Luck, or cunning, as the main means of organic modification?

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Luck, or Cunning ?

Nullum numen abest si sit prudentia ; nos, te,
Nos facimus, Fortuna, Deam, cceloque locamus.
—JUVENAL, Sat. x. 366.

Oh wondrous scheme decreed of old on high,

At once to take and give,
He that is born begins to die,

And he that dies to live:
For life is death, and death is life,
A harmony of endless strife,
And mode of universal growth
Is seen alike in both.

—Chorus in “ Narcissus.”

Luck, or Cunning

As the Main Means of
Organic Modification?

Samuel Butler

Jonathan Cape

Eleven Gower Street, London

First Published 1887
Second Edition 1920
Re-issued 1922

ay
366

Bm
pier

TO THE MEMORY OF
THE LATE
ALFRED TYLOR, Esq, F.GS., &c.
WHOSE EXPERIMENTS AT CARSHALTON
IN THE YEARS 1883 AND 1884
ESTABLISHED THAT PLANTS ALSO ARE ENDOWED WITH
INTELLIGENTIAL AND VOLITIONAL FACULTIES
THIS BOOK
BEGUN AT HIS INSTIGATION

IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

Note

Tuis 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 pagina-
tion 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 develop-
ment; and these two points he treats as though they have some-
thing 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

HIS 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 con-
versation 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 Decem-
ber, 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
original 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.

7

8 Luck, or Cunning?

In the course of writing I became more and more con-
vinced that no progress could be made towards a sounder
view of the theory of descent until people came to under-
stand 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 de-
voted 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 understand-
ing 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,

Pretace 9

therefore, I have most respectfully, and regretfully, in-
scribed 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.

XIV.

XV.
XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX.

Contents

Nore, By Henry Festinc JONES : 2
AvuTHOR’s PREFACE To First EDITION ; .
INTRODUCTION . ‘ % c < ‘i .
Mr. HERBERT SPENCER 3 3 . ‘ é
Mr. HERBERT SPENCER (continued) . : .

Mr. Romanes’ ‘ MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS ”
STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION AT IssUE . .
STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION AT IssUE (continued)

Mr. HERBERT SPENCER’S “‘ THE Factors OF ORGANIC
Evo.LuTion ”’ ‘ i ‘ z 5 ‘.

PROPERTY, COMMON SENSE, AND PROTOPLASM ~ .

PROPERTY, COMMON SENSE, AND PROTOPLASM (con-
tinued) é r . . . -

THE ATTEMPT TO ELIMINATE MIND . . .
THE Way oF ESCAPE “ a é 2 :
Wuy Darwin’s VARIATIONS WERE, ACCIDENTAL .
Darwin’s Cram To “ DESCENT WITH MoDIFICA-

TION” . é . 3 - a 2 .
DaRWIN AND DESCENT witH MODIFICATION (con-

tinued) .- ‘ : 3 5 é 5 :
THE ExcisEep ‘‘ My’s” . ‘ : 5 ‘
Mr. Grant ALLEN’s ‘‘ CHARLES DARWIN” . F

ProFEessoR Ray LANKESTER AND LAMARCK . ‘

PER CONTRA - i ‘ a - : e
CONCLUSION ‘ i - a ;
INDEX * ° ° . . 7 5 q

Il

Luck, or Cunning?

Chapter I

Introduction

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 litera-
ture of descent than to my immediate public, but any book
13

14 Luck, or Cunning ?

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, how-
ever, 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, how-
ever, 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.

Introduction 15

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 immed-
iate 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 any-
thing 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 strong-
hold 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

16 Luck, or Cunning ?

developments occurring in any organism after this haS
been attained—the sterility of many animals in confine-
ment, 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 develop-
ment 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,

Introduction 17

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 varia-
tions, or variations of an adaptive kind.’’*

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

* “Nature,” Nov. 12, 1885.
B

18 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 accumula-
tion, 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

Introduction ie)

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 furcd, 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,

20 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 tele-
ological, 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 develop-
ment. True, he did not know he was a teleologist, but he
was none the less a teleologist for this. He was an uncon-
scious 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,* 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

* “Hist. Nat. Gén.,” tom. ii. p. 411, 1859.

Introduction 21

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 accumu-
lation 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 amceba 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

22 Luck, or Cunning ?

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-fore-
seeing 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 ; neverthe-
less, 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. Rudimen-
tary 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

antroauction 23

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 sub-
stantial 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,* 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 immedi-
ately taking the book read the following—which it occurs

* «Selections, &c.” Triibner & Co., 1884. [Out of print.]

24 Luck, or Cunning ?

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

Introduction 25

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

26 Luck, or Cunning ?

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.

Introduction 27

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

R. HERBERT SPENCER wrote to the Atheneum

(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 hypo-
thesis 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).

28

Mr. Herbert Spencer 29

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 corre-
spondence, 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 re-
membrance 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 appre-
ciable ; 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* I had said that though Mr. Spencer at
times closely approached Professor Hering and “ Life and
Habit,‘ he had nevertheless nowhere shown that he con-
sidered memory and heredity to be parts of the same story
and parcel of one another. In his letter to the Atheneum,
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 tres-

* “Selections, &c., and Remarks on Romanes’ ‘ Mental [ntelli-
gence in Animals,’ Triibner & Co., 1884, pp. 228, 229, [Out of
print.]

30 Luck, or Cunning ?

passing 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
Atheneum 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 expres-
sions 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

Mr. Herbert Spencer 31

important respects it is the race that is one, and the indi-
vidual 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 Atheneum
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 genera-
tion, 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 con-
tinued 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

32 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 indi-
vidual living indeed in pulsations, so to speak, but no more
losing continued personality by living in successive genera-
tions, 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

Mr. Herbert Spencer 33

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 I 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.

“Ts 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 serious-
ness 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 cul 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

Cc

34 Luck, or Cunning ?

’

“Principles of Psychology ” is the prominence given to
continued personal identity, and hence to bond 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 pleas-
ing 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 trans-
muted 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 cuvat 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 convul-
sions, 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 micro-
scopically small. Here, indeed, miracles were in the begin-

Mr. Herbert Spencer 35

ning, 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 70 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 palpabe
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 some-
thing 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 natt, rien ne se crée, tout
se continue. La nature ne nous offre le spectacle d’aucune
création, elle est d’une éernelle continuation ;* 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 impor-
tant ; he might have said, Rien ne se continue, tout natt,

* Quoted by M. Vianna De Lima in his “ Exposé Sommaire,” &c.,
p. 6. Paris, Delagrave, 1886,

36 Luck, or Cunning ?

tout se crée. La nature ne nous offre le spectacle d’aucune
continuation. Elle est d’une éternelle création ; 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.

Mr. Herbert Spencer wy

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

38 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 Atheneum 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 accus-
tomed 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

Mr. Herbert Spencer 39

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 bond 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 fore-
ground as Professor Hering did, instead of leaving them
to be discovered ‘“‘ by implications,” and then such expres-
sions as “‘ accumulated experiences’ and ‘‘ experience of
the race” become luminous ; till this had been done they
were Vox et preterea nihil.

To sum up briefly. The passages quoted by Mr. Spencer
from his “ Principles of Psychology ” can hardly be called

40 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 necesi-
tated, 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 ingeni-
ous 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,* 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

* I have given the passage in full on p. 254a of my “‘ Selections,”
&c. [Nowoutofprint.] 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).”—Frasery, 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.

Mr. Herbert Spencer AI

inherited memory. Mr Spencer cannot maintain that
these two startling novelties went without saying ‘“‘ by
implication ”’ from the use of such expressions as “‘ accumu-
lated experiences ’’ or ‘‘ experience of the race.”

Chapter III

Mr. Herbert Spencer (continued)

HETHER 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 comprehen-
sive 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 Atheneum (March
29, 1884), he spoke of my “tardy recognition”’ of the
fact that Professor Hering had preceded me “ in treat-
ing 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

42

Mr. Herbert Spencer 43

“ 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 under-
stood 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

44 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 ;*
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 him-
self) 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 Atheneum (March 8, 1884), took a different view of the
value of the theory of inherited memory to the one he
took in 188z.

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

* 26 Sept., 1877. ‘‘ Unconscious Memory,” ch. ii.

Mr. Herbert Spencer 45

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

46 Luck, or Cunning ?

memory on the part of offspring of the action it bond 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 ap-
proaches 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),

Mr. Herbert Spencer 47

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 explana-
tion 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 un-
deliberate 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

48 Luck, or Cunning ?

merely on the ground that he could not escape contradic-
tion in terms: who can? When facts conflict, con-
tradict 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 with-
out 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 endur-
ance; 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 herma-
phroditically, 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 fer-
tility 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

Mr. Herbert Spencer 49

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 “ Prin-
ciples of Psychology ” earlier, as well as I know the work
now, I should have used it largely.

D

50 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 Atheneum already referred to, in which he
tells us to stand aside. He writes :—

“T 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 amceba into, we will say, a mollusc than heredity
itself. True, ‘‘ inheritance of functionally produced modi-
fications ’’ 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 ;

Mr. Herbert Spencer 51

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 impor-
tant 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 accumu-
lated 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 an-
swer 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 con-
tinued personality and an abiding memory between suc-
cessive 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 tostand 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*

Mr. Romanes’ “ Mental Evolution in Animals”

ITHOUT 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 impor-
tance, IJ 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. f
Again, he says that although the memory of milk shown
by new-born infants is “ at all events in large part heredi-
tary, it is none the less memory ” of a certain kind.t+
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. For it makes no essential difference whether
the nervous changes . . . were occasioned during the life-

* This chapteris taken almost entirely from my book, ‘‘ Selections,
&c., and Remarks on Romanes’ ‘ Mental Evolution in Animals.’ ”
Trtibner, 1884. [Now out of print.]

¢ “Mental Evolution in Animals,” p. 113. Kegan Paul, Nov.,
1883.

3 Ibid. p. 115. § Ibid. p. 116,

52

‘Mental Evolution in Animals” 53

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 heredi-
tary 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 indi-
vidual.”

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.”’*

Again :—

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

“TI. The first mode of origin consists in natural selection
or survival of the fittest, continuously preserving actions,
&e. &e. 2.

“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

* “Mental Evolution in Animals,” p. 131. Kegan Paul, Nov.,
1883.

54 Luck, or Cunning ?

individual adjustive actions which were originally intelli-
gent 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 ”*) the ‘ lapsing of intelligence.’ ” f

I may say in passing that in spite of the great stress laid
by Mr. Romanes both in his ‘‘ Mental Evolution in Ani-
mals ” and in his letters to the Atheneum 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 ts 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 reser-
vation, 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 In-
herited 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,

* Vol. I, 3rd ed., 1874, p. 141, and Problem I. 21.
t ‘‘ Mental Evolution in Animals,” pp. 177, 178. Nov., 1883.

“Mental Evolution in Animals” 55

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.”’*

From this Mr. Romanes goes on to show “‘ that automatic
actions and conscious habits may be inherited,”’} 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 assump-
tions, 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.” f

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.

* “Mental Evolution in Animals,” p. 192. ¢ Ibid. p. 195.
t Ibid. p. 296. Nov., 1883.

56 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 him-
self—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.”* It is heredity which impresses nervous changes
on the individual.t ‘In the lifetime of species actions
originallyintelligentmay byfrequent repetition and heredity,”
&c.;{ 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

* “ Mental Evolution in Animals,” p. 33. Nov., 1883.
f Ibid., p. 116. $ Ibid., p. 178.

** Mental Evolution in Animals” 57

grows his body as he does, anda 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
- “is the conditio sine quad 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 under-
stand 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 funda-
mental 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 develop-
ment, whether of mind or body, as due to memory, for it is

58 Luck, or Cunning ?

now pretty generally seen to be nonsense to talk about
“hereditary experience” or ‘‘ héreditary 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 dif-
ficult he has made what could have been said intelligibly

‘* Mental Evolution in Animals” 59

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 toseek. 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 pro-
posed 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.”* 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 him-
self. 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 alto-
gether from others with whom he knew himself after all

* “ Evolution Old and New,” pp. 357; 358.

60 Luck, or Cunning ?

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.”’*

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 genera-
tions—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—

“ Tf 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

* “Mental Evolution in Animals,” p. 159. Kegan Paul & Co.,
1883.

“¢ Mental Evolution in Animals” 61

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*) 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 migra-
tion,” f or of “‘ the principle of (natural) selection combining
with that of lapsing intelligence to the formation of a
joint result,’’t is little likely to depart from the usual
methods of scientific prodecure 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

* “ Zoonomia,” vol. i. p. 484.

¢ “Mental Evolution in Animals,” p. 297. Kegan Paul & Co.,
1883.

t Ibid., p. 201, Kegan Paul & Co., 1883.

62 Luck, or Cunning?

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.”’*

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.”t And this more especially
applies to the instincts of many ants.

1876. ‘ It would be a serious error to suppose,” &c., as
before. {

1881. ‘“‘ We should remember what a mass of inherited
knowledge is crowded into the minute brain of a worker
ant.’’§

188x 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 :” 7.¢., memory
transmitted from one generation to another.||

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

* “ Mental Evolution in Animals,’”’ p. 301. November, 1883.

t ‘‘ Origin of Species,” ed. i. p. 209.

$ Ibid., ed. vi., 1876, p. 206.

§ ‘‘ Formation of Vegetable Mould,” etc., p. 98.

[| Quoted by Mr. Romanes as written in the last year of Mr.
Darwin’s life.

“Mental Evolution in Animals” 63

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 hered-
ity, 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 Miiller’s “ Fertilisation of
Flowers,”’* 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 con-
fidence 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 Miiller’s book, for what little Hermann Miiller
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

* Macmillan, 1883.

64 Luck, or Cunning ?

ways, and pat design as it were on the head while not com-
mitting 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 him-
self 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,” pub-
lished in 1882.

“‘ 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 con-
ditions 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 environ-
ment 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 io be perfected.

I could find no able discussion upon the whole subject

a”

‘* Mental Evolution in Animals” 65

in Professor Weismann’s book. There was a little some-
thing 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 de-
scended ’”’ (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 instinct-
ively 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 inter-

crossing-. . . How his theory can be properly termed one
of slrtion he fails to make clear. If correct, it is a law or
E

66 Luck, or Cunning ?

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:* ‘‘ 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
* “Nature,” August 5, 1886,

*< Mental Evolution in Animals” 67

case is true if the Charles-Darwinian selection from for-
tuitous 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 considera-
tions 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.’”’* 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,

* London, H. K. Lewis, 1886.

68 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 ven-
tured 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 ? ”

“Tf I had thought,” he continues later, “ that uncon-
scious memory was no more than a metaphor, and the de-
tailed application of it to these various forms of disease
merely allegorical, I should still have judged it not un-
profitable 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 un-
divided 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

‘“* Mental Evolution in Animals” 69

development to maturity by an unconscious memory, Dr.
Creighton says that ‘‘ Professor Bain calls reproduction the
acme of organic complication. ” “ T 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.

“IT 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 ? Obvi-
ously the fine flower of consciousness. Generation is
implicit memory, consciousness is explicit memory ;
generation is potential memory, consciousness is actual
memory.”

Tam 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

F 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* and Professor Ray
Lankestert in England, and Dr. Ernst Krause} in Germany,
have spoken and written warmly in support of the theory

* “Charles Darwin.”” Longmans, 1885.

¢ Lectures at the London Institution, Feb., 1886.
+ ‘Charles Darwin.”’ Leipzig, 1885.

70

The Question at Issue 71

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 our-
selves—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 faive 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,

72 Luck, or Cunning ?

which still remains the sheet anchor of the early evolu-
tionists. 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 ameeba.

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.*

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

* See Professor Hering’s “‘ Zur Lehre von der Beziehung zwischen
oat und Seele. Mittheilung iiber Fechner’s psychophysisches
esetz.’

The Question at Issue 73

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 cumula-
tively in some one direction, until it has reached a develop-
ment 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,*
c’est la mort: he might have added, and perhaps did,
et la mort ce n’est que la vie transformée. 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

* Quoted by M. Vianna De Lima in his “‘ Exposé Sommaire des
Théories Transformistes de Lamarck, Darwin, et Heckel.” Paris,
1886, p. 23.

74 Luck, or Cunning?

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 gud 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 ameba.
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, fro 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

The Question at Issue a6

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 ¢dpa, 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 continu-
ing 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
jife 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

76 Luck, or Cunning ?

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

The Question at Issue a

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, xpnpdrwv rdévrav perpov dvOpwiros ; we are body en- -
souled, 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 any-
thing 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

78 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 some-
times 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 nett 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

The Question at Issue 79

extending reason to the lower animals, so we must extend
a system of moral government by rewards and punish-
ments no less surely ; and if we admit that to some con-
siderable 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)

O 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

80

The Question at Issue 81

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 what-
ever to do with the eye. The telescope owes its develop-
ment 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 modifica-
tion.* 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 Preserva-
tion of Favoured Races ;”’ “ Favoured” is ‘ Fortunate,”

* “ Origin of Species,” ed.i., p. 6; see also p. 43.
F

82 Luck, or Cunning ?

and “ Fortunate” ‘ Lucky ;”’ it is plain, therefore, that
with Mr. Darwin natural selection comes to ‘‘ The Preserva-
tion 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

The Question at Issue 83

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 dis-
covery 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 preserva-
tion 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* 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.

t 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, how-
ever, it so turned out that we unhesitatingly gave that

__ *® “T 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.

84 Luck, or Cunning ?

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
celave aviem 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 Jies, 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 modifi-
cation ; 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 import-
ance 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

The Question at Issue 85

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 indis-
pensable ?

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 modifica-
tion 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

86 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 sivict ordeal by which
nature tests their adaptation to her standard of perfection
and fitness to continue their kind by reproduction.”* 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

* “On Naval Timber and Arboriculture,’ 1831, pp. 384, 385.
See also ‘‘ Evolution Old and New,” pp. 320, 321.

The Question at Issue 87

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,* “‘ 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 expres-
sion 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,

* “ Origin of Species,’’ p. 49, ed. vi.

88 Luck, or Cunning ?

and one survival of the fittest only, but two natural selec-
tions, 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 sup-
poses 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 uncon-
nected 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 modifi-
cation 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 contribu-
tion 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 under-
stand 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 résumé of Mr. Darwin’s theory side by side with a
similar vésumé of his grandfather’s and Lamarck’s ? Neither
Mr. Darwin himself, not any of those to whose advocacy

The Question at Issue 89

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 develop-
ments 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

go Luck, or Cunning ?

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 com-
petitive forms. Let this process go on for countless genera-
tions, 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 any-
thing which made the utility of his contention as apparent
as it is made by what I have above put into the mouth of

The Question at Issue gt

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 per-
fected 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 be-
neath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be con-
tinually 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

Q2 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 ?’’*

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 accumu-
lation 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 acci-
dental 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 pur-
posiveness point blank, was trying to refer the develop-
ment 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

* “ Origin of Species,” ed.i., pp. 188, 189.

The Question at Issue 93

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 ’’* that the
only “ skill,” that is to say the only thing that can possibly
involve design, is “‘ the unerring skill’’ of natural selec-
tion.

In the same paragraph Mr. Darwin has already said :
“ Further, we must suppose that there is a power repre-
sented by natural selection or the survival of the fittest
always intently waching 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 sur-
vival 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

* Page 9.

94 Luck, or Cunning ?

must suppose that there is a power always intently watch-
ing 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 selec-
tion, 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 “‘ acci-
dental.”

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 altera-
tion,” &c.*

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

* Page 226.

The Question at Issue 95

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 contra-
diction.

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 arriére
pensée as pervading it whenever the “ distinctive feature ig
is on the fapis. 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

96 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 communi-
cated 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 com-
panions, and on the first scarcity of food were thus enabled
to outlive them” (italics in original).*

“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 dif-
ference. 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

* “ Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society.’”’ Williams
and Norgate, 1858, p. 61.

The Question at Issue 97

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 modifica-
tion, 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

G

98 Luck, or Cunning ?

are alike due to the accumulation of variations that are
mainly accidental, fortuitous, spontaneous, that is to say,
that cannot be reduced to any known general principle.
According to Charles Darwin “the preservation of fav-
oured,” 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 ves 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 pheno-
mena. Every part of the ego is non ego gud 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 point-
ing 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

The Question at Issue 99

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.

Notse.—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

(lntercalated)

Mr. Spencer’s “The Factors of Organic Evolution”

INCE 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 primor-
dial, 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. Udterly
inadequate to explain the major part of the facts as is the
hypothesis of the inheritance of functionally produced modifica-
tions, yet there is a minor part of the facts very extensive

190

“ Factors of Organic Evolution” ror

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 function-
ally 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 for-
ward 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

102 Luck, or Cunning ?

Darwin’s own words to put his position beyond doubt.
He writes :—

“Thirdly, when we enumerate the great changes pro-
duced 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 sup-
poses to have been produced by a custom long established
of cutting their tails close off.’’*

Here not one of the causes of variation adduced is con-
nected 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 rudi-
ments or primordium to the termination of their lives, all
animals undergo perpetual transformations ; which ave 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.”

3 * “ Zoonomia,”’ vol. i., p. 505.

“ Factors of Organic Evolution” 103

I have quoted enough to show that Dr. Erasmus Darwin
would have protested against the supposition that func-
tionally produced modifications were an adequate explana-
tion 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 im-
portance 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

104. Luck, or Cunning ?

the other hand, there is indeed cunning, effort, and conse-
quent 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 im-
portant 7éle 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 pense
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 environ-
ment 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 amceba 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 modifica-
tions. Again, when writing of the dog, he speaks of
variations arising ‘‘ by some chance common enough with
nature,’”’* and clearly does not contemplate function as the
sole cause of modification. Practically, though I grant I

* See ‘‘ Evolution Old and New,” p. 122.

“Factors of Organic Evolution” 105

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.”* 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 impercep-
tibly rendered such as we now see them.”’+ Who can doubt
that accident is here regarded as a potent factor of evolu-
tion, 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, differ-
ences of abode, of habit, of the most frequent actions, and
lastly of the means of obtaining food, self-defence, reproduc-
tion,” &c.t 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

* “ Phil, Zool.,” i., p. 80. ¢ Ibid., i. 82.
t Ibid. vol.i., p. 237.

106 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 varia-
tions 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 evolu-
tion ; 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 con-
veniently 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 modifica-
tion. 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

“Factors of Organic Evolution” 107

got plants and animals as embodiments of the two great
fundamental principles on which it is alone possible that
life can be conducted,* 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 pre-
served 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 varia-
tions may be favourable as there are conditions of the
environment that affect the organism. We cannot con-
ceive 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 varia-
tion ; 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

* See concluding chapter.

108 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 thatit 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
§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 propor-
tion as a healthy existence cannot be secured by a large
endowment of some one power, but demands many powers ;

** Factors of Organic Evolution” rog

in the same proportion do there arise obstacles to the in-
crease 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, othcr 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 superior-
ities 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 superi-
ority 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 ;

110 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 esthetic 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 non-
existent—and this, doubtless from a business standpoint,
was the best thing he could do. How far such a course was

“ Factors of Organic Evolution” 111

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

NE 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

112

Property and Common Sense_ 113

the right half pass for the whole, but the wrong half not
infrequently passes current for it also, without being chal-
lenged 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 pass-
book ; the universe is generally right, or would be upheld as
right if the matter were to come before the not too incor-
ruptible 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 some-
thing 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 varia-
tion, 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,

H

114 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 or-
ganic 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 cer-
tain 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 occur-
rence in the one colony, and is so rare in the other ? Fortes
creantur fortibus et bonis. True, but howand 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 composi-
tion 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 ?

Property and Common Sense 115

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 isso ? 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

116 Luck, or Cunning?

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

Property and Common Sense 117

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
reputation as moulders of circumstances have ever been
the first to admit that they had gained their ends more by
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 itis at any rate a prophesy-
ing 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 versd, 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 accur-

118 Luck, or Cunning ?

ate ; 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 sup-
posed 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
ameceba 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 ameeba. Itisitself gud maker of the stomach
and being fed; it is not itself gud stomach and qud 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

Property and Common Sense 119

persons of some of its descendants to reason with sufficient
soundness. And what the ameeba is man is also; man is
only a great many ameebas, 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 amcebas that have had much time and money
spent on their education, and received large bequests of
eee intelligence from those that have gone before
em.

The most incorporate tool—we will say an eye, or a
tooth, or the closed fist when used to strike—has still some-
thing of the on 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 work-
ing 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 inter-
permeated 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 im-
plements 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 out-

120 Luck, or Cunning ?

side 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 dis-
cussion 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 un-
specialised 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

Property and Common Sense 121

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 proto-
plasm. 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,

122 Luck, or Cunning ?

_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 representa-
tive 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.’’*

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 proto-
plasm ; 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

* Report, 9, 26.

Property and Common Sense 123

authorities are believed to stuff their new specimens with
the skins of old ones ; the matter used by the living proto-
plasm 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 proto-
plasm 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 to-
gether; they are mended by the protoplasm which per-
meates the Haversian canals; the bones themselves are
no more living merely because they are tenanted by some-
thing 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 structure-
less 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 doneit. Set aman who has never
painted, to watch Rembrandt paint the Burgomaster Six,
and he will no more understand how Rembrandt can have

124 Luck, or Cunning?

done it, than we can understand how the amceba.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 pay-
‘ment 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 )

HE 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
125

126 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 instrumen-
tality of tools of the second and first degrees ; as, for ex-
ample, 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 com-
pounded 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

Property and Common Sense 127

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 proto-
plasm 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 ex-
ample, 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 asaw. 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

128 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 out-
come 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,

Property and Common Sense 129

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 func-
tion, 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

I

130 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 un-
known, and presume that even as our non-bodily organs
originated and were developed through gradual accumula-
tion 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, de-
nuded 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 modifica-
tion, 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 over-
whelming, 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

Property and Common Sense 131

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 sub-
stance vivifying all, both animals and plants, must be held
as uniting them into a single corporation or body—especi-
ally when their community of descent is borne in mind—
more effectually than any merely superficial separation into

132 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 didnot
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 proto-
plasm 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

Property and Common Sense 133

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 bathy-
bius 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 accept-
ance ; nor is it easy to believe that his reluctance to express
his conclusion fotidem 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

134 Luck, or Cunning ?

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’étve 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 prob-
ably 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

We 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 im-
perishable, 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.”*

* Ps, cii. 25-27, Bible version.
135

136 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 J 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 Isay, Peradventure the dark-
ness 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.’’*

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

* Ps, cxxxix., Prayer-book version.

The Attempt to Eliminate Mind 137

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 discus-
sion 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 connec-
tion. 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 because I felt pleased with him, and
thought he would like it ; ” or, “I knocked him down

138 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 decep-
tive ; 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

The Attempt to Eliminate Mind 1 39

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 gud non for the Neo-
Darwinistic doctrine of natural selection, which, as Von
Hartmann justly observes, involves an essentially mechani-

I40 Luck, or Cunning ?

cal mindless conception of the universe ; to natural selec-
tion’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 in-
fluenced 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,* “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 auto-
mata, 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

* Contemporary Review, August, 1885, p. 84.

The Attempt to Eliminate Mind 141

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 where-
of 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 conscious-
ness 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

142 Luck, or Cunning ?

its extreme consequences, and how to put those conse-
quences 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 dis-
charge must depend solely on physical conditions. And
T 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 ts 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 hashappened ? 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,’’*
quotes the latter part of the foregoing extract. Mr. Duncan
goes on to quote passages from Professor Tyndall’s utter-
ances 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

* London, David Bogue, 1881, p. 60,

The Attempt to Eliminate Mind 143

processes would go on just as well if there were no accom-
paniment 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 quad 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

144 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 scandal-
ised 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 fore-
going chapter, and indeed just as this book is on the point
of leaving my hands, there appears in Nature* a letter
from the Duke of Argyll, which shows that he too is im-
pressed 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

* August 12, 1886.

The Attempt to Eliminate Mind 145

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,

K

146 Luck, or Cunning ?

but I cannot remember anything having been ever
attempted against me which could cause fear in any ordin-
arily 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 conveni-
ence 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

O 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 re-
taining this view of the matter. They say that an ameba
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 insuffi-
cient should surely find no difficulty in admitting that the
degrees are more numerous than is dreamed of in the some-
what 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

147

148 Luck, or Cunning ?

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

The Way of Escape 149

arose, for, slaves of habit as we all are, we are more especi-
ally 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 accus-
tomed 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

150 Luck, or Cunning ?

lightly—each carries to its extreme conceivable develop-
ment 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 com-
monly 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 un-
known, and also perhaps from an instinctive sense that
the fear of death is a sine gud 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 “‘ Exposé Sommaire des
Théories transformistes de Lamarck, Darwin, et Haeckel,’*
says that all attempts to trace une ligne de démarcation
nette et profonde entre la matiére vivante et la matiére inerte
have broken down.{ Il y aun reste de vie dans le cadavre,
says Diderot,{ 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 form-
less matter—from the most highly organised matter to the
most entirely inorganic substance.’’§

Is the line to be so drawn as to admit any of the non-

* Paris, Delagrave, 1886. t Page 60.

t “‘ Buvres complétes,” tom. ix., p. 422. Paris, Garnier fréres,
1875.

§ ao Nat.,” tom.i., p. 13, 1749, quoted ‘“‘ Evol. Old and New,”
p. 108.

The Way of Escape 151

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 im-
material vital principle or soul as animating an alien body,
with which it not only has no essential underlying commun-
ity of substance, but with which it has no conceivable
point in common to render a union between the two possi-
ble, 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

152 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 yearsago. Heasked, 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 unify-
ing 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

The Way of Escape 153

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 recog-
nising 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 classifi-
cation 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

154 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 ofa 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 ot cun-
ning. 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 és 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

The Way of Escape 155

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

OME 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 ;*
sometimes “the principle of natural selection” “ fully
embraced ”’ “‘ the expression of conditions of existence.” f
It would not be easy to find more unsatisfactory writing

* “ Origin of Species,” ed. vi., p. 107. ¢ Ibid., ed. vi., p. 166.

156

Darwin’s Variations [BF

than this is, nor any more clearly indicating a mind ill at
ease with itself. Sometimes “ants work by inherited
instincts and inherited tools ;” * sometimes, again, it is
surprising that the case of ants working by inherited
instincts has not been brought as a demonstrative argu-
ment “‘ against the well-known doctrine of inherited habit,
as advanced by Lamarck.”+ Sometimes the winglessness
of beetles inhabiting ocean islands is “‘ mainly due to natural
selection,’’{ 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. 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 rudi-
mentary—that is to say, in bringing about its development.
The ostensible raison d’étre, 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 heredi-
tary ’’—a sentence, by the way, than which none can be
either more unfalteringly Lamarckian or less tainted with

* & Origi Species,” ed. vi., p.233. Ibid.

t a 109. . § Ibid., ed. vi., p. 401.

158 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 repro-
duction ; Variability from the indirect and direct action
of the external conditions of life and from use and disuse,
&c.”* 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 com-
pose 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

* “ Origin of Species,” ed.i., p. 490.

Darwin’s Variations 159

survival of the fittest, but two, inasmuch as there are two
classes of variations from which nature (supposing no ex-
ception 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 varia-
tions 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 acci-
dent, and function, though not denied all efficacy, is de-
clared to be the greatly subordinate factor; natural
selection, therefore, has been hitherto throughout tanta-
mount 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

160 Luck, or Cunning ?

allowed this paragraph to remain from first. to last un-

changed (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 modifica-
tions, 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

Darwin’s Variations 161

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 per-
sistently 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 :*—‘‘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

* “ Origin of Species,’”’ ed. vi., 1876, p. 171.
L

162 Luck, or Cunning ?

than ever. Nevertheless there is no change in his conclud-
ing 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 con-
siderations 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 succes-
sive, 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

Darwin’s Variations 163

chiefly through selection in the ordinary course of nature
from among spontaneous variations, aided in an unimportant
manner by variations which qua us ave spontaneous. Never-
theless, 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,” “ import-
ant,” like the King when addressing the jury in “ Alice in
Wonderland ;”’ and yet this is the book of which Mr. Grant
Allen * 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 bio-
logical theory.”’ The book and the eulogy are well mated.

T see that in the paragraph following on the one just
quoted, Mr. Allen says, that “‘ to the world at large Dar-
winism 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

* “ Charles Darwin,” p. 113.

164 Luck, or Cunning ?

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* 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 clo 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

* “ Animals and Plants under Domestication,” vol. ii., p. 367,
ed. 1875.

Darwin’s Variations 165

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 appli-
cation 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 disap-
provingly. 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 con-
cluding 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

166 Luck, or Cunning ?

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
coriceived. 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 modifica-
tion generally, if he were not provided with some ostensibly
distinctive feature, in virtue of which, if people said any-
thing, he might claim to have advanced something dif-
ferent, 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.

Darwin’s Variations 167

_Timagine 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 dis-
trusted it. Much, however, as he disliked the accumula-
tion 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 varia-
tions 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 work-
ings 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 modifica-
tion 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 him-
self 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

R. ALLEN, in his ‘“‘ Charles Darwin,’ 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 credit-
able to Mr. Darwin.

Mr. Allen sayst 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 fre-
quently 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

* Page 3. t Page 4.
168

Darwin’s Claim to Descent 169

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* into a sketch of the con-
clusions 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 tohim. 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.

* It should be remembered this was the year in which the
Vestiges of Creation ’’ appeared.

170 Luck, or Cunning ?

“My work,” continues Mr. Darwin, ‘‘is now nearly
finished ; but as it will take me two or three years to com-
plete 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 modifica-
tion 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 authori-
ties 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 natural-
ists, 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

Darwin’s Claim to Descent 171

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 con-
cerned. Mr. Darwin says :—

“In considering the origin of species, it is quite con-
ceivable 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 nourish-
ment 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

172 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 dis-
puted ; 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 them-
selves than this, it would not be worth while to trouble

Darwin’s Claim to Descent 173

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,* is given on p. 134 of the English translation of
Professor Haeckel’s “‘ History of Creation,’’f 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

* “Charles Darwin,” p. 67. t H.S. King & Co., 1876.

174 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 pro-
duction 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. Unfor-
tunately, 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,* “‘ in his childhood and youth
these great but formless’’ (why “‘ formless” ?) ‘‘ evolution-
ary 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,’

* Page 17,

. Darwin’s Claim to Descent 175

and those who disbelieved in it, alike, were profoundly
interested and agitated in soul by the far-reaching implica-
tions 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 evo-
lutionism. Geology on the one hand and astronomy on
the other were making men’s minds gradually familiar

176 Luck, or Cunning?

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 possi-
bility 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 repre-
sents 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 )

HAVE said enough to show that Mr. Darwin claimed

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 remem-
bered, consisted of the very unusually large number of
four thousand copies, and from which no important devia-
tion 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

M 177

178 Luck, or Cunning ?

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, neverthe-
less, is the inference which the great majority of his readers
were likely to draw, and did draw, from Mr. Darwin’s
words.

Again :—

“Tt 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.

Darwin and Descent 179

“ 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 tofo, 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 techni-
cally ; 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.

180 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 para-
graph immediately following, which begins, ‘“‘ He who
believes in separate and innumerable acts of creation,” &c.
We therefore understand descent to be the theory so fre-
quently 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 hesi-
tate 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 transi-
tional grades ”’ (p. 188).

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

Again :—

“Tf 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;”

Darwin and Descent 181

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 dis-
cussed 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 :—

“T 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 struc-
ture 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 succes-
sive 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 modifi-
cation.”

Again :—

“We have in this chapter discussed some of the difficul-
ties and objections which may be urged against my theory.
Many of them are very grave, but I think that in the dis-
cussion 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

182 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 mis-
takes ;—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

Darwin and Descent 183

modification, that is here corroborated, and that it is this:
which Mr. Darwin is mainly trying to establish ; the sen-
tence 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.
gain :—

“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

184 Luck, or Cunning?

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 modifi-
cation 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 :—

“ Tf, then, there be some degree of truth in these remarks,
we have no right to expect to find in our geological forma-
tions 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 pre-
served geological sections, had not the absence of innumer-
able 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 :— it

“The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species:
suddenly appear in some formations, has been urged by
several palzontologists ... as a fatal objection to the
belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species,

Darwin and Descent 185

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 modifi-
cation, 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 modifi-
cation, and in the other it may not. Unfortunately with Mr.

186 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 ; practi-
cally, 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 modifica-
tion’ through the kind of natural selection ostensibly
intended by Mr. Darwin was a quasi-synonymous expres-
sion 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 trans-
mutation 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 palzontologists, namely, Cuvier,
Owen, Agassiz, Barrande, E. Forbes, &c., and all our

Darwin and Descent 187

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 un-
doubtedly 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 moditfica-
tion, 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 con-
clusion 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 comformable 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

188 Luck, or Cunning?

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 in-
evitably 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).

Darwin and Descent 189

Putting the three preceding passages together, we natur-
ally 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 unhesita-
tingly 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 excel-
lently 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

ity

Igo Luck, or Cunning?

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 18609.

Again :—

““He who rejects these views on the nature of the
geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory”
(Pp. 342). .

“ My ” became “ our ’’ in 1869.

Again :—

“ Passing from these difficulties, the other great leading
facts in paleontology 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”
(Pp. 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 inheri-
tance.”’ 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

Darwin and Descent IQ!

diminished or disappear. On the other hand, all the chief
laws of palzontology 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, 1s 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 ances-

192 Luck, or Cunning ?

tor, 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

Darwin and Descent 193

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, om 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 explana-
tion 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.

N

194 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 pro-
pinquity of descent—the only known cause of the simi-
larity 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

Darwin and Descent 195

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 indi-
viduals 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 natural-
ists 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 arrange-
ment 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.’”’* 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 soitis.... The explanation 1s mantfest
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 sim-
plicity ; 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

* “ Phil, Zool.,” tom. i., pp. 34, 35-

196 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 inde-
pendent 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 :—

“‘T 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 sfecies, 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,”

Darwin and Descent 197

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, 1 do not deny ”’ (p. 459).

This now stands, ‘“‘ That many and serious objections
may be advanced against the theory of descent with modifica-
tion 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

198 Luck, or Cunning ?

feeling no discomfort in such an expression as ‘‘ an inter-
minable number.”

‘Again :—
“ This is the most forcible of the giles objections which
may be urged against my theory. ... For certainly, on

my theory,” &e. (p. 463).

The “ my ” in eae 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 moditfica-
tions” (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 modifica-
tion ;”’ 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 :—

“Tt is inexplicable, on the theory of creation, why a part
developed, &c., . . . but, on my view, this part has under-

gone,” &c. (p. 474).

Darwin and Descent 199

“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 :—

“Tf 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 modifi-
catton, 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 modi-

fications ”’ (p. 479).

200 Luck, or Cunning ?

Again :—

“‘ 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 fay 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 amceba—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 analog-
ous 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.

Darwin and Descent 201

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”

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 pro-

prietorship ” 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.”* He often, as I have said,

* “ Origin of Species,” p. 381, ed.i.
202

The Excised “ My’s” 203

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 éxits 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,’* 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

* Page 454, ed.i.

204 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 to
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 practi-
cally 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

The Excised “ My’s” 205

feeling appear even in the late Sir Charles Lyell’s “ Princi-
ples 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 pro-
gressive development in past time of the organic world.’’*
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 occa-
sioned 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
heis mentioned. Professor Haeckel says :—

“ Although the theory of development had been already

* “ Principles of Geology,” vol. ii., chap. xxxiv., ed. 1872.

206 Luck, or Cunning ?

maintained at the beginning of this century by several
great naturalists, especially by Lamarck and Goethe, it
only received complete demonstration and causal founda-
tion 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.’’*

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 Pro-
fessor 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 preserva-
tion, 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

* “Natiirliche Schépfungsgeschichte,” p. 3. Berlin, 1868.

The Excised “ My’s ” 207

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 edu-
cation,—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 resent-
ment 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

208 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 pre-
decessors 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 :—

“T 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

The Excised “ My’s ” 209

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.* 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 evolu-
tionists 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

* See “ Evolution Old and New,” pp. 8, 9.
Q

210 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 differen-
tiates 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, what-
ever its shortcomings may be in other respects ; and when
people are doing their best to help us and make us under-
stand 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”

T is here that Mr. Grant Allen’s book fails. It is im-
possible 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 unde-
veloped 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 univer-
sally 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

21t

212 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 “‘ Ves-
tiges ’’ 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 phil-
osophers. 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

Grant Allen’s ‘Charles Darwin” 213

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 argu-
ment ; 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 vigor-
ous biological creed, while he himself was in truth the real
heir to all the honours of the situation. He was in posses-
sion 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, amass-

214 Luck, or Cunning ?

ing, 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 dis-
tinctly 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.’

Ihave 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.”

Grant Allen’s ‘‘Charles Darwin” 215

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 salium 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 be-
lieve 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 slow-
ness 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 misre-
present 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

216 Luck, or Cunning ?

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.”* 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 modifica-
tion, and, bad as the “‘ Vestiges’’ is, it is ingenuous as
compared with the “ Origin of Species.” Subsequently to
Mr. Chambers’s 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.” 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

* “ Vestiges,”’ &c., ed. 1860; Proofs, Hlustrations, &c., p. xiv.
{ Examiner, May 17, 1879, review of ‘‘ Evolution Old and New.”

Grant Allen’s “Charles Darwin” 217

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 con-
scious 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 :—

“T venture to think that the first way, if we look it
clearly in the face, will be seen to be practically unthink-
able ; and that we have no alternative, therefore, but to
accept the second.”

I like our looking a “ way ” which is “‘ practically un-
thinkable”’ “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 selec-
tion 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.”

218 Luck, or Cunning ?

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,’’* 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 dexter-
ously 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 concep-
tion 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

* Given in part in ' Evolution Old and New.”

Grant Allen’s “Charles Darwin” 219

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.’’*

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 hypo-
thesis ” (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

* “Mind,” p. 498, Oct., 1883.

220 Luck, or Cunning?

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 scandal-
ised then at the completeness and suddenness of the move-
ment 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 bond 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.

Grant Allen’s “‘Charles Darwin” 221

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
areone. 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 distinc-
tive 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 ” “ unthink-
able.” 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 accep-
tance 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

222 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 English-
man of the present generation can trust himself to speak
with becoming moderation.”

Grant Allen’s “Charles Darwin” 223

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 con-
spicuous 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 unostenta-
tious,” or that he was “ unosténtatiously ostentatious ”’ ?
I think we may guess from this passage who it was that in
the old days of the Pall Mall Gazette 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
encyclopedia 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 trans-
parent fearlessness and honesty of purpose, his childlike
simplicity, his modesty of demeanour, his charming manner,
his affectionate disposition, his kindliness to‘friends, his

224 Luck, or Cunning ?

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.’’*

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 com-
monly 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.

* “ Degeneration,”’ 1880, p, 10,

Chapter XVII

Professor Ray Lankester and Lamarck

Be 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 Atheneum 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 specula-
tions of Lamarck, which have found a worthy advocate in
Mr. Butler, as really solid contributions to the discovery of
the vere cause 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 experi-
enced 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,

P 225

226 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 suf-
ficiently 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 thread-
bare 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, asina transforma-
tion scene, but in successive generations, each being born
a shade different from its progenitors. Hence to observe

Professor Lankester and Lamarck 227

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 emphati-
cally state ”’ (Why so much emphasis ? Why not “it should
be stated’ ?) ‘‘ that Professor Semper and a few other
writers of similar views ’’* (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’ advo-
cated 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 ’’

* E.g. the Rev. George Henslow, in ‘‘ Modern Thought,” vol. ii.,
No. 5, 1881.

228 Luck, or Cunning?

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 surround-
ings 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 ; becom-
ing augmented by accumulation in many successive genera-
tions, 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 ac-
cumulated 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 con-
tinues :—

““ 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

Professor Lankester and Lamarck 229

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 demon-
strated 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 explana-
tion he was giving) ‘“‘ by which the evolution is possible ; it
was almost universally rejected, while such undemonstrable

230 Luck, or Cunning ?

agencies as those arbitrarily asserted to exist by Professor
Semper and Mr. George Henslow were the only means sug-
gested 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 2? Even under the most favourable condi-
tions 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 recep-
tion 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 exclu
sively due to Mr. Darwin’s “ Origin of Species”’ as is

Professor Lankester and Lamarck 231

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 argu-
ments 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 Lan-
kester, “rest on the proved existence of minute, many-

292 Luck, or Cunning ?

sided, irrelative variations not produced by directly trans-
forming 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 con-
ditions of existence, and to use and disuse, but a con-
cluding 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* 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? Andina .
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,

* “Nature,” Aug. 6, 1886.

Professor Lankester and Lamarck 233

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 connec-
tion 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 origin-
ate 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, trans-
mitted.” 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 uncom-

234 Luck, or Cunning ?

monly descend to offspring.* I know Brown-Séquard
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 transform-
ing 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 naturalselection 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.

* See Mr. Darwin’s ‘‘ Animals and Plants under Domestication,”
vol.i., p. 466, &c., ed. 1875.

Professor Lankester and Lamarck a2

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,’’*
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 conven-
tional 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,t “ 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

* Paris, 1873, Introd., p. vi.
{ ‘Hist. Nat. Gen.,’’ ii. 404, 1859.

236 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 genera-
tions have passed, that men have clean forgotten what and
who it was that made that cause triumphant, and ignor-
antly 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 complain-
ing 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? Ifa 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 misappre-
hended 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

Professor Lankester and Lamarck 237

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 con-
tinued 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 modifica-
tion, which was the leading idea throughout the book, was
so obviously strong, but perhaps mainly because every one

238 Luck, or Cunning ?

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

* HE evil that men do lives after them ”* 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 genera-
tion 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

* As these pages are on the point of going to press, I see that the

writer of an article on Liszt in the ‘‘ Atheneum ’’ makes the same
emendation on Shakespeare’s words that I have done.

239

240 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 re-
minded 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

Per Contra 241

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 reputa-
tion 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 manu-
facturies (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 bank-
rupt; 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.”* 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

* “Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle,” vol. iii., p. 373.
London, 1839.

Q

242 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 gener-
ally 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 scienti-
fic world ; when these were at stake he was not to be trusted
for a moment. Unfortunately they were directly or in-
directly at stake more often than one could wish. His book
on the action of worms, however, was shown by Professor
Paley and other writers* to contain many serious errors
and omissions, though it involved no personal question ;
but I imagine him to have been more or less hébéé 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,
Iam 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 tohave
been a failure. Though, however, it is not likely that pos-
terity will consider him as a man of transcendent intellec-
tual power, he must be admitted to have been richly
endowed with a much more valuable quality than either

* 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.

Per Contra 243

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 philoso-
phers 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.

244 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 charac-
ter ? 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.
if 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 suc-
cess, but it is only by blaspheming the world in a way which
no good citizen of the world will do, that we can deny

Per Contra 24.5

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,* 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 under-
stand ; 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 tbis 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

* “ Formation of Vegetable Mould,” etc., p. 217. Murray, 1882.

24.6 Luck, or Cunning ?

have been the kind of man to persuade us into first tolerat-
ing, and then cordially accepting, descent with modifica-
tion. 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

Per Contra 24.7

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 cere-
mony, 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 par-
doned 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

248 Luck, or Cunning ?

(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 neces-
sarily 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 irretriev-
ably 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* 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

* “ Fortnightly Review,” Jan., 1886,

Per Contra 24.9

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 résumé 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 say-
ing 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

250 Luck, or Cunning ?

part in the attempt to further this; Mr. Darwin was per-
fectly 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 ad-
junct 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
messteurys les Charles- Darwiniens commencent. Mr. Dar-
win 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

ae 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.
T 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 modi-
fication 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

251

252 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 under-
standing 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 con-
tinuity 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

Conclusion 253

Linnean Society, Mr. Tylor being then too ill to read it
himself. The paper has since been edited by Mr. Skertchly,
and published.* Anything that should be said further about
it will come best from Mr. Skertchly ; it will be enough
here if I give the résumé 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 them-
selves 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

*<On the Growth of Trees and Protoplasmic Continuity.”
London, Stanford, 1886.

254 Luck, or Cunning ?

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. ‘“‘ Admit-
ting,” I said, ‘‘ the common protoplasmic origin of animals
and plants, and setting aside the notion that plants pre-
ceded 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 ani-
mal 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 in-
numerable sub-divisions of animals and plants, but we see
no other such great subdivision of organic life as that where-
by 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

Conclusion 255

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 differ-
ences of opinion, then, so ultimately do generic ; so, there-
fore, 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 dif-
ference being expressed in shades of physical difference,
while broad fundamental differences of opinion are ex-
pressed in broad fundamental differences of bodily shape.

Or to put it thus :—

If form and habit be regarded as functionally interde-
pendent, 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 cun-
ning) 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 sub-
division 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

256 Luck, or Cunning ?

possible modes of action very evenly balanced as regards
advantage and disadvantages, then the ultimate appear-
ance 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 con-
ceivable ? 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

Conclusion 257

boughs and leaves ; this is a kind of locomotion ; and, as
Dr. Erasmus Darwin long since pointed out, they do some-
times 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, Pp. 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 repre-
sentation 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 commod-
ities 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,

R

258 Luck, or Cunning ?

the rude, unassisted, uneducated senses see it as above all
things motionless, whereas assisted and trained ideas con-
cerning it represent motion as its most essential character-
istic ; but the stone has not changed. So, again, the unedu-
cated 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 elemen-
tary 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 con-
venient, 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 sensa-
tions 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 clear-
ness—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 to-
wards 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

Conclusion 259

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 avs 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 develop-
ment 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. bed
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. When-
ever 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

260 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 con-
ditioned 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’* 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

* Sometimes called Mendelejeft’s (see ‘‘ Monthly Journal of
Science,” April, 1884).

Conclusion 261

for us to seize, compare, and, hence, cognise ; uncondi-
tioned matter must, therefore, be as inconceivable by us
as unmattered condition ;= 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 under-
lying substance in such-and-such a state of molecular
disturbance, and it is only by alteration of the dis-
turbance that the substance can be altered—the dis-
turbance of the substance is practically equivalent to
the substance: a pat of butter is such-and-such a dis-
turbance of the unknowable underlying substance, and
such-and-such a disturbance of the underlying substance
is a pat of butter. In communicating its vibrations, there-
fore, 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

{ 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 with-
out 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.

262 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 con-
veyed 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 qué us is the thing that is remem-
bered, and the ease with which habitual actions come to be
performed is due to the power of the vibrations having

Conclusion 263

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 docket-
ing molecular disturbances. The same vibrations, there-
fore, form the substance remembered, introduce an infini-
tesimal 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 ; never-
theless, 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
anjmals and plants grow into conformity with their sur-
roundings 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 concern-
ing life and death expressed in an early chapter. They

264 Luck, or Cunning ?

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 necessita-
ting 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 fagon de parler only ; it is, as
I said in ‘“‘ Life and Habit,’’* “ 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 spon-

* Page 53.

Conclusion 265

taneous, 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. Never-
theless 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 every-
where ? 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 depart-
mental 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 govern-
ment 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 dis-
continuity, and discontinuity in continuity ; of unity in
diversity, and of diversity in unity. As in the develop-

266 Luck, or Cunning ?

ment 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, substra-
tum ;”’ 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

Conclusion 267

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 de-
claring that the main means of organic modification is, not
luck, but cunning.

Index

ABUSES, the poor, of the time, 153

Academicism, 165

Acie, mixed with design, 81,
9

aii most important,
1

Accidental variations would not
accumulate, 88, 107, 159, 185,
219

——C. Darwin cutting out, 92,94

asa we want to, for things,
13

Accumulation, of accidental
variations impossible, 88, 107,
159, 185, 219

Act of Parliament like trying to
construe, &c., 95

Action, a middle term between
mind and matter, 76

Adjuncts, thought, and feeling
declared, 139, &c.

Agrees, our food, with us, 128

Allen, G., on “The Origin of
Species,” 163

——on misconception concern-
ing C. Darwin’s claiming
descent, 168, 202, 222

—on C. Darwin’s youth, 174,
&e.

——on pre-C. Darwinian evolu-
tion, 211, 212

—on C, Darwin, 211-214, 222-
224

—onC. Darwin making all sure
behind him, 214, 215

——article in ‘‘ Mind,” 216

———" practically unthinkable,”
217

——-stepping-stones, 220

Allman, Prof., his address to the
British Association, 121, 122
uneasy about protoplasm,

133

Almost impossible, and provi-
dential, 152

American, on ‘‘ Life and Habit,’’
24

Ameba, its illogical nature, 118

Animals, and plants, the em-
bodiments of two principles,
107, 254

democracies, 265, &c.

Argyll, Duke of, timid, 99

letter to Nature, August 12,
1886, 144

——on natural selection, 144,146

——on H. Spencer’s Nineteenth
Century articles, 145, &c.

reign of terror, 145

Aristides, and C. Darwin, 224

Association, liberal, 112

words and painting alike
rest on, 112

——does not stick to its bond,
112

Atom, universe the only, 152

Austria, emperors of, washing
feet, 247

Automatism, animal, Huxley,
Hobbes, and Romanes on, 139,
&e.

BaBEL, logic the true, 36

Balance of power, among our
ideas, upset, 32

Barrenness, of ideas, 38, 39

Bathybius died at Norwich, 132,
133

269

270

Beethoven, and snuffers, 247

Bernard, Claude, ‘“‘ Rien ne
nait,” &c., 35

“Ta ute, c'est la mort,” 73

Body and mind, interaction of,

77 : aa

——and living and non-living,
Ir

—the more they reduced
mechanism to, &c., 134

the ars artium, 259

Bones, do not mend themselves,
123

Books, live many generations, 14

Boom, the biggest biological, 70

Boots, our, spare paws, 123

Brain, butter on the, 261, 262

Breach, the same, which lets, &c.,
126

Bricks and bricklayer, 123

British Museum stuff new speci-
mens with old ones, 122, 123

Bruno, Giordano, on the life of
clothes, 119

Buffon, and Erasmus Darwin,
better men than Lamarck, 22

—did not insist so much on
function, 104

Burglar’s jemmy, the,
natural selection, 89, 90

Butter on the brain, 261, 262

and

CAMBRE, 245
Capital, cunning the most potent
developer of, 115

Categorical, C. Darwin’s, ‘‘ my,” ©

192, 203
Chance, and aroma of design,
154
Change, all, miraculous, 34, 74
——-+}ro tanto, death, or birth, 73,
74
—substratum of life and
death, 73
—solve any, &c., 73
——either growth, or dissolu-
tion, or half-and-half, 74
all pleasant, recreative, &c.,

74

Luck, or Cunning?

Change and consciousness, 76

Chimerical as well as metaphori-
cal, 66, 185, 186

Church, I was educated for
the, 25

the, would discourage con-
tinued personality between
generations, 31

Classification, depends on hu-
mour, 152

C. Darwin, and Lamarck on
genealogical, 194, 195

Clifford, Prof., his article ‘‘ Body
and Mind,” 141

Clothes, in wear, live, 119, 120

Coal, shot out of sack, 154

Coleridges, or at best make,
of ourselves, 35

Common sense alone enables us
to brook fusion, 31

—alone enables us to brook
outrages of fusion, 31

must know when to close

a discussion, 120

not yet formulated in

matters of science, 120, 121

when our philosophers left

the ground of, &c., 148

the Mammon of, 148

Compromise between universe
and organism, 113

as per boughs and tendrils,
257

Conditions, new, involved in
each new life, 232

Confidence trick, scientific, 173

Consciousness, no, no contradic-
tion, 48

and change, 76

——and feeling, the attempt to
eliminate, 139

Continuity, a, in discontinuity,
36, 265

Contradiction in terms,
can avoid ? 48

no, no consciousness, 48

as per festina lente, 72

—involved in the union of
body and soul, 76

who

Index

Contradiction foundation of
sound reasoning, 121

God the ineffable, 1 36

we must rehabilitate, 151

——omnuipresent, 265

Convenient, the common view
of personality, 31

——God enduringly, 266

Converts, protoplasm, things, 128

Correlation of mental growth, 246

Creations, we must have, but,
&c., 36

Creighton, Dr., on unconscious
memory, 67, &c.

Cross, no, no crown, 48

Culture and vulgarity, 121

Cunning, we do not mean all,
&e., 97

Erasmus Darwin the apostle
of, 98 ,

——enough obvious, &c., 98

‘Lamarck apostle of, 98

and form functionally re-
lated, 255

Cuvier, great in small things, 230

Darwiy, C., and Paley, the first
denied design, 16, 17

his weak place, ve rudimen-

tary organs, 18

his mantle, 56, 61, 65

if he had told us what the

earlier evolutionists said, 59

heir to discredited truth,

&c., 61, 243

stages of opinion on the

connection between memory

and heredity, 62

“‘“Nature by making habit

hereditary,”” &c., 62

wanted to differ from his

grandfather and Lamarck, 63

and old Moore’s almanac, 63

———on design in connection with
Hermann Miiller’s book, 63

preface to Weismann’s
book, 64 .

—tThis was not Mr. Darwin’s
manner, 64

271

Darwin, C., title-page of
“ Origin of Species,’ 81, &c.
—essential difference between
him and his forerunners, 84

——‘‘through natural selec-
tion,” 85

——and “Hunting oftheSnark,”’
gI

———on the eye, 91

——cutting out ‘‘ accidental,”
92, 94

| ——did not like his accidental

variations, 93
——and ‘the unerring skill’’
of natural selection, 93
‘“power represented by
natural selection,’ 93
his several editions, 94
found his natural selection
a millstone, 95
admits element of cunning,

97

——his real name, 99

——by supposing his judgment
warped, &c., 104

never met H. Spencer's

fatal objection, 110

waved Lamarck and E.
Darwin aside, 130

——-said sometimes one thing
and sometimesits opposite, 156

intended his change of front

to escape us, 159, 222

supposed leaning towards

function in later life, 160

if he had changed, should

have said so, 160

-we should have known him

as one who was anxious to

keep us straight, 161

important, unimportant, 163

——and “‘experienced natural-
ists,” 164

‘imperfect answer,’’ ‘ sat-

isfactory,” 164

there must be some other,
164

—why he did not say what he
meant, 166

292

Darwin, C., told Lamarck to go
away, 166, 212

——and “ Vestiges,’’ 166, 214

——cast about for a distinctive
feature, 166, 167

——did not acknowledge earlier
evolutionists till 6000 copies
of his work had been sold, 166,
205, 212

his attitude towards de-
scent, explains his natural
selection, 167

—-— his claim to the theory of
descent, 168, &c., 177, &c.

figure of straw re the mistle-

toe, 172

naive letter to Heckel, 173

eo Allen on his youth, 174,

c.

treats descent as identical

with natural selection, 180,

&c., 185, &c., 196, 197, 199

——nmysterious, and intelligible,

190

his categorical ‘“‘my,’’ 192,
203

—on genealogical order of
nature, 194, 195

——a large extent of simplicity,
195

alters ‘“‘on ”’ to “‘ opposed

to” and ‘‘ according to,”’ 197

an interminable number,
198

——and by Mr. Wallace, 200

—ubiquity of his claim, 202

and Gladstone, 91, 160, 167,
203, 205

——-sneaked his ‘‘my’s’”’ out,
204, &c.

his meanness, and greatness

of his services, 207

‘what he should have said,
208, 209

——his distinctive feature, 208,
&c.

—ostrich-like and pitiable,
209

forthcoming life of, 209, 210

Luck, or Cunning?

Darwiy, C., told Lamarck to go
away, after grossly misrepre-
senting him, 212

——neutralised his historical
sketch, by his book, 213

—should have said of Buffon
what he said of Lamarck, 213

and ‘‘seems,’’ ve Lamarck,

213

made all sure behind him,

214, 215

and ‘‘ Vestiges of Creation,”

214

““ presumes’ re the ‘‘ Ves-
tiges,’”’ 215

—suave, but singularly fraud-
ulent, 215

misconception about his doc-

trine and Lamarck’s, 221, 222

intended us to attach his

name to the principles of La-

marck, 222

his conspicuous sinking of
self, ostentatious unostenta-
tiousness, and mastery over
simplicity, 223

——like Aristides, 224

greatest of living men, 224

——and Herod, 224

we think we know what he

was driving at, 229

cogent while following La-

marck, 231

fortuitousness of variations

kept as dark as possible, 231

does not know whether his

variations are produced by
directly transforming agencies

or no, 232

so fogged us, that we did

not catch his doctrine, 234 .

“in trying to filch, while

pretending to amend,” &c.,236

his own fault, if misunder-
stood, 236

——wished us to misunderstand,
237

should not be judged by

letter of his books, 239

Index

Darwin, C., no writer done so
much good as, 239

his persistency, 240, &c.

like Pope Julius II., 240

did not show early promise,

241

had hand of iron under
velvet glove, 241

——on earthquakes, 241

——action of worms, 242

not especially great as

observer, 242

strongestin savoir faire, 242,

243

cannot be denied rare great-

ness, 243

gave his esoteric doctrine to

the world, 243

must be allowed great, 243

organised a literary backing,
243

——-strong social position, 244

‘would have been too wide
a cross if as good as G. Allen
says, 244

——the right man in the right
place, 244

knew our little ways, 245

‘watching his worms, 245

and ‘‘sag,’’ 245

——effect of work, instantane-
ous, 246

his style bad, 247

-when badly hit said nothing,

247, 248

and emperors of Austria,

7
should have noticed Hering,

2

ahs best justification, 248

and Professor Mivart, 248

——did not care whether uni-
verse instinct with mind or
no, 250

his Gladstonian nature, 250

great populariser of evolu-
tion, 250

Darwin, Erasmus, and Buffon
better men than Lamarck, 22

Ss

273

Darwin, Erasmus, new genera-
tion, elongation, 61

——and thrift, 71, 72

and moral uniformity, 78

admits chance, 101, 103

Darwin, Francis, ve Professor
Hering’s lecture, 44

Death and life, 73

in the liquidation and re-

construction of, 73

and decay an untuning, 74

complex, 74

swallowed up in life, 75

fear of, necessary, 150

residue of life in, 150

only a new departure, 150

if we let life without the

body, &c., 151

not so complete, 264

a facon de parler only, 264

Decimals, true for seven places,
32

Deception, there is no, 209

Democracies, animals and plants,
265

Departmental, reflex action, 265 —

Descent, treated as identical
with natural selection, 180,
&c., 185, &c., 196, 197, 199

triumphed as rapidly as

other theories, 231
no more C. Darwin’s theory
than mine, 234

Design, aggregation of small
designs, truest design, 21, 22

——C. Darwin, ve Hermann
Miller’s book, 63, 64

——of telescope, and chance, 80,
81

a rope of many strands, 97

mixed with chance, 154

Detail, none escaped if small, 159

Details of two principles em-
bodied in species of animals
and plants, 107

Diapason, the, closing full, &c.,

74
Diderot, on life of corpse, 150
Digests us, our food, 128

274
Discords, should be prepared, 34,

3

Distinctive feature, Mr.Darwin’s,
never compared with older
view by neo-Darwinians, 88,
89

Disturbance of equilibrium, who
can say how small may induce
great change, 232

Disuse, if main means of reduc-
ing, 157

Dog’s nose, as it were the
twitchings of a, 94

and share-list, 258

Donkey-race, and theorists, 220

Duncan, Stewart, his ‘‘ Conscious
Matter,” 142

Dying, and degrees of life, 120,

147

EartuguakEs,C. Darwin on, 241

Eating, and love, 128

Ego, the, non ego qud organ in
use, 98

Enemy, if the last, death, &c., 75

Enures, cunning, to the benefit
of successors, I14

Ephemeron, apologue of the, 227

Equation, Prof. Hering reduced
life from an, of 100 unknown
quantities, &c., 14, 57

Equilibrium, small disturbance
of, may modify much, 232

Estate, in mind, body, or, 118

Evolution in 1809, meant much
what it does now, 175

Examiner, my articles in the, 131

Experience of the race, accumu-
lated experiences, &c., 30

H. Spencer on, 30, 38, 39

the elements of, 30

while realising, our minds

excluded race, 38

it was not in the nexus of
our ideas, to extend to off-
spring, 46

Experienced naturalists, &c., 164

Experiments, I have made none,
26

Luck, or Cunning?

Extreme, to mark that, &c., 107
Eye, the, and telescope, 80
——C. Darwin on the, 91

Face, if we look it in the, 217

Faith, the just shall live by, 36

or wants of faith, that have

been most, &c., 78

founded on reason, 121

Faiths, many, both living and
saving, 36

Fancy, which sometimes sways,
&c., 78

Father, when the, eats, the un-
begotten son is nourished, 33

Favour, a cloak for luck, 229,
230

Feed, to fuse and diffuse ideas, 37

Feel, none perfectly, and some
not at all, 259

Feeling and consciousness, the
attempt to eliminate, 139, &c.

an acquired art, 257, &c.

——-originally symbolic, 257, &c.

to reality, as word to feeling,

258

not part of mind, 259

Fobbed by the rusty curb of
logic, 153

Font, ces choses, &c., 124

Food, we must chew our, fine,
&e., 37

very thoughtful, 37

———and money, 118

——our, digests us, 128

Form, mind, made manifest in
flesh through action, 255

and cunning functionally
related, 255

Fortes creantuy, &c., 114

Fortuitous a foolish organism
and its variation, 116

Fraudulent, suave, but singu-
larly, 215

Fugue, life like a, 266

Fusion, all, an outrage upon our
understandings, 37

——and feeding, 37

Index

Gas, potent as a, 37
Genealogical order, C. Darwin
and Lamarck on, 194, 195
Generation, ordinary, and natu-

ral selection, 190, 191
Geoffroy, Isidore, an unconsci-
ous teleologist, 20
——on Lamarck, 235
German and Irish colonies, 113,

114

Gladstone, C. Darwin the, of
biology, 91

no one not brought up in

school of, 203

‘we might as well expect Mr.,
to put us on our guard, 160

Gladstonian nature, C. Darwin’s,
250

tendencies of Mr. Darwin’s
mind, 205

—pblunder, C. Darwin com-
mitted the, 167

Gloves, why we box with, 127

Gnome, mused forth as a, 63

Go away, uncles and aunts, 263

God, but see, and live, 36

we are a part of, 114

an invaluable conception,

136

the ineffable contradiction
in terms, 136

——of philosophy and mammon
of common sense, 148

Corruptio optimi, &c., 266

——substratum, hypothesis, 266

Goethe’s ‘‘Wilhelm Meister,’’ 164,
16

dee, a sense of deadlocks, 48

Gordian knots, a succession of
cutting, 48

Grove, Sir William, his conser-
vation of energy, 135, &c.

Growth, a coming together of
elements, &c., 74

a kind of success, 116

Gustibus, de, non est, &c., 78

Hasit, changed, involves
changed organism, 72

275

Haeckel, C. Darwin to, 173

his ‘‘ History of Creation”
and C. Darwin’s ‘“‘ my’s,” 205,
&e.

Halt, tomake a, where, &c., 131

Harmonics, from every proposi-
tion, 14

and in the harmonics to
which it gives rise, 74

——when the note of life is
struck, &c., 75

——of life in death, 149

Hartmann, Von, declares neo-
Darwinism a mechanical con-
ception, 139

Helm, unguided by the, 130

Hering, Professor E., reduced
life from an equation, &c., 14

should run his own theory,

27

adopted by Dr. Creighton,

67

Hermaphroditic breeding, nature
hates, &c., 48

Hobbes, and automatism, 141

Horace, on omnis moriar, 75

Nunc in Arvistippi, 99

Hour-hand of clock, and organic
modification, 226

Household of the prophets of
evolution, 246

Husband and wife one flesh, 46

Huxley, Professor, foisted C.
Darwin upon us, 89

prophet of protoplasm, 121

His ‘‘ Physical Basis of
Mind,” 121

——on animal automatism, 140

-Romanes, G. J., on, 140

Hypothesis, substratum,
God, 266

and

Ick, as steps on slope of, 138

Ideas, like plants and animals, 13

the balance of power among
our, was upset, 32

——can be changed in almost
any direction, 34

—and words, 34

276

Ideas, cross fertilisation of, essen-
tial, 48

unlike objects, 257

solidified, and organism, 266

Illustration to palm off an,
upon one, &c., 32

Imperfect answer, satisfactory,
164

Important, unimportant, 163

Impostors, E, R. Lankester on,
236

Inch, common sense gave the,125

Incoherency, barrenness, 38, 39

Income Tax, from this, &c., 78

Incompetent and obsequious,247

Individual, the, formerly seen as
one and race as many, 30

Professor Moseley and
‘almost impossible,’ 152

Inherited memory, Spencer, H.,
on, 49

Instinct, Spencer, H., on, 47

Romanes, G. J., on the

origin and development of, 53

RRomanes, G. J., soon drop-
ped natural selection in con-
nection with, 54

——Romanes, G. J., defines, and
proposed amendment, 60

Intelligence, the power of being
understood, 76, 252

power of not being under-
stood, 245

Irish and German colonies, 113,
114

Ishmaels, 27

Jemmy, burglar’s, and natural
selection, 89, 90

Julius II, Pope, boxed Michael
Angelo’s ears, 240

KINGSLEY, Canon, and inherited
memory, 40

LaMARCK, an unconscious tele-
ologist, 20

Luck, or Cunning?

Lamarck did not deal hand-
somely by Buffon, 22
his sheet anchor is in thrift,

71
introduces moral uniform-
ity, &c., 78
admits element of chance,
105

on genealogical order, 195

——Sir C. Lyell on, 205

bore brunt of laughing, 212

“Philosophie Zoologique,”

a better work than the

‘‘Origin of Species,’’? 212

made ‘‘ Vestiges ’’ possible,

212

direct transforming agents,
228

—opposed by Huxley, &c.,
230

his poverty, 230

unequally matched against

Cuvier, 230

his opinions now accepted,

231

C. Martins, and I. Geoffroy

on, 235

‘Lazarus of biology, 235

Lankester, E. R., and Professor
Hering’s lecture, 40

his attack in the Atheneum

on myself, 42

“greatest of living men,”
224

—on Professor Semper’s book,
225, &c.

his note in ‘“‘ Nature,” 227,
&e.

——on inherited mutilation, 233

—on traitors and impostors,
236

Lawyer, ‘‘like trying to act on
the advice of a,” &c., 95

Liberal, precipitate and inaccur-
ate, 112

Life and death, not absolutely
antagonistic, 73, 74

——a mode of change, 73

——and growth an attuning, 74

Index

Life ranges through every de-
gree of complexity, 74

no greater mystery than
death, 74

——swallowed up in death, 75

——of clothes in wear, 119, 120

-——and death we can distin-
guish easily enough, 148

—— extreme developments sup-
plementary to one another, 149

——and death, not fundament-
ally opposed to one another,
149

and death, as reflections in

two mirrors, 149, 154

they were cornering it, 144

‘Life and Habit,” sketch of, 14,
15

note written in,
American, 24

and the ‘Principles of
Psychology,” their differen-
tiating feature, 33, 34

considered too startling a
paradox to be taken seriously,

by an

45
Life short and business long, 112
Lines, hard and fast, we want,138
Literary culture, I wish my
opponents had more, 25
Living, all is, that is in connec-
tion with mind, 119
which parts are most, 121
if the body is not, what can
be called living ? 129
Livingness, on degrees of,121,147
and versatility, 147
Logic, true tower of Babel, 36
and the ameeba, 118
the slaves of, &c., 138
fobbed by the rusty curb
of, 153
Lord, a being ever with the, 75
we do it to the, 76
Love, and eating, 128 |
Luck, goes without saying, 89
——C. Darwin the apostle of, 98
——enough obvious, &c., 98
——will not hoard, 108

At 7

Luck, the unforeseeable, 115
mighty, 117
Lyell, Sir C., on Lamarck, 205

MacsetuH, Lapy, blood on her
hand, 139

Man, many amecebas, 119

Manner, this was not Mr. Dar-
win’s, 64

Martins, C., on Lamarck, 235

Materialism, and spiritualism,
137

Matter and mind, the attempt
to eliminate, 137

Matter, and modes of motion,
260

——unconditioned,
able, &c., 260

Matthew, P., on natural selec-
tion, 85, 86

Meanness, I know not whether
most to wonder at C. Darwin’s,
or the greatness of his ser-
vices, 207

Mechanism, the more they re-
duced the body to, 134

——+to the level of unerring, 139

Mendelejeff’s law, 260

Mental growth, correlation of,
246

Mind and body, interaction of, 77

the more a thing knows its

own, &c., 148

manifested through form,
255

——elementary in stone, 258

feeling no part of, 259

Minimis, de, &c., 34

Miracle, none can say exactly
where it must cease, 38

——a, in respect of only two or
three per cent., 72

——death as great a, as life, 74

Miraculous, change,essentially, 34

the lawful home of the, 34

—the, writ large, &c., kills, 35

——all fusion and diffusion, 37

——all change is, 74

uncognis-

278

Mirrors, life and death as reflec-
tions in two, 149, 154

Mistletoe, C. Darwin’s figure of

* straw ve the, 172

Misunderstanding, people can
remove if they chose, 236, 237

Mivart, Professor St. G., his
“* Genesis of Species,’’ 16, 19

reviewed my books in the

American Catholic Quarterly, 43

‘What are living beings ?’”’

121, 152

and C. Darwin, 248

Modification, begins at home, 117

Modus vivendi, all living forms
established a, &c., 72

Money and food, 118

—gives new lease of life, 147

— sensible people alone hold,
246

Monistic conception of the uni-
verse, we all desire, 135

Moral, a, uniformity, 78

Moseley, Professor, on “‘individ-
ual,” 152

Motion, most essential character-
istic of a stone, 258

modes of, and matter, 260

Moulders, mould themselves, 117

Mused forth asa general gnome,
63

Mutilation, rule, ve inherited, 233

“My,” C. Darwin’s categorical,
192, 203

“My’s”’ smitten with homing in-
stinct, 204

Nalts, that want cutting,120,151

Naive, this is very, 174

Natural selection, the early
evolutionists taught this, 85-

87
Patrick Matthew on, 85-87
——a misleading expression, 87
two theories of, 66, 88, 159,
185,195,196, 206, 210, 217, 218
. the preservation of lucky
races, 82

Luck, or Cunning?

Natural selection, the original
title of the ‘Origin of
Species,’’ 83

the biggest biological boom,
70

——as applied to machines, 89,
90

representing a power, 93, 94

intently watching, &c., 93

Duke of Argyll on, 144, 146

——C. Darwin’s, explained by
his attitude towards descent,
167

as in last paragraph of

the “‘ Origin of Species,” 158,

159

treated as identical with

descent, 180, &c., 185, &c., 196,

197: 199

not a theory, but a fact, 188

and ordinary generation,

1QI

Allen,G.’s, record ve, 216,217

——no distinctive feature of C.
Darwin, 218

“Neanderthal Skull,” review,
226

Newlands’ law, 260

New life, new conditions, 232

Nexus, it was not in the, 46

Non-readers, many of my, 38

Norwich, Bathybius, died at, 132,
133

Nutrition and reproduction, 128

Opinion, divided, and form, 255

Oratorio, almost any one can
compose an, 244

Organic wealth, and thrift, 71

wealth not figurative, 117

and inorganic, une ligne de
démarcation nette, &c., 150

Organism and surroundings run
into one another, 98

in account with universe,

113

more important than en-

vironment, 115

Index

Organism, a foolish, and its for-
tuitous variation, 116

and property, 117, &c.

Organs and tools, 129, &c.

Origin of Species,”’ its title mis-

leading, 82

——riginally called ‘‘ Natural
Selection,” 83

Should be referred to as

“Origin of Species,” &c., 84

almost any view can be de-
fended from the, 157

——concluding paragraph, 158,
159, 201

first edition consisted of

4000 copies, 177

first two editions

copies, 205, 212, 216

‘we knew there was some-
bears uncanny about it, 237,
23

Original thought more common
than is supposed, 244

a trifle too, 244

Orpheus-like, to charm, &c., 37

Ostentatious unostentatiousness,
223

6000

Patey, F. A., devised descent,
16, 17
——on C. Darwin’s book on
worms, 242
Palmam qui meruit fevat, 250
Paradox, the non-livingness of
the living, and the livingness
of the non-living, 133
—should be put so as to
startle, 133
Paws, our boots, spare, 123
Pellet, impotent as a, 37
Penelope-like, undoing, &c., 108
Penny, if a, be dropped, &c., 143
Pensions, we have given, 19
—out of the public, 139
Personality, the common view
commonly most convenient,
31, 32 .
—no more lost in generations
than in seconds, 32

279

Personality not lost in death,
263, 264

Philosophy made for man, 36

another world, with another

language, 148

the God of, 148

Picture, almost anyone can paint
a, 244

Plants must have intelligence,
251

and animals, embodiments
of two principles, 107, 254, &c.

Plasticity, of organism, 72

Porter, beating doormats, 153

Power, a, represented by natural
selection, 93, 94

Preposterous, it would be, 172

Property, and organism, 117, &c.

Proselytises, protoplasm in
stomach, 128

Prosperity, a book’s, is like a
jest’s, 246

Protoplasm, great is, 121, &c.

coextensive with life, 122

———has the ear of life, 122

turns dead to account, 122

goes masked behind its
habits, 123

——will fare as the body, 125

——cannot communicate di-
rectly with machine, 127

the life of the world, 132

——God Almighty, 132

collapsed in 1879, 132

and vital principle, 133

and the mechanical theory
of the universe, 143

Protoplasmic parts of body more
living than non-protoplasmic,
131

Psalmist, the, aiming at modern
conceptions, 135, 136

Pure, we want to get things, 138

Purse and stomach, 118

Race, formerly seen as many,
and individual as one, 30

while realising, our minds

excluded experience, 38

280

Race, the, not to the swift, 72

Reason, founded on faith, 121

Reflex action, departmental, 265

Religion and science, antagon-
ism of, and reconciling, 221

Rembrandt and Burgomaster
Six, 123

Reproduction and nutrition, 128

Res, non sibt, &c., 98

Rhythms, reinforce pre-existing,

74

Rift, the little, in C. Darwin’s
“my’s,” 206

Romanes, G. J., his review of
“Unconscious Memory,” 42

the very essence of C. Dar-
win’s theory, &c., 17

——letter to Atheneum, 44

——on ‘“‘Erewhon” and “ Life
and Habit,” 45

——-has adopted Heringian view
52, 53, 56

on the origin of develop-
ment of instincts, 53

— dropped natural selection in
connection with instinct, 54

——and Mr. Darwin’s mantle,
56, 61, 65

——calls consciousness an ad-
junct, 58

wanted to hunt with the
hounds and run with the hare,
59

——obscures what he adopts, 6o

——his definition of instinct, 60

heredity working up a

faculty, 61

theory of physiological
selection, 65, &c.

——does not see there are two
natural selections, 66

on Huxley’s automatism,

140

says that natural selection
trusts to accident for its
variations, 232

Rosmini, on property, 117

Roots, boughs and tendrils plant
compromise in, 257

Luck, or Cunning?

Rudimentary organs, Paley and
C. Darwin on, 18

“Sac,” C. Darwin, &c., 245

Salary or agency commission,
&e., 77

Salvation, have worked their, 79

Satisfactory, imperfect answer,
164

Saturday Review, review of
“Evolution, Old and New”
in, 43

Science, too young to know, &e.,
121

—and religion, antagonism
of, and reconciling, 221

should be a kingdom not of
this world, 248

Scientific men, our, write abom-
inably, 25

Scylla and Charybdis of classi-
fication, 153

Seem, on greasing sentences
with, 213

Selection, from what? 84, 85

Semper, Prof., E. R. Lankester
on, 225, &c. :

Simplicity, C. Darwin’s happy,
223 ;

a large extent of, 195

Smooth, the course of true phil-
osophy, &c., 137

Snark, and C. Darwin, 91

Sneaked, C. Darwin, his ‘‘my’s”’
out, 204

Snuffers, Beethoven and, 247

Solid form of idea, organism,
266

Son, his dinner does not nourish
the father, 33

Soul, animating alien body, 151

Spalding, D., on animal auto-
matism, 141, &c.

Species, embodiment of details,
&c., 107

Spencer, H., letter to Atheneum,
28, 29, 50, 51

——experience of the race, 30

Index

Spencer, H., did not make per-
sonality endure through suc-
cessive generations, 39

“Principles of Psychology ”’

and “Life and Habit,’’ how

differentiated, 33, 34

—not understood to be taking
line taken in “Life and
Habit,” 42-50

——0n instinct, 46, 47

——approaches Hering, 46

———on unconscious memory, 47

his contradictions blinked,

48
——fond of qualifying phrases,49
——should have spoken sooner,

49
——only once speaks of in-

herited memory, 49
I should have used his work
largely if I had known it
better, earlier, 49
factors of organic evolution,
100, &c.
thinks as Erasmus Darwin,
100, &c.,
fatal objection to neo-

Darwinism, 108, &c.
—Duke of Argyll on, 145, 146
——on C. Darwin’s supposed

change of opinion, 160
——could not have converted

us as C. Darwin did, 246
cut out Lamarck’s name,249
Spirits, doctrine of, returns, &e.,

151
Spiritualism and materialism, 137
Sports, E. Darwin and Lamarck

on, 71
St. Gothard tunnel, 124
St. James’ Gazette, review in the,

45, 46 : ;
St. Paul, ‘‘I die daily,” 75
——doubtful disputations, 120
Steam-engine, the, and natural
selection, 89
Stomach than healthy thought
can, 48
and purse, 118

281

Stomach, amceba jobs its, 118

protoplasm’s fullest suasion
in, 128

Stone, motion, characterises a,
258

and elementary mind, 258

Straight, helm to keep their
heads, 130

Substratum,
266

Succeed, in not succeeding, 224

Success, only test on large scale,
115

Survival of the luckiest, 85

of the fittest, two theories
of, 88, 159 (see ‘‘ Natural
Selection ’’)

Swallowed up in life, death, 75,
151

hypothesis, God,

TEars, with almost, in our eyes,
238

Teleology, unconscious, 20

Telescope, accumulated cunning,
80

Tempering power, or temper, 34

Tenacity, C. Darwin’s, 240, 241

Thing, what is a? (a thing is
what we choose to think it is),
152

and thought, identity of, 263

Think, so easy to, if it is not
thought about, 37

we have got to, 138

Thought and food, 37

and steps on ice, 138

and feeling, adjuncts, 139

—sicklied o’er with the pale,
&C, 153.

and thing, identity of, 263

Thrift, and early evolutionists,

71, 72
Throe, of thought and thing, 76
“ Through natural selection,” 85
Times, the, on G. J. Romanes’
physiological selection, 65, &c.
Tools, in use, living, 119
and non-protoplasmic parts
of body, 126

282 Luck, or

Tools of various degrees, 126

and bodily organs run on all
fours, but must be classed
apart, 128, &c.

Traitors and impostors, E. R.
Lankester on, 236

True, neithe view more, 31

Trumps, are not held, &c., 116

Tylor, Alfred, Carshalton experi-
ments, &c., 252 (see Preface)

Linnean Society lecture, 253

Tyndall, Prof., on automatism,
142

ULYSSES, unprincipled, 153

Uncles and aunts, go away, 263

Unconditioned matter, 77, 260,
261

‘Unconscious Memory,’ why I
wrote, 23

Underlying substance, an un-
changeable, 135

Understand, the less we under-
stand animals the less they
understand, 245

Undesign, within design, 97

Unglovedly, we handle our food
most, 127

Unimportant, important, 163

Universe, the, in account with
organism, 113

—the only atom, 152

Unjust judges, we become, 151

Unmattered condition, 77, 260,
261

Unostentatious ostentatiousness,
223

Use, if disuse main means of
reducing, should, &c., 157

VARIATION, a mode of cooking
accounts, 113

Cunning?

Variations, caused by variation,
92

Vegetable, animal, why ? 254,

&c.

“‘Vestiges of Creation,” C.
Darwin’s misrepresentation of,
166, 214, 215, 216

madeC. Darwin possible, 212

author of, relying on new
editions, 240

Vianna De Lima, M., on organic
and inorganic, 150

Vibrations, the same, form the
thing, the ideas, and the ner-
vous mechanism, 263

Vicious circle, arguing in, 118

Virgil even knew that plants and
animals varied under domes-
tication, 233

Vulgarity, and culture, 121

Wa tact, A. R., review of ‘‘ Life
and Habit,” 43

and Lamarck, 95

Ways, Mr. Darwin knew our
little, 245

Wealth, organic, 71, 117

Weismann, C. Darwin’s preface,

64.

“Wilhelm Meister,’’ Goethe's,
164, 165

Wilson, A., on protoplasm, 121

Woodpecker, and mistletoe, and
luck, 172

Words, like fairy cloak, &c.,

34

World, no good worldling should
blaspheme the, 244

being in, we should be of
the, 245

Writs, of our thoughts, 78, 266

THE END

The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, England. William Brendon & Son, Ltd.

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