Algernon Charles Swinburne - "Locrine A Tragedy"

George Gissing - "In the Year of Jubilee"

Samuel Johnson - "Preface to Shakespeare"

Georges Ohnet - "Serge Panine, v3"

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PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
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Books: Luck or Cunning?

S >> Samuel Butler >> Luck or Cunning?




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again:-

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

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

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

This second creed is pure Erasmus-Darwinism and Lamarck.

Again:-

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