Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life

ANGELS AND AGES: A SHORT BOOK ABOUT DARWIN, LINCOLN, AND MODERN LIFE; Adam Gopnik; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009; 204 pgs. Nonfiction.

Adam Gopnik celebrates the 200th birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin in a glittering new volume, “Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern
Life.” Taking his title from Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton’s lament at Lincoln’s passing,
variously reported as “Now he belongs to the ages” and “Now he belongs to the angels,” Gopnik uses Lincoln and Darwin’s thought and expression to show the shift in worldview from a vertical sensibility (man looking upward to God/angels) to a horizontal one (man discovering his genesis in ancient ages past, and looking forward toward an unknown future). Along the way Gopnik shows us these twin titans in unusual ways: Lincoln’s exquisite, passionate rhetoric expressing in every circumstance, his trust in the safety of the law (“Let every American . . . swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others”). Darwin’s endless curiosity and tireless observations leading to new knowledge of the relationships among living things (“He looks as hard as he can . . . and this act of looking and organizing is for him the probity of intelligence”). There is great tenderness in these portraits as well. We see Lincoln, inconsolable over the death of his son Willie, and carrying simultaneously the burden of the deaths of thousands of young men whom he had sent into battle. Darwin delayed publication of “On the Origin of Species” because he wished not to offend his passionately religious wife Emma. Darwin also lost a child, his favorite Annie, who died of tuberculosis at age 10, leaving her father nearly overwhelmed with grief. “Angels and Ages . . . “ is one of the best books I have ever read, even though I completely disagree with Gopnik’s conclusion that evolutionary biology proves that life on earth came into being by accident and advanced by chance. “Angels and Ages . . . “ is a model of respectful discourse and, oddly enough, tends to affirm one’s own belief in the face of the extremely well-wrought expression of another’s disbelief. Although Adam Gopnik doesn't believe in angels,
he certainly writes like one.

LW