Language
The text is not concerned just with the loss of species as a result of natural selection, but also the loss of culture. Species come and go and this is recognized by the fossil record, but one really has no full idea of the extent of the loss of a culture because cultures are based on communication. This reality is put into metaphorical form with brutal truth:
“A language, like a species, when once extinct, never, as Sir C. Lyell remarks, reappears. The same language never has two birthplaces.”
Scientific Simile
We generally associate similes with a very concrete and often tangible comparison between things. After an extensive description of the ways that monkeys behave which reveal a precise awareness combining fear and interest in snakes, Darwin engages a simile in which the comparison is much more scientifically abstract in nature:
“It would almost appear as if mon- keys had some notion of zoological affinities, for those kept by Brehm exhibited a strange, though mistaken, instinctive dread of innocent lizards and frogs.”
Conscience
Darwin identifies the possession of a conscience as the primary emotional element separating man from the lower creatures. It is this sense of morality that he also places, via metaphor, as the highest attainment of humanity:
“It is the most noble of all the attributes of man, leading him without a moment’s hesitation to risk his life for that of a fellow-creature; or after due deliberation, impelled simply by the deep feeling of right or duty, to sacrifice it in some great cause.”
The Birds and the Bees (without the Birds)
Darwin was ahead of his time, let there be no doubt. He saw that humans evolved into something greater than they had been. But also saw with an intensity that take away the evolutionary steps and situate us into the existing world of social order of certain animals and we are no further along than some of the most basic creatures:
“If, for instance, to take an extreme case, 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.”
Darkness Even in Darwin
Darkness as a metaphor has been around a long time, but it really began to catch fire in the late 1800’s. Today, it is almost impossible to pick up a book and not find darkness used metaphorically, especially in fiction. Just how omnipresent this metaphor is—the central metaphor of our age, really—is partially manifested by the fact that even Darwin gives into temptation:
“we can sometimes indicate, with a certain amount of confidence, the probable steps by which the males have acquired their brilliant plumage and various ornaments; yet in many cases we are involved in complete darkness.”
