threat was no longer France, but Britain.  Meanwhile, the conflicts in North America and Europe had taken a very serious toll on both France and Britain.  The expenses incurred in these wars had placed a great drain on their respective economies, and this in turn would start a chain of events that would lead to revolution on two continents, and disaster for both nations.

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            The importance of the American and French Revolutions to modern history cannot be underestimated.  In the eighteenth century, monarchy was not just the standard of government for Western civilization – when George Washington became President in 1789, he was the only head of a major country who did not wear a crown or have a monarch’s title.  And although the French Revolution was technically a failure, the event signaled the end of feudalism in Europe and an irrecoverable break with its medieval past.  Both revolutions would leave, in their wake, the rise of ideas and institutions that have become a commonplace to us today: equality before the law, the right to a fair trial, and freedom of religious worship.  And both would create an enduring quest for liberty and equality, a quest to find fuller expression of these ideals in society and to strike a fair and workable balance between the two.  But why did the revolution in America lead to a successful outcome – a military victory followed by the establishment of an innovative, effective, and stable form of government, while the revolution in France led to domestic terror, chaos, and the rise of a conqueror whose ambitions would rival those of a Caesar or an Alexander the Great?  Was it the character of the men who led these revolutions that shaped their outcome?  Or were there special circumstances, unique to each society and event, that made the final respective results inevitable?   To try to find an answer to this puzzle, let us first look at the lives and backgrounds of each of the revolution’s military leaders, George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte, and then look at the societies in which they lived.

The Mount Vernon Estate Today

            George Washington was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia on February 11, 1732 - February 22 to us, because there was a change in the calendar during his lifetime – the first son of his father’s second marriage.  His father died when he was very young, and as his relationship with his mother could occasionally be a turbulent one, he eventually settled into the home of his older half-brother Lawrence in Mount Vernon.  Lawrence was a tutor and role model for the young George, teaching him trigonometry and surveying, and fostering an interest in the finer arts.  As a youth, George had found it difficult to contend with an angry temperament, but had found inspiration and practical guides to character in the writings of classical Rome.  One enduring hero from that era that left an indelible mark on Washington’s character was the Roman military leader Cincinnatus.  A farmer who had been renowned for his military skill, the Senate of Rome had appealed to him in 458 B.C. for help when its army was under siege by foreign invaders.  After the Senate proclaimed him dictator of Rome, Cincinnatus led the besieged Roman army to victory, and when the victory was complete, he returned to the Senate, gave up his power as dictator, and settled back into his former life as a farmer.  For Washington, there was no finer example of heroism, and of self-control.

Cincinnatus Summoned from His Farm to Lead Rome (Painting by Juan Antonio Ribera)

            George’s brother Lawrence had served in the military under Admiral Edward Vernon, and George had found in this further inspiration for a career of his own in military service.  After a stint as a surveyor, he began his military career in 1753, when the Governor of Virginia sent him on a mission to a French fort west of Virginia to deliver a message to the French commandant, warning him that he was encroaching upon British territory.  Although the young man was received graciously by the commandant, he was informed that the French had no intention of leaving the region. 

            In 1754, Washington led a military expedition back to the French outposts to drive the French off of the disputed territory.  His exact orders were unclear concerning the conditions under which a conflict should begin, but this did not deter Washington from initiating hostilities - the shots that he fired upon French troops inaugurated the French and Indian War in America.  As one writer put it, "The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire."  His particular campaign, though, was unsuccessful.  His troops had constructed a stronghold which they named Fort Necessity, but were unable to hold it against the French and Indian forces that attacked it.  Many British and colonial notables censured Washington for agreeing to the terms of surrender offered by the French, although these had enabled him to conduct an orderly evacuation of the fort, but in spite of these criticisms he was allowed to accompany the British General Braddock on a subsequent attack on the French-held territory.  This encounter also ended in failure - Braddock was killed and Washington once again found himself leading his troops on an orderly retreat from battle.  On this occasion he was commended for saving the soldiers from imminent disaster. Nevertheless, he abandoned his tenure in the military to embark on a career as a Virginia planter, and accumulated considerable wealth in the undertaking.  Like Cincinnatus, he resigned himself to life as a farmer, until he was called to return to military service and fight a desperate battle against a powerful enemy by the Continental Congress more than twenty years later.

General Braddock (with George Washington) Defeated in the Battle of the Wilderness

            On August 15, 1769, long after Washington had resigned himself to life as a country squire, a child was born to a family of noble blood but modest means in Corsica, an island in the Mediterranean Sea about sixty miles west of Italy.  This was Napoleon Bonaparte, and as a youth he would also know firsthand the experience of submission to the French, who had conquered Corsica three months before he had been born.  The young Napoleon grew to resent his father, Carlo, for abandoning his loyalty to the Corsican homeland in favor of the French overlords, later declaring that his father had been “too fond of pleasure”.  It seems that he found more to admire in his mother, who had a tougher, and more severe, temperament.  Nevertheless, although his father may have been seduced by the splendor of French courtly life, Carlo’s new loyalties enabled him to get Napoleon enrolled in a private academy in France.  But it was a mixed blessing for the boy.  As the only Corsican, he was bullied and ostracized by his fellow students, and became a loner, although a proud and diffident one.  At the age of fifteen, he entered the Royal Military Academy in Paris, and while embarking on a career in the French military he still retained a personal, abiding dream of someday liberating his homeland, a dream that sustained him through the many periods of melancholy that overcame him and obsessed him with thoughts of death.  At the age of twenty-three, when revolution was breaking out in France, he took a leave of absence from the military, returned to Corsica, and entered local politics.  But to the island’s governor, Napoleon appeared as more of a threat than an ally: he was too ambitious, too independent, and seemed to share his father’s sin of harboring sympathies with France.  The governor’s suspicions were probably well founded, on all counts, even this last one of pro-French leanings, because in the wake of the revolutionary outbreak, Napoleon envisioned Corsica as a part of the new France.  For the governor, his allies, and the Corsican Assembly, this was an unforgivable sin.  The Assembly branded the entire Bonaparte family as “traitors and enemies of the Fatherland, condemned to perpetual execration and infamy”.  At the age of twenty-four, Napoleon was forced to flee the island with his widowed mother, and six brothers and sisters.  Like Washington, it seemed that what had first appeared to be a promising military and political career was cut short in the youthful prime of his early twenties.  But while Washington would have to wait for over two decades before a revolution called him back to his destiny, Napoleon would find, on his return to France, that destiny was calling him already, in the revolution that was then in progress.

Young Napoleon (at 23)

            Having compared the early backgrounds of these two extraordinary men, let’s look now at the revolutions that called each of them into service.  We have all heard the story of the American Revolution, and the causes that led up to it: how Great Britain, reeling from a huge national debt brought on by years of conflict with its powerful rival, France, pressed its colonists in the New World to take on a greater share of paying for the debt.  After all, the British argued, much of the expense in the most recent war had gone toward defending the colonists from hostile French forces and their Indian allies who had harassed them and encroached upon their settlements.  In the eyes of the British, the colonists had provided lackluster support to the troops that had gone overseas to defend them, offering little in the way of men, supplies, or quarters.  When Britain attempted to extract greater monetary support from its colonists by imposing new and heavier taxes, the new rallying cry in America became “taxation without representation”.  The Americans’ side of the argument was that if they were going to pay a larger share to support the British government, then they should have a larger say in that government as well.  The irony, of course, is that Americans had grown to feel that they were entitled to this representation, because of their roots in Great Britain, a land where a tradition of representative government had been evolving for several centuries.  But as acts of resistance became more violent, and British attempts to quell the resistance became more repressive and militant, the outcome was a permanent and irreconcilable rift between the colonies and their mother country.

The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia

            The revolutionary origins of the United States might have had somewhat ordinary causes, but the creation of its government was anything but ordinary.  The birth of the constitution has been called a miracle, and the story of the Philadelphia Convention, where it was drafted, has the stuff of legend in it, with its images of enlightened men, referring to classical and modern texts on government, working together to create an ideal constitution.  Of course, there were some practical, and even selfish, interests that came into play, during the crafting of the constitution, and in the end it was a workable form of government, rather than an ideal one, that became the goal.  But traces of the ideal can still be seen in the final product, and in particular the legacy of the Roman Republic, which had been regarded by some ancient observers as the most ideal form of government that had ever come into existence up to that time.  Even America's higher legislative body, the Senate, takes its name from the Roman institution.  Rome’s Senate had been comprised of aristocrats who held their office for life.  America’s Senators, as originally conceived by the Constitution, while only serving six years in office, would only be selected by a body of men who themselves already held political office.  And although the United States government is not headed by two Consuls, as in ancient Rome, it does have a President and Vice-President, and in its original form the Constitution called for the Vice-President to be the runner up in the Presidential election – a sort of rival in office, rather than apprentice, to the leader of the government.  It was not then democracy, or rule by the people, that the Founding Fathers sought to institute: like the patricians who founded the Roman Republic, they even wished to limit the right to vote to holders of property.  When Alexander Hamilton advised his fellows to “check the imprudence of democracy”, he echoed the sentiments of the Greek philosopher Plato, who warned that democracy easily gives way to tyranny, and those of the ancient Roman elite, who distrusted rule by the masses.  We saw in an earlier episode how the Roman word “Res publica”, from which our own word “republic” comes from, can be translated to mean the “public thing”, but another equally appropriate translation is the “common wealth”.  A republic was understood to be ruled by those best able to lead, and for the creators of Rome’s government, as for the architects of our constitution, only those who held property had proved themselves capable of participating in government.  And as with Rome, it would take the passage of time, and popular agitation, to make the American “republic” more truly “democratic”.

            Democracy, on the other hand, was one of the guiding principles of the French Revolution, as embodied in its slogan, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”  This was not only a revolution more democratic in spirit than the earlier one in America, but a more idealistic one as well.  Latter-day critics have charged that the Philadelphia Convention had been heavily stocked with lawyers, businessmen, and rich planters, and that the final product of the labors of these men had been designed with their interests at the forefront.  The charge is not without merit: many of the framers of the Constitution were motivated by pragmatic considerations.  But in the midst of that sea of self-interest, there were a handful of genuinely gifted men who could inject a little wisdom into the handiwork of their more self-serving compatriots, and endow the document with just enough touches of highbrow ingenuity and simple common sense to give it an enduring value, and provide it with the means to rise above its baser roots.  There was little pragmatism in the work of the French revolutionaries, particularly in the radicals who came to dominate the movement.  Like Great Britain, France had been reeling under a huge national debt as an aftermath of war, and also because France had made loans to the American colonies during their war of revolt against Britain.  The French King Louis XVI’s call for an assembly of representatives in 1788 to address the growing economic crisis started a chain of events that would lead to his own downfall, because within two years a radical faction of this assembly would usurp even more powers than those granted to it by the king, eventually demand a restriction of the king’s own power, and ultimately settle for nothing less than his execution.  A friend of Washington's who happened to be in Paris during the French Revolution described the revolutionaries for him this way: "They have all that romantic spirit, and all those romantic ideas of government from which, happily for America, we were saved before it was too late."  Idealism gave way to fanaticism, and fanaticism to the Terror, that dark period in French history when its revolutionary leaders turned their wrath upon real or imagined enemies, and caused the death of some 40,000 persons.

The Reign of Terror (French Revolution)

            We can make some sense of this violence if we remember that the revolution in France, much more so than in the United States, was a social revolution - a civil war.  While Americans concentrated their energies resisting an enemy from abroad, French citizens were attempting to uproot the aristocracy, with all of its blatant privileges and abuses - and the members of that aristocracy lived in their midst.  And French rebels had more to contend with than the royalty and aristocracy within France.  Aristocracy was a trans-national phenomenon - royal families had ties throughout Europe, and the institution was militantly supported by virtually every European nation.  Years after the French Revolution, Napoleon would bristle at comparisons between the upheaval in his country and the one that had occurred in America.  "The example of the United States is absurd," he said.  "If the United States were in the middle of Europe, it would not stand up two years to the monarchies' pressure."

            Two unique men, and two very different revolutions – was it the leadership or the circumstances that led to the different outcomes?  When Washington volunteered his services in the cause of the American Revolution, in 1775, and the Continental Congress appointed him commander in chief of the army, he faced almost insurmountable obstacles from the beginning of the war.  He had to contend with continual shortages of supplies, food, and manpower.  In spite of these obstacles, the general had an early success in the winter of 1775-1776, as he forced the British General Howe to abandon his occupation of Boston and retreat to New York.  But his fortunes changed as he took up the pursuit of the British army into New York.  He suffered a succession of reversals, and, by the end of 1776, things looked bleak for the American cause.  At this desperate moment, Washington took a desperate gamble.  He led his army, which had taken a position in New Jersey, on a bold crossing of the Delaware River to surprise the Hessian mercenaries camped on the other side.  The gamble paid off, and news of his subsequent victories at Trenton and Princeton convinced the world that he was a military leader of merit.  The French, who had been watching the conflict with great interest, now believed that lending support to the American rebels was a practical venture.

            In spite of these promising developments, Washington's own fortunes did not change.  The year 1777 brought more strategic retreats.  The terrible winter of 1777-1778 was the low point of the war for him and his troops camped at Valley Forge.  As he struggled to hold his forces together during 1778 and 1779, Washington had to contend with a series of domestic crises.  Rivals in the military were lobbying to replace him as commander-in-chief of the revolutionary forces.  Added to these intrigues was the outright betrayal of Benedict Arnold, who switched allegiances and nearly succeeded in transferring control of West Point to the British in October, 1780.

            The entry of the French on the side of the colonists finally turned the tide of battle.  French forces gained control of Chesapeake Bay in 1781.  Washington moved his troops to join them, and their combined forces compelled General Cornwallis to surrender at Yorktown on October 18, 1781.  The Revolutionary War was over.  Following the example of his hero, Cincinnatus, Washington resigned his commission and returned to his Mount Vernon estate.

Surrender of Lord Cornwallis (Painting by John Trumbull)

            But his career was far from over.  He watched with great consternation as victory brought nothing but dissension among the thirteen colonies.  Leading American statesmen and intellectuals realized that the survival of the new nation depended upon a strong, national union.  When the Philadelphia Convention was organized, George Washington was selected as one of the delegates from Virginia, and when he arrived, he was elected by a unanimous vote to preside over its members.  The new constitution that came out of this Convention would save the infant republic.  It had been the product of many bold men and great minds, but it was Washington's prominent participation in the project that gave it the necessary legitimacy to make it palatable to a general public wary of a strong central government.  And it was Washington again who proved that the new government could work, by serving as its first chief executive when he was elected president of the United States.

            Washington served two tumultuous terms as America's first president, but when he left office the institutions of government were firmly established.  He died in 1799, and his passing was not only mourned in the United States, but in England, where British ships fired a twenty-gun salute in his honor upon news of his death, and in France, where Napoleon ordered ten days of national mourning.

Napoleonic Empire At Its Height

            Napoleon’s own career as a revolutionary general had begun only six years earlier, in 1793.  After fleeing to France with his family, he put himself in the service of the revolutionary government, or such government as there was, because in 1793 factional strife, external assault at the hands of a coalition of other European nations, and social unrest had encouraged those in control of the revolution to institute a reign of terror.  Napoleon distinguished himself in a battle against British forces at Toulon, and he was promoted to brigadier general and given command of the army of Italy.  Other successes soon followed against the Austrians and Sardinians, and when he returned to France he was given a hero’s welcome.  But in this dark time of French history, heroes were threats rather than consolations, and the Directory, who held the reigns of government, sent him to Egypt to threaten Britain’s holdings in India.  While Napoleon’s successes in this so-called “Battle of the Pyramids” were undermined by a devastating British naval victory under the leadership of Admiral Horatio Nelson, he convinced his fellow countrymen, upon his return in 1798, that the battle had gone well for him.  He now set his eyes on a political career, using his prestige and military power to get himself appointed as First Consul of the government.  During the next few years he consolidated his power, culminating in his being crowned emperor of France by the Pope in 1804.  In some ways it appeared that here was an actual demonstration of Plato’s warning - two thousand years earlier - that democracy gives way to tyranny, which in turn gives way to monarchy.  But in other ways, and certainly in the eyes of Napoleon himself, it was not tyranny, but a republic that he had established, if “republic” be understood as rule by those most capable of ruling, and if Napoleon be seen as he who is most capable.  He did, after all, complete the revolution’s work of destroying feudalism, and of making opportunities available to all based upon merit, rather than birthright.  And like Washington, he presided over a body of men who crafted a new set of laws and procedures that would be based upon enlightened principles of justice: the Napoleonic Code.  He restored prosperity to France, established a national system of banking, encouraged the growth of industry, nationalized higher education, and supported cultural pursuits.  It is unfair to blame Napoleon for the failure of the French Revolution- that failure preceded him.  In fact, upon the ruins of that disaster, he built a renewed, reinvigorated, and formidable French nation that appeared to be leading the way to modernity.  But in his success lay the seeds of his own downfall, as he set about bringing the entire continent of Europe under his control.  In 1807, after defeating the Russians, he was at the summit of his powers, with the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain subject to his rule, and the Austrians and Prussians - former enemies - joined to France as allies.  Only Britain remained as a tangible and formidable threat, and Napoleon tried to bring that country into submission by imposing a continental trade blockade against it.  But a revolt in Spain in 1808 signaled a breakdown in France’s empire, and a disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812 would mark the beginning of the end for Napoleon.  In the next two years, as former allies and subjects joined Britain in defiance of France, a steady succession of losses by the French army culminated in an invasion of Paris in 1814, and Napoleon’s abdication.  In 1815, he made one last desperate attempt to regain power in France, but was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo by a coalition of British and Prussian armies, and was forced to live out the rest of his days in exile on the island of St. Helena.

The Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine (Painting by Jacques-Louis David)

            Was it destiny that guided the actions of these two extraordinary men, that pressed them into service at a critical juncture of history to fulfill some pre-ordained plan, or did they, and others like them, determine destiny’s course?  It’s a tantalizing question, particularly here, where the outcomes of the revolutions of which they took part were so entirely different.  Did the man make the difference?  Napoleon bristled at comparisons between himself and George Washington.  As he put it, “When I came to power, it was hoped that I would be a Washington.  Words are cheap, and those who so facilely voiced this hope did so without understanding of time, places, men, and events.  If I had been in America, I should willingly have been a Washington, and with no great merit, since there was nothing else I could have been.  But if he had been in France, with domestic disorder and the threat of foreign invasion, I defy him to have been himself.  If he had, he would have been a fool and prolonged the unhappiness of the country.  As for me, I could only have been a Washington with a crown, amid a congress of conquered kings.  Only under such circumstances could I have shown his moderation, wisdom, and disinterestedness.  These I could attain only by a universal dictatorship, such as, indeed, I strove for.”  And yet, Napoleon was keenly aware that he was merely the agent of a destiny over which he did not have complete control.  He once said, “I am the instrument of Providence, she will use me as long as I accomplish her designs, then she will break me like a glass.”

            Three hundred years before Napoleon, Machiavelli argued that his divided, beloved Italy could only be saved if a great man arose who put himself above the law in order to preserve the law.  Only then could higher pursuits, such as justice and fairness, be attained.  Security would bring economic prosperity, which would in turn be followed by a measure of freedom and toleration, bestowed by the wise ruler on his people.  Napoleon, the Corsican, the Italian, was the living embodiment of Machiavelli's amoral conqueror hero.  If Machiavelli had been the prophet of modern statesmanship, Napoleon, more than any other person, was his messiah.  But while the Corsican lived out the glory of Machiavelli’s vision, he also proved its ultimate untenability.  For by putting himself above the law, and renouncing any limits to his authority and his designs, Napoleon ultimately set himself on a tragic course which could only end in his empire collapsing on the weak foundations of his own human limitations.  Washington, on the other hand, by recognizing his limitations, and imposing upon himself a sense of duty that limited his powers, or his opportunities to exploit power, left his achievements on a firm foundation that would survive him for centuries.

But regardless of the outcome of their activities, or the weight of their legacies, both Washington and Napoleon have become living legends.  Bonaparte was aware of his own legend, and, as in all things, tried to exert personal control over it.  “I always felt,” he said, “that Alexander the Great’s idea of pretending to be descended from a God was inspired by a sure instinct for real politics.”  Washington’s legend would be crafted by others after his death, like Parson Weems, who gave us the story of the cherry tree, and how young George’s honesty after chopping it down saved him from his father’s punishment.  The legends that these men have become seem well-suited, for history gives us no better example of individuals who rose to the extraordinary circumstances of their age, and made themselves equal to momentous and ultimately world-shaping events.

            The American and French Revolutions marked a turning point in the social and political history of western Civilization.  But even before these political revolutions had begun to play out, another, more subtle - but ultimately more radical - revolution had begun.  This was the upheaval brought about by new scientific ideas.  And in the nineteenth century, as both America and Europe were settling into their new respective political realities, a British scientist would make popular a new idea about life’s origins that would shake the foundations of religious belief, and ultimately the foundations of society itself.  The man was Charles Darwin, and the idea, evolution.