Books: Luck or Cunning?
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Samuel Butler >> Luck or Cunning?
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"But showing themselves," continues Professor Ray Lankester, "at
each new act of reproduction, as part of the phenomena of heredity
such minute 'sports' or 'variations' are due to constitutional
disturbance" (No doubt. The difference, however, between Mr. Darwin
and Lamarck consists in the fact that Lamarck believes he knows what
it is that so disturbs the constitution as generally to induce
variation, whereas Mr. Darwin says he does not know), "and appear
not in individuals subjected to new conditions" (What organism can
pass through life without being subjected to more or less new
conditions? What life is ever the exact fac-simile of another? And
in a matter of such extreme delicacy as the adjustment of psychical
and physical relations, who can say how small a disturbance of
established equilibrium may not involve how great a rearrangement?),
"but in the offspring of all, though more freely in the offspring of
those subjected to special causes of constitutional disturbance.
Mr. Darwin has further proved that these slight variations can be
transmitted and intensified by selective breeding."
Mr. Darwin did, indeed, follow Buffon and Lamarck in at once turning
to animals and plants under domestication in order to bring the
plasticity of organic forms more easily home to his readers, but the
fact that variations can be transmitted and intensified by selective
breeding had been so well established and was so widely known long
before Mr. Darwin was born, that he can no more be said to have
proved it than Newton can be said to have proved the revolution of
the earth on its own axis. Every breeder throughout the world had
known it for centuries. I believe even Virgil knew it.
"They have," continues Professor Ray Lankester, "in reference to
breeding, a remarkably tenacious, persistent character, as might be
expected from their origin in connection with the reproductive
process."
The variations do not normally "originate in connection with the
reproductive process," though it is during this process that they
receive organic expression. They originate mainly, so far as
anything originates anywhere, in the life of the parent or parents.
Without going so far as to say that no variation can arise in
connection with the reproductive system--for, doubtless, striking
and successful sports do occasionally so arise--it is more probable
that the majority originate earlier. Professor Ray Lankester
proceeds:-
"On the other hand, mutilations and other effects of directly
transforming agents are rarely, if ever, transmitted." Professor
Ray Lankester ought to know the facts better than to say that the
effects of mutilation are rarely, if ever, transmitted. The rule
is, that they will not be transmitted unless they have been followed
by disease, but that where disease has supervened they not
uncommonly descend to offspring. {234a} I know Brown-Sequard
considered it to be the morbid state of the nervous system
consequent upon the mutilation that is transmitted, rather than the
immediate effects of the mutilation, but this distinction is
somewhat finely drawn.
When Professor Ray Lankester talks about the "other effects of
directly transforming agents" being rarely transmitted, he should
first show us the directly transforming agents. Lamarck, as I have
said, knows them not. "It is little short of an absurdity," he
continues, "for people to come forward at this epoch, when evolution
is at length accepted solely because of Mr. Darwin's doctrine, and
coolly to propose to replace that doctrine by the old notion so
often tried and rejected."
Whether this is an absurdity or no, Professor Lankester will do well
to learn to bear it without showing so much warmth, for it is one
that is becoming common. Evolution has been accepted not "because
of" Mr. Darwin's doctrine, but because Mr. Darwin so fogged us about
his doctrine that we did not understand it. We thought we were
backing his bill for descent with modification, whereas we were in
reality backing it for descent with modification by means of natural
selection from among fortuitous variations. This last really is Mr.
Darwin's theory, except in so far as it is also Mr. A. R. Wallace's;
descent, alone, is just as much and just as little Mr. Darwin's
doctrine as it is Professor Ray Lankester's or mine. I grant it is
in great measure through Mr. Darwin's books that descent has become
so widely accepted; it has become so through his books, but in spite
of, rather than by reason of, his doctrine. Indeed his doctrine was
no doctrine, but only a back-door for himself to escape by in the
event of flood or fire; the flood and fire have come; it remains to
be seen how far the door will work satisfactorily.
Professor Ray Lankester, again, should not say that Lamarck's
doctrine has been "so often tried and rejected." M. Martins, in his
edition of the "Philosophie Zoologique," {235a} said truly that
Lamarck's theory had never yet had the honour of being seriously
discussed. It never has--not at least in connection with the name
of its propounder. To mention Lamarck's name in the presence of the
conventional English society naturalist has always been like shaking
a red rag at a cow; he is at once infuriated; "as if it were
possible," to quote from Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, whose defence
of Lamarck is one of the best things in his book, {235b} "that so
great labour on the part of so great a naturalist should have led
him to 'a fantastic conclusion' only--to 'a flighty error,' and, as
has been often said, though not written, to 'one absurdity the
more.' Such was the language which Lamarck heard during his
protracted old age, saddened alike by the weight of years and
blindness; this was what people did not hesitate to utter over his
grave, yet barely closed, and what, indeed, they are still saying--
commonly too, without any knowledge of what Lamarck maintained, but
merely repeating at second hand bad caricatures of his teaching.
"When will the time come when we may see Lamarck's theory discussed,
and I may as well at once say refuted, in some important points,
with at any rate the respect due to one of the most illustrious
masters of our science? And when will this theory, the hardihood of
which has been greatly exaggerated, become freed from the
interpretations and commentaries by the false light of which so many
naturalists have formed their opinion concerning it? If its author
is to be condemned, let it, at any rate, not be before he has been
heard."
Lamarck was the Lazarus of biology. I wish his more fortunate
brethren, instead of intoning the old Church argument that he has
"been refuted over and over again," would refer us to some of the
best chapters in the writers who have refuted him. My own reading
has led me to become moderately well acquainted with the literature
of evolution, but I have never come across a single attempt fairly
to grapple with Lamarck, and it is plain that neither Isidore
Geoffroy nor M. Martins knows of such an attempt any more than I do.
When Professor Ray Lankester puts his finger on Lamarck's weak
places, then, but not till then, may he complain of those who try to
replace Mr. Darwin's doctrine by Lamarck's.
Professor Ray Lankester concludes his note thus:-
"That such an attempt should be made is an illustration of a curious
weakness of humanity. Not infrequently, after a long contested
cause has triumphed, and all have yielded allegiance thereto, you
will find, when few generations have passed, that men have clean
forgotten what and who it was that made that cause triumphant, and
ignorantly will set up for honour the name of a traitor or an
impostor, or attribute to a great man as a merit deeds and thoughts
which he spent a long life in opposing."
Exactly so; that is what one rather feels, but surely Professor Ray
Lankester should say "in trying to filch while pretending to oppose
and to amend." He is complaining here that people persistently
ascribe Lamarck's doctrine to Mr. Darwin. Of course they do; but,
as I have already perhaps too abundantly asked, whose fault is this?
If a man knows his own mind, and wants others to understand it, it
is not often that he is misunderstood for any length of time. If he
finds he is being misapprehended in a way he does not like, he will
write another book and make his meaning plainer. He will go on
doing this for as long time as he thinks necessary. I do not
suppose, for example, that people will say I originated the theory
of descent by means of natural selection from among fortunate
accidents, or even that I was one of its supporters as a means of
modification; but if this impression were to prevail, I cannot think
I should have much difficulty in removing it. At any rate no such
misapprehension could endure for more than twenty years, during
which I continued to address a public who welcomed all I wrote,
unless I myself aided and abetted the mistake. Mr. Darwin wrote
many books, but the impression that Darwinism and evolution, or
descent with modification, are identical is still nearly as
prevalent as it was soon after the appearance of the "Origin of
Species;" the reason of this is, that Mr. Darwin was at no pains to
correct us. Where, in any one of his many later books, is there a
passage which sets the matter in its true light, and enters a
protest against the misconception of which Professor Ray Lankester
complains so bitterly? The only inference from this is, that Mr.
Darwin was not displeased at our thinking him to be the originator
of the theory of descent with modification, and did not want us to
know more about Lamarck than he could help. If we wanted to know
about him, we must find out what he had said for ourselves, it was
no part of Mr. Darwin's business to tell us; he had no interest in
our catching the distinctive difference between himself and that
writer; perhaps not; but this approaches closely to wishing us to
misunderstand it. When Mr. Darwin wished us to understand this or
that, no one knew better how to show it to us.
We were aware, on reading the "Origin of Species," that there was a
something about it of which we had not full hold; nevertheless we
gave Mr. Darwin our confidence at once, partly because he led off by
telling us that we must trust him to a great extent, and explained
that the present book was only an instalment of a larger work which,
when it came out, would make everything perfectly clear; partly,
again, because the case for descent with modification, which was the
leading idea throughout the book, was so obviously strong, but
perhaps mainly because every one said Mr. Darwin was so good, and so
much less self-heeding than other people; besides, he had so
"patiently" and "carefully" accumulated "such a vast store of facts"
as no other naturalist, living or dead, had ever yet even tried to
get together; he was so kind to us with his, "May we not believe?"
and his "Have we any right to infer that the Creator?" &c. "Of
course we have not," we exclaimed, almost with tears in our eyes--
"not if you ask us in that way." Now that we understand what it was
that puzzled us in Mr. Darwin's work we do not think highly either
of the chief offender, or of the accessories after the fact, many of
whom are trying to brazen the matter out, and on a smaller scale to
follow his example.
CHAPTER XVIII--Per Contra
"'The evil that men do lives after them" {239a} is happily not so
true as that the good lives after them, while the ill is buried with
their bones, and to no one does this correction of Shakespeare's
unwonted spleen apply more fully than to Mr. Darwin. Indeed it was
somewhat thus that we treated his books even while he was alive; the
good, descent, remained with us, while the ill, the deification of
luck, was forgotten as soon as we put down his work. Let me now,
therefore, as far as possible, quit the ungrateful task of dwelling
on the defects of Mr. Darwin's work and character, for the more
pleasant one of insisting upon their better side, and of explaining
how he came to be betrayed into publishing the "Origin of Species"
without reference to the works of his predecessors.
In the outset I would urge that it is not by any single book that
Mr. Darwin should be judged. I do not believe that any one of the
three principal works on which his reputation is founded will
maintain with the next generation the place it has acquired with
ourselves; nevertheless, if asked to say who was the man of our own
times whose work had produced the most important, and, on the whole,
beneficial effect, I should perhaps wrongly, but still both
instinctively and on reflection, name him to whom I have,
unfortunately, found myself in more bitter opposition than to any
other in the whole course of my life. I refer, of course, to Mr.
Darwin.
His claim upon us lies not so much in what is actually found within
the four corners of any one of his books, as in the fact of his
having written them at all--in the fact of his having brought out
one after another, with descent always for its keynote, until the
lesson was learned too thoroughly to make it at all likely that it
will be forgotten. Mr. Darwin wanted to move his generation, and
had the penetration to see that this is not done by saying a thing
once for all and leaving it. It almost seems as though it matters
less what a man says than the number of times he repeats it, in a
more or less varied form. It was here the author of the "Vestiges
of Creation" made his most serious mistake. He relied on new
editions, and no one pays much attention to new editions--the mark a
book makes is almost always made by its first edition. If, instead
of bringing out a series of amended editions during the fifteen
years' law which Mr. Darwin gave him, Mr. Chambers had followed up
the "Vestiges" with new book upon new book, he would have learned
much more, and, by consequence, not have been snuffed out so easily
once for all as he was in 1859 when the "Origin of Species"
appeared.
The tenacity of purpose which appears to have been one of Mr.
Darwin's most remarkable characteristics was visible even in his
outward appearance. He always reminded me of Raffaelle's portrait
of Pope Julius the Second, which, indeed, would almost do for a
portrait of Mr. Darwin himself. I imagine that these two men,
widely as the sphere of their action differed, must have been like
each other in more respects than looks alone. Each, certainly, had
a hand of iron; whether Pope Julius wore a velvet glove or no, I do
not know; I rather think not, for, if I remember rightly, he boxed
Michael Angelo's ears for giving him a saucy answer. We cannot
fancy Mr. Darwin boxing any one's ears; indeed there can be no doubt
he wore a very thick velvet glove, but the hand underneath it was
none the less of iron. It was to his tenacity of purpose,
doubtless, that his success was mainly due; but for this he must
inevitably have fallen before the many inducements to desist from
the pursuit of his main object, which beset him in the shape of ill
health, advancing years, ample private means, large demands upon his
time, and a reputation already great enough to satisfy the ambition
of any ordinary man.
I do not gather from those who remember Mr. Darwin as a boy, and as
a young man, that he gave early signs of being likely to achieve
greatness; nor, as it seems to me, is there any sign of unusual
intellectual power to be detected in his earliest book. Opening
this "almost" at random I read--"Earthquakes alone are sufficient to
destroy the prosperity of any country. If, for instance, beneath
England the now inert subterraneous forces should exert those powers
which most assuredly in former geological ages they have exerted,
how completely would the entire condition of the country be changed!
What would become of the lofty houses, thickly-packed cities, great
manufacturies (sic), the beautiful public and private edifices? If
the new period of disturbance were to commence by some great
earthquake in the dead of night, how terrific would be the carnage!
England would be at once bankrupt; all papers, records, and accounts
would from that moment be lost. Government being unable to collect
the taxes, and failing to maintain its authority, the hand of
violence and rapine would go uncontrolled. In every large town
famine would be proclaimed, pestilence and death following in its
train." {240a} Great allowance should be made for a first work, and
I admit that much interesting matter is found in Mr. Darwin's
journal; still, it was hardly to be expected that the writer who at
the age of thirty-three could publish the foregoing passage should
twenty years later achieve the reputation of being the profoundest
philosopher of his time.
I have not sufficient technical knowledge to enable me to speak
certainly, but I question his having been the great observer and
master of experiment which he is generally believed to have been.
His accuracy was, I imagine, generally to be relied upon as long as
accuracy did not come into conflict with his interests as a leader
in the scientific world; when these were at stake he was not to be
trusted for a moment. Unfortunately they were directly or
indirectly at stake more often than one could wish. His book on the
action of worms, however, was shown by Professor Paley and other
writers {242a} to contain many serious errors and omissions, though
it involved no personal question; but I imagine him to have been
more or less hebete when he wrote this book. On the whole I should
doubt his having been a better observer of nature than nine country
gentlemen out of ten who have a taste for natural history.
Presumptuous as I am aware it must appear to say so, I am unable to
see more than average intellectual power even in Mr. Darwin's later
books. His great contribution to science is supposed to have been
the theory of natural selection, but enough has been said to show
that this, if understood as he ought to have meant it to be
understood, cannot be rated highly as an intellectual achievement.
His other most important contribution was his provisional theory of
pan-genesis, which is admitted on all hands to have been a failure.
Though, however, it is not likely that posterity will consider him
as a man of transcendent intellectual power, he must be admitted to
have been richly endowed with a much more valuable quality than
either originality or literary power--I mean with savoir faire. The
cards he held--and, on the whole, his hand was a good one--he played
with judgment; and though not one of those who would have achieved
greatness under any circumstances, he nevertheless did achieve
greatness of no mean order. Greatness, indeed, of the highest kind-
-that of one who is without fear and without reproach--will not
ultimately be allowed him, but greatness of a rare kind can only be
denied him by those whose judgment is perverted by temper or
personal ill-will. He found the world believing in fixity of
species, and left it believing--in spite of his own doctrine--in
descent with modification.
I have said on an earlier page that Mr. Darwin was heir to a
discredited truth, and left behind him an accredited fallacy. This
is true as regards men of science and cultured classes who
understood his distinctive feature, or thought they did, and so long
as Mr. Darwin lived accepted it with very rare exceptions; but it is
not true as regards the unreading, unreflecting public, who seized
the salient point of descent with modification only, and troubled
themselves little about the distinctive feature. It would almost
seem as if Mr. Darwin had reversed the usual practice of
philosophers and given his esoteric doctrine to the world, while
reserving the exoteric for his most intimate and faithful adherents.
This, however, is a detail; the main fact is, that Mr. Darwin
brought us all round to evolution. True, it was Mr. Darwin backed
by the Times and the other most influential organs of science and
culture, but it was one of Mr. Darwin's great merits to have
developed and organised this backing, as part of the work which he
knew was essential if so great a revolution was to be effected.
This is an exceedingly difficult and delicate thing to do. If
people think they need only write striking and well-considered
books, and that then the Times will immediately set to work to call
attention to them, I should advise them not to be too hasty in
basing action upon this hypothesis. I should advise them to be even
less hasty in basing it upon the assumption that to secure a
powerful literary backing is a matter within the compass of any one
who chooses to undertake it. No one who has not a strong social
position should ever advance a new theory, unless a life of hard
fighting is part of what he lays himself out for. It was one of Mr.
Darwin's great merits that he had a strong social position, and had
the good sense to know how to profit by it. The magnificent feat
which he eventually achieved was unhappily tarnished by much that
detracts from the splendour that ought to have attended it, but a
magnificent feat it must remain.
Whose work in this imperfect world is not tarred and tarnished by
something that detracts from its ideal character? It is enough that
a man should be the right man in the right place, and this Mr.
Darwin pre-eminently was. If he had been more like the ideal
character which Mr. Allen endeavours to represent him, it is not
likely that he would have been able to do as much, or nearly as
much, as he actually did; he would have been too wide a cross with
his generation to produce much effect upon it. Original thought is
much more common than is generally believed. Most people, if they
only knew it, could write a good book or play, paint a good picture,
compose a fine oratorio; but it takes an unusually able person to
get the book well reviewed, persuade a manager to bring the play
out, sell the picture, or compass the performance of the oratorio;
indeed, the more vigorous and original any one of these things may
be, the more difficult will it prove to even bring it before the
notice of the public. The error of most original people is in being
just a trifle too original. It was in his business qualities--and
these, after all, are the most essential to success, that Mr. Darwin
showed himself so superlative. These are not only the most
essential to success, but it is only by blaspheming the world in a
way which no good citizen of the world will do, that we can deny
them to be the ones which should most command our admiration. We
are in the world; surely so long as we are in it we should be of it,
and not give ourselves airs as though we were too good for our
generation, and would lay ourselves out to please any other by
preference. Mr. Darwin played for his own generation, and he got in
the very amplest measure the recognition which he endeavoured, as we
all do, to obtain.
His success was, no doubt, in great measure due to the fact that he
knew our little ways, and humoured them; but if he had not had
little ways of his own, he never could have been so much au fait
with ours. He knew, for example, we should be pleased to hear that
he had taken his boots off so as not to disturb his worms when
watching them by night, so he told us of this, and we were
delighted. He knew we should like his using the word "sag," so he
used it, {245a} and we said it was beautiful. True, he used it
wrongly, for he was writing about tesselated pavement, and builders
assure me that "sag" is a word which applies to timber only, but
this is not to the point; the point was, that Mr. Darwin should have
used a word that we did not understand; this showed that he had a
vast fund of knowledge at his command about all sorts of practical
details with which he might have well been unacquainted. We do not
deal the same measure to man and to the lower animals in the matter
of intelligence; the less we understand these last, the less, we
say, not we, but they can understand; whereas the less we can
understand a man, the more intelligent we are apt to think him. No
one should neglect by-play of this description; if I live to be
strong enough to carry it through, I mean to play "cambre," and I
shall spell it "camber." I wonder Mr. Darwin never abused this
word. Laugh at him, however, as we may for having said "sag," if he
had not been the kind of man to know the value of these little hits,
neither would he have been the kind of man to persuade us into first
tolerating, and then cordially accepting, descent with modification.
There is a correlation of mental as well as of physical growth, and
we could not probably have had one set of Mr. Darwin's qualities
without the other. If he had been more faultless, he might have
written better books, but we should have listened worse. A book's
prosperity is like a jest's--in the ear of him that hears it.
Mr. Spencer would not--at least one cannot think he would--have been
able to effect the revolution which will henceforth doubtless be
connected with Mr. Darwin's name. He had been insisting on
evolution for some years before the "Origin of Species" came out,
but he might as well have preached to the winds, for all the visible
effect that had been produced. On the appearance of Mr. Darwin's
book the effect was instantaneous; it was like the change in the
condition of a patient when the right medicine has been hit on after
all sorts of things have been tried and failed. Granted that it was
comparatively easy for Mr. Darwin, as having been born into the
household of one of the prophets of evolution, to arrive at
conclusions about the fixity of species which, if not so born, he
might never have reached at all; this does not make it any easier
for him to have got others to agree with him. Any one, again, may
have money left him, or run up against it, or have it run up against
him, as it does against some people, but it is only a very sensible
person who does not lose it. Moreover, once begin to go behind
achievement and there is an end of everything. Did the world give
much heed to or believe in evolution before Mr. Darwin's time?
Certainly not. Did we begin to attend and be persuaded soon after
Mr. Darwin began to write? Certainly yes. Did we ere long go over
en masse? Assuredly. If, as I said in "Life and Habit," any one
asks who taught the world to believe in evolution, the answer to the
end of time must be that it was Mr. Darwin. And yet the more his
work is looked at, the more marvellous does its success become. It
seems as if some organisms can do anything with anything. Beethoven
picked his teeth with the snuffers, and seems to have picked them
sufficiently to his satisfaction. So Mr. Darwin with one of the
worst styles imaginable did all that the clearest, tersest writer
could have done. Strange, that such a master of cunning (in the
sense of my title) should have been the apostle of luck, and one so
terribly unlucky as Lamarck, of cunning, but such is the irony of
nature. Buffon planted, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck watered, but it
was Mr. Darwin who said, "That fruit is ripe," and shook it into his
lap.
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