Books: Luck or Cunning?

S >> Samuel Butler >> Luck or Cunning?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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