Carl Zimmer Quote
The Galtons were a pious family of Quakers, but by the end of the 1700s, the wealth they made from war and slavery had largely turned the Society of Friends against them. In 1790, a faction of Quakers tried to bar the Galtons from their monthly meetings. Delegations of wealthy Quakers tried to persuade the Galtons to get into a different line of work. Samuel the elder agreed to stop taking profits from the family’s gun business. But Samuel the younger refused. He wouldn’t even admit he was doing anything wrong. In a letter read to the monthly meeting in Birmingham in 1796, he cast himself as a helpless prisoner of heredity. The Trade devolved upon me as if it were an inheritance, he declared. My Engagements in the Business were not a matter of choice. The Quakers didn’t buy that excuse. They barred him from their meetings for life.
The Galtons were a pious family of Quakers, but by the end of the 1700s, the wealth they made from war and slavery had largely turned the Society of Friends against them. In 1790, a faction of Quakers tried to bar the Galtons from their monthly meetings. Delegations of wealthy Quakers tried to persuade the Galtons to get into a different line of work. Samuel the elder agreed to stop taking profits from the family’s gun business. But Samuel the younger refused. He wouldn’t even admit he was doing anything wrong. In a letter read to the monthly meeting in Birmingham in 1796, he cast himself as a helpless prisoner of heredity. The Trade devolved upon me as if it were an inheritance, he declared. My Engagements in the Business were not a matter of choice. The Quakers didn’t buy that excuse. They barred him from their meetings for life.
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About Carl Zimmer
Zimmer describes his journalistic beat as "life" or "what it means to be alive". He is the only science writer to have a species of tapeworm named after him (Acanthobothrium zimmeri). Zimmer's father is Dick Zimmer, a Republican politician from New Jersey, who was a member of U.S. House of Representatives from 1991 to 1997.