ABSTRACT
On November 18, 1873, John Fiske, the American historian and philosopher, wrote to his wife-“My darling puss”—with details of a dinner conversation he had had with Thomas Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and George Henry Lewes. Engaged in a discussion about the theory of evolution, Fiske hammered home his belief that in the hands of scientifi c experts, evolutionary theories held the potential to transform humanity. Turning in the course of conversation to George Henry Lewes, Fiske insisted that all that was needed to ensure human evolution was a learned “Evolver.”1 Fiske’s off-handed remark underlined the mindset of late nineteenth-century intellectuals, social reformers, and legislators, in which evolutionary theory was thought to provide a clear set of guidelines that would ensure humankind’s future progress.2 But in the United States and Australia between the 1850s and 1890s, this confi dence was tempered by the “problem” of racial hybridity.3 As the Native American reformer William Barrows suggested, the wise “Evolver” in settler societies must foster social harmony by helping to eliminate the “dubious hyphen between savagery and civilization.”4
