Books: Luck or Cunning?

S >> Samuel Butler >> Luck or Cunning?

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

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

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

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

If this view is adopted, our memory of a thing is our retention
within the brain of a small leaven of the actual thing itself, or of
what qua us is the thing that is remembered, and the ease with which
habitual actions come to be performed is due to the power of the
vibrations having been increased and modified by continual accession
from without till they modify the molecular disturbances of the
nervous system, and therefore its material substance, which we have
already settled to be only our way of docketing molecular
disturbances. The same vibrations, therefore, form the substance
remembered, introduce an infinitesimal dose of it within the brain,
modify the substance remembering, and, in the course of time, create
and further modify the mechanism of both the sensory and motor
nerves. Thought and thing are one.

I commend these two last speculations to the reader's charitable
consideration, as feeling that I am here travelling beyond the
ground on which I can safely venture; nevertheless, as it may be
some time before I have another opportunity of coming before the
public, I have thought it, on the whole, better not to omit them,
but to give them thus provisionally. I believe they are both
substantially true, but am by no means sure that I have expressed
them either clearly or accurately; I cannot, however, further delay
the issue of my book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Footnotes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

{52c} Ibid. p. 115.

{52d} Ibid. p. 116.

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

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

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

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

{55b} Ibid. p. 195.

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

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

{56b} Ibid., p. 116.

{56c} Ibid., p. 178.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

{63a} Macmillan, 1883.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

{93a} Page 9.

{94a} Page 226.

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

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

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

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

{105b} Ibid., i. 82.

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

{107a} See concluding chapter.

{122a} Report, 9, 26.

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

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

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

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

{144a} August 12, 1886.

{150a} Paris, Delagrave, 1886.

{150b} Page 60.

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

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

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

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

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

{157b} Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

{168a} Page 3.

{168b} Page 4.

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

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

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

{174a} Page 17.

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

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

{203a} Page 454, ed. i.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

{264a} Page 53.

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