Unconscious Memory / Butler, Samuel, 1835-1902

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Title: Unconscious Memory

Author: Samuel Butler

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Transcribed from the 1910 A. C. Fifield edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk




UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY




"As this paper contains nothing which deserves the name either of
experiment or discovery, and as it is, in fact, destitute of every
species of merit, we should have allowed it to pass among the
multitude of those articles which must always find their way into the
collections of a society which is pledged to publish two or three
volumes every year. . . .  We wish to raise our feeble voice against
innovations, that can have no other effect than to check the progress
of science, and renew all those wild phantoms of the imagination
which Bacon and Newton put to flight from her temple."--Opening
Paragraph of a Review of Dr. Young's Bakerian Lecture.  Edinburgh
Review, January 1803, p. 450.

"Young's work was laid before the Royal society, and was made the
1801 Bakerian Lecture.  But he was before his time.  The second
number of the Edinburgh Review contained an article levelled against
him by Henry (afterwards Lord) Brougham, and this was so severe an
attack that Young's ideas were absolutely quenched for fifteen years.
Brougham was then only twenty-four years of age.  Young's theory was
reproduced in France by Fresnel.  In our days it is the accepted
theory, and is found to explain all the phenomena of light."--Times
Report of a Lecture by Professor Tyndall on Light, April 27, 1880.


This Book
Is inscribed to
RICHARD GARNETT, ESQ.
(Of the British Museum)
In grateful acknowledgment of the unwearying kindness with which he
has so often placed at my disposal his varied store of information.



Contents:
   Note by R. A. Streatfeild
   Introduction by Marcus Hartog
   Author's Preface
   Unconscious Memory



NOTE



For many years a link in the chain of Samuel Butler's biological
works has been missing.  "Unconscious Memory" was originally
published thirty years ago, but for fully half that period it has
been out of print, owing to the destruction of a large number of the
unbound sheets in a fire at the premises of the printers some years
ago.  The present reprint comes, I think, at a peculiarly fortunate
moment, since the attention of the general public has of late been
drawn to Butler's biological theories in a marked manner by several
distinguished men of science, notably by Dr. Francis Darwin, who, in
his presidential address to the British Association in 1908, quoted
from the translation of Hering's address on "Memory as a Universal
Function of Original Matter," which Butler incorporated into
"Unconscious Memory," and spoke in the highest terms of Butler
himself.  It is not necessary for me to do more than refer to the
changed attitude of scientific authorities with regard to Butler and
his theories, since Professor Marcus Hartog has most kindly consented
to contribute an introduction to the present edition of "Unconscious
Memory," summarising Butler's views upon biology, and defining his
position in the world of science.  A word must be said as to the
controversy between Butler and Darwin, with which Chapter IV is
concerned.  I have been told that in reissuing the book at all I am
committing a grievous error of taste, that the world is no longer
interested in these "old, unhappy far-off things and battles long
ago," and that Butler himself, by refraining from republishing
"Unconscious Memory," tacitly admitted that he wished the controversy
to be consigned to oblivion.  This last suggestion, at any rate, has
no foundation in fact.  Butler desired nothing less than that his
vindication of himself against what he considered unfair treatment
should be forgotten.  He would have republished "Unconscious Memory"
himself, had not the latter years of his life been devoted to all-
engrossing work in other fields.  In issuing the present edition I am
fulfilling a wish that he expressed to me shortly before his death.

R. A. STREATFEILD.
April, 1910.



INTRODUCTION By Marcus Hartog, M.A.  D.Sc., F.L.S., F.R.H.S.



In reviewing Samuel Butler's works, "Unconscious Memory" gives us an
invaluable lead; for it tells us (Chaps. II, III) how the author came
to write the Book of the Machines in "Erewhon" (1872), with its
foreshadowing of the later theory, "Life and Habit," (1878),
"Evolution, Old and New" (1879), as well as "Unconscious Memory"
(1880) itself.  His fourth book on biological theory was "Luck? or
Cunning?" (1887). {0a}

Besides these books, his contributions to biology comprise several
essays:  "Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals, contained
in "Selections from Previous Works" (1884) incorporated into "Luck?
or Cunning," "The Deadlock in Darwinism" (Universal Review, April-
June, 1890), republished in the posthumous volume of "Essays on Life,
Art, and Science" (1904), and, finally, some of the "Extracts from
the Notebooks of the late Samuel Butler," edited by Mr. H. Festing
Jones, now in course of publication in the New Quarterly Review.


Of all these, "LIFE AND HABIT" (1878) is the most important, the main
building to which the other writings are buttresses or, at most,
annexes.  Its teaching has been summarised in "Unconscious Memory" in
four main principles:  "(1) the oneness of personality between parent
and offspring; (2) memory on the part of the offspring of certain
actions which it did when in the persons of its forefathers; (3) the
latency of that memory until it is rekindled by a recurrence of the
associated ideas; (4) the unconsciousness with which habitual actions
come to be performed."  To these we must add a fifth:  the
purposiveness of the actions of living beings, as of the machines
which they make or select.

Butler tells ("Life and Habit," p. 33) that he sometimes hoped "that
this book would be regarded as a valuable adjunct to Darwinism."  He
was bitterly disappointed in the event, for the book, as a whole, was
received by professional biologists as a gigantic joke--a joke,
moreover, not in the best possible taste.  True, its central ideas,
largely those of Lamarck, had been presented by Hering in 1870 (as
Butler found shortly after his publication); they had been favourably
received, developed by Haeckel, expounded and praised by Ray
Lankester.  Coming from Butler, they met with contumely, even from
such men as Romanes, who, as Butler had no difficulty in proving,
were unconsciously inspired by the same ideas--"Nur mit ein bischen
ander'n Worter."

It is easy, looking back, to see why "Life and Habit" so missed its
mark.  Charles Darwin's presentation of the evolution theory had, for
the first time, rendered it possible for a "sound naturalist" to
accept the doctrine of common descent with divergence; and so given a
real meaning to the term "natural relationship," which had forced
itself upon the older naturalists, despite their belief in special
and independent creations.  The immediate aim of the naturalists of
the day was now to fill up the gaps in their knowledge, so as to
strengthen the fabric of a unified biology.  For this purpose they
found their actual scientific equipment so inadequate that they were
fully occupied in inventing fresh technique, and working therewith at
facts--save a few critics, such as St. George Mivart, who was
regarded as negligible, since he evidently held a brief for a party
standing outside the scientific world.

Butler introduced himself as what we now call "The Man in the
Street," far too bare of scientific clothing to satisfy the Mrs.
Grundy of the domain:  lacking all recognised tools of science and
all sense of the difficulties in his way, he proceeded to tackle the
problems of science with little save the deft pen of the literary
expert in his hand.  His very failure to appreciate the difficulties
gave greater power to his work--much as Tartarin of Tarascon ascended
the Jungfrau and faced successfully all dangers of Alpine travel, so
long as he believed them to be the mere "blagues de reclame" of the
wily Swiss host.  His brilliant qualities of style and irony
themselves told heavily against him.  Was he not already known for
having written the most trenchant satire that had appeared since
"Gulliver's Travels"?  Had he not sneered therein at the very
foundations of society, and followed up its success by a pseudo-
biography that had taken in the "Record" and the "Rock"?  In "Life
and Habit," at the very start, he goes out of his way to heap scorn
at the respected names of Marcus Aurelius, Lord Bacon, Goethe, Arnold
of Rugby, and Dr. W. B. Carpenter.  He expressed the lowest opinion
of the Fellows of the Royal Society.  To him the professional man of
science, with self-conscious knowledge for his ideal and aim, was a
medicine-man, priest, augur--useful, perhaps, in his way, but to be
carefully watched by all who value freedom of thought and person,
lest with opportunity he develop into a persecutor of the worst type.
Not content with blackguarding the audience to whom his work should
most appeal, he went on to depreciate that work itself and its author
in his finest vein of irony.  Having argued that our best and highest
knowledge is that of whose possession we are most ignorant, he
proceeds:  "Above all, let no unwary reader do me the injustice of
believing in me.  In that I write at all I am among the damned."


His writing of "EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW" (1879) was due to his
conviction that scant justice had been done by Charles Darwin and
Alfred Wallace and their admirers to the pioneering work of Buffon,
Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck.  To repair this he gives a brilliant
exposition of what seemed to him the most valuable portion of their
teachings on evolution.  His analysis of Buffon's true meaning,
veiled by the reticences due to the conditions under which he wrote,
is as masterly as the English in which he develops it.  His sense of
wounded justice explains the vigorous polemic which here, as in all
his later writings, he carries to the extreme.

As a matter of fact, he never realised Charles Darwin's utter lack of
sympathetic understanding of the work of his French precursors, let
alone his own grandfather, Erasmus.  Yet this practical ignorance,
which to Butler was so strange as to transcend belief, was altogether
genuine, and easy to realise when we recall the position of Natural
Science in the early thirties in Darwin's student days at Cambridge,
and for a decade or two later.  Catastropharianism was the tenet of
the day:  to the last it commended itself to his Professors of Botany
and Geology,--for whom Darwin held the fervent allegiance of the
Indian scholar, or chela, to his guru.  As Geikie has recently
pointed out, it was only later, when Lyell had shown that the breaks
in the succession of the rocks were only partial and local, without
involving the universal catastrophes that destroyed all life and
rendered fresh creations thereof necessary, that any general
acceptance of a descent theory could be expected.  We may be very
sure that Darwin must have received many solemn warnings against the
dangerous speculations of the "French Revolutionary School."  He
himself was far too busy at the time with the reception and
assimilation of new facts to be awake to the deeper interest of far-
reaching theories.

It is the more unfortunate that Butler's lack of appreciation on
these points should have led to the enormous proportion of bitter
personal controversy that we find in the remainder of his biological
writings.  Possibly, as suggested by George Bernard Shaw, his
acquaintance and admirer, he was also swayed by philosophical
resentment at that banishment of mind from the organic universe,
which was generally thought to have been achieved by Charles Darwin's
theory.  Still, we must remember that this mindless view is not
implicit in Charles Darwin's presentment of his own theory, nor was
it accepted by him as it has been by so many of his professed
disciples.


"UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY" (1880).--We have already alluded to an
anticipation of Butler's main theses.  In 1870 Dr. Ewald Hering, one
of the most eminent physiologists of the day, Professor at Vienna,
gave an Inaugural Address to the Imperial Royal Academy of Sciences:
"Das Gedachtniss als allgemeine Funktion der organisirter Substanz"
("Memory as a Universal Function of Organised Matter").  When "Life
and Habit" was well advanced, Francis Darwin, at the time a frequent
visitor, called Butler's attention to this essay, which he himself
only knew from an article in "Nature."  Herein Professor E. Ray
Lankester had referred to it with admiring sympathy in connection
with its further development by Haeckel in a pamphlet entitled "Die
Perigenese der Plastidule."  We may note, however, that in his
collected Essays, "The Advancement of Science" (1890), Sir Ray
Lankester, while including this Essay, inserts on the blank page
{0b}--we had almost written "the white sheet"--at the back of it an
apology for having ever advocated the possibility of the transmission
of acquired characters.

"Unconscious Memory" was largely written to show the relation of
Butler's views to Hering's, and contains an exquisitely written
translation of the Address.  Hering does, indeed, anticipate Butler,
and that in language far more suitable to the persuasion of the
scientific public.  It contains a subsidiary hypothesis that memory
has for its mechanism special vibrations of the protoplasm, and the
acquired capacity to respond to such vibrations once felt upon their
repetition.  I do not think that the theory gains anything by the
introduction of this even as a mere formal hypothesis; and there is
no evidence for its being anything more.  Butler, however, gives it a
warm, nay, enthusiastic, reception in Chapter V (Introduction to
Professor Hering's lecture), and in his notes to the translation of
the Address, which bulks so large in this book, but points out that
he was "not committed to this hypothesis, though inclined to accept
it on a prima facie view."  Later on, as we shall see, he attached
more importance to it.

The Hering Address is followed in "Unconscious Memory" by
translations of selected passages from Von Hartmann's "Philosophy of
the Unconscious," and annotations to explain the difference from this
personification of "The Unconscious" as a mighty all-ruling, all-
creating personality, and his own scientific recognition of the great
part played by UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSES in the region of mind and
memory.

These are the essentials of the book as a contribution to biological
philosophy.  The closing chapters contain a lucid statement of
objections to his theory as they might be put by a rigid
necessitarian, and a refutation of that interpretation as applied to
human action.

But in the second chapter Butler states his recession from the strong
logical position he had hitherto developed in his writings from
"Erewhon" onwards; so far he had not only distinguished the living
from the non-living, but distinguished among the latter MACHINES or
TOOLS from THINGS AT LARGE. {0c}  Machines or tools are the external
organs of living beings, as organs are their internal machines:  they
are fashioned, assembled, or selected by the beings for a purposes so
they have a FUTURE PURPOSE, as well as a PAST HISTORY.  "Things at
large" have a past history, but no purpose (so long as some being
does not convert them into tools and give them a purpose):  Machines
have a Why? as well as a How?:  "things at large" have a How? only.

In "Unconscious Memory" the allurements of unitary or monistic views
have gained the upper hand, and Butler writes (p. 23):-


"The only thing of which I am sure is, that the distinction between
the organic and inorganic is arbitrary; that it is more coherent with
our other ideas, and therefore more acceptable, to start with every
molecule as a living thing, and then deduce death as the breaking up
of an association or corporation, than to start with inanimate
molecules and smuggle life into them; and that, therefore, what we
call the inorganic world must be regarded as up to a certain point
living, and instinct, within certain limits, with consciousness,
volition, and power of concerted action.  IT IS ONLY OF LATE,
HOWEVER, THAT I HAVE COME TO THIS OPINION."


I have italicised the last sentence, to show that Butler was more or
less conscious of its irreconcilability with much of his most
characteristic doctrine.  Again, in the closing chapter, Butler
writes (p. 275):-


"We should endeavour to see the so-called inorganic as living in
respect of the qualities it has in common with the organic, rather
than the organic as non-living in respect of the qualities it has in
common with the inorganic."


We conclude our survey of this book by mentioning the literary
controversial part chiefly to be found in Chapter IV, but cropping up
elsewhere.  It refers to interpolations made in the authorised
translation of Krause's "Life of Erasmus Darwin."  Only one side is
presented; and we are not called upon, here or elsewhere, to discuss
the merits of the question.


"LUCK, OR CUNNING, as the Main Means of Organic Modification? an
Attempt to throw Additional Light upon the late Mr. Charles Darwin's
Theory of Natural Selection" (1887), completes the series of
biological books.  This is mainly a book of strenuous polemic.  It
brings out still more forcibly the Hering-Butler doctrine of
continued personality from generation to generation, and of the
working of unconscious memory throughout; and points out that, while
this is implicit in much of the teaching of Herbert Spencer, Romanes,
and others, it was nowhere--even after the appearance of "Life and
Habit"--explicitly recognised by them, but, on the contrary, masked
by inconsistent statements and teaching.  Not Luck but Cunning, not
the uninspired weeding out by Natural Selection but the intelligent
striving of the organism, is at the bottom of the useful variety of
organic life.  And the parallel is drawn that not the happy accident
of time and place, but the Machiavellian cunning of Charles Darwin,
succeeded in imposing, as entirely his own, on the civilised world an
uninspired and inadequate theory of evolution wherein luck played the
leading part; while the more inspired and inspiring views of the
older evolutionists had failed by the inferiority of their luck.  On
this controversy I am bound to say that I do not in the very least
share Butler's opinions; and I must ascribe them to his lack of
personal familiarity with the biologists of the day and their modes
of thought and of work.  Butler everywhere undervalues the important
work of elimination played by Natural Selection in its widest sense.

The "Conclusion" of "Luck, or Cunning?" shows a strong advance in
monistic views, and a yet more marked development in the vibration
hypothesis of memory given by Hering and only adopted with the
greatest reserve in "Unconscious Memory."


"Our conception, then, concerning the nature of any matter depends
solely upon its kind and degree of unrest, that is to say, on the
characteristics of the vibrations that are going on within it.  The
exterior object vibrating in a certain way imparts some of its
vibrations to our brain; but if the state of the thing itself depends
upon its vibrations, it [the thing] must be considered as to all
intents and purposes the vibrations themselves--plus, of course, the
underlying substance that is vibrating. . . .  The same vibrations,
therefore, form the substance remembered, introduce an infinitesimal
dose of it within the brain, modify the substance remembering, and,
in the course of time, create and further modify the mechanism of
both the sensory and the motor nerves.  Thought and thing are one.

"I commend these two last speculations to the reader's charitable
consideration, as feeling that I am here travelling beyond the ground
on which I can safely venture. . . .  I believe they are both
substantially true."


In 1885 he had written an abstract of these ideas in his notebooks
(see New Quarterly Review, 1910, p. 116), and as in "Luck, or
Cunning?" associated them vaguely with the unitary conceptions
introduced into chemistry by Newlands and Mendelejeff.  Judging
himself as an outsider, the author of "Life and Habit" would
certainly have considered the mild expression of faith, "I believe
they are both substantially true," equivalent to one of extreme
doubt.  Thus "the fact of the Archbishop's recognising this as among
the number of his beliefs is conclusive evidence, with those who have
devoted attention to the laws of thought, that his mind is not yet
clear" on the matter of the belief avowed (see "Life and Habit," pp.
24, 25).

To sum up:  Butler's fundamental attitude to the vibration hypothesis
was all through that taken in "Unconscious Memory"; he played with it
as a pretty pet, and fancied it more and more as time went on; but
instead of backing it for all he was worth, like the main theses of
"Life and Habit," he put a big stake on it--and then hedged.


The last of Butler's biological writings is the Essay, "THE DEADLOCK
IN DARWINISM," containing much valuable criticism on Wallace and
Weismann.  It is in allusion to the misnomer of Wallace's book,
"Darwinism," that he introduces the term "Wallaceism" {0d} for a
theory of descent that excludes the transmission of acquired
characters.  This was, indeed, the chief factor that led Charles
Darwin to invent his hypothesis of pangenesis, which, unacceptable as
it has proved, had far more to recommend it as a formal hypothesis
than the equally formal germ-plasm hypothesis of Weismann.


The chief difficulty in accepting the main theses of Butler and
Hering is one familiar to every biologist, and not at all difficult
to understand by the layman.  Everyone knows that the complicated
beings that we term "Animals" and "Plants," consist of a number of
more or less individualised units, the cells, each analogous to a
simpler being, a Protist--save in so far as the character of the cell
unit of the Higher being is modified in accordance with the part it
plays in that complex being as a whole.  Most people, too, are
familiar with the fact that the complex being starts as a single
cell, separated from its parent; or, where bisexual reproduction
occurs, from a cell due to the fusion of two cells, each detached
from its parent.  Such cells are called "Germ-cells."  The germ-cell,
whether of single or of dual origin, starts by dividing repeatedly,
so as to form the PRIMARY EMBRYONIC CELLS, a complex mass of cells,
at first essentially similar, which, however, as they go on
multiplying, undergo differentiations and migrations, losing their
simplicity as they do so.  Those cells that are modified to take part
in the proper work of the whole are called tissue-cells.  In virtue
of their activities, their growth and reproductive power are limited-
-much more in Animals than in Plants, in Higher than in Lower beings.
It is these tissues, or some of them, that receive the impressions
from the outside which leave the imprint of memory.  Other cells,
which may be closely associated into a continuous organ, or more or
less surrounded by tissue-cells, whose part it is to nourish them,
are called "secondary embryonic cells," or "germ-cells."  The germ-
cells may be differentiated in the young organism at a very early
stage, but in Plants they are separated at a much later date from the
less isolated embryonic regions that provide for the Plant's
branching; in all cases we find embryonic and germ-cells screened
from the life processes of the complex organism, or taking no very
obvious part in it, save to form new tissues or new organs, notably
in Plants.


Again, in ourselves, and to a greater or less extent in all Animals,
we find a system of special tissues set apart for the reception and
storage of impressions from the outer world, and for guiding the
other organs in their appropriate responses--the "Nervous System";
and when this system is ill-developed or out of gear the remaining
organs work badly from lack of proper skilled guidance and co-
ordination.  How can we, then, speak of "memory" in a germ-cell which
has been screened from the experiences of the organism, which is too
simple in structure to realise them if it were exposed to them?  My
own answer is that we cannot form any theory on the subject, the only
question is whether we have any right to INFER this "memory" from the
BEHAVIOUR of living beings; and Butler, like Hering, Haeckel, and
some more modern authors, has shown that the inference is a very
strong presumption.  Again, it is easy to over-value such complex
instruments as we possess.  The possessor of an up-to-date camera,
well instructed in the function and manipulation of every part, but
ignorant of all optics save a hand-to-mouth knowledge of the
properties of his own lens, might say that a priori no picture could
be taken with a cigar-box perforated by a pin-hole; and our ignorance
of the mechanism of the Psychology of any organism is greater by many
times than that of my supposed photographer.  We know that Plants are
able to do many things that can only be accounted for by ascribing to
them a "psyche," and these co-ordinated enough to satisfy their
needs; and yet they possess no central organ comparable to the brain,
no highly specialised system for intercommunication like our nerve
trunks and fibres.  As Oscar Hertwig says, we are as ignorant of the
mechanism of the development of the individual as we are of that of
hereditary transmission of acquired characters, and the absence of
such mechanism in either case is no reason for rejecting the proven
fact.

However, the relations of germ and body just described led Jager,
Nussbaum, Galton, Lankester, and, above all, Weismann, to the view
that the germ-cells or "stirp" (Galton) were IN the body, but not OF
it.  Indeed, in the body and out of it, whether as reproductive cells
set free, or in the developing embryo, they are regarded as forming
one continuous homogeneity, in contrast to the differentiation of the
body; and it is to these cells, regarded as a continuum, that the
terms stirp, germ-plasm, are especially applied.  Yet on this view,
so eagerly advocated by its supporters, we have to substitute for the
hypothesis of memory, which they declare to have no real meaning
here, the far more fantastic hypotheses of Weismann:  by these they
explain the process of differentiation in the young embryo into new
germ and body; and in the young body the differentiation of its
cells, each in due time and place, into the varied tissue cells and
organs.  Such views might perhaps be acceptable if it could be shown
that over each cell-division there presided a wise all-guiding genie
of transcending intellect, to which Clerk-Maxwell's sorting demons
were mere infants.  Yet these views have so enchanted many
distinguished biologists, that in dealing with the subject they have
actually ignored the existence of equally able workers who hesitate
to share the extremest of their views.  The phenomenon is one well
known in hypnotic practice.  So long as the non-Weismannians deal
with matters outside this discussion, their existence and their work
is rated at its just value; but any work of theirs on this point so
affects the orthodox Weismannite (whether he accept this label or
reject it does not matter), that for the time being their existence
and the good work they have done are alike non-existent. {0e}

Butler founded no school, and wished to found none.  He desired that
what was true in his work should prevail, and he looked forward
calmly to the time when the recognition of that truth and of his
share in advancing it should give him in the lives of others that
immortality for which alone he craved.

Lamarckian views have never lacked defenders here and in America.  Of
the English, Herbert Spencer, who however, was averse to the
vitalistic attitude, Vines and Henslow among botanists, Cunningham
among zoologists, have always resisted Weismannism; but, I think,
none of these was distinctly influenced by Hering and Butler.  In
America the majority of the great school of palaeontologists have
been strong Lamarckians, notably Cope, who has pointed out, moreover,
that the transformations of energy in living beings are peculiar to
them.

We have already adverted to Haeckel's acceptance and development of
Hering's ideas in his "Perigenese der Plastidule."  Oscar Hertwig has
been a consistent Lamarckian, like Yves Delage of the Sorbonne, and
these occupy pre-eminent positions not only as observers, but as
discriminating theorists and historians of the recent progress of
biology.  We may also cite as a Lamarckian--of a sort--Felix Le
Dantec, the leader of the chemico-physical school of the present day.

But we must seek elsewhere for special attention to the points which
Butler regarded as the essentials of "Life and Habit."  In 1893 Henry
P. Orr, Professor of Biology in the University of Louisiana,
published a little book entitled "A Theory of Heredity."  Herein he
insists on the nervous control of the whole body, and on the
transmission to the reproductive cells of such stimuli, received by
the body, as will guide them on their path until they shall have
acquired adequate experience of their own in the new body they have
formed.  I have found the name of neither Butler nor Hering, but the
treatment is essentially on their lines, and is both clear and
interesting.

In 1896 I wrote an essay on "The Fundamental Principles of Heredity,"
primarily directed to the man in the street.  This, after being held
over for more than a year by one leading review, was "declined with
regret," and again after some weeks met the same fate from another
editor.  It appeared in the pages of "Natural Science" for October,
1897, and in the "Biologisches Centralblatt" for the same year.  I
reproduce its closing paragraph:-


"This theory [Hering-Butler's] has, indeed, a tentative character,
and lacks symmetrical completeness, but is the more welcome as not
aiming at the impossible.  A whole series of phenomena in organic
beings are correlated under the term of MEMORY, CONSCIOUS AND
UNCONSCIOUS, PATENT AND LATENT. . . .  Of the order of unconscious
memory, latent till the arrival of the appropriate stimulus, is all
the co-operative growth and work of the organism, including its
development from the reproductive cells.  Concerning the modus
operandi we know nothing:  the phenomena may be due, as Hering
suggests, to molecular vibrations, which must be at least as distinct
from ordinary physical disturbances as Rontgen's rays are from
ordinary light; or it may be correlated, as we ourselves are inclined
to think, with complex chemical changes in an intricate but orderly
succession.  For the present, at least, the problem of heredity can
only be elucidated by the light of mental, and not material
processes."


It will be seen that I express doubts as to the validity of Hering's
invocation of molecular vibrations as the mechanism of memory, and
suggest as an alternative rhythmic chemical changes.  This view has
recently been put forth in detail by J. J. Cunningham in his essay on
the "Hormone {0f} Theory of Heredity," in the Archiv fur
Entwicklungsmechanik (1909), but I have failed to note any direct
effect of my essay on the trend of biological thought.

Among post-Darwinian controversies the one that has latterly assumed
the greatest prominence is that of the relative importance of small
variations in the way of more or less "fluctuations," and of
"discontinuous variations," or "mutations," as De Vries has called
them.  Darwin, in the first four editions of the "Origin of Species,"
attached more importance to the latter than in subsequent editions;
he was swayed in his attitude, as is well known, by an article of the
physicist, Fleeming Jenkin, which appeared in the North British
Review.  The mathematics of this article were unimpeachable, but they
were founded on the assumption that exceptional variations would only
occur in single individuals, which is, indeed, often the case among
those domesticated races on which Darwin especially studied the
phenomena of variation.  Darwin was no mathematician or physicist,
and we are told in his biography that he regarded every tool-shop
rule or optician's thermometer as an instrument of precision:  so he
appears to have regarded Fleeming Jenkin's demonstration as a
mathematical deduction which he was bound to accept without
criticism.

Mr. William Bateson, late Professor of Biology in the University of
Cambridge, as early as 1894 laid great stress on the importance of
discontinuous variations, collecting and collating the known facts in
his "Materials for the Study of Variations"; but this important work,
now become rare and valuable, at the time excited so little interest
as to be 'remaindered' within a very few years after publication.

In 1901 Hugo De Vries, Professor of Botany in the University of
Amsterdam, published "Die Mutationstheorie," wherein he showed that
mutations or discontinuous variations in various directions may
appear simultaneously in many individuals, and in various directions.
In the gardener's phrase, the species may take to sporting in various
directions at the same time, and each sport may be represented by
numerous specimens.

De Vries shows the probability that species go on for long periods
showing only fluctuations, and then suddenly take to sporting in the
way described, short periods of mutation alternating with long
intervals of relative constancy.  It is to mutations that De Vries
and his school, as well as Luther Burbank, the great former of new
fruit- and flower-plants, look for those variations which form the
material of Natural Selection.  In "God the Known and God the
Unknown," which appeared in the Examiner (May, June, and July), 1879,
but though then revised was only published posthumously in 1909,
Butler anticipates this distinction:-


"Under these circumstances organism must act in one or other of these
two ways:  it must either change slowly and continuously with the
surroundings, paying cash for everything, meeting the smallest change
with a corresponding modification, so far as is found convenient, or
it must put off change as long as possible, and then make larger and
more sweeping changes.

"Both these courses are the same in principle, the difference being
one of scale, and the one being a miniature of the other, as a ripple
is an Atlantic wave in little; both have their advantages and
disadvantages, so that most organisms will take the one course for
one set of things and the other for another.  They will deal promptly
with things which they can get at easily, and which lie more upon the
surface; THOSE, HOWEVER, WHICH ARE MORE TROUBLESOME TO REACH, AND LIE
DEEPER, WILL BE HANDLED UPON MORE CATACLYSMIC PRINCIPLES, BEING
ALLOWED LONGER PERIODS OF REPOSE FOLLOWED BY SHORT PERIODS OF GREATER
ACTIVITY . . . it may be questioned whether what is called a sport is
not the organic expression of discontent which has been long felt,
but which has not been attended to, nor been met step by step by as
much small remedial modification as was found practicable:  so that
when a change does come it comes by way of revolution.  Or, again
(only that it comes to much the same thing), it may be compared to
one of those happy thoughts which sometimes come to us unbidden after
we have been thinking for a long time what to do, or how to arrange
our ideas, and have yet been unable to come to any conclusion" (pp.
14, 15). {0g}

We come to another order of mind in Hans Driesch.  At the time he
began his work biologists were largely busy in a region indicated by
Darwin, and roughly mapped out by Haeckel--that of phylogeny.  From
the facts of development of the individual, from the comparison of
fossils in successive strata, they set to work at the construction of
pedigrees, and strove to bring into line the principles of
classification with the more or less hypothetical "stemtrees."
Driesch considered this futile, since we never could reconstruct from
such evidence anything certain in the history of the past.  He
therefore asserted that a more complete knowledge of the physics and
chemistry of the organic world might give a scientific explanation of
the phenomena, and maintained that the proper work of the biologist
was to deepen our knowledge in these respects.  He embodied his
views, seeking the explanation on this track, filling up gaps and
tracing projected roads along lines of probable truth in his
"Analytische Theorie der organische Entwicklung."  But his own work
convinced him of the hopelessness of the task he had undertaken, and
he has become as strenuous a vitalist as Butler.  The most complete
statement of his present views is to be found in "The Philosophy of
Life" (1908-9), being the Giffold Lectures for 1907-8.  Herein he
postulates a quality ("psychoid") in all living beings, directing
energy and matter for the purpose of the organism, and to this he
applies the Aristotelian designation "Entelechy."  The question of
the transmission of acquired characters is regarded as doubtful, and
he does not emphasise--if he accepts--the doctrine of continuous
personality.  His early youthful impatience with descent theories and
hypotheses has, however, disappeared.

In the next work the influence of Hering and Butler is definitely
present and recognised.  In 1906 Signor Eugenio Rignano, an engineer
keenly interested in all branches of science, and a little later the
founder of the international review, Rivista di Scienza (now simply
called Scientia), published in French a volume entitled "Sur la
transmissibilite des Caracteres acquis--Hypothese d'un Centro-
epigenese."  Into the details of the author's work we will not enter
fully.  Suffice it to know that he accepts the Hering-Butler theory,
and makes a distinct advance on Hering's rather crude hypothesis of
persistent vibrations by suggesting that the remembering centres
store slightly different forms of energy, to give out energy of the
same kind as they have received, like electrical accumulators.  The
last chapter, "Le Phenomene mnemonique et le Phenomene vital," is
frankly based on Hering.

In "The Lesson of Evolution" (1907, posthumous, and only published
for private circulation) Frederick Wollaston Hutton, F.R.S., late
Professor of Biology and Geology, first at Dunedin and after at
Christchurch, New Zealand, puts forward a strongly vitalistic view,
and adopts Hering's teaching.  After stating this he adds, "The same
idea of heredity being due to unconscious memory was advocated by Mr.
Samuel Butler in his "Life and Habit."

Dr. James Mark Baldwin, Stuart Professor of Psychology in Princeton
University, U.S.A., called attention early in the 90's to a reaction
characteristic of all living beings, which he terms the "Circular
Reaction."  We take his most recent account of this from his
"Development and Evolution" (1902):- {0h}


"The general fact is that the organism reacts by concentration upon
the locality stimulated for the CONTINUANCE of the conditions,
movements, stimulations, WHICH ARE VITALLY BENEFICIAL, and for the
cessation of the conditions, movements, stimulations WHICH ARE
VITALLY DEPRESSING."


This amounts to saying in the terminology of Jenning (see below) that
the living organism alters its "physiological states" either for its
direct benefit, or for its indirect benefit in the reduction of
harmful conditions.

Again:-


"This form of concentration of energy on stimulated localities, with
the resulting renewal through movement of conditions that are
pleasure-giving and beneficial, and the consequent repetition of the
movements is called 'circular reaction.'"


Of course, the inhibition of such movements as would be painful on
repetition is merely the negative case of the circular reaction.  We
must not put too much of our own ideas into the author's mind; he
nowhere says explicitly that the animal or plant shows its sense and
does this because it likes the one thing and wants it repeated, or
dislikes the other and stops its repetition, as Butler would have
said.  Baldwin is very strong in insisting that no full explanation
can be given of living processes, any more than of history, on purely
chemico-physical grounds.

The same view is put differently and independently by H. S. Jennings,
{0i} who started his investigations of living Protista, the simplest
of living beings, with the idea that only accurate and ample
observation was needed to enable us to explain all their activities
on a mechanical basis, and devised ingenious models of protoplastic
movements.  He was led, like Driesch, to renounce such efforts as
illusory, and has come to the conviction that in the behaviour of
these lowly beings there is a purposive and a tentative character--a
method of "trial and error"--that can only be interpreted by the
invocation of psychology.  He points out that after stimulation the
"state" of the organism may be altered, so that the response to the
same stimulus on repetition is other.  Or, as he puts it, the first
stimulus has caused the organism to pass into a new "physiological
state."  As the change of state from what we may call the "primary
indifferent state" is advantageous to the organism, we may regard
this as equivalent to the doctrine of the "circular reaction," and
also as containing the essence of Semon's doctrine of "engrams" or
imprints which we are about to consider.  We cite one passage which
for audacity of thought (underlying, it is true, most guarded
expression) may well compare with many of the boldest flights in
"Life and Habit":-


"It may be noted that regulation in the manner we have set forth is
what, in the behaviour of higher organisms, at least, is called
intelligence [the examples have been taken from Protista, Corals, and
the Lowest Worms].  If the same method of regulation is found in
other fields, there is no reason for refusing to compare the action
to intelligence.  Comparison of the regulatory processes that are
shown in internal physiological changes and in regeneration to
intelligence seems to be looked upon sometimes as heretical and
unscientific.  Yet intelligence is a name applied to processes that
actually exist in the regulation of movements, and there is, a
priori, no reason why similar processes should not occur in
regulation in other fields.  When we analyse regulation objectively
there seems indeed reason to think that the processes are of the same
character in behaviour as elsewhere.  If the term intelligence be
reserved for the subjective accompaniments of such regulation, then
of course we have no direct knowledge of its existence in any of the
fields of regulation outside of the self, and in the self perhaps
only in behaviour.  But in a purely objective consideration there
seems no reason to suppose that regulation in behaviour
(intelligence) is of a fundamentally different character from
regulation elsewhere."  ("Method of Regulation," p. 492.)


Jennings makes no mention of questions of the theory of heredity.  He
has made some experiments on the transmission of an acquired
character in Protozoa; but it was a mutilation-character, which is,
as has been often shown, {0j} not to the point.


One of the most obvious criticisms of Hering's exposition is based
upon the extended use he makes of the word "Memory":  this he had
foreseen and deprecated.


"We have a perfect right," he says, "to extend our conception of
memory so as to make it embrace involuntary [and also unconscious]
reproductions of sensations, ideas, perceptions, and efforts; but we
find, on having done so, that we have so far enlarged her boundaries
that she proves to be an ultimate and original power, the source and,
at the same time, the unifying bond, of our whole conscious life."
("Unconscious Memory," p. 68.)


This sentence, coupled with Hering's omission to give to the concept
of memory so enlarged a new name, clear alike of the limitations and
of the stains of habitual use, may well have been the inspiration of
the next work on our list.  Richard Semon is a professional zoologist
and anthropologist of such high status for his original observations
and researches in the mere technical sense, that in these countries
he would assuredly have been acclaimed as one of the Fellows of the
Royal Society who were Samuel Butler's special aversion.  The full
title of his book is "DIE MNEME als erhaltende Prinzip im Wechsel des
organischen Geschehens" (Munich, Ed.  1, 1904; Ed. 2, 1908).  We may
translate it "MNEME, a Principle of Conservation in the
Transformations of Organic Existence."

From this I quote in free translation the opening passage of Chapter
II:-


"We have shown that in very many cases, whether in Protist, Plant, or
Animal, when an organism has passed into an indifferent state after
the reaction to a stimulus has ceased, its irritable substance has
suffered a lasting change:  I call this after-action of the stimulus
its 'imprint' or 'engraphic' action, since it penetrates and imprints
itself in the organic substance; and I term the change so effected an
'imprint' or 'engram' of the stimulus; and the sum of all the
imprints possessed by the organism may be called its 'store of
imprints,' wherein we must distinguish between those which it has
inherited from its forbears and those which it has acquired itself.
Any phenomenon displayed by an organism as the result either of a
single imprint or of a sum of them, I term a 'mnemic phenomenon'; and
the mnemic possibilities of an organism may be termed, collectively,
its 'MNEME.'

"I have selected my own terms for the concepts that I have just
defined.  On many grounds I refrain from making any use of the good
German terms 'Gedachtniss, Erinnerungsbild.'  The first and chiefest
ground is that for my purpose I should have to employ the German
words in a much wider sense than what they usually convey, and thus
leave the door open to countless misunderstandings and idle
controversies.  It would, indeed, even amount to an error of fact to
give to the wider concept the name already current in the narrower
sense--nay, actually limited, like 'Erinnerungsbild,' to phenomena of
consciousness. . . .  In Animals, during the course of history, one
set of organs has, so to speak, specialised itself for the reception
and transmission of stimuli--the Nervous System.  But from this
specialisation we are not justified in ascribing to the nervous
system any monopoly of the function, even when it is as highly
developed as in Man. . . .  Just as the direct excitability of the
nervous system has progressed in the history of the race, so has its
capacity for receiving imprints; but neither susceptibility nor
retentiveness is its monopoly; and, indeed, retentiveness seems
inseparable from susceptibility in living matter."


Semen here takes the instance of stimulus and imprint actions
affecting the nervous system of a dog


"who has up till now never experienced aught but kindness from the
Lord of Creation, and then one day that he is out alone is pelted
with stones by a boy. . . .  Here he is affected at once by two sets
of stimuli:  (1) the optic stimulus of seeing the boy stoop for
stones and throw them, and (2) the skin stimulus of the pain felt
when they hit him.  Here both stimuli leave their imprints; and the
organism is permanently changed in relation to the recurrence of the
stimuli.  Hitherto the sight of a human figure quickly stooping had
produced no constant special reaction.  Now the reaction is constant,
and may remain so till death. . . .  The dog tucks in its tail
between its legs and takes flight, often with a howl [as of] pain."

"Here we gain on one side a deeper insight into the imprint action of
stimuli.  It reposes on the lasting change in the conditions of the
living matter, so that the repetition of the immediate or synchronous
reaction to its first stimulus (in this case the stooping of the boy,
the flying stones, and the pain on the ribs), no longer demands, as
in the original state of indifference, the full stimulus a, but may
be called forth by a partial or different stimulus, b (in this case
the mere stooping to the ground).  I term the influences by which
such changed reaction are rendered possible, 'outcome-reactions,' and
when such influences assume the form of stimuli, 'outcome-stimuli.'


They are termed "outcome" ("ecphoria") stimuli, because the author
regards them and would have us regard them as the outcome,
manifestation, or efference of an imprint of a previous stimulus.  We
have noted that the imprint is equivalent to the changed
"physiological state" of Jennings.  Again, the capacity for gaining
imprints and revealing them by outcomes favourable to the individual
is the "circular reaction" of Baldwin, but Semon gives no reference
to either author. {0k}

In the preface to his first edition (reprinted in the second) Semon
writes, after discussing the work of Hering and Haeckel:-


"The problem received a more detailed treatment in Samuel Butler's
book, 'Life and Habit,' published in 1878.  Though he only made
acquaintance with Hering's essay after this publication, Butler gave
what was in many respects a more detailed view of the coincidences of
these different phenomena of organic reproduction than did Hering.
With much that is untenable, Butler's writings present many a
brilliant idea; yet, on the whole, they are rather a retrogression
than an advance upon Hering.  Evidently they failed to exercise any
marked influence upon the literature of the day."


This judgment needs a little examination.  Butler claimed, justly,
that his "Life and Habit" was an advance on Hering in its dealing
with questions of hybridity, and of longevity puberty and sterility.
Since Semon's extended treatment of the phenomena of crosses might
almost be regarded as the rewriting of the corresponding section of
"Life and Habit" in the "Mneme" terminology, we may infer that this
view of the question was one of Butler's "brilliant ideas."  That
Butler shrank from accepting such a formal explanation of memory as
Hering did with his hypothesis should certainly be counted as a
distinct "advance upon Hering," for Semon also avoids any attempt at
an explanation of "Mneme."  I think, however, we may gather the real
meaning of Semon's strictures from the following passages:-


"I refrain here from a discussion of the development of this theory
of Lamarck's by those Neo-Lamarckians who would ascribe to the
individual elementary organism an equipment of complex psychical
powers--so to say, anthropomorphic perception and volitions.  This
treatment is no longer directed by the scientific principle of
referring complex phenomena to simpler laws, of deducing even human
intellect and will from simpler elements.  On the contrary, they
follow that most abhorrent method of taking the most complex and
unresolved as a datum, and employing it as an explanation.  The
adoption of such a method, as formerly by Samuel Butler, and recently
by Pauly, I regard as a big and dangerous step backward" (ed. 2, pp.
380-1, note).


Thus Butler's alleged retrogressions belong to the same order of
thinking that we have seen shared by Driesch, Baldwin, and Jennings,
and most explicitly avowed, as we shall see, by Francis Darwin.
Semon makes one rather candid admission, "The impossibility of
interpreting the phenomena of physiological stimulation by those of
direct reaction, and the undeception of those who had put faith in
this being possible, have led many on the BACKWARD PATH OF VITALISM."
Semon assuredly will never be able to complete his theory of "Mneme"
until, guided by the experience of Jennings and Driesch, he forsakes
the blind alley of mechanisticism and retraces his steps to
reasonable vitalism.


But the most notable publications bearing on our matter are
incidental to the Darwin Celebrations of 1908-9.  Dr. Francis Darwin,
son, collaborator, and biographer of Charles Darwin, was selected to
preside over the Meeting of the British Association held in Dublin in
1908, the jubilee of the first publications on Natural Selection by
his father and Alfred Russel Wallace.  In this address we find the
theory of Hering, Butler, Rignano, and Semon taking its proper place
as a vera causa of that variation which Natural Selection must find
before it can act, and recognised as the basis of a rational theory
of the development of the individual and of the race.  The organism
is essentially purposive:  the impossibility of devising any adequate
accounts of organic form and function without taking account of the
psychical side is most strenuously asserted.  And with our regret
that past misunderstandings should be so prominent in Butler's works,
it was very pleasant to hear Francis Darwin's quotation from Butler's
translation of Hering {0l} followed by a personal tribute to Butler
himself.

In commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and
of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the "Origin of
Species," at the suggestion of the Cambridge Philosophical Society,
the University Press published during the current year a volume
entitled "Darwin and Modern Science," edited by Mr. A. C. Seward,
Professor of Botany in the University.  Of the twenty-nine essays by
men of science of the highest distinction, one is of peculiar
interest to the readers of Samuel Butler:  "Heredity and Variation in
Modern Lights," by Professor W. Bateson, F.R.S., to whose work on
"Discontinuous Variations" we have already referred.  Here once more
Butler receives from an official biologist of the first rank full
recognition for his wonderful insight and keen critical power.  This
is the more noteworthy because Bateson has apparently no faith in the
transmission of acquired characters; but such a passage as this would
have commended itself to Butler's admiration:-


"All this indicates a definiteness and specific order in heredity,
and therefore in variation.  This order cannot by the nature of the
case be dependent on Natural Selection for its existence, but must be
a consequence of the fundamental chemical and physical nature of
living things.  The study of Variation had from the first shown that
an orderliness of this kind was present.  The bodies and properties
of living things are cosmic, not chaotic.  No matter how low in the
scale we go, never do we find the slightest hint of a diminution in
that all-pervading orderliness, nor can we conceive an organism
existing for one moment in any other state."


We have now before us the materials to determine the problem of
Butler's relation to biology and to biologists.  He was, we have
seen, anticipated by Hering; but his attitude was his own, fresh and
original.  He did not hamper his exposition, like Hering, by a
subsidiary hypothesis of vibrations which may or may not be true,
which burdens the theory without giving it greater carrying power or
persuasiveness, which is based on no objective facts, and which, as
Semon has practically demonstrated, is needless for the detailed
working out of the theory.  Butler failed to impress the biologists
of his day, even those on whom, like Romanes, he might have
reasonably counted for understanding and for support.  But he kept
alive Hering's work when it bade fair to sink into the limbo of
obsolete hypotheses.  To use Oliver Wendell Holmes's phrase, he
"depolarised" evolutionary thought.  We quote the words of a young
biologist, who, when an ardent and dogmatic Weismannist of the most
pronounced type, was induced to read "Life and Habit":  "The book was
to me a transformation and an inspiration."  Such learned writings as
Semon's or Hering's could never produce such an effect:  they do not
penetrate to the heart of man; they cannot carry conviction to the
intellect already filled full with rival theories, and with the
unreasoned faith that to-morrow or next day a new discovery will
obliterate all distinction between Man and his makings.  The mind
must needs be open for the reception of truth, for the rejection of
prejudice; and the violence of a Samuel Butler may in the future as
in the past be needed to shatter the coat of mail forged by too
exclusively professional a training.


MARCUS HARTOG
Cork, April, 1910



AUTHOR'S PREFACE



Not finding the "well-known German scientific journal Kosmos" {0m}
entered in the British Museum Catalogue, I have presented the Museum
with a copy of the number for February 1879, which contains the
article by Dr. Krause of which Mr. Charles Darwin has given a
translation, the accuracy of which is guaranteed--so he informs us--
by the translator's "scientific reputation together with his
knowledge of German." {0n}

I have marked the copy, so that the reader can see at a glance what
passages has been suppressed and where matter has been interpolated.

I have also present a copy of "Erasmus Darwin."  I have marked this
too, so that the genuine and spurious passages can be easily
distinguished.

I understand that both the "Erasmus Darwin" and the number of Kosmos
have been sent to the Keeper of Printed Books, with instructions that
they shall be at once catalogued and made accessible to readers, and
do not doubt that this will have been done before the present volume
is published.  The reader, therefore, who may be sufficiently
interested in the matter to care to see exactly what has been done
will now have an opportunity of doing so.

October 25, 1880.



CHAPTER I



Introduction--General ignorance on the subject of evolution at the
time the "Origin of Species" was published in 1859.

There are few things which strike us with more surprise, when we
review the course taken by opinion in the last century, than the
suddenness with which belief in witchcraft and demoniacal possession
came to an end.  This has been often remarked upon, but I am not
acquainted with any record of the fact as it appeared to those under
whose eyes the change was taking place, nor have I seen any
contemporary explanation of the reasons which led to the apparently
sudden overthrow of a belief which had seemed hitherto to be deeply
rooted in the minds of almost all men.  As a parallel to this, though
in respect of the rapid spread of an opinion, and not its decadence,
it is probable that those of our descendants who take an interest in
ourselves will note the suddenness with which the theory of
evolution, from having been generally ridiculed during a period of
over a hundred years, came into popularity and almost universal
acceptance among educated people.

It is indisputable that this has been the case; nor is it less
indisputable that the works of Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace have been
the main agents in the change that has been brought about in our
opinions.  The names of Cobden and Bright do not stand more
prominently forward in connection with the repeal of the Corn Laws
than do those of Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace in connection with the
general acceptance of the theory of evolution.  There is no living
philosopher who has anything like Mr. Darwin's popularity with
Englishmen generally; and not only this, but his power of fascination
extends all over Europe, and indeed in every country in which
civilisation has obtained footing:  not among the illiterate masses,
though these are rapidly following the suit of the educated classes,
but among experts and those who are most capable of judging.  France,
indeed--the country of Buffon and Lamarck--must be counted an
exception to the general rule, but in England and Germany there are
few men of scientific reputation who do not accept Mr. Darwin as the
founder of what is commonly called "Darwinism," and regard him as
perhaps the most penetrative and profound philosopher of modern
times.

To quote an example from the last few weeks only, {2} I have observed
that Professor Huxley has celebrated the twenty-first year since the
"Origin of Species" was published by a lecture at the Royal
Institution, and am told that he described Mr. Darwin's candour as
something actually "terrible" (I give Professor Huxley's own word, as
reported by one who heard it); and on opening a small book entitled
"Degeneration," by Professor Ray Lankester, published a few days
before these lines were written, I find the following passage amid
more that is to the same purport:-


"Suddenly one of those great guesses which occasionally appear in the
history of science was given to the science of biology by the
imaginative insight of that greatest of living naturalists--I would
say that greatest of living men--Charles Darwin."--Degeneration, p.
10.


This is very strong language, but it is hardly stronger than that
habitually employed by the leading men of science when they speak of
Mr. Darwin.  To go farther afield, in February 1879 the Germans
devoted an entire number of one of their scientific periodicals {3}
to the celebration of Mr. Darwin's seventieth birthday.  There is no
other Englishman now living who has been able to win such a
compliment as this from foreigners, who should be disinterested
judges.

Under these circumstances, it must seem the height of presumption to
differ from so great an authority, and to join the small band of
malcontents who hold that Mr. Darwin's reputation as a philosopher,
though it has grown up with the rapidity of Jonah's gourd, will yet
not be permanent.  I believe, however, that though we must always
gladly and gratefully owe it to Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace that the
public mind has been brought to accept evolution, the admiration now
generally felt for the "Origin of Species" will appear as
unaccountable to our descendants some fifty or eighty years hence as
the enthusiasm of our grandfathers for the poetry of Dr. Erasmus
Darwin does to ourselves; and as one who has yielded to none in
respect of the fascination Mr. Darwin has exercised over him, I would
fain say a few words of explanation which may make the matter clearer
to our future historians.  I do this the more readily because I can
at the same time explain thus better than in any other way the steps
which led me to the theory which I afterwards advanced in "Life and
Habit."

This last, indeed, is perhaps the main purpose of the earlier
chapters of this book.  I shall presently give a translation of a
lecture by Professor Ewald Hering of Prague, which appeared ten years
ago, and which contains so exactly the theory I subsequently
advocated myself, that I am half uneasy lest it should be supposed
that I knew of Professor Hering's work and made no reference to it.
A friend to whom I submitted my translation in MS., asking him how
closely he thought it resembled "Life and Habit," wrote back that it
gave my own ideas almost in my own words.  As far as the ideas are
concerned this is certainly the case, and considering that Professor
Hering wrote between seven and eight years before I did, I think it
due to him, and to my readers as well as to myself, to explain the
steps which led me to my conclusions, and, while putting Professor
Hering's lecture before them, to show cause for thinking that I
arrived at an almost identical conclusion, as it would appear, by an
almost identical road, yet, nevertheless, quite independently, I must
ask the reader, therefore, to regard these earlier chapters as in
some measure a personal explanation, as well as a contribution to the
history of an important feature in the developments of the last
twenty years.  I hope also, by showing the steps by which I was led
to my conclusions, to make the conclusions themselves more acceptable
and easy of comprehension.

Being on my way to New Zealand when the "Origin of Species" appeared,
I did not get it till 1860 or 1861.  When I read it, I found "the
theory of natural selection" repeatedly spoken of as though it were a
synonym for "the theory of descent with modification"; this is
especially the case in the recapitulation chapter of the work.  I
failed to see how important it was that these two theories--if indeed
"natural selection" can be called a theory--should not be confounded
together, and that a "theory of descent with modification" might be
true, while a "theory of descent with modification through natural
selection" {4} might not stand being looked into.

If any one had asked me to state in brief what Mr. Darwin's theory
was, I am afraid I might have answered "natural selection," or
"descent with modification," whichever came first, as though the one
meant much the same as the other.  I observe that most of the leading
writers on the subject are still unable to catch sight of the
distinction here alluded to, and console myself for my want of acumen
by reflecting that, if I was misled, I was misled in good company.

I--and I may add, the public generally--failed also to see what the
unaided reader who was new to the subject would be almost certain to
overlook.  I mean, that, according to Mr. Darwin, the variations
whose accumulation resulted in diversity of species and genus were
indefinite, fortuitous, attributable but in small degree to any known
causes, and without a general principle underlying them which would
cause them to appear steadily in a given direction for many
successive generations and in a considerable number of individuals at
the same time.  We did not know that the theory of evolution was one
that had been quietly but steadily gaining ground during the last
hundred years.  Buffon we knew by name, but he sounded too like
"buffoon" for any good to come from him.  We had heard also of
Lamarck, and held him to be a kind of French Lord Monboddo; but we
knew nothing of his doctrine save through the caricatures promulgated
by his opponents, or the misrepresentations of those who had another
kind of interest in disparaging him.  Dr. Erasmus Darwin we believed
to be a forgotten minor poet, but ninety-nine out of every hundred of
us had never so much as heard of the "Zoonomia."  We were little
likely, therefore, to know that Lamarck drew very largely from
Buffon, and probably also from Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and that this
last-named writer, though essentially original, was founded upon
Buffon, who was greatly more in advance of any predecessor than any
successor has been in advance of him.

We did not know, then, that according to the earlier writers the
variations whose accumulation results in species were not fortuitous
and definite, but were due to a known principle of universal
application--namely, "sense of need"--or apprehend the difference
between a theory of evolution which has a backbone, as it were, in
the tolerably constant or slowly varying needs of large numbers of
individuals for long periods together, and one which has no such
backbone, but according to which the progress of one generation is
always liable to be cancelled and obliterated by that of the next.
We did not know that the new theory in a quiet way professed to tell
us less than the old had done, and declared that it could throw
little if any light upon the matter which the earlier writers had
endeavoured to illuminate as the central point in their system.  We
took it for granted that more light must be being thrown instead of
less; and reading in perfect good faith, we rose from our perusal
with the impression that Mr. Darwin was advocating the descent of all
existing forms of life from a single, or from, at any rate, a very
few primordial types; that no one else had done this hitherto, or
that, if they had, they had got the whole subject into a mess, which
mess, whatever it was--for we were never told this--was now being
removed once for all by Mr. Darwin.

The evolution part of the story, that is to say, the fact of
evolution, remained in our minds as by far the most prominent feature
in Mr. Darwin's book; and being grateful for it, we were very ready
to take Mr. Darwin's work at the estimate tacitly claimed for it by
himself, and vehemently insisted upon by reviewers in influential
journals, who took much the same line towards the earlier writers on
evolution as Mr. Darwin himself had taken.  But perhaps nothing more
prepossessed us in Mr. Darwin's favour than the air of candour that
was omnipresent throughout his work.  The prominence given to the
arguments of opponents completely carried us away; it was this which
threw us off our guard.  It never occurred to us that there might be
other and more dangerous opponents who were not brought forward.  Mr.
Darwin did not tell us what his grandfather and Lamarck would have
had to say to this or that.  Moreover, there was an unobtrusive
parade of hidden learning and of difficulties at last overcome which
was particularly grateful to us.  Whatever opinion might be
ultimately come to concerning the value of his theory, there could be
but one about the value of the example he had set to men of science
generally by the perfect frankness and unselfishness of his work.
Friends and foes alike combined to do homage to Mr. Darwin in this
respect.

For, brilliant as the reception of the "Origin of Species" was, it
met in the first instance with hardly less hostile than friendly
criticism.  But the attacks were ill-directed; they came from a
suspected quarter, and those who led them did not detect more than
the general public had done what were the really weak places in Mr.
Darwin's armour.  They attacked him where he was strongest; and above
all, they were, as a general rule, stamped with a disingenuousness
which at that time we believed to be peculiar to theological writers
and alien to the spirit of science.  Seeing, therefore, that the men
of science ranged themselves more and more decidedly on Mr. Darwin's
side, while his opponents had manifestly--so far as I can remember,
all the more prominent among them--a bias to which their hostility
was attributable, we left off looking at the arguments against
"Darwinism," as we now began to call it, and pigeon-holed the matter
to the effect that there was one evolution, and that Mr. Darwin was
its prophet.

The blame of our errors and oversights rests primarily with Mr.
Darwin himself.  The first, and far the most important, edition of
the "Origin of Species" came out as a kind of literary Melchisedec,
without father and without mother in the works of other people.  Here
is its opening paragraph:-


"When on board H.M.S. 'Beagle' as naturalist, I was much struck with
certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South
America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past
inhabitants of that continent.  These facts seemed to me to throw
some light on the origin of species--that mystery of mysteries, as it
has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.  On my return
home, it occurred to me, in 1837, that something might be made out on
this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting upon all sorts
of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it.  After five
years' work I allowed myself to speculate on the subject, and drew up
some short notes; these I enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of the
conclusions which then seemed to me probable:  from that period to
the present day I have steadily pursued the same object.  I hope that
I may be excused for entering on these personal details, as I give
them to show that I have not been hasty in coming to a decision."
{8a}


In the latest edition this passage remains unaltered, except in one
unimportant respect.  What could more completely throw us off the
scent of the earlier writers?  If they had written anything worthy of
our attention, or indeed if there had been any earlier writers at
all, Mr. Darwin would have been the first to tell us about them, and
to award them their due meed of recognition.  But, no; the whole
thing was an original growth in Mr. Darwin's mind, and he had never
so much as heard of his grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin.

Dr. Krause, indeed, thought otherwise.  In the number of Kosmos for
February 1879 he represented Mr. Darwin as in his youth approaching
the works of his grandfather with all the devotion which people
usually feel for the writings of a renowned poet. {8b}  This should
perhaps be a delicately ironical way of hinting that Mr. Darwin did
not read his grandfather's books closely; but I hardly think that Dr.
Krause looked at the matter in this light, for he goes on to say that
"almost every single work of the younger Darwin may be paralleled by
at least a chapter in the works of his ancestor:  the mystery of
heredity, adaptation, the protective arrangements of animals and
plants, sexual selection, insectivorous plants, and the analysis of
the emotions and sociological impulses; nay, even the studies on
infants are to be found already discussed in the pages of the elder
Darwin." {8c}

Nevertheless, innocent as Mr. Darwin's opening sentence appeared, it
contained enough to have put us upon our guard.  When he informed us
that, on his return from a long voyage, "it occurred to" him that the
way to make anything out about his subject was to collect and reflect
upon the facts that bore upon it, it should have occurred to us in
our turn, that when people betray a return of consciousness upon such
matters as this, they are on the confines of that state in which
other and not less elementary matters will not "occur to" them.  The
introduction of the word "patiently" should have been conclusive.  I
will not analyse more of the sentence, but will repeat the next two
lines:- "After five years of work, I allowed myself to speculate upon
the subject, and drew up some short notes."  We read this, thousands
of us, and were blind.

If Dr. Erasmus Darwin's name was not mentioned in the first edition
of the "Origin of Species," we should not be surprised at there being
no notice taken of Buffon, or at Lamarck's being referred to only
twice--on the first occasion to be serenely waved aside, he and all
his works; {9a} on the second, {9b} to be commended on a point of
detail.  The author of the "Vestiges of Creation" was more widely
known to English readers, having written more recently and nearer
home.  He was dealt with summarily, on an early and prominent page,
by a misrepresentation, which was silently expunged in later editions
of the "Origin of Species."  In his later editions (I believe first
in his third, when 6000 copies had been already sold), Mr. Darwin did
indeed introduce a few pages in which he gave what he designated as a
"brief but imperfect sketch" of the progress of opinion on the origin
of species prior to the appearance of his own work; but the general
impression which a book conveys to, and leaves upon, the public is
conveyed by the first edition--the one which is alone, with rare
exceptions, reviewed; and in the first edition of the "Origin of
Species" Mr. Darwin's great precursors were all either ignored or
misrepresented.  Moreover, the "brief but imperfect sketch," when it
did come, was so very brief, but, in spite of this (for this is what
I suppose Mr. Darwin must mean), so very imperfect, that it might as
well have been left unwritten for all the help it gave the reader to
see the true question at issue between the original propounders of
the theory of evolution and Mr. Charles Darwin himself.

That question is this:  Whether variation is in the main attributable
to a known general principle, or whether it is not?--whether the
minute variations whose accumulation results in specific and generic
differences are referable to something which will ensure their
appearing in a certain definite direction, or in certain definite
directions, for long periods together, and in many individuals, or
whether they are not?--whether, in a word, these variations are in
the main definite or indefinite?

It is observable that the leading men of science seem rarely to
understand this even now.  I am told that Professor Huxley, in his
recent lecture on the coming of age of the "Origin of Species," never
so much as alluded to the existence of any such division of opinion
as this.  He did not even, I am assured, mention "natural selection,"
but appeared to believe, with Professor Tyndall, {10a} that
"evolution" is "Mr. Darwin's theory."  In his article on evolution in
the latest edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," I find only a
veiled perception of the point wherein Mr. Darwin is at variance with
his precursors.  Professor Huxley evidently knows little of these
writers beyond their names; if he had known more, it is impossible he
should have written that "Buffon contributed nothing to the general
doctrine of evolution," {10b} and that Erasmus Darwin, "though a
zealous evolutionist, can hardly be said to have made any real
advance on his predecessors." {11}  The article is in a high degree
unsatisfactory, and betrays at once an amount of ignorance and of
perception which leaves an uncomfortable impression.

If this is the state of things that prevails even now, it is not
surprising that in 1860 the general public should, with few
exceptions, have known of only one evolution, namely, that propounded
by Mr. Darwin.  As a member of the general public, at that time
residing eighteen miles from the nearest human habitation, and three
days' journey on horseback from a bookseller's shop, I became one of
Mr. Darwin's many enthusiastic admirers, and wrote a philosophical
dialogue (the most offensive form, except poetry and books of travel
into supposed unknown countries, that even literature can assume)
upon the "Origin of Species."  This production appeared in the Press,
Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1861 or 1862, but I have long lost the
only copy I had.



CHAPTER II



How I came to write "Life and Habit," and the circumstances of its
completion.

It was impossible, however, for Mr. Darwin's readers to leave the
matter as Mr. Darwin had left it.  We wanted to know whence came that
germ or those germs of life which, if Mr. Darwin was right, were once
the world's only inhabitants.  They could hardly have come hither
from some other world; they could not in their wet, cold, slimy state
have travelled through the dry ethereal medium which we call space,
and yet remained alive.  If they travelled slowly, they would die; if
fast, they would catch fire, as meteors do on entering the earth's
atmosphere.  The idea, again, of their having been created by a
quasi-anthropomorphic being out of the matter upon the earth was at
variance with the whole spirit of evolution, which indicated that no
such being could exist except as himself the result, and not the
cause, of evolution.  Having got back from ourselves to the monad, we
were suddenly to begin again with something which was either
unthinkable, or was only ourselves again upon a larger scale--to
return to the same point as that from which we had started, only made
harder for us to stand upon.

There was only one other conception possible, namely, that the germs
had been developed in the course of time from some thing or things
that were not what we called living at all; that they had grown up,
in fact, out of the material substances and forces of the world in
some manner more or less analogous to that in which man had been
developed from themselves.

I first asked myself whether life might not, after all, resolve
itself into the complexity of arrangement of an inconceivably
intricate mechanism.  Kittens think our shoe-strings are alive when
they see us lacing them, because they see the tag at the end jump
about without understanding all the ins and outs of how it comes to
do so.  "Of course," they argue, "if we cannot understand how a thing
comes to move, it must move of itself, for there can be no motion
beyond our comprehension but what is spontaneous; if the motion is
spontaneous, the thing moving must he alive, for nothing can move of
itself or without our understanding why unless it is alive.
Everything that is alive and not too large can be tortured, and
perhaps eaten; let us therefore spring upon the tag" and they spring
upon it.  Cats are above this; yet give the cat something which
presents a few more of those appearances which she is accustomed to
see whenever she sees life, and she will fall as easy a prey to the
power which association exercises over all that lives as the kitten
itself.  Show her a toy-mouse that can run a few yards after being
wound up; the form, colour, and action of a mouse being here, there
is no good cat which will not conclude that so many of the
appearances of mousehood could not be present at the same time
without the presence also of the remainder.  She will, therefore,
spring upon the toy as eagerly as the kitten upon the tag.

Suppose the toy more complex still, so that it might run a few yards,
stop, and run on again without an additional winding up; and suppose
it so constructed that it could imitate eating and drinking, and
could make as though the mouse were cleaning its face with its paws.
Should we not at first be taken in ourselves, and assume the presence
of the remaining facts of life, though in reality they were not
there?  Query, therefore, whether a machine so complex as to be
prepared with a corresponding manner of action for each one of the
successive emergencies of life as it arose, would not take us in for
good and all, and look so much as if it were alive that, whether we
liked it or not, we should be compelled to think it and call it so;
and whether the being alive was not simply the being an exceedingly
complicated machine, whose parts were set in motion by the action
upon them of exterior circumstances; whether, in fact, man was not a
kind of toy-mouse in the shape of a man, only capable of going for
seventy or eighty years, instead of half as many seconds, and as much
more versatile as he is more durable?  Of course I had an uneasy
feeling that if I thus made all plants and men into machines, these
machines must have what all other machines have if they are machines
at all--a designer, and some one to wind them up and work them; but I
thought this might wait for the present, and was perfectly ready
then, as now, to accept a designer from without, if the facts upon
examination rendered such a belief reasonable.

If, then, men were not really alive after all, but were only machines
of so complicated a make that it was less trouble to us to cut the
difficulty and say that that kind of mechanism was "being alive," why
should not machines ultimately become as complicated as we are, or at
any rate complicated enough to be called living, and to be indeed as
living as it was in the nature of anything at all to be?  If it was
only a case of their becoming more complicated, we were certainly
doing our best to make them so.

I do not suppose I at that time saw that this view comes to much the
same as denying that there are such qualities as life and
consciousness at all, and that this, again, works round to the
assertion of their omnipresence in every molecule of matter, inasmuch
as it destroys the separation between the organic and inorganic, and
maintains that whatever the organic is the inorganic is also.  Deny
it in theory as much as we please, we shall still always feel that an
organic body, unless dead, is living and conscious to a greater or
less degree.  Therefore, if we once break down the wall of partition
between the organic and inorganic, the inorganic must be living and
conscious also, up to a certain point.

I have been at work on this subject now for nearly twenty years, what
I have published being only a small part of what I have written and
destroyed.  I cannot, therefore, remember exactly how I stood in
1863.  Nor can I pretend to see far into the matter even now; for
when I think of life, I find it so difficult, that I take refuge in
death or mechanism; and when I think of death or mechanism, I find it
so inconceivable, that it is easier to call it life again.  The only
thing of which I am sure is, that the distinction between the organic
and inorganic is arbitrary; that it is more coherent with our other
ideas, and therefore more acceptable, to start with every molecule as
a living thing, and then deduce death as the breaking up of an
association or corporation, than to start with inanimate molecules
and smuggle life into them; and that, therefore, what we call the
inorganic world must be regarded as up to a certain point living, and
instinct, within certain limits, with consciousness, volition, and
power of concerted action.  It is only of late, however, that I have
come to this opinion.

One must start with a hypothesis, no matter how much one distrusts
it; so I started with man as a mechanism, this being the strand of
the knot that I could then pick at most easily.  Having worked upon
it a certain time, I drew the inference about machines becoming
animate, and in 1862 or 1863 wrote the sketch of the chapter on
machines which I afterwards rewrote in "Erewhon."  This sketch
appeared in the Press, Canterbury, N.Z., June 13, 1863; a copy of it
is in the British Museum.

I soon felt that though there was plenty of amusement to be got out
of this line, it was one that I should have to leave sooner or later;
I therefore left it at once for the view that machines were limbs
which we had made, and carried outside our bodies instead of
incorporating them with ourselves.  A few days or weeks later than
June 13, 1863, I published a second letter in the Press putting this
view forward.  Of this letter I have lost the only copy I had; I have
not seen it for years.  The first was certainly not good; the second,
if I remember rightly, was a good deal worse, though I believed more
in the views it put forward than in those of the first letter.  I had
lost my copy before I wrote "Erewhon," and therefore only gave a
couple of pages to it in that book; besides, there was more amusement
in the other view.  I should perhaps say there was an intermediate
extension of the first letter which appeared in the Reasoner, July 1,
1865.

In 1870 and 1871, when I was writing "Erewhon," I thought the best
way of looking at machines was to see them as limbs which we had made
and carried about with us or left at home at pleasure.  I was not,
however, satisfied, and should have gone on with the subject at once
if I had not been anxious to write "The Fair Haven," a book which is
a development of a pamphlet I wrote in New Zealand and published in
London in 1865.

As soon as I had finished this, I returned to the old subject, on
which I had already been engaged for nearly a dozen years as
continuously as other business would allow, and proposed to myself to
see not only machines as limbs, but also limbs as machines.  I felt
immediately that I was upon firmer ground.  The use of the word
"organ" for a limb told its own story; the word could not have become
so current under this meaning unless the idea of a limb as a tool or
machine had been agreeable to common sense.  What would follow, then,
if we regarded our limbs and organs as things that we had ourselves
manufactured for our convenience?

The first question that suggested itself was, how did we come to make
them without knowing anything about it?  And this raised another,
namely, how comes anybody to do anything unconsciously?  The answer
"habit" was not far to seek.  But can a person be said to do a thing
by force of habit or routine when it is his ancestors, and not he,
that has done it hitherto?  Not unless he and his ancestors are one
and the same person.  Perhaps, then, they ARE the same person after
all.  What is sameness?  I remembered Bishop Butler's sermon on
"Personal Identity," read it again, and saw very plainly that if a
man of eighty may consider himself identical with the baby from whom
he has developed, so that he may say, "I am the person who at six
months old did this or that," then the baby may just as fairly claim
identity with its father and mother, and say to its parents on being
born, "I was you only a few months ago."  By parity of reasoning each
living form now on the earth must be able to claim identity with each
generation of its ancestors up to the primordial cell inclusive.

Again, if the octogenarian may claim personal identity with the
infant, the infant may certainly do so with the impregnate ovum from
which it has developed.  If so, the octogenarian will prove to have
been a fish once in this his present life.  This is as certain as
that he was living yesterday, and stands on exactly the same
foundation.

I am aware that Professor Huxley maintains otherwise.  He writes:
"It is not true, for example, . . . that a reptile was ever a fish,
but it is true that the reptile embryo" (and what is said here of the
reptile holds good also for the human embryo), "at one stage of its
development, is an organism, which, if it had an independent
existence, must be classified among fishes." {17}

This is like saying, "It is not true that such and such a picture was
rejected for the Academy, but it is true that it was submitted to the
President and Council of the Royal Academy, with a view to acceptance
at their next forthcoming annual exhibition, and that the President
and Council regretted they were unable through want of space, &c.,
&c." --and as much more as the reader chooses.  I shall venture,
therefore, to stick to it that the octogenarian was once a fish, or
if Professor Huxley prefers it, "an organism which must be classified
among fishes."

But if a man was a fish once, he may have been a fish a million times
over, for aught he knows; for he must admit that his conscious
recollection is at fault, and has nothing whatever to do with the
matter, which must be decided, not, as it were, upon his own evidence
as to what deeds he may or may not recollect having executed, but by
the production of his signatures in court, with satisfactory proof
that he has delivered each document as his act and deed.

This made things very much simpler.  The processes of embryonic
development, and instinctive actions, might be now seen as
repetitions of the same kind of action by the same individual in
successive generations.  It was natural, therefore, that they should
come in the course of time to be done unconsciously, and a
consideration of the most obvious facts of memory removed all further
doubt that habit--which is based on memory--was at the bottom of all
the phenomena of heredity.

I had got to this point about the spring of 1874, and had begun to
write, when I was compelled to go to Canada, and for the next year
and a half did hardly any writing.  The first passage in "Life and
Habit" which I can date with certainty is the one on page 52, which
runs as follows:-


"It is one against legion when a man tries to differ from his own
past selves.  He must yield or die if he wants to differ widely, so
as to lack natural instincts, such as hunger or thirst, and not to
gratify them.  It is more righteous in a man that he should 'eat
strange food,' and that his cheek should 'so much as lank not,' than
that he should starve if the strange food be at his command.  His
past selves are living in him at this moment with the accumulated
life of centuries.  'Do this, this, this, which we too have done, and
found out profit in it,' cry the souls of his forefathers within him.
Faint are the far ones, coming and going as the sound of bells wafted
on to a high mountain; loud and clear are the near ones, urgent as an
alarm of fire."


This was written a few days after my arrival in Canada, June 1874.  I
was on Montreal mountain for the first time, and was struck with its
extreme beauty.  It was a magnificent Summer's evening; the noble St.
Lawrence flowed almost immediately beneath, and the vast expanse of
country beyond it was suffused with a colour which even Italy cannot
surpass.  Sitting down for a while, I began making notes for "Life
and Habit," of which I was then continually thinking, and had written
the first few lines of the above, when the bells of Notre Dame in
Montreal began to ring, and their sound was carried to and fro in a
remarkably beautiful manner.  I took advantage of the incident to
insert then and there the last lines of the piece just quoted.  I
kept the whole passage with hardly any alteration, and am thus able
to date it accurately.

Though so occupied in Canada that writing a book was impossible, I
nevertheless got many notes together for future use.  I left Canada
at the end of 1875, and early in 1876 began putting these notes into
more coherent form.  I did this in thirty pages of closely written
matter, of which a pressed copy remains in my commonplace-book.  I
find two dates among them--the first, "Sunday, Feb. 6, 1876"; and the
second, at the end of the notes, "Feb. 12, 1876."

From these notes I find that by this time I had the theory contained
in "Life and Habit" completely before me, with the four main
principles which it involves, namely, the oneness of personality
between parents and offspring; memory on the part of offspring of
certain actions which it did when in the persons of its forefathers;
the latency of that memory until it is rekindled by a recurrence of
the associated ideas; and the unconsciousness with which habitual
actions come to be performed.

The first half-page of these notes may serve as a sample, and runs
thus:-


"Those habits and functions which we have in common with the lower
animals come mainly within the womb, or are done involuntarily, as
our [growth of] limbs, eyes, &c., and our power of digesting food,
&c. . . .

"We say of the chicken that it knows how to run about as soon as it
is hatched, . . . but had it no knowledge before it was hatched?

"It knew how to make a great many things before it was hatched.

"It grew eyes and feathers and bones.

"Yet we say it knew nothing about all this.

"After it is born it grows more feathers, and makes its bones larger,
and develops a reproductive system.

"Again we say it knows nothing about all this.

"What then does it know?

"Whatever it does not know so well as to be unconscious of knowing
it.

"Knowledge dwells upon the confines of uncertainty.

"When we are very certain, we do not know that we know.  When we will
very strongly, we do not know that we will."


I then began my book, but considering myself still a painter by
profession, I gave comparatively little time to writing, and got on
but slowly.  I left England for North Italy in the middle of May 1876
and returned early in August.  It was perhaps thus that I failed to
hear of the account of Professor Hering's lecture given by Professor
Ray Lankester in Nature, July 13 1876; though, never at that time
seeing Nature, I should probably have missed it under any
circumstances.  On my return I continued slowly writing.  By August
1877 I considered that I had to all intents and purposes completed my
book.  My first proof bears date October 13, 1877.

At this time I had not been able to find that anything like what I
was advancing had been said already.  I asked many friends, but not
one of them knew of anything more than I did; to them, as to me, it
seemed an idea so new as to be almost preposterous; but knowing how
things turn up after one has written, of the existence of which one
had not known before, I was particularly careful to guard against
being supposed to claim originality.  I neither claimed it nor wished
for it; for if a theory has any truth in it, it is almost sure to
occur to several people much about the same time, and a reasonable
person will look upon his work with great suspicion unless he can
confirm it with the support of others who have gone before him.
Still I knew of nothing in the least resembling it, and was so afraid
of what I was doing, that though I could see no flaw in the argument,
nor any loophole for escape from the conclusion it led to, yet I did
not dare to put it forward with the seriousness and sobriety with
which I should have treated the subject if I had not been in
continual fear of a mine being sprung upon me from some unexpected
quarter.  I am exceedingly glad now that I knew nothing of Professor
Hering's lecture, for it is much better that two people should think
a thing out as far as they can independently before they become aware
of each other's works but if I had seen it, I should either, as is
most likely, not have written at all, or I should have pitched my
book in another key.

Among the additions I intended making while the book was in the
press, was a chapter on Mr. Darwin's provisional theory of
Pangenesis, which I felt convinced must be right if it was Mr.
Darwin's, and which I was sure, if I could once understand it, must
have an important bearing on "Life and Habit."  I had not as yet seen
that the principle I was contending for was Darwinian, not Neo-
Darwinian.  My pages still teemed with allusions to "natural
selection," and I sometimes allowed myself to hope that "Life and
Habit" was going to be an adjunct to Darwinism which no one would
welcome more gladly than Mr. Darwin himself.  At this time I had a
visit from a friend, who kindly called to answer a question of mine,
relative, if I remember rightly, to "Pangenesis."  He came, September
26, 1877.  One of the first things he said was, that the theory which
had pleased him more than anything he had heard of for some time was
one referring all life to memory.  I said that was exactly what I was
doing myself, and inquired where he had met with his theory.  He
replied that Professor Ray Lankester had written a letter about it in
Nature some time ago, but he could not remember exactly when, and had
given extracts from a lecture by Professor Ewald Hering, who had
originated the theory.  I said I should not look at it, as I had
completed that part of my work, and was on the point of going to
press.  I could not recast my work if, as was most likely, I should
find something, when I saw what Professor Hering had said, which
would make me wish to rewrite my own book; it was too late in the day
and I did not feel equal to making any radical alteration; and so the
matter ended with very little said upon either side.  I wrote,
however, afterwards to my friend asking him to tell me the number of
Nature which contained the lecture if he could find it, but he was
unable to do so, and I was well enough content.

A few days before this I had met another friend, and had explained to
him what I was doing.  He told me I ought to read Professor Mivart's
"Genesis of Species," and that if I did so I should find there were
two sides to "natural selection."  Thinking, as so many people do--
and no wonder--that "natural selection" and evolution were much the
same thing, and having found so many attacks upon evolution produce
no effect upon me, I declined to read it.  I had as yet no idea that
a writer could attack Neo-Darwinism without attacking evolution.  But
my friend kindly sent me a copy; and when I read it, I found myself
in the presence of arguments different from those I had met with
hitherto, and did not see my way to answering them.  I had, however,
read only a small part of Professor Mivart's work, and was not fully
awake to the position, when the friend referred to in the preceding
paragraph called on me.

When I had finished the "Genesis of Species," I felt that something
was certainly wanted which should give a definite aim to the
variations whose accumulation was to amount ultimately to specific
and generic differences, and that without this there could have been
no progress in organic development.  I got the latest edition of the
"Origin of Species" in order to see how Mr. Darwin met Professor
Mivart, and found his answers in many respects unsatisfactory.  I had
lost my original copy of the "Origin of Species," and had not read
the book for some years.  I now set about reading it again, and came
to the chapter on instinct, where I was horrified to find the
following passage:-


"But it would be a serious error to suppose that the greater number
of instincts have been acquired by habit in one generation and then
transmitted by inheritance to the succeeding generations.  It can be
clearly shown that the most wonderful instincts with which we are
acquainted, namely, those of the hive-bee and of many ants, could not
possibly have been acquired by habit." {23a}


This showed that, according to Mr. Darwin, I had fallen into serious
error, and my faith in him, though somewhat shaken, was far too great
to be destroyed by a few days' course of Professor Mivart, the full
importance of whose work I had not yet apprehended.  I continued to
read, and when I had finished the chapter felt sure that I must
indeed have been blundering.  The concluding words, "I am surprised
that no one has hitherto advanced this demonstrative case of neuter
insects against the well-known doctrine of inherited habit as
advanced by Lamarck," {23b} were positively awful.  There was a quiet
consciousness of strength about them which was more convincing than
any amount of more detailed explanation.  This was the first I had
heard of any doctrine of inherited habit as having been propounded by
Lamarck (the passage stands in the first edition, "the well-known
doctrine of Lamarck," p. 242); and now to find that I had been only
busying myself with a stale theory of this long-since exploded
charlatan--with my book three parts written and already in the press-
-it was a serious scare.

On reflection, however, I was again met with the overwhelming weight
of the evidence in favour of structure and habit being mainly due to
memory.  I accordingly gathered as much as I could second-hand of
what Lamarck had said, reserving a study of his "Philosophie
Zoologique" for another occasion, and read as much about ants and
bees as I could find in readily accessible works.  In a few days I
saw my way again; and now, reading the "Origin of Species" more
closely, and I may say more sceptically, the antagonism between Mr.
Darwin and Lamarck became fully apparent to me, and I saw how
incoherent and unworkable in practice the later view was in
comparison with the earlier.  Then I read Mr. Darwin's answers to
miscellaneous objections, and was met, and this time brought up, by
the passage beginning "In the earlier editions of this work," {24a}
&c., on which I wrote very severely in "Life and Habit"; {24b} for I
felt by this time that the difference of opinion between us was
radical, and that the matter must be fought out according to the
rules of the game.  After this I went through the earlier part of my
book, and cut out the expressions which I had used inadvertently, and
which were inconsistent with a teleological view.  This necessitated
only verbal alterations; for, though I had not known it, the spirit
of the book was throughout teleological.

I now saw that I had got my hands full, and abandoned my intention of
touching upon "Pangenesis."  I took up the words of Mr. Darwin quoted
above, to the effect that it would be a serious error to ascribe the
greater number of instincts to transmitted habit.  I wrote chapter
xi. of "Life and Habit," which is headed "Instincts as Inherited
Memory"; I also wrote the four subsequent chapters, "Instincts of
Neuter Insects," "Lamarck and Mr. Darwin," "Mr. Mivart and Mr.
Darwin," and the concluding chapter, all of them in the month of
October and the early part of November 1877, the complete book
leaving the binder's hands December 4, 1877, but, according to trade
custom, being dated 1878.  It will be seen that these five concluding
chapters were rapidly written, and this may account in part for the
directness with which I said anything I had to say about Mr. Darwin;
partly this, and partly I felt I was in for a penny and might as well
be in for a pound.  I therefore wrote about Mr. Darwin's work exactly
as I should about any one else's, bearing in mind the inestimable
services he had undoubtedly--and must always be counted to have--
rendered to evolution.



CHAPTER III



How I came to write "Evolution, Old and New"--Mr Darwin's "brief but
imperfect" sketch of the opinions of the writers on evolution who had
preceded him--The reception which "Evolution, Old and New," met with.

Though my book was out in 1877, it was not till January 1878 that I
took an opportunity of looking up Professor Ray Lankester's account
of Professor Hering's lecture.  I can hardly say how relieved I was
to find that it sprung no mine upon me, but that, so far as I could
gather, Professor Hering and I had come to pretty much the same
conclusion.  I had already found the passage in Dr. Erasmus Darwin
which I quoted in "Evolution, Old and New," but may perhaps as well
repeat it here.  It runs -


"Owing to the imperfection of language, the offspring is termed a new
animal; but is, in truth, a branch or elongation of the parent, since
a part of the embryon animal is or was a part of the parent, and,
therefore, in strict language, cannot be said to be entirely new at
the time of its production, and, therefore, it may retain some of the
habits of the parent system." {26}


When, then, the Athenaeum reviewed "Life and Habit" (January 26,
1878), I took the opportunity to write to that paper, calling
attention to Professor Hering's lecture, and also to the passage just
quoted from Dr. Erasmus Darwin.  The editor kindly inserted my letter
in his issue of February 9, 1878.  I felt that I had now done all in
the way of acknowledgment to Professor Hering which it was, for the
time, in my power to do.

I again took up Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species," this time, I admit,
in a spirit of scepticism.  I read his "brief but imperfect" sketch
of the progress of opinion on the origin of species, and turned to
each one of the writers he had mentioned.  First, I read all the
parts of the "Zoonomia" that were not purely medical, and was
astonished to find that, as Dr. Krause has since said in his essay on
Erasmus Darwin, "HE WAS THE FIRST WHO PROPOSED AND PERSISTENTLY
CARRIED OUT A WELL-ROUNDED THEORY WITH REGARD TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF
THE LIVING WORLD" {27} (italics in original).

This is undoubtedly the case, and I was surprised at finding
Professor Huxley say concerning this very eminent man that he could
"hardly be said to have made any real advance upon his predecessors."
Still more was I surprised at remembering that, in the first edition
of the "Origin of Species," Dr. Erasmus Darwin had never been so much
as named; while in the "brief but imperfect" sketch he was dismissed
with a line of half-contemptuous patronage, as though the mingled
tribute of admiration and curiosity which attaches to scientific
prophecies, as distinguished from discoveries, was the utmost he was
entitled to.  "It is curious," says Mr. Darwin innocently, in the
middle of a note in the smallest possible type, "how largely my
grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and erroneous
grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his 'Zoonomia' (vol. i. pp. 500-
510), published in 1794"; this was all he had to say about the
founder of "Darwinism," until I myself unearthed Dr. Erasmus Darwin,
and put his work fairly before the present generation in "Evolution,
Old and New."  Six months after I had done this, I had the
satisfaction of seeing that Mr. Darwin had woke up to the propriety
of doing much the same thing, and that he had published an
interesting and charmingly written memoir of his grandfather, of
which more anon.

Not that Dr. Darwin was the first to catch sight of a complete theory
of evolution.  Buffon was the first to point out that, in view of the
known modifications which had been effected among our domesticated
animals and cultivated plants, the ass and the horse should be
considered as, in all probability, descended from a common ancestor;
yet, if this is so, he writes--if the point "were once gained that
among animals and vegetables there had been, I do not say several
species, but even a single one, which had been produced in the course
of direct descent from another species; if, for example, it could be
once shown that the ass was but a degeneration from the horse, then
there is no further limit to be set to the power of Nature, and we
should not be wrong in supposing that, with sufficient time, she has
evolved all other organised forms from one primordial type" {28a} (et
l'on n'auroit pas tort de supposer, que d'un seul etre elle a su
tirer avec le temps tous les autres etres organises).

This, I imagine, in spite of Professor Huxley's dictum, is
contributing a good deal to the general doctrine of evolution; for
though Descartes and Leibnitz may have thrown out hints pointing more
or less broadly in the direction of evolution, some of which
Professor Huxley has quoted, he has adduced nothing approaching to
the passage from Buffon given above, either in respect of the
clearness with which the conclusion intended to be arrived at is
pointed out, or the breadth of view with which the whole ground of
animal and vegetable nature is covered.  The passage referred to is
only one of many to the same effect, and must be connected with one
quoted in "Evolution, Old and New," {28b} from p. 13 of Buffon's
first volume, which appeared in 1749, and than which nothing can well
point more plainly in the direction of evolution.  It is not easy,
therefore, to understand why Professor Huxley should give 1753-78 as
the date of Buffon's work, nor yet why he should say that Buffon was
"at first a partisan of the absolute immutability of species," {29a}
unless, indeed, we suppose he has been content to follow that very
unsatisfactory writer, Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire (who falls into
this error, and says that Buffon's first volume on animals appeared
1753), without verifying him, and without making any reference to
him.

Professor Huxley quotes a passage from the "Palingenesie
Philosophique" of Bonnet, of which he says that, making allowance for
his peculiar views on the subject of generation, they bear no small
resemblance to what is understood by "evolution" at the present day.
The most important parts of the passage quoted are as follows:-


"Should I be going too far if I were to conjecture that the plants
and animals of the present day have arisen by a sort of natural
evolution from the organised beings which peopled the world in its
original state as it left the hands of the Creator? . . .  In the
outset organised beings were probably very different from what they
are now--as different as the original world is from our present one.
We have no means of estimating the amount of these differences, but
it is possible that even our ablest naturalist, if transplanted to
the original world, would entirely fail to recognise our plants and
animals therein." {29b}


But this is feeble in comparison with Buffon, and did not appear till
1769, when Buffon had been writing on evolution for fully twenty
years with the eyes of scientific Europe upon him.  Whatever
concession to the opinion of Buffon Bonnet may have been inclined to
make in 1769, in 1764, when he published his "Contemplation de la
Nature," and in 1762 when his "Considerations sur les Corps Organes"
appeared, he cannot be considered to have been a supporter of
evolution.  I went through these works in 1878 when I was writing
"Evolution, Old and New," to see whether I could claim him as on my
side; but though frequently delighted with his work, I found it
impossible to press him into my service.

The pre-eminent claim of Buffon to be considered as the father of the
modern doctrine of evolution cannot be reasonably disputed, though he
was doubtless led to his conclusions by the works of Descartes and
Leibnitz, of both of whom he was an avowed and very warm admirer.
His claim does not rest upon a passage here or there, but upon the
spirit of forty quartos written over a period of about as many years.
Nevertheless he wrote, as I have shown in "Evolution, Old and New,"
of set purpose enigmatically, whereas there was no beating about the
bush with Dr. Darwin.  He speaks straight out, and Dr. Krause is
justified in saying of him "THAT HE WAS THE FIRST WHO PROPOSED AND
PERSISTENTLY CARRIED OUT A WELL-ROUNDED THEORY" of evolution.

I now turned to Lamarck.  I read the first volume of the "Philosophie
Zoologique," analysed it and translated the most important parts.
The second volume was beside my purpose, dealing as it does rather
with the origin of life than of species, and travelling too fast and
too far for me to be able to keep up with him.  Again I was
astonished at the little mention Mr. Darwin had made of this
illustrious writer, at the manner in which he had motioned him away,
as it were, with his hand in the first edition of the "Origin of
Species," and at the brevity and imperfection of the remarks made
upon him in the subsequent historical sketch.

I got Isidore Geoffroy's "Histoire Naturelle Generale," which Mr.
Darwin commends in the note on the second page of the historical
sketch, as giving "an excellent history of opinion" upon the subject
of evolution, and a full account of Buffon's conclusions upon the
same subject.  This at least is what I supposed Mr. Darwin to mean.
What he said was that Isidore Geoffroy gives an excellent history of
opinion on the subject of the date of the first publication of
Lamarck, and that in his work there is a full account of Buffon's
fluctuating conclusions upon THE SAME SUBJECT. {31}  But Mr. Darwin
is a more than commonly puzzling writer.  I read what M. Geoffroy had
to say upon Buffon, and was surprised to find that, after all,
according to M. Geoffroy, Buffon, and not Lamarck, was the founder of
the theory of evolution.  His name, as I have already said, was never
mentioned in the first edition of the "Origin of Species."

M. Geoffroy goes into the accusations of having fluctuated in his
opinions, which he tells us have been brought against Buffon, and
comes to the conclusion that they are unjust, as any one else will do
who turns to Buffon himself.  Mr. Darwin, however, in the "brief but
imperfect sketch," catches at the accusation, and repeats it while
saying nothing whatever about the defence.  The following is still
all he says:  "The first author who in modern times has treated"
evolution "in a scientific spirit was Buffon.  But as his opinions
fluctuated greatly at different periods, and as he does not enter on
the causes or means of the transformation of species, I need not here
enter on details."  On the next page, in the note last quoted, Mr.
Darwin originally repeated the accusation of Buffon's having been
fluctuating in his opinions, and appeared to give it the imprimatur
of Isidore Geoffroy's approval; the fact being that Isidore Geoffroy
only quoted the accusation in order to refute it; and though, I
suppose, meaning well, did not make half the case he might have done,
and abounds with misstatements.  My readers will find this matter
particularly dealt with in "Evolution, Old and New," Chapter X.

I gather that some one must have complained to Mr. Darwin of his
saying that Isidore Geoffroy gave an account of Buffon's "fluctuating
conclusions" concerning evolution, when he was doing all he knew to
maintain that Buffon's conclusions did not fluctuate; for I see that
in the edition of 1876 the word "fluctuating" has dropped out of the
note in question, and we now learn that Isidore Geoffroy gives "a
full account of Buffon's conclusions," without the "fluctuating."
But Buffon has not taken much by this, for his opinions are still
left fluctuating greatly at different periods on the preceding page,
and though he still was the first to treat evolution in a scientific
spirit, he still does not enter upon the causes or means of the
transformation of species.  No one can understand Mr. Darwin who does
not collate the different editions of the "Origin of Species" with
some attention.  When he has done this, he will know what Newton
meant by saying he felt like a child playing with pebbles upon the
seashore.

One word more upon this note before I leave it.  Mr. Darwin speaks of
Isidore Geoffroy's history of opinion as "excellent," and his account
of Buffon's opinions as "full."  I wonder how well qualified he is to
be a judge of these matters?  If he knows much about the earlier
writers, he is the more inexcusable for having said so little about
them.  If little, what is his opinion worth?

To return to the "brief but imperfect sketch."  I do not think I can
ever again be surprised at anything Mr. Darwin may say or do, but if
I could, I should wonder how a writer who did not "enter upon the
causes or means of the transformation of species," and whose opinions
"fluctuated greatly at different periods," can be held to have
treated evolution "in a scientific spirit."  Nevertheless, when I
reflect upon the scientific reputation Mr. Darwin has attained, and
the means by which he has won it, I suppose the scientific spirit
must be much what he here implies.  I see Mr. Darwin says of his own
father, Dr. Robert Darwin of Shrewsbury, that he does not consider
him to have had a scientific mind.  Mr. Darwin cannot tell why he
does not think his father's mind to have been fitted for advancing
science, "for he was fond of theorising, and was incomparably the
best observer" Mr. Darwin ever knew. {33a}  From the hint given in
the "brief but imperfect sketch," I fancy I can help Mr. Darwin to
see why he does not think his father's mind to have been a scientific
one.  It is possible that Dr. Robert Darwin's opinions did not
fluctuate sufficiently at different periods, and that Mr. Darwin
considered him as having in some way entered upon the causes or means
of the transformation of species.  Certainly those who read Mr.
Darwin's own works attentively will find no lack of fluctuation in
his case; and reflection will show them that a theory of evolution
which relies mainly on the accumulation of accidental variations
comes very close to not entering upon the causes or means of the
transformation of species. {33b}

I have shown, however, in "Evolution, Old and New," that the
assertion that Buffon does not enter on the causes or means of the
transformation of species is absolutely without foundation, and that,
on the contrary, he is continually dealing with this very matter, and
devotes to it one of his longest and most important chapters, {33c}
but I admit that he is less satisfactory on this head than either Dr.
Erasmus Darwin or Lamarck.

As a matter of fact, Buffon is much more of a Neo-Darwinian than
either Dr. Erasmus Darwin or Lamarck, for with him the variations are
sometimes fortuitous.  In the case of the dog, he speaks of them as
making their appearance "BY SOME CHANCE common enough with Nature,"
{33d} and being perpetuated by man's selection.  This is exactly the
"if any slight favourable variation HAPPEN to arise" of Mr. Charles
Darwin.  Buffon also speaks of the variations among pigeons arising
"par hasard."  But these expressions are only ships; his main cause
of variation is the direct action of changed conditions of existence,
while with Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck the action of the
conditions of existence is indirect, the direct action being that of
the animals or plants themselves, in consequence of changed sense of
need under changed conditions.

I should say that the sketch so often referred to is at first sight
now no longer imperfect in Mr. Darwin's opinion.  It was "brief but
imperfect" in 1861 and in 1866, but in 1876 I see that it is brief
only.  Of course, discovering that it was no longer imperfect, I
expected to find it briefer.  What, then, was my surprise at finding
that it had become rather longer?  I have found no perfectly
satisfactory explanation of this inconsistency, but, on the whole,
incline to think that the "greatest of living men" felt himself
unequal to prolonging his struggle with the word "but," and resolved
to lay that conjunction at all hazards, even though the doing so
might cost him the balance of his adjectives; for I think he must
know that his sketch is still imperfect.

From Isidore Geoffroy I turned to Buffon himself, and had not long to
wait before I felt that I was now brought into communication with the
master-mind of all those who have up to the present time busied
themselves with evolution.  For a brief and imperfect sketch of him,
I must refer my readers to "Evolution, Old and New."

I have no great respect for the author of the "Vestiges of Creation,"
who behaved hardly better to the writers upon whom his own work was
founded than Mr. Darwin himself has done.  Nevertheless, I could not
forget the gravity of the misrepresentation with which he was
assailed on page 3 of the first edition of the "Origin of Species,"
nor impugn the justice of his rejoinder in the following year, {34}
when he replied that it was to be regretted Mr. Darwin had read his
work "almost as much amiss as if, like its declared opponents, he had
an interest in misrepresenting it." {35a}  I could not, again, forget
that, though Mr. Darwin did not venture to stand by the passage in
question, it was expunged without a word of apology or explanation of
how it was that he had come to write it.  A writer with any claim to
our consideration will never fall into serious error about another
writer without hastening to make a public apology as soon as he
becomes aware of what he has done.

Reflecting upon the substance of what I have written in the last few
pages, I thought it right that people should have a chance of knowing
more about the earlier writers on evolution than they were likely to
hear from any of our leading scientists (no matter how many lectures
they may give on the coming of age of the "Origin of Species") except
Professor Mivart.  A book pointing the difference between
teleological and non-teleological views of evolution seemed likely to
be useful, and would afford me the opportunity I wanted for giving a
resume of the views of each one of the three chief founders of the
theory, and of contrasting them with those of Mr. Charles Darwin, as
well as for calling attention to Professor Hering's lecture.  I
accordingly wrote "Evolution, Old and New," which was prominently
announced in the leading literary periodicals at the end of February,
or on the very first days of March 1879, {35b} as "a comparison of
the theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck, with that of
Mr. Charles Darwin, with copious extracts from the works of the three
first-named writers."  In this book I was hardly able to conceal the
fact that, in spite of the obligations under which we must always
remain to Mr. Darwin, I had lost my respect for him and for his work.

I should point out that this announcement, coupled with what I had
written in "Life and Habit," would enable Mr. Darwin and his friends
to form a pretty shrewd guess as to what I was likely to say, and to
quote from Dr. Erasmus Darwin in my forthcoming book.  The
announcement, indeed, would tell almost as much as the book itself to
those who knew the works of Erasmus Darwin.

As may be supposed, "Evolution, Old and New," met with a very
unfavourable reception at the hands of many of its reviewers.  The
Saturday Review was furious.  "When a writer," it exclaimed, "who has
not given as many weeks to the subject as Mr. Darwin has given years,
is not content to air his own crude though clever fallacies, but
assumes to criticise Mr. Darwin with the superciliousness of a young
schoolmaster looking over a boy's theme, it is difficult not to take
him more seriously than he deserves or perhaps desires.  One would
think that Mr. Butler was the travelled and laborious observer of
Nature, and Mr. Darwin the pert speculator who takes all his facts at
secondhand." {36}

The lady or gentleman who writes in such a strain as this should not
be too hard upon others whom she or he may consider to write like
schoolmasters.  It is true I have travelled--not much, but still as
much as many others, and have endeavoured to keep my eyes open to the
facts before me; but I cannot think that I made any reference to my
travels in "Evolution, Old and New."  I did not quite see what that
had to do with the matter.  A man may get to know a good deal without
ever going beyond the four-mile radius from Charing Cross.  Much less
did I imply that Mr. Darwin was pert:  pert is one of the last words
that can be applied to Mr. Darwin.  Nor, again, had I blamed him for
taking his facts at secondhand; no one is to be blamed for this,
provided he takes well-established facts and acknowledges his
sources.  Mr. Darwin has generally gone to good sources.  The ground
of complaint against him is that he muddied the water after he had
drawn it, and tacitly claimed to be the rightful owner of the spring,
on the score of the damage he had effected.

Notwithstanding, however, the generally hostile, or more or less
contemptuous, reception which "Evolution, Old and New," met with,
there were some reviews--as, for example, those in the Field, {37a}
the Daily Chronicle, {37b} the Athenaeum, {37c} the Journal of
Science, {37d} the British Journal of Homaeopathy, {37e} the Daily
News, {37f} the Popular Science Review {37g}--which were all I could
expect or wish.



CHAPTER IV



The manner in which Mr. Darwin met "Evolution, Old and New."

By far the most important notice of "Evolution, Old and New," was
that taken by Mr. Darwin himself; for I can hardly be mistaken in
believing that Dr. Krause's article would have been allowed to repose
unalter