Sharing A Day

Today marks the 200th anniversary of the birthdays of two giants of the 19th century.

Both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on this day in 1809. Both would eventually go on to great fame and accomplishment, although in very different ways.

Lincoln is celebrated today for preserving the union through a terrible civil war and freeing the slaves, ending a long era of national moral shame.

Darwin gave us the theory of natural selection, probably the most powerful scientific edifice we have ever been handed. Together with discoveries in genetics, it forms the foundation of all of modern biology.

Abe was born into a poor family and married into money. Unfortunately, his wife was a woman who suffered from deep depression and was eventually committed to an asylum, no doubt helped along by grief and her doctor's over-prescriptions of laudanum.

Charles was born into a wealthy physician's family and married into even more money - his bride was Emma Wedgwood, heir to the great pottery dynasty. She had big money, enough to take piano lessons in Paris from Frederick Chopin himself.

Lincoln's family tree is dead, that is, he has no direct living descendants, while the Darwin name lives on in several branches.

Lincoln of course gave his life to an assassin's bullet far too young, while Darwin lived well into old age and was buried with state honors in the nave of Westminster Abbey, right next to Sir Isaac Newton.

But long after their deaths, these men now have much in common:

Both are depicted on their country's money. Lincoln has been on the US penny for the last 100 years, and Darwin has replaced Charles Dickens on the British ten-pound note and also graces a new commemorative two-pound coin for the 200th anniversary of his birthday.

Both also have countless schools and other institutions named after them, not to mention cities (Lincoln, the capital of Nebraska, and Darwin, the capital of Australia's Northern Territory are both commemorations).

To me they seem like they were both logical, thoughtful and practical men. Although they never met, I'd be willing to bet they would have gotten along splendidly. Darwin was a staunch abolitionist and followed the American Civil War with great interest. And there is good evidence that Lincoln was "not only familiar with the idea of evolution, but convinced by it".

Yeah, they would have clicked.

February 12th, 1809. What a day.


Here are some things these men had to say in their lives:

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy."

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts."

"My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth."

"The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend."

"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."

"If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin."

"I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me."

"How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children."

"We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."

And I can't forget to include the conclusion of Origin of Species which I think is one of the great closing sentences of any book, ever:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Happy Birthday Abe & Charles!