Critics uniformly praised darwins sacred cause describing it as thoroughly researched absorbing and even thrilling independent only a few had misgivings some critics noticed that the authors gloss over evidence of prejud. The extensive literature on charles darwin has valuable additions with these two volumes one revealing the depth and complexity of the intersection of science. Darwins sacred cause how a hatred of slavery shaped darwins views on human evolution en dcprovenance digital citation created by the bioethics research library georgetown university for the national information resource on ethics and human genetics a project funded by the united states national human genome research institute en dc . He believed that far from being separate species the races belonged to the same human family slavery was therefore a sin and abolishing it became darwins sacred cause his theory of. Slavery was therefore a sin and abolishing it became darwins sacred cause his theory of evolution gave a common ancestor not only to all races but to all biological life this masterful book restores the missing moral core of darwins evolutionary universe providing a completely new account of how he came to his shattering theories about human origins publishers weekly starred review