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Title: Luck or Cunning?

Author: Samuel Butler

Release Date: January, 2004  [EBook #4967]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on April 5, 2002]
[Most recently updated: April 5, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, LUCK OR CUNNING? ***




Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk from the
1922 Jonathan Cape edition



LUCK, OR CUNNING AS THE MAIN MEANS OF ORGANIC MODIFICATION




NOTE



This second edition of Luck, or Cunning? is a reprint of the first
edition, dated 1887, but actually published in November, 1886.  The
only alterations of any consequence are in the Index, which has been
enlarged by the incorporation of several entries made by the author
in a copy of the book which came into my possession on the death of
his literary executor, Mr. R. A. Streatfeild.  I thank Mr. G. W.
Webb, of the University Library, Cambridge, for the care and skill
with which he has made the necessary alterations; it was a
troublesome job because owing to the re-setting, the pagination was
no longer the same.

Luck, or Cunning? is the fourth of Butler's evolution books; it was
followed in 1890 by three articles in The Universal Review entitled
"The Deadlock in Darwinism" (republished in The Humour of Homer),
after which he published no more upon that subject.

In this book, as he says in his Introduction, he insists upon two
main points:  (1) the substantial identity between heredity and
memory, and (2) the reintroduction of design into organic
development; and these two points he treats as though they have
something of that physical life with which they are so closely
associated.  He was aware that what he had to say was likely to
prove more interesting to future generations than to his immediate
public, "but any book that desires to see out a literary three-score
years and ten must offer something to future generations as well as
to its own."  By next year one half of the three-score years and ten
will have passed, and the new generation by their constant enquiries
for the work have already begun to show their appreciation of
Butler's method of treating the subject, and their readiness to
listen to what was addressed to them as well as to their fathers.

HENRY FESTING JONES.
March, 1920.



AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION



This book, as I have said in my concluding chapter, has turned out
very different from the one I had it in my mind to write when I
began it.  It arose out of a conversation with the late Mr. Alfred
Tylor soon after his paper on the growth of trees and protoplasmic
continuity was read before the Linnean Society--that is to say, in
December, 1884--and I proposed to make the theory concerning the
subdivision of organic life into animal and vegetable, which I have
broached in my concluding chapter, the main feature of the book.
One afternoon, on leaving Mr. Tylor's bedside, much touched at the
deep disappointment he evidently felt at being unable to complete
the work he had begun so ably, it occurred to me that it might be
some pleasure to him if I promised to dedicate my own book to him,
and thus, however unworthy it might be, connect it with his name.
It occurred to me, of course, also that the honour to my own book
would be greater than any it could confer, but the time was not one
for balancing considerations nicely, and when I made my suggestion
to Mr. Tylor on the last occasion that I ever saw him, the manner in
which he received it settled the question.  If he had lived I should
no doubt have kept more closely to my  plan, and should probably
have been furnished by him with much that would have enriched the
book and made it more worthy of his acceptance; but this was not to
be.

In the course of writing I became more and more convinced that no
progress could be made towards a sounder view of the theory of
descent until people came to understand what the late Mr. Charles
Darwin's theory of natural selection amounted to, and how it was
that it ever came to be propounded.  Until the mindless theory of
Charles Darwinian natural selection was finally discredited, and a
mindful theory of evolution was substituted in its place, neither
Mr. Tylor's experiments nor my own theories could stand much chance
of being attended to.  I therefore devoted myself mainly, as I had
done in "Evolution Old and New," and in "Unconscious Memory," to
considering whether the view taken by the late Mr. Darwin, or the
one put forward by his three most illustrious predecessors, should
most command our assent.

The deflection from my original purpose was increased by the
appearance, about a year ago, of Mr. Grant Allen's "Charles Darwin,"
which I imagine to have had a very large circulation.  So important,
indeed, did I think it not to leave Mr. Allen's statements
unchallenged, that in November last I recast my book completely,
cutting out much that I had written, and practically starting anew.
How far Mr. Tylor would have liked it, or even sanctioned its being
dedicated to him, if he were now living, I cannot, of course, say.
I never heard him speak of the late Mr. Darwin in any but terms of
warm respect, and am by no means sure that he would have been well
pleased at an attempt to connect him with a book so polemical as the
present.  On the other hand, a promise made and received as mine
was, cannot be set aside lightly.  The understanding was that my
next book was to be dedicated to Mr. Tylor; I have written the best
I could, and indeed never took so much pains with any other; to Mr.
Tylor's memory, therefore, I have most respectfully, and
regretfully, inscribed it.

Desiring that the responsibility for what has been done should rest
with me, I have avoided saying anything about the book while it was
in progress to any of Mr Tylor's family or representatives.  They
know nothing, therefore, of its contents, and if they did, would
probably feel with myself very uncertain how far it is right to use
Mr. Tylor's name in connection with it.  I can only trust that, on
the whole, they may think I have done most rightly in adhering to
the letter of my promise.

October 15, 1886.



CHAPTER I--INTRODUCTION



I shall perhaps best promote the acceptance of the two main points
on which I have been insisting for some years past, I mean, the
substantial identity between heredity and memory, and the
reintroduction of design into organic development, by treating them
as if they had something of that physical life with which they are
so closely connected.  Ideas are like plants and animals in this
respect also, as in so many others, that they are more fully
understood when their relations to other ideas of their time, and
the history of their development are known and borne in mind.  By
development I do not merely mean their growth in the minds of those
who first advanced them, but that larger development which consists
in their subsequent good or evil fortunes--in their reception,
favourable or otherwise, by those to whom they were presented.  This
is to an idea what its surroundings are to an organism, and throws
much the same light upon it that knowledge of the conditions under
which an organism lives throws upon the organism itself.  I shall,
therefore, begin this new work with a few remarks about its
predecessors.

I am aware that what I may say on this head is likely to prove more
interesting to future students of the literature of descent than to
my immediate public, but any book that desires to see out a literary
three-score years and ten must offer something to future generations
as well as to its own.  It is a condition of its survival that it
shall do this, and herein lies one of the author's chief
difficulties.  If books only lived as long as men and women, we
should know better how to grow them; as matters stand, however, the
author lives for one or two generations, whom he comes in the end to
understand fairly well, while the book, if reasonable pains have
been taken with it, should live more or less usefully for a dozen.
About the greater number of these generations the author is in the
dark; but come what may, some of them are sure to have arrived at
conclusions diametrically opposed to our own upon every subject
connected with art, science, philosophy, and religion; it is plain,
therefore, that if posterity is to be pleased, it can only be at the
cost of repelling some present readers.  Unwilling as I am to do
this, I still hold it the lesser of two evils; I will be as brief,
however, as the interests of the opinions I am supporting will
allow.

In "Life and Habit" I contended that heredity was a mode of memory.
I endeavoured to show that all hereditary traits, whether of mind or
body, are inherited in virtue of, and as a manifestation of, the
same power whereby we are able to remember intelligently what we did
half an hour, yesterday, or a twelvemonth since, and this in no
figurative but in a perfectly real sense.  If life be compared to an
equation of a hundred unknown quantities, I followed Professor
Hering of Prague in reducing it to one of ninety-nine only, by
showing two of the supposed unknown quantities to be so closely
allied that they should count as one.  I maintained that instinct
was inherited memory, and this without admitting more exceptions and
qualifying clauses than arise, as it were, by way of harmonics from
every proposition, and must be neglected if thought and language are
to be possible.

I showed that if the view for which I was contending was taken, many
facts which, though familiar, were still without explanation or
connection with our other ideas, would remain no longer isolated,
but be seen at once as joined with the mainland of our most assured
convictions.  Among the things thus brought more comfortably home to
us was the principle underlying longevity.  It became apparent why
some living beings should live longer than others, and how any race
must be treated whose longevity it is desired to increase.  Hitherto
we had known that an elephant was a long-lived animal and a fly
short-lived, but we could give no reason why the one should live
longer than the other; that is to say, it did not follow in
immediate coherence with, or as intimately associated with, any
familiar principle that an animal which is late in the full
development of its reproductive system will tend to live longer than
one which reproduces early.  If the theory of "Life and Habit" be
admitted, the fact of a slow-growing animal being in general longer
lived than a quick developer is seen to be connected with, and to
follow as a matter of course from, the fact of our being able to
remember anything at all, and all the well-known traits of memory,
as observed where we can best take note of them, are perceived to be
reproduced with singular fidelity in the development of an animal
from its embryonic stages to maturity.

Take this view, and the very general sterility of hybrids from being
a CRUX of the theory of descent becomes a stronghold of defence.  It
appears as part of the same story as the benefit derived from
judicious, and the mischief from injudicious, crossing; and this, in
its turn, is seen as part of the same story, as the good we get from
change of air and scene when we are overworked.  I will not amplify;
but reversion to long-lost, or feral, characteristics, the phenomena
of old age, the fact of the reproductive system being generally the
last to arrive at maturity--few further developments occurring in
any organism after this has been attained--the sterility of many
animals in confinement, the development in both males and females
under certain circumstances of the characteristics of the opposite
sex, the latency of memory, the unconsciousness with which we grow,
and indeed perform all familiar actions, these points, though
hitherto, most of them, so apparently inexplicable that no one even
attempted to explain them, became at once intelligible, if the
contentions of "Life and Habit" were admitted.

Before I had finished writing this book I fell in with Professor
Mivart's "Genesis of Species," and for the first time understood the
distinction between the Lamarckian and Charles-Darwinian systems of
evolution.  This had not, so far as I then knew, been as yet made
clear to us by any of our more prominent writers upon the subject of
descent with modification; the distinction was unknown to the
general public, and indeed is only now beginning to be widely
understood.  While reading Mr. Mivart's book, however, I became
aware that I was being faced by two facts, each incontrovertible,
but each, if its leading exponents were to be trusted, incompatible
with the other.

On the one hand there was descent; we could not read Mr. Darwin's
books and doubt that all, both animals and plants, were descended
from a common source.  On the other, there was design; we could not
read Paley and refuse to admit that design, intelligence, adaptation
of means to ends, must have had a large share in the development of
the life we saw around us; it seemed indisputable that the minds and
bodies of all living beings must have come to be what they are
through a wise ordering and administering of their estates.  We
could not, therefore, dispense either with descent or with design,
and yet it seemed impossible to keep both, for those who offered us
descent stuck to it that we could have no design, and those, again,
who spoke so wisely and so well about design would not for a moment
hear of descent with modification.

Each, moreover, had a strong case.  Who could reflect upon
rudimentary organs, and grant Paley the kind of design that alone
would content him?  And yet who could examine the foot or the eye,
and grant Mr. Darwin his denial of forethought and plan?

For that Mr. Darwin did deny skill and contrivance in connection
with the greatly preponderating part of organic developments cannot
be and is not now disputed.  In the first chapter of "Evolution Old
and New" I brought forward passages to show how completely he and
his followers deny design, but will here quote one of the latest of
the many that have appeared to the same effect since "Evolution Old
and New" was published; it is by Mr. Romanes, and runs as follows:-

"It is the VERY ESSENCE of the Darwinian hypothesis that it only
seeks to explain the APPARENTLY purposive variations, or variations
of an adaptive kind." {17a}

The words "apparently purposive" show that those organs in animals
and plants which at first sight seem to have been designed with a
view to the work they have to do--that is to say, with a view to
future function--had not, according to Mr. Darwin, in reality any
connection with, or inception in, effort; effort involves purpose
and design; they had therefore no inception in design, however much
they might present the appearance of being designed; the appearance
was delusive; Mr. Romanes correctly declares it to be "the very
essence" of Mr. Darwin's system to attempt an explanation of these
seemingly purposive variations which shall be compatible with their
having arisen without being in any way connected with intelligence
or design.

As it is indisputable that Mr. Darwin denied design, so neither can
it be doubted that Paley denied descent with modification.  What,
then, were the wrong entries in these two sets of accounts, on the
detection and removal of which they would be found to balance as
they ought?

Paley's weakest place, as already implied, is in the matter of
rudimentary organs; the almost universal presence in the higher
organisms of useless, and sometimes even troublesome, organs is
fatal to the kind of design he is trying to uphold; granted that
there is design, still it cannot be so final and far-foreseeing as
he wishes to make it out.  Mr. Darwin's weak place, on the other
hand, lies, firstly, in the supposition that because rudimentary
organs imply no purpose now, they could never in time past have done
so--that because they had clearly not been designed with an eye to
all circumstances and all time, they never, therefore, could have
been designed with an eye to any time or any circumstances; and,
secondly, in maintaining that "accidental," "fortuitous,"
"spontaneous" variations could be accumulated at all except under
conditions that have never been fulfilled yet, and never will be; in
other words, his weak place lay in the contention (for it comes to
this) that there can be sustained accumulation of bodily wealth,
more than of wealth of any other kind, unless sustained experience,
watchfulness, and good sense preside over the accumulation.  In
"Life and Habit," following Mr. Mivart, and, as I now find, Mr.
Herbert Spencer, I showed (pp. 279-281) how impossible it was for
variations to accumulate unless they were for the most part
underlain by a sustained general principle; but this subject will be
touched upon more fully later on.

The accumulation of accidental variations which owed nothing to mind
either in their inception, or their accumulation, the pitchforking,
in fact, of mind out of the universe, or at any rate its exclusion
from all share worth talking about in the process of organic
development, this was the pill Mr. Darwin had given us to swallow;
but so thickly had he gilded it with descent with modification, that
we did as we were told, swallowed it without a murmur, were lavish
in our expressions of gratitude, and, for some twenty years or so,
through the mouths of our leading biologists, ordered design
peremptorily out of court, if she so much as dared to show herself.
Indeed, we have even given life pensions to some of the most notable
of these biologists, I suppose in order to reward them for having
hoodwinked us so much to our satisfaction.

Happily the old saying, Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque
recurret, still holds true, and the reaction that has been gaining
force for some time will doubtless ere long brush aside the cobwebs
with which those who have a vested interest in Mr. Darwin's
reputation as a philosopher still try to fog our outlook.  Professor
Mivart was, as I have said, among the first to awaken us to Mr.
Darwin's denial of design, and to the absurdity involved therein.
He well showed how incredible Mr Darwin's system was found to be, as
soon as it was fully realised, but there he rather left us.  He
seemed to say that we must have our descent and our design too, but
he did not show how we were to manage this with rudimentary organs
still staring us in the face.  His work rather led up to the clearer
statement of the difficulty than either put it before us in so many
words, or tried to remove it.  Nevertheless there can be no doubt
that the "Genesis of Species" gave Natural Selection what will prove
sooner or later to be its death-blow, in spite of the persistence
with which many still declare that it has received no hurt, and the
sixth edition of the" Origin of Species," published in the following
year, bore abundant traces of the fray.  Moreover, though Mr. Mivart
gave us no overt aid, he pointed to the source from which help might
come, by expressly saying that his most important objection to Neo-
Darwinism had no force against Lamarck.

To Lamarck, therefore, I naturally turned, and soon saw that the
theory on which I had been insisting in" Life and Habit" was in
reality an easy corollary on his system, though one which he does
not appear to have caught sight of.  I saw also that his denial of
design was only, so to speak, skin deep, and that his system was in
reality teleological, inasmuch as, to use Isidore Geoffroy's words,
it makes the organism design itself.  In making variations depend on
changed actions, and these, again, on changed views of life,
efforts, and designs, in consequence of changed conditions of life,
he in effect makes effort, intention, will, all of which involve
design (or at any rate which taken together involve it), underlie
progress in organic development.  True, he did not know he was a
teleologist, but he was none the less a teleologist for this.  He
was an unconscious teleologist, and as such perhaps more absolutely
an upholder of teleology than Paley himself; but this is neither
here nor there; our concern is not with what people think about
themselves, but with what their reasoning makes it evident that they
really hold.

How strange the irony that hides us from ourselves!  When Isidore
Geoffroy said that according to Lamarck organisms designed
themselves, {20a} and endorsed this, as to a great extent he did, he
still does not appear to have seen that either he or Lamarck were in
reality reintroducing design into organism; he does not appear to
have seen this more than Lamarck himself had seen it, but, on the
contrary, like Lamarck, remained under the impression that he was
opposing teleology or purposiveness.

Of course in one sense he did oppose it; so do we all, if the word
design be taken to intend a very far-foreseeing of minute details, a
riding out to meet trouble long before it comes, a provision on
academic principles for contingencies that are little likely to
arise.  We can see no evidence of any such design as this in nature,
and much everywhere that makes against it.  There is no such
improvidence as over providence, and whatever theories we may form
about the origin and development of the universe, we may be sure
that it is not the work of one who is unable to understand how
anything can possibly go right unless he sees to it himself.  Nature
works departmentally and by way of leaving details to subordinates.
But though those who see nature thus do indeed deny design of the
prescient-from-all-eternity order, they in no way impugn a method
which is far more in accord with all that we commonly think of as
design.  A design which is as incredible as that a ewe should give
birth to a lion becomes of a piece with all that we observe most
frequently if it be regarded rather as an aggregation of many small
steps than as a single large one.  This principle is very simple,
but it seems rather difficult to understand.  It has taken several
generations before people would admit it as regards organism even
after it was pointed out to them, and those who saw it as regards
organism still failed to understand it as regards design; an
inexorable "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther" barred them from
fruition of the harvest they should have been the first to reap.
The very men who most insisted that specific difference was the
accumulation of differences so minute as to be often hardly, if at
all, perceptible, could not see that the striking and baffling
phenomena of design in connection with organism admitted of exactly
the same solution as the riddle of organic development, and should
be seen not as a result reached per saltum, but as an accumulation
of small steps or leaps in a given direction.  It was as though
those who had insisted on the derivation of all forms of the steam-
engine from the common kettle, and who saw that this stands in much
the same relations to the engines, we will say, of the Great Eastern
steamship as the amoeba to man, were to declare that the Great
Eastern engines were not designed at all, on the ground that no one
in the early kettle days had foreseen so great a future development,
and were unable to understand that a piecemeal solvitur ambulando
design is more omnipresent, all-seeing, and all-searching, and hence
more truly in the strictest sense design, than any speculative leap
of fancy, however bold and even at times successful.

From Lamarck I went on to Buffon and Erasmus Darwin--better men both
of them than Lamarck, and treated by him much as he has himself been
treated by those who have come after him--and found that the system
of these three writers, if considered rightly, and if the corollary
that heredity is only a mode of memory were added, would get us out
of our dilemma as regards descent and design, and enable us to keep
both.  We could do this by making the design manifested in organism
more like the only design of which we know anything, and therefore
the only design of which we ought to speak--I mean our own.

Our own design is tentative, and neither very far-foreseeing nor
very retrospective; it is a little of both, but much of neither; it
is like a comet with a little light in front of the nucleus and a
good deal more behind it, which ere long, however, fades away into
the darkness; it is of a kind that, though a little wise before the
event, is apt to be much wiser after it, and to profit even by
mischance so long as the disaster is not an overwhelming one;
nevertheless, though it is so interwoven with luck, there is no
doubt about its being design; why, then, should the design which
must have attended organic development be other than this?  If the
thing that has been is the thing that also shall be, must not the
thing which is be that which also has been?  Was there anything in
the phenomena of organic life to militate against such a view of
design as this?  Not only was there nothing, but this view made
things plain, as the connecting of heredity and memory had already
done, which till now had been without explanation.  Rudimentary
organs were no longer a hindrance to our acceptance of design, they
became weighty arguments in its favour.

I therefore wrote "Evolution Old and New," with the object partly of
backing up "Life and Habit," and showing the easy rider it admitted,
partly to show how superior the old view of descent had been to Mr.
Darwin's, and partly to reintroduce design into organism.  I wrote
"Life and Habit" to show that our mental and bodily acquisitions
were mainly stores of memory:  I wrote "Evolution Old and New" to
add that the memory must be a mindful and designing memory.

I followed up these two books with "Unconscious Memory," the main
object of which was to show how Professor Hering of Prague had
treated the connection between memory and heredity; to show, again,
how substantial was the difference between Von Hartmann and myself
in spite of some little superficial resemblance; to put forward a
suggestion as regards the physics of memory, and to meet the most
plausible objection which I have yet seen brought against "Life and
Habit."

Since writing these three books I have published nothing on the
connection between heredity and memory, except a few pages of
remarks on Mr. Romanes' "Mental Evolution in Animals" in my book,
{23a} from which I will draw whatever seems to be more properly
placed here.  I have collected many facts that make my case
stronger, but am precluded from publishing them by the reflection
that it is strong enough already.  I have said enough in "Life and
Habit" to satisfy any who wish to be satisfied, and those who wish
to be dissatisfied would probably fail to see the force of what I
said, no matter how long and seriously I held forth to them; I
believe, therefore, that I shall do well to keep my facts for my own
private reading and for that of my executors.

I once saw a copy of "Life and Habit" on Mr. Bogue's counter, and
was told by the very obliging shopman that a customer had just
written something in it which I might like to see.  I said of course
I should like to see, and immediately taking the book read the
following--which it occurs to me that I am not justified in
publishing.  What was written ran thus:-

"As a reminder of our pleasant hours on the broad Atlantic, will Mr.
-- please accept this book (which I think contains more truth, and
less evidence of it, than any other I have met with) from his friend
-- ?"

I presume the gentleman had met with the Bible--a work which lays
itself open to a somewhat similar comment.  I was gratified,
however, at what I had read, and take this opportunity of thanking
the writer, an American, for having liked my book.  It was so plain
he had been relieved at not finding the case smothered to death in
the weight of its own evidences, that I resolved not to forget the
lesson his words had taught me.

The only writer in connection with "Life and Habit" to whom I am
anxious to reply is Mr. Herbert Spencer, but before doing this I
will conclude the present chapter with a consideration of some
general complaints that have been so often brought against me that
it may be worth while to notice them.

These general criticisms have resolved themselves mainly into two.

Firstly, it is said that I ought not to write about biology on the
ground of my past career, which my critics declare to have been
purely literary.  I wish I might indulge a reasonable hope of one
day becoming a literary man; the expression is not a good one, but
there is no other in such common use, and this must excuse it; if a
man can be properly called literary, he must have acquired the habit
of reading accurately, thinking attentively, and expressing himself
clearly.  He must have endeavoured in all sorts of ways to enlarge
the range of his sympathies so as to be able to put himself easily
en rapport with those whom he is studying, and those whom he is
addressing.  If he cannot speak with tongues himself, he is the
interpreter of those who can--without whom they might as well be
silent.  I wish I could see more signs of literary culture among my
scientific opponents; I should find their books much more easy and
agreeable reading if I could; and then they tell me to satirise the
follies and abuses of the age, just as if it was not this that I was
doing in writing about themselves.

What, I wonder, would they say if I were to declare that they ought
not to write books at all, on the ground that their past career has
been too purely scientific to entitle them to a hearing?  They would
reply with justice that I should not bring vague general
condemnations, but should quote examples of their bad writing.  I
imagine that I have done this more than once as regards a good many
of them, and I dare say I may do it again in the course of this
book; but though I must own to thinking that the greater number of
our scientific men write abominably, I should not bring this against
them if I believed them to be doing their best to help us; many such
men we happily have, and doubtless always shall have, but they are
not those who push to the fore, and it is these last who are most
angry with me for writing on the subjects I have chosen.  They
constantly tell me that I am not a man of science; no one knows this
better than I do, and I am quite used to being told it, but I am not
used to being confronted with the mistakes that I have made in
matters of fact, and trust that this experience is one which I may
continue to spare no pains in trying to avoid.

Nevertheless I again freely grant that I am not a man of science.  I
have never said I was.  I was educated for the Church.  I was once
inside the Linnean Society's rooms, but have no present wish to go
there again; though not a man of science, however, I have never
affected indifference to the facts and arguments which men of
science have made it their business to lay before us; on the
contrary, I have given the greater part of my time to their
consideration for several years past.  I should not, however, say
this unless led to do so by regard to the interests of theories
which I believe to be as nearly important as any theories can be
which do not directly involve money or bodily convenience.

The second complaint against me is to the effect that I have made no
original experiments, but have taken all my facts at second hand.
This is true, but I do not see what it has to do with the question.
If the facts are sound, how can it matter whether A or B collected
them?  If Professor Huxley, for example, has made a series of
valuable original observations (not that I know of his having done
so), why am I to make them over again?  What are fact-collectors
worth if the fact co-ordinators may not rely upon them?  It seems to
me that no one need do more than go to the best sources for his
facts, and tell his readers where he got them.  If I had had
occasion for more facts I daresay I should have taken the necessary
steps to get hold of them, but there was no difficulty on this
score; every text-book supplied me with all, and more than all, I
wanted; my complaint was that the facts which Mr. Darwin supplied
would not bear the construction he tried to put upon them; I tried,
therefore, to make them bear another which seemed at once more sound
and more commodious; rightly or wrongly I set up as a builder, not
as a burner of bricks, and the complaint so often brought against me
of not having made experiments is about as reasonable as complaint
against an architect on the score of his not having quarried with
his own hands a single one of the stones which he has used in
building.  Let my opponents show that the facts which they and I use
in common are unsound, or that I have misapplied them, and I will
gladly learn my mistake, but this has hardly, to my knowledge, been
attempted.  To me it seems that the chief difference between myself
and some of my opponents lies in this, that I take my facts from
them with acknowledgment, and they take their theories from me--
without.

One word more and I have done.  I should like to say that I do not
return to the connection between memory and heredity under the
impression that I shall do myself much good by doing so.  My own
share in the matter was very small.  The theory that heredity is
only a mode of memory is not mine, but Professor Hering's.  He wrote
in 1870, and I not till 1877.  I should be only too glad if he would
take his theory and follow it up himself; assuredly he could do so
much better than I can; but with the exception of his one not
lengthy address published some fifteen or sixteen years ago he has
said nothing upon the subject, so far at least as I have been able
to ascertain; I tried hard to draw him in 1880, but could get
nothing out of him.  If, again, any of our more influential writers,
not a few of whom evidently think on this matter much as I do, would
eschew ambiguities and tell us what they mean in plain language, I
would let the matter rest in their abler hands, but of this there
does not seem much chance at present.

I wish there was, for in spite of the interest I have felt in
working the theory out and the information I have been able to
collect while doing so, I must confess that I have found it somewhat
of a white elephant.  It has got me into the hottest of hot water,
made a literary Ishmael of me, lost me friends whom I have been
sorry to lose, cost me a good deal of money, done everything to me,
in fact, which a good theory ought not to do.  Still, as it seems to
have taken up with me, and no one else is inclined to treat it
fairly, I shall continue to report its developments from time to
time as long as life and health are spared me.  Moreover, Ishmaels
are not without their uses, and they are not a drug in the market
just now.

I may now go on to Mr. Spencer.



CHAPTER II--MR. HERBERT SPENCER



Mr. Herbert Spencer wrote to the Athenaeum (April 5, 1884), and
quoted certain passages from the 1855 edition of his "Principles of
Psychology," "the meanings and implications" from which he contended
were sufficiently clear.  The passages he quoted were as follows:-

Though it is manifest that reflex and instinctive sequences are not
determined by the experiences of the INDIVIDUAL organism manifesting
them, yet there still remains the hypothesis that they are
determined by the experiences of the RACE of organisms forming its
ancestry, which by infinite repetition in countless successive
generations have established these sequences as organic relations
(p. 526).

The modified nervous tendencies produced by such new habits of life
are also bequeathed (p. 526).

That is to say, the tendencies to certain combinations of psychical
changes have become organic (p. 527).

The doctrine that the connections among our ideas are determined by
experience must, in consistency, be extended not only to all the
connections established by the accumulated experiences of every
individual, but to all those established by the accumulated
experiences of every race (p. 529).

Here, then, we have one of the simpler forms of instinct which,
under the requisite conditions, must necessarily be established by
accumulated experiences (p. 547).

And manifestly, if the organisation of inner relations, in
correspondence with outer relations, results from a continual
registration of experiences, &c. (p. 551).

On the one hand, Instinct may be regarded as a kind of organised
memory; on the other hand, Memory may be regarded as a kind of
incipient instinct (pp. 555-6).

Memory, then, pertains to all that class of psychical states which
are in process of being organised.  It continues so long as the
organising of them continues; and disappears when the organisation
of them is complete.  In the advance of the correspondence, each
more complex class of phenomena which the organism acquires the
power of recognising is responded to at first irregularly and
uncertainly; and there is then a weak remembrance of the relations.
By multiplication of experiences this remembrance becomes stronger,
and the response more certain.  By further multiplication of
experiences the internal relations are at last automatically
organised in correspondence with the external ones; and so conscious
memory passes into unconscious or organic memory.  At the same time,
a new and still more complex order of experiences is thus rendered
appreciable; the relations they present occupy the memory in place
of the simpler one; they become gradually organised; and, like the
previous ones, are succeeded by others more complex still (p. 563).

Just as we saw that the establishment of those compound reflex
actions which we call instincts is comprehensible on the principle
that inner relations are, by perpetual repetition, organised into
correspondence with outer relations; so the establishment of those
consolidated, those indissoluble, those instinctive mental relations
constituting our ideas of Space and Time, is comprehensible on the
same principle (p. 579).


In a book published a few weeks before Mr. Spencer's letter appeared
{29a} I had said that though Mr. Spencer at times closely approached
Professor Hering and "Life and Habit," he had nevertheless nowhere
shown that he considered memory and heredity to be parts of the same
story and parcel of one another.  In his letter to the Athenaeum,
indeed, he does not profess to have upheld this view, except "by
implications;" nor yet, though in the course of the six or seven
years that had elapsed since "Life and Habit" was published I had
brought out more than one book to support my earlier one, had he
said anything during those years to lead me to suppose that I was
trespassing upon ground already taken by himself.  Nor, again, had
he said anything which enabled me to appeal to his authority--which
I should have been only too glad to do; at last, however, he wrote,
as I have said, to the Athenaeum a letter which, indeed, made no
express claim, and nowhere mentioned myself, but "the meanings and
implications" from which were this time as clear as could be
desired, and amount to an order to Professor Hering and myself to
stand aside.

The question is, whether the passages quoted by Mr. Spencer, or any
others that can be found in his works, show that he regarded
heredity in all its manifestations as a mode of memory.  I submit
that this conception is not derivable from Mr. Spencer's writings,
and that even the passages in which he approaches it most closely
are unintelligible till read by the light of Professor Hering's
address and of "Life and Habit."

True, Mr. Spencer made abundant use of such expressions as "the
experience of the race," "accumulated experiences," and others like
them, but he did not explain--and it was here the difficulty lay--
how a race could have any experience at all.  We know what we mean
when we say that an individual has had experience; we mean that he
is the same person now (in the common use of the words), on the
occasion of some present action, as the one who performed a like
action at some past time or times, and that he remembers how he
acted before, so as to be able to turn his past action to account,
gaining in proficiency through practice.  Continued personality and
memory are the elements that constitute experience; where these are
present there may, and commonly will, be experience; where they are
absent the word "experience" cannot properly be used.

Formerly we used to see an individual as one, and a race as many.
We now see that though this is true as far as it goes, it is by no
means the whole truth, and that in certain important respects it is
the race that is one, and the individual many.  We all admit and
understand this readily enough now, but it was not understood when
Mr. Spencer wrote the passages he adduced in the letter to the
Athenaeum above referred to.  In the then state of our ideas a race
was only a succession of individuals, each one of them new persons,
and as such incapable of profiting by the experience of its
predecessors except in the very limited number of cases where oral
teaching, or, as in recent times, writing, was possible.  The thread
of life was, as I have elsewhere said, remorselessly shorn between
each successive generation, and the importance of the physical and
psychical connection between parents and offspring had been quite,
or nearly quite, lost sight of.  It seems strange how this could
ever have been allowed to come about, but it should be remembered
that the Church in the Middle Ages would strongly discourage
attempts to emphasize a connection that would raise troublesome
questions as to who in a future state was to be responsible for
what; and, after all, for nine purposes of life out of ten the
generally received opinion that each person is himself and nobody
else is on many grounds the most convenient.  Every now and then,
however, there comes a tenth purpose, for which the continued
personality side of the connection between successive generations is
as convenient as the new personality side is for the remaining nine,
and these tenth purposes--some of which are not unimportant--are
obscured and fulfilled amiss owing to the completeness with which
the more commonly needed conception has overgrown the other.

Neither view is more true than the other, but the one was wanted
every hour and minute of the day, and was therefore kept, so to
speak, in stock, and in one of the most accessible places of our
mental storehouse, while the other was so seldom asked for that it
became not worth while to keep it.  By-and-by it was found so
troublesome to send out for it, and so hard to come by even then,
that people left off selling it at all, and if any one wanted it he
must think it out at home as best he could; this was troublesome, so
by common consent the world decided no longer to busy itself with
the continued personality of successive generations--which was all
very well until it also decided to busy itself with the theory of
descent with modification.  On the introduction of a foe so inimical
to many of our pre-existing ideas the balance of power among them
was upset, and a readjustment became necessary, which is still far
from having attained the next settlement that seems likely to be
reasonably permanent.

To change the illustration, the ordinary view is true for seven
places of decimals, and this commonly is enough; occasions, however,
have now arisen when the error caused by neglect of the omitted
places is appreciably disturbing, and we must have three or four
more.  Mr. Spencer showed no more signs of seeing that he must
supply these, and make personal identity continue between successive
generations before talking about inherited (as opposed to post-natal
and educational) experience, than others had done before him; the
race with him, as with every one else till recently, was not one
long individual living indeed in pulsations, so to speak, but no
more losing continued personality by living in successive
generations, than an individual loses it by living in consecutive
days; a race was simply a succession of individuals, each one of
which was held to be an entirely new person, and was regarded
exclusively, or very nearly so, from this point of view.

When I wrote "Life and Habit" I knew that the words "experience of
the race" sounded familiar, and were going about in magazines and
newspapers, but I did not know where they came from; if I had, I
should have given their source.  To me they conveyed no meaning, and
vexed me as an attempt to make me take stones instead of bread, and
to palm off an illustration upon me as though it were an
explanation.  When I had worked the matter out in my own way, I saw
that the illustration, with certain additions, would become an
explanation, but I saw also that neither he who had adduced it nor
any one else could have seen how right he was, till much had been
said which had not, so far as 1 knew, been said yet, and which
undoubtedly would have been said if people had seen their way to
saying it.

"What is this talk," I wrote, "which is made about the experience of
the race, as though the experience of one man could profit another
who knows nothing about him?  If a man eats his dinner it nourishes
him and not his neighbour; if he learns a difficult art it is he
that can do it and not his neighbour" ("Life and Habit," p. 49).

When I wrote thus in 1877, it was not generally seen that though the
father is not nourished by the dinners that the son eats, yet the
son was fed when the father ate before he begot him.

"Is there any way," I continued, "of showing that this experience of
the race about which so much is said without the least attempt to
show in what way it may, or does, become the experience of the
individual, is in sober seriousness the experience of one single
being only, who repeats on a great many different occasions, and in
slightly different ways, certain performances with which he has
already become exceedingly familiar?"

I felt, as every one else must have felt who reflected upon the
expression in question, that it was fallacious till this was done.
When I first began to write "Life and Habit" I did not believe it
could be done, but when I had gone right up to the end, as it were,
of my cu de sac, I saw the path which led straight to the point I
had despaired of reaching--I mean I saw that personality could not
be broken as between generations, without also breaking it between
the years, days, and moments of a man's life.  What differentiates
"Life and Habit" from the "Principles of Psychology" is the
prominence given to continued personal identity, and hence to bona
fide memory, as between successive generations; but surely this
makes the two books differ widely.

Ideas can be changed to almost any extent in almost any direction,
if the change is brought about gradually and in accordance with the
rules of all development.  As in music we may take almost any
possible discord with pleasing effect if we have prepared and
resolved it rightly, so our ideas will outlive and outgrow almost
any modification which is approached and quitted in such a way as to
fuse the old and new harmoniously.  Words are to ideas what the
fairy invisible cloak was to the prince who wore it--only that the
prince was seen till he put on the cloak, whereas ideas are unseen
until they don the robe of words which reveals them to us; the
words, however, and the ideas, should be such as fit each other and
stick to one another in our minds as soon as they are brought
together, or the ideas will fly off, and leave the words void of
that spirit by the aid of which alone they can become transmuted
into physical action and shape material things with their own
impress.  Whether a discord is too violent or no, depends on what we
have been accustomed to, and on how widely the new differs from the
old, but in no case can we fuse and assimilate more than a very
little new at a time without exhausting our tempering power--and
hence presently our temper.

Mr. Spencer appears to have forgotten that though de minimis non
curat lex,--though all the laws fail when applied to trifles,--yet
too sudden a change in the manner in which our ideas are associated
is as cataclysmic and subversive of healthy evolution as are
material convulsions, or too violent revolutions in politics.  This
must always be the case, for change is essentially miraculous, and
the only lawful home of the miracle is in the microscopically small.
Here, indeed, miracles were in the beginning, are now, and ever
shall be, but we are deadened if they are required of us on a scale
which is visible to the naked eye.  If we are told to work them our
hands fall nerveless down; if, come what may, we must do or die, we
are more likely to die than to succeed in doing.  If we are required
to believe them--which only means to fuse them with our other ideas-
-we either take the law into our own hands, and our minds being in
the dark fuse something easier of assimilation, and say we have
fused the miracle; or if we play more fairly and insist on our minds
swallowing and assimilating it, we weaken our judgments, and pro
tanto kill our souls.  If we stick out beyond a certain point we go
mad, as fanatics, or at the best make Coleridges of ourselves; and
yet upon a small scale these same miracles are the breath and
essence of life; to cease to work them is to die.  And by miracle I
do not merely mean something new, strange, and not very easy of
comprehension--I mean something which violates every canon of
thought which in the palpable world we are accustomed to respect;
something as alien to, and inconceivable by, us as contradiction in
terms, the destructibility of force or matter, or the creation of
something out of nothing.  This, which when writ large maddens and
kills, writ small is our meat and drink; it attends each minutest
and most impalpable detail of the ceaseless fusion and diffusion in
which change appears to us as consisting, and which we recognise as
growth and decay, or as life and death.

Claude Bernard says, Rien ne nait, rien ne se cree, tout se
continue.  La nature ne nous offre le spectacle d'aucune creation,
elle est d'une eternelle continuation; {35a} but surely he is
insisting upon one side of the truth only, to the neglect of another
which is just as real, and just as important; he might have said,
Rien ne se continue, tout nait, tout se cree.  La nature ne nous
offre le spectacle d'aucune continuation.  Elle est d'une eternelle
creation; for change is no less patent a fact than continuity, and,
indeed, the two stand or fall together.  True, discontinuity, where
development is normal, is on a very small scale, but this is only
the difference between looking at distances on a small instead of a
large map; we cannot have even the smallest change without a small
partial corresponding discontinuity; on a small scale--too small,
indeed, for us to cognise--these breaks in continuity, each one of
which must, so far as our understanding goes, rank as a creation,
are as essential a factor of the phenomena we see around us, as is
the other factor that they shall normally be on too small a scale
for us to find it out.  Creations, then, there must be, but they
must be so small that practically they are no creations.  We must
have a continuity in discontinuity, and a discontinuity in
continuity; that is to say, we can only conceive the help of change
at all by the help of flat contradiction in terms.  It comes,
therefore, to this, that if we are to think fluently and
harmoniously upon any subject into which change enters (and there is
no conceivable subject into which it does not), we must begin by
flying in the face of every rule that professors of the art of
thinking have drawn up for our instruction.  These rules may be good
enough as servants, but we have let them become the worst of
masters, forgetting that philosophy is made for man, not man for
philosophy.  Logic has been the true Tower of Babel, which we have
thought to build so that we might climb up into the heavens, and
have no more miracle, but see God and live--nor has confusion of
tongues failed to follow on our presumption.  Truly St. Paul said
well that the just shall live by faith; and the question "By what
faith?" is a detail of minor moment, for there are as many faiths as
species, whether of plants or animals, and each of them is in its
own way both living and saving.

All, then, whether fusion or diffusion, whether of ideas or things,
is miraculous.  It is the two in one, and at the same time one in
two, which is only two and two making five put before us in another
shape; yet this fusion--so easy to think so long as it is not
thought about, and so unthinkable if we try to think it--is, as it
were, the matrix from which our more thinkable thought is taken; it
is the cloud gathering in the unseen world from which the waters of
life descend in an impalpable dew.  Granted that all, whether fusion
or diffusion, whether of ideas or things, is, if we dwell upon it
and take it seriously, an outrage upon our understandings which
common sense alone enables us to brook; granted that it carries with
it a distinctly miraculous element which should vitiate the whole
process ab initio, still, if we have faith we can so work these
miracles as Orpheus-like to charm denizens of the unseen world into
the seen again--provided we do not look back, and provided also we
do not try to charm half a dozen Eurydices at a time.  To think is
to fuse and diffuse ideas, and to fuse and diffuse ideas is to feed.
We can all feed, and by consequence within reasonable limits we can
fuse ideas; or we can fuse ideas, and by consequence within
reasonable limits we can feed; we know not which comes first, the
food or the ideas, but we must not overtax our strength; the moment
we do this we taste of death.

It is in the closest connection with this that we must chew our food
fine before we can digest it, and that the same food given in large
lumps will choke and kill which in small pieces feeds us; or, again,
that that which is impotent as a pellet may be potent as a gas.
Food is very thoughtful:  through thought it comes, and back through
thought it shall return; the process of its conversion and
comprehension within our own system is mental as well as physical,
and here, as everywhere else with mind and evolution, there must be
a cross, but not too wide a cross--that is to say, there must be a
miracle, but not upon a large scale.  Granted that no one can draw a
clear line and define the limits within which a miracle is healthy
working and beyond which it is unwholesome, any more than he can
prescribe the exact degree of fineness to which we must comminute
our food; granted, again, that some can do more than others, and
that at all times all men sport, so to speak, and surpass
themselves, still we know as a general rule near enough, and find
that the strongest can do but very little at a time, and, to return
to Mr. Spencer, the fusion of two such hitherto unassociated ideas
as race and experience was a miracle beyond our strength.

Assuredly when Mr. Spencer wrote the passages he quoted in the
letter to the Athenaeum above referred to, we were not in the habit
of thinking of any one as able to remember things that had happened
before he had been born or thought of.  This notion will still
strike many of my non-readers as harsh and strained; no such
discord, therefore, should have been taken unprepared, and when
taken it should have been resolved with pomp and circumstance.  Mr
Spencer, however, though he took it continually, never either
prepared it or resolved it at all, but by using the words
"experience of the race" sprang this seeming paradox upon us, with
the result that his words were barren.  They were barren because
they were incoherent; they were incoherent because they were
approached and quitted too suddenly.  While we were realising
"experience" our minds excluded "race," inasmuch as experience was
an idea we had been accustomed hitherto to connect only with the
individual; while realising the idea "race," for the same reason, we
as a matter of course excluded experience.  We were required to fuse
two ideas that were alien to one another, without having had those
other ideas presented to us which would alone flux them.  The
absence of these--which indeed were not immediately ready to hand,
or Mr. Spencer would have doubtless grasped them--made nonsense of
the whole thing; we saw the ideas propped up as two cards one
against the other, on one of Mr. Spencer's pages, only to find that
they had fallen asunder before we had turned over to the next, so we
put down his book resentfully, as written by one who did not know
what to do with his meaning even if he had one, or bore it meekly
while he chastised us with scorpions, as Mr. Darwin had done with
whips, according to our temperaments.

I may say, in passing, that the barrenness of incoherent ideas, and
the sterility of widely distant species and genera of animals and
plants, are one in principle--the sterility of hybrids being just as
much due to inability to fuse widely unlike and unfamiliar ideas
into a coherent whole, as barrenness of ideas is, and, indeed,
resolving itself ultimately into neither more nor less than
barrenness of ideas--that is to say, into inability to think at all,
or at any rate to think as their neighbours do.

If Mr. Spencer had made it clear that the generations of any race
are bona fide united by a common personality, and that in virtue of
being so united each generation remembers (within, of course, the
limits to which all memory is subject) what happened to it while
still in the persons of its progenitors--then his order to Professor
Hering and myself should be immediately obeyed; but this was just
what was at once most wanted, and least done by Mr. Spencer.  Even
in the passages given above--passages collected by Mr. Spencer
himself--this point is altogether ignored; make it clear as
Professor Hering made it--put continued personality and memory in
the foreground as Professor Hering did, instead of leaving them to
be discovered "by implications," and then such expressions as
"accumulated experiences" and "experience of the race" become
luminous; till this had been done they were Vox et praeterea nihil.

To sum up briefly.  The passages quoted by Mr. Spencer from his
"Principles of Psychology" can hardly be called clear, even now that
Professor Hering and others have thrown light upon them.  If,
indeed, they had been clear Mr. Spencer would probably have seen
what they necesitated, and found the way of meeting the difficulties
of the case which occurred to Professor Hering and myself.  Till we
wrote, very few writers had even suggested this.  The idea that
offspring was only "an elongation or branch proceeding from its
parents" had scintillated in the ingenious brain of Dr. Erasmus
Darwin, and in that of the designer of Jesse tree windows, but it
had kindled no fire; it now turns out that Canon Kingsley had once
called instinct inherited memory, {40a} but the idea, if born alive
at all, died on the page on which it saw light:  Professor Ray
Lankester, again called attention to Professor Hering's address
(Nature, July 13, 1876), but no discussion followed, and the matter
dropped without having produced visible effect.  As for offspring
remembering in any legitimate sense of the words what it had done,
and what had happened to it, before it was born, no such notion was
understood to have been gravely mooted till very recently.  I doubt
whether Mr. Spencer and Mr. Romanes would accept this even now, when
it is put thus undisguisedly; but this is what Professor Hering and
I mean, and it is the only thing that should be meant, by those who
speak of instinct as inherited memory.  Mr Spencer cannot maintain
that these two startling novelties went without saying "by
implication" from the use of such expressions as "accumulated
experiences" or "experience of the race."



CHAPTER III--MR. HERBERT SPENCER (continued)



Whether they ought to have gone or not, they did not go.

When "Life and Habit" was first published no one considered Mr.
Spencer to be maintaining the phenomena of heredity to be in reality
phenomena of memory.  When, for example, Professor Ray Lankester
first called attention to Professor Hering's address, he did not
understand Mr. Spencer to be intending this.  "Professor Hering," he
wrote (Nature, July 13, 1876), "helps us to a comprehensive view of
the nature of heredity and adaptation, by giving us the word
'memory,' conscious or unconscious, for the continuity of Mr.
Spencer's polar forces or polarities of physiological units."  He
evidently found the prominence given to memory a help to him which
he had not derived from reading Mr. Spencer's works.

When, again, he attacked me in the Athenaeum (March 29, 1884), he
spoke of my "tardy recognition" of the fact that Professor Hering
had preceded me "in treating all manifestations of heredity as a
form of memory."  Professor Lankester's words could have no force if
he held that any other writer, and much less so well known a writer
as Mr. Spencer, had preceded me in putting forward the theory in
question.

When Mr. Romanes reviewed "Unconscious Memory" in Nature (January
27, 1881) the notion of a "race-memory," to use his own words, was
still so new to him that he declared it "simply absurd" to suppose
that it could "possibly be fraught with any benefit to science," and
with him too it was Professor Hering who had anticipated me in the
matter, not Mr. Spencer.

In his "Mental Evolution in Animals" (p. 296) he said that Canon
Kingsley, writing in 1867, was the first to advance the theory that
instinct is inherited memory; he could not have said this if Mr.
Spencer had been understood to have been upholding this view for the
last thirty years.

Mr. A. R. Wallace reviewed "Life and Habit" in Nature (March 27,
1879), but he did not find the line I had taken a familiar one, as
he surely must have done if it had followed easily by implication
from Mr. Spencer's works.  He called it "an ingenious and
paradoxical explanation" which was evidently new to him.  He
concluded by saying that "it might yet afford a clue to some of the
deepest mysteries of the organic world."

Professor Mivart, when he reviewed my books on Evolution in the
American Catholic Quarterly Review (July 1881), said, "Mr Butler is
not only perfectly logical and consistent in the startling
consequences he deduces from his principles, but," &c.  Professor
Mivart could not have found my consequences startling if they had
already been insisted upon for many years by one of the best-known
writers of the day.

The reviewer of "Evolution Old and New" in the Saturday Review
(March 31, 1879), of whom all I can venture to say is that he or she
is a person whose name carries weight in matters connected with
biology, though he (for brevity) was in the humour for seeing
everything objectionable in me that could be seen, still saw no Mr.
Spencer in me.  He said--"Mr Butler's own particular contribution to
the terminology of Evolution is the phrase two or three times
repeated with some emphasis" (I repeated it not two or three times
only, but whenever and wherever I could venture to do so without
wearying the reader beyond endurance) "oneness of personality
between parents and offspring."  The writer proceeded to reprobate
this in language upon which a Huxley could hardly improve, but as he
declares himself unable to discover what it means, it may be
presumed that the idea of continued personality between successive
generations was new to him.

When Dr. Francis Darwin called on me a day or two before "Life and
Habit" went to the press, he said the theory which had pleased him
more than any he had seen for some time was one which referred all
life to memory; {44a} he doubtless intended "which referred all the
phenomena of heredity to memory."  He then mentioned Professor Ray
Lankester's article in Nature, of which I had not heard, but he said
nothing about Mr. Spencer, and spoke of the idea as one which had
been quite new to him.

The above names comprise (excluding Mr. Spencer himself) perhaps
those of the best-known writers on evolution that can be mentioned
as now before the public; it is curious that Mr Spencer should be
the only one of them to see any substantial resemblance between the
"Principles of Psychology" and Professor Hering's address and "Life
and Habit."

I ought, perhaps, to say that Mr. Romanes, writing to the Athenaeum
(March 8, 1884), took a different view of the value of the theory of
inherited memory to the one he took in 1881.

In 1881 he said it was "simply absurd" to suppose it could "possibly
be fraught with any benefit to science" or "reveal any truth of
profound significance;" in 1884 he said of the same theory, that "it
formed the backbone of all the previous literature upon instinct" by
Darwin, Spencer, Lewes, Fiske, and Spalding, "not to mention their
numerous followers, and is by all of them elaborately stated as
clearly as any theory can be stated in words."

Few except Mr. Romanes will say this.  I grant it ought to "have
formed the backbone," &c., and ought "to have been elaborately
stated," &c., but when I wrote "Life and Habit" neither Mr Romanes
nor any one else understood it to have been even glanced at by more
than a very few, and as for having been "elaborately stated," it had
been stated by Professor Hering as elaborately as it could be stated
within the limits of an address of only twenty-two pages, but with
this exception it had never been stated at all.  It is not too much
to say that "Life and Habit," when it first came out, was considered
so startling a paradox that people would not believe in my desire to
be taken seriously, or at any rate were able to pretend that they
thought I was not writing seriously.

Mr. Romanes knows this just as well as all must do who keep an eye
on evolution; he himself, indeed, had said (Nature, January 27,
1881) that so long as I "aimed only at entertaining" my "readers by
such works as 'Erewhon' and 'Life and Habit'" (as though these books
were of kindred character) I was in my proper sphere.  It would be
doing too little credit to Mr. Romanes' intelligence to suppose him
not to have known when he said this that "Life and Habit" was
written as seriously as my subsequent books on evolution, but it
suited him at the moment to join those who professed to consider it
another book of paradoxes such as, I suppose, "Erewhon" had been, so
he classed the two together.  He could not have done this unless
enough people thought, or said they thought, the books akin, to give
colour to his doing so.

One alone of all my reviewers has, to my knowledge, brought Mr.
Spencer against me.  This was a writer in the St. James's Gazette
(December 2, 1880).  I challenged him in a letter which appeared
(December 8, 1880), and said, "I would ask your reviewer to be kind
enough to refer your readers to those passages of Mr. Spencer's
"Principles of Psychology" which in any direct intelligible way
refer the phenomena of instinct and heredity generally, to memory on
the part of offspring of the action it bona fide took in the persons
of its forefathers."  The reviewer made no reply, and I concluded,
as I have since found correctly, that he could not find the
passages.

True, in his "Principles of Psychology" (vol. ii. p. 195) Mr.
Spencer says that we have only to expand the doctrine that all
intelligence is acquired through experience "so as to make it
include with the experience of each individual the experiences of
all ancestral individuals," &c.  This is all very good, but it is
much the same as saying, "We have only got to stand on our heads and
we shall be able to do so and so."  We did not see our way to
standing on our heads, and Mr. Spencer did not help us; we had been
accustomed, as I am afraid I must have said usque ad nauseam
already, to lose sight of the physical connection existing between
parents and offspring; we understood from the marriage service that
husband and wife were in a sense one flesh, but not that parents and
children were so also; and without this conception of the matter,
which in its way is just as true as the more commonly received one,
we could not extend the experience of parents to offspring.  It was
not in the bond or nexus of our ideas to consider experience as
appertaining to more than a single individual in the common
acceptance of the term; these two ideas were so closely bound
together that wherever the one went the other went perforce.  Here,
indeed, in the very passage of Mr. Spencer's just referred to, the
race is throughout regarded as "a series of individuals"--without an
attempt to call attention to that other view, in virtue of which we
are able to extend to many an idea we had been accustomed to confine
to one.

In his chapter on Memory, Mr. Spencer certainly approaches the
Heringian view.  He says, "On the one hand, Instinct may be regarded
as a kind of organised memory; on the other, Memory may be regarded
as a kind of incipient instinct" ("Principles of Psychology," ed. 2,
vol. i. p. 445).  Here the ball has fallen into his hands, but if he
had got firm hold of it he could not have written, "Instinct MAY BE
regarded as A KIND OF, &c.;" to us there is neither "may be regarded
as" nor "kind of" about it; we require, "Instinct is inherited
memory," with an explanation making it intelligible how memory can
come to be inherited at all.  I do not like, again, calling memory
"a kind of incipient instinct;" as Mr. Spencer puts them the words
have a pleasant antithesis, but "instinct is inherited memory"
covers all the ground, and to say that memory is inherited instinct
is surplusage.

Nor does he stick to it long when he says that "instinct is a kind
of organised memory," for two pages later he says that memory, to be
memory at all, must be tolerably conscious or deliberate; he,
therefore (vol. i. p. 447), denies that there can be such a thing as
unconscious memory; but without this it is impossible for us to see
instinct as the "kind of organised memory" which he has just been
calling it, inasmuch as instinct is notably undeliberate and
unreflecting.

A few pages farther on (vol. i. p. 452) he finds himself driven to
unconscious memory after all, and says that "conscious memory passes
into unconscious or organic memory."  Having admitted unconscious
memory, he declares (vol. i. p. 450) that "as fast as those
connections among psychical states, which we form in memory, grow by
constant repetition automatic--they CEASE TO BE PART OF MEMORY," or,
in other words, he again denies that there can be an unconscious
memory.

Mr. Spencer doubtless saw that he was involved in contradiction in
terms, and having always understood that contradictions in terms
were very dreadful things--which, of course, under some
circumstances they are--thought it well so to express himself that
his readers should be more likely to push on than dwell on what was
before them at the moment.  I should be the last to complain of him
merely on the ground that he could not escape contradiction in
terms:  who can?  When facts conflict, contradict one another, melt
into one another as the colours of the spectrum so insensibly that
none can say where one begins and the other ends, contradictions in
terms become first fruits of thought and speech.  They are the basis
of intellectual consciousness, in the same way that a physical
obstacle is the basis of physical sensation.  No opposition, no
sensation, applies as much to the psychical as to the physical
kingdom, as soon as these two have got well above the horizon of our
thoughts and can be seen as two.  No contradiction, no
consciousness; no cross, no crown; contradictions are the very small
deadlocks without which there is no going; going is our sense of a
succession of small impediments or deadlocks; it is a succession of
cutting Gordian knots, which on a small scale please or pain as the
case may be; on a larger, give an ecstasy of pleasure, or shock to
the extreme of endurance; and on a still larger, kill whether they
be on the right side or the wrong.  Nature, as I said in "Life and
Habit," hates that any principle should breed hermaphroditically,
but will give to each an helpmeet for it which shall cross it and be
the undoing of it; and in the undoing, do; and in the doing, undo,
and so ad infinitum.  Cross-fertilisation is just as necessary for
continued fertility of ideas as for that of organic life, and the
attempt to frown this or that down merely on the ground that it
involves contradiction in terms, without at the same time showing
that the contradiction is on a larger scale than healthy thought can
stomach, argues either small sense or small sincerity on the part of
those who make it.  The contradictions employed by Mr. Spencer are
objectionable, not on the ground of their being contradictions at
all, but on the ground of their being blinked, and used
unintelligently.

But though it is not possible for any one to get a clear conception
of Mr. Spencer's meaning, we may say with more confidence what it
was that he did not mean.  He did not mean to make memory the
keystone of his system; he has none of that sense of the unifying,
binding force of memory which Professor Hering has so well
expressed, nor does he show any signs of perceiving the far-reaching
consequences that ensue if the phenomena of heredity are considered
as phenomena of memory.  Thus, when he is dealing with the phenomena
of old age (vol. i. p. 538, ed. 2) he does not ascribe them to lapse
and failure of memory, nor surmise the principle underlying
longevity.  He never mentions memory in connection with heredity
without presently saying something which makes us involuntarily
think of a man missing an easy catch at cricket; it is only rarely,
however, that he connects the two at all.  I have only been able to
find the word "inherited" or any derivative of the verb "to inherit"
in connection with memory once in all the 1300 long pages of the
"Principles of Psychology."  It occurs in vol ii. p. 200, 2d ed.,
where the words stand, "Memory, inherited or acquired."  I submit
that this was unintelligible when Mr. Spencer wrote it, for want of
an explanation which he never gave; I submit, also, that he could
not have left it unexplained, nor yet as an unrepeated expression
not introduced till late in his work, if he had had any idea of its
pregnancy.

At any rate, whether he intended to imply what he now implies that
he intended to imply (for Mr. Spencer, like the late Mr. Darwin, is
fond of qualifying phrases), I have shown that those most able and
willing to understand him did not take him to mean what he now
appears anxious to have it supposed that he meant.  Surely,
moreover, if he had meant it he would have spoken sooner, when he
saw his meaning had been missed.  I can, however, have no hesitation
in saying that if I had known the "Principles of Psychology"
earlier, as well as I know the work now, I should have used it
largely.

It may be interesting, before we leave Mr. Spencer, to see whether
he even now assigns to continued personality and memory the place
assigned to it by Professor Hering and myself.  I will therefore
give the concluding words of the letter to the Athenaeum already
referred to, in which he tells us to stand aside.  He writes "I
still hold that inheritance of functionally produced modifications
is the chief factor throughout the higher stages of organic
evolution, bodily as well as mental (see 'Principles of Biology,' i.
166), while I recognise the truth that throughout the lower stages
survival of the fittest is the chief factor, and in the lowest the
almost exclusive factor."

This is the same confused and confusing utterance which Mr. Spencer
has been giving us any time this thirty years.  According to him the
fact that variations can be inherited and accumulated has less to do
with the first development of organic life, than the fact that if a
square organism happens to get into a square hole, it will live
longer and more happily than a square organism which happens to get
into a round one; he declares "the survival of the fittest"--and
this is nothing but the fact that those who "fit" best into their
surroundings will live longest and most comfortably--to have more to
do with the development of the amoeba into, we will say, a mollusc
than heredity itself.  True, "inheritance of functionally produced
modifications" is allowed to be the chief factor throughout the
"higher stages of organic evolution," but it has very little to do
in the lower; in these "the almost exclusive factor" is not
heredity, or inheritance, but "survival of the fittest."

Of course we know that Mr. Spencer does not believe this; of course,
also, all who are fairly well up in the history of the development
theory will see why Mr. Spencer has attempted to draw this
distinction between the "factors" of the development of the higher
and lower forms of life; but no matter how or why Mr. Spencer has
been led to say what he has, he has no business to have said it.
What can we think of a writer who, after so many years of writing
upon his subject, in a passage in which he should make his meaning
doubly clear, inasmuch as he is claiming ground taken by other
writers, declares that though hereditary use and disuse, or, to use
his own words, "the inheritance of functionally produced
modifications," is indeed very important in connection with the
development of the higher forms of life, yet heredity itself has
little or nothing to do with that of the lower?  Variations, whether
produced functionally or not, can only be perpetuated and
accumulated because they can be inherited;--and this applies just as
much to the lower as to the higher forms of life; the question which
Professor Hering and I have tried to answer is, "How comes it that
anything can be inherited at all?  In virtue of what power is it
that offspring can repeat and improve upon the performances of their
parents?"  Our answer was, "Because in a very valid sense, though
not perhaps in the most usually understood, there is continued
personality and an abiding memory between successive generations."
How does Mr. Spencer's confession of faith touch this?  If any
meaning can be extracted from his words, he is no more supporting
this view now than he was when he wrote the passages he has adduced
to show that he was supporting it thirty years ago; but after all no
coherent meaning can be got out of Mr. Spencer's letter--except, of
course, that Professor Hering and myself are to stand aside.  I have
abundantly shown that I am very ready to do this in favour of
Professor Hering, but see no reason for admitting Mr. Spencer's
claim to have been among the forestallers of "Life and Habit."



CHAPTER IV {52a}--Mr. Romanes' "Mental Evolution in Animals"



Without raising the unprofitable question how Mr. Romanes, in spite
of the indifference with which he treated the theory of Inherited
Memory in 1881, came, in 1883, to be sufficiently imbued with a
sense of its importance, I still cannot afford to dispense with the
weight of his authority, and in this chapter will show how closely
he not infrequently approaches the Heringian position.

Thus, he says that the analogies between the memory with which we
are familiar in daily life and hereditary memory "are so numerous
and precise" as to justify us in considering them to be of
essentially the same kind. {52b}

Again, he says that although the memory of milk shown by new-born
infants is "at all events in large part hereditary, it is none the
less memory" of a certain kind. {52c}

Two lines lower down he writes of "hereditary memory or instinct,"
thereby implying that instinct is "hereditary memory."  "It makes no
essential difference," he says, "whether the past sensation was
actually experienced by the individual itself, or bequeathed it, so
to speak, by its ancestors. {52d}  For it makes no essential
difference whether the nervous changes . . . were occasioned during
the life-time of the individual or during that of the species, and
afterwards impressed by heredity on the individual."

Lower down on the same page he writes:-

"As showing how close is the connection between hereditary memory
and instinct," &c.

And on the following page:-

"And this shows how closely the phenomena of hereditary memory are
related to those of individual memory:  at this stage . . . it is
practically impossible to disentangle the effects of hereditary
memory from those of the individual."

Again:-

"Another point which we have here to consider is the part which
heredity has played in forming the perceptive faculty of the
individual prior to its own experience.  We have already seen that
heredity plays an important part in forming memory of ancestral
experiences, and thus it is that many animals come into the world
with their power of perception already largely developed.  The
wealth of ready-formed information, and therefore of ready-made
powers of perception, with which many newly-born or newly-hatched
animals are provided, is so great and so precise that it scarcely
requires to be supplemented by the subsequent experience of the
individual." {53a}

Again:-

"Instincts probably owe their origin and development to one or other
of the two principles.

"I.  The first mode of origin consists in natural selection or
survival of the fittest, continuously preserving actions, &c. &c.

"II.  The second mode of origin is as follows:- By the effects of
habit in successive generations, actions which were originally
intelligent become as it were stereotyped into permanent instincts.
Just as in the lifetime of the individual adjustive actions which
were originally intelligent may by frequent repetition become
automatic, so in the lifetime of species actions originally
intelligent may by frequent repetition and heredity so write their
effects on the nervous system that the latter is prepared, even
before individual experience, to perform adjustive actions
mechanically which in previous generations were performed
intelligently.  This mode of origin of instincts has been
appropriately called (by Lewes--see "Problems of Life and Mind"
{54a}) the 'lapsing of intelligence.'" {54b}

I may say in passing that in spite of the great stress laid by Mr.
Romanes both in his "Mental Evolution in Animals" and in his letters
to the Athenaeum in March 1884, on Natural Selection as an
originator and developer of instinct, he very soon afterwards let
the Natural Selection part of the story go as completely without
saying as I do myself, or as Mr. Darwin did during the later years
of his life.  Writing to Nature, April 10, 1884, he said:  "To deny
THAT EXPERIENCE IN THE COURSE OF SUCCESSIVE GENERATIONS IS THE
SOURCE OF INSTINCT, is not to meet by way of argument the enormous
mass of evidence which goes to prove THAT THIS IS THE CASE."  Here,
then, instinct is referred, without reservation, to "experience in
successive generations," and this is nonsense unless explained as
Professor Hering and I explain it.  Mr. Romanes' words, in fact,
amount to an unqualified acceptance of the chapter "Instinct as
Inherited Memory" given in "Life and Habit," of which Mr. Romanes in
March 1884 wrote in terms which it is not necessary to repeat.

Later on:-

"That 'practice makes perfect' is a matter, as I have previously
said, of daily observation.  Whether we regard a juggler, a pianist,
or a billiard-player, a child learning his lesson or an actor his
part by frequently repeating it, or a thousand other illustrations
of the same process, we see at once that there is truth in the
cynical definition of a man as a 'bundle of habits.'  And the same,
of course, is true of animals." {55a}

From this Mr. Romanes goes on to show "that automatic actions and
conscious habits may be inherited," {55b} and in the course of doing
this contends that "instincts may be lost by disuse, and conversely
that they may be acquired as instincts by the hereditary
transmission of ancestral experience."

On another page Mr. Romanes says:-

"Let us now turn to the second of these two assumptions, viz., that
some at least among migratory birds must possess, by inheritance
alone, a very precise knowledge of the particular direction to be
pursued.  It is without question an astonishing fact that a young
cuckoo should be prompted to leave its foster parents at a
particular season of the year, and without any guide to show the
course previously taken by its own parents, but this is a fact which
must be met by any theory of instinct which aims at being complete.
Now upon our own theory it can only be met by taking it to be due to
inherited memory."

A little lower Mr. Romanes says:  "Of what kind, then, is the
inherited memory on which the young cuckoo (if not also other
migratory birds) depends?  We can only answer, of the same kind,
whatever this may be, as that upon which the old bird depends."
{55c}

I have given above most of the more marked passages which I have
been able to find in Mr. Romanes' book which attribute instinct to
memory, and which admit that there is no fundamental difference
between the kind of memory with which we are all familiar and
hereditary memory as transmitted from one generation to another.

But throughout his work there are passages which suggest, though
less obviously, the same inference.

The passages I have quoted show that Mr. Romanes is upholding the
same opinions as Professor Hering's and my own, but their effect and
tendency is more plain here than in Mr Romanes' own book, where they
are overlaid by nearly 400 long pages of matter which is not always
easy of comprehension.

Moreover, at the same time that I claim the weight of Mr. Romanes'
authority, I am bound to admit that I do not find his support
satisfactory.  The late Mr. Darwin himself--whose mantle seems to
have fallen more especially and particularly on Mr. Romanes--could
not contradict himself more hopelessly than Mr. Romanes often does.
Indeed in one of the very passages I have quoted in order to show
that Mr. Romanes accepts the phenomena of heredity as phenomena of
memory, he speaks of "heredity as playing an important part IN
FORMING MEMORY of ancestral experiences;" so that, whereas I want
him to say that the phenomena of heredity are due to memory, he will
have it that the memory is due to the heredity, which seems to me
absurd.

Over and over again Mr. Romanes insists that it is heredity which
does this or that.  Thus it is "HEREDITY WITH NATURAL SELECTION
WHICH ADAPT the anatomical plan of the ganglia." {56a}  It is
heredity which impresses nervous changes on the individual. {56b}
"In the lifetime of species actions originally intelligent may by
frequent repetition and heredity," &c.; {56c} but he nowhere tells
us what heredity is any more than Messrs. Herbert Spencer, Darwin,
and Lewes have done.  This, however, is exactly what Professor
Hering, whom I have unwittingly followed, does.  He resolves all
phenomena of heredity, whether in respect of body or mind, into
phenomena of memory.  He says in effect, "A man grows his body as he
does, and a bird makes her nest as she does, because both man and
bird remember having grown body and made nest as they now do, or
very nearly so, on innumerable past occasions."  He thus, as I have
said on an earlier page, reduces life from an equation of say 100
unknown quantities to one of 99 only by showing that heredity and
memory, two of the original 100 unknown quantities, are in reality
part of one and the same thing.

That he is right Mr. Romanes seems to me to admit, though in a very
unsatisfactory way.

What, for example, can be more unsatisfactory than the following?--
Mr. Romanes says that the most fundamental principle of mental
operation is that of memory, and that this "is the conditio sine qua
non of all mental life" (page 35).

I do not understand Mr. Romanes to hold that there is any living
being which has no mind at all, and I do understand him to admit
that development of body and mind are closely interdependent.

If, then, "the most fundamental principle" of mind is memory, it
follows that memory enters also as a fundamental principle into
development of body.  For mind and body are so closely connected
that nothing can enter largely into the one without correspondingly
affecting the other.

On a later page Mr. Romanes speaks point-blank of the new-born child
as "EMBODYING the results of a great mass of HEREDITARY EXPERIENCE"
(p. 77), so that what he is driving at can be collected by those who
take trouble, but is not seen until we call up from our own
knowledge matter whose relevancy does not appear on the face of it,
and until we connect passages many pages asunder, the first of which
may easily be forgotten before we reach the second.  There can be no
doubt, however, that Mr. Romanes does in reality, like Professor
Hering and myself, regard development, whether of mind or body, as
due to memory, for it is now pretty generally seen to be nonsense to
talk about "hereditary experience" or "hereditary memory" if
anything else is intended.

I have said above that on page 113 of his recent work Mr. Romanes
declares the analogies between the memory with which we are familiar
in daily life, and hereditary memory, to be "so numerous and
precise" as to justify us in considering them as of one and the same
kind.

This is certainly his meaning, but, with the exception of the words
within inverted commas, it is not his language.  His own words are
these:-

"Profound, however, as our ignorance unquestionably is concerning
the physical substratum of memory, I think we are at least justified
in regarding this substratum as the same both in ganglionic or
organic, and in the conscious or psychological memory, seeing that
the analogies between them are so numerous and precise.
Consciousness is but an adjunct which arises when the physical
processes, owing to infrequency of repetition, complexity of
operation, or other causes, involve what I have before called
ganglionic friction."

I submit that I have correctly translated Mr. Romanes' meaning, and
also that we have a right to complain of his not saying what he has
to say in words which will involve less "ganglionic friction" on the
part of the reader.

Another example may be found on p. 43 of Mr. Romanes' book.
"Lastly," he writes, "just as innumerable special mechanisms of
muscular co-ordinations are found to be inherited, innumerable
special associations of ideas are found to be the same, and in one
case as in the other the strength of the organically imposed
connection is found to bear a direct proportion to the frequency
with which in the history of the species it has occurred."

Mr. Romanes is here intending what the reader will find insisted on
on p. 51 of "Life and Habit;" but how difficult he has made what
could have been said intelligibly enough, if there had been nothing
but the reader's comfort to be considered.  Unfortunately that seems
to have been by no means the only thing of which Mr. Romanes was
thinking, or why, after implying and even saying over and over again
that instinct is inherited habit due to inherited memory, should he
turn sharply round on p. 297 and praise Mr. Darwin for trying to
snuff out "the well-known doctrine of inherited habit as advanced by
Lamarck"?  The answer is not far to seek.  It is because Mr. Romanes
did not merely want to tell us all about instinct, but wanted also,
if I may use a homely metaphor, to hunt with the hounds and run with
the hare at one and the same time.

I remember saying that if the late Mr. Darwin "had told us what the
earlier evolutionists said, why they said it, wherein he differed
from them, and in what way he proposed to set them straight, he
would have taken a course at once more agreeable with usual
practice, and more likely to remove misconception from his own mind
and from those of his readers." {59a}  This I have no doubt was one
of the passages which made Mr. Romanes so angry with me.  I can find
no better words to apply to Mr. Romanes himself.  He knows perfectly
well what others have written about the connection between heredity
and memory, and he knows no less well that so far as he is
intelligible at all he is taking the same view that they have taken.
If he had begun by saying what they had said, and had then improved
on it, I for one should have been only too glad to be improved upon.

Mr. Romanes has spoiled his book just because this plain old-
fashioned method of procedure was not good enough for him.  One-half
the obscurity which makes his meaning so hard to apprehend is due to
exactly the same cause as that which has ruined so much of the late
Mr. Darwin's work--I mean to a desire to appear to be differing
altogether from others with whom he knew himself after all to be in
substantial agreement.  He adopts, but (probably quite
unconsciously) in his anxiety to avoid appearing to adopt, he
obscures what he is adopting.

Here, for example, is Mr. Romanes' definition of instinct:-

"Instinct is reflex action into which there is imported the element
of consciousness.  The term is therefore a generic one, comprising
all those faculties of mind which are concerned in conscious and
adaptive action, antecedent to individual experience, without
necessary knowledge of the relation between means employed and ends
attained, but similarly performed under similar and frequently
recurring circumstances by all the individuals of the same species."
{60a}

If Mr. Romanes would have been content to build frankly upon
Professor Hering's foundation, the soundness of which he has
elsewhere abundantly admitted, he might have said -

"Instinct is knowledge or habit acquired in past generations--the
new generation remembering what happened to it before it parted
company with the old.  More briefly, Instinct is inherited memory."
Then he might have added a rider -

"If a habit is acquired as a new one, during any given lifetime, it
is not an instinct.  If having been acquired in one lifetime it is
transmitted to offspring, it is an instinct in the offspring, though
it was not an instinct in the parent.  If the habit is transmitted
partially, it must be considered as partly instinctive and partly
acquired."

This is easy; it tells people how they may test any action so as to
know what they ought to call it; it leaves well alone by avoiding
all such debatable matters as reflex action, consciousness,
intelligence, purpose, knowledge of purpose. &c.; it both introduces
the feature of inheritance which is the one mainly distinguishing
instinctive from so-called intelligent actions, and shows the manner
in which these last pass into the first, that is to say, by way of
memory and habitual repetition; finally it points the fact that the
new generation is not to be looked upon as a new thing, but (as Dr.
Erasmus Darwin long since said {61a}) as "a branch or elongation" of
the one immediately preceding it.

In Mr. Darwin's case it is hardly possible to exaggerate the waste
of time, money and trouble that has been caused, by his not having
been content to appear as descending with modification like other
people from those who went before him.  It will take years to get
the evolution theory out of the mess in which Mr. Darwin has left
it.  He was heir to a discredited truth; he left behind him an
accredited fallacy.  Mr. Romanes, if he is not stopped in time, will
get the theory connecting heredity and memory into just such another
muddle as Mr. Darwin has got evolution, for surely the writer who
can talk about "HEREDITY BEING ABLE TO WORK UP the faculty of homing
into the instinct of migration," {61b} or of "the principle of
(natural) selection combining with that of lapsing intelligence to
the formation of a joint result," {61c} is little likely to depart
from the usual methods of scientific procedure with advantage either
to himself or any one else.  Fortunately Mr. Romanes is not Mr.
Darwin, and though he has certainly got Mr. Darwin's mantle, and got
it very much too, it will not on Mr. Romanes' shoulders hide a good
deal that people were not going to observe too closely while Mr.
Darwin wore it.

I ought to say that the late Mr. Darwin appears himself eventually
to have admitted the soundness of the theory connecting heredity and
memory.  Mr. Romanes quotes a letter written by Mr. Darwin in the
last year of his life, in which he speaks of an intelligent action
gradually becoming "INSTINCTIVE, I.E., MEMORY TRANSMITTED FROM ONE
GENERATION TO ANOTHER." {62a}

Briefly, the stages of Mr. Darwin's opinion upon the subject of
hereditary memory are as follows:-

1859.  "It would be THE MOST SERIOUS ERROR to suppose that the
greater number of instincts have been acquired by habit in one
generation and transmitted by inheritance to succeeding
generations." {62b}  And this more especially applies to the
instincts of many ants.

1876.  "It would be a SERIOUS ERROR to suppose," &c., as before.
{62c}

1881.  "We should remember WHAT A MASS OF INHERITED KNOWLEDGE is
crowded into the minute brain of a worker ant." {62d}

1881 or 1882.  Speaking of a given habitual action Mr. Darwin
writes:  "It does not seem to me at all incredible that this action
[and why this more than any other habitual action?] should then
become instinctive:" i.e., MEMORY TRANSMITTED FROM ONE GENERATION TO
ANOTHER. {62e}

And yet in 1839, or thereabouts, Mr. Darwin had pretty nearly
grasped the conception from which until the last year or two of his
life he so fatally strayed; for in his contribution to the volumes
giving an account of the voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, he
wrote:  "Nature by making habit omnipotent and its effects
hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian for the climate and productions
of his country" (p. 237).

What is the secret of the long departure from the simple common-
sense view of the matter which he took when he was a young man?  I
imagine simply what I have referred to in the preceding chapter,
over-anxiety to appear to be differing from his grandfather, Dr.
Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck.

I believe I may say that Mr. Darwin before he died not only admitted
the connection between memory and heredity, but came also to see
that he must readmit that design in organism which he had so many
years opposed.  For in the preface to Hermann Muller's
"Fertilisation of Flowers," {63a} which bears a date only a very few
weeks prior to Mr. Darwin's death, I find him saying:- "Design in
nature has for a long time deeply interested many men, and though
the subject must now be looked at from a somewhat different point of
view from what was formerly the case, it is not on that account
rendered less interesting."  This is mused forth as a general gnome,
and may mean anything or nothing:  the writer of the letterpress
under the hieroglyph in Old Moore's Almanac could not be more
guarded; but I think I know what it does mean.

I cannot, of course, be sure; Mr. Darwin did not probably intend
that I should; but I assume with confidence that whether there is
design in organism or no, there is at any rate design in this
passage of Mr. Darwin's.  This, we may be sure, is not a fortuitous
variation; and, moreover, it is introduced for some reason which
made Mr. Darwin think it worth while to go out of his way to
introduce it.  It has no fitness in its connection with Hermann
Muller's book, for what little Hermann Muller says about teleology
at all is to condemn it; why, then, should Mr. Darwin muse here of
all places in the world about the interest attaching to design in
organism?  Neither has the passage any connection with the rest of
the preface.  There is not another word about design, and even here
Mr. Darwin seems mainly anxious to face both ways, and pat design as
it were on the head while not committing himself to any proposition
which could be disputed.

The explanation is sufficiently obvious.  Mr Darwin wanted to hedge.
He saw that the design which his works had been mainly instrumental
in pitchforking out of organisms no less manifestly designed than a
burglar's jemmy is designed, had nevertheless found its way back
again, and that though, as I insisted in "Evolution Old and New,"
and "Unconscious Memory," it must now be placed within the organism
instead of outside it, as "was formerly the case," it was not on
that account any the less--design, as well as interesting.

I should like to have seen Mr. Darwin say this more explicitly.
Indeed I should have liked to have seen Mr. Darwin say anything at
all about the meaning of which there could be no mistake, and
without contradicting himself elsewhere; but this was not Mr.
Darwin's manner.

In passing I will give another example of Mr Darwin's manner when he
did not quite dare even to hedge.  It is to be found in the preface
which he wrote to Professor Weismann's "Studies in the Theory of
Descent," published in 1881.

"Several distinguished naturalists," says Mr. Darwin, "maintain with
much confidence that organic beings tend to vary and to rise in the
scale, independently of the conditions to which they and their
progenitors have been exposed; whilst others maintain that all
variation is due to such exposure, though the manner in which the
environment acts is as yet quite unknown.  At the present time there
is hardly any question in biology of more importance than this of
the nature and causes of variability; and the reader will find in
the present work an able discussion on the whole subject, which will
probably lead him to pause before he admits the existence of an
innate tendency to perfectibility"--or towards BEING ABLE TO BE
PERFECTED.

I could find no able discussion upon the whole subject in Professor
Weismann's book.  There was a little something here and there, but
not much.

It may be expected that I should say something here about Mr.
Romanes' latest contribution to biology--I mean his theory of
physiological selection, of which the two first instalments have
appeared in Nature just as these pages are leaving my hands, and
many months since the foregoing, and most of the following chapters
were written.  I admit to feeling a certain sense of thankfulness
that they did not appear earlier; as it is, my book is too far
advanced to be capable of further embryonic change, and this must be
my excuse for saying less about Mr. Romanes' theory than I might
perhaps otherwise do.  I cordially, however, agree with the Times,
which says that "Mr. George Romanes appears to be the biological
investigator on whom the mantle of Mr. Darwin has most conspicuously
descended" (August 16, 1886).  Mr. Romanes is just the person whom
the late Mr. Darwin would select to carry on his work, and Mr.
Darwin was just the kind of person towards whom Mr. Romanes would
find himself instinctively attracted.

The Times continues--"The position which Mr. Romanes takes up is the
result of his perception shared by many evolutionists, that the
theory of natural selection is not really a theory of the origin of
species. . . ."  What, then, becomes of Mr. Darwin's most famous
work, which was written expressly to establish natural selection as
the main means of organic modification?  "The new factor which Mr.
Romanes suggests," continues the Times, "is that at a certain stage
of development of varieties in a state of nature a change takes
place in their reproductive systems, rendering those which differ in
some particulars mutually infertile, and thus the formation of new
permanent species takes place without the swamping effect of free
intercrossing. . . .  How his theory can be properly termed one of
selection he fails to make clear.  If correct, it is a law or
principle of operation rather than a process of selection.  It has
been objected to Mr. Romanes' theory that it is the re-statement of
a fact.  This objection is less important than the lack of facts in
support of the theory."  The Times, however, implies it as its
opinion that the required facts will be forthcoming by and by, and
that when they have been found Mr. Romanes' suggestion will
constitute "the most important addition to the theory of evolution
since the publication of the 'Origin of Species.'"  Considering that
the Times has just implied the main thesis of the "Origin of
Species" to be one which does not stand examination, this is rather
a doubtful compliment.

Neither Mr. Romanes nor the writer in the Times appears to perceive
that the results which may or may not be supposed to ensue on choice
depend upon what it is that is supposed to be chosen from; they do
not appear to see that though the expression natural selection must
be always more or less objectionable, as too highly charged with
metaphor for purposes of science, there is nevertheless a natural
selection which is open to no other objection than this, and which,
when its metaphorical character is borne well in mind, may be used
without serious risk of error, whereas natural selection from
variations that are mainly fortuitous is chimerical as well as
metaphorical.  Both writers speak of natural selection as though
there could not possibly be any selection in the course of nature,
or natural survival, of any but accidental variations.  Thus Mr.
Romanes says:  {66a}  "The swamping effect of free inter-crossing
upon an individual variation constitutes perhaps the most formidable
difficulty with which THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION is beset."
And the writer of the article in the Times above referred to says:
"In truth THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION presents many facts and
results which increase rather than diminish the difficulty of
accounting for the existence of species."  The assertion made in
each case is true if the Charles-Darwinian selection from fortuitous
variations is intended, but it does not hold good if the selection
is supposed to be made from variations under which there lies a
general principle of wide and abiding application.  It is not likely
that a man of Mr. Romanes' antecedents should not be perfectly awake
to considerations so obvious as the foregoing, and I am afraid I am
inclined to consider his whole suggestion as only an attempt upon
the part of the wearer of Mr. Darwin's mantle to carry on Mr.
Darwin's work in Mr. Darwin's spirit.

I have seen Professor Hering's theory adopted recently more
unreservedly by Dr. Creighton in his "Illustrations of Unconscious
Memory in Disease." {67a}  Dr. Creighton avowedly bases his system
on Professor Hering's address, and endorses it; it is with much
pleasure that I have seen him lend the weight of his authority to
the theory that each cell and organ has an individual memory.  In
"Life and Habit" I expressed a hope that the opinions it upheld
would be found useful by medical men, and am therefore the more glad
to see that this has proved to be the case.  I may perhaps be
pardoned if I quote the passage in" Life and Habit" to which I am
referring.  It runs:-

"Mutatis mutandis, the above would seem to hold as truly about
medicine as about politics.  We cannot reason with our cells, for
they know so much more" (of course I mean "about their own
business") "than we do, that they cannot understand us;--but though
we cannot reason with them, we can find out what they have been most
accustomed to, and what, therefore, they are most likely to expect;
we can see that they get this as far as it is in our power to give
it them, and may then generally leave the rest to them, only bearing
in mind that they will rebel equally against too sudden a change of
treatment and no change at all" (p. 305).

Dr. Creighton insists chiefly on the importance of change, which--
though I did not notice his saying so--he would doubtless see as a
mode of cross-fertilisation, fraught in all respects with the same
advantages as this, and requiring the same precautions against
abuse; he would not, however, I am sure, deny that there could be no
fertility of good results if too wide a cross were attempted, so
that I may claim the weight of his authority as supporting both the
theory of an unconscious memory in general, and the particular
application of it to medicine which I had ventured to suggest.

"Has the word 'memory,'" he asks, "a real application to unconscious
organic phenomena, or do we use it outside its ancient limits only
in a figure of speech?"

"If I had thought," he continues later, "that unconscious memory was
no more than a metaphor, and the detailed application of it to these
various forms of disease merely allegorical, I should still have
judged it not unprofitable to represent a somewhat hackneyed class
of maladies in the light of a parable.  None of our faculties is
more familiar to us in its workings than the memory, and there is
hardly any force or power in nature which every one knows so well as
the force of habit.  To say that a neurotic subject is like a person
with a retentive memory, or that a diathesis gradually acquired is
like an over-mastering habit, is at all events to make comparisons
with things that we all understand.

"For reasons given chiefly in the first chapter, I conclude that
retentiveness, with reproduction, is a single undivided faculty
throughout the whole of our life, whether mental or bodily,
conscious or unconscious; and I claim the description of a certain
class of maladies according to the phraseology of memory and habit
as a real description and not a figurative." (p. 2.)

As a natural consequence of the foregoing he regards "alterative
action" as "habit-breaking action."

As regards the organism's being guided throughout its development to
maturity by an unconscious memory, Dr. Creighton says that
"Professor Bain calls reproduction the acme of organic
complication."  "I should prefer to say," he adds, "the acme of
organic implication; for the reason that the sperm and germ elements
are perfectly simple, having nothing in their form or structure to
show for the marvellous potentialities within them.

"I now come to the application of these considerations to the
doctrine of unconscious memory.  If generation is the acme of
organic implicitness, what is its correlative in nature, what is the
acme of organic explicitness?  Obviously the fine flower of
consciousness.  Generation is implicit memory, consciousness is
explicit memory; generation is potential memory, consciousness is
actual memory."

I am not sure that I understand the preceding paragraph as clearly
as I should wish, but having quoted enough to perhaps induce the
reader to turn to Dr. Creighton's book, I will proceed to the
subject indicated in my title.



CHAPTER V--Statement of the Question at Issue



Of the two points referred to in the opening sentence of this book--
I mean the connection between heredity and memory, and the
reintroduction of design into organic modification--the second is
both the more important and the one which stands most in need of
support.  The substantial identity between heredity and memory is
becoming generally admitted; as regards my second point, however, I
cannot flatter myself that I have made much way against the
formidable array of writers on the neo-Darwinian side; I shall
therefore devote the rest of my book as far as possible to this
subject only.  Natural selection (meaning by these words the
preservation in the ordinary course of nature of favourable
variations that are supposed to be mainly matters of pure good luck
and in no way arising out of function) has been, to use an
Americanism than which I can find nothing apter, the biggest
biological boom of the last quarter of a century; it is not,
therefore, to be wondered at that Professor Ray Lankester, Mr.
Romanes, Mr. Grant Allen, and others, should show some impatience at
seeing its value as prime means of modification called in question.
Within the last few months, indeed, Mr. Grant Allen {70a} and
Professor Ray Lankester {70b} in England, and Dr. Ernst Krause {70c}
in Germany, have spoken and written warmly in support of the theory
of natural selection, and in opposition to the views taken by
myself; if they are not to be left in possession of the field the
sooner they are met the better.

Stripped of detail the point at issue is this;--whether luck or
cunning is the fitter to be insisted on as the main means of organic
development.  Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck answered this question in
favour of cunning.  They settled it in favour of intelligent
perception of the situation--within, of course, ever narrower and
narrower limits as organism retreats farther backwards from
ourselves--and persistent effort to turn it to account.  They made
this the soul of all development whether of mind or body.

And they made it, like all other souls, liable to aberration both
for better and worse.  They held that some organisms show more ready
wit and savoir faire than others; that some give more proofs of
genius and have more frequent happy thoughts than others, and that
some have even gone through waters of misery which they have used as
wells.

The sheet anchor both of Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck is in good sense
and thrift; still they are aware that money has been sometimes made
by "striking oil," and ere now been transmitted to descendants in
spite of the haphazard way in which it was originally acquired.  No
speculation, no commerce; "nothing venture, nothing have," is as
true for the development of organic wealth as for that of any other
kind, and neither Erasmus Darwin nor Lamarck hesitated about
admitting that highly picturesque and romantic incidents of
developmental venture do from time to time occur in the race
histories even of the dullest and most dead-level organisms under
the name of "sports;" but they would hold that even these occur most
often and most happily to those that have persevered in well-doing
for some generations.  Unto the organism that hath is given, and
from the organism that hath not is taken away; so that even "sports"
prove to be only a little off thrift, which still remains the sheet
anchor of the early evolutionists.  They believe, in fact, that more
organic wealth has been made by saving than in any other way.  The
race is not in the long run to the phenomenally swift nor the battle
to the phenomenally strong, but to the good average all-round
organism that is alike shy of Radical crotchets and old world
obstructiveness.  Festina, but festina lente--perhaps as involving
so completely the contradiction in terms which must underlie all
modification--is the motto they would assign to organism, and Chi va
piano va lontano, they hold to be a maxim as old, if not as the
hills (and they have a hankering even after these), at any rate as
the amoeba.

To repeat in other words.  All enduring forms establish a modus
vivendi with their surroundings.  They can do this because both they
and the surroundings are plastic within certain undefined but
somewhat narrow limits.  They are plastic because they can to some
extent change their habits, and changed habit, if persisted in,
involves corresponding change, however slight, in the organs
employed; but their plasticity depends in great measure upon their
failure to perceive that they are moulding themselves.  If a change
is so great that they are seriously incommoded by its novelty, they
are not likely to acquiesce in it kindly enough to grow to it, but
they will make no difficulty about the miracle involved in
accommodating themselves to a difference of only two or three per
cent. {72a}

As long as no change exceeds this percentage, and as long, also, as
fresh change does not supervene till the preceding one is well
established, there seems no limit to the amount of modification
which may be accumulated in the course of generations--provided, of
course, always, that the modification continues to be in conformity
with the instinctive habits and physical development of the organism
in their collective capacity.  Where the change is too great, or
where an organ has been modified cumulatively in some one direction,
until it has reached a development too seriously out of harmony with
the habits of the organism taken collectively, then the organism
holds itself excused from further effort, throws up the whole
concern, and takes refuge in the liquidation and reconstruction of
death.  It is only on the relinquishing of further effort that this
death ensues; as long as effort endures, organisms go on from change
to change, altering and being altered--that is to say, either
killing themselves piecemeal in deference to the surroundings or
killing the surroundings piecemeal to suit themselves.  There is a
ceaseless higgling and haggling, or rather a life-and-death struggle
between these two things as long as life lasts, and one or other or
both have in no small part to re-enter into the womb from whence
they came and be born again in some form which shall give greater
satisfaction.

All change is pro tanto death or pro tanto birth.  Change is the
common substratum which underlies both life and death; life and
death are not two distinct things absolutely antagonistic to one
another; in the highest life there is still much death, and in the
most complete death there is still not a little life.  La vie, says
Claud Bernard, {73a} c'est la mort:  he might have added, and
perhaps did, et la mort ce n'est que la vie transformee.  Life and
death are the extreme modes of something which is partly both and
wholly neither; this something is common, ordinary change; solve any
change and the mystery of life and death will be revealed; show why
and how anything becomes ever anything other in any respect than
what it is at any given moment, and there will be little secret left
in any other change.  One is not in its ultimate essence more
miraculous that another; it may be more striking--a greater
congeries of shocks, it may be more credible or more incredible, but
not more miraculous; all change is qua us absolutely
incomprehensible and miraculous; the smallest change baffles the
greatest intellect if its essence, as apart from its phenomena, be
inquired into.

But however this may be, all organic change is either a growth or a
dissolution, or a combination of the two.  Growth is the coming
together of elements with quasi similar characteristics.  I
understand it is believed to be the coming together of matter in
certain states of motion with other matter in states so nearly
similar that the rhythms of the one coalesce with and hence
reinforce the rhythms pre-existing in the other--making, rather than
marring and undoing them.  Life and growth are an attuning, death
and decay are an untuning; both involve a succession of greater or
smaller attunings and untunings; organic life is "the diapason
closing full in man"; it is the fulness of a tone that varies in
pitch, quality, and in the harmonics to which it gives rise; it
ranges through every degree of complexity from the endless
combinations of life-and-death within life-and-death which we find
in the mammalia, to the comparative simplicity of the amoeba.
Death, again, like life, ranges through every degree of complexity.
All pleasant changes are recreative; they are pro tanto births; all
unpleasant changes are wearing, and, as such, pro tanto deaths, but
we can no more exhaust either wholly of the other, than we can
exhaust all the air out of a receiver; pleasure and pain lurk within
one another, as life in death, and death in life, or as rest and
unrest in one another.

There is no greater mystery in life than in death.  We talk as
though the riddle of life only need engage us; this is not so; death
is just as great a miracle as life; the one is two and two making
five, the other is five splitting into two and two.  Solve either,
and we have solved the other; they should be studied not apart, for
they are never parted, but together, and they will tell more tales
of one another than either will tell about itself.  If there is one
thing which advancing knowledge makes clearer than another, it is
that death is swallowed up in life, and life in death; so that if
the last enemy that shall be subdued is death, then indeed is our
salvation nearer than what we thought, for in strictness there is
neither life nor death, nor thought nor thing, except as figures of
speech, and as the approximations which strike us for the time as
most convenient.  There is neither perfect life nor perfect death,
but a being ever with the Lord only, in the eternal f??a, or going
to and fro and heat and fray of the universe.  When we were young we
thought the one certain thing was that we should one day come to
die; now we know the one certain thing to be that we shall never
wholly do so.  Non omnis moriar, says Horace, and "I die daily,"
says St. Paul, as though a life beyond the grave, and a death on
this side of it, were each some strange thing which happened to them
alone of all men; but who dies absolutely once for all, and for ever
at the hour that is commonly called that of death, and who does not
die daily and hourly?  Does any man in continuing to live from day
to day or moment to moment, do more than continue in a changed body,
with changed feelings, ideas, and aims, so that he lives from moment
to moment only in virtue of a simultaneous dying from moment to
moment also?  Does any man in dying do more than, on a larger and
more complete scale, what he has been doing on a small one, as the
most essential factor of his life, from the day that he became "he"
at all?  When the note of life is struck the harmonics of death are
sounded, and so, again, to strike death is to arouse the infinite
harmonics of life that rise forthwith as incense curling upwards
from a censer.  If in the midst of life we are in death, so also in
the midst of death we are in life, and whether we live or whether we
die, whether we like it and know anything about it or no, still we
do it to the Lord--living always, dying always, and in the Lord
always, the unjust and the just alike, for God is no respecter of
persons.

Consciousness and change, so far as we can watch them, are as
functionally interdependent as mind and matter, or condition and
substance, are--for the condition of every substance may be
considered as the expression and outcome of its mind.  Where there
is consciousness there is change; where there is no change there is
no consciousness; may we not suspect that there is no change without
a pro tanto consciousness however simple and unspecialised?  Change
and motion are one, so that we have substance, feeling, change (or
motion), as the ultimate three-in-one of our thoughts, and may
suspect all change, and all feeling, attendant or consequent,
however limited, to be the interaction of those states which for
want of better terms we call mind and matter.  Action may be
regarded as a kind of middle term between mind and matter; it is the
throe of thought and thing, the quivering clash and union of body
and soul; commonplace enough in practice; miraculous, as violating
every canon on which thought and reason are founded, if we theorise
about it, put it under the microscope, and vivisect it.  It is here,
if anywhere, that body or substance is guilty of the contradiction
in terms of combining with that which is without material substance
and cannot, therefore, be conceived by us as passing in and out with
matter, till the two become a body ensouled and a soul embodied.

All body is more or less ensouled.  As it gets farther and farther
from ourselves, indeed, we sympathise less with it; nothing, we say
to ourselves, can have intelligence unless we understand all about
it--as though intelligence in all except ourselves meant the power
of being understood rather than of understanding.  We are
intelligent, and no intelligence, so different from our own as to
baffle our powers of comprehension deserves to be called
intelligence at all.  The more a thing resembles ourselves, the more
it thinks as we do--and thus by implication tells us that we are
right, the more intelligent we think it; and the less it thinks as
we do, the greater fool it must be; if a substance does not succeed
in making it clear that it understands our business, we conclude
that it cannot have any business of its own, much less understand
it, or indeed understand anything at all.  But letting this pass, so
far as we are concerned, [Greek text]; we are
body ensouled, and soul embodied, ourselves, nor is it possible for
us to think seriously of anything so unlike ourselves as to consist
either of soul without body, or body without soul.  Unmattered
condition, therefore, is as inconceivable by us as unconditioned
matter; and we must hold that all body with which we can be
conceivably concerned is more or less ensouled, and all soul, in
like manner, more or less embodied.  Strike either body or soul--
that is to say, effect either a physical or a mental change, and the
harmonics of the other sound.  So long as body is minded in a
certain way--so long, that is to say, as it feels, knows, remembers,
concludes, and forecasts one set of things--it will be in one form;
if it assumes a new one, otherwise than by external violence, no
matter how slight the change may be, it is only through having
changed its mind, through having forgotten and died to some trains
of thought, and having been correspondingly born anew by the
adoption of new ones.  What it will adopt depends upon which of the
various courses open to it it considers most to its advantage.

What it will think to its advantage depends mainly on the past
habits of its race.  Its past and now invisible lives will influence
its desires more powerfully than anything it may itself be able to
add to the sum of its likes and dislikes; nevertheless, over and
above preconceived opinion and the habits to which all are slaves,
there is a small salary, or, as it were, agency commission, which
each may have for himself, and spend according to his fancy; from
this, indeed, income-tax must be deducted; still there remains a
little margin of individual taste, and here, high up on this narrow,
inaccessible ledge of our souls, from year to year a breed of not
unprolific variations build where reason cannot reach them to
despoil them; for de gustibus non est disputandum.

Here we are as far as we can go.  Fancy, which sometimes sways so
much and is swayed by so little, and which sometimes, again, is so
hard to sway, and moves so little when it is swayed; whose ways have
a method of their own, but are not as our ways--fancy, lies on the
extreme borderland of the realm within which the writs of our
thoughts run, and extends into that unseen world wherein they have
no jurisdiction.  Fancy is as the mist upon the horizon which blends
earth and sky; where, however, it approaches nearest to the earth
and can be reckoned with, it is seen as melting into desire, and
this as giving birth to design and effort.  As the net result and
outcome of these last, living forms grow gradually but persistently
into physical conformity with their own intentions, and become
outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual faiths, or
wants of faith, that have been most within them.  They thus very
gradually, but none the less effectually, design themselves.

In effect, therefore, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck introduce
uniformity into the moral and spiritual worlds as it was already
beginning to be introduced into the physical.  According to both
these writers development has ever been a matter of the same energy,
effort, good sense, and perseverance, as tend to advancement of life
now among ourselves.  In essence it is neither more nor less than
this, as the rain-drop which denuded an ancient formation is of the
same kind as that which is denuding a modern one, though its effect
may vary in geometrical ratio with the effect it has produced
already.  As we are extending reason to the lower animals, so we
must extend a system of moral government by rewards and punishments
no less surely; and if we admit that to some considerable extent man
is man, and master of his fate, we should admit also that all
organic forms which are saved at all have been in proportionate
degree masters of their fate too, and have worked out, not only
their own salvation, but their salvation according, in no small
measure, to their own goodwill and pleasure, at times with a light
heart, and at times in fear and trembling.  I do not say that
Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck saw all the foregoing as clearly as it is
easy to see it now; what I have said, however, is only the natural
development of their system.



CHAPTER VI--Statement of the Question at Issue (continued)



So much for the older view; and now for the more modern opinion.
According to Messrs. Darwin and Wallace, and ostensibly, I am afraid
I should add, a great majority of our most prominent biologists, the
view taken by Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck is not a sound one.  Some
organisms, indeed, are so admirably adapted to their surroundings,
and some organs discharge their functions with so much appearance of
provision, that we are apt to think they must owe their development
to sense of need and consequent contrivance, but this opinion is
fantastic; the appearance of design is delusive; what we are tempted
to see as an accumulated outcome of desire and cunning, we should
regard as mainly an accumulated outcome of good luck.

Let us take the eye as a somewhat crucial example.  It is a seeing-
machine, or thing to see with.  So is a telescope; the telescope in
its highest development is a secular accumulation of cunning,
sometimes small, sometimes great; sometimes applied to this detail
of the instrument, and sometimes to that.  It is an admirable
example of design; nevertheless, as I said in "Evolution Old and
New," he who made the first rude telescope had probably no idea of
any more perfect form of the instrument than the one he had himself
invented.  Indeed, if he had, he would have carried his idea out in
practice.  He would have been unable to conceive such an instrument
as Lord Rosse's; the design, therefore, at present evidenced by the
telescope was not design all on the part of one and the same person.
Nor yet was it unmixed with chance; many a detail has been doubtless
due to an accident or coincidence which was forthwith seized and
made the best of.  Luck there always has been and always will be,
until all brains are opened, and all connections made known, but
luck turned to account becomes design; there is, indeed, if things
are driven home, little other design than this.  The telescope,
therefore, is an instrument designed in all its parts for the
purpose of seeing, and, take it all round, designed with singular
skill.

Looking at the eye, we are at first tempted to think that it must be
the telescope over again, only more so; we are tempted to see it as
something which has grown up little by little from small beginnings,
as the result of effort well applied and handed down from generation
to generation, till, in the vastly greater time during which the eye
has been developing as compared with the telescope, a vastly more
astonishing result has been arrived at.  We may indeed be tempted to
think this, but, according to Mr. Darwin, we should be wrong.
Design had a great deal to do with the telescope, but it had nothing
or hardly anything whatever to do with the eye.  The telescope owes
its development to cunning, the eye to luck, which, it would seem,
is so far more cunning than cunning that one does not quite
understand why there should be any cunning at all.  The main means
of developing the eye was, according to Mr. Darwin, not use as
varying circumstances might direct with consequent slow increase of
power and an occasional happy flight of genius, but natural
selection.  Natural selection, according to him, though not the
sole, is still the most important means of its development and
modification. {81a}  What, then, is natural selection?

Mr. Darwin has told us this on the title-page of the "Origin of
Species."  He there defines it as "The Preservation of Favoured
Races;" "Favoured" is "Fortunate," and "Fortunate" "Lucky;" it is
plain, therefore, that with Mr. Darwin natural selection comes to
"The Preservation of Lucky Races," and that he regarded luck as the
most important feature in connection with the development even of so
apparently purposive an organ as the eye, and as the one, therefore,
on which it was most proper to insist.  And what is luck but absence
of intention or design?  What, then, can Mr. Darwin's title-page
amount to when written out plainly, but to an assertion that the
main means of modification has been the preservation of races whose
variations have been unintentional, that is to say, not connected
with effort or intention, devoid of mind or meaning, fortuitous,
spontaneous, accidental, or whatever kindred word is least
disagreeable to the reader?  It is impossible to conceive any more
complete denial of mind as having had anything to do with organic
development, than is involved in the title-page of the "Origin of
Species" when its doubtless carefully considered words are studied--
nor, let me add, is it possible to conceive a title-page more likely
to make the reader's attention rest much on the main doctrine of
evolution, and little, to use the words now most in vogue concerning
it, on Mr. Darwin's own "distinctive feature."

It should be remembered that the full title of the "Origin of
Species" is, "On the origin of species by means of natural
selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for
life."  The significance of the expansion of the title escaped the
greater number of Mr. Darwin's readers.  Perhaps it ought not to
have done so, but we certainly failed to catch it.  The very words
themselves escaped us--and yet there they were all the time if we
had only chosen to look.  We thought the book was called "On the
Origin of Species," and so it was on the outside; so it was also on
the inside fly-leaf; so it was on the title-page itself as long as
the most prominent type was used; the expanded title was only given
once, and then in smaller type; so the three big "Origins of
Species" carried us with them to the exclusion of the rest.

The short and working title, "On the Origin of Species," in effect
claims descent with modification generally; the expanded and
technically true title only claims the discovery that luck is the
main means of organic modification, and this is a very different
matter.  The book ought to have been entitled, "On Natural
Selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for
life, as the main means of the origin of species;" this should have
been the expanded title, and the short title should have been "On
Natural Selection."  The title would not then have involved an
important difference between its working and its technical forms,
and it would have better fulfilled the object of a title, which is,
of course, to give, as far as may be, the essence of a book in a
nutshell.  We learn on the authority of Mr. Darwin himself {83a}
that the "Origin of Species" was originally intended to bear the
title "Natural Selection;" nor is it easy to see why the change
should have been made if an accurate expression of the contents of
the book was the only thing which Mr. Darwin was considering.  It is
curious that, writing the later chapters of "Life and Habit" in
great haste, I should have accidentally referred to the "Origin of
Species" as "Natural Selection;" it seems hard to believe that there
was no intention in my thus unconsciously reverting to Mr. Darwin's
own original title, but there certainly was none, and I did not then
know what the original title had been.

If we had scrutinised Mr. Darwin's title-page as closely as we
should certainly scrutinise anything written by Mr. Darwin now, we
should have seen that the title did not technically claim the theory
of descent; practically, however, it so turned out that we
unhesitatingly gave that theory to the author, being, as I have
said, carried away by the three large "Origins of Species" (which we
understood as much the same thing as descent with modification), and
finding, as I shall show in a later chapter, that descent was
ubiquitously claimed throughout the work, either expressly or by
implication, as Mr. Darwin's theory.  It is not easy to see how any
one with ordinary instincts could hesitate to believe that Mr.
Darwin was entitled to claim what he claimed with so much
insistance.  If ars est celare artem Mr. Darwin must be allowed to
have been a consummate artist, for it took us years to understand
the ins and outs of what had been done.

I may say in passing that we never see the "Origin of Species"
spoken of as "On the Origin of Species, &c.," or as "The Origin of
Species, &c."  (the word "on" being dropped in the latest editions).
The distinctive feature of the book lies, according to its admirers,
in the "&c.," but they never give it.  To avoid pedantry I shall
continue to speak of the "Origin of Species."

At any rate it will be admitted that Mr. Darwin did not make his
title-page express his meaning so clearly that his readers could
readily catch the point of difference between himself and his
grandfather and Lamarck; nevertheless the point just touched upon
involves the only essential difference between the systems of Mr.
Charles Darwin and those of his three most important predecessors.
All four writers agree that animals and plants descend with
modification; all agree that the fittest alone survive; all agree
about the important consequences of the geometrical ratio of
increase; Mr. Charles Darwin has said more about these last two
points than his predecessors did, but all three were alike cognisant
of the facts and attached the same importance to them, and would
have been astonished at its being supposed possible that they
disputed them.  The fittest alone survive; yes--but the fittest from
among what?  Here comes the point of divergence; the fittest from
among organisms whose variations arise mainly through use and
disuse?  In other words, from variations that are mainly functional?
Or from among organisms whose variations are in the main matters of
luck?  From variations into which a moral and intellectual system of
payment according to results has largely entered?  Or from
variations which have been thrown for with dice?  From variations
among which, though cards tell, yet play tells as much or more?  Or
from those in which cards are everything and play goes for so little
as to be not worth taking into account?  Is "the survival of the
fittest" to be taken as meaning "the survival of the luckiest" or
"the survival of those who know best how to turn fortune to
account"?  Is luck the only element of fitness, or is not cunning
even more indispensable?

Mr. Darwin has a habit, borrowed, perhaps, mutatis mutandis, from
the framers of our collects, of every now and then adding the words
"through natural selection," as though this squared everything, and
descent with modification thus became his theory at once.  This is
not the case.  Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck believed in
natural selection to the full as much as any follower of Mr. Charles
Darwin can do.  They did not use the actual words, but the idea
underlying them is the essence of their system.  Mr. Patrick Matthew
epitomised their doctrine more tersely, perhaps, than was done by
any other of the pre-Charles-Darwinian evolutionists, in the
following passage which appeared in 1831, and which I have already
quoted in "Evolution Old and New" (pp. 320, 323).  The passage
runs:-

"The self-regulating adaptive disposition of organised life may, in
part, be traced to the extreme fecundity of nature, who, as before
stated, has in all the varieties of her offspring a prolific power
much beyond (in many cases a thousandfold) what is necessary to fill
up the vacancies caused by senile decay.  As the field of existence
is limited and preoccupied, it is only the hardier, more robust,
better suited to circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle
forward to maturity, these inhabiting only the situations to which
they have superior adaptation and greater power of occupancy than
any other kind; the weaker and less circumstance-suited being
prematurely destroyed.  This principle is in constant action; it
regulates the colour, the figure, the capacities, and instincts;
those individuals in each species whose colour and covering are best
suited to concealment or protection from enemies, or defence from
inclemencies or vicissitudes of climate, whose figure is best
accommodated to health, strength, defence, and support; whose
capacities and instincts can best regulate the physical energies to
self-advantage according to circumstances--in such immense waste of
primary and youthful life those only come forward to maturity from
THE STRICT ORDEAL BY WHICH NATURE TESTS THEIR ADAPTATION TO HER
STANDARD OF PERFECTION and fitness to continue their kind by
reproduction." {86a}  A little lower down Mr. Matthew speaks of
animals under domestication "NOT HAVING UNDERGONE SELECTION BY THE
LAW OF NATURE, OF WHICH WE HAVE SPOKEN, and hence being unable to
maintain their ground without culture and protection."

The distinction between Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism is generally
believed to lie in the adoption of a theory of natural selection by
the younger Darwin and its non-adoption by the elder.  This is true
in so far as that the elder Darwin does not use the words "natural
selection," while the younger does, but it is not true otherwise.
Both writers agree that offspring tends to inherit modifications
that have been effected, from whatever cause, in parents; both hold
that the best adapted to their surroundings live longest and leave
most offspring; both, therefore, hold that favourable modifications
will tend to be preserved and intensified in the course of many
generations, and that this leads to divergence of type; but these
opinions involve a theory of natural selection or quasi-selection,
whether the words "natural selection" are used or not; indeed it is
impossible to include wild species in any theory of descent with
modification without implying a quasi-selective power on the part of
nature; but even with Mr. Charles Darwin the power is only quasi-
selective; there is no conscious choice, and hence there is nothing
that can in strictness be called selection.

It is indeed true that the younger Darwin gave the words "natural
selection" the importance which of late years they have assumed; he
probably adopted them unconsciously from the passage of Mr.
Matthew's quoted above, but he ultimately said, {87a} "In the
literal sense of the word (sic) no doubt natural selection is a
false term," as personifying a fact, making it exercise the
conscious choice without which there can be no selection, and
generally crediting it with the discharge of functions which can
only be ascribed legitimately to living and reasoning beings.
Granted, however, that while Mr. Charles Darwin adopted the
expression natural selection and admitted it to be a bad one, his
grandfather did not use it at all; still Mr. Darwin did not mean the
natural selection which Mr. Matthew and those whose opinions he was
epitomising meant.  Mr. Darwin meant the selection to be made from
variations into which purpose enters to only a small extent
comparatively.  The difference, therefore, between the older
evolutionists and their successor does not lie in the acceptance by
the more recent writer of a quasi-selective power in nature which
his predecessors denied, but in the background--hidden behind the
words natural selection, which have served to cloak it--in the views
which the old and the new writers severally took of the variations
from among which they are alike agreed that a selection or quasi-
selection is made.

It now appears that there is not one natural selection, and one
survival of the fittest only, but two natural selections, and two
survivals of the fittest, the one of which may be objected to as an
expression more fit for religious and general literature than for
science, but may still be admitted as sound in intention, while the
other, inasmuch as it supposes accident to be the main purveyor of
variations, has no correspondence with the actual course of things;
for if the variations are matters of chance or hazard unconnected
with any principle of constant application, they will not occur
steadily enough, throughout a sufficient number of successive
generations, nor to a sufficient number of individuals for many
generations together at the same time and place, to admit of the
fixing and permanency of modification at all.  The one theory of
natural selection, therefore, may, and indeed will, explain the
facts that surround us, whereas the other will not.  Mr. Charles
Darwin's contribution to the theory of evolution was not, as is
commonly supposed, "natural selection," but the hypothesis that
natural selection from variations that are in the main fortuitous
could accumulate and result in specific and generic differences.

In the foregoing paragraph I have given the point of difference
between Mr. Charles Darwin and his predecessors.  Why, I wonder,
have neither he nor any of his exponents put this difference before
us in such plain words that we should readily apprehend it?  Erasmus
Darwin and Lamarck were understood by all who wished to understand
them; why is it that the misunderstanding of Mr. Darwin's
"distinctive feature" should have been so long and obstinate?  Why
is it that, no matter how much writers like Mr. Grant Allen and
Professor Ray Lankester may say about "Mr. Darwin's master-key," nor
how many more like hyperboles they brandish, they never put a
succinct resume of Mr. Darwin's theory side by side with a similar
resume of his grandfather's and Lamarck's?  Neither Mr. Darwin
himself, not any of those to whose advocacy his reputation is mainly
due, have done this.  Professor Huxley is the man of all others who
foisted Mr. Darwin most upon us, but in his famous lecture on the
coming of age of the "Origin of Species" he did not explain to his
hearers wherein the Neo-Darwinian theory of evolution differed from
the old; and why not?  Surely, because no sooner is this made clear
than we perceive that the idea underlying the old evolutionists is
more in accord with instinctive feelings that we have cherished too
long to be able now to disregard them than the central idea which
underlies the "Origin of Species."

What should we think of one who maintained that the steam-engine and
telescope were not developed mainly through design and effort
(letting the indisputably existing element of luck go without
saying), but to the fact that if any telescope or steam-engine
"happened to be made ever such a little more conveniently for man's
purposes than another," &c., &c.?

Let us suppose a notorious burglar found in possession of a jemmy;
it is admitted on all hands that he will use it as soon as he gets a
chance; there is no doubt about this; how perverted should we not
consider the ingenuity of one who tried to persuade us we were wrong
in thinking that the burglar compassed the possession of the jemmy
by means involving ideas, however vague in the first instance, of
applying it to its subsequent function.

If any one could be found so blind to obvious inferences as to
accept natural selection, "or the preservation of favoured
machines," as the main means of mechanical modification, we might
suppose him to argue much as follows:- "I can quite understand," he
would exclaim, "how any one who reflects upon the originally simple
form of the earliest jemmies, and observes the developments they
have since attained in the hands of our most accomplished
housebreakers, might at first be tempted to believe that the present
form of the instrument has been arrived at by long-continued
improvement in the hands of an almost infinite succession of
thieves; but may not this inference be somewhat too hastily drawn?
Have we any right to assume that burglars work by means analogous to
those employed by other people?  If any thief happened to pick up
any crowbar which happened to be ever such a little better suited to
his purpose than the one he had been in the habit of using hitherto,
he would at once seize and carefully preserve it.  If it got worn
out or broken he would begin searching for a crowbar as like as
possible to the one that he had lost; and when, with advancing
skill, and in default of being able to find the exact thing he
wanted, he took at length to making a jemmy for himself, he would
imitate the latest and most perfect adaptation, which would thus be
most likely to be preserved in the struggle of competitive forms.
Let this process go on for countless generations, among countless
burglars of all nations, and may we not suppose that a jemmy would
be in time arrived at, as superior to any that could have been
designed as the effect of the Niagara Falls is superior to the puny
efforts of the landscape gardener?"

For the moment I will pass over the obvious retort that there is no
sufficient parallelism between bodily organs and mechanical
inventions to make a denial of design in the one involve in equity a
denial of it in the other also, and that therefore the preceding
paragraph has no force.  A man is not bound to deny design in
machines wherein it can be clearly seen because he denies it in
living organs where at best it is a matter of inference.  This
retort is plausible, but in the course of the two next following
chapters but one it will be shown to be without force; for the
moment, however, beyond thus calling attention to it, I must pass it
by.

I do not mean to say that Mr. Darwin ever wrote anything which made
the utility of his contention as apparent as it is made by what I
have above put into the mouth of his supposed follower.  Mr. Darwin
was the Gladstone of biology, and so old a scientific hand was not
going to make things unnecessarily clear unless it suited his
convenience.  Then, indeed, he was like the man in "The Hunting of
the Snark," who said, "I told you once, I told you twice, what I
tell you three times is true."  That what I have supposed said,
however, above about the jemmy is no exaggeration of Mr. Darwin's
attitude as regards design in organism will appear from the passage
about the eye already referred to, which it may perhaps be as well
to quote in full.  Mr. Darwin says:-

"It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye to a telescope.
We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-
continued efforts of the highest human intellects, and we naturally
infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process.
But may not this inference be presumptuous?  Have we any right to
assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of
men?  If we must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we ought
in imagination to take a thick layer of transparent tissue, with a
nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose every part of
this layer to be continually changing slowly in density, so as to
separate into layers of different densities and thicknesses, placed
at different distances from each other, and with the surfaces of
each layer slowly changing in form.  Further, we must suppose that
there is a power always intently watching each slight accidental
alteration in the transparent layers, and carefully selecting each
alteration which, under varied circumstances, may in any way, or in
any degree, tend to produce a distincter image.  We must suppose
each new state of the instrument to be multiplied by the million,
and each to be preserved till a better be produced, and then the old
ones to be destroyed.  In living bodies variation will cause the
slight alterations, generation will multiply them almost infinitely,
and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each
improvement.  Let this process go on for millions on millions of
years, and during each year on millions of individuals of many
kinds; and may we not believe that a living optical instrument might
thus be formed as superior to one of glass as the works of the
Creator are to those of man?" {92a}

Mr. Darwin does not in this passage deny design, or cunning, point
blank; he was not given to denying things point blank, nor is it
immediately apparent that he is denying design at all, for he does
not emphasize and call attention to the fact that the VARIATIONS on
whose accumulation he relies for his ultimate specific difference
are accidental, and, to use his own words, in the passage last
quoted, caused by VARIATION.  He does, indeed, in his earlier
editions, call the variations "accidental," and accidental they
remained for ten years, but in 1869 the word "accidental" was taken
out.  Mr. Darwin probably felt that the variations had been
accidental as long as was desirable; and though they would, of
course, in reality remain as accidental as ever, still, there could
be no use in crying "accidental variations" further.  If the reader
wants to know whether they were accidental or no, he had better find
out for himself.  Mr. Darwin was a master of what may be called
scientific chiaroscuro, and owes his reputation in no small measure
to the judgment with which he kept his meaning dark when a less
practised hand would have thrown light upon it.  There can, however,
be no question that Mr. Darwin, though not denying purposiveness
point blank, was trying to refer the development of the eye to the
accumulation of small accidental improvements, which were not as a
rule due to effort and design in any way analogous to those
attendant on the development of the telescope.

Though Mr. Darwin, if he was to have any point of difference from
his grandfather, was bound to make his variations accidental, yet,
to do him justice, he did not like it.  Even in the earlier editions
of the "Origin of Species," where the "alterations" in the passage
last quoted are called "accidental" in express terms, the word does
not fall, so to speak, on a strong beat of the bar, and is apt to
pass unnoticed.  Besides, Mr. Darwin does not say point blank "we
may believe," or "we ought to believe;" he only says "may we not
believe?"  The reader should always be on his guard when Mr. Darwin
asks one of these bland and child-like questions, and he is fond of
asking them; but, however this may be, it is plain, as I pointed out
in "Evolution Old and New" {93a} that the only "skill," that is to
say the only thing that can possibly involve design, is "the
unerring skill" of natural selection.

In the same paragraph Mr. Darwin has already said:  "Further, we
must suppose that there is a power represented by natural selection
or the survival of the fittest always intently watching each slight
alteration, &c."  Mr. Darwin probably said "a power represented by
natural selection" instead of "natural selection" only, because he
saw that to talk too frequently about the fact that the most lucky
live longest as "intently watching" something was greater nonsense
than it would be prudent even for him to write, so he fogged it by
making the intent watching done by "a power represented by" a fact,
instead of by the fact itself.  As the sentence stands it is just as
great nonsense as it would have been if "the survival of the
fittest" had been allowed to do the watching instead of "the power
represented by" the survival of the fittest, but the nonsense is
harder to dig up, and the reader is more likely to pass it over.

This passage gave Mr. Darwin no less trouble than it must have given
to many of his readers.  In the original edition of the "Origin of
Species" it stood, "Further, we must suppose that there is a power
always intently watching each slight accidental variation."  I
suppose it was felt that if this was allowed to stand, it might be
fairly asked what natural selection was doing all this time?  If the
power was able to do everything that was necessary now, why not
always? and why any natural selection at all?  This clearly would
not do, so in 1861 the power was allowed, by the help of brackets,
actually to become natural selection, and remained so till 1869,
when Mr. Darwin could stand it no longer, and, doubtless for the
reason given above, altered the passage to "a power represented by
natural selection," at the same time cutting out the word
"accidental."

It may perhaps make the workings of Mr. Darwin's mind clearer to the
reader if I give the various readings of this passage as taken from
the three most important editions of the "Origin of Species."

In 1859 it stood, "Further, we must suppose that there is a power
always intently watching each slight accidental alteration," &c.

In 1861 it stood, "Further, we must suppose that there is a power
(natural selection) always intently watching each slight accidental
alteration," &c.

And in 1869, "Further, we must suppose that there is a power
represented by natural selection or the survival of the fittest
always intently watching each slight alteration," &c. {94a}

The hesitating feeble gait of one who fears a pitfall at every step,
so easily recognisable in the "numerous, successive, slight
alterations" in the foregoing passage, may be traced in many another
page of the "Origin of Species" by those who will be at the trouble
of comparing the several editions.  It is only when this is done,
and the working of Mr. Darwin's mind can be seen as though it were
the twitchings of a dog's nose, that any idea can be formed of the
difficulty in which he found himself involved by his initial blunder
of thinking he had got a distinctive feature which entitled him to
claim the theory of evolution as an original idea of his own.  He
found his natural selection hang round his neck like a millstone.
There is hardly a page in the "Origin of Species" in which traces of
the struggle going on in Mr. Darwin's mind are not discernible, with
a result alike exasperating and pitiable.  I can only repeat what I
said in "Evolution Old and New," namely, that I find the task of
extracting a well-defined meaning out of Mr. Darwin's words
comparable only to that of trying to act on the advice of a lawyer
who has obscured the main issue as much as he can, and whose chief
aim has been to leave as many loopholes as possible for himself to
escape by, if things should go wrong hereafter.  Or, again, to that
of one who has to construe an Act of Parliament which was originally
drawn with a view to throwing as much dust as possible in the eyes
of those who would oppose the measure, and which, having been found
utterly unworkable in practice, has had clauses repealed up and down
it till it is now in an inextricable tangle of confusion and
contradiction.

The more Mr. Darwin's work is studied, and more especially the more
his different editions are compared, the more impossible is it to
avoid a suspicion of arriere pensee as pervading it whenever the
"distinctive feature" is on the tapis.  It is right to say, however,
that no such suspicion attaches to Mr. A. R. Wallace, Mr. Darwin's
fellow discoverer of natural selection.  It is impossible to doubt
that Mr. Wallace believed he had made a real and important
improvement upon the Lamarckian system, and, as a natural
consequence, unlike Mr. Darwin, he began by telling us what Lamarck
had said.  He did not, I admit, say quite all that I should have
been glad to have seen him say, nor use exactly the words I should
myself have chosen, but he said enough to make it impossible to
doubt his good faith, and his desire that we should understand that
with him, as with Mr. Darwin, variations are mainly accidental, not
functional.  Thus, in his memorable paper communicated to the
Linnean Society in 1858 he said, in a passage which I have quoted in
"Unconscious Memory":

"The hypothesis of Lamarck--that progressive changes in species have
been produced by the attempts of the animals to increase the
development of their own organs, and thus modify their structures
and habits--has been repeatedly and easily refuted by all writers on
the subject of varieties and species; . . . but the view here
developed renders such an hypothesis quite unnecessary. . . .  The
powerful retractile talons of the falcon and cat tribes have not
been produced or increased by the volition of those animals; . . .
neither did the giraffe acquire its long neck by desiring to reach
the foliage of the more lofty shrubs, and constantly stretching its
neck for this purpose, but because any varieties which occurred
among its antitypes with a longer neck than usual AT ONCE SECURED A
FRESH RANGE OF PASTURE OVER THE SAME GROUND AS THEIR SHORTER-NECKED
COMPANIONS, AND ON THE FIRST SCARCITY OF FOOD WERE THUS ENABLED TO
OUTLIVE THEM" (italics in original). {96a}

"Which occurred" is obviously "which happened to occur, by some
chance or accident entirely unconnected with use and disuse;" and
though the word "accidental" is never used, there can be no doubt
about Mr. Wallace's desire to make the reader catch the fact that
with him accident, and not, as with Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck,
sustained effort, is the main purveyor of the variations whose
accumulation amounts ultimately to specific difference.  It is a
pity, however, that instead of contenting himself like a theologian
with saying that his opponent had been refuted over and over again,
he did not refer to any particular and tolerably successful attempt
to refute the theory that modifications in organic structure are
mainly functional.  I am fairly well acquainted with the literature
of evolution, and have never met with any such attempt.  But let
this pass; as with Mr. Darwin, so with Mr. Wallace, and so indeed
with all who accept Mr. Charles Darwin's natural selection as the
main means of modification, the central idea is luck, while the
central idea of the Erasmus-Darwinian system is cunning.

I have given the opinions of these contending parties in their
extreme development; but they both admit abatements which bring them
somewhat nearer to one another.  Design, as even its most strenuous
upholders will admit, is a difficult word to deal with; it is, like
all our ideas, substantial enough until we try to grasp it--and
then, like all our ideas, it mockingly eludes us; it is like life or
death--a rope of many strands; there is design within design, and
design within undesign; there is undesign within design (as when a
man shuffles cards designing that there shall be no design in their
arrangement), and undesign within undesign; when we speak of cunning
or design in connection with organism we do not mean cunning, all
cunning, and nothing but cunning, so that there shall be no place
for luck; we do not mean that conscious attention and forethought
shall have been bestowed upon the minutest details of action, and
nothing been left to work itself out departmentally according to
precedent, or as it otherwise best may according to the chapter of
accidents.

So, again, when Mr. Darwin and his followers deny design and effort
to have been the main purveyors of the variations whose accumulation
results in specific difference, they do not entirely exclude the
action of use and disuse--and this at once opens the door for
cunning; nevertheless, according to Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, the
human eye and the long neck of the giraffe are alike due to the
accumulation of variations that are mainly functional, and hence
practical; according to Charles Darwin they are alike due to the
accumulation of variations that are accidental, fortuitous,
spontaneous, that is to say, mainly cannot be reduced to any known
general principle.  According to Charles Darwin "the preservation of
favoured," or lucky, "races" is by far the most important means of
modification; according to Erasmus Darwin effort non sibi res sed se
rebus subjungere is unquestionably the most potent means; roughly,
therefore, there is no better or fairer way of putting the matter,
than to say that Charles Darwin is the apostle of luck, and his
grandfather, and Lamarck, of cunning.

It should be observed also that the distinction between the organism
and its surroundings--on which both systems are founded--is one that
cannot be so universally drawn as we find it convenient to allege.
There is a debatable ground of considerable extent on which RES and
ME, ego and non ego, luck and cunning, necessity and freewill, meet
and pass into one another as night and day, or life and death.  No
one can draw a sharp line between ego and non ego, nor indeed any
sharp line between any classes of phenomena.  Every part of the ego
is non ego qua organ or tool in use, and much of the non ego runs up
into the ego and is inseparably united with it; still there is
enough that it is obviously most convenient to call ego, and enough
that it is no less obviously most convenient to call non ego, as
there is enough obvious day and obvious night, or obvious luck and
obvious cunning, to make us think it advisable to keep separate
accounts for each.

I will say more on this head in a following chapter; in this present
one my business should be confined to pointing out as clearly and
succinctly as I can the issue between the two great main contending
opinions concerning organic development that obtain among those who
accept the theory of descent at all; nor do I believe that this can
be done more effectually and accurately than by saying, as above,
that Mr. Charles Darwin (whose name, by the way, was "Charles
Robert," and not, as would appear from the title-pages of his books,
"Charles" only), Mr. A. R. Wallace, and their supporters are the
apostles of luck, while Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, followed, more
or less timidly, by the Geoffroys and by Mr. Herbert Spencer, and
very timidly indeed by the Duke of Argyll, preach cunning as the
most important means of organic modification.

NOTE.--It appears from "Samuel Butler:  A Memoir" (II, 29) that
Butler wrote to his father (Dec. 1885) about a passage in Horace
(near the beginning of the First Epistle of the First Book) -

Nunc in Aristippi furtim praecepta relabor,
Et mihi res, non me rebus subjungere conor.

On the preceding page he is adapting the second of these two verses
to his own purposes.--H. F. J.



CHAPTER VII--(Intercalated)  Mr. Spencer's "The Factors of Organic
Evolution"



Since the foregoing and several of the succeeding chapters were
written, Mr. Herbert Spencer has made his position at once more
clear and more widely understood by his articles "The Factors of
Organic Evolution" which appeared in the Nineteenth Century for
April and May, 1886.  The present appears the fittest place in which
to intercalate remarks concerning them.

Mr. Spencer asks whether those are right who regard Mr. Charles
Darwin's theory of natural selection as by itself sufficient to
account for organic evolution.

"On critically examining the evidence" (modern writers never examine
evidence, they always "critically," or "carefully," or "patiently,"
examine it), he writes, we shall find reason to think that it by no
means explains all that has to be explained.  Omitting for the
present any consideration of a factor which may be considered
primordial, it may be contended that one of the factors alleged by
Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck must be recognised as a co-operator.
Unless that increase of a part resulting from extra activity, and
that decrease of it resulting from inactivity, are transmissible to
descendants, we are without a key to many phenomena of organic
evolution.  UTTERLY INADEQUATE TO EXPLAIN THE MAJOR PART OF THE
FACTS AS IS THE HYPOTHESIS OF THE INHERITANCE OF FUNCTIONALLY
PRODUCED MODIFICATIONS, yet there is a minor part of the facts very
extensive though less, which must be ascribed to this cause."
(Italics mine.)

Mr. Spencer does not here say expressly that Erasmus Darwin and
Lamarck considered inheritance of functionally produced
modifications to be the sole explanation of the facts of organic
life; modern writers on evolution for the most part avoid saying
anything expressly; this nevertheless is the conclusion which the
reader naturally draws--and was doubtless intended to draw--from Mr.
Spencer's words.  He gathers that these writers put forward an
"utterly inadequate" theory, which cannot for a moment be
entertained in the form in which they left it, but which,
nevertheless, contains contributions to the formation of a just
opinion which of late years have been too much neglected.

This inference would be, as Mr. Spencer ought to know, a mistaken
one.  Erasmus Darwin, who was the first to depend mainly on
functionally produced modifications, attributes, if not as much
importance to variations induced either by what we must call chance,
or by causes having no connection with use and disuse, as Mr.
Spencer does, still so nearly as much that there is little to choose
between them.  Mr. Spencer's words show that he attributes, if not
half, still not far off half the modification that has actually been
produced, to use and disuse.  Erasmus Darwin does not say whether he
considers use and disuse to have brought about more than half or
less than half; he only says that animal and vegetable modification
is "in part produced" by the exertions of the animals and vegetables
themselves; the impression I have derived is, that just as Mr.
Spencer considers rather less than half to be due to use and disuse,
so Erasmus Darwin considers decidedly more than half--so much more,
in fact, than half as to make function unquestionably the factor
most proper to be insisted on if only one can be given.  Further
than this he did not go.  I will quote enough of Dr. Erasmus
Darwin's own words to put his position beyond doubt.  He writes:-

"Thirdly, when we enumerate the great changes produced in the
species of animals before their nativity, as, for example, when the
offspring reproduces the effects produced upon the parent by
accident or culture, or the changes produced by the mixture of
species, as in mules; or the changes produced probably by exuberance
of nourishment supplied to the foetus, as in monstrous births with
additional limbs; many of these enormities are propagated and
continued as a variety at least, if not as a new species of animal.
I have seen a breed of cats with an additional claw on every foot;
of poultry also with an additional claw and with wings to their
feet; and of others without rumps.  Mr. Buffon" (who, by the way,
surely, was no more "Mr. Buffon" than Lord Salisbury is "Mr.
Salisbury") "mentions a breed of dogs without tails which are common
at Rome and Naples--which he supposes to have been produced by a
custom long established of cutting their tails close off." {102a}

Here not one of the causes of variation adduced is connected with
use and disuse, or effort, volition, and purpose; the manner,
moreover, in which they are brought forward is not that of one who
shows signs of recalcitrancy about admitting other causes of
modification as well as use and disuse; indeed, a little lower down
he almost appears to assign the subordinate place to functionally
produced modifications, for he says--"Fifthly, from their first
rudiments or primordium to the termination of their lives, all
animals undergo perpetual transformations; WHICH ARE IN PART
PRODUCED by their own exertions in consequence of their desires and
aversions, of their pleasures and their pains, or of irritations or
of associations; and many of these acquired forms or propensities
are transmitted to their posterity."

I have quoted enough to show that Dr. Erasmus Darwin would have
protested against the supposition that functionally produced
modifications were an adequate explanation of all the phenomena of
organic modification.  He declares accident and the chances and
changes of this mortal life to be potent and frequent causes of
variations, which, being not infrequently inherited, result in the
formation of varieties and even species, but considers these causes
if taken alone as no less insufficient to account for observable
facts than the theory of functionally produced modifications would
be if not supplemented by inheritance of so-called fortuitous, or
spontaneous variations.  The difference between Dr. Erasmus Darwin
and Mr. Spencer does not consist in the denial by the first, that a
variety which happens, no matter how accidentally, to have varied in
a way that enables it to comply more fully and readily with the
conditions of its existence, is likely to live longer and leave more
offspring than one less favoured; nor in the denial by the second of
the inheritance and accumulation of functionally produced
modifications; but in the amount of stress which they respectively
lay on the relative importance of the two great factors of organic
evolution, the existence of which they are alike ready to admit.

With Erasmus Darwin there is indeed luck, and luck has had a great
deal to do with organic modification, but no amount of luck would
have done unless cunning had known how to take advantage of it;
whereas if cunning be given, a very little luck at a time will
accumulate in the course of ages and become a mighty heap.  Cunning,
therefore, is the factor on which, having regard to the usage of
language and the necessity for simplifying facts, he thinks it most
proper to insist.  Surely this is as near as may be the opinion
which common consent ascribes to Mr. Spencer himself.  It is
certainly the one which, in supporting Erasmus Darwin's system as
against his grandson's, I have always intended to support.  With
Charles Darwin, on the other hand, there is indeed cunning, effort,
and consequent use and disuse; nor does he deny that these have
produced some, and sometimes even an important, effect in modifying
species, but he assigns by far the most important role in the whole
scheme to natural selection, which, as I have already shown, must,
with him, be regarded as a synonym for luck pure and simple.  This,
for reasons well shown by Mr. Spencer in the articles under
consideration, is so untenable that it seems only possible to
account for its having been advanced at all by supposing Mr.
Darwin's judgment to have been perverted by some one or more of the
many causes that might tend to warp them.  What the chief of those
causes may have been I shall presently point out.

Buffon erred rather on the side of ignoring functionally produced
modifications than of insisting on them.  The main agency with him
is the direct action of the environment upon the organism.  This, no
doubt, is a flaw in Buffon's immortal work, but it is one which
Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck easily corrected; nor can we doubt that
Buffon would have readily accepted their amendment if it had been
suggested to him.  Buffon did infinitely more in the way of
discovering and establishing the theory of descent with modification
than any one has ever done either before or since.  He was too much
occupied with proving the fact of evolution at all, to dwell as
fully as might have been wished upon the details of the process
whereby the amoeba had become man, but we have already seen that he
regarded inherited mutilation as the cause of establishing a new
breed of dogs, and this is at any rate not laying much stress on
functionally produced modifications.  Again, when writing of the
dog, he speaks of variations arising "BY SOME CHANCE common enough
with nature," {104a} and clearly does not contemplate function as
the sole cause of modification.  Practically, though I grant I
should be less able to quote passages in support of my opinion than
I quite like, I do not doubt that his position was much the same as
that of his successors, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck.

Lamarck is more vulnerable than either Erasmus Darwin or Buffon on
the score of unwillingness to assign its full share to mere chance,
but I do not for a moment believe his comparative reticence to have
been caused by failure to see that the chapter of accidents is a
fateful one.  He saw that the cunning or functional side had been
too much lost sight of, and therefore insisted on it, but he did not
mean to say that there is no such thing as luck.  "Let us suppose,"
he says, "that a grass growing in a low-lying meadow, gets carried
BY SOME ACCIDENT to the brow of a neighbouring hill, where the soil
is still damp enough for the plant to be able to exist." {105a}  Or
again--"With sufficient time, favourable conditions of life,
successive changes in the condition of the globe, and the power of
new surroundings and habits to modify the organs of living bodies,
all animal and vegetable forms have been imperceptibly rendered such
as we now see them." {105b}  Who can doubt that accident is here
regarded as a potent factor of evolution, as well as the design that
is involved in the supposition that modification is, in the main,
functionally induced?  Again he writes, "As regards the
circumstances that give rise to variation, the principal are
climatic changes, different temperatures of any of a creature's
environments, differences of abode, of habit, of the most frequent
actions, and lastly of the means of obtaining food, self-defence,
reproduction," &c. {105c}  I will not dwell on the small
inconsistencies which may be found in the passages quoted above; the
reader will doubtless see them, and will also doubtless see that in
spite of them there can be no doubt that Lamarck, while believing
modification to be effected mainly by the survival in the struggle
for existence of modifications which had been induced functionally,
would not have hesitated to admit the survival of favourable
variations due to mere accident as also a potent factor in inducing
the results we see around us.

For the rest, Mr. Spencer's articles have relieved me from the
necessity of going into the evidence which proves that such
structures as a giraffe's neck, for example, cannot possibly have
been produced by the accumulation of variations which had their
origin mainly in accident.  There is no occasion to add anything to
what Mr. Spencer has said on this score, and I am satisfied that
those who do not find his argument convince them would not be
convinced by anything I might say; I shall, therefore, omit what I
had written on this subject, and confine myself to giving the
substance of Mr. Spencer's most telling argument against Mr.
Darwin's theory that accidental variations, if favourable, would
accumulate and result in seemingly adaptive structures.  Mr. Spencer
well shows that luck or chance is insufficient as a motive-power, or
helm, of evolution; but luck is only absence of design; if, then,
absence of design is found to fail, it follows that there must have
been design somewhere, nor can the design be more conveniently
placed than in association with function.

Mr. Spencer contends that where life is so simple as to consist
practically in the discharge of only one function, or where
circumstances are such that some one function is supremely important
(a state of things, by the way, more easily found in hypothesis than
in nature--at least as continuing without modification for many
successive seasons), then accidental variations, if favourable,
would indeed accumulate and result in modification, without the aid
of the transmission of functionally produced modification.  This is
true; it is also true, however, that only a very small number of
species in comparison with those we see around us could thus arise,
and that we should never have got plants and animals as embodiments
of the two great fundamental principles on which it is alone
possible that life can be conducted, {107a} and species of plants
and animals as embodiments of the details involved in carrying out
these two main principles.

If the earliest organism could have only varied favourably in one
direction, the one possible favourable accidental variation would
have accumulated so long as the organism continued to exist at all,
inasmuch as this would be preserved whenever it happened to occur,
while every other would be lost in the struggle of competitive
forms; but even in the lowest forms of life there is more than one
condition in respect of which the organism must be supposed
sensitive, and there are as many directions in which variations may
be favourable as there are conditions of the environment that affect
the organism.  We cannot conceive of a living form as having a power
of adaptation limited to one direction only; the elasticity which
admits of a not being "extreme to mark that which is done amiss" in
one direction will commonly admit of it in as many directions as
there are possible favourable modes of variation; the number of
these, as has been just said, depends upon the number of the
conditions of the environment that affect the organism, and these
last, though in the long run and over considerable intervals of time
tolerably constant, are over shorter intervals liable to frequent
and great changes; so that there is nothing in Mr. Charles Darwin's
system of modification through the natural survival of the lucky, to
prevent gain in one direction one year from being lost irretrievably
in the next, through the greater success of some in no way
correlated variation, the fortunate possessors of which alone
survive.  This, in its turn, is as likely as not to disappear
shortly through the arising of some difficulty in some entirely new
direction, and so on; nor, if function be regarded as of small
effect in determining organism, is there anything to ensure either
that, even if ground be lost for a season or two in any one
direction, it shall be recovered presently on resumption by the
organism of the habits that called it into existence, or that it
shall appear synchronously in a sufficient number of individuals to
ensure its not being soon lost through gamogenesis.

How is progress ever to be made if races keep reversing, Penelope-
like, in one generation all that they have been achieving in the
preceding?  And how, on Mr. Darwin's system, of which the
accumulation of strokes of luck is the greatly preponderating
feature, is a hoard ever to be got together and conserved, no matter
how often luck may have thrown good things in an organism's way?
Luck, or absence of design, may be sometimes almost said to throw
good things in our way, or at any rate we may occasionally get more
through having made no design than any design we should have been
likely to have formed would have given us; but luck does not hoard
these good things for our use and make our wills for us, nor does it
keep providing us with the same good gifts again and again, and no
matter how often we reject them.

I had better, perhaps, give Mr. Spencer's own words as quoted by
himself in his article in the Nineteenth Century for April, 1886.
He there wrote as follows, quoting from section 166 of his
"Principles of Biology," which appeared in 1864:-

"Where the life is comparatively simple, or where surrounding
circumstances render some one function supremely important, the
survival of the fittest" (which means here the survival of the
luckiest) "may readily bring about the appropriate structural
change, without any aid from the transmission of functionally-
acquired modifications" (into which effort and design have entered).
"But in proportion as the life grows complex--in proportion as a
healthy existence cannot be secured by a large endowment of some one
power, but demands many powers; in the same proportion do there
arise obstacles to the increase of any particular power, by 'the
preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life'" (that is
to say, through mere survival of the luckiest).  "As fast as the
faculties are multiplied, so fast does it become possible for the
several members of a species to have various kinds of superiority
over one another.  While one saves its life by higher speed, another
does the like by clearer vision, another by keener scent, another by
quicker hearing, another by greater strength, another by unusual
power of enduring cold or hunger, another by special sagacity,
another by special timidity, another by special courage; and others
by other bodily and mental attributes.  Now it is unquestionably
true that, other things equal, each of these attributes, giving its
possessor an equal extra chance of life, is likely to be transmitted
to posterity.  But there seems no reason to believe it will be
increased in subsequent generations by natural selection.  That it
may be thus increased, the animals not possessing more than average
endowments of it must be more frequently killed off than individuals
highly endowed with it; and this can only happen when the attribute
is one of greater importance, for the time being, than most of the
other attributes.

If those members of the species which have but ordinary shares of
it, nevertheless survive by virtue of other superiorities which they
severally possess, then it is not easy to see how this particular
attribute can be developed by natural selection in subsequent
generations."  (For if some other superiority is a greater source of
luck, then natural selection, or survival of the luckiest, will
ensure that this other superiority be preserved at the expense of
the one acquired in the earlier generation.)  "The probability seems
rather to be, that by gamogenesis, this extra endowment will, on the
average, be diminished in posterity--just serving in the long run to
compensate the deficient endowments of other individuals, whose
special powers lie in other directions; and so to keep up the normal
structure of the species.  The working out of the process is here
somewhat difficult to follow" (there is no difficulty as soon as it
is perceived that Mr. Darwin's natural selection invariably means,
or ought to mean, the survival of the luckiest, and that seasons and
what they bring with them, though fairly constant on an average, yet
individually vary so greatly that what is luck in one season is
disaster in another); "but it appears to me that as fast as the
number of bodily and mental faculties increases, and as fast as the
maintenance of life comes to depend less on the amount of any one,
and more on the combined action of all, so fast does the production
of specialities of character by natural selection alone become
difficult.  Particularly does this seem to be so with a species so
multitudinous in powers as mankind; and above all does it seem to be
so with such of the human powers as have but minor shares in aiding
the struggle for life--the aesthetic faculties, for example.

"Dwelling for a moment on this last illustration of the class of
difficulties described, let us ask how we are to interpret the
development of the musical faculty; how came there that endowment of
musical faculty which characterises modern Europeans at large, as
compared with their remote ancestors?  The monotonous chants of low
savages cannot be said to show any melodic inspiration; and it is
not evident that an individual savage who had a little more musical
perception than the rest would derive any such advantage in the
maintenance of life as would secure the spread of his superiority by
inheritance of the variation," &c.

It should be observed that the passage given in the last paragraph
but one appeared in 1864, only five years after the first edition of
the "Origin of Species," but, crushing as it is, Mr. Darwin never
answered it.  He treated it as nonexistent--and this, doubtless from
a business standpoint, was the best thing he could do.  How far such
a course was consistent with that single-hearted devotion to the
interests of science for which Mr. Darwin developed such an abnormal
reputation, is a point which I must leave to his many admirers to
determine.



CHAPTER VIII--Property, Common Sense, and Protoplasm



One would think the issue stated in the three preceding chapters was
decided in the stating.  This, as I have already implied, is
probably the reason why those who have a vested interest in Mr.
Darwin's philosophical reputation have avoided stating it.

It may be said that, seeing the result is a joint one, inasmuch as
both "res" and "me," or both luck and cunning, enter so largely into
development, neither factor can claim pre-eminence to the exclusion
of the other.  But life is short and business long, and if we are to
get the one into the other we must suppress details, and leave our
words pregnant, as painters leave their touches when painting from
nature.  If one factor concerns us greatly more than the other, we
should emphasize it, and let the other go without saying, by force
of association.  There is no fear of its being lost sight of;
association is one of the few really liberal things in nature; by
liberal, I mean precipitate and inaccurate; the power of words, as
of pictures, and indeed the power to carry on life at all, vests in
the fact that association does not stick to the letter of its bond,
but will take the half for the whole without even looking closely at
the coin given to make sure that it is not counterfeit.  Through the
haste and high pressure of business, errors arise continually, and
these errors give us the shocks of which our consciousness is
compounded.  Our whole conscious life, therefore, grows out of
memory and out of the power of association, in virtue of which not
only does the right half pass for the whole, but the wrong half not
infrequently passes current for it also, without being challenged
and found out till, as it were, the accounts come to be balanced,
and it is found that they will not do so.

Variations are an organism's way of getting over an unexpected
discrepancy between its resources as shown by the fly-leaves of its
own cheques and the universe's passbook; the universe is generally
right, or would be upheld as right if the matter were to come before
the not too incorruptible courts of nature, and in nine cases out of
ten the organism has made the error in its own favour, so that it
must now pay or die.  It can only pay by altering its mode of life,
and how long is it likely to be before a new departure in its mode
of life comes out in its own person and in those of its family?
Granted it will at first come out in their appearance only, but
there can be no change in appearance without some slight
corresponding organic modification.  In practice there is usually
compromise in these matters.  The universe, if it does not give an
organism short shrift and eat it at once, will commonly abate
something of its claim; it gets tricked out of an additional moiety
by the organism; the organism really does pay something by way of
changed habits; this results in variation, in virtue of which the
accounts are cooked, cobbled, and passed by a series of those
miracles of inconsistency which was call compromises, and after this
they cannot be reopened--not till next time.

Surely of the two factors which go to the making up of development,
cunning is the one more proper to be insisted on as determining the
physical and psychical well or ill being, and hence, ere long, the
future form of the organism.  We can hardly open a newspaper without
seeing some sign of this; take, for example, the following extract
from a letter in the Times of the day on which I am writing
(February 8, 1886)-- "You may pass along a road which divides a
settlement of Irish Celts from one of Germans.  They all came to the
country equally without money, and have had to fight their way in
the forest, but the difference in their condition is very
remarkable; on the German side there is comfort, thrift, peace, but
on the other side the spectacle is very different."  Few will deny
that slight organic differences, corresponding to these differences
of habit, are already perceptible; no Darwinian will deny that these
differences are likely to be inherited, and, in the absence of
intermarriage between the two colonies, to result in still more
typical difference than that which exists at present.  According to
Mr. Darwin, the improved type of the more successful race would not
be due mainly to transmitted perseverance in well-doing, but to the
fact that if any member of the German colony "happened" to be born
"ever so slightly," &c.  Of course this last is true to a certain
extent also; if any member of the German colony does "happen to be
born," &c., then he will stand a better chance of surviving, and, if
he marries a wife like himself, of transmitting his good qualities;
but how about the happening?  How is it that this is of such
frequent occurrence in the one colony, and is so rare in the other?
Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis.  True, but how and why?  Through
the race being favoured?  In one sense, doubtless, it is true that
no man can have anything except it be given him from above, but it
must be from an above into the composition of which he himself
largely enters.  God gives us all things; but we are a part of God,
and that part of Him, moreover, whose department it more especially
is to look after ourselves.  It cannot be through luck, for luck is
blind, and does not pick out the same people year after year and
generation after generation; shall we not rather say, then, that it
is because mind, or cunning, is a great factor in the achievement of
physical results, and because there is an abiding memory between
successive generations, in virtue of which the cunning of an earlier
one enures to the benefit of its successors?

It is one of the commonplaces of biology that the nature of the
organism (which is mainly determined by ancestral antecedents) is
greatly more important in determining its future than the conditions
of its environment, provided, of course, that these are not too
cruelly abnormal, so that good seed will do better on rather poor
soil, than bad seed on rather good soil; this alone should be enough
to show that cunning, or individual effort, is more important in
determining organic results than luck is, and therefore that if
either is to be insisted on to the exclusion of the other, it should
be cunning, not luck.  Which is more correctly said to be the main
means of the development of capital--Luck? or Cunning?  Of course
there must be something to be developed--and luck, that is to say,
the unknowable and unforeseeable, enters everywhere; but is it more
convenient with our oldest and best-established ideas to say that
luck is the main means of the development of capital, or that
cunning is so?  Can there be a moment's hesitation in admitting that
if capital is found to have been developed largely, continuously, by
many people, in many ways, over a long period of time, it can only
have been by means of continued application, energy, effort,
industry, and good sense?  Granted there has been luck too; of
course there has, but we let it go without saying, whereas we cannot
let the skill or cunning go without saying, inasmuch as we feel the
cunning to have been the essence of the whole matter.

Granted, again, that there is no test more fallacious on a small
scale than that of immediate success.  As applied to any particular
individual, it breaks down completely.  It is unfortunately no rare
thing to see the good man striving against fate, and the fool born
with a silver spoon in his mouth.  Still on a large scale no test
can be conceivably more reliable; a blockhead may succeed for a
time, but a succession of many generations of blockheads does not go
on steadily gaining ground, adding field to field and farm to farm,
and becoming year by year more capable and prosperous.  Given time--
of which there is no scant in the matter of organic development--and
cunning will do more with ill luck than folly with good.  People do
not hold six trumps every hand for a dozen games of whist running,
if they do not keep a card or two up their sleeves.  Cunning, if it
can keep its head above water at all, will beat mere luck unaided by
cunning, no matter what start luck may have had, if the race be a
fairly long one.  Growth is a kind of success which does indeed come
to some organisms with less effort than to others, but it cannot be
maintained and improved upon without pains and effort.  A foolish
organism and its fortuitous variation will be soon parted, for, as a
general rule, unless the variation has so much connection with the
organism's past habits and ways of thought as to be in no proper
sense of the word "fortuitous," the organism will not know what to
do with it when it has got it, no matter how favourable it may be,
and it is little likely to be handed down to descendants.  Indeed
the kind of people who get on best in the world--and what test to a
Darwinian can be comparable to this?--commonly do insist on cunning
rather than on luck, sometimes perhaps even unduly; speaking, at
least, from experience, I have generally found myself more or less
of a failure with those Darwinians to whom I have endeavoured to
excuse my shortcomings on the score of luck.

It may be said that the contention that the nature of the organism
does more towards determining its future than the conditions of its
immediate environment do, is only another way of saying that the
accidents which have happened to an organism in the persons of its
ancestors throughout all time are more irresistible by it for good
or ill than any of the more ordinary chances and changes of its own
immediate life.  I do not deny this; but these ancestral accidents
were either turned to account, or neglected where they might have
been taken advantage of; they thus passed either into skill, or want
of skill; so that whichever way the fact is stated the result is the
same; and if simplicity of statement be regarded, there is no more
convenient way of putting the matter than to say that though luck is
mighty, cunning is mightier still.  Organism commonly shows its
cunning by practising what Horace preached, and treating itself as
more plastic than its surroundings; those indeed who have had the
greatest the first to admit that they had gained their ends more by
reputation as moulders of circumstances have ever been shaping their
actions and themselves to suit events, than by trying to shape
events to suit themselves and their actions.  Modification, like
charity, begins at home.

But however this may be, there can be no doubt that cunning is in
the long run mightier than luck as regards the acquisition of
property, and what applies to property applies to organism also.
Property, as I have lately seen was said by Rosmini, is a kind of
extension of the personality into the outside world.  He might have
said as truly that it is a kind of penetration of the outside world
within the limits of the personality, or that it is at any rate a
prophesying of, and essay after, the more living phase of matter in
the direction of which it is tending.  If approached from the
dynamical or living side of the underlying substratum, it is the
beginning of the comparatively stable equilibrium which we call
brute matter; if from the statical side, that is to say, from that
of brute matter, it is the beginning of that dynamical state which
we associate with life; it is the last of ego and first of non ego,
or vice versa, as the case may be; it is the ground whereon the two
meet and are neither wholly one nor wholly the other, but a whirling
mass of contradictions such as attends all fusion.

What property is to a man's mind or soul that his body is also, only
more so.  The body is property carried to the bitter end, or
property is the body carried to the bitter end, whichever the reader
chooses; the expression "organic wealth" is not figurative; none
other is so apt and accurate; so universally, indeed, is this
recognised that the fact has found expression in our liturgy, which
bids us pray for all those who are any wise afflicted "in mind,
body, or estate;" no inference, therefore, can be more simple and
legitimate than the one in accordance with which the laws that
govern the development of wealth generally are supposed also to
govern the particular form of health and wealth which comes most
closely home to us--I mean that of our bodily implements or organs.
What is the stomach but a living sack, or purse of untanned leather,
wherein we keep our means of subsistence?  Food is money made easy;
it is petty cash in its handiest and most reduced form; it is our
way of assimilating our possessions and making them indeed our own.
What is the purse but a kind of abridged extra corporeal stomach
wherein we keep the money which we convert by purchase into food, as
we presently convert the food by digestion into flesh and blood?
And what living form is there which is without a purse or stomach,
even though it have to job it by the meal as the amoeba does, and
exchange it for some other article as soon as it has done eating?
How marvellously does the analogy hold between the purse and the
stomach alike as regards form and function; and I may say in passing
that, as usual, the organ which is the more remote from protoplasm
is at once more special, more an object of our consciousness, and
less an object of its own.

Talk of ego and non ego meeting, and of the hopelessness of avoiding
contradiction in terms--talk of this, and look, in passing, at the
amoeba.  It is itself qua maker of the stomach and being fed; it is
not itself qua stomach and qua its using itself as a mere tool or
implement to feed itself with.  It is active and passive, object and
subject, ego and non ego--every kind of Irish bull, in fact, which a
sound logician abhors--and it is only because it has persevered, as
I said in "Life and Habit," in thus defying logic and arguing most
virtuously in a most vicious circle, that it has come in the persons
of some of its descendants to reason with sufficient soundness.  And
what the amoeba is man is also; man is only a great many amoebas,
most of them dreadfully narrow-minded, going up and down the country
with their goods and chattels like gipsies in a caravan; he is only
a great many amoebas that have had much time and money spent on
their education, and received large bequests of organised
intelligence from those that have gone before them.

The most incorporate tool--we will say an eye, or a tooth, or the
closed fist when used to strike--has still something of the non ego
about it in so far as it is used; those organs, again, that are the
most completely separate from the body, as the locomotive engine,
must still from time to time kiss the soil of the human body, and be
handled and thus crossed with man again if they would remain in
working order.  They cannot be cut adrift from the most living form
of matter (I mean most living from our point of view), and remain
absolutely without connection with it for any length of time, any
more than a seal can live without coming up sometimes to breathe;
and in so far as they become linked on to living beings they live.
Everything is living which is in close communion with, and
interpermeated by, that something which we call mind or thought.
Giordano Bruno saw this long ago when he made an interlocutor in one
of his dialogues say that a man's hat and cloak are alive when he is
wearing them.  "Thy boots and spurs live," he exclaims, "when thy
feet carry them; thy hat lives when thy head is within it; and so
the stable lives when it contains the horse or mule, or even
yourself;" nor is it easy to see how this is to be refuted except at
a cost which no one in his senses will offer.

It may be said that the life of clothes in wear and implements in
use is no true life, inasmuch as it differs from flesh and blood
life in too many and important respects; that we have made up our
minds about not letting life outside the body too decisively to
allow the question to be reopened; that if this be tolerated we
shall have societies for the prevention of cruelty to chairs and
tables, or cutting clothes amiss, or wearing them to tatters, or
whatever other absurdity may occur to idle and unkind people; the
whole discussion, therefore, should be ordered out of court at once.

I admit that this is much the most sensible position to take, but it
can only be taken by those who turn the deafest of deaf ears to the
teachings of science, and tolerate no going even for a moment below
the surface of things.  People who take this line must know how to
put their foot down firmly in the matter of closing a discussion.
Some one may perhaps innocently say that some parts of the body are
more living and vital than others, and those who stick to common
sense may allow this, but if they do they must close the discussion
on the spot; if they listen to another syllable they are lost; if
they let the innocent interlocutor say so much as that a piece of
well-nourished healthy brain is more living than the end of a
finger-nail that wants cutting, or than the calcareous parts of a
bone, the solvent will have been applied which will soon make an end
of common sense ways of looking at the matter.  Once even admit the
use of the participle "dying," which involves degrees of death, and
hence an entry of death in part into a living body, and common sense
must either close the discussion at once, or ere long surrender at
discretion.

Common sense can only carry weight in respect of matters with which
every one is familiar, as forming part of the daily and hourly
conduct of affairs; if we would keep our comfortable hard and fast
lines, our rough and ready unspecialised ways of dealing with
difficult questions, our impatience of what St. Paul calls "doubtful
disputations," we must refuse to quit the ground on which the
judgments of mankind have been so long and often given that they are
not likely to be questioned.  Common sense is not yet formulated in
manners of science or philosophy, for only few consider them; few
decisions, therefore, have been arrived at which all hold final.
Science is, like love, "too young to know what conscience," or
common sense, is.  As soon as the world began to busy itself with
evolution it said good-bye to common sense, and must get on with
uncommon sense as best it can.  The first lesson that uncommon sense
will teach it is that contradiction in terms is the foundation of
all sound reasoning--and, as an obvious consequence, compromise, the
foundation of all sound practice.  This, it follows easily, involves
the corollary that as faith, to be of any value, must be based on
reason, so reason, to be of any value, must be based on faith, and
that neither can stand alone or dispense with the other, any more
than culture or vulgarity can stand unalloyed with one another
without much danger of mischance.

It may not perhaps be immediately apparent why the admission that a
piece of healthy living brain is more living than the end of a
finger-nail, is so dangerous to common sense ways of looking at life
and death; I had better, therefore, be more explicit.  By this
admission degrees of livingness are admitted within the body; this
involves approaches to non-livingness.  On this the question arises,
"Which are the most living parts?"  The answer to this was given a
few years ago with a flourish of trumpets, and our biologists
shouted with one voice, "Great is protoplasm.  There is no life but
protoplasm, and Huxley is its prophet."  Read Huxley's "Physical
Basis of Mind."  Read Professor Mivart's article, "What are Living
Beings?" in the Contemporary Review, July, 1879.  Read Dr. Andrew
Wilson's article in the Gentleman's Magazine, October, 1879.
Remember Professor Allman's address to the British Association,
1879; ask, again, any medical man what is the most approved
scientific attitude as regards the protoplasmic and non-protoplasmic
parts of the body, and he will say that the thinly veiled conclusion
arrived at by all of them is, that the protoplasmic parts are alone
truly living, and that the non-protoplasmic are non-living.

It may suffice if I confine myself to Professor Allman's address to
the British Association in 1879, as a representative utterance.
Professor Allman said:-

"Protoplasm lies at the base of every vital phenomenon.  It is, as
Huxley has well expressed it, 'the physical basis of life;' wherever
there is life from its lowest to its highest manifestation there is
protoplasm; wherever there is protoplasm there is life." {122a}

To say wherever there is life there is protoplasm, is to say that
there can be no life without protoplasm, and this is saying that
where there is no protoplasm there is no life.  But large parts of
the body are non-protoplasmic; a bone is, indeed, permeated by
protoplasm, but it is not protoplasm; it follows, therefore, that
according to Professor Allman bone is not in any proper sense of
words a living substance.  From this it should follow, and doubtless
does follow in Professor Allman's mind, that large tracts of the
human body, if not the greater part by weight (as bones, skin,
muscular tissues, &c.), are no more alive than a coat or pair of
boots in wear is alive, except in so far as the bones, &c., are more
closely and nakedly permeated by protoplasm than the coat or boots,
and are thus brought into closer, directer, and more permanent
communication with that which, if not life itself, still has more of
the ear of life, and comes nearer to its royal person than anything
else does.  Indeed that this is Professor Allman's opinion appears
from the passage on page 26 of the report, in which he says that in
"protoplasm we find the only form of matter in which life can
manifest itself."

According to this view the skin and other tissues are supposed to be
made from dead protoplasm which living protoplasm turns to account
as the British Museum authorities are believed to stuff their new
specimens with the skins of old ones; the matter used by the living
protoplasm for this purpose is held to be entirely foreign to
protoplasm itself, and no more capable of acting in concert with it
than bricks can understand and act in concert with the bricklayer.
As the bricklayer is held to be living and the bricks non-living, so
the bones and skin which protoplasm is supposed to construct are
held non-living and the protoplasm alone living.  Protoplasm, it is
said, goes about masked behind the clothes or habits which it has
fashioned.  It has habited itself as animals and plants, and we have
mistaken the garment for the wearer--as our dogs and cats doubtless
think with Giordano Bruno that our boots live when we are wearing
them, and that we keep spare paws in our bedrooms which lie by the
wall and go to sleep when we have not got them on.

If, in answer to the assertion that the osseous parts of bone are
non-living, it is said that they must be living, for they heal if
broken, which no dead matter can do, it is answered that the broken
pieces of bone do not grow together; they are mended by the
protoplasm which permeates the Haversian canals; the bones
themselves are no more living merely because they are tenanted by
something which really does live, than a house lives because men and
women inhabit it; and if a bone is repaired, it no more repairs
itself than a house can be said to have repaired itself because its
owner has sent for the bricklayer and seen that what was wanted was
done.

We do not know, it is said, by what means the structureless viscid
substance which we call protoplasm can build for itself a solid
bone; we do not understand how an amoeba makes its test; no one
understands how anything is done unless he can do it himself; and
even then he probably does not know how he has done it.  Set a man
who has never painted, to watch Rembrandt paint the Burgomaster Six,
and he will no more understand how Rembrandt can have done it, than
we can understand how the amoeba makes its test, or the protoplasm
cements two broken ends of a piece of bone.  Ces choses se font mais
ne s'expliquent pas.  So some denizen of another planet looking at
our earth through a telescope which showed him much, but still not
quite enough, and seeing the St. Gothard tunnel plumb on end so that
he could not see the holes of entry and exit, would think the trains
there a kind of caterpillar which went through the mountain by a
pure effort of the will--that enabled them in some mysterious way to
disregard material obstacles and dispense with material means.  We
know, of course, that it is not so, and that exemption from the toil
attendant on material obstacles has been compounded for, in the
ordinary way, by the single payment of a tunnel; and so with the
cementing of a bone, our biologists say that the protoplasm, which
is alone living, cements it much as a man might mend a piece of
broken china, but that it works by methods and processes which elude
us, even as the holes of the St. Gothard tunnel may be supposed to
elude a denizen of another world.

The reader will already have seen that the toils are beginning to
close round those who, while professing to be guided by common
sense, still parley with even the most superficial probers beneath
the surface; this, however, will appear more clearly in the
following chapter.  It will also appear how far-reaching were the
consequences of the denial of design that was involved in Mr.
Darwin's theory that luck is the main element in survival, and how
largely this theory is responsible for the fatuous developments in
connection alike with protoplasm and automatism which a few years
ago seemed about to carry everything before them.



CHAPTER IX--Property, Common Sense, and Protoplasm (continued)



The position, then, stands thus.  Common sense gave the inch of
admitting some parts of the body to be less living than others, and
philosophy took the ell of declaring the body to be almost all of it
stone dead.  This is serious; still if it were all, for a quiet
life, we might put up with it.  Unfortunately we know only too well
that it will not be all.  Our bodies, which seemed so living and now
prove so dead, have served us such a trick that we can have no
confidence in anything connected with them.  As with skin and bones
to-day, so with protoplasm to-morrow.  Protoplasm is mainly oxygen,
hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon; if we do not keep a sharp look out,
we shall have it going the way of the rest of the body, and being
declared dead in respect, at any rate, of these inorganic
components.  Science has not, I believe, settled all the components
of protoplasm, but this is neither here nor there; she has settled
what it is in great part, and there is no trusting her not to settle
the rest at any moment, even if she has not already done so.  As
soon as this has been done we shall be told that nine-tenths of the
protoplasm of which we are composed must go the way of our non-
protoplasmic parts, and that the only really living part of us is
the something with a new name that runs the protoplasm that runs the
flesh and bones that run the organs -

Why stop here?  Why not add "which run the tools and properties
which are as essential to our life and health as much that is
actually incorporate with us?"  The same breach which has let the
non-living effect a lodgment within the body must, in all equity,
let the organic character--bodiliness, so to speak--pass out beyond
its limits and effect a lodgment in our temporary and extra-
corporeal limbs.  What, on the protoplasmic theory, the skin and
bones are, that the hammer and spade are also; they differ in the
degree of closeness and permanence with which they are associated
with protoplasm, but both bones and hammers are alike non-living
things which protoplasm uses for its own purposes and keeps closer
or less close at hand as custom and convenience may determine.

According to this view, the non-protoplasmic parts of the body are
tools of the first degree; they are not living, but they are in such
close and constant contact with that which really lives, that an
aroma of life attaches to them.  Some of these, however, such as
horns, hooves, and tusks, are so little permeated by protoplasm that
they cannot rank much higher than the tools of the second degree,
which come next to them in order.

These tools of the second degree are either picked up ready-made, or
are manufactured directly by the body, as being torn or bitten into
shape, or as stones picked up to throw at prey or at an enemy.

Tools of the third degree are made by the instrumentality of tools
of the second and first degrees; as, for example, chipped flint,
arrow-heads, &c.

Tools of the fourth degree are made by those of the third, second,
and first.  They consist of the simpler compound instruments that
yet require to be worked by hand, as hammers, spades, and even hand
flour-mills.

Tools of the fifth degree are made by the help of those of the
fourth, third, second, and first.  They are compounded of many
tools, worked, it may be, by steam or water and requiring no
constant contact with the body.

But each one of these tools of the fifth degree was made in the
first instance by the sole instrumentality of the four preceding
kinds of tool.  They must all be linked on to protoplasm, which is
the one original tool-maker, but which can only make the tools that
are more remote from itself by the help of those that are nearer,
that is to say, it can only work when it has suitable tools to work
with, and when it is allowed to use them in its own way.  There can
be no direct communication between protoplasm and a steam-engine;
there may be and often is direct communication between machines of
even the fifth order and those of the first, as when an engine-man
turns a cock, or repairs something with his own hands if he has
nothing better to work with.  But put a hammer, for example, to a
piece of protoplasm, and the protoplasm will no more know what to do
with it than we should be able to saw a piece of wood in two without
a saw.  Even protoplasm from the hand of a carpenter who has been
handling hammers all his life would be hopelessly put off its stroke
if not allowed to work in its usual way but put bare up against a
hammer; it would make a slimy mess and then dry up; still there can
be no doubt (so at least those who uphold protoplasm as the one
living substance would say) that the closer a machine can be got to
protoplasm and the more permanent the connection, the more living it
appears to be, or at any rate the more does it appear to be endowed
with spontaneous and reasoning energy, so long, of course, as the
closeness is of a kind which protoplasm understands and is familiar
with.  This, they say, is why we do not like using any implement or
tool with gloves on, for these impose a barrier between the tool and
its true connection with protoplasm by means of the nervous system.
For the same reason we put gloves on when we box so as to bar the
connection.

That which we handle most unglovedly is our food, which we handle
with our stomachs rather than with our hands.  Our hands are so
thickly encased with skin that protoplasm can hold but small
conversation with what they contain, unless it be held for a long
time in the closed fist, and even so the converse is impeded as in a
strange language; the inside of our mouths is more naked, and our
stomachs are more naked still; it is here that protoplasm brings its
fullest powers of suasion to bear on those whom it would proselytise
and receive as it were into its own communion--whom it would convert
and bring into a condition of mind in which they shall see things as
it sees them itself, and, as we commonly say, "agree with" it,
instead of standing out stiffly for their own opinion.  We call this
digesting our food; more properly we should call it being digested
by our food, which reads, marks, learns, and inwardly digests us,
till it comes to understand us and encourage us by assuring us that
we were perfectly right all the time, no matter what any one might
have said, or say, to the contrary.  Having thus recanted all its
own past heresies, it sets to work to convert everything that comes
near it and seems in the least likely to be converted.  Eating is a
mode of love; it is an effort after a closer union; so we say we
love roast beef.  A French lady told me once that she adored veal;
and a nurse tells her child that she would like to eat it.  Even he
who caresses a dog or horse pro tanto both weds and eats it.
Strange how close the analogy between love and hunger; in each case
the effort is after closer union and possession; in each case the
outcome is reproduction (for nutrition is the most complete of
reproductions), and in each case there are residua.  But to return.

I have shown above that one consequence of the attempt so vigorously
made a few years ago to establish protoplasm as the one living
substance, is the making it clear that the non-protoplasmic parts of
the body and the simpler extra-corporeal tools or organs must run on
all fours in the matter of livingness and non-livingness.  If the
protoplasmic parts of the body are held living in virtue of their
being used by something that really lives, then so, though in a less
degree, must tools and machines.  If, on the other hand, tools and
machines are held non-living inasmuch as they only owe what little
appearance of life they may present when in actual use to something
else that lives, and have no life of their own--so, though in a less
degree, must the non-protoplasmic parts of the body.  Allow an
overflowing aroma of life to vivify the horny skin under the heel,
and from this there will be a spilling which will vivify the boot in
wear.  Deny an aroma of life to the boot in wear, and it must ere
long be denied to ninety-nine per cent. of the body; and if the body
is not alive while it can walk and talk, what in the name of all
that is unreasonable can be held to be so?

That the essential identity of bodily organs and tools is no
ingenious paradoxical way of putting things is evident from the fact
that we speak of bodily organs at all.  Organ means tool.  There is
nothing which reveals our most genuine opinions to us so unerringly
as our habitual and unguarded expressions, and in the case under
consideration so completely do we instinctively recognise the
underlying identity of tools and limbs, that scientific men use the
word "organ" for any part of the body that discharges a function,
practically to the exclusion of any other term.  Of course, however,
the above contention as to the essential identity of tools and
organs does not involve a denial of their obvious superficial
differences--differences so many and so great as to justify our
classing them in distinct categories so long as we have regard to
the daily purposes of life without looking at remoter ones.

If the above be admitted, we can reply to those who in an earlier
chapter objected to our saying that if Mr. Darwin denied design in
the eye he should deny it in the burglar's jemmy also.  For if
bodily and non-bodily organs are essentially one in kind, being each
of them both living and non-living, and each of them only a higher
development of principles already admitted and largely acted on in
the other, then the method of procedure observable in the evolution
of the organs whose history is within our ken should throw light
upon the evolution of that whose history goes back into so dim a
past that we can only know it by way of inference.  In the absence
of any show of reason to the contrary we should argue from the known
to the unknown, and presume that even as our non-bodily organs
originated and were developed through gradual accumulation of
design, effort, and contrivance guided by experience, so also must
our bodily organs have been, in spite of the fact that the
contrivance has been, as it were, denuded of external evidences in
the course of long time.  This at least is the most obvious
inference to draw; the burden of proof should rest not with those
who uphold function as the most important means of organic
modification, but with those who impugn it; it is hardly necessary,
however, to say that Mr. Darwin never attempted to impugn by way of
argument the conclusions either of his grandfather or of Lamarck.
He waved them both aside in one or two short semi-contemptuous
sentences, and said no more about them--not, at least, until late in
life he wrote his "Erasmus Darwin," and even then his remarks were
purely biographical; he did not say one syllable by way of
refutation, or even of explanation.

I am free to confess that, overwhelming as is the evidence brought
forward by Mr. Spencer in the articles already referred to, as
showing that accidental variations, unguided by the helm of any main
general principle which should as it were keep their heads straight,
could never accumulate with the results supposed by Mr. Darwin; and
overwhelming, again, as is the consideration that Mr. Spencer's most
crushing argument was allowed by Mr. Darwin to go without reply,
still the considerations arising from the discoveries of the last
forty years or so in connection with protoplasm, seem to me almost
more overwhelming still.  This evidence proceeds on different lines
from that adduced by Mr. Spencer, but it points to the same
conclusion, namely, that though luck will avail much if backed by
cunning and experience, it is unavailing for any permanent result
without them.  There is an irony which seems almost always to attend
on those who maintain that protoplasm is the only living substance
which ere long points their conclusions the opposite way to that
which they desire--in the very last direction, indeed, in which they
of all people in the world would willingly see them pointed.

It may be asked why I should have so strong an objection to seeing
protoplasm as the only living substance, when I find this view so
useful to me as tending to substantiate design--which I admit that I
have as much and as seriously at heart as I can allow myself to have
any matter which, after all, can so little affect daily conduct; I
reply that it is no part of my business to inquire whether this or
that makes for my pet theories or against them; my concern is to
inquire whether or no it is borne out by facts, and I find the
opinion that protoplasm is the one living substance unstable,
inasmuch as it is an attempt to make a halt where no halt can be
made.  This is enough; but, furthermore, the fact that the
protoplasmic parts of the body are MORE living than the non-
protoplasmic--which I cannot deny, without denying that it is any
longer convenient to think of life and death at all--will answer my
purpose to the full as well or better.

I pointed out another consequence, which, again, was cruelly the
reverse of what the promoters of the protoplasm movement might be
supposed anxious to arrive at--in a series of articles which
appeared in the Examiner during the summer of 1879, and showed that
if protoplasm were held to be the sole seat of life, then this unity
in the substance vivifying all, both animals and plants, must be
held as uniting them into a single corporation or body--especially
when their community of descent is borne in mind--more effectually
than any merely superficial separation into individuals can be held
to disunite them, and that thus protoplasm must be seen as the life
of the world--as a vast body corporate, never dying till the earth
itself shall pass away.  This came practically to saying that
protoplasm was God Almighty, who, of all the forms open to Him, had
chosen this singularly unattractive one as the channel through which
to make Himself manifest in the flesh by taking our nature upon Him,
and animating us with His own Spirit.  Our biologists, in fact, were
fast nearing the conception of a God who was both personal and
material, but who could not be made to square with pantheistic
notions inasmuch as no provision was made for the inorganic world;
and, indeed, they seem to have become alarmed at the grotesqueness
of the position in which they must ere long have found themselves,
for in the autumn of 1879 the boom collapsed, and thenceforth the
leading reviews and magazines have known protoplasm no more.  About
the same time bathybius, which at one time bade fair to supplant it
upon the throne of popularity, died suddenly, as I am told, at
Norwich, under circumstances which did not transpire, nor has its
name, so far as I am aware, been ever again mentioned.

So much for the conclusions in regard to the larger aspect of life
taken as a whole which must follow from confining life to
protoplasm; but there is another aspect--that, namely, which regards
the individual.  The inevitable consequences of confining life to
the protoplasmic parts of the body were just as unexpected and
unwelcome here as they had been with regard to life at large; for,
as I have already pointed out, there is no drawing the line at
protoplasm and resting at this point; nor yet at the next halting-
point beyond; nor at the one beyond that.  How often is this process
to be repeated? and in what can it end but in the rehabilitation of
the soul as an ethereal, spiritual, vital principle, apart from
matter, which, nevertheless, it animates, vivifying the clay of our
bodies?  No one who has followed the course either of biology or
psychology during this century, and more especially during the last
five-and-twenty years, will tolerate the reintroduction of the soul
as something apart from the substratum in which both feeling and
action must be held to inhere.  The notion of matter being ever
changed except by other matter in another state is so shocking to
the intellectual conscience that it may be dismissed without
discussion; yet if bathybius had not been promptly dealt with, it
must have become apparent even to the British public that there were
indeed but few steps from protoplasm, as the only living substance,
to vital principle.  Our biologists therefore stifled bathybius,
perhaps with justice, certainly with prudence, and left protoplasm
to its fate.

Any one who reads Professor Allman's address above referred to with
due care will see that he was uneasy about protoplasm, even at the
time of its greatest popularity.  Professor Allman never says
outright that the non-protoplasmic parts of the body are no more
alive than chairs and tables are.  He said what involved this as an
inevitable consequence, and there can be no doubt that this is what
he wanted to convey, but he never insisted on it with the
outspokenness and emphasis with which so startling a paradox should
alone be offered us for acceptance; nor is it easy to believe that
his reluctance to express his conclusion totidem verbis was not due
to a sense that it might ere long prove more convenient not to have
done so.  When I advocated the theory of the livingness, or quasi-
livingness of machines, in the chapters of "Erewhon" of which all
else that I have written on biological subjects is a development, I
took care that people should see the position in its extreme form;
the non-livingness of bodily organs is to the full as startling a
paradox as the livingness of non-bodily ones, and we have a right to
expect the fullest explicitness from those who advance it.  Of
course it must be borne in mind that a machine can only claim any
appreciable even aroma of livingness so long as it is in actual use.
In "Erewhon" I did not think it necessary to insist on this, and did
not, indeed, yet fully know what I was driving at.

The same disposition to avoid committing themselves to the assertion
that any part of the body is non-living may be observed in the
writings of the other authorities upon protoplasm above referred to;
I have searched all they said, and cannot find a single passage in
which they declare even the osseous parts of a bone to be non-
living, though this conclusion was the raison d'etre of all they
were saying and followed as an obvious inference.  The reader will
probably agree with me in thinking that such reticence can only have
been due to a feeling that the ground was one on which it behoved
them to walk circumspectly; they probably felt, after a vague, ill-
defined fashion, that the more they reduced the body to mechanism
the more they laid it open to an opponent to raise mechanism to the
body, but, however this may be, they dropped protoplasm, as I have
said, in some haste with the autumn of 1879.



CHAPTER X--The Attempt to Eliminate Mind



What, it may be asked, were our biologists really aiming at?--for
men like Professor Huxley do not serve protoplasm for nought.  They
wanted a good many things, some of them more righteous than others,
but all intelligible.  Among the more lawful of their desires was a
craving after a monistic conception of the universe.  We all desire
this; who can turn his thoughts to these matters at all and not
instinctively lean towards the old conception of one supreme and
ultimate essence as the source from which all things proceed and
have proceeded, both now and ever?  The most striking and apparently
most stable theory of the last quarter of a century had been Sir
William Grove's theory of the conservation of energy; and yet
wherein is there any substantial difference between this recent
outcome of modern amateur, and hence most sincere, science--pointing
as it does to an imperishable, and as such unchangeable, and as
such, again, for ever unknowable underlying substance the modes of
which alone change--wherein, except in mere verbal costume, does
this differ from the conclusions arrived at by the psalmist?

"Of old," he exclaims, "hast Thou laid the foundation of the earth;
and the heavens are the work of Thy hands.  They shall perish, but
Thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as
a vesture shalt Thou change them and they shall be changed; but Thou
art the same, and Thy years shall have no end." {135a}

I know not what theologians may think of this passage, but from a
scientific point of view it is unassailable.  So again, "O Lord," he
exclaims, "Thou hast searched me out, and known me:  Thou knowest my
down-sitting and mine up-rising; Thou understandest my thoughts long
before.  Thou art about my path, and about my bed:  and spiest out
all my ways.  For lo, there is not a word in my tongue but Thou, O
Lord, knowest it altogether . . . Whither shall I go, then, from Thy
Spirit?  Or whither shall I go, then, from Thy presence?  If I climb
up into heaven Thou art there:  if I go down to hell, Thou art there
also.  If I take the wings of the morning, and remain in the
uttermost parts of the sea, even there also shall Thy hand lead me
and Thy right hand shall hold me.  If I say, Peradventure the
darkness shall cover me, then shall my night be turned to day.  Yea,
the darkness is no darkness with Thee, but . . . the darkness and
light to Thee are both alike." {136a}

What convention or short cut can symbolise for us the results of
laboured and complicated chains of reasoning or bring them more
aptly and concisely home to us than the one supplied long since by
the word God?  What can approach more nearly to a rendering of that
which cannot be rendered--the idea of an essence omnipresent in all
things at all times everywhere in sky and earth and sea; ever
changing, yet the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; the
ineffable contradiction in terms whose presence none can either ever
enter, or ever escape?  Or rather, what convention would have been
more apt if it had not been lost sight of as a convention and come
to be regarded as an idea in actual correspondence with a more or
less knowable reality?  A convention was converted into a fetish,
and now that its worthlessness as a fetish is being generally felt,
its great value as a hieroglyph or convention is in danger of being
lost sight of.  No doubt the psalmist was seeking for Sir William
Grove's conception, if haply he might feel after it and find it, and
assuredly it is not far from every one of us.  But the course of
true philosophy never did run smooth; no sooner have we fairly
grasped the conception of a single eternal and for ever unknowable
underlying substance, then we are faced by mind and matter.  Long-
standing ideas and current language alike lead us to see these as
distinct things--mind being still commonly regarded as something
that acts on body from without as the wind blows upon a leaf, and as
no less an actual entity than the body.  Neither body nor mind seems
less essential to our existence than the other; not only do we feel
this as regards our own existence, but we feel it also as pervading
the whole world of life; everywhere we see body and mind working
together towards results that must be ascribed equally to both; but
they are two, not one; if, then, we are to have our monistic
conception, it would seem as though one of these must yield to the
other; which, therefore, is it to be?

This is a very old question.  Some, from time immemorial, have tried
to get rid of matter by reducing it to a mere concept of the mind,
and their followers have arrived at conclusions that may be
logically irrefragable, but are as far removed from common sense as
they are in accord with logic; at any rate they have failed to
satisfy, and matter is no nearer being got rid of now than it was
when the discussion first began.  Others, again, have tried
materialism, have declared the causative action of both thought and
feeling to be deceptive, and posit matter obeying fixed laws of
which thought and feeling must be admitted as concomitants, but with
which they have no causal connection.  The same thing has happened
to these men as to their opponents; they made out an excellent case
on paper, but thought and feeling still remain the mainsprings of
action that they have been always held to be.  We still say, "I gave
him 5 pounds because I felt pleased with him, and thought he would
like it;" or, "I knocked him down because I felt angry, and thought
I would teach him better manners."  Omnipresent life and mind with
appearances of brute non-livingness--which appearances are
deceptive; this is one view.  Omnipresent non-livingness or
mechanism with appearances as though the mechanism were guided and
controlled by thought--which appearances are deceptive; this is the
other.  Between these two views the slaves of logic have oscillated
for centuries, and to all appearance will continue to oscillate for
centuries more.

People who think--as against those who feel and act--want hard and
fast lines--without which, indeed, they cannot think at all; these
lines are as it were steps cut on a slope of ice without which there
would be no descending it.  When we have begun to travel the
downward path of thought, we ask ourselves questions about life and
death, ego and non ego, object and subject, necessity and free will,
and other kindred subjects.  We want to know where we are, and in
the hope of simplifying matters, strip, as it were, each subject to
the skin, and finding that even this has not freed it from all
extraneous matter, flay it alive in the hope that if we grub down
deep enough we shall come upon it in its pure unalloyed state free
from all inconvenient complication through intermixture with
anything alien to itself.  Then, indeed, we can docket it, and
pigeon-hole it for what it is; but what can we do with it till we
have got it pure?  We want to account for things, which means that
we want to know to which of the various accounts opened in our
mental ledger we ought to carry them--and how can we do this if we
admit a phenomenon to be neither one thing nor the other, but to
belong to half-a-dozen different accounts in proportions which often
cannot even approximately be determined?  If we are to keep accounts
we must keep them in reasonable compass; and if keeping them within
reasonable compass involves something of a Procrustean arrangement,
we may regret it, but cannot help it; having set up as thinkers we
have got to think, and must adhere to the only conditions under
which thought is possible; life, therefore, must be life, all life,
and nothing but life, and so with death, free will, necessity,
design, and everything else.  This, at least, is how philosophers
must think concerning them in theory; in practice, however, not even
John Stuart Mill himself could eliminate all taint of its opposite
from any one of these things, any more than Lady Macbeth could clear
her hand of blood; indeed, the more nearly we think we have
succeeded the more certain are we to find ourselves ere long mocked
and baffled; and this, I take it, is what our biologists began in
the autumn of 1879 to discover had happened to themselves.

For some years they had been trying to get rid of feeling,
consciousness, and mind generally, from active participation in the
evolution of the universe.  They admitted, indeed, that feeling and
consciousness attend the working of the world's gear, as noise
attends the working of a steam-engine, but they would not allow that
consciousness produced more effect in the working of the world than
noise on that of the steam-engine.  Feeling and noise were alike
accidental unessential adjuncts and nothing more.  Incredible as it
may seem to those who are happy enough not to know that this attempt
is an old one, they were trying to reduce the world to the level of
a piece of unerring though sentient mechanism.  Men and animals must
be allowed to feel and even to reflect; this much must be conceded,
but granted that they do, still (so, at least, it was contended) it
has no effect upon the result; it does not matter as far as this is
concerned whether they feel and think or not; everything would go on
exactly as it does and always has done, though neither man nor beast
knew nor felt anything at all.  It is only by maintaining things
like this that people will get pensions out of the British public.

Some such position as this is a sine qua non for the Neo-Darwinistic
doctrine of natural selection, which, as Von Hartmann justly
observes, involves an essentially mechanical mindless conception of
the universe; to natural selection's door, therefore, the blame of
the whole movement in favour of mechanism must be justly laid.  It
was natural that those who had been foremost in preaching mindless
designless luck as the main means of organic modification, should
lend themselves with alacrity to the task of getting rid of thought
and feeling from all share in the direction and governance of the
world.  Professor Huxley, as usual, was among the foremost in this
good work, and whether influenced by Hobbes, or Descartes, or Mr.
Spalding, or even by the machine chapters in "Erewhon" which were
still recent, I do not know, led off with his article "On the
hypothesis that animals are automata" (which it may be observed is
the exact converse of the hypothesis that automata are animated) in
the Fortnightly Review for November 1874.  Professor Huxley did not
say outright that men and women were just as living and just as dead
as their own watches, but this was what his article came to in
substance.  The conclusion arrived at was that animals were
automata; true, they were probably sentient, still they were
automata pure and simple, mere sentient pieces of exceedingly
elaborate clockwork, and nothing more.

"Professor Huxley," says Mr. Romanes, in his Rede Lecture for 1885,
{140a} "argues by way of perfectly logical deduction from this
statement, that thought and feeling have nothing to do with
determining action; they are merely the bye-products of cerebration,
or, as he expresses it, the indices of changes which are going on in
the brain.  Under this view we are all what he terms conscious
automata, or machines which happen, as it were by chance, to be
conscious of some of their own movements.  But the consciousness is
altogether adventitious, and bears the same ineffectual relation to
the activity of the brain as a steam whistle bears to the activity
of a locomotive, or the striking of a clock to the time-keeping
adjustments of the clockwork.  Here, again, we meet with an echo of
Hobbes, who opens his work on the commonwealth with these words:-

"'Nature, the art whereby God hath made and governs the world, is by
the ART of man, as in many other things, in this also imitated, that
it can make an artificial animal.  For seeing life is but a motion
of limbs, the beginning whereof is in the principal part within; why
may we not say that all automata (engines that move themselves by
springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life?  For
what is the HEART but a spring, and the NERVES but so many STRINGS;
and the JOINTS but so many WHEELS giving motion to the whole body,
such as was intended by the artificer?'

"Now this theory of conscious automatism is not merely a legitimate
outcome of the theory that nervous changes are the causes of mental
changes, but it is logically the only possible outcome.  Nor do I
see any way in which this theory can be fought on grounds of
physiology."

In passing, I may say the theory that living beings are conscious
machines, can be fought just as much and just as little as the
theory that machines are unconscious living beings; everything that
goes to prove either of these propositions goes just as well to
prove the other also.  But I have perhaps already said as much as is
necessary on this head; the main point with which I am concerned is
the fact that Professor Huxley was trying to expel consciousness and
sentience from any causative action in the working of the universe.
In the following month appeared the late Professor Clifford's hardly
less outspoken article, "Body and Mind," to the same effect, also in
the Fortnightly Review, then edited by Mr. John Morley.  Perhaps
this view attained its frankest expression in an article by the late
Mr. Spalding, which appeared in Nature, August 2, 1877; the
following extracts will show that Mr. Spalding must be credited with
not playing fast and loose with his own conclusions, and knew both
how to think a thing out to its extreme consequences, and how to put
those consequences clearly before his readers.  Mr. Spalding said:-

"Against Mr. Lewes's proposition that the movements of living beings
are prompted and guided by feeling, I urged that the amount and
direction of every nervous discharge must depend solely on physical
conditions.  And I contended that to see this clearly is to see that
when we speak of movement being guided by feeling, we use the
language of a less advanced stage of enlightenment.  This view has
since occupied a good deal of attention.  Under the name of
automatism it has been advocated by Professor Huxley, and with
firmer logic by Professor Clifford.  In the minds of our savage
ancestors feeling was the source of all movement . . . Using the
word feeling in its ordinary sense . . . WE ASSERT NOT ONLY THAT NO
EVIDENCE CAN BE GIVEN THAT FEELING EVER DOES GUIDE OR PROMPT ACTION,
BUT THAT THE PROCESS OF ITS DOING SO IS INCONCEIVABLE.  (Italics
mine.)  How can we picture to ourselves a state of consciousness
putting in motion any particle of matter, large or small?  Puss,
while dozing before the fire, hears a light rustle in the corner,
and darts towards the spot.  What has happened?  Certain sound-waves
have reached the ear, a series of physical changes have taken place
within the organism, special groups of muscles have been called into
play, and the body of the cat has changed its position on the floor.
Is it asserted that this chain of physical changes is not at all
points complete and sufficient in itself?"

I have been led to turn to this article of Mr. Spalding's by Mr.
Stewart Duncan, who, in his "Conscious Matter," {142a} quotes the
latter part of the foregoing extract.  Mr. Duncan goes on to quote
passages from Professor Tyndall's utterances of about the same date
which show that he too took much the same line--namely, that there
is no causative connection between mental and physical processes;
from this it is obvious he must have supposed that physical
processes would go on just as well if there were no accompaniment of
feeling and consciousness at all.

I have said enough to show that in the decade, roughly, between 1870
and 1880 the set of opinion among our leading biologists was
strongly against mind, as having in any way influenced the
development of animal and vegetable life, and it is not likely to be
denied that the prominence which the mindless theory of natural
selection had assumed in men's thoughts since 1860 was one of the
chief reasons, if not the chief, for the turn opinion was taking.
Our leading biologists had staked so heavily upon natural selection
from among fortuitous variations that they would have been more than
human if they had not caught at everything that seemed to give it
colour and support.  It was while this mechanical fit was upon them,
and in the closest connection with it, that the protoplasm boom
developed.  It was doubtless felt that if the public could be got to
dislodge life, consciousness, and mind from any considerable part of
the body, it would be no hard matter to dislodge it, presently, from
the remainder; on this the deceptiveness of mind as a causative
agent, and the sufficiency of a purely automatic conception of the
universe, as of something that will work if a penny be dropped into
the box, would be proved to demonstration.  It would be proved from
the side of mind by considerations derivable from automatic and
unconscious action where mind ex hypothesi was not, but where action
went on as well or better without it than with it; it would be
proved from the side of body by what they would doubtless call the
"most careful and exhaustive" examination of the body itself by the
aid of appliances more ample than had ever before been within the
reach of man.

This was all very well, but for its success one thing was a sine qua
non--I mean the dislodgment must be thorough; the key must be got
clean of even the smallest trace of blood, for unless this could be
done all the argument went to the profit not of the mechanism, with
which, for some reason or other, they were so much enamoured, but of
the soul and design, the ideas which of all others were most
distasteful to them.  They shut their eyes to this for a long time,
but in the end appear to have seen that if they were in search of an
absolute living and absolute non-living, the path along which they
were travelling would never lead them to it.  They were driving life
up into a corner, but they were not eliminating it, and, moreover,
at the very moment of their thinking they had hedged it in and could
throw their salt upon it, it flew mockingly over their heads and
perched upon the place of all others where they were most
scandalised to see it--I mean upon machines in use.  So they retired
sulkily to their tents baffled but not ashamed.


Some months subsequent to the completion of the foregoing chapter,
and indeed just as this book is on the point of leaving my hands,
there appears in Nature {144a} a letter from the Duke of Argyll,
which shows that he too is impressed with the conviction expressed
above--I mean that the real object our men of science have lately
had in view has been the getting rid of mind from among the causes
of evolution.  The Duke says:-

"The violence with which false interpretations were put upon this
theory (natural selection) and a function was assigned to it which
it could never fulfil, will some day be recognised as one of the
least creditable episodes in the history of science.  With a curious
perversity it was the weakest elements in the theory which were
seized upon as the most valuable, particularly the part assigned to
blind chance in the occurrence of variations.  This was valued not
for its scientific truth,--for it could pretend to none,--but
because of its assumed bearing upon another field of thought and the
weapon it afforded for expelling mind from the causes of evolution."

The Duke, speaking of Mr. Herbert Spencer's two articles in the
Nineteenth Century for April and May, 1886, to which I have already
called attention, continues:-

"In these two articles we have for the first time an avowed and
definite declaration against some of the leading ideas on which the
mechanical philosophy depends; and yet the caution, and almost
timidity, with which a man so eminent approaches the announcement of
conclusions of the most self-evident truth is a most curious proof
of the reign of terror which has come to be established."

Against this I must protest; the Duke cannot seriously maintain that
the main scope and purpose of Mr. Herbert Spencer's articles is new.
Their substance has been before us in Mr. Spencer's own writings for
some two-and-twenty years, in the course of which Mr. Spencer has
been followed by Professor Mivart, the Rev. J. J. Murphy, the Duke
of Argyll himself, and many other writers of less note.  When the
Duke talks about the establishment of a scientific reign of terror,
I confess I regard such an exaggeration with something like
impatience.  Any one who has known his own mind and has had the
courage of his opinions has been able to say whatever he wanted to
say with as little let or hindrance during the last twenty years, as
during any other period in the history of literature.  Of course, if
a man will keep blurting out unpopular truths without considering
whose toes he may or may not be treading on, he will make enemies
some of whom will doubtless be able to give effect to their
displeasure; but that is part of the game.  It is hardly possible
for any one to oppose the fallacy involved in the Charles-Darwinian
theory of natural selection more persistently and unsparingly than I
have done myself from the year 1877 onwards; naturally I have at
times been very angrily attacked in consequence, and as a matter of
business have made myself as unpleasant as I could in my rejoinders,
but I cannot remember anything having been ever attempted against me
which could cause fear in any ordinarily constituted person.  If,
then, the Duke of Argyll is right in saying that Mr. Spencer has
shown a caution almost amounting to timidity in attacking Mr.
Darwin's theory, either Mr. Spencer must be a singularly timid
person, or there must be some cause for his timidity which is not
immediately obvious.  If terror reigns anywhere among scientific
men, I should say it reigned among those who have staked imprudently
on Mr. Darwin's reputation as a philosopher.  I may add that the
discovery of the Duke's impression that there exists a scientific
reign of terror, explains a good deal in his writings which it has
not been easy to understand hitherto.

As regards the theory of natural selection, the Duke says:-

"From the first discussions which arose on this subject, I have
ventured to maintain that . . . the phrase 'natural-selection'
represented no true physical cause, still less the complete set of
causes requisite to account for the orderly procession of organic
forms in Nature; that in so far as it assumed variations to arise by
accident it was not only essentially faulty and incomplete, but
fundamentally erroneous; in short, that its only value lay in the
convenience with which it groups under one form of words, highly
charged with metaphor, an immense variety of causes, some purely
mental, some purely vital, and others purely physical or
mechanical."



CHAPTER XI--The Way of Escape



To sum up the conclusions hitherto arrived at.  Our philosophers
have made the mistake of forgetting that they cannot carry the
rough-and-ready language of common sense into precincts within which
politeness and philosophy are supreme.  Common sense sees life and
death as distinct states having nothing in common, and hence in all
respects the antitheses of one another; so that with common sense
there should be no degrees of livingness, but if a thing is alive at
all it is as much alive as the most living of us, and if dead at all
it is stone dead in every part of it.  Our philosophers have
exercised too little consideration in retaining this view of the
matter.  They say that an amoeba is as much a living being as a man
is, and do not allow that a well-grown, highly educated man in
robust health is more living than an idiot cripple.  They say he
differs from the cripple in many important respects, but not in
degree of livingness.  Yet, as we have seen already, even common
sense by using the word "dying" admits degrees of life; that is to
say, it admits a more and a less; those, then, for whom the
superficial aspects of things are insufficient should surely find no
difficulty in admitting that the degrees are more numerous than is
dreamed of in the somewhat limited philosophy which common sense
alone knows.  Livingness depends on range of power, versatility,
wealth of body and mind--how often, indeed, do we not see people
taking a new lease of life when they have come into money even at an
advanced age; it varies as these vary, beginning with things that,
though they have mind enough for an outsider to swear by, can hardly
be said to have yet found it out themselves, and advancing to those
that know their own minds as fully as anything in this world does
so.  The more a thing knows its own mind the more living it becomes,
for life viewed both in the individual and in the general as the
outcome of accumulated developments, is one long process of
specialising consciousness and sensation; that is to say, of getting
to know one's own mind more and more fully upon a greater and
greater variety of subjects.  On this I hope to touch more fully in
another book; in the meantime I would repeat that the error of our
philosophers consists in not having borne in mind that when they
quitted the ground on which common sense can claim authority, they
should have reconsidered everything that common sense had taught
them.

The votaries of common sense make the same mistake as philosophers
do, but they make it in another way.  Philosophers try to make the
language of common sense serve for purposes of philosophy,
forgetting that they are in another world, in which another tongue
is current; common sense people, on the other hand, every now and
then attempt to deal with matters alien to the routine of daily
life.  The boundaries between the two kingdoms being very badly
defined, it is only by giving them a wide berth and being so
philosophical as almost to deny that there is any either life or
death at all, or else so full of common sense as to refuse to see
one part of the body as less living than another, that we can hope
to steer clear of doubt, inconsistency, and contradiction in terms
in almost every other word we utter.  We cannot serve the God of
philosophy and the Mammon of common sense at one and the same time,
and yet it would almost seem as though the making the best that can
be made of both these worlds were the whole duty of organism.

It is easy to understand how the error of philosophers arose, for,
slaves of habit as we all are, we are more especially slaves when
the habit is one that has not been found troublesome.  There is no
denying that it saves trouble to have things either one thing or the
other, and indeed for all the common purposes of life if a thing is
either alive or dead the small supplementary residue of the opposite
state should be neglected as too small to be observable.  If it is
good to eat we have no difficulty in knowing when it is dead enough
to be eaten; if not good to eat, but valuable for its skin, we know
when it is dead enough to be skinned with impunity; if it is a man,
we know when he has presented enough of the phenomena of death to
allow of our burying him and administering his estate; in fact, I
cannot call to mind any case in which the decision of the question
whether man or beast is alive or dead is frequently found to be
perplexing; hence we have become so accustomed to think there can be
no admixture of the two states, that we have found it almost
impossible to avoid carrying this crude view of life and death into
domains of thought in which it has no application.  There can be no
doubt that when accuracy is required we should see life and death
not as fundamentally opposed, but as supplementary to one another,
without either's being ever able to exclude the other altogether;
thus we should indeed see some things as more living than others,
but we should see nothing as either unalloyedly living or
unalloyedly non-living.  If a thing is living, it is so living that
it has one foot in the grave already; if dead, it is dead as a thing
that has already re-entered into the womb of Nature.  And within the
residue of life that is in the dead there is an element of death;
and within this there is an element of life, and so ad infinitum--
again, as reflections in two mirrors that face one another.

In brief, there is nothing in life of which there are not germs,
and, so to speak, harmonics in death, and nothing in death of which
germs and harmonics may not be found in life.  Each emphasizes what
the other passes over most lightly--each carries to its extreme
conceivable development that which in the other is only sketched in
by a faint suggestion--but neither has any feature rigorously
special to itself.  Granted that death is a greater new departure in
an organism's life, than any since that congeries of births and
deaths to which the name embryonic stages is commonly given, still
it is a new departure of the same essential character as any other--
that is to say, though there be much new there is much, not to say
more, old along with it.  We shrink from it as from any other change
to the unknown, and also perhaps from an instinctive sense that the
fear of death is a sine qua non for physical and moral progress, but
the fear is like all else in life, a substantial thing which, if its
foundations be dug about, is found to rest on a superstitious basis.

Where, and on what principle, are the dividing lines between living
and non-living to be drawn?  All attempts to draw them hitherto have
ended in deadlock and disaster; of this M. Vianna De Lima, in his
"Expose Sommaire des Theories transformistes de Lamarck, Darwin, et
Haeckel," {150a} says that all attempts to trace une ligne de
demarcation nette et profonde entre la matiere vivante et la matiere
inerte have broken down. {150b}  Il y a un reste de vie dans le
cadavre, says Diderot, {150c} speaking of the more gradual decay of
the body after an easy natural death, than after a sudden and
violent one; and so Buffon begins his first volume by saying that
"we can descend, by almost imperceptible degrees, from the most
perfect creature to the most formless matter--from the most highly
organised matter to the most entirely inorganic substance." {150d}

Is the line to be so drawn as to admit any of the non-living within
the body?  If we answer "yes," then, as we have seen, moiety after
moiety is filched from us, till we find ourselves left face to face
with a tenuous quasi immaterial vital principle or soul as animating
an alien body, with which it not only has no essential underlying
community of substance, but with which it has no conceivable point
in common to render a union between the two possible, or give the
one a grip of any kind over the other; in fact, the doctrine of
disembodied spirits, so instinctively rejected by all who need be
listened to, comes back as it would seem, with a scientific
imprimatur; if, on the other hand, we exclude the non-living from
the body, then what are we to do with nails that want cutting, dying
skin, or hair that is ready to fall off?  Are they less living than
brain?  Answer "yes," and degrees are admitted, which we have
already seen prove fatal; answer "no," and we must deny that one
part of the body is more vital than another--and this is refusing to
go as far even as common sense does; answer that these things are
not very important, and we quit the ground of equity and high
philosophy on which we have given ourselves such airs, and go back
to common sense as unjust judges that will hear those widows only
who importune us.

As with the non-living so also with the living.  Are we to let it
pass beyond the limits of the body, and allow a certain temporary
overflow of livingness to ordain as it were machines in use?  Then
death will fare, if we once let life without the body, as life fares
if we once let death within it.  It becomes swallowed up in life,
just as in the other case life was swallowed up in death.  Are we to
confine it to the body?  If so, to the whole body, or to parts?  And
if to parts, to what parts, and why?  The only way out of the
difficulty is to rehabilitate contradiction in terms, and say that
everything is both alive and dead at one and the same time--some
things being much living and little dead, and others, again, much
dead and little living.  Having done this we have only got to settle
what a thing is--when a thing is a thing pure and simple, and when
it is only a congeries of things--and we shall doubtless then live
very happily and very philosophically ever afterwards.

But here another difficulty faces us.  Common sense does indeed know
what is meant by a "thing" or "an individual," but philosophy cannot
settle either of these two points.  Professor Mivart made the
question "What are Living Beings?" the subject of an article in one
of our leading magazines only a very few years ago.  He asked, but
he did not answer.  And so Professor Moseley was reported (Times,
January 16, 1885) as having said that it was "almost impossible" to
say what an individual was.  Surely if it is only "almost"
impossible for philosophy to determine this, Professor Moseley
should have at any rate tried to do it; if, however, he had tried
and failed, which from my own experience I should think most likely,
he might have spared his "almost."  "Almost" is a very dangerous
word.  I once heard a man say that an escape he had had from
drowning was "almost" providential.  The difficulty about defining
an individual arises from the fact that we may look at "almost"
everything from two different points of view.  If we are in a
common-sense humour for simplifying things, treating them broadly,
and emphasizing resemblances rather than differences, we can find
excellent reasons for ignoring recognised lines of demarcation,
calling everything by a new name, and unifying up till we have
united the two most distant stars in heaven as meeting and being
linked together in the eyes and souls of men; if we are in this
humour individuality after individuality disappears, and ere long,
if we are consistent, nothing will remain but one universal whole,
one true and only atom from which alone nothing can be cut off and
thrown away on to something else; if, on the other hand, we are in a
subtle philosophically accurate humour for straining at gnats and
emphasizing differences rather than resemblances, we can draw
distinctions, and give reasons for subdividing and subdividing,
till, unless we violate what we choose to call our consistency
somewhere, we shall find ourselves with as many names as atoms and
possible combinations and permutations of atoms.  The lines we draw,
the moments we choose for cutting this or that off at this or that
place, and thenceforth the dubbing it by another name, are as
arbitrary as the moments chosen by a South-Eastern Railway porter
for leaving off beating doormats; in each case doubtless there is an
approximate equity, but it is of a very rough and ready kind.

What else, however, can we do?  We can only escape the Scylla of
calling everything by one name, and recognising no individual
existences of any kind, by falling into the Charybdis of having a
name for everything, or by some piece of intellectual sharp practice
like that of the shrewd but unprincipled Ulysses.  If we were
consistent honourable gentlemen, into Charybdis or on to Scylla we
should go like lambs; every subterfuge by the help of which we
escape our difficulty is but an arbitrary high-handed act of
classification that turns a deaf ear to everything not robust enough
to hold its own; nevertheless even the most scrupulous of
philosophers pockets his consistency at a pinch, and refuses to let
the native hue of resolution be sicklied o'er with the pale cast of
thought, nor yet fobbed by the rusty curb of logic.  He is right,
for assuredly the poor intellectual abuses of the time want
countenancing now as much as ever, but so far as he countenances
them, he should bear in mind that he is returning to the ground of
common sense, and should not therefore hold himself too stiffly in
the matter of logic.

As with life and death so with design and absence of design or luck.
So also with union and disunion.  There is never either absolute
design rigorously pervading every detail, nor yet absolute absence
of design pervading any detail rigorously, so, as between
substances, there is neither absolute union and homogeneity, not
absolute disunion and heterogeneity; there is always a little place
left for repentance; that is to say, in theory we should admit that
both design and chance, however well defined, each have an aroma, as
it were, of the other.  Who can think of a case in which his own
design--about which he should know more than any other, and from
which, indeed, all his ideas of design are derived--was so complete
that there was no chance in any part of it?  Who, again, can bring
forward a case even of the purest chance or good luck into which no
element of design had entered directly or indirectly at any
juncture?  This, nevertheless, does not involve our being unable
ever to ascribe a result baldly either to luck or cunning.  In some
cases a decided preponderance of the action, whether seen as a whole
or looked at in detail, is recognised at once as due to design,
purpose, forethought, skill, and effort, and then we properly
disregard the undesigned element; in others the details cannot
without violence be connected with design, however much the position
which rendered the main action possible may involve design--as, for
example, there is no design in the way in which individual pieces of
coal may hit one another when shot out of a sack, but there may be
design in the sack's being brought to the particular place where it
is emptied; in others design may be so hard to find that we rightly
deny its existence, nevertheless in each case there will be an
element of the opposite, and the residuary element would, if seen
through a mental microscope, be found to contain a residuary element
of ITS opposite, and this again of ITS opposite, and so on ad
infinitum, as with mirrors standing face to face.  This having been
explained, and it being understood that when we speak of design in
organism we do so with a mental reserve of exceptis excipiendis,
there should be no hesitation in holding the various modifications
of plants and animals to be in such preponderating measure due to
function, that design, which underlies function, is the fittest idea
with which to connect them in our minds.

We will now proceed to inquire how Mr. Darwin came to substitute, or
try to substitute, the survival of the luckiest fittest, for the
survival of the most cunning fittest, as held by Erasmus Darwin and
Lamarck; or more briefly how he came to substitute luck for cunning.



CHAPTER XII--Why Darwin's Variations were Accidental



Some may perhaps deny that Mr. Darwin did this, and say he laid so
much stress on use and disuse as virtually to make function his main
factor of evolution.

If, indeed, we confine ourselves to isolated passages, we shall find
little difficulty in making out a strong case to this effect.
Certainly most people believe this to be Mr. Darwin's doctrine, and
considering how long and fully he had the ear of the public, it is
not likely they would think thus if Mr. Darwin had willed otherwise,
nor could he have induced them to think as they do if he had not
said a good deal that was capable of the construction so commonly
put upon it; but it is hardly necessary, when addressing biologists,
to insist on the fact that Mr. Darwin's distinctive doctrine is the
denial of the comparative importance of function, or use and disuse,
as a purveyor of variations,--with some, but not very considerable,
exceptions, chiefly in the cases of domesticated animals.

He did not, however, make his distinctive feature as distinct as he
should have done.  Sometimes he said one thing, and sometimes the
directly opposite.  Sometimes, for example, the conditions of
existence "included natural selection" or the fact that the best
adapted to their surroundings live longest and leave most offspring;
{156a} sometimes "the principle of natural selection" "fully
embraced" "the expression of conditions of existence." {156b}  It
would not be easy to find more unsatisfactory writing than this is,
nor any more clearly indicating a mind ill at ease with itself.
Sometimes "ants work BY INHERITED INSTINCTS and inherited tools;"
{157a} sometimes, again, it is surprising that the case of ants
working by inherited instincts has not been brought as a
demonstrative argument "against the well-known doctrine of INHERITED
HABIT, as advanced by Lamarck." {157b}  Sometimes the winglessness
of beetles inhabiting ocean islands is "mainly due to natural
selection," {157c} and though we might be tempted to ascribe the
rudimentary condition of the wing to disuse, we are on no account to
do so--though disuse was probably to some extent "combined with"
natural selection; at other times "it is probable that disuse has
been the main means of rendering the wings of beetles living on
small exposed islands" rudimentary. {157d}  We may remark in passing
that if disuse, as Mr. Darwin admits on this occasion, is the main
agent in rendering an organ rudimentary, use should have been the
main agent in rendering it the opposite of rudimentary--that is to
say, in bringing about its development.  The ostensible raison
d'etre, however, of the "Origin of Species" is to maintain that this
is not the case.

There is hardly an opinion on the subject of descent with
modification which does not find support in some one passage or
another of the "Origin of Species."  If it were desired to show that
there is no substantial difference between the doctrine of Erasmus
Darwin and that of his grandson, it would be easy to make out a good
case for this, in spite of Mr. Darwin's calling his grandfather's
views "erroneous," in the historical sketch prefixed to the later
editions of the "Origin of Species."  Passing over the passage
already quoted on p. 62 of this book, in which Mr. Darwin declares
"habit omnipotent and its effects hereditary"--a sentence, by the
way, than which none can be either more unfalteringly Lamarckian or
less tainted with the vices of Mr. Darwin's later style--passing
this over as having been written some twenty years before the
"Origin of Species"--the last paragraph of the "Origin of Species"
itself is purely Lamarckian and Erasmus-Darwinian.  It declares the
laws in accordance with which organic forms assumed their present
shape to be--"Growth with reproduction; Variability from the
indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life and
from use and disuse, &c." {158a}  Wherein does this differ from the
confession of faith made by Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck?  Where are
the accidental fortuitous, spontaneous variations now?  And if they
are not found important enough to demand mention in this peroration
and stretto, as it were, of the whole matter, in which special
prominence should be given to the special feature of the work, where
ought they to be made important?

Mr. Darwin immediately goes on:  "A ratio of existence so high as to
lead to a struggle for life, and as a consequence to natural
selection, entailing divergence of character and the extinction of
less improved forms;" so that natural selection turns up after all.
Yes--in the letters that compose it, but not in the spirit; not in
the special sense up to this time attached to it in the "Origin of
Species."  The expression as used here is one with which Erasmus
Darwin would have found little fault, for it means not as elsewhere
in Mr. Darwin's book and on his title-page the preservation of
"favoured" or lucky varieties, but the preservation of varieties
that have come to be varieties through the causes assigned in the
preceding two or three lines of Mr. Darwin's sentence; and these are
mainly functional or Erasmus-Darwinian; for the indirect action of
the conditions of life is mainly functional, and the direct action
is admitted on all hands to be but small.

It now appears more plainly, as insisted upon on an earlier page,
that there is not one natural selection and one survival of the
fittest, but two, inasmuch as there are two classes of variations
from which nature (supposing no exception taken to her
personification) can select.  The bottles have the same labels, and
they are of the same colour, but the one holds brandy, and the other
toast and water.  Nature can, by a figure of speech, be said to
select from variations that are mainly functional or from variations
that are mainly accidental; in the first case she will eventually
get an accumulation of variation, and widely different types will
come into existence; in the second, the variations will not occur
with sufficient steadiness for accumulation to be possible.  In the
body of Mr. Darwin's book the variations are supposed to be mainly
due to accident, and function, though not denied all efficacy, is
declared to be the greatly subordinate factor; natural selection,
therefore, has been hitherto throughout tantamount to luck; in the
peroration the position is reversed in toto; the selection is now
made from variations into which luck has entered so little that it
may be neglected, the greatly preponderating factor being function;
here, then, natural selection is tantamount to cunning.  We are such
slaves of words that, seeing the words "natural selection" employed-
-and forgetting that the results ensuing on natural selection will
depend entirely on what it is that is selected from, so that the
gist of the matter lies in this and not in the words "natural
selection"--it escaped us that a change of front had been made, and
a conclusion entirely alien to the tenor of the whole book smuggled
into the last paragraph as the one which it had been written to
support; the book preached luck, the peroration cunning.

And there can be no doubt Mr. Darwin intended that the change of
front should escape us; for it cannot be believed that he did not
perfectly well know what he had done.  Mr. Darwin edited and re-
edited with such minuteness of revision that it may be said no
detail escaped him provided it was small enough; it is incredible
that he should have allowed this paragraph to remain from first to
last unchanged (except for the introduction of the words "by the
Creator," which are wanting in the first edition) if they did not
convey the conception he most wished his readers to retain.  Even if
in his first edition he had failed to see that he was abandoning in
his last paragraph all that it had been his ostensible object most
especially to support in the body of his book, he must have become
aware of it long before he revised the "Origin of Species" for the
last time; still he never altered it, and never put us on our guard.

It was not Mr. Darwin's manner to put his reader on his guard; we
might as well expect Mr. Gladstone to put us on our guard about the
Irish land bills.  Caveat lector seems to have been his motto.  Mr.
Spencer, in the articles already referred to, is at pains to show
that Mr. Darwin's opinions in later life underwent a change in the
direction of laying greater stress on functionally produced
modifications, and points out that in the sixth edition of the
"Origin of Species" Mr. Darwin says, "I think there can be no doubt
that use in our domestic animals has strengthened and enlarged
certain parts, and disuse diminished them;" whereas in his first
edition he said, "I think there can be LITTLE doubt" of this.  Mr.
Spencer also quotes a passage from "The Descent of Man," in which
Mr. Darwin said that EVEN IN THE FIRST EDITION of the "Origin of
Species" he had attributed great effect to function, as though in
the later ones he had attributed still more; but if there was any
considerable change of position, it should not have been left to be
toilsomely collected by collation of editions, and comparison of
passages far removed from one another in other books.  If his mind
had undergone the modification supposed by Mr. Spencer, Mr. Darwin
should have said so in a prominent passage of some later edition of
the "Origin of Species."  He should have said--"In my earlier
editions I underrated, as now seems probable, the effects of use and
disuse as purveyors of the slight successive modifications whose
accumulation in the ordinary course of things results in specific
difference, and I laid too much stress on the accumulation of merely
accidental variations;" having said this, he should have summarised
the reasons that had made him change his mind, and given a list of
the most important cases in which he has seen fit to alter what he
had originally written.  If Mr. Darwin had dealt thus with us we
should have readily condoned all the mistakes he would have been at
all likely to have made, for we should have known him as one who was
trying to help us, tidy us up, keep us straight, and enable us to
use our judgments to the best advantage.  The public will forgive
many errors alike of taste and judgment, where it feels that a
writer persistently desires this.

I can only remember a couple of sentences in the later editions of
the "Origin of Species" in which Mr. Darwin directly admits a change
of opinion as regards the main causes of organic modification.  How
shuffling the first of these is I have already shown in "Life and
Habit," p. 260, and in "Evolution, Old and New," p. 359; I need not,
therefore, say more here, especially as there has been no rejoinder
to what I then said.  Curiously enough the sentence does not bear
out Mr. Spencer's contention that Mr. Darwin in his later years
leaned more decidedly towards functionally produced modifications,
for it runs:  {161a}--"In the earlier editions of this work I
underrated, as now seems probable, the frequency and importance of
modifications due," not, as Mr. Spencer would have us believe, to
use and disuse, but "to spontaneous variability," by which can only
be intended, "to variations in no way connected with use and
disuse," as not being assignable to any known cause of general
application, and referable as far as we are concerned to accident
only; so that he gives the natural survival of the luckiest, which
is indeed his distinctive feature, if it deserve to be called a
feature at all, greater prominence than ever.  Nevertheless there is
no change in his concluding paragraph, which still remains an
embodiment of the views of Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck.

The other passage is on p. 421 of the edition of 1876.  It stands:-
"I have now recapitulated the facts and considerations which have
thoroughly" (why "thoroughly"?) "convinced me that species have been
modified during a long course of descent.  This has been effected
chiefly through the natural selection of numerous, successive,
slight, favourable variations; aided in an important manner by the
inherited effects of the use and disuse of parts; and in an
unimportant manner, that is, in relation to adaptive structures,
whether past or present, by the direct action of external
conditions, and by variations which seem to us in our ignorance to
arise spontaneously.  It appears that I formerly underrated the
frequency and value of these latter forms of variation as leading to
permanent modifications of structure independently of natural
selection."

Here, again, it is not use and disuse which Mr. Darwin declares
himself to have undervalued, but spontaneous variations.  The
sentence just given is one of the most confusing I ever read even in
the works of Mr Darwin.  It is the essence of his theory that the
"numerous successive, slight, favourable variations," above referred
to, should be fortuitous, accidental, spontaneous; it is evident,
moreover, that they are intended in this passage to be accidental or
spontaneous, although neither of these words is employed, inasmuch
as use and disuse and the action of the conditions of existence,
whether direct or indirect, are mentioned specially as separate
causes which purvey only the minor part of the variations from among
which nature selects.  The words "that is, in relation to adaptive
forms" should be omitted, as surplusage that draws the reader's
attention from the point at issue; the sentence really amounts to
this--that modification has been effected CHIEFLY THROUGH SELECTION
in the ordinary course of nature FROM AMONG SPONTANEOUS VARIATIONS,
AIDED IN AN UNIMPORTANT MANNER BY VARIATIONS WHICH QUa US ARE
SPONTANEOUS.  Nevertheless, though these spontaneous variations are
still so trifling in effect that they only aid spontaneous
variations in an unimportant manner, in his earlier editions Mr.
Darwin thought them still less important than he does now.

This comes of tinkering.  We do not know whether we are on our heads
or our heels.  We catch ourselves repeating "important,"
"unimportant," "unimportant," "important," like the King when
addressing the jury in "Alice in Wonderland;" and yet this is the
book of which Mr. Grant Allen {163a} says that it is "one of the
greatest, and most learned, the most lucid, the most logical, the
most crushing, the most conclusive, that the world has ever seen.
Step by step, and principle by principle, it proved every point in
its progress triumphantly before it went on to the next.  So vast an
array of facts so thoroughly in hand had never before been mustered
and marshalled in favour of any biological theory."  The book and
the eulogy are well mated.

I see that in the paragraph following on the one just quoted, Mr.
Allen says, that "to the world at large Darwinism and evolution
became at once synonymous terms."  Certainly it was no fault of Mr.
Darwin's if they did not, but I will add more on this head
presently; for the moment, returning to Mr. Darwin, it is hardly
credible, but it is nevertheless true, that Mr Darwin begins the
paragraph next following on the one on which I have just reflected
so severely, with the words, "It can hardly be supposed that a false
theory would explain in so satisfactory a manner as does the theory
of natural selection, the several large classes of facts above
specified."  If Mr. Darwin found the large classes of facts
"satisfactorily" explained by the survival of the luckiest
irrespectively of the cunning which enabled them to turn their luck
to account, he must have been easily satisfied.  Perhaps he was in
the same frame of mind as when he said {164a} that "even an
imperfect answer would be satisfactory," but surely this is being
thankful for small mercies.

On the following page Mr. Darwin says:- "Although I am fully" (why
"fully"?) "convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume
under the form of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince
experienced naturalists," &c.  I have not quoted the whole of Mr.
Darwin's sentence, but it implies that any experienced naturalist
who remained unconvinced was an old-fashioned, prejudiced person.  I
confess that this is what I rather feel about the experienced
naturalists who differ in only too great numbers from myself, but I
did not expect to find so much of the old Adam remaining in Mr.
Darwin; I did not expect to find him support me in the belief that
naturalists are made of much the same stuff as other people, and, if
they are wise, will look upon new theories with distrust until they
find them becoming generally accepted.  I am not sure that Mr.
Darwin is not just a little bit flippant here.

Sometimes I ask myself whether it is possible that, not being
convinced, I may be an experienced naturalist after all; at other
times, when I read Mr. Darwin's works and those of his eulogists, I
wonder whether there is not some other Mr. Darwin, some other
"Origin of Species," some other Professors Huxley, Tyndal, and Ray
Lankester, and whether in each case some malicious fiend has not
palmed off a counterfeit upon me that differs toto caelo from the
original.  I felt exactly the same when I read Goethe's "Wilhelm
Meister"; I could not believe my eyes, which nevertheless told me
that the dull diseased trash I was so toilsomely reading was a work
which was commonly held to be one of the great literary masterpieces
of the world.  It seemed to me that there must be some other Goethe
and some other Wilhelm Meister.  Indeed I find myself so
depressingly out of harmony with the prevailing not opinion only,
but spirit--if, indeed, the Huxleys, Tyndals, Miss Buckleys, Ray
Lankesters, and Romaneses express the prevailing spirit as
accurately as they appear to do--that at times I find it difficult
to believe I am not the victim of hallucination; nevertheless I know
that either every canon, whether of criticism or honourable conduct,
which I have learned to respect is an impudent swindle, suitable for
the cloister only, and having no force or application in the outside
world; or else that Mr. Darwin and his supporters are misleading the
public to the full as much as the theologians of whom they speak at
times so disapprovingly.  They sin, moreover, with incomparably less
excuse.  Right as they doubtless are in much, and much as we
doubtless owe them (so we owe much also to the theologians, and they
also are right in much), they are giving way to a temper which
cannot be indulged with impunity.  I know the great power of
academicism; I know how instinctively academicism everywhere must
range itself on Mr. Darwin's side, and how askance it must look on
those who write as I do; but I know also that there is a power
before which even academicism must bow, and to this power I look not
unhopefully for support.

As regards Mr. Spencer's contention that Mr. Darwin leaned more
towards function as he grew older, I do not doubt that at the end of
his life Mr. Darwin believed modification to be mainly due to
function, but the passage quoted on page 62 written in 1839, coupled
with the concluding paragraph of the "Origin of Species" written in
1859, and allowed to stand during seventeen years of revision,
though so much else was altered--these passages, when their dates
and surroundings are considered, suggest strongly that Mr. Darwin
thought during all the forty years or so thus covered exactly as his
grandfather and Lamarck had done, and indeed as all sensible people
since Buffon wrote have done if they have accepted evolution at all.

Then why should he not have said so?  What object could he have in
writing an elaborate work to support a theory which he knew all the
time to be untenable?  The impropriety of such a course, unless the
work was, like Buffon's, transparently ironical, could only be
matched by its fatuousness, or indeed by the folly of one who should
assign action so motiveless to any one out of a lunatic asylum.

This sounds well, but unfortunately we cannot forget that when Mr.
Darwin wrote the "Origin of Species" he claimed to be the originator
of the theory of descent with modification generally; that he did
this without one word of reference either to Buffon or Erasmus
Darwin until the first six thousand copies of his book had been
sold, and then with as meagre, inadequate notice as can be well
conceived.  Lamarck was just named in the first editions of the
"Origin of Species," but only to be told that Mr. Darwin had not got
anything to give him, and he must go away; the author of the
"Vestiges of Creation" was also just mentioned, but only in a
sentence full of such gross misrepresentation that Mr. Darwin did
not venture to stand by it, and expunged it in later editions, as
usual, without calling attention to what he had done.  It would have
been in the highest degree imprudent, not to say impossible, for one
so conscientious as Mr. Darwin to have taken the line he took in
respect of descent with modification generally, if he were not
provided with some ostensibly distinctive feature, in virtue of
which, if people said anything, he might claim to have advanced
something different, and widely different, from the theory of
evolution propounded by his illustrious predecessors; a distinctive
theory of some sort, therefore, had got to be looked for--and if
people look in this spirit they can generally find.

I imagine that Mr. Darwin, casting about for a substantial
difference, and being unable to find one, committed the Gladstonian
blunder of mistaking an unsubstantial for a substantial one.  It was
doubtless because he suspected it that he never took us fully into
his confidence, nor in all probability allowed even to himself how
deeply he distrusted it.  Much, however, as he disliked the
accumulation of accidental variations, he disliked not claiming the
theory of descent with modification still more; and if he was to
claim this, accidental his variations had got to be.  Accidental
they accordingly were, but in as obscure and perfunctory a fashion
as Mr. Darwin could make them consistently with their being to hand
as accidental variations should later developments make this
convenient.  Under these circumstances it was hardly to be expected
that Mr. Darwin should help the reader to follow the workings of his
mind--nor, again, that a book the writer of which was hampered as I
have supposed should prove clear and easy reading.

The attitude of Mr. Darwin's mind, whatever it may have been in
regard to the theory of descent with modification generally, goes so
far to explain his attitude in respect to the theory of natural
selection (which, it cannot be too often repeated, is only one of
the conditions of existence advanced as the main means of
modification by the earlier evolutionists), that it is worth while
to settle the question once for all whether Mr. Darwin did or did
not believe himself justified in claiming the theory of descent as
an original discovery of his own.  This will be a task of some
little length, and may perhaps try the reader's patience, as it
assuredly tried mine; if, however, he will read the two following
chapters, he will probably be able to make up his mind upon much
that will otherwise, if he thinks about it at all, continue to
puzzle him.



CHAPTER XIII--Darwin's Claim to Descent with Modification



Mr. Allen, in his "Charles Darwin," {168a} says that "in the public
mind Mr. Darwin is commonly regarded as the discoverer and founder
of the evolution hypothesis," and on p. 177 he says that to most men
Darwinism and evolution mean one and the same thing.  Mr. Allen
declares misconception on this matter to be "so extremely general"
as to be "almost universal;" this is more true than creditable to
Mr. Darwin.

Mr. Allen says {168b} that though Mr. Darwin gained "far wider
general acceptance" for both the doctrine of descent in general, and
for that of the descent of man from a simious or semi-simious
ancestor in particular, "he laid no sort of claim to originality or
proprietorship in either theory."  This is not the case.  No one can
claim a theory more frequently and more effectually than Mr. Darwin
claimed descent with modification, nor, as I have already said, is
it likely that the misconception of which Mr. Allen complains would
be general, if he had not so claimed it.  The "Origin of Species"
begins:-

"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 relation 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 perhaps
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
upon the subject, and drew up some short notes; these I enlarged in
1844 {169a} 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 I may be excused these personal
details, as I give them to show that I have not been hasty in coming
to a decision."

This is bland, but peremptory.  Mr. Darwin implies that the mere
asking of the question how species has come about opened up a field
into which speculation itself had hardly yet ventured to intrude.
It was the mystery of mysteries; one of our greatest philosophers
had said so; not one little feeble ray of light had ever yet been
thrown upon it.  Mr. Darwin knew all this, and was appalled at the
greatness of the task that lay before him; still, after he had
pondered on what he had seen in South America, it really did occur
to him, that if he was very very patient, and went on reflecting for
years and years longer, upon all sorts of facts, good, bad, and
indifferent, which could possibly have any bearing on the subject--
and what fact might not possibly have some bearing?--well,
something, as against the nothing that had been made out hitherto,
might by some faint far-away possibility be one day dimly seem.  It
was only what he had seen in South America that made all this occur
to him.  He had never seen anything about descent with modification
in any book, nor heard any one talk about it as having been put
forward by other people; if he had, he would, of course, have been
the first to say so; he was not as other philosophers are; so the
mountain went on for years and years gestating, but still there was
no labour.

"My work," continues Mr. Darwin, "is now nearly finished; but as it
will take me two or three years to complete it, and as my health is
far from strong, I have been urged to publish this abstract.  I have
been more especially induced to do this, as Mr. Wallace, who is now
studying the natural history of the Malay Archipelago, has arrived
at almost exactly the same general conclusions that I have on the
origin of species."  Mr. Darwin was naturally anxious to forestall
Mr. Wallace, and hurried up with his book.  What reader, on finding
descent with modification to be its most prominent feature, could
doubt--especially if new to the subject, as the greater number of
Mr. Darwin's readers in 1859 were--that this same descent with
modification was the theory which Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace had
jointly hit upon, and which Mr. Darwin was so anxious to show that
he had not been hasty in adopting?  When Mr. Darwin went on to say
that his abstract would be very imperfect, and that he could not
give references and authorities for his several statements, we did
not suppose that such an apology could be meant to cover silence
concerning writers who during their whole lives, or nearly so, had
borne the burden and heat of the day in respect of descent with
modification in its most extended application.  "I much regret,"
says Mr. Darwin, "that want of space prevents my having the
satisfaction of acknowledging the generous assistance I have
received from very many naturalists, some of them personally unknown
to me."  This is like what the Royal Academicians say when they do
not intend to hang our pictures; they can, however, generally find
space for a picture if they want to hang it, and we assume with
safety that there are no master-works by painters of the very
highest rank for which no space has been available.  Want of space
will, indeed, prevent my quoting from more than one other paragraph
of Mr. Darwin's introduction; this paragraph, however, should alone
suffice to show how inaccurate Mr. Allen is in saying that Mr.
Darwin "laid no sort of claim to originality or proprietorship" in
the theory of descent with modification, and this is the point with
which we are immediately concerned.  Mr. Darwin says:-

"In considering the origin of species, it is quite conceivable that
a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings,
on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution,
geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the
conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but
had descended like varieties from other species."

It will be observed that not only is no hint given here that descent
with modification was a theory which, though unknown to the general
public, had been occupying the attention of biologists for a hundred
years and more, but it is distinctly implied that this was not the
case.  When Mr. Darwin said it was "conceivable that a naturalist
might" arrive at the theory of descent, straightforward readers took
him to mean that though this was conceivable, it had never, to Mr.
Darwin's knowledge, been done.  If we had a notion that we had
already vaguely heard of the theory that men and the lower animals
were descended from common ancestors, we must have been wrong; it
was not this that we had heard of, but something else, which, though
doubtless a little like it, was all wrong, whereas this was
obviously going to be all right.

To follow the rest of the paragraph with the closeness that it
merits would be a task at once so long and so unpleasant that I will
omit further reference to any part of it except the last sentence.
That sentence runs:-

"In the case of the mistletoe, which draws its nourishment from
certain trees, which has seeds that must be transported by certain
birds, and which has flowers with separate sexes absolutely
requiring the agency of certain insects to bring pollen from one
flower to the other, it is equally preposterous to account for the
structure of this parasite, with its relations to several distinct
organic beings, by the effects of the external conditions, or of
habit, or of the volition of the plant itself."

Doubtless it would be preposterous to refer the structure of either
woodpecker or mistletoe to the single agency of any one of these
three causes; but neither Lamarck nor any other writer on evolution
has, so far as I know, even contemplated this; the early
evolutionists supposed organic modification to depend on the action
and interaction of all three, and I venture to think that this will
ere long be considered as, to say the least of it, not more
preposterous than the assigning of the largely preponderating share
in the production of such highly and variously correlated organisms
as the mistletoe and woodpecker mainly to luck pure and simple, as
is done by Mr. Charles Darwin's theory.

It will be observed that in the paragraph last quoted from, Mr.
Darwin, more suo, is careful not to commit himself.  All he has said
is, that it would be preposterous to do something the
preposterousness of which cannot be reasonably disputed; the
impression, however, is none the less effectually conveyed, that
some one of the three assigned agencies, taken singly, was the only
cause of modification ever yet proposed, if, indeed, any writer had
even gone so far as this.  We knew we did not know much about the
matter ourselves, and that Mr. Darwin was a naturalist of long and
high standing; we naturally, therefore, credited him with the same
good faith as a writer that we knew in ourselves as readers; it
never so much as crossed our minds to suppose that the head which he
was holding up all dripping before our eyes as that of a fool, was
not that of a fool who had actually lived and written, but only of a
figure of straw which had been dipped in a bucket of red paint.
Naturally enough we concluded, since Mr. Darwin seemed to say so,
that if his predecessors had nothing better to say for themselves
than this, it would not be worth while to trouble about them
further; especially as we did not know who they were, nor what they
had written, and Mr. Darwin did not tell us.  It would be better and
less trouble to take the goods with which it was plain Mr. Darwin
was going to provide us, and ask no questions.  We have seen that
even tolerably obvious conclusions were rather slow in occurring to
poor simple-minded Mr. Darwin, and may be sure that it never once
occurred to him that the British public would be likely to argue
thus; he had no intention of playing the scientific confidence trick
upon us.  I dare say not, but unfortunately the result has closely
resembled the one that would have ensued if Mr. Darwin had had such
an intention.

The claim to originality made so distinctly in the opening sentences
of the" Origin of Species" is repeated in a letter to Professor
Haeckel, written October 8, 1864, and giving an account of the
development of his belief in descent with modification.  This
letter, part of which is quoted by Mr. Allen, {173a} is given on p.
134 of the English translation of Professor Haeckel's "History of
Creation," {173b} and runs as follows:-

"In South America three classes of facts were brought strongly
before my mind.  Firstly, the manner in which closely allied species
replace species in going southward.  Secondly, the close affinity of
the species inhabiting the islands near South America to those
proper to the continent.  This struck me profoundly, especially the
difference of the species in the adjoining islets in the Galapagos
Archipelago.  Thirdly, the relation of the living Edentata and
Rodentia to the extinct species.  I shall never forget my
astonishment when I dug out a gigantic piece of armour like that of
the living armadillo.

"Reflecting on these facts, and collecting analogous ones, it seemed
to me probable that allied species were descended from a common
ancestor.  But during several years I could not conceive how each
form could have been modified so as to become admirably adapted to
its place in nature.  I began, therefore, to study domesticated
animals and cultivated plants, and after a time perceived that man's
power of selecting and breeding from certain individuals was the
most powerful of all means in the production of new races.  Having
attended to the habits of animals and their relations to the
surrounding conditions, I was able to realise the severe struggle
for existence to which all organisms are subjected, and my
geological observations had allowed me to appreciate to a certain
extent the duration of past geological periods.  Therefore, when I
happened to read Malthus on population, the idea of natural
selection flashed on me.  Of all minor points, the last which I
appreciated was the importance and cause of the principle of
divergence."

This is all very naive, and accords perfectly with the introductory
paragraphs of the "Origin of Species;" it gives us the same picture
of a solitary thinker, a poor, lonely, friendless student of nature,
who had never so much as heard of Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, or
Lamarck.  Unfortunately, however, we cannot forget the description
of the influences which, according to Mr. Grant Allen, did in
reality surround Mr. Darwin's youth, and certainly they are more
what we should have expected than those suggested rather than
expressly stated by Mr. Darwin.  "Everywhere around him," says Mr.
Allen, {174a} "in his childhood and youth these great but formless"
(why "formless"?) "evolutionary ideas were brewing and fermenting.
The scientific society of his elders and of the contemporaries among
whom he grew up was permeated with the leaven of Laplace and
Lamarck, of Hutton and of Herschel.  Inquiry was especially
everywhere rife as to the origin and nature of specific distinctions
among plants and animals.  Those who believed in the doctrine of
Buffon and of the 'Zoonomia,' and those who disbelieved in it,
alike, were profoundly interested and agitated in soul by the far-
reaching implications of that fundamental problem.  On every side
evolutionism, in its crude form."  (I suppose Mr. Allen could not
help saying "in its crude form," but descent with modification in
1809 meant, to all intents and purposes, and was understood to mean,
what it means now, or ought to mean, to most people.)  "The
universal stir," says Mr. Allen on the following page, "and deep
prying into evolutionary questions which everywhere existed among
scientific men in his early days was naturally communicated to a lad
born of a scientific family and inheriting directly in blood and
bone the biological tastes and tendencies of Erasmus Darwin."

I confess to thinking that Mr. Allen's account of the influences
which surrounded Mr. Darwin's youth, if tainted with
picturesqueness, is still substantially correct.  On an earlier page
he had written:- "It is impossible to take up any scientific memoirs
or treatises of the first half of our own century without seeing at
a glance how every mind of high original scientific importance was
permeated and disturbed by the fundamental questions aroused, but
not fully answered, by Buffon, Lamarck, and Erasmus Darwin.  In
Lyell's letters, and in Agassiz's lectures, in the 'Botanic Journal'
and in the 'Philosophical Transactions,' in treatises on Madeira
beetles and the Australian flora, we find everywhere the thoughts of
men profoundly influenced in a thousand directions by this universal
evolutionary solvent and leaven.

"And while the world of thought was thus seething and moving
restlessly before the wave of ideas set in motion by these various
independent philosophers, another group of causes in another field
was rendering smooth the path beforehand for the future champion of
the amended evolutionism.  Geology on the one hand and astronomy on
the other were making men's minds gradually familiar with the
conception of slow natural development, as opposed to immediate and
miraculous creation.

. . .

"The influence of these novel conceptions upon the growth and spread
of evolutionary ideas was far-reaching and twofold.  In the first
place, the discovery of a definite succession of nearly related
organic forms following one another with evident closeness through
the various ages, inevitably suggested to every inquiring observer
the possibility of their direct descent one from the other.  In the
second place, the discovery that geological formations were not
really separated each from its predecessor by violent revolutions,
but were the result of gradual and ordinary changes, discredited the
old idea of frequent fresh creations after each catastrophe, and
familiarised the minds of men of science with the alternative notion
of slow and natural evolutionary processes.  The past was seen in
effect to be the parent of the present; the present was recognised
as the child of the past."

This is certainly not Mr. Darwin's own account of the matter.
Probably the truth will lie somewhere between the two extreme views:
and on the one hand, the world of thought was not seething quite so
badly as Mr. Allen represents it, while on the other, though "three
classes of fact," &c., were undoubtedly "brought strongly before"
Mr. Darwin's "mind in South America," yet some of them had perhaps
already been brought before it at an earlier time, which he did not
happen to remember at the moment of writing his letter to Professor
Haeckel and the opening paragraph of the "Origin of Species."



CHAPTER XIV--Darwin and Descent with Modification (continued)



I have said enough to show that Mr. Darwin claimed I to have been
the originator of the theory of descent with modification as
distinctly as any writer usually claims any theory; but it will
probably save the reader trouble in the end if I bring together a
good many, though not, probably, all (for I much disliked the task,
and discharged it perfunctorily), of the passages in the "Origin of
Species" in which the theory of descent with modification in its
widest sense is claimed expressly or by implication.  I shall quote
from the original edition, which, it should be remembered, consisted
of the very unusually large number of four thousand copies, and from
which no important deviation was made either by addition or
otherwise until a second edition of two thousand further copies had
been sold; the "Historical Sketch," &c., being first given with the
third edition.  The italics, which I have employed so as to catch
the reader's eye, are mine, not Mr. Darwin's.  Mr. Darwin writes:-

"Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I CAN
ENTERTAIN NO DOUBT, AFTER THE MOST DELIBERATE STUDY AND
DISPASSIONATE JUDGMENT OF WHICH I AM CAPABLE, THAT THE VIEW WHICH
MOST NATURALISTS ENTERTAIN, AND WHICH I FORMERLY ENTERTAINED--NAMELY
THAT EACH SPECIES HAS BEEN INDEPENDENTLY CREATED--IS ERRONEOUS.  I
am fully convinced that species are not immutable, but that those
belonging to what are called the same genera are lineal descendants
of some other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as
the acknowledged varieties of any one species are the descendants of
that species.  Furthermore, I am convinced that natural selection"
(or the preservation of fortunate races) "has been the main but not
exclusive means of modification" (p. 6).

It is not here expressly stated that the theory of the mutability of
species is Mr. Darwin's own; this, nevertheless, is the inference
which the great majority of his readers were likely to draw, and did
draw, from Mr. Darwin's words.

Again:-

"It is not that all large genera are now varying much, and are thus
increasing in the number of their species, or that no small genera
are now multiplying and increasing; for if this had been so it would
have been fatal to MY THEORY; inasmuch as geology," &c. (p. 56).

The words "my theory" stand in all the editions.  Again:-

"This relation has a clear meaning ON MY VIEW of the subject; I look
upon all the species of any genus as having as certainly descended
from the same progenitor, as have the two sexes of any one of the
species" (p. 157).

"My view" here, especially in the absence of reference to any other
writer as having held the same opinion, implies as its most natural
interpretation that descent pure and simple is Mr. Darwin's view.
Substitute "the theory of descent" for "my view," and we do not feel
that we are misinterpreting the author's meaning.  The words "my
view" remain in all editions.

Again:-

"Long before having arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of
difficulties will have occurred to the reader.  Some of them are so
grave that to this day I can never reflect on them without being
staggered; but to the best of my belief the greater number are only
apparent, and those that are real are not, I think, FATAL TO MY
THEORY.

"These difficulties and objections may be classed under the
following heads:- Firstly, if species have descended from other
species by insensibly fine gradations, why do we not everywhere
see?" &c. (p. 171).

We infer from this that "my theory" is the theory "that species have
descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations"--that is
to say, that it is the theory of descent with modification; for the
theory that is being objected to is obviously the theory of descent
in toto, and not a mere detail in connection with that theory.

The words "my theory" were altered in 1872, with the sixth edition
of the "Origin of species," into "the theory;" but I am chiefly
concerned with the first edition of the work, my object being to
show that Mr. Darwin was led into his false position as regards
natural selection by a desire to claim the theory of descent with
modification; if he claimed it in the first edition, this is enough
to give colour to the view which I take; but it must be remembered
that descent with modification remained, by the passage just quoted
"my theory," for thirteen years, and even when in 1869 and 1872, for
a reason that I can only guess at, "my theory" became generally "the
theory," this did not make it become any one else's theory.  It is
hard to say whose or what it became, if the words are to be
construed technically; practically, however, with all ingenuous
readers, "the theory" remained as much Mr. Darwin's theory as though
the words "my theory" had been retained, and Mr. Darwin cannot be
supposed so simple-minded as not to have known this would be the
case.  Moreover, it appears, from the next page but one to the one
last quoted, that Mr. Darwin claimed the theory of descent with
modification generally, even to the last, for we there read, "BY MY
THEORY these allied species have descended from a common parent,"
and the "my" has been allowed, for some reason not quite obvious, to
survive the general massacre of Mr. Darwin's "my's" which occurred
in 1869 and 1872.

Again:-

"He who believes that each being has been created as we now see it,
must occasionally have felt surprise when he has met," &c. (p. 185).

Here the argument evidently lies between descent and independent
acts of creation.  This appears from the paragraph immediately
following, which begins, "He who believes in separate and
innumerable acts of creation," &c.  We therefore understand descent
to be the theory so frequently spoken of by Mr. Darwin as "my."

Again:-

"He who will go thus far, if he find on finishing this treatise that
large bodies of facts, otherwise inexplicable, can be explained BY
THE THEORY OF DESCENT, ought not to hesitate to go farther, and to
admit that a structure even as perfect as an eagle's eye might be
formed BY NATURAL SELECTION, although in this case he does not know
any of the transitional grades" (p. 188).

The natural inference from this is that descent and natural
selection are one and the same thing.

Again:-

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which
could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight
modifications, MY THEORY would absolutely break down.  But I can
find out no such case.  No doubt many organs exist of which we do
not know the transitional grades, more especially if we look to
much-isolated species, round which, according to my THEORY, there
has been much extinction" (p. 189).

This makes "my theory" to be "the theory that complex organs have
arisen by numerous, successive, slight modifications;" that is to
say, to be the theory of descent with modification.  The first of
the two "my theory's" in the passage last quoted has been allowed to
stand.  The second became "the theory" in 1872.  It is obvious,
therefore, that "the theory" means "my theory;" it is not so obvious
why the change should have been made at all, nor why the one "my
theory" should have been taken and the other left, but I will return
to this question.

Again, Mr. Darwin writes:-

"Although we must be extremely cautious in concluding that any organ
could not possibly have been produced by small successive
transitional gradations, yet, undoubtedly grave cases of difficulty
occur, some of which will be discussed in my future work" (p. 192).

This, as usual, implies descent with modification to be the theory
that Mr. Darwin is trying to make good.

Again:-

"I have been astonished how rarely an organ can be named towards
which no transitional variety is known to lead . . . Why, ON THE
THEORY OF CREATION, should this be so?  Why should not nature have
taken a leap from structure to structure?  ON THE THEORY OF NATURAL
SELECTION we can clearly understand why she should not; for natural
selection can act only by taking advantage of slight successive
variations; she can never take a leap, but must advance by the
slowest and shortest steps" (p. 194).

Here "the theory of natural selection" is opposed to "the theory of
creation;" we took it, therefore, to be another way of saying "the
theory of descent with modification."

Again:-

"We have in this chapter discussed some of the difficulties and
objections which may be urged against MY THEORY.  Many of them are
very grave, but I think that in the discussion light has been thrown
on several facts which, ON THE THEORY OF INDEPENDENT ACTS OF
CREATION, are utterly obscure" (p. 203).

Here we have, on the one hand, "my theory," on the other,
"independent acts of creation."  The natural antithesis to
independent acts of creation is descent, and we assumed with reason
that Mr. Darwin was claiming this when he spoke of "my theory."  "My
theory" became "the theory" in 1869.

Again:-

"On the theory of natural selection we can clearly understand the
full meaning of that old canon in natural history, 'Natura non facit
saltum.'  This canon, if we look only to the present inhabitants of
the world is not strictly correct, but if we include all those of
past times, it must BY MY THEORY be strictly true" (p. 206).

Here the natural interpretation of "by my theory" is "by the theory
of descent with modification;" the words "on the theory of natural
selection," with which the sentence opens, lead us to suppose that
Mr. Darwin regarded natural selection and descent as convertible
terms.  "My theory" was altered to "this theory" in 1872.  Six lines
lower down we read, "ON MY THEORY unity of type is explained by
unity of descent."  The "my" here has been allowed to stand.

Again:-

"Again, as in the case of corporeal structure, and conformably with
MY THEORY, the instinct of each species is good for itself, but has
never," &c. (p. 210).

Who was to see that "my theory" did not include descent with
modification?  The "my" here has been allowed to stand.

Again:-

"The fact that instincts . . . are liable to make mistakes;--that no
instinct has been produced for the exclusive good of other animals,
but that each animal takes advantage of the instincts of others;--
that the canon of natural history, 'Natura non facit saltum,' is
applicable to instincts as well as to corporeal structure, and is
plainly explicable on the foregoing views, but is otherwise
inexplicable,--ALL TEND TO CORROBORATE THE THEORY OF NATURAL
SELECTION" (p. 243).

We feel that it is the theory of evolution, or descent with
modification, that is here corroborated, and that it is this which
Mr. Darwin is mainly trying to establish; the sentence should have
ended "all tend to corroborate the theory of descent with
modification;" the substitution of "natural selection" for descent
tends to make us think that these conceptions are identical.  That
they are so regarded, or at any rate that it is the theory of
descent in full which Mr. Darwin has in his mind, appears from the
immediately succeeding paragraph, which begins "THIS THEORY," and
continues six lines lower, "For instance, we can understand, on the
PRINCIPLE OF INHERITANCE, how it is that," &c.

Again:-

"In the first place, it should always be borne in mind what sort of
intermediate forms must, ON MY THEORY, formerly have existed" (p.
280).

"My theory" became "the theory" in 1869.  No reader who read in good
faith could doubt that the theory of descent with modification was
being here intended.

"It is just possible BY MY THEORY, that one of two living forms
might have descended from the other; for instance, a horse from a
tapir; but in this case DIRECT intermediate links will have existed
between them" (p. 281).

"My theory" became "the theory" in 1869.

Again:-

"BY THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION all living species have been
connected with the parent species of each genus," &c.  We took this
to mean, "By the theory of descent with modification all living
species," &c. (p. 281).

Again:-

"Some experienced conchologists are now sinking many of the very
fine species of D'Orbigny and others into the rank of varieties; and
on this view we do find the kind of evidence of change which ON MY
THEORY we ought to find" (p. 297).

"My theory" became "the theory" in 1869.

In the fourth edition (1866), in a passage which is not in either of
the two first editions, we read (p. 359), "So that here again we
have undoubted evidence of change in the direction required by MY
THEORY."  "My theory" became "the theory" in 1869; the theory of
descent with modification is unquestionably intended.

Again:-

"Geological research has done scarcely anything in breaking down the
distinction between species, by connecting them together by
numerous, fine, intermediate varieties; and this not having been
effected, is probably the gravest and most obvious of all the many
objections which may be urged against MY VIEWS" (p. 299).

We naturally took "my views" to mean descent with modification.  The
"my" has been allowed to stand.

Again:-

"If, then, there be some degree of truth in these remarks, we have
no right to expect to find in our geological formations an infinite
number of those transitional forms which ON MY THEORY assuredly have
connected all the past and present species of the same group in one
long and branching chain of life . . . But I do not pretend that I
should ever have suspected how poor was the record in the best
preserved geological sections, had not the absence of innumerable
transitional links between the species which lived at the
commencement and at the close of each formation pressed so hardly ON
MY THEORY" (pp. 301, 302).

Substitute "descent with modification" for "my theory" and the
meaning does not suffer.  The first of the two "my theories" in the
passage last quoted was altered in 1869 into "our theory;" the
second has been allowed to stand.

Again:-

"The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear
in some formations, has been urged by several palaeontologists . . .
as a fatal objection TO THE BELIEF IN THE TRANSMUTATION OF SPECIES.
If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have
really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal TO THE
THEORY OF DESCENT WITH SLOW MODIFICATION THROUGH NATURAL SELECTION"
(p. 302).

Here "the belief in the transmutation of species," or descent with
modification, is treated as synonymous with "the theory of descent
with slow modification through natural selection; "but it has
nowhere been explained that there are two widely different "theories
of descent with slow modification through natural selection," the
one of which may be true enough for all practical purposes, while
the other is seen to be absurd as soon as it is examined closely.
The theory of descent with modification is not properly convertible
with either of these two views, for descent with modification deals
with the question whether species are transmutable or no, and
dispute as to the respective merits of the two natural selections
deals with the question how it comes to be transmuted; nevertheless,
the words "the theory of descent with slow modification through the
ordinary course of things" (which is what "descent with modification
through natural selection" comes to) may be considered as expressing
the facts with practical accuracy, if the ordinary course of nature
is supposed to be that modification is mainly consequent on the
discharge of some correlated function, and that modification, if
favourable, will tend to accumulate so long as the given function
continues important to the wellbeing of the organism; the words,
however, have no correspondence with reality if they are supposed to
imply that variations which are mainly matters of pure chance and
unconnected in any way with function will accumulate and result in
specific difference, no matter how much each one of them may be
preserved in the generation in which it appears.  In the one case,
therefore, the expression natural selection may be loosely used as a
synonym for descent with modification, and in the other it may not.
Unfortunately with Mr. Charles Darwin the variations are mainly
accidental.  The words "through natural selection," therefore, in
the passage last quoted carry no weight, for it is the wrong natural
selection that is, or ought to be, intended; practically, however,
they derived a weight from Mr. Darwin's name to which they had no
title of their own, and we understood that "the theory of descent
with slow modification" through the kind of natural selection
ostensibly intended by Mr. Darwin was a quasi-synonymous expression
for the transmutation of species.  We understood--so far as we
understood anything beyond that we were to believe in descent with
modification--that natural selection was Mr. Darwin's theory; we
therefore concluded, since Mr. Darwin seemed to say so, that the
theory of the transmutation of species generally was so also.  At
any rate we felt as regards the passage last quoted that the theory
of descent with modification was the point of attack and defence,
and we supposed it to be the theory so often referred to by Mr.
Darwin as "my."

Again:-

"Some of the most ancient Silurian animals, as the Nautilus,
Lingula, &c., do not differ much from the living species; and it
cannot ON MY THEORY be supposed that these old species were the
progenitors," &c. (p. 306) . . . "Consequently IF MY THEORY BE TRUE,
it is indisputable," &c. (p. 307).

Here the two "my theories" have been altered, the first into "our
theory," and the second into "the theory," both in 1869; but, as
usual, the thing that remains with the reader is the theory of
descent, and it remains morally and practically as much claimed when
called "the theory"--as during the many years throughout which the
more open "my" distinctly claimed it.

Again:-

"All the most eminent palaeontologists, namely, Cuvier, Owen,
Agassiz, Barrande, E. Forbes, &c., and all our greatest geologists,
as Lyell, Murchison, Sedgwick, &c., have unanimously, often
vehemently, maintained THE IMMUTABILITY OF SPECIES. . . . I feel how
rash it is to differ from these great authorities . . . Those who
think the natural geological record in any degree perfect, and who
do not attach much weight to the facts and arguments of other kinds
brought forward in this volume, will undoubtedly at once REJECT MY
THEORY" (p. 310).

What is "my theory" here, if not that of the mutability of species,
or the theory of descent with modification?  "My theory" became "the
theory" in 1869.

Again:-

"Let us now see whether the several facts and rules relating to the
geological succession of organic beings, better accord with the
common view of the immutability of species, or with that of their
SLOW AND GRADUAL MODIFICATION, THROUGH DESCENT AND NATURAL
SELECTION" (p. 312).

The words "natural selection" are indeed here, but they might as
well be omitted for all the effect they produce.  The argument is
felt to be about the two opposed theories of descent, and
independent creative efforts.

Again:-

"These several facts accord well with MY THEORY" (p. 314).  That "my
theory" is the theory of descent is the conclusion most naturally
drawn from the context.  "My theory" became "our theory" in 1869.

Again:-

"This gradual increase in the number of the species of a group is
strictly conformable WITH MY THEORY; for the process of modification
and the production of a number of allied forms must be slow and
gradual, . . . like the branching of a great tree from a single
stem, till the group becomes large" (p. 314).

"My theory" became "the theory" in 1869.  We took "my theory" to be
the theory of descent; that Mr. Darwin treats this as synonymous
with the theory of natural selection appears from the next
paragraph, on the third line of which we read, "On THE THEORY OF
NATURAL SELECTION the extinction of old forms," &c.

Again:-

"THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION is grounded on the belief that each
new variety and ultimately each new species, is produced and
maintained by having some advantage over those with which it comes
into competition; and the consequent extinction of less favoured
forms almost inevitably follows" (p. 320).  Sense and consistency
cannot be made of this passage.  Substitute "The theory of the
preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life" for "The
theory of natural selection" (to do this is only taking Mr. Darwin's
own synonym for natural selection) and see what the passage comes
to.  "The preservation of favoured races" is not a theory, it is a
commonly observed fact; it is not "grounded on the belief that each
new variety," &c., it is one of the ultimate and most elementary
principles in the world of life.  When we try to take the passage
seriously and think it out, we soon give it up, and pass on,
substituting "the theory of descent" for "the theory of natural
selection," and concluding that in some way these two things must be
identical.

Again:-

"The manner in which single species and whole groups of species
become extinct accords well with THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION"
(p. 322).

Again:-

"This great fact of the parallel succession of the forms of life
throughout the world, is explicable ON THE THEORY OF NATURAL
SELECTION" (p. 325).

Again:-

"Let us now look to the mutual affinities of extinct and living
species.  They all fall into one grand natural system; and this is
at once explained ON THE PRINCIPLE OF DESCENT" (p. 329).

Putting the three preceding passages together, we naturally inferred
that "the theory of natural selection" and "the principle of
descent" were the same things.  We knew Mr. Darwin claimed the
first, and therefore unhesitatingly gave him the second at the same
time.

Again:-

"Let us see how far these several facts and inferences accord with
THE THEORY OF DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION" (p. 331)

Again:-

"Thus, ON THE THEORY OF DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION, the main facts
with regard to the mutual affinities of the extinct forms of life to
each other and to living forms, seem to me explained in a
satisfactory manner.  And they are wholly inexplicable ON ANY OTHER
VIEW" (p. 333).

The words "seem to me" involve a claim in the absence of so much as
a hint in any part of the book concerning indebtedness to earlier
writers.

Again:-

"ON THE THEORY OF DESCENT, the full meaning of the fossil remains,"
&c. (p. 336).

In the following paragraph we read:-

"But in one particular sense the more recent forms must, ON MY
THEORY, be higher than the more ancient."

Again:-

"Agassiz insists that ancient animals resemble to a certain extent
the embryos of recent animals of the same classes; or that the
geological succession of extinct forms is in some degree parallel to
the embryological development of recent forms. . . . This doctrine
of Agassiz accords well with THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION" (p.
338).

"The theory of natural selection" became "our theory" in 1869.  The
opinion of Agassiz accords excellently with the theory of descent
with modification, but it is not easy to see how it bears upon the
fact that lucky races are preserved in the struggle for life--which,
according to Mr. Darwin's title-page, is what is meant by natural
selection.

Again:-

"ON THE THEORY OF DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION, the great law of the
long-enduring but not immutable succession of the same types within
the same areas, is at once explained" (p. 340).

Again:-

"It must not be forgotten that, ON MY THEORY, all the species of the
same genus have descended from some one species" (p. 341).

"My theory" became "our theory" in 1869.

Again:-

"He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record,
will rightly reject MY WHOLE THEORY" (p. 342).

"My" became "our" in 1869.

Again:-

"Passing from these difficulties, the other great leading facts in
palaeontology agree admirably with THE THEORY OF DESCENT WITH
MODIFICATION THROUGH VARIATION AND NATURAL SELECTION" (p. 343).

Again:-

The succession of the same types of structure within the same areas
during the later geological periods CEASES TO BE MYSTERIOUS, and IS
SIMPLY EXPLAINED BY INHERITANCE (p. 345).

I suppose inheritance was not when Mr. Darwin wrote considered
mysterious.  The last few words have been altered to "and is
intelligible on the principle of inheritance."  It seems as though
Mr. Darwin did not like saying that inheritance was not mysterious,
but had no objection to implying that it was intelligible.

The next paragraph begins--"If, then, the geological record be as
imperfect as I believe it to be, . . . the main objections TO THE
THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION are greatly diminished or disappear.  On
the other hand, all the chief laws of palaeontology plainly
proclaim, AS IT SEEMS TO ME, THAT SPECIES HAVE BEEN PRODUCED BY
ORDINARY GENERATION."

Here again the claim to the theory of descent with modification is
unmistakable; it cannot, moreover, but occur to us that if species
"have been produced by ordinary generation," then ordinary
generation has as good a claim to be the main means of originating
species as natural selection has.  It is hardly necessary to point
out that ordinary generation involves descent with modification, for
all known offspring differ from their parents, so far, at any rate,
as that practised judges can generally tell them apart.

Again:-

"We see in these facts some deep organic bond, prevailing throughout
space and time, over the same areas of land and water, and
independent of their physical condition.  The naturalist must feel
little curiosity who is not led to inquire what this bond is.

"This bond, ON MY THEORY, IS SIMPLY INHERITANCE, that cause which
alone," &c. (p. 350).

This passage was altered in 1869 to "The bond is simply
inheritance."  The paragraph concludes, "ON THIS PRINCIPLE OF
INHERITANCE WITH MODIFICATION, we can understand how it is that
sections of genera . . . are confined to the same areas," &c.

Again:-

"He who rejects it rejects the vera causa of ordinary generation,"
&c. (p. 352).

We naturally ask, Why call natural selection the "main means of
modification," if "ordinary generation" is a vera causa?

Again:-

"In discussing this subject, we shall be enabled at the same time to
consider a point equally important for us, namely, whether the
several distinct species of a genus, WHICH ON MY THEORY HAVE ALL
DESCENDED FROM A COMMON ANCESTOR, can have migrated (undergoing
modification during some part of their migration) from the area
inhabited by their progenitor" (p. 354).

The words "on my theory" became "on our theory" in 1869.

Again:-

"With those organic beings which never intercross (if such exist)
THE SPECIES, ON MY THEORY, MUST HAVE DESCENDED FROM A SUCCESSION OF
IMPROVED VARIETIES," &c. (p. 355).

The words "on my theory" were cut out in 1869.

Again:-

"A slow southern migration of a marine fauna will account, ON THE
THEORY OF MODIFICATION, for many closely allied forms," &c. (p.
372).

Again:-

"But the existence of several quite distinct species, belonging to
genera exclusively confined to the southern hemisphere, is, ON MY
THEORY OF DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION, a far more remarkable case of
difficulty" (p. 381).

"My" became "the" in 1866 with the fourth edition.  This was the
most categorical claim to the theory of descent with modification in
the "Origin of Species."  The "my" here is the only one that was
taken out before 1869.  I suppose Mr. Darwin thought that with the
removal of this "my" he had ceased to claim the theory of descent
with modification.  Nothing, however, could be gained by calling the
reader's attention to what had been done, so nothing was said about
it.

Again:-

"Some species of fresh-water shells have a very wide range, AND
ALLIED SPECIES, WHICH, ON MY THEORY, ARE DESCENDED FROM A SINGLE
SOURCE, prevail throughout the world" (p. 385).

"My theory" became "our theory" in 1869.

Again:-

"In the following remarks I shall not confine myself to the mere
question of dispersal, but shall consider some other facts which
bear upon the truth of THE TWO THEORIES OF INDEPENDENT CREATION AND
OF DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION" (p. 389).  What can be plainer than
that the theory which Mr. Darwin espouses, and has so frequently
called "my," is descent with modification?

Again:-

"But as these animals and their spawn are known to be immediately
killed by sea-water, ON MY VIEW, we can see that there would be
great difficulty in their transportal across the sea, and therefore
why they do not exist on any oceanic island.  But why, ON THE THEORY
OF CREATION, they should not have been created there, it would be
very difficult to explain" (p. 393).

"On my view" was cut out in 1869.

On the following page we read--"On my view this question can easily
be answered."  "On my view" is retained in the latest edition.

Again:-

"Yet there must be, ON MY VIEW, some unknown but highly efficient
means for their transportation" (p. 397).

"On my view" became "according to our view" in 1869.

Again:-

"I believe this grand fact can receive no sort of explanation ON THE
ORDINARY VIEW OF INDEPENDENT CREATION; whereas, ON THE VIEW HERE
MAINTAINED, it is obvious that the Galapagos Islands would be likely
to receive colonists . . . from America, and the Cape de Verde
Islands from Africa; and that such colonists would be liable to
modification; the principle of inheritance still betraying their
original birth-place" (p. 399).

Again:-

"With respect to the distinct species of the same genus which, ON MY
THEORY, must have spread from one parent source, if we make the same
allowances as before," &c.

"On my theory" became "on our theory" in 1869.

Again:-

"ON MY THEORY these several relations throughout time and space are
intelligible; . . . the forms within each class have been connected
by the same bond of ordinary generation; . . . in both cases the
laws of variation have been the same, and modifications have been
accumulated by the same power of natural selection" (p. 410).

"On my theory" became "according to our theory" in 1869, and natural
selection is no longer a power, but has become a means.

Again:-

"I BELIEVE THAT SOMETHING MORE IS INCLUDED, and that propinquity of
descent--the only known cause of the similarity of organic beings--
is the bond, hidden as it is by various degrees of modification,
which is partially revealed to us by our classification" (p. 418).

Again:-

"THUS, ON THE VIEW WHICH I HOLD, the natural system is genealogical
in its arrangement, like a pedigree" (p. 422).

"On the view which I hold" was cut out in 1872.

Again:-

"We may feel almost sure, ON THE THEORY OF DESCENT, that these
characters have been inherited from a common ancestor" (p. 426).

Again:-

"ON MY VIEW OF CHARACTERS BEING OF REAL IMPORTANCE FOR
CLASSIFICATION ONLY IN SO FAR AS THEY REVEAL DESCENT, we can clearly
understand," &c. (p. 427).

"On my view" became "on the view" in 1872.

Again:-

"The more aberrant any form is, the greater must be the number of
connecting forms which, ON MY THEORY, have been exterminated and
utterly lost" (p. 429).

The words "on my theory" were excised in 1869.

Again:-

"Finally, we have seen that NATURAL SELECTION. . . EXPLAINS that
great and universal feature in the affinities of all organic beings,
namely, their subordination in group under group.  WE USE THE
ELEMENT OF DESCENT in classing the individuals of both sexes, &c.; .
. . WE USE DESCENT in classing acknowledged varieties; . . . and I
believe this element of descent is the hidden bond of connection
which naturalists have sought under the term of the natural system"
(p. 433).

Lamarck was of much the same opinion, as I showed in "Evolution Old
and New."  He wrote:- "An arrangement should be considered
systematic, or arbitrary, when it does not conform to the
genealogical order taken by nature in the development of the things
arranged, and when, by consequence, it is not founded on well-
considered analogies.  There is a natural order in every department
of nature; it is the order in which its several component items have
been successively developed." {195a}  The point, however, which
should more particularly engage our attention is that Mr. Darwin in
the passage last quoted uses "natural selection" and "descent" as
though they were convertible terms.

Again:-

"Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this
similarity of pattern in members of the same class by utility or the
doctrine of final causes . . .  ON THE ORDINARY VIEW OF THE
INDEPENDENT CREATION OF EACH BEING, we can only say that so it is .
. . THE EXPLANATION IS MANIFEST ON THE THEORY OF THE NATURAL
SELECTION OF SUCCESSIVE SLIGHT modifications," &c. (p. 435).

This now stands--"The explanation is to a large extent simple, on
the theory of the selection of successive, slight modifications."  I
do not like "a large extent" of simplicity; but, waiving this, the
point at issue is not whether the ordinary course of things ensures
a quasi-selection of the types that are best adapted to their
surroundings, with accumulation of modification in various
directions, and hence wide eventual difference between species
descended from common progenitors--no evolutionist since 1750 has
doubted this--but whether a general principle underlies the
modifications from among which the quasi-selection is made, or
whether they are destitute of such principle and referable, as far
as we are concerned, to chance only.  Waiving this again, we note
that the theories of independent creation and of natural selection
are contrasted, as though they were the only two alternatives;
knowing the two alternatives to be independent creation and descent
with modification, we naturally took natural selection to mean
descent with modification.

Again:-

"ON THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION we can satisfactorily answer
these questions" (p. 437).

"Satisfactorily" now stands "to a certain extent."

Again:-

"ON MY VIEW these terms may be used literally" (pp. 438, 439).

"On my view" became "according to the views here maintained such
language may be," &c., in 1869.

Again:-

"I believe all these facts can be explained as follows, ON THE VIEW
OF DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION" (p. 443).

This sentence now ends at "follows."

Again:-

"Let us take a genus of birds, DESCENDED, ON MY THEORY, FROM SOME
ONE PARENT SPECIES, and of which the several new species HAVE BECOME
MODIFIED THROUGH NATURAL SELECTION in accordance with their divers
habits" (p. 446).

The words "on my theory" were cut out in 1869, and the passage now
stands, "Let us take a group of birds, descended from some ancient
form and modified through natural selection for different habits."

Again:-

"ON MY VIEW OF DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION, the origin of rudimentary
organs is simple" (p. 454).

"On my view" became "ON THE VIEW" in 1869.

Again:-

"ON THE VIEW OF DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION," &c. (p. 455).

Again:-

"ON THIS SAME VIEW OF DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION all the great facts
of morphology become intelligible" (p. 456).

Again:-

"That many and grave objections may be advanced against THE THEORY
OF DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION THROUGH NATURAL SELECTION, I do not
deny" (p. 459).

This now stands, "That many and serious objections may be advanced
against THE THEORY OF DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION THROUGH VARIATION
AND NATURAL SELECTION, I do not deny."

Again:-

"There are, it must be admitted, cases of special difficulty ON THE
THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION" (p. 460).

"On" has become "opposed to;" it is not easy to see why this
alteration was made, unless because "opposed to" is longer.

Again:-

"Turning to geographical distribution, the difficulties encountered
ON THE THEORY OF DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION are grave enough."

"Grave" has become "serious," but there is no other change (p. 461).

Again:-

"As ON THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION an interminable number of
intermediate forms must have existed," &c.

"On" has become "according to"--which is certainly longer, but does
not appear to possess any other advantage over "on."  It is not easy
to understand why Mr. Darwin should have strained at such a gnat as
"on," though feeling no discomfort in such an expression as "an
interminable number."

Again:-

"This is the most forcible of the many objections which may be urged
AGAINST MY THEORY . . . For certainly, ON MY THEORY," &c. (p. 463).

The "my" in each case became "the" in 1869.

Again:-

"Such is the sum of the several chief objections and difficulties
which may be justly urged AGAINST MY THEORY" (p. 465).

"My" became "the" in 1869.

Again:-

"Grave as these several difficulties are, IN MY JUDGMENT they do not
overthrow THE THEORY OF DESCENT WITH MODIFICATIONS" (p. 466).

This now stands, "Serious as these several objections are, in my
judgment they are by no means sufficient to overthrow THE THEORY OF
DESCENT WITH SUBSEQUENT MODIFICATION;" which, again, is longer, and
shows at what little, little gnats Mr. Darwin could strain, but is
no material amendment on the original passage.

Again:-

"THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION, even if we looked no further than
this, SEEMS TO ME TO BE IN ITSELF PROBABLE" (p. 469).

This now stands, "The theory of natural selection, even if we look
no further than this, SEEMS TO BE IN THE HIGHEST DEGREE PROBABLE."
It is not only probable, but was very sufficiently proved long
before Mr. Darwin was born, only it must be the right natural
selection and not Mr. Charles Darwin's.

Again:-

"It is inexplicable, ON THE THEORY OF CREATION, why a part
developed, &c., . . . BUT, ON MY VIEW, this part has undergone," &c.
(p. 474).

"On my view" became "on our view" in 1869.

Again:-

"Glancing at instincts, marvellous as some are, they offer no
greater difficulty than does corporeal structure ON THE THEORY OF
THE NATURAL SELECTION OF SUCCESSIVE, SLIGHT, BUT PROFITABLE
MODIFICATIONS" (p. 474).

Again:-

"ON THE VIEW OF ALL THE SPECIES OF THE SAME GENUS HAVING DESCENDED
FROM A COMMON PARENT, and having inherited much in common, we can
understand how it is," &c. (p. 474).

Again:-

"If we admit that the geological record is imperfect in an extreme
degree, then such facts as the record gives, support THE THEORY OF
DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION.

" . . . The extinction of species . . . almost inevitably follows on
THE PRINCIPLE OF NATURAL SELECTION" (p. 475).

The word "almost" has got a great deal to answer for.

Again:-

"We can understand, ON THE THEORY OF DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION, most
of the great leading facts in Distribution" (p. 476).

Again:-

"The existence of closely allied or representative species in any
two areas, implies, ON THE THEORY OF DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION, that
the same parents formerly inhabited both areas . . . It must be
admitted that these facts receive no explanation ON THE THEORY OF
CREATION . . . The fact . . . is intelligible ON THE THEORY OF
NATURAL SELECTION, with its contingencies of extinction and
divergence of character" (p. 478).

Again:-

"Innumerable other such facts at once explain themselves ON THE
THEORY OF DESCENT WITH SLOW AND SLIGHT SUCCESSIVE MODIFICATIONS" (p.
479).

"Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to
unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number
of facts, WILL CERTAINLY REJECT MY THEORY" (p. 482).

"My theory" became "the theory" in 1869.


From this point to the end of the book the claim is so ubiquitous,
either expressly or by implication, that it is difficult to know
what not to quote.  I must, however, content myself with only a few
more extracts.  Mr. Darwin says:-

"It may be asked HOW FAR I EXTEND THE DOCTRINE OF THE MODIFICATION
OF SPECIES" (p. 482).

Again:-

"Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that
all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype . . .
Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic
beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some
one primordial form, into which life was first breathed."

From an amoeba--Adam, in fact, though not in name.  This last
sentence is now completely altered, as well it might be.

Again:-

"When THE VIEWS ENTERTAINED IN THIS VOLUME ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES,
OR WHEN ANALOGOUS VIEWS ARE GENERALLY ADMITTED, we can dimly foresee
that there will be a considerable revolution in natural history" (p.
434).

Possibly.  This now stands, "When the views advanced by me in this
volume, and by Mr. Wallace, or when analogous views on the origin of
species are generally admitted, we can dimly foresee," &c.  When the
"Origin of Species" came out we knew nothing of any analogous views,
and Mr. Darwin's words passed unnoticed.  I do not say that he knew
they would, but he certainly ought to have known.

Again:-

"A GRAND AND ALMOST UNTRODDEN FIELD OF INQUIRY WILL BE OPENED, on
the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the
effects of use and disuse, on the direct action of external
conditions, and so forth" (p. 486).

Buffon and Lamarck had trodden this field to some purpose, but not a
hint to this effect is vouchsafed to us.  Again; -

"WHEN I VIEW ALL BEINGS NOT AS SPECIAL CREATIONS, BUT AS THE LINEAL
DESCENDANTS OF SOME FEW BEINGS WHICH LIVED LONG BEFORE the first bed
of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become
ennobled . . . We can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity
as to foretell that it will be the common and widely spread species,
belonging to the larger and dominant groups, which will ultimately
prevail and procreate new and dominant species."

There is no alteration in this except that "Silurian" has become
"Cambrian."

The idyllic paragraph with which Mr. Darwin concludes his book
contains no more special claim to the theory of descent en bloc than
many another which I have allowed to pass unnoticed; it has been,
moreover, dealt with in an earlier chapter (Chapter XII.)



CHAPTER XV--The Excised "My's"



I have quoted in all ninety-seven passages, as near as I can make
them, in which Mr. Darwin claimed the theory of descent, either
expressly by speaking of "my theory" in such connection that the
theory of descent ought to be, and, as the event has shown, was,
understood as being intended, or by implication, as in the opening
passages of the "Origin of Species," in which he tells us how he had
thought the matter out without acknowledging obligation of any kind
to earlier writers.  The original edition of the "Origin of Species"
contained 490 pp., exclusive of index; a claim, therefore, more or
less explicit, to the theory of descent was made on the average
about once in every five pages throughout the book from end to end;
the claims were most prominent in the most important parts, that is
to say, at the beginning and end of the work, and this made them
more effective than they are made even by their frequency.  A more
ubiquitous claim than this it would be hard to find in the case of
any writer advancing a new theory; it is difficult, therefore, to
understand how Mr. Grant Allen could have allowed himself to say
that Mr. Darwin "laid no sort of claim to originality or
proprietorship" in the theory of descent with modification.

Nevertheless I have only found one place where Mr. Darwin pinned
himself down beyond possibility of retreat, however ignominious, by
using the words "my theory of descent with modification." {202a}  He
often, as I have said, speaks of "my theory," and then shortly
afterwards of "descent with modification," under such circumstances
that no one who had not been brought up in the school of Mr.
Gladstone could doubt that the two expressions referred to the same
thing.  He seems to have felt that he must be a poor wriggler if he
could not wriggle out of this; give him any loophole, however small,
and Mr. Darwin could trust himself to get out through it; but he did
not like saying what left no loophole at all, and "my theory of
descent with modification" closed all exits so firmly that it is
surprising he should ever have allowed himself to use these words.
As I have said, Mr. Darwin only used this direct categorical form of
claim in one place; and even here, after it had stood through three
editions, two of which had been largely altered, he could stand it
no longer, and altered the "my" into "the" in 1866, with the fourth
edition of the "Origin of Species."

This was the only one of the original forty-five my's that was cut
out before the appearance of the fifth edition in 1869, and its
excision throws curious light upon the working of Mr. Darwin's mind.
The selection of the most categorical my out of the whole forty-
five, shows that Mr. Darwin knew all about his my's, and, while
seeing reason to remove this, held that the others might very well
stand.  He even left "On my VIEW of descent with modification,"
{203a} which, though more capable of explanation than "my theory,"
&c., still runs it close; nevertheless the excision of even a single
my that had been allowed to stand through such close revision as
those to which the "Origin of Species" had been subjected betrays
uneasiness of mind, for it is impossible that even Mr. Darwin should
not have known that though the my excised in 1866 was the most
technically categorical, the others were in reality just as guilty,
though no tower of Siloam in the shape of excision fell upon them.
If, then, Mr. Darwin was so uncomfortable about this one as to cut
it out, it is probable he was far from comfortable about the others.

This view derives confirmation from the fact that in 1869, with the
fifth edition of the "Origin of Species," there was a stampede of
my's throughout the whole work, no less than thirty out of the
original forty-five being changed into "the," "our," "this," or some
other word, which, though having all the effect of my, still did not
say "my" outright.  These my's were, if I may say so, sneaked out;
nothing was said to explain their removal to the reader or call
attention to it.  Why, it may be asked, having been considered
during the revisions of 1861 and 1866, and with only one exception
allowed to stand, why should they be smitten with a homing instinct
in such large numbers with the fifth edition?  It cannot be
maintained that Mr. Darwin had had his attention called now for the
first time to the fact that he had used my perhaps a little too
freely, and had better be more sparing of it for the future.  The my
excised in 1866 shows that Mr. Darwin had already considered this
question, and saw no reason to remove any but the one that left him
no loophole.  Why, then, should that which was considered and
approved in 1859, 1861, and 1866 (not to mention the second edition
of 1859 or 1860) be retreated from with every appearance of panic in
1869?  Mr. Darwin could not well have cut out more than he did--not
at any rate without saying something about it, and it would not be
easy to know exactly what say.  Of the fourteen my's that were left
in 1869, five more were cut out in 1872, and nine only were allowed
eventually to remain.  We naturally ask, Why leave any if thirty-six
ought to be cut out, or why cut out thirty-six if nine ought to be
left--especially when the claim remains practically just the same
after the excision as before it?

I imagine complaint had early reached Mr. Darwin that the difference
between himself and his predecessors was unsubstantial and hard to
grasp; traces of some such feeling appear even in the late Sir
Charles Lyell's "Principles of Geology," in which he writes that he
had reprinted his abstract of Lamarck's doctrine word for word, "in
justice to Lamarck, in order to show how nearly the opinions taught
by him at the beginning of this century resembled those now in vogue
among a large body of naturalists respecting the infinite
variability of species, and the progressive development in past time
of the organic world." {205a}  Sir Charles Lyell could not have
written thus if he had thought that Mr. Darwin had already done
"justice to Lamarck," nor is it likely that he stood alone in
thinking as he did.  It is probable that more reached Mr. Darwin
than reached the public, and that the historical sketch prefixed to
all editions after the first six thousand copies had been sold--
meagre and slovenly as it is--was due to earlier manifestation on
the part of some of Mr. Darwin's friends of the feeling that was
afterwards expressed by Sir Charles Lyell in the passage quoted
above.  I suppose the removal of the my that was cut out in 1866 to
be due partly to the Gladstonian tendencies of Mr. Darwin's mind,
which would naturally make that particular my at all times more or
less offensive to him, and partly to the increase of objection to it
that must have ensued on the addition of the "brief but imperfect"
historical sketch in 1861; it is doubtless only by an oversight that
this particular my was not cut out in 1861.  The stampede of 1869
was probably occasioned by the appearance in Germany of Professor
Haeckel's "History of Creation."  This was published in 1868, and
Mr. Darwin no doubt foresaw that it would be translated into
English, as indeed it subsequently was.  In this book some account
is given--very badly, but still much more fully than by Mr. Darwin--
of Lamarck's work; and even Erasmus Darwin is mentioned--
inaccurately--but still he is mentioned.  Professor Haeckel says:-

"Although the theory of development had been already maintained at
the beginning of this century by several great naturalists,
especially by Lamarck and Goethe, it only received complete
demonstration and causal foundation nine years ago through Darwin's
work, and it is on this account that it is now generally (though not
altogether rightly) regarded as exclusively Mr. Darwin's theory."
{206a}

Later on, after giving nearly a hundred pages to the works of the
early evolutionists--pages that would certainly disquiet the
sensitive writer who had cut out the "my" which disappeared in 1866-
-he continued:-

"We must distinguish clearly (though this is not usually done)
between, firstly, the theory of descent as advanced by Lamarck,
which deals only with the fact of all animals and plants being
descended from a common source, and secondly, Darwin's theory of
natural selection, which shows us WHY this progressive modification
of organic forms took place" (p. 93).

This passage is as inaccurate as most of those by Professor Haeckel
that I have had occasion to examine have proved to be.  Letting
alone that Buffon, not Lamarck, is the foremost name in connection
with descent, I have already shown in "Evolution Old and New" that
Lamarck goes exhaustively into the how and why of modification.  He
alleges the conservation, or preservation, in the ordinary course of
nature, of the most favourable among variations that have been
induced mainly by function; this, I have sufficiently explained, is
natural selection, though the words "natural selection" are not
employed; but it is the true natural selection which (if so
metaphorical an expression is allowed to pass) actually does take
place with the results ascribed to it by Lamarck, and not the false
Charles-Darwinian natural selection that does not correspond with
facts, and cannot result in specific differences such as we now
observe.  But, waiving this, the "my's," within which a little rift
had begun to show itself in 1866, might well become as mute in 1869
as they could become without attracting attention, when Mr. Darwin
saw the passages just quoted, and the hundred pages or so that lie
between them.

I suppose Mr. Darwin cut out the five more my's that disappeared in
1872 because he had not yet fully recovered from his scare, and
allowed nine to remain in order to cover his retreat, and tacitly
say that he had not done anything and knew nothing whatever about
it.  Practically, indeed, he had not retreated, and must have been
well aware that he was only retreating technically; for he must have
known that the absence of acknowledgment to any earlier writers in
the body of his work, and the presence of the many passages in which
every word conveyed the impression that the writer claimed descent
with modification, amounted to a claim as much when the actual word
"my" had been taken out as while it was allowed to stand.  We took
Mr. Darwin at his own estimate because we could not for a moment
suppose that a man of means, position, and education,--one,
moreover, who was nothing if he was not unself-seeking--could play
such a trick upon us while pretending to take us into his
confidence; hence the almost universal belief on the part of the
public, of which Professors Haeckel and Ray Lankester and Mr. Grant
Allen alike complain--namely, that Mr. Darwin is the originator of
the theory of descent, and that his variations are mainly
functional.  Men of science must not be surprised if the readiness
with which we responded to Mr. Darwin's appeal to our confidence is
succeeded by a proportionate resentment when the peculiar shabbiness
of his action becomes more generally understood.  For myself, I know
not which most to wonder at--the meanness of the writer himself, or
the greatness of the service that, in spite of that meanness, he
unquestionably rendered.

If Mr. Darwin had been dealing fairly by us, when he saw that we had
failed to catch the difference between the Erasmus-Darwinian theory
of descent through natural selection from among variations that are
mainly functional, and his own alternative theory of descent through
natural selection from among variations that are mainly accidental,
and, above all, when he saw we were crediting him with other men's
work, he would have hastened to set us right.  "It is with great
regret," he might have written, "and with no small surprise, that I
find how generally I have been misunderstood as claiming to be the
originator of the theory of descent with modification; nothing can
be further from my intention; the theory of descent has been
familiar to all biologists from the year 1749, when Buffon advanced
it in its most comprehensive form, to the present day."  If Mr.
Darwin had said something to the above effect, no one would have
questioned his good faith, but it is hardly necessary to say that
nothing of the kind is to be found in any one of Mr. Darwin's many
books or many editions; nor is the reason why the requisite
correction was never made far to seek.  For if Mr. Darwin had said
as much as I have put into his mouth above, he should have said
more, and would ere long have been compelled to have explained to us
wherein the difference between himself and his predecessors
precisely lay, and this would not have been easy.  Indeed, if Mr.
Darwin had been quite open with us he would have had to say much as
follows:-

"I should point out that, according to the evolutionists of the last
century, improvement in the eye, as in any other organ, is mainly
due to persistent, rational, employment of the organ in question, in
such slightly modified manner as experience and changed surroundings
may suggest.  You will have observed that, according to my system,
this goes for very little, and that the accumulation of fortunate
accidents, irrespectively of the use that may be made of them, is by
far the most important means of modification.  Put more briefly
still, the distinction between me and my predecessors lies in this;-
-my predecessors thought they knew the main normal cause or
principle that underlies variation, whereas I think that there is no
general principle underlying it at all, or that even if there is, we
know hardly anything about it.  This is my distinctive feature;
there is no deception; I shall not consider the arguments of my
predecessors, nor show in what respect they are insufficient; in
fact, I shall say nothing whatever about them.  Please to understand
that I alone am in possession of the master key that can unlock the
bars of the future progress of evolutionary science; so great an
improvement, in fact, is my discovery that it justifies me in
claiming the theory of descent generally, and I accordingly claim
it.  If you ask me in what my discovery consists, I reply in this;--
that the variations which we are all agreed accumulate are caused--
by variation. {209a}  I admit that this is not telling you much
about them, but it is as much as I think proper to say at present;
above all things, let me caution you against thinking that there is
any principle of general application underlying variation."

This would have been right.  This is what Mr. Darwin would have had
to have said if he had been frank with us; it is not surprising,
therefore, that he should have been less frank than might have been
wished.  I have no doubt that many a time between 1859 and 1882, the
year of his death, Mr. Darwin bitterly regretted his initial error,
and would have been only too thankful to repair it, but he could
only put the difference between himself and the early evolutionists
clearly before his readers at the cost of seeing his own system come
tumbling down like a pack of cards; this was more than he could
stand, so he buried his face, ostrich-like, in the sand.  I know no
more pitiable figure in either literature or science.

As I write these lines (July 1886) I see a paragraph in Nature which
I take it is intended to convey the impression that Mr. Francis
Darwin's life and letters of his father will appear shortly.  I can
form no idea whether Mr. F. Darwin's forthcoming work is likely to
appear before this present volume; still less can I conjecture what
it may or may not contain; but I can give the reader a criterion by
which to test the good faith with which it is written.  If Mr. F.
Darwin puts the distinctive feature that differentiates Mr. C.
Darwin from his predecessors clearly before his readers, enabling
them to seize and carry it away with them once for all--if he shows
no desire to shirk this question, but, on the contrary, faces it and
throws light upon it, then we shall know that his work is sincere,
whatever its shortcomings may be in other respects; and when people
are doing their best to help us and make us understand all that they
understand themselves, a great deal may be forgiven them.  If, on
the other hand, we find much talk about the wonderful light which
Mr. Charles Darwin threw on evolution by his theory of natural
selection, without any adequate attempt to make us understand the
difference between the natural selection, say, of Mr. Patrick
Matthew, and that of his more famous successor, then we may know
that we are being trifled with; and that an attempt is being again
made to throw dust in our eyes.



CHAPTER XVI--Mr. Grant Allen's "Charles Darwin"



It is here that Mr. Grant Allen's book fails.  It is impossible to
believe it written in good faith, with no end in view, save to make
something easy which might otherwise be found difficult; on the
contrary, it leaves the impression of having been written with a
desire to hinder us, as far as possible, from understanding things
that Mr. Allen himself understood perfectly well.

After saying that "in the public mind Mr. Darwin is perhaps most
commonly regarded as the discoverer and founder of the evolution
hypothesis," he continues that "the grand idea which he did really
originate was not the idea of 'descent with modification,' but the
idea of 'natural selection,'" and adds that it was Mr. Darwin's
"peculiar glory" to have shown the "nature of the machinery" by
which all the variety of animal and vegetable life might have been
produced by slow modifications in one or more original types.  "The
theory of evolution," says Mr. Allen, "already existed in a more or
less shadowy and undeveloped shape;" it was Mr. Darwin's "task in
life to raise this theory from the rank of a mere plausible and
happy guess to the rank of a highly elaborate and almost universally
accepted biological system" (pp. 3-5).

We all admit the value of Mr. Darwin's work as having led to the
general acceptance of evolution.  No one who remembers average
middle-class opinion on this subject before 1860 will deny that it
was Mr. Darwin who brought us all round to descent with
modification; but Mr. Allen cannot rightly say that evolution had
only existed before Mr. Darwin's time in "a shadowy, undeveloped
state," or as "a mere plausible and happy guess."  It existed in the
same form as that in which most people accept it now, and had been
carried to its extreme development, before Mr. Darwin's father had
been born.  It is idle to talk of Buffon's work as "a mere plausible
and happy guess," or to imply that the first volume of the
"Philosophie Zoologique" of Lamarck was a less full and sufficient
demonstration of descent with modification than the "Origin of
Species" is.  It has its defects, shortcomings, and mistakes, but it
is an incomparably sounder work than the "Origin of Species;" and
though it contains the deplorable omission of any reference to
Buffon, Lamarck does not first grossly misrepresent Buffon, and then
tell him to go away, as Mr. Darwin did to the author of the
"Vestiges" and to Lamarck.  If Mr. Darwin was believed and honoured
for saying much the same as Lamarck had said, it was because Lamarck
had borne the brunt of the laughing.  The "Origin of Species" was
possible because the "Vestiges" had prepared the way for it.  The
"Vestiges" were made possible by Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin, and
these two were made possible by Buffon.  Here a somewhat sharper
line can be drawn than is usually found possible when defining the
ground covered by philosophers.  No one broke the ground for Buffon
to anything like the extent that he broke it for those who followed
him, and these broke it for one another.

Mr. Allen says (p. 11) that, "in Charles Darwin's own words, Lamarck
'first did the eminent service of arousing attention to the
probability of all change in the organic as well as in the inorganic
world being the result of law, and not of miraculous
interposition.'"  Mr. Darwin did indeed use these words, but Mr.
Allen omits the pertinent fact that he did not use them till six
thousand copies of his work had been issued, and an impression been
made as to its scope and claims which the event has shown to be not
easily effaced; nor does he say that Mr. Darwin only pays these few
words of tribute in a quasi-preface, which, though prefixed to his
later editions of the "Origin of Species," is amply neutralised by
the spirit which I have shown to be omnipresent in the body of the
work itself.  Moreover, Mr. Darwin's statement is inaccurate to an
unpardonable extent; his words would be fairly accurate if applied
to Buffon, but they do not apply to Lamarck.

Mr. Darwin continues that Lamarck "seems to attribute all the
beautiful adaptations in nature, such as the long neck of the
giraffe for browsing on the branches of trees," to the effects of
habit.  Mr. Darwin should not say that Lamarck "seems" to do this.
It was his business to tell us what led Lamarck to his conclusions,
not what "seemed" to do so.  Any one who knows the first volume of
the "Philosophie Zoologique" will be aware that there is no "seems"
in the matter.  Mr. Darwin's words "seem" to say that it really
could not be worth any practical naturalist's while to devote
attention to Lamarck's argument; the inquiry might be of interest to
antiquaries, but Mr. Darwin had more important work in hand than
following the vagaries of one who had been so completely exploded as
Lamarck had been.  "Seem" is to men what "feel" is to women; women
who feel, and men who grease every other sentence with a "seem," are
alike to be looked on with distrust.

"Still," continues Mr. Allen, "Darwin gave no sign.  A flaccid,
cartilaginous, unphilosophic evolutionism had full possession of the
field for the moment, and claimed, as it were, to be the genuine
representative of the young and vigorous biological creed, while he
himself was in truth the real heir to all the honours of the
situation.  He was in possession of the master-key which alone could
unlock the bars that opposed the progress of evolution, and still he
waited.  He could afford to wait.  He was diligently collecting,
amassing, investigating; eagerly reading every new systematic work,
every book of travels, every scientific journal, every record of
sport, or exploration, or discovery, to extract from the dead mass
of undigested fact whatever item of implicit value might swell the
definite co-ordinated series of notes in his own commonplace books
for the now distinctly contemplated 'Origin of Species.'  His way
was to make all sure behind him, to summon up all his facts in
irresistible array, and never to set out upon a public progress
until he was secure against all possible attacks of the ever-
watchful and alert enemy in the rear," &c. (p. 73).

It would not be easy to beat this.  Mr. Darwin's worst enemy could
wish him no more damaging eulogist.

Of the "Vestiges" Mr. Allen says that Mr. Darwin "felt sadly" the
inaccuracy and want of profound technical knowledge everywhere
displayed by the anonymous author.  Nevertheless, long after, in the
"Origin of Species," the great naturalist wrote with generous
appreciation of the "Vestiges of Creation"--"In my opinion it has
done excellent service in this country in calling attention to the
subject, in removing prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for
the reception of analogous views."

I have already referred to the way in which Mr. Darwin treated the
author of the "Vestiges," and have stated the facts at greater
length in "Evolution Old and New," but it may be as well to give Mr.
Darwin's words in full; he wrote as follows on the third page of the
original edition of the "Origin of Species":-

"The author of the 'Vestiges of Creation' would, I presume, say
that, after a certain unknown number of generations, some bird had
given birth to a woodpecker, and some plant to the mistletoe, and
that these had been produced perfect as we now see them; but this
assumption seems to me to be no explanation, for it leaves the case
of the coadaptation of organic beings to each other and to their
physical conditions of life untouched and unexplained."

The author of the "Vestiges" did, doubtless, suppose that "SOME
bird" had given birth to a woodpecker, or more strictly, that a
couple of birds had done so--and this is all that Mr. Darwin has
committed himself to--but no one better knew that these two birds
would, according to the author of the "Vestiges," be just as much
woodpeckers, and just as little woodpeckers, as they would be with
Mr. Darwin himself.  Mr. Chambers did not suppose that a woodpecker
became a woodpecker per saltum though born of some widely different
bird, but Mr. Darwin's words have no application unless they convey
this impression.  The reader will note that though the impression is
conveyed, Mr. Darwin avoids conveying it categorically.  I suppose
this is what Mr. Allen means by saying that he "made all things sure
behind him."  Mr. Chambers did indeed believe in occasional sports;
so did Mr. Darwin, and we have seen that in the later editions of
the "Origin of Species" he found himself constrained to lay greater
stress on these than he had originally done.  Substantially, Mr.
Chambers held much the same opinion as to the suddenness or slowness
of modification as Mr. Darwin did, nor can it be doubted that Mr.
Darwin knew this perfectly well.

What I have said about the woodpecker applies also to the mistletoe.
Besides, it was Mr. Darwin's business not to presume anything about
the matter; his business was to tell us what the author of the
"Vestiges" had said, or to refer us to the page of the "Vestiges" on
which we should find this.  I suppose he was too busy "collecting,
amassing, investigating," &c., to be at much pains not to
misrepresent those who had been in the field before him.  There is
no other reference to the "Vestiges" in the "Origin of Species" than
this suave but singularly fraudulent passage.

In his edition of 1860 the author of the "Vestiges" showed that he
was nettled, and said it was to be regretted Mr. Darwin had read the
"Vestiges" "almost as much amiss as if, like its declared opponents,
he had an interest in misunderstanding it;" and a little lower he
adds that Mr. Darwin's book "in no essential respect contradicts the
'Vestiges,'" but that, on the contrary, "while adding to its
explanations of nature, it expressed the same general ideas." {216a}
This is substantially true; neither Mr. Darwin's nor Mr. Chambers's
are good books, but the main object of both is to substantiate the
theory of descent with modification, and, bad as the "Vestiges" is,
it is ingenuous as compared with the "Origin of Species."
Subsequently to Mr. Chambers' protest, and not till, as I have said,
six thousand copies of the "Origin of Species" had been issued, the
sentence complained of by Mr. Chambers was expunged, but without a
word of retractation, and the passage which Mr. Allen thinks so
generous was inserted into the "brief but imperfect" sketch which
Mr. Darwin prefixed--after Mr. Chambers had been effectually snuffed
out--to all subsequent editions of his "Origin of Species."  There
is no excuse for Mr. Darwin's not having said at least this much
about the author of the "Vestiges" in his first edition; and on
finding that he had misrepresented him in a passage which he did not
venture to retain, he should not have expunged it quietly, but
should have called attention to his mistake in the body of his book,
and given every prominence in his power to the correction.

Let us now examine Mr. Allen's record in the matter of natural
selection.  For years he was one of the foremost apostles of Neo-
Darwinism, and any who said a good word for Lamarck were told that
this was the "kind of mystical nonsense" from which Mr. Allen "had
hoped Mr. Darwin had for ever saved us." {216b}  Then in October
1883 came an article in "Mind," from which it appeared as though Mr.
Allen had abjured Mr. Darwin and all his works.

"There are only two conceivable ways," he then wrote, "in which any
increment of brain power can ever have arisen in any individual.
The one is the Darwinian way, by spontaneous variation, that is to
say, by variation due to minute physical circumstances affecting the
individual in the germ.  The other is the Spencerian way, by
functional increment, that is to say, by the effect of increased use
and constant exposure to varying circumstances during conscious
life."

Mr. Allen calls this the Spencerian view, and so it is in so far as
that Mr. Spencer has adopted it.  Most people will call it
Lamarckian.  This, however, is a detail.  Mr. Allen continues:-

"I venture to think that the first way, if we look it clearly in the
face, will be seen to be practically unthinkable; and that we have
no alternative, therefore, but to accept the second."

I like our looking a "way" which is "practically unthinkable"
"clearly in the face."  I particularly like "practically
unthinkable."  I suppose we can think it in theory, but not in
practice.  I like almost everything Mr. Allen says or does; it is
not necessary to go far in search of his good things; dredge up any
bit of mud from him at random and we are pretty sure to find an
oyster with a pearl in it, if we look it clearly in the face; I
mean, there is sure to be something which will be at any rate
"almost" practically unthinkable.  But however this may be, when Mr.
Allen wrote his article in "Mind" two years ago, he was in
substantial agreement with myself about the value of natural
selection as a means of modification--by natural selection I mean,
of course, the commonly known Charles-Darwinian natural selection
from fortuitous variations; now, however, in 1885, he is all for
this same natural selection again, and in the preface to his
"Charles Darwin" writes (after a handsome acknowledgment of
"Evolution Old and New") that he "differs from" me "fundamentally
in" my "estimate of the worth of Charles Darwin's distinctive
discovery of natural selection."

This he certainly does, for on page 81 of the work itself he speaks
of "the distinctive notion of natural selection" as having, "like
all true and fruitful ideas, more than once flashed," &c.  I have
explained usque ad nauseam, and will henceforth explain no longer,
that natural selection is no "distinctive notion" of Mr. Darwin's.
Mr. Darwin's "distinctive notion" is natural selection from among
fortuitous variations.

Writing again (p. 89) of Mr. Spencer's essay in the "Leader," {218a}
Mr. Allen says:-

"It contains, in a very philosophical and abstract form, the theory
of 'descent with modification' without the distinctive Darwinian
adjunct of 'natural selection' or survival of the fittest.  Yet it
was just that lever dexterously applied, and carefully weighted with
the whole weight of his endlessly accumulated inductive instances,
that finally enabled our modern Archimedes to move the world."

Again:-

"To account for adaptation, for the almost perfect fitness of every
plant and every animal to its position in life, for the existence
(in other words) of definitely correlated parts and organs, we must
call in the aid of survival of the fittest.  Without that potent
selective agent, our conception of the becoming of life is a mere
chaos; order and organisation are utterly inexplicable save by the
brilliant illuminating ray of the Darwinian principle" (p. 93).

And yet two years previously this same principle, after having been
thinkable for many years, had become "unthinkable."

Two years previously, writing of the Charles-Darwinian scheme of
evolution, Mr. Allen had implied it as his opinion "that all brains
are what they are in virtue of antecedent function."  "The one
creed," he wrote--referring to Mr Darwin's--"makes the man depend
mainly upon the accidents of molecular physics in a colliding germ
cell and sperm cell; the other makes him depend mainly on the doings
and gains of his ancestors as modified and altered by himself."

This second creed is pure Erasmus-Darwinism and Lamarck.

Again:-

"It seems to me easy to understand how survival of the fittest may
result in progress STARTING FROM SUCH FUNCTIONALLY PRODUCED GAINS
(italics mine), but impossible to understand how it could result in
progress, if it had to start in mere accidental structural
increments due to spontaneous variation alone." {219a}

Which comes to saying that it is easy to understand the Lamarckian
system of evolution, but not the Charles-Darwinian.  Mr. Allen
concluded his article a few pages later on by saying

"The first hypothesis" (Mr. Darwin's) "is one that throws no light
upon any of the facts.  The second hypothesis" (which is unalloyed
Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck) "is one that explains them all with
transparent lucidity."  Yet in his "Charles Darwin" Mr. Allen tells
us that though Mr. Darwin "did not invent the development theory, he
made it believable and comprehensible" (p. 4).

In his "Charles Darwin" Mr. Allen does not tell us how recently he
had, in another place, expressed an opinion about the value of Mr.
Darwin's "distinctive contribution" to the theory of evolution, so
widely different from the one he is now expressing with
characteristic appearance of ardour.  He does not explain how he is
able to execute such rapid changes of front without forfeiting his
claim on our attention; explanations on matters of this sort seem
out of date with modern scientists.  I can only suppose that Mr.
Allen regards himself as having taken a brief, as it were, for the
production of a popular work, and feels more bound to consider the
interests of the gentleman who pays him than to say what he really
thinks; for surely Mr. Allen would not have written as he did in
such a distinctly philosophical and scientific journal as "Mind"
without weighing his words, and nothing has transpired lately,
apropos of evolution, which will account for his present
recantation.  I said in my book "Selections," &c., that when Mr.
Allen made stepping-stones of his dead selves, he jumped upon them
to some tune.  I was a little scandalised then at the completeness
and suddenness of the movement he executed, and spoke severely; I
have sometimes feared I may have spoken too severely, but his recent
performance goes far to warrant my remarks.

If, however, there is no dead self about it, and Mr. Allen has only
taken a brief, I confess to being not greatly edified.  I grant that
a good case can be made out for an author's doing as I suppose Mr.
Allen to have done; indeed I am not sure that both science and
religion would not gain if every one rode his neighbour's theory, as
at a donkey-race, and the least plausible were held to win; but
surely, as things stand, a writer by the mere fact of publishing a
book professes to be giving a bona fide opinion.  The analogy of the
bar does not hold, for not only is it perfectly understood that a
barrister does not necessarily state his own opinions, but there
exists a strict though unwritten code to protect the public against
the abuses to which such a system must be liable.  In religion and
science no such code exists--the supposition being that these two
holy callings are above the necessity for anything of the kind.
Science and religion are not as business is; still, if the public do
not wish to be taken in, they must be at some pains to find out
whether they are in the hands of one who, while pretending to be a
judge, is in reality a paid advocate, with no one's interests at
heart except his client's, or in those of one who, however warmly he
may plead, will say nothing but what springs from mature and genuine
conviction.

The present unsettled and unsatisfactory state of the moral code in
this respect is at the bottom of the supposed antagonism between
religion and science.  These two are not, or never ought to be,
antagonistic.  They should never want what is spoken of as
reconciliation, for in reality they are one.  Religion is the
quintessence of science, and science the raw material of religion;
when people talk about reconciling religion and science they do not
mean what they say; they mean reconciling the statements made by one
set of professional men with those made by another set whose
interests lie in the opposite direction--and with no recognised
president of the court to keep them within due bounds this is not
always easy.

Mr. Allen says:-

"At the same time it must be steadily remembered that there are many
naturalists at the present day, especially among those of the lower
order of intelligence, who, while accepting evolutionism in a
general way, and therefore always describing themselves as
Darwinians, do not believe, and often cannot even understand, the
distinctive Darwinian addition to the evolutionary doctrine--namely,
the principle of natural selection.  Such hazy and indistinct
thinkers as these are still really at the prior stage of Lamarckian
evolution" (p. 199).

Considering that Mr. Allen was at that stage himself so recently, he
might deal more tenderly with others who still find "the distinctive
Darwinian adjunct" "unthinkable."  It is perhaps, however, because
he remembers his difficulties that Mr. Allen goes on as follows:-

"It is probable that in the future, while a formal acceptance of
Darwinism becomes general, the special theory of natural selection
will be thoroughly understood and assimilated only by the more
abstract and philosophical minds."

By the kind of people, in fact, who read the Spectator and are
called thoughtful; and in point of fact less than a twelvemonth
after this passage was written, natural selection was publicly
abjured as "a theory of the origin of species" by Mr. Romanes
himself, with the implied approval of the Times.

"Thus," continues Mr. Allen, "the name of Darwin will often no doubt
be tacked on to what are in reality the principles of Lamarck."

It requires no great power of prophecy to foretell this, considering
that it is done daily by nine out of ten who call themselves
Darwinians.  Ask ten people of ordinary intelligence how Mr. Darwin
explains the fact that giraffes have long necks, and nine of them
will answer "through continually stretching them to reach higher and
higher boughs."  They do not understand that this is the Lamarckian
view of evolution, not the Darwinian; nor will Mr. Allen's book
greatly help the ordinary reader to catch the difference between the
two theories, in spite of his frequent reference to Mr. Darwin's
"distinctive feature," and to his "master-key."  No doubt the
British public will get to understand all about it some day, but it
can hardly be expected to do so all at once, considering the way in
which Mr. Allen and so many more throw dust in its eyes, and will
doubtless continue to throw it as long as an honest penny is to be
turned by doing so.  Mr. Allen, then, is probably right in saying
that "the name of Darwin will no doubt be often tacked on to what
are in reality the principles of Lamarck," nor can it be denied that
Mr. Darwin, by his practice of using "the theory of natural
selection" as though it were a synonym for "the theory of descent
with modification," contributed to this result.

I do not myself doubt that he intended to do this, but Mr. Allen
would say no less confidently he did not.  He writes of Mr. Darwin
as follows:-

"Of Darwin's pure and exalted moral nature no Englishman of the
present generation can trust himself to speak with becoming
moderation."

He proceeds to trust himself thus:-

"His love of truth, his singleness of heart, his sincerity, his
earnestness, his modesty, his candour, his absolute sinking of self
and selfishness--these, indeed are all conspicuous to every reader
on the very face of every word he ever printed."

This "conspicuous sinking of self" is of a piece with the
"delightful unostentatiousness WHICH EVERY ONE MUST HAVE NOTICED"
about which Mr. Allen writes on page 65.  Does he mean that Mr.
Darwin was "ostentatiously unostentatious," or that he was
"unostentatiously ostentatious"?  I think we may guess from this
passage who it was that in the old days of the Pall Mall Gazelle
called Mr. Darwin "a master of a certain happy simplicity."

Mr. Allen continues:-

"Like his works themselves, they must long outlive him.  But his
sympathetic kindliness, his ready generosity, the staunchness of his
friendship, the width and depth and breadth of his affections, the
manner in which 'he bore with those who blamed him unjustly without
blaming them again'--these things can never be so well known to any
other generation of men as to the three generations that walked the
world with him" (pp. 174, 175).

Again:-

"He began early in life to collect and arrange a vast encyclopaedia
of facts, all finally focussed with supreme skill upon the great
principle he so clearly perceived and so lucidly expounded.  He
brought to bear upon the question an amount of personal observation,
of minute experiment, of world-wide book knowledge, of universal
scientific ability, such as never, perhaps, was lavished by any
other man upon any other department of study.  His conspicuous and
beautiful love of truth, his unflinching candour, his transparent
fearlessness and honesty of purpose, his childlike simplicity, his
modesty of demeanour, his charming manner, his affectionate
disposition, his kindliness to friends, his courtesy to opponents,
his gentleness to harsh and often bitter assailants, kindled in the
minds of men of science everywhere throughout the world a contagious
enthusiasm only equalled perhaps among the disciples of Socrates and
the great teachers of the revival of learning.  His name became a
rallying-point for the children of light in every country" (pp. 196,
197).

I need not quote more; the sentence goes on to talk about "firmly
grounding" something which philosophers and speculators might have
taken a century or two more "to establish in embryo;" but those who
wish to see it must turn to Mr. Allen's book.

If I have formed too severe an estimate of Mr. Darwin's work and
character--and this is more than likely--the fulsomeness of the
adulation lavished on him by his admirers for many years past must
be in some measure my excuse.  We grow tired even of hearing
Aristides called just, but what is so freely said about Mr. Darwin
puts us in mind more of what the people said about Herod--that he
spoke with the voice of a God, not of a man.  So we saw Professor
Ray Lankester hail him not many years ago as the "greatest of living
men." {224a}

It is ill for any man's fame that he should be praised so
extravagantly.  Nobody ever was as good as Mr. Darwin looked, and a
counterblast to such a hurricane of praise as has been lately
blowing will do no harm to his ultimate reputation, even though it
too blow somewhat fiercely.  Art, character, literature, religion,
science (I have named them in alphabetical order), thrive best in a
breezy, bracing air; I heartily hope I may never be what is commonly
called successful in my own lifetime--and if I go on as I am doing
now, I have a fair chance of succeeding in not succeeding.



CHAPTER XVII--Professor Ray Lankester and Lamarck



Being anxious to give the reader a sample of the arguments against
the theory of natural selection from among variations that are
mainly either directly or indirectly functional in their inception,
or more briefly against the Erasmus-Darwinian and Lamarckian
systems, I can find nothing more to the point, or more recent, than
Professor Ray Lankester's letter to the Athenaeum of March 29, 1884,
to the latter part of which, however, I need alone call attention.
Professor Ray Lankester says:-

"And then we are introduced to the discredited speculations of
Lamarck, which have found a worthy advocate in Mr. Butler, as really
solid contributions to the discovery of the verae causae of
variation!  A much more important attempt to do something for
Lamarck's hypothesis, of the transmission to offspring of structural
peculiarities acquired by the parents, was recently made by an able
and experienced naturalist, Professor Semper of Wurzburg.  His book
on 'Animal Life,' &c., is published in the 'International Scientific
Series.'  Professor Semper adduces an immense number and variety of
cases of structural change in animals and plants brought about in
the individual by adaptation (during its individual life-history) to
new conditions.  Some of these are very marked changes, such as the
loss of its horny coat in the gizzard of a pigeon fed on meat; BUT
IN NO SINGLE INSTANCE COULD PROFESSOR SEMPER SHOW--although it was
his object and desire to do so if possible--that such change was
transmitted from parent to offspring.  Lamarckism looks all very
well on paper, but, as Professor Semper's book shows, when put to
the test of observation and experiment it collapses absolutely."

I should have thought it would have been enough if it had collapsed
without the "absolutely," but Professor Ray Lankester does not like
doing things by halves.  Few will be taken in by the foregoing
quotation, except those who do not greatly care whether they are
taken in or not; but to save trouble to readers who may have neither
Lamarck nor Professor Semper at hand, I will put the case as
follows:-

Professor Semper writes a book to show, we will say, that the hour-
hand of the clock moves gradually forward, in spite of its appearing
stationary.  He makes his case sufficiently clear, and then might
have been content to leave it; nevertheless, in the innocence of his
heart, he adds the admission that though he had often looked at the
clock for a long time together, he had never been able actually to
see the hour-hand moving.  "There now," exclaims Professor Ray
Lankester on this, "I told you so; the theory collapses absolutely;
his whole object and desire is to show that the hour-hand moves, and
yet when it comes to the point, he is obliged to confess that he
cannot see it do so."  It is not worth while to meet what Professor
Ray Lankester has been above quoted as saying about Lamarckism
beyond quoting the following passage from a review of "The
Neanderthal Skull on Evolution" in the "Monthly Journal of Science"
for June, 1885 (p. 362):-

"On the very next page the author reproduces the threadbare
objection that the 'supporters of the theory have never yet
succeeded in observing a single instance in all the millions of
years invented (!) in its support of one species of animal turning
into another.'  Now, ex hypothesi, one species turns into another
not rapidly, as in a transformation scene, but in successive
generations, each being born a shade different from its progenitors.
Hence to observe such a change is excluded by the very terms of the
question.  Does Mr. Saville forget Mr. Herbert Spencer's apologue of
the ephemeron which had never witnessed the change of a child into a
man?"

The apologue, I may say in passing, is not Mr. Spencer's; it is by
the author of the "Vestiges," and will be found on page 161 of the
1853 edition of that book; but let this pass.  How impatient
Professor Ray Lankester is of any attempt to call attention to the
older view of evolution appears perhaps even more plainly in a
review of this same book of Professor Semper's that appeared in
"Nature," March 3, 1881.  The tenor of the remarks last quoted shows
that though what I am about to quote is now more than five years
old, it may be taken as still giving us the position which Professor
Ray Lankester takes on these matters.  He wrote:-

"It is necessary," he exclaims, "to plainly and emphatically state"
(Why so much emphasis?  Why not "it should be stated"?) "that
Professor Semper and a few other writers of similar views" {227a} (I
have sent for the number of "Modern Thought" referred to by
Professor Ray Lankester but find no article by Mr. Henslow, and do
not, therefore, know what he had said) "are not adding to or
building on Mr. Darwin's theory, but are actually opposing all that
is essential and distinctive in that theory, by the revival of the
exploded notion of 'directly transforming agents' advocated by
Lamarck and others."

It may be presumed that these writers know they are not "adding to
or building on" Mr. Darwin's theory, and do not wish to build on it,
as not thinking it a sound foundation.  Professor Ray Lankester says
they are "actually opposing," as though there were something
intolerably audacious in this; but it is not easy to see why he
should be more angry with them for "actually opposing" Mr. Darwin
than they may be with him, if they think it worth while, for
"actually defending" the exploded notion of natural selection--for
assuredly the Charles-Darwinian system is now more exploded than
Lamarck's is.

What Professor Ray Lankester says about Lamarck and "directly
transforming agents" will mislead those who take his statement
without examination.  Lamarck does not say that modification is
effected by means of "directly transforming agents;" nothing can be
more alien to the spirit of his teaching.  With him the action of
the external conditions of existence (and these are the only
transforming agents intended by Professor Ray Lankester) is not
direct, but indirect.  Change in surroundings changes the organism's
outlook, and thus changes its desires; desires changing, there is
corresponding change in the actions performed; actions changing, a
corresponding change is by-and-by induced in the organs that perform
them; this, if long continued, will be transmitted; becoming
augmented by accumulation in many successive generations, and
further modifications perhaps arising through further changes in
surroundings, the change will amount ultimately to specific and
generic difference.  Lamarck knows no drug, nor operation, that will
medicine one organism into another, and expects the results of
adaptive effort to be so gradual as to be only perceptible when
accumulated in the course of many generations.  When, therefore,
Professor Ray Lankester speaks of Lamarck as having "advocated
directly transforming agents," he either does not know what he is
talking about, or he is trifling with his readers.  Professor Ray
Lankester continues:-

"They do not seem to be aware of this, for they make no attempt to
examine Mr. Darwin's accumulated facts and arguments."  Professor
Ray Lankester need not shake Mr. Darwin's "accumulated facts and
arguments" at us.  We have taken more pains to understand them than
Professor Ray Lankester has taken to understand Lamarck, and by this
time know them sufficiently.  We thankfully accept by far the
greater number, and rely on them as our sheet-anchors to save us
from drifting on to the quicksands of Neo-Darwinian natural
selection; few of them, indeed, are Mr. Darwin's, except in so far
as he has endorsed them and given them publicity, but I do not know
that this detracts from their value.  We have paid great attention
to Mr. Darwin's facts, and if we do not understand all his
arguments--for it is not always given to mortal man to understand
these--yet we think we know what he was driving at.  We believe we
understand this to the full as well as Mr. Darwin intended us to do,
and perhaps better.  Where the arguments tend to show that all
animals and plants are descended from a common source we find them
much the same as Buffon's, or as those of Erasmus Darwin or Lamarck,
and have nothing to say against them; where, on the other hand, they
aim at proving that the main means of modification has been the fact
that if an animal has been "favoured" it will be "preserved"--then
we think that the animal's own exertions will, in the long run, have
had more to do with its preservation than any real or fancied
"favour."  Professor Ray Lankester continues:-

"The doctrine of evolution has become an accepted truth" (Professor
Ray Lankester writes as though the making of truth and falsehood lay
in the hollow of Mr. Darwin's hand.  Surely "has become accepted"
should be enough; Mr. Darwin did not make the doctrine true)
"entirely in consequence of Mr. Darwin's having demonstrated the
mechanism."  (There is no mechanism in the matter, and if there is,
Mr. Darwin did not show it.  He made some words which confused us
and prevented us from seeing that "the preservation of favoured
races" was a cloak for "luck," and that this was all the explanation
he was giving) "by which the evolution is possible; it was almost
universally rejected, while such undemonstrable agencies as those
arbitrarily asserted to exist by Professor Semper and Mr. George
Henslow were the only means suggested by its advocates."

Undoubtedly the theory of descent with modification, which received
its first sufficiently ample and undisguised exposition in 1809 with
the "Philosophie Zoologique" of Lamarck, shared the common fate of
all theories that revolutionise opinion on important matters, and
was fiercely opposed by the Huxleys, Romaneses, Grant Allens, and
Ray Lankesters of its time.  It had to face the reaction in favour
of the Church which began in the days of the First Empire, as a
natural consequence of the horrors of the Revolution; it had to face
the social influence and then almost Darwinian reputation of Cuvier,
whom Lamarck could not, or would not, square; it was put forward by
one who was old, poor, and ere long blind.  What theory could do
more than just keep itself alive under conditions so unfavourable?
Even under the most favourable conditions descent with modification
would have been a hard plant to rear, but, as things were, the
wonder is that it was not killed outright at once.  We all know how
large a share social influences have in deciding what kind of
reception a book or theory is to meet with; true, these influences
are not permanent, but at first they are almost irresistible; in
reality it was not the theory of descent that was matched against
that of fixity, but Lamarck against Cuvier; who can be surprised
that Cuvier for a time should have had the best of it?

And yet it is pleasant to reflect that his triumph was not, as
triumphs go, long lived.  How is Cuvier best known now?  As one who
missed a great opportunity; as one who was great in small things,
and stubbornly small in great ones.  Lamarck died in 1831; in 1861
descent with modification was almost universally accepted by those
most competent to form an opinion.  This result was by no means so
exclusively due to Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species" as is commonly
believed.  During the thirty years that followed 1831 Lamarck's
opinions made more way than Darwinians are willing to allow.
Granted that in 1861 the theory was generally accepted under the
name of Darwin, not under that of Lamarck, still it was Lamarck and
not Darwin that was being accepted; it was descent, not descent with
modification by means of natural selection from among fortuitous
variations, that we carried away with us from the "Origin of
Species."  The thing triumphed whether the name was lost or not.  I
need not waste the reader's time by showing further how little
weight he need attach to the fact that Lamarckism was not
immediately received with open arms by an admiring public.  The
theory of descent has become accepted as rapidly, if I am not
mistaken, as the Copernican theory, or as Newton's theory of
gravitation.

When Professor Ray Lankester goes on to speak of the "undemonstrable
agencies" "arbitrarily asserted" to exist by Professor Semper, he is
again presuming on the ignorance of his readers.  Professor Semper's
agencies are in no way more undemonstrable than Mr. Darwin's are.
Mr. Darwin was perfectly cogent as long as he stuck to Lamarck's
demonstration; his arguments were sound as long as they were
Lamarck's, or developments of, and riders upon, Buffon, Erasmus
Darwin, and Lamarck, and almost incredibly silly when they were his
own.  Fortunately the greater part of the "Origin of Species" is
devoted to proving the theory of descent with modification, by
arguments against which no exception would have been taken by Mr.
Darwin's three great precursors, except in so far as the variations
whose accumulation results in specific difference are supposed to be
fortuitous--and, to do Mr. Darwin justice, the fortuitousness,
though always within hail, is kept as far as possible in the
background.

"Mr. Darwin's arguments," says Professor Ray Lankester, "rest on the
PROVED existence of minute, many-sided, irrelative variations NOT
produced by directly transforming agents."  Mr. Darwin throughout
the body of the "Origin of Species" is not supposed to know what his
variations are or are not produced by; if they come, they come, and
if they do not come, they do not come.  True, we have seen that in
the last paragraph of the book all this was changed, and the
variations were ascribed to the conditions of existence, and to use
and disuse, but a concluding paragraph cannot be allowed to override
a whole book throughout which the variations have been kept to hand
as accidental.  Mr. Romanes is perfectly correct when he says {232a}
that "natural selection" (meaning the Charles-Darwinian natural
selection) "trusts to the chapter of accidents in the matter of
variation" this is all that Mr. Darwin can tell us; whether they
come from directly transforming agents or no he neither knows nor
says.  Those who accept Lamarck will know that the agencies are not,
as a rule, directly transforming, but the followers of Mr. Darwin
cannot.

"But showing themselves," continues Professor Ray Lankester, "at
each new act of reproduction, as part of the phenomena of heredity
such minute 'sports' or 'variations' are due to constitutional
disturbance" (No doubt.  The difference, however, between Mr. Darwin
and Lamarck consists in the fact that Lamarck believes he knows what
it is that so disturbs the constitution as generally to induce
variation, whereas Mr. Darwin says he does not know), "and appear
not in individuals subjected to new conditions" (What organism can
pass through life without being subjected to more or less new
conditions?  What life is ever the exact fac-simile of another?  And
in a matter of such extreme delicacy as the adjustment of psychical
and physical relations, who can say how small a disturbance of
established equilibrium may not involve how great a rearrangement?),
"but in the offspring of all, though more freely in the offspring of
those subjected to special causes of constitutional disturbance.
Mr. Darwin has further proved that these slight variations can be
transmitted and intensified by selective breeding."

Mr. Darwin did, indeed, follow Buffon and Lamarck in at once turning
to animals and plants under domestication in order to bring the
plasticity of organic forms more easily home to his readers, but the
fact that variations can be transmitted and intensified by selective
breeding had been so well established and was so widely known long
before Mr. Darwin was born, that he can no more be said to have
proved it than Newton can be said to have proved the revolution of
the earth on its own axis.  Every breeder throughout the world had
known it for centuries.  I believe even Virgil knew it.

"They have," continues Professor Ray Lankester, "in reference to
breeding, a remarkably tenacious, persistent character, as might be
expected from their origin in connection with the reproductive
process."

The variations do not normally "originate in connection with the
reproductive process," though it is during this process that they
receive organic expression.  They originate mainly, so far as
anything originates anywhere, in the life of the parent or parents.
Without going so far as to say that no variation can arise in
connection with the reproductive system--for, doubtless, striking
and successful sports do occasionally so arise--it is more probable
that the majority originate earlier.  Professor Ray Lankester
proceeds:-

"On the other hand, mutilations and other effects of directly
transforming agents are rarely, if ever, transmitted."  Professor
Ray Lankester ought to know the facts better than to say that the
effects of mutilation are rarely, if ever, transmitted.  The rule
is, that they will not be transmitted unless they have been followed
by disease, but that where disease has supervened they not
uncommonly descend to offspring. {234a}  I know Brown-Sequard
considered it to be the morbid state of the nervous system
consequent upon the mutilation that is transmitted, rather than the
immediate effects of the mutilation, but this distinction is
somewhat finely drawn.

When Professor Ray Lankester talks about the "other effects of
directly transforming agents" being rarely transmitted, he should
first show us the directly transforming agents.  Lamarck, as I have
said, knows them not.  "It is little short of an absurdity," he
continues, "for people to come forward at this epoch, when evolution
is at length accepted solely because of Mr. Darwin's doctrine, and
coolly to propose to replace that doctrine by the old notion so
often tried and rejected."

Whether this is an absurdity or no, Professor Lankester will do well
to learn to bear it without showing so much warmth, for it is one
that is becoming common.  Evolution has been accepted not "because
of" Mr. Darwin's doctrine, but because Mr. Darwin so fogged us about
his doctrine that we did not understand it.  We thought we were
backing his bill for descent with modification, whereas we were in
reality backing it for descent with modification by means of natural
selection from among fortuitous variations.  This last really is Mr.
Darwin's theory, except in so far as it is also Mr. A. R. Wallace's;
descent, alone, is just as much and just as little Mr. Darwin's
doctrine as it is Professor Ray Lankester's or mine.  I grant it is
in great measure through Mr. Darwin's books that descent has become
so widely accepted; it has become so through his books, but in spite
of, rather than by reason of, his doctrine.  Indeed his doctrine was
no doctrine, but only a back-door for himself to escape by in the
event of flood or fire; the flood and fire have come; it remains to
be seen how far the door will work satisfactorily.

Professor Ray Lankester, again, should not say that Lamarck's
doctrine has been "so often tried and rejected."  M. Martins, in his
edition of the "Philosophie Zoologique," {235a} said truly that
Lamarck's theory had never yet had the honour of being seriously
discussed.  It never has--not at least in connection with the name
of its propounder.  To mention Lamarck's name in the presence of the
conventional English society naturalist has always been like shaking
a red rag at a cow; he is at once infuriated; "as if it were
possible," to quote from Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, whose defence
of Lamarck is one of the best things in his book, {235b} "that so
great labour on the part of so great a naturalist should have led
him to 'a fantastic conclusion' only--to 'a flighty error,' and, as
has been often said, though not written, to 'one absurdity the
more.'  Such was the language which Lamarck heard during his
protracted old age, saddened alike by the weight of years and
blindness; this was what people did not hesitate to utter over his
grave, yet barely closed, and what, indeed, they are still saying--
commonly too, without any knowledge of what Lamarck maintained, but
merely repeating at second hand bad caricatures of his teaching.

"When will the time come when we may see Lamarck's theory discussed,
and I may as well at once say refuted, in some important points,
with at any rate the respect due to one of the most illustrious
masters of our science?  And when will this theory, the hardihood of
which has been greatly exaggerated, become freed from the
interpretations and commentaries by the false light of which so many
naturalists have formed their opinion concerning it?  If its author
is to be condemned, let it, at any rate, not be before he has been
heard."

Lamarck was the Lazarus of biology.  I wish his more fortunate
brethren, instead of intoning the old Church argument that he has
"been refuted over and over again," would refer us to some of the
best chapters in the writers who have refuted him.  My own reading
has led me to become moderately well acquainted with the literature
of evolution, but I have never come across a single attempt fairly
to grapple with Lamarck, and it is plain that neither Isidore
Geoffroy nor M. Martins knows of such an attempt any more than I do.
When Professor Ray Lankester puts his finger on Lamarck's weak
places, then, but not till then, may he complain of those who try to
replace Mr. Darwin's doctrine by Lamarck's.

Professor Ray Lankester concludes his note thus:-

"That such an attempt should be made is an illustration of a curious
weakness of humanity.  Not infrequently, after a long contested
cause has triumphed, and all have yielded allegiance thereto, you
will find, when few generations have passed, that men have clean
forgotten what and who it was that made that cause triumphant, and
ignorantly will set up for honour the name of a traitor or an
impostor, or attribute to a great man as a merit deeds and thoughts
which he spent a long life in opposing."

Exactly so; that is what one rather feels, but surely Professor Ray
Lankester should say "in trying to filch while pretending to oppose
and to amend."  He is complaining here that people persistently
ascribe Lamarck's doctrine to Mr. Darwin.  Of course they do; but,
as I have already perhaps too abundantly asked, whose fault is this?
If a man knows his own mind, and wants others to understand it, it
is not often that he is misunderstood for any length of time.  If he
finds he is being misapprehended in a way he does not like, he will
write another book and make his meaning plainer.  He will go on
doing this for as long time as he thinks necessary.  I do not
suppose, for example, that people will say I originated the theory
of descent by means of natural selection from among fortunate
accidents, or even that I was one of its supporters as a means of
modification; but if this impression were to prevail, I cannot think
I should have much difficulty in removing it.  At any rate no such
misapprehension could endure for more than twenty years, during
which I continued to address a public who welcomed all I wrote,
unless I myself aided and abetted the mistake.  Mr. Darwin wrote
many books, but the impression that Darwinism and evolution, or
descent with modification, are identical is still nearly as
prevalent as it was soon after the appearance of the "Origin of
Species;" the reason of this is, that Mr. Darwin was at no pains to
correct us.  Where, in any one of his many later books, is there a
passage which sets the matter in its true light, and enters a
protest against the misconception of which Professor Ray Lankester
complains so bitterly?  The only inference from this is, that Mr.
Darwin was not displeased at our thinking him to be the originator
of the theory of descent with modification, and did not want us to
know more about Lamarck than he could help.  If we wanted to know
about him, we must find out what he had said for ourselves, it was
no part of Mr. Darwin's business to tell us; he had no interest in
our catching the distinctive difference between himself and that
writer; perhaps not; but this approaches closely to wishing us to
misunderstand it.  When Mr. Darwin wished us to understand this or
that, no one knew better how to show it to us.

We were aware, on reading the "Origin of Species," that there was a
something about it of which we had not full hold; nevertheless we
gave Mr. Darwin our confidence at once, partly because he led off by
telling us that we must trust him to a great extent, and explained
that the present book was only an instalment of a larger work which,
when it came out, would make everything perfectly clear; partly,
again, because the case for descent with modification, which was the
leading idea throughout the book, was so obviously strong, but
perhaps mainly because every one said Mr. Darwin was so good, and so
much less self-heeding than other people; besides, he had so
"patiently" and "carefully" accumulated "such a vast store of facts"
as no other naturalist, living or dead, had ever yet even tried to
get together; he was so kind to us with his, "May we not believe?"
and his "Have we any right to infer that the Creator?" &c.  "Of
course we have not," we exclaimed, almost with tears in our eyes--
"not if you ask us in that way."  Now that we understand what it was
that puzzled us in Mr. Darwin's work we do not think highly either
of the chief offender, or of the accessories after the fact, many of
whom are trying to brazen the matter out, and on a smaller scale to
follow his example.



CHAPTER XVIII--Per Contra



"'The evil that men do lives after them" {239a} is happily not so
true as that the good lives after them, while the ill is buried with
their bones, and to no one does this correction of Shakespeare's
unwonted spleen apply more fully than to Mr. Darwin.  Indeed it was
somewhat thus that we treated his books even while he was alive; the
good, descent, remained with us, while the ill, the deification of
luck, was forgotten as soon as we put down his work.  Let me now,
therefore, as far as possible, quit the ungrateful task of dwelling
on the defects of Mr. Darwin's work and character, for the more
pleasant one of insisting upon their better side, and of explaining
how he came to be betrayed into publishing the "Origin of Species"
without reference to the works of his predecessors.

In the outset I would urge that it is not by any single book that
Mr. Darwin should be judged.  I do not believe that any one of the
three principal works on which his reputation is founded will
maintain with the next generation the place it has acquired with
ourselves; nevertheless, if asked to say who was the man of our own
times whose work had produced the most important, and, on the whole,
beneficial effect, I should perhaps wrongly, but still both
instinctively and on reflection, name him to whom I have,
unfortunately, found myself in more bitter opposition than to any
other in the whole course of my life.  I refer, of course, to Mr.
Darwin.

His claim upon us lies not so much in what is actually found within
the four corners of any one of his books, as in the fact of his
having written them at all--in the fact of his having brought out
one after another, with descent always for its keynote, until the
lesson was learned too thoroughly to make it at all likely that it
will be forgotten.  Mr. Darwin wanted to move his generation, and
had the penetration to see that this is not done by saying a thing
once for all and leaving it.  It almost seems as though it matters
less what a man says than the number of times he repeats it, in a
more or less varied form.  It was here the author of the "Vestiges
of Creation" made his most serious mistake.  He relied on new
editions, and no one pays much attention to new editions--the mark a
book makes is almost always made by its first edition.  If, instead
of bringing out a series of amended editions during the fifteen
years' law which Mr. Darwin gave him, Mr. Chambers had followed up
the "Vestiges" with new book upon new book, he would have learned
much more, and, by consequence, not have been snuffed out so easily
once for all as he was in 1859 when the "Origin of Species"
appeared.

The tenacity of purpose which appears to have been one of Mr.
Darwin's most remarkable characteristics was visible even in his
outward appearance.  He always reminded me of Raffaelle's portrait
of Pope Julius the Second, which, indeed, would almost do for a
portrait of Mr. Darwin himself.  I imagine that these two men,
widely as the sphere of their action differed, must have been like
each other in more respects than looks alone.  Each, certainly, had
a hand of iron; whether Pope Julius wore a velvet glove or no, I do
not know; I rather think not, for, if I remember rightly, he boxed
Michael Angelo's ears for giving him a saucy answer.  We cannot
fancy Mr. Darwin boxing any one's ears; indeed there can be no doubt
he wore a very thick velvet glove, but the hand underneath it was
none the less of iron.  It was to his tenacity of purpose,
doubtless, that his success was mainly due; but for this he must
inevitably have fallen before the many inducements to desist from
the pursuit of his main object, which beset him in the shape of ill
health, advancing years, ample private means, large demands upon his
time, and a reputation already great enough to satisfy the ambition
of any ordinary man.

I do not gather from those who remember Mr. Darwin as a boy, and as
a young man, that he gave early signs of being likely to achieve
greatness; nor, as it seems to me, is there any sign of unusual
intellectual power to be detected in his earliest book.  Opening
this "almost" at random I read--"Earthquakes alone are sufficient to
destroy the prosperity of any country.  If, for instance, beneath
England the now inert subterraneous forces should exert those powers
which most assuredly in former geological ages they have exerted,
how completely would the entire condition of the country be changed!
What would become of the lofty houses, thickly-packed cities, great
manufacturies (sic), the beautiful public and private edifices?  If
the new period of disturbance were to commence by some great
earthquake in the dead of night, how terrific would be the carnage!
England would be at once bankrupt; all papers, records, and accounts
would from that moment be lost.  Government being unable to collect
the taxes, and failing to maintain its authority, the hand of
violence and rapine would go uncontrolled.  In every large town
famine would be proclaimed, pestilence and death following in its
train." {240a}  Great allowance should be made for a first work, and
I admit that much interesting matter is found in Mr. Darwin's
journal; still, it was hardly to be expected that the writer who at
the age of thirty-three could publish the foregoing passage should
twenty years later achieve the reputation of being the profoundest
philosopher of his time.

I have not sufficient technical knowledge to enable me to speak
certainly, but I question his having been the great observer and
master of experiment which he is generally believed to have been.
His accuracy was, I imagine, generally to be relied upon as long as
accuracy did not come into conflict with his interests as a leader
in the scientific world; when these were at stake he was not to be
trusted for a moment.  Unfortunately they were directly or
indirectly at stake more often than one could wish.  His book on the
action of worms, however, was shown by Professor Paley and other
writers {242a} to contain many serious errors and omissions, though
it involved no personal question; but I imagine him to have been
more or less hebete when he wrote this book.  On the whole I should
doubt his having been a better observer of nature than nine country
gentlemen out of ten who have a taste for natural history.

Presumptuous as I am aware it must appear to say so, I am unable to
see more than average intellectual power even in Mr. Darwin's later
books.  His great contribution to science is supposed to have been
the theory of natural selection, but enough has been said to show
that this, if understood as he ought to have meant it to be
understood, cannot be rated highly as an intellectual achievement.
His other most important contribution was his provisional theory of
pan-genesis, which is admitted on all hands to have been a failure.
Though, however, it is not likely that posterity will consider him
as a man of transcendent intellectual power, he must be admitted to
have been richly endowed with a much more valuable quality than
either originality or literary power--I mean with savoir faire.  The
cards he held--and, on the whole, his hand was a good one--he played
with judgment; and though not one of those who would have achieved
greatness under any circumstances, he nevertheless did achieve
greatness of no mean order.  Greatness, indeed, of the highest kind-
-that of one who is without fear and without reproach--will not
ultimately be allowed him, but greatness of a rare kind can only be
denied him by those whose judgment is perverted by temper or
personal ill-will.  He found the world believing in fixity of
species, and left it believing--in spite of his own doctrine--in
descent with modification.

I have said on an earlier page that Mr. Darwin was heir to a
discredited truth, and left behind him an accredited fallacy.  This
is true as regards men of science and cultured classes who
understood his distinctive feature, or thought they did, and so long
as Mr. Darwin lived accepted it with very rare exceptions; but it is
not true as regards the unreading, unreflecting public, who seized
the salient point of descent with modification only, and troubled
themselves little about the distinctive feature.  It would almost
seem as if Mr. Darwin had reversed the usual practice of
philosophers and given his esoteric doctrine to the world, while
reserving the exoteric for his most intimate and faithful adherents.
This, however, is a detail; the main fact is, that Mr. Darwin
brought us all round to evolution.  True, it was Mr. Darwin backed
by the Times and the other most influential organs of science and
culture, but it was one of Mr. Darwin's great merits to have
developed and organised this backing, as part of the work which he
knew was essential if so great a revolution was to be effected.

This is an exceedingly difficult and delicate thing to do.  If
people think they need only write striking and well-considered
books, and that then the Times will immediately set to work to call
attention to them, I should advise them not to be too hasty in
basing action upon this hypothesis.  I should advise them to be even
less hasty in basing it upon the assumption that to secure a
powerful literary backing is a matter within the compass of any one
who chooses to undertake it.  No one who has not a strong social
position should ever advance a new theory, unless a life of hard
fighting is part of what he lays himself out for.  It was one of Mr.
Darwin's great merits that he had a strong social position, and had
the good sense to know how to profit by it.  The magnificent feat
which he eventually achieved was unhappily tarnished by much that
detracts from the splendour that ought to have attended it, but a
magnificent feat it must remain.

Whose work in this imperfect world is not tarred and tarnished by
something that detracts from its ideal character?  It is enough that
a man should be the right man in the right place, and this Mr.
Darwin pre-eminently was.  If he had been more like the ideal
character which Mr. Allen endeavours to represent him, it is not
likely that he would have been able to do as much, or nearly as
much, as he actually did; he would have been too wide a cross with
his generation to produce much effect upon it.  Original thought is
much more common than is generally believed.  Most people, if they
only knew it, could write a good book or play, paint a good picture,
compose a fine oratorio; but it takes an unusually able person to
get the book well reviewed, persuade a manager to bring the play
out, sell the picture, or compass the performance of the oratorio;
indeed, the more vigorous and original any one of these things may
be, the more difficult will it prove to even bring it before the
notice of the public.  The error of most original people is in being
just a trifle too original.  It was in his business qualities--and
these, after all, are the most essential to success, that Mr. Darwin
showed himself so superlative.  These are not only the most
essential to success, but it is only by blaspheming the world in a
way which no good citizen of the world will do, that we can deny
them to be the ones which should most command our admiration.  We
are in the world; surely so long as we are in it we should be of it,
and not give ourselves airs as though we were too good for our
generation, and would lay ourselves out to please any other by
preference.  Mr. Darwin played for his own generation, and he got in
the very amplest measure the recognition which he endeavoured, as we
all do, to obtain.

His success was, no doubt, in great measure due to the fact that he
knew our little ways, and humoured them; but if he had not had
little ways of his own, he never could have been so much au fait
with ours.  He knew, for example, we should be pleased to hear that
he had taken his boots off so as not to disturb his worms when
watching them by night, so he told us of this, and we were
delighted.  He knew we should like his using the word "sag," so he
used it, {245a} and we said it was beautiful.  True, he used it
wrongly, for he was writing about tesselated pavement, and builders
assure me that "sag" is a word which applies to timber only, but
this is not to the point; the point was, that Mr. Darwin should have
used a word that we did not understand; this showed that he had a
vast fund of knowledge at his command about all sorts of practical
details with which he might have well been unacquainted.  We do not
deal the same measure to man and to the lower animals in the matter
of intelligence; the less we understand these last, the less, we
say, not we, but they can understand; whereas the less we can
understand a man, the more intelligent we are apt to think him.  No
one should neglect by-play of this description; if I live to be
strong enough to carry it through, I mean to play "cambre," and I
shall spell it "camber."  I wonder Mr. Darwin never abused this
word.  Laugh at him, however, as we may for having said "sag," if he
had not been the kind of man to know the value of these little hits,
neither would he have been the kind of man to persuade us into first
tolerating, and then cordially accepting, descent with modification.
There is a correlation of mental as well as of physical growth, and
we could not probably have had one set of Mr. Darwin's qualities
without the other.  If he had been more faultless, he might have
written better books, but we should have listened worse.  A book's
prosperity is like a jest's--in the ear of him that hears it.

Mr. Spencer would not--at least one cannot think he would--have been
able to effect the revolution which will henceforth doubtless be
connected with Mr. Darwin's name.  He had been insisting on
evolution for some years before the "Origin of Species" came out,
but he might as well have preached to the winds, for all the visible
effect that had been produced.  On the appearance of Mr. Darwin's
book the effect was instantaneous; it was like the change in the
condition of a patient when the right medicine has been hit on after
all sorts of things have been tried and failed.  Granted that it was
comparatively easy for Mr. Darwin, as having been born into the
household of one of the prophets of evolution, to arrive at
conclusions about the fixity of species which, if not so born, he
might never have reached at all; this does not make it any easier
for him to have got others to agree with him.  Any one, again, may
have money left him, or run up against it, or have it run up against
him, as it does against some people, but it is only a very sensible
person who does not lose it.  Moreover, once begin to go behind
achievement and there is an end of everything.  Did the world give
much heed to or believe in evolution before Mr. Darwin's time?
Certainly not.  Did we begin to attend and be persuaded soon after
Mr. Darwin began to write?  Certainly yes.  Did we ere long go over
en masse?  Assuredly.  If, as I said in "Life and Habit," any one
asks who taught the world to believe in evolution, the answer to the
end of time must be that it was Mr. Darwin.  And yet the more his
work is looked at, the more marvellous does its success become.  It
seems as if some organisms can do anything with anything.  Beethoven
picked his teeth with the snuffers, and seems to have picked them
sufficiently to his satisfaction.  So Mr. Darwin with one of the
worst styles imaginable did all that the clearest, tersest writer
could have done.  Strange, that such a master of cunning (in the
sense of my title) should have been the apostle of luck, and one so
terribly unlucky as Lamarck, of cunning, but such is the irony of
nature.  Buffon planted, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck watered, but it
was Mr. Darwin who said, "That fruit is ripe," and shook it into his
lap.

With this Mr. Darwin's best friends ought to be content; his
admirers are not well advised in representing him as endowed with
all sorts of qualities which he was very far from possessing.  Thus
it is pretended that he was one of those men who were ever on the
watch for new ideas, ever ready to give a helping hand to those who
were trying to advance our knowledge, ever willing to own to a
mistake and give up even his most cherished ideas if truth required
them at his hands.  No conception can be more wantonly inexact.  I
grant that if a writer was sufficiently at once incompetent and
obsequious Mr. Darwin was "ever ready," &c.  So the Emperors of
Austria wash a few poor people's feet on some one of the festivals
of the Church, but it would not be safe to generalise from this
yearly ceremony, and conclude that the Emperors of Austria are in
the habit of washing poor people's feet.  I can understand Mr.
Darwin's not having taken any public notice, for example, of "Life
and Habit," for though I did not attack him in force in that book,
it was abundantly clear that an attack could not be long delayed,
and a man may be pardoned for not doing anything to advertise the
works of his opponents; but there is no excuse for his never having
referred to Professor Hering's work either in "Nature," when
Professor Ray Lankester first called attention to it (July 13,
1876), or in some one of his subsequent books.  If his attitude
towards those who worked in the same field as himself had been the
generous one which his admirers pretend, he would have certainly
come forward, not necessarily as adopting Professor Hering's theory,
but still as helping it to obtain a hearing.

His not having done so is of a piece with his silence about Buffon,
Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck in the early editions of the "Origin of
Species," and with the meagre reference to them which is alone found
in the later ones.  It is of a piece also with the silence which Mr.
Darwin invariably maintained when he saw his position irretrievably
damaged, as, for example, by Mr. Spencer's objection already
referred to, and by the late Professor Fleeming Jenkin in the North
British Review (June 1867).  Science, after all, should form a
kingdom which is more or less not of this world.  The ideal
scientist should know neither self nor friend nor foe--he should be
able to hob-nob with those whom he most vehemently attacks, and to
fly at the scientific throat of those to whom he is personally most
attached; he should be neither grateful for a favourable review nor
displeased at a hostile one; his literary and scientific life should
be something as far apart as possible from his social; it is thus,
at least, alone that any one will be able to keep his eye single for
facts, and their legitimate inferences.  We have seen Professor
Mivart lately taken to task by Mr. Romanes for having said {248a}
that Mr. Darwin was singularly sensitive to criticism, and made it
impossible for Professor Mivart to continue friendly personal
relations with him after he had ventured to maintain his own
opinion.  I see no reason to question Professor Mivart's accuracy,
and find what he has said to agree alike with my own personal
experience of Mr. Darwin, and with all the light that his works
throw upon his character.

The most substantial apology that can be made for his attempt to
claim the theory of descent with modification is to be found in the
practice of Lamarck, Mr. Patrick Matthew, the author of the
"Vestiges of Creation," and Mr. Herbert Spencer, and, again, in the
total absence of complaint which this practice met with.  If Lamarck
might write the "Philosophie Zoologique" without, so far as I
remember, one word of reference to Buffon, and without being
complained of, why might not Mr. Darwin write the "Origin of
Species" without more than a passing allusion to Lamarck?  Mr.
Patrick Matthew, again, though writing what is obviously a resume of
the evolutionary theories of his time, makes no mention of Lamarck,
Erasmus Darwin, or Buffon.  I have not the original edition of the
"Vestiges of Creation" before me, but feel sure I am justified in
saying that it claimed to be a more or less Minerva-like work, that
sprang full armed from the brain of Mr. Chambers himself.  This at
least is how it was received by the public; and, however violent the
opposition it met with, I cannot find that its author was blamed for
not having made adequate mention of Lamarck.  When Mr. Spencer wrote
his first essay on evolution in the Leader (March 20, 1852) he did
indeed begin his argument, "Those who cavalierly reject the doctrine
of Lamarck," &c., so that his essay purports to be written in
support of Lamarck; but when he republished his article in 1858, the
reference to Lamarck was cut out.

I make no doubt that it was the bad example set him by the writers
named in the preceding paragraph which betrayed Mr. Darwin into
doing as they did, but being more conscientious than they, he could
not bring himself to do it without having satisfied himself that he
had got hold of a more or less distinctive feature, and this, of
course, made matters worse.  The distinctive feature was not due to
any deep-laid plan for pitchforking mind out of the universe, or as
part of a scheme of materialistic philosophy, though it has since
been made to play an important part in the attempt to further this;
Mr. Darwin was perfectly innocent of any intention of getting rid of
mind, and did not, probably, care the toss of sixpence whether the
universe was instinct with mind or no--what he did care about was
carrying off the palm in the matter of descent with modification,
and the distinctive feature was an adjunct with which his nervous,
sensitive, Gladstonian nature would not allow him to dispense.

And why, it may be asked, should not the palm be given to Mr. Darwin
if he wanted it, and was at so much pains to get it?  Why, if
science is a kingdom not of this world, make so much fuss about
settling who is entitled to what?  At best such questions are of a
sorry personal nature, that can have little bearing upon facts, and
it is these that alone should concern us.  The answer is, that if
the question is so merely personal and unimportant, Mr. Darwin may
as well yield as Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck; Mr. Darwin's
admirers find no difficulty in appreciating the importance of a
personal element as far as he is concerned; let them not wonder,
then, if others, while anxious to give him the laurels to which he
is entitled, are somewhat indignant at the attempt to crown him with
leaves that have been filched from the brows of the great dead who
went before him.  Palmam qui meruit ferat.  The instinct which tells
us that no man in the scientific or literary world should claim more
than his due is an old and, I imagine, a wholesome one, and if a
scientific self-denying ordinance is demanded, we may reply with
justice, Que messieurs les Charles-Darwinies commencent.  Mr. Darwin
will have a crown sufficient for any ordinary brow remaining in the
achievement of having done more than any other writer, living or
dead, to popularise evolution.  This much may be ungrudgingly
conceded to him, but more than this those who have his scientific
position most at heart will be well advised if they cease henceforth
to demand.



CHAPTER XIX--Conclusion



And now I bring this book to a conclusion.  So many things requiring
attention have happened since it was begun that I leave it in a very
different shape to the one which it was originally intended to bear.
I have omitted much that I had meant to deal with, and have been
tempted sometimes to introduce matter the connection of which with
my subject is not immediately apparent.  Such however, as the book
is, it must now go in the form into which it has grown almost more
in spite of me than from malice prepense on my part.  I was afraid
that it might thus set me at defiance, and in an early chapter
expressed a doubt whether I should find it redound greatly to my
advantage with men of science; in this concluding chapter I may say
that doubt has deepened into something like certainty.  I regret
this, but cannot help it.

Among the points with which it was most incumbent upon me to deal
was that of vegetable intelligence.  A reader may well say that
unless I give plants much the same sense of pleasure and pain,
memory, power of will, and intelligent perception of the best way in
which to employ their opportunities that I give to low animals, my
argument falls to the ground.  If I declare organic modification to
be mainly due to function, and hence in the closest correlation with
mental change, I must give plants, as well as animals, a mind, and
endow them with power to reflect and reason upon all that most
concerns them.  Many who will feel little difficulty about admitting
that animal modification is upon the whole mainly due to the secular
cunning of the animals themselves will yet hesitate before they
admit that plants also can have a reason and cunning of their own.

Unwillingness to concede this is based principally upon the error
concerning intelligence to which I have already referred--I mean to
our regarding intelligence not so much as the power of understanding
as that of being understood by ourselves.  Once admit that the
evidence in favour of a plant's knowing its own business depends
more on the efficiency with which that business is conducted than
either on our power of understanding how it can be conducted, or on
any signs on the plant's part of a capacity for understanding things
that do not concern it, and there will be no further difficulty
about supposing that in its own sphere a plant is just as
intelligent as an animal, and keeps a sharp look-out upon its own
interests, however indifferent it may seem to be to ours.  So strong
has been the set of recent opinion in this direction that with
botanists the foregoing now almost goes without saying, though few
five years ago would have accepted it.

To no one of the several workers in this field are we more indebted
for the change which has been brought about in this respect than to
my late valued and lamented friend Mr. Alfred Tylor.  Mr. Tylor was
not the discoverer of the protoplasmic continuity that exists in
plants, but he was among the very first to welcome this discovery,
and his experiments at Carshalton in the years 1883 and 1884
demonstrated that, whether there was protoplasmic continuity in
plants or no, they were at any rate endowed with some measure of
reason, forethought, and power of self-adaptation to varying
surroundings.  It is not for me to give the details of these
experiments.  I had the good fortune to see them more than once
while they were in progress, and was present when they were made the
subject of a paper read by Mr. Sydney B. J. Skertchly before the
Linnean Society, Mr. Tylor being then too ill to read it himself.
The paper has since been edited by Mr. Skertchly, and published.
{253a}  Anything that should be said further about it will come best
from Mr. Skertchly; it will be enough here if I give the resume of
it prepared by Mr. Tylor himself.

In this Mr. Tylor said:- "The principles which underlie this paper
are the individuality of plants, the necessity for some co-
ordinating system to enable the parts to act in concert, and the
probability that this also necessitates the admission that plants
have a dim sort of intelligence.

"It is shown that a tree, for example, is something more than an
aggregation of tissues, but is a complex being performing acts as a
whole, and not merely responsive to the direct influence of light,
&c.  The tree knows more than its branches, as the species know more
than the individual, the community than the unit.

"Moreover, inasmuch as my experiments show that many plants and
trees possess the power of adapting themselves to unfamiliar
circumstances, such as, for instance, avoiding obstacles by bending
aside before touching, or by altering the leaf arrangement, it seems
probable that at least as much voluntary power must be accorded to
such plants as to certain lowly organised animals.

"Finally, a connecting system by means of which combined movements
take place is found in the threads of protoplasm which unite the
various cells, and which I have now shown to exist even in the wood
of trees.

"One of the important facts seems to be the universality of the
upward curvature of the tips of growing branches of trees, and the
power possessed by the tree to straighten its branches afterwards,
so that new growth shall by similar means be able to obtain the
necessary light and air.

"A house, to use a sanitary analogy, is functionally useless without
it obtains a good supply of light and air.  The architect strives so
to produce the house as to attain this end, and still leave the
house comfortable.  But the house, though dependent upon, is not
produced by, the light and air.  So a tree is functionally useless,
and cannot even exist without a proper supply of light and air; but,
whereas it has been the custom to ascribe the heliotropic and other
motions to the direct influence of those agents, I would rather
suggest that the movements are to some extent due to the desire of
the plant to acquire its necessaries of life."

The more I have reflected upon Mr. Tylor's Carshalton experiments,
the more convinced I am of their great value.  No one, indeed, ought
to have doubted that plants were intelligent, but we all of us do
much that we ought not to do, and Mr. Tylor supplied a demonstration
which may be henceforth authoritatively appealed to.

I will take the present opportunity of insisting upon a suggestion
which I made in "Alps and Sanctuaries" (New edition, pp. 152, 153),
with which Mr. Tylor was much pleased, and which, at his request, I
made the subject of a few words that I ventured to say at the
Linnean Society's rooms after his paper had been read.  "Admitting,"
I said, "the common protoplasmic origin of animals and plants, and
setting aside the notion that plants preceded animals, we are still
faced by the problem why protoplasm should have developed into the
organic life of the world, along two main lines, and only two--the
animal and the vegetable.  Why, if there was an early schism--and
this there clearly was--should there not have been many subsequent
ones of equal importance?  We see innumerable sub-divisions of
animals and plants, but we see no other such great subdivision of
organic life as that whereby it ranges itself, for the most part
readily, as either animal or vegetable.  Why any subdivision?--but
if any, why not more than two great classes?"

The two main stems of the tree of life ought, one would think, to
have been formed on the same principle as the boughs which represent
genera, and the twigs which stand for species and varieties.  If
specific differences arise mainly from differences of action taken
in consequence of differences of opinion, then, so ultimately do
generic; so, therefore, again, do differences between families; so
therefore, by analogy, should that greatest of differences in virtue
of which the world of life is mainly animal, or vegetable.  In this
last case as much as in that of specific difference, we ought to
find divergent form the embodiment and organic expression of
divergent opinion.  Form is mind made manifest in flesh through
action:  shades of mental difference being expressed in shades of
physical difference, while broad fundamental differences of opinion
are expressed in broad fundamental differences of bodily shape.

Or to put it thus:-

If form and habit be regarded as functionally interdependent, that
is to say, if neither form nor habit can vary without corresponding
variation in the other, and if habit and opinion concerning
advantage are also functionally interdependent, it follows self-
evidently that form and opinion concerning advantage (and hence form
and cunning) will be functionally interdependent also, and that
there can be no great modification of the one without corresponding
modification of the other.  Let there, then, be a point in respect
of which opinion might be early and easily divided--a point in
respect of which two courses involving different lines of action
presented equally-balanced advantages--and there would be an early
subdivision of primordial life, according as the one view or the
other was taken.

It is obvious that the pros and cons for either course must be
supposed very nearly equal, otherwise the course which presented the
fewest advantages would be attended with the probable gradual
extinction of the organised beings that adopted it, but there being
supposed two possible modes of action very evenly balanced as
regards advantage and disadvantages, then the ultimate appearance of
two corresponding forms of life is a sequitur from the admission
that form varies as function, and function as opinion concerning
advantage.  If there are three, four, five, or six such opinions
tenable, we ought to have three, four, five, or six main
subdivisions of life.  As things are, we have two only.  Can we,
then, see a matter on which opinion was likely to be easily and
early divided into two, and only two, main divisions--no third
course being conceivable?  If so, this should suggest itself as the
probable source from which the two main forms of organic life have
been derived.

I submit that we can see such a matter in the question whether it
pays better to sit still and make the best of what comes in one's
way, or to go about in search of what one can find.  Of course we,
as animals, naturally hold that it is better to go about in search
of what we can find than to sit still and make the best of what
comes; but there is still so much to be said on the other side, that
many classes of animals have settled down into sessile habits, while
a perhaps even larger number are, like spiders, habitual liers in
wait rather than travellers in search of food.  I would ask my
reader, therefore, to see the opinion that it is better to go in
search of prey as formulated, and finding its organic expression, in
animals; and the other--that it is better to be ever on the look-out
to make the best of what chance brings up to them--in plants.  Some
few intermediate forms still record to us the long struggle during
which the schism was not yet complete, and the halting between two
opinions which it might be expected that some organisms should
exhibit.

"Neither class," I said in "Alps and Sanctuaries," "has been quite
consistent.  Who ever is or can be?  Every extreme--every opinion
carried to its logical end--will prove to be an absurdity.  Plants
throw out roots and boughs and leaves; this is a kind of locomotion;
and, as Dr.  Erasmus Darwin long since pointed out, they do
sometimes approach nearly to what may be called travelling; a man of
consistent character will never look at a bough, a root, or a
tendril without regarding it as a melancholy and unprincipled
compromise" (New edition, p. 153).

Having called attention to this view, and commended it to the
consideration of my readers, I proceed to another which should not
have been left to be touched upon only in a final chapter, and
which, indeed, seems to require a book to itself--I refer to the
origin and nature of the feelings, which those who accept volition
as having had a large share in organic modification must admit to
have had a no less large share in the formation of volition.
Volition grows out of ideas, ideas from feelings.  What, then, is
feeling, and the subsequent mental images or ideas?

The image of a stone formed in our minds is no representation of the
object which has given rise to it.  Not only, as has been often
remarked, is there no resemblance between the particular thought and
the particular thing, but thoughts and things generally are too
unlike to be compared.  An idea of a stone may be like an idea of
another stone, or two stones may be like one another; but an idea of
a stone is not like a stone; it cannot be thrown at anything, it
occupies no room in space, has no specific gravity, and when we come
to know more about stones, we find our ideas concerning them to be
but rude, epitomised, and highly conventional renderings of the
actual facts, mere hieroglyphics, in fact, or, as it were, counters
or bank-notes, which serve to express and to convey commodities with
which they have no pretence of analogy.

Indeed we daily find that, as the range of our perceptions becomes
enlarged either by invention of new appliances or after use of old
ones, we change our ideas though we have no reason to think that the
thing about which we are thinking has changed.  In the case of a
stone, for instance, the rude, unassisted, uneducated senses see it
as above all things motionless, whereas assisted and trained ideas
concerning it represent motion as its most essential characteristic;
but the stone has not changed.  So, again, the uneducated idea
represents it as above all things mindless, and is as little able to
see mind in connection with it as it lately was to see motion; it
will be no greater change of opinion than we have most of us
undergone already if we come presently to see it as no less full of
elementary mind than of elementary motion, but the stone will not
have changed.

The fact that we modify our opinions suggests that our ideas are
formed not so much in involuntary self-adjusting mimetic
correspondence with the objects that we believe to give rise to
them, as by what was in the outset voluntary, conventional
arrangement in whatever way we found convenient, of sensation and
perception-symbols, which had nothing whatever to do with the
objects, and were simply caught hold of as the only things we could
grasp.  It would seem as if, in the first instance, we must have
arbitrarily attached some one of the few and vague sensations which
we could alone at first command, to certain motions of outside
things as echoed by our brain, and used them to think and feel the
things with, so as to docket them, and recognise them with greater
force, certainty, and clearness--much as we use words to help us to
docket and grasp our feelings and thoughts, or written characters to
help us to docket and grasp our words.

If this view be taken we stand in much the same attitude towards our
feelings as a dog may be supposed to do towards our own reading and
writing.  The dog may be supposed to marvel at the wonderful
instinctive faculty by which we can tell the price of the different
railway stocks merely by looking at a sheet of paper; he supposes
this power to be a part of our nature, to have come of itself by
luck and not by cunning, but a little reflection will show that
feeling is not more likely to have "come by nature" than reading and
writing are.  Feeling is in all probability the result of the same
kind of slow laborious development as that which has attended our
more recent arts and our bodily organs; its development must be
supposed to have followed the same lines as that of our other arts,
and indeed of the body itself, which is the ars artium--for growth
of mind is throughout coincident with growth of organic resources,
and organic resources grow with growing mind.

Feeling is the art the possession of which differentiates the
civilised organic world from that of brute inorganic matter, but
still it is an art; it is the outcome of a mind that is common both
to organic and inorganic, and which the organic has alone
cultivated.  It is not a part of mind itself; it is no more this
than language and writing are parts of thought.  The organic world
can alone feel, just as man can alone speak; but as speech is only
the development of powers the germs of which are possessed by the
lower animals, so feeling is only a sign of the employment and
development of powers the germs of which exist in inorganic
substances.  It has all the characteristics of an art, and though it
must probably rank as the oldest of those arts that are peculiar to
the organic world, it is one which is still in process of
development.  None of us, indeed, can feel well on more than a very
few subjects, and many can hardly feel at all.

But, however this may be, our sensations and perceptions of material
phenomena are attendant on the excitation of certain motions in the
anterior parts of the brain.  Whenever certain motions are excited
in this substance, certain sensations and ideas of resistance,
extension, &c., are either concomitant, or ensue within a period too
brief for our cognisance.  It is these sensations and ideas that we
directly cognise, and it is to them that we have attached the idea
of the particular kind of matter we happen to be thinking of.  As
this idea is not like the thing itself, so neither is it like the
motions in our brain on which it is attendant.  It is no more like
these than, say, a stone is like the individual characters, written
or spoken, that form the word "stone," or than these last are, in
sound, like the word "stone" itself, whereby the idea of a stone is
so immediately and vividly presented to us.  True, this does not
involve that our idea shall not resemble the object that gave rise
to it, any more than the fact that a looking-glass bears no
resemblance to the things reflected in it involves that the
reflection shall not resemble the things reflected; the shifting
nature, however, of our ideas and conceptions is enough to show that
they must be symbolical, and conditioned by changes going on within
ourselves as much as by those outside us; and if, going behind the
ideas which suffice for daily use, we extend our inquiries in the
direction of the reality underlying our conception, we find reason
to think that the brain-motions which attend our conception
correspond with exciting motions in the object that occasions it,
and that these, rather than anything resembling our conception
itself, should be regarded as the reality.

This leads to a third matter, on which I can only touch with extreme
brevity.

Different modes of motion have long been known as the causes of our
different colour perceptions, or at any rate as associated
therewith, and of late years, more especially since the promulgation
of Newlands' {260a} law, it has been perceived that what we call the
kinds or properties of matter are not less conditioned by motion
than colour is.  The substance or essence of unconditioned matter,
as apart from the relations between its various states (which we
believe to be its various conditions of motion) must remain for ever
unknown to us, for it is only the relations between the conditions
of the underlying substance that we cognise at all, and where there
are no conditions, there is nothing for us to seize, compare, and,
hence, cognise; unconditioned matter must, therefore, be as
inconceivable by us as unmattered condition; {261a} but though we
can know nothing about matter as apart from its conditions or
states, opinion has been for some time tending towards the belief
that what we call the different states, or kinds, of matter are only
our ways of mentally characterising and docketing our estimates of
the different kinds of motion going on in this otherwise
uncognisable substratum.

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 must be considered as to all intents
and purposes the vibrations themselves--plus, of course, the
underlying substance that is vibrating.  If, for example, a pat of
butter is a portion of the unknowable underlying substance in such-
and-such a state of molecular disturbance, and it is only by
alteration of the disturbance that the substance can be altered--the
disturbance of the substance is practically equivalent to the
substance:  a pat of butter is such-and-such a disturbance of the
unknowable underlying substance, and such-and-such a disturbance of
the underlying substance is a pat of butter.  In communicating its
vibrations, therefore, to our brain a substance does actually
communicate what is, as far as we are concerned, a portion of
itself.  Our perception of a thing and its attendant feeling are
symbols attaching to an introduction within our brain of a feeble
state of the thing itself.  Our recollection of it is occasioned by
a feeble continuance of this feeble state in our brains, becoming
less feeble through the accession of fresh but similar vibrations
from without.  The molecular vibrations which make the thing an idea
of which is conveyed to our minds, put within our brain a little
feeble emanation from the thing itself--if we come within their
reach.  This being once put there, will remain as it were dust, till
dusted out, or till it decay, or till it receive accession of new
vibrations.

The vibrations from a pat of butter do, then, actually put butter
into a man's head.  This is one of the commonest of expressions, and
would hardly be so common if it were not felt to have some
foundation in fact.  At first the man does not know what feeling or
complex of feelings to employ so as to docket the vibrations, any
more than he knows what word to employ so as to docket the feelings,
or with what written characters to docket his word; but he gets over
this, and henceforward the vibrations of the exterior object (that
is to say, the thing) never set up their characteristic
disturbances, or, in other words, never come into his head, without
the associated feeling presenting itself as readily as word and
characters present themselves, on the presence of the feeling.  The
more butter a man sees and handles, the more he gets butter on the
brain--till, though he can never get anything like enough to be
strictly called butter, it only requires the slightest molecular
disturbance with characteristics like those of butter to bring up a
vivid and highly sympathetic idea of butter in the man's mind.

If this view is adopted, our memory of a thing is our retention
within the brain of a small leaven of the actual thing itself, or of
what qua us is the thing that is remembered, and the ease with which
habitual actions come to be performed is due to the power of the
vibrations having been increased and modified by continual accession
from without till they modify the molecular disturbances of the
nervous system, and therefore its material substance, which we have
already settled to be only our way of docketing molecular
disturbances.  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 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; nevertheless, as it may be
some time before I have another opportunity of coming before the
public, I have thought it, on the whole, better not to omit them,
but to give them thus provisionally.  I believe they are both
substantially true, but am by no means sure that I have expressed
them either clearly or accurately; I cannot, however, further delay
the issue of my book.

Returning to the point raised in my title, is luck, I would ask, or
cunning, the more fitting matter to be insisted upon in connection
with organic modification?  Do animals and plants grow into
conformity with their surroundings because they and their fathers
and mothers take pains, or because their uncles and aunts go away?
For the survival of the fittest is only the non-survival or going
away of the unfittest--in whose direct line the race is not
continued, and who are therefore only uncles and aunts of the
survivors.  I can quite understand its being a good thing for any
race that its uncles and aunts should go away, but I do not believe
the accumulation of lucky accidents could result in an eye, no
matter how many uncles and aunts may have gone away during how many
generations.

I would ask the reader to bear in mind the views concerning life and
death expressed in an early chapter.  They seem to me not, indeed,
to take away any very considerable part of the sting from death;
this should not be attempted or desired, for with the sting of death
the sweets of life are inseparably bound up so that neither can be
weakened without damaging the other.  Weaken the fear of death, and
the love of life would be weakened.  Strengthen it, and we should
cling to life even more tenaciously than we do.  But though death
must always remain as a shock and change of habits from which we
must naturally shrink--still it is not the utter end of our being,
which, until lately, it must have seemed to those who have been
unable to accept the grosser view of the resurrection with which we
were familiarised in childhood.  We too now know that though worms
destroy this body, yet in our flesh shall we so far see God as to be
still in Him and of Him--biding our time for a resurrection in a new
and more glorious body; and, moreover, that we shall be to the full
as conscious of this as we are at present of much that concerns us
as closely as anything can concern us.

The thread of life cannot be shorn between successive generations,
except upon grounds which will in equity involve its being shorn
between consecutive seconds, and fractions of seconds.  On the other
hand, it cannot be left unshorn between consecutive seconds without
necessitating that it should be left unshorn also beyond the grave,
as well as in successive generations.  Death is as salient a feature
in what we call our life as birth was, but it is no more than this.
As a salient feature, it is a convenient epoch for the drawing of a
defining line, by the help of which we may better grasp the
conception of life, and think it more effectually, but it is a facon
de parler only; it is, as I said in "Life and Habit," {264a} "the
most inexorable of all conventions," but our idea of it has no
correspondence with eternal underlying realities.

Finally, we must have evolution; consent is too spontaneous,
instinctive, and universal among those most able to form an opinion,
to admit of further doubt about this.  We must also have mind and
design.  The attempt to eliminate intelligence from among the main
agencies of the universe has broken down too signally to be again
ventured upon--not until the recent rout has been forgotten.
Nevertheless the old, far-foreseeing Deus ex machina design as from
a point outside the universe, which indeed it directs, but of which
it is no part, is negatived by the facts of organism.  What, then,
remains, but the view that I have again in this book endeavoured to
uphold--I mean, the supposition that the mind or cunning of which we
see such abundant evidence all round us, is, like the kingdom of
heaven, within us, and within all things at all times everywhere?
There is design, or cunning, but it is a cunning not despotically
fashioning us from without as a potter fashions his clay, but
inhering democratically within the body which is its highest
outcome, as life inheres within an animal or plant.

All animals and plants are corporations, or forms of democracy, and
may be studied by the light of these, as democracies, not
infrequently, by that of animals and plants.  The solution of the
difficult problem of reflex action, for example, is thus
facilitated, by supposing it to be departmental in character; that
is to say, by supposing it to be action of which the department that
attends to it is alone cognisant, and which is not referred to the
central government so long as things go normally.  As long,
therefore, as this is the case, the central government is
unconscious of what is going on, but its being thus unconscious is
no argument that the department is unconscious also.

I know that contradiction in terms lurks within much that I have
said, but the texture of the world is a warp and woof of
contradiction in terms; of continuity in discontinuity, and
discontinuity in continuity; of unity in diversity, and of diversity
in unity.  As in the development of a fugue, where, when the subject
and counter subject have been enounced, there must henceforth be
nothing new, and yet all must be new, so throughout organic life--
which is as a fugue developed to great length from a very simple
subject--everything is linked on to and grows out of that which
comes next to it in order--errors and omissions excepted.  It
crosses and thwarts what comes next to it with difference that
involves resemblance, and resemblance that involves difference, and
there is no juxtaposition of things that differ too widely by
omission of necessary links, or too sudden departure from recognised
methods of procedure.

To conclude; bodily form may be almost regarded as idea and memory
in a solidified state--as an accumulation of things each one of them
so tenuous as to be practically without material substance.  It is
as a million pounds formed by accumulated millionths of farthings;
more compendiously it arises normally from, and through, action.
Action arises normally from, and through, opinion.  Opinion, from,
and through, hypothesis.  "Hypothesis," as the derivation of the
word itself shows, is singularly near akin to "underlying, and only
in part knowable, substratum;" and what is this but "God" translated
from the language of Moses into that of Mr. Herbert Spencer?  The
conception of God is like nature--it returns to us in another shape,
no matter how often we may expel it.  Vulgarised as it has been by
Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, and others who shall be nameless, it has
been like every other corruptio optimi--pessimum:  used as a
hieroglyph by the help of which we may better acknowledge the height
and depth of our own ignorance, and at the same time express our
sense that there is an unseen world with which we in some mysterious
way come into contact, though the writs of our thoughts do not run
within it--used in this way, the idea and the word have been found
enduringly convenient.  The theory that luck is the main means of
organic modification is the most absolute denial of God which it is
possible for the human mind to conceive--while the view that God is
in all His creatures, He in them and they in Him, is only expressed
in other words by declaring that the main means of organic
modification is, not luck, but cunning.



Footnotes:

{17a}  "Nature," Nov. 12, 1885.

{20a}  "Hist. Nat. Gen.," tom. ii. p. 411, 1859.

{23a}  "Selections, &c."  Trubner & Co., 1884.  [Out of print.]

{29a}  "Selections, &c., and Remarks on Romanes' 'Mental
Intelligence in Animals,'" Trubner & Co., 1884. pp. 228, 229.  [Out
of print.]

{35a}  Quoted by M. Vianna De Lima in his "Expose Sommaire," &c., p.
6.  Paris, Delagrave, 1886.

{40a}  I have given the passage in full on p. 254a of my
"Selections," &c.  [Now out of print.]  I observe that Canon
Kingsley felt exactly the same difficulty that I had felt myself,
and saw also how alone it could be met.  He makes the wood-wren say,
"Something told him his mother had done it before him, and he was
flesh of her flesh, life of her life, and had inherited her instinct
(as we call hereditary memory, to avoid the trouble of finding out
what it is and how it comes)." --Fraser, June, 1867.  Canon Kingsley
felt he must insist on the continued personality of the two
generations before he could talk about inherited memory.  On the
other hand, though he does indeed speak of this as almost a synonym
for instinct, he seems not to have realised how right he was, and
implies that we should find some fuller and more satisfactory
explanation behind this, only that we are too lazy to look for it.

{44a}  26 Sept., 1877.  "Unconscious Memory."  ch. ii.

{52a}  This chapter is taken almost entirely from my book,
"Selections, &c.. and Remarks on Romanes' 'Mental Evolution in
Animals.'"  Trubner, 1884.  [Now out of print.]

{52b}  "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 113.  Kegan Paul, Nov.,
1883.

{52c}  Ibid. p. 115.

{52d}  Ibid. p. 116.

{53a}  "Mental Evolution in Animals."  p. 131.  Kegan Paul, Nov.,
1883.

{54a}  Vol.  I, 3rd ed., 1874, p. 141, and Problem I. 21.

{54b}  "Mental Evolution in Animals," pp. 177, 178.  Nov., 1883.

{55a}  "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 192.

{55b}  Ibid. p. 195.

{55c}  Ibid. p. 296.  Nov., 1883.

{56a}  "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 33.  Nov., 1883.

{56b}  Ibid., p. 116.

{56c}  Ibid., p. 178.

{59a}  "Evolution Old and New," pp. 357, 358.

{60a}  "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 159.  Kegan Paul & Co.,
1883.

{61a}  "Zoonomia," vol. i. p. 484.

{61b}   "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 297.  Kegan Paul & Co.,
1883.

{61c}  Ibid., p. 201.  Kegan Paul & Co., 1883.

{62a}  "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 301.  November, 1883.

{62b}  Origin of Species," ed. i. p. 209.

{62c}  Ibid., ed. vi., 1876. p. 206.

{62d}  "Formation of Vegetable Mould," etc., p. 98.

{62e}  Quoted by Mr. Romanes as written in the last year of Mr.
Darwin's life.

{63a}  Macmillan, 1883.

{66a}  "Nature," August 5, 1886.

{67a}  London, H. K. Lewis, 1886.

{70a}  "Charles Darwin."  Longmans, 1885.

{70b}  Lectures at the London Institution, Feb., 1886.

{70c}  "Charles Darwin."  Leipzig. 1885.

{72a}  See Professor Hering's "Zur Lehre von der Beziehung zwischen
Leib und Seele.  Mittheilung uber Fechner's psychophysisches
Gesetz."

{73a}  Quoted by M. Vianna De Lima in his "Expose Sommaire des
Theories Transformistes de Lamarck, Darwin, et Haeckel."  Paris,
1886, p. 23.

{81a}  "Origin of Species," ed. i., p. 6; see also p. 43.

{83a}  "I think it can be shown that there is such a power at work
in 'Natural Selection' (the title of my book)."--"Proceedings of the
Linnean Society for 1858," vol. iii., p. 51.

{86a}  "On Naval Timber and Arboriculture," 1831, pp. 384, 385.  See
also "Evolution Old and New," pp. 320, 321.

{87a}  "Origin of Species," p. 49, ed. vi.

{92a}  "Origin of Species," ed. i., pp. 188, 189.

{93a}  Page 9.

{94a}  Page 226.

{96a}  "Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society."
Williams and Norgate, 1858, p. 61.

{102a}  "Zoonomia," vol. i., p. 505.

{104a}  See "Evolution Old and New."  p. 122.

{105a}  "Phil. Zool.," i., p. 80.

{105b}  Ibid., i. 82.

{105c}  Ibid. vol. i., p. 237.

{107a}  See concluding chapter.

{122a}  Report, 9, 26.

{135a}  Ps. cii. 25-27, Bible version.

{136a}  Ps. cxxxix., Prayer-book version.

{140a}  Contemporary Review, August, 1885, p. 84.

{142a}  London, David Bogue, 1881, p. 60.

{144a}  August 12, 1886.

{150a}  Paris, Delagrave, 1886.

{150b}  Page 60.

{150c}  "OEuvre completes," tom. ix. p. 422.  Paris, Garnier freres,
1875.

{150d}  "Hist. Nat.," tom. i., p. 13, 1749, quoted "Evol. Old and
New," p. 108.

{156a}  "Origin of Species," ed. vi., p. 107.

{156b}  Ibid., ed. vi., p. 166.

{157a}  "Origin of Species," ed. vi., p. 233.

{157b}  Ibid.

{157c}  Ibid., ed. vi., p. 109.

{157d}  Ibid., ed. vi., p. 401.

{158a}  "Origin of Species," ed. i., p. 490.

{161a}   "Origin of Species," ed. vi., 1876, p. 171.

{163a}  "Charles Darwin," p. 113.

{164a}  "Animals and Plants under Domestication," vol. ii., p. 367,
ed. 1875.

{168a}  Page 3.

{168b}  Page 4.

{169a}  It should be remembered this was the year in which the
"Vestiges of Creation" appeared.

{173a}  "Charles Darwin," p. 67.

{173b}  H. S. King & Co., 1876.

{174a}  Page 17.

{195a}  "Phil. Zool.," tom. i., pp. 34, 35.

{202a}  "Origin of Species," p. 381, ed. i.

{203a}  Page 454, ed. i.

{205a}  "Principles of Geology," vol. ii., chap. xxxiv., ed. 1872.

{206a}  "Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte," p. 3.  Berlin, 1868.

{209a}  See "Evolution Old and New," pp. 8, 9.

{216a}  "Vestiges," &c., ed. 1860; Proofs, Illustrations, &c., p.
xiv.

{216b}  Examiner, May 17, 1879, review of "Evolution Old and New."

{218a}  Given in part in "Evolution Old and New."

{219a}  "Mind," p. 498, Oct., 1883.

{224a}  "Degeneration," 1880, p. 10.

{227a}  E.g. the Rev. George Henslow, in "Modern Thought," vol. ii.,
No. 5, 1881.

{232a}  "Nature," Aug. 6, 1886.

{234a}  See Mr. Darwin's "Animals and Plants under Domestication,"
vol. i., p. 466, &c., ed. 1875.

{235a}  Paris, 1873, Introd., p. vi.

{235b}  "Hist. Nat. Gen.," ii. 404, 1859.

{239a}  As these pages are on the point of going to press, I see
that the writer of an article on Liszt in the "Athenaeum" makes the
same emendation on Shakespeare's words that I have done.

{240a}  "Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle," vol. iii., p. 373.
London, 1839.

{242a}  See Professor Paley, "Fraser," Jan., 1882, "Science Gossip,"
Nos. 162, 163, June and July, 1878, and "Nature," Jan. 3, Jan. 10,
Feb. 28, and March 27, 1884.

{245a}  "Formation of Vegetable Mould," etc., p. 217.  Murray, 1882.

{248a}  "Fortnightly Review," Jan., 1886.

{253a}  "On the Growth of Trees and Protoplasmic Continuity."
London, Stanford, 1886.

{260a}  Sometimes called Mendelejeff's (see "Monthly Journal of
Science," April, 1884).

{261a}  I am aware that attempts have been made to say that we can
conceive a condition of matter, although there is no matter in
connection with it--as, for example, that we can have motion without
anything moving (see "Nature," March 5, March 12, and April 9,
1885)--but I think it little likely that this opinion will meet
general approbation.

{264a}  Page 53.





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