Transcribed from the 1922 Jonathan Cape edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
Luck, or Cunning
As the Main Means of
Organic Modification?
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
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Jonathan Cape
Eleven Gower Street, London
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_First Published_ 1887
_Second Edition_ 1920
_Re-issued_ 1922
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TO THE MEMORY OF
THE LATE
_ALFRED TAYLOR_, ESQ., _&c._
WHOSE EXPERIMENTS AT CARSHALTON
IN THE YEARS 1883 AND 1884
ESTABLISHED THAT PLANTS ALSO ARE ENDOWED WITH
INTELLIGENTIAL AND VOLITIONAL FACULTIES
THIS BOOK
BEGUN AT HIS INSTIGATION
IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
Note
THIS second edition of _Luck_, _or Cunning_? is a reprint of the first
edition, dated 1887, but actually published in November, 1886. The only
alterations of any consequence are in the Index, which has been enlarged
by the incorporation of several entries made by the author in a copy of
the book which came into my possession on the death of his literary
executor, Mr. R. A. Streatfeild. I thank Mr. G. W. Webb, of the
University Library, Cambridge, for the care and skill with which he has
made the necessary alterations; it was a troublesome job because owing to
the re-setting, the pagination was no longer the same.
_Luck_, _or Cunning_? is the fourth of Butler’s evolution books; it was
followed in 1890 by three articles in _The Universal Review_ entitled
“The Deadlock in Darwinism” (republished in _The Humour of Homer_), after
which he published no more upon that subject.
In this book, as he says in his Introduction, he insists upon two main
points: (1) the substantial identity between heredity and memory, and (2)
the reintroduction of design into organic development; and these two
points he treats as though they have something of that physical life with
which they are so closely associated. He was aware that what he had to
say was likely to prove more interesting to future generations than to
his immediate public, “but any book that desires to see out a literary
three-score years and ten must offer something to future generations as
well as to its own.” By next year one half of the three-score years and
ten will have passed, and the new generation by their constant enquiries
for the work have already begun to show their appreciation of Butler’s
method of treating the subject, and their readiness to listen to what was
addressed to them as well as to their fathers.
HENRY FESTING JONES.
_March_, 1920.
Author’s Preface to First Edition
THIS book, as I have said in my concluding chapter, has turned out very
different from the one I had it in my mind to write when I began it. It
arose out of a conversation with the late Mr. Alfred Tylor soon after his
paper on the growth of trees and protoplasmic continuity was read before
the Linnean Society—that is to say, in December, 1884—and I proposed to
make the theory concerning the subdivision of organic life into animal
and vegetable, which I have broached in my concluding chapter, the main
feature of the book. One afternoon, on leaving Mr. Tylor’s bedside, much
touched at the deep disappointment he evidently felt at being unable to
complete the work he had begun so ably, it occurred to me that it might
be some pleasure to him if I promised to dedicate my own book to him, and
thus, however unworthy it might be, connect it with his name. It
occurred to me, of course, also that the honour to my own book would be
greater than any it could confer, but the time was not one for balancing
considerations nicely, and when I made my suggestion to Mr. Tylor on the
last occasion that I ever saw him, the manner in which he received it
settled the question. If he had lived I should no doubt have kept more
closely to my plan, and should probably have been furnished by him with
much that would have enriched the book and made it more worthy of his
acceptance; but this was not to be.
In the course of writing I became more and more convinced that no
progress could be made towards a sounder view of the theory of descent
until people came to understand what the late Mr. Charles Darwin’s theory
of natural selection amounted to, and how it was that it ever came to be
propounded. Until the mindless theory of Charles Darwinian natural
selection was finally discredited, and a mindful theory of evolution was
substituted in its place, neither Mr. Tylor’s experiments nor my own
theories could stand much chance of being attended to. I therefore
devoted myself mainly, as I had done in “Evolution Old and New,” and in
“Unconscious Memory,” to considering whether the view taken by the late
Mr. Darwin, or the one put forward by his three most illustrious
predecessors, should most command our assent.
The deflection from my original purpose was increased by the appearance,
about a year ago, of Mr. Grant Allen’s “Charles Darwin,” which I imagine
to have had a very large circulation. So important, indeed, did I think
it not to leave Mr. Allen’s statements unchallenged, that in November
last I recast my book completely, cutting out much that I had written,
and practically starting anew. How far Mr. Tylor would have liked it, or
even sanctioned its being dedicated to him, if he were now living, I
cannot, of course, say. I never heard him speak of the late Mr. Darwin
in any but terms of warm respect, and am by no means sure that he would
have been well pleased at an attempt to connect him with a book so
polemical as the present. On the other hand, a promise made and received
as mine was, cannot be set aside lightly. The understanding was that my
next book was to be dedicated to Mr. Tylor; I have written the best I
could, and indeed never took so much pains with any other; to Mr. Tylor’s
memory, therefore, I have most respectfully, and regretfully, inscribed
it.
Desiring that the responsibility for what has been done should rest with
me, I have avoided saying anything about the book while it was in
progress to any of Mr Tylor’s family or representatives. They know
nothing, therefore, of its contents, and if they did, would probably feel
with myself very uncertain how far it is right to use Mr. Tylor’s name in
connection with it. I can only trust that, on the whole, they may think
I have done most rightly in adhering to the letter of my promise.
_October_ 15, 1886.
Contents
Page
NOTE, BY HENRY FESTING JONES 6
AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION 7
I. INTRODUCTION 13
II. MR. HERBERT SPENCER 28
III. MR. HERBERT SPENCER (_continued_) 42
IV. MR. ROMANES’ “MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS” 52
V. STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION AT ISSUE 70
VI. STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION AT ISSUE 80
(_continued_)
VII. MR. SPENCER’S “THE FACTORS OF ORGANIC 100
EVOLUTION”
VIII. PROPERTY, COMMON SENSE, AND PROTOPLASM 112
IX. PROPERTY, COMMON SENSE, AND PROTOPLASM 125
(_continued_)
X. THE ATTEMPT TO ELIMINATE MIND 135
XI. THE WAY OF ESCAPE 147
XII. WHY DARWIN’S VARIATIONS WERE ACCIDENTAL 156
XIII. DARWIN’S CLAIM TO DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION 168
XIV. DARWIN AND DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION 177
(_continued_)
XV. THE EXCISED “MY’S” 202
XVI. MR. GRANT ALLEN’S “CHARLES DARWIN” 211
XVII. PROFESSOR RAY LANKESTER AND LAMARCK 225
XVIII. PER CONTRA 239
XIX. CONCLUSION 251
Chapter I
Introduction
I SHALL perhaps best promote the acceptance of the two main points on
which I have been insisting for some years past, I mean, the substantial
identity between heredity and memory, and the reintroduction of design
into organic development, by treating them as if they had something of
that physical life with which they are so closely connected. Ideas are
like plants and animals in this respect also, as in so many others, that
they are more fully understood when their relations to other ideas of
their time, and the history of their development are known and borne in
mind. By development I do not merely mean their growth in the minds of
those who first advanced them, but that larger development which consists
in their subsequent good or evil fortunes—in their reception, favourable
or otherwise, by those to whom they were presented. This is to an idea
what its surroundings are to an organism, and throws much the same light
upon it that knowledge of the conditions under which an organism lives
throws upon the organism itself. I shall, therefore, begin this new work
with a few remarks about its predecessors.
I am aware that what I may say on this head is likely to prove more
interesting to future students of the literature of descent than to my
immediate public, but any book that desires to see out a literary
three-score years and ten must offer something to future generations as
well as to its own. It is a condition of its survival that it shall do
this, and herein lies one of the author’s chief difficulties. If books
only lived as long as men and women, we should know better how to grow
them; as matters stand, however, the author lives for one or two
generations, whom he comes in the end to understand fairly well, while
the book, if reasonable pains have been taken with it, should live more
or less usefully for a dozen. About the greater number of these
generations the author is in the dark; but come what may, some of them
are sure to have arrived at conclusions diametrically opposed to our own
upon every subject connected with art, science, philosophy, and religion;
it is plain, therefore, that if posterity is to be pleased, it can only
be at the cost of repelling some present readers. Unwilling as I am to
do this, I still hold it the lesser of two evils; I will be as brief,
however, as the interests of the opinions I am supporting will allow.
In “Life and Habit” I contended that heredity was a mode of memory. I
endeavoured to show that all hereditary traits, whether of mind or body,
are inherited in virtue of, and as a manifestation of, the same power
whereby we are able to remember intelligently what we did half an hour,
yesterday, or a twelvemonth since, and this in no figurative but in a
perfectly real sense. If life be compared to an equation of a hundred
unknown quantities, I followed Professor Hering of Prague in reducing it
to one of ninety-nine only, by showing two of the supposed unknown
quantities to be so closely allied that they should count as one. I
maintained that instinct was inherited memory, and this without admitting
more exceptions and qualifying clauses than arise, as it were, by way of
harmonics from every proposition, and must be neglected if thought and
language are to be possible.
I showed that if the view for which I was contending was taken, many
facts which, though familiar, were still without explanation or
connection with our other ideas, would remain no longer isolated, but be
seen at once as joined with the mainland of our most assured convictions.
Among the things thus brought more comfortably home to us was the
principle underlying longevity. It became apparent why some living
beings should live longer than others, and how any race must be treated
whose longevity it is desired to increase. Hitherto we had known that an
elephant was a long-lived animal and a fly short-lived, but we could give
no reason why the one should live longer than the other; that is to say,
it did not follow in immediate coherence with, or as intimately
associated with, any familiar principle that an animal which is late in
the full development of its reproductive system will tend to live longer
than one which reproduces early. If the theory of “Life and Habit” be
admitted, the fact of a slow-growing animal being in general longer lived
than a quick developer is seen to be connected with, and to follow as a
matter of course from, the fact of our being able to remember anything at
all, and all the well-known traits of memory, as observed where we can
best take note of them, are perceived to be reproduced with singular
fidelity in the development of an animal from its embryonic stages to
maturity.
Take this view, and the very general sterility of hybrids from being a
_crux_ of the theory of descent becomes a stronghold of defence. It
appears as part of the same story as the benefit derived from judicious,
and the mischief from injudicious, crossing; and this, in its turn, is
seen as part of the same story, as the good we get from change of air and
scene when we are overworked. I will not amplify; but reversion to
long-lost, or feral, characteristics, the phenomena of old age, the fact
of the reproductive system being generally the last to arrive at
maturity—few further developments occurring in any organism after this
has been attained—the sterility of many animals in confinement, the
development in both males and females under certain circumstances of the
characteristics of the opposite sex, the latency of memory, the
unconsciousness with which we grow, and indeed perform all familiar
actions, these points, though hitherto, most of them, so apparently
inexplicable that no one even attempted to explain them, became at once
intelligible, if the contentions of “Life and Habit” were admitted.
Before I had finished writing this book I fell in with Professor Mivart’s
“Genesis of Species,” and for the first time understood the distinction
between the Lamarckian and Charles-Darwinian systems of evolution. This
had not, so far as I then knew, been as yet made clear to us by any of
our more prominent writers upon the subject of descent with modification;
the distinction was unknown to the general public, and indeed is only now
beginning to be widely understood. While reading Mr. Mivart’s book,
however, I became aware that I was being faced by two facts, each
incontrovertible, but each, if its leading exponents were to be trusted,
incompatible with the other.
On the one hand there was descent; we could not read Mr. Darwin’s books
and doubt that all, both animals and plants, were descended from a common
source. On the other, there was design; we could not read Paley and
refuse to admit that design, intelligence, adaptation of means to ends,
must have had a large share in the development of the life we saw around
us; it seemed indisputable that the minds and bodies of all living beings
must have come to be what they are through a wise ordering and
administering of their estates. We could not, therefore, dispense either
with descent or with design, and yet it seemed impossible to keep both,
for those who offered us descent stuck to it that we could have no
design, and those, again, who spoke so wisely and so well about design
would not for a moment hear of descent with modification.
Each, moreover, had a strong case. Who could reflect upon rudimentary
organs, and grant Paley the kind of design that alone would content him?
And yet who could examine the foot or the eye, and grant Mr. Darwin his
denial of forethought and plan?
For that Mr. Darwin did deny skill and contrivance in connection with the
greatly preponderating part of organic developments cannot be and is not
now disputed. In the first chapter of “Evolution Old and New” I brought
forward passages to show how completely he and his followers deny design,
but will here quote one of the latest of the many that have appeared to
the same effect since “Evolution Old and New” was published; it is by Mr.
Romanes, and runs as follows:—
“It is the _very essence_ of the Darwinian hypothesis that it only seeks
to explain the _apparently_ purposive variations, or variations of an
adaptive kind.” {17a}
The words “apparently purposive” show that those organs in animals and
plants which at first sight seem to have been designed with a view to the
work they have to do—that is to say, with a view to future function—had
not, according to Mr. Darwin, in reality any connection with, or
inception in, effort; effort involves purpose and design; they had
therefore no inception in design, however much they might present the
appearance of being designed; the appearance was delusive; Mr. Romanes
correctly declares it to be “the very essence” of Mr. Darwin’s system to
attempt an explanation of these seemingly purposive variations which
shall be compatible with their having arisen without being in any way
connected with intelligence or design.
As it is indisputable that Mr. Darwin denied design, so neither can it be
doubted that Paley denied descent with modification. What, then, were
the wrong entries in these two sets of accounts, on the detection and
removal of which they would be found to balance as they ought?
Paley’s weakest place, as already implied, is in the matter of
rudimentary organs; the almost universal presence in the higher organisms
of useless, and sometimes even troublesome, organs is fatal to the kind
of design he is trying to uphold; granted that there is design, still it
cannot be so final and far-foreseeing as he wishes to make it out. Mr.
Darwin’s weak place, on the other hand, lies, firstly, in the supposition
that because rudimentary organs imply no purpose now, they could never in
time past have done so—that because they had clearly not been designed
with an eye to all circumstances and all time, they never, therefore,
could have been designed with an eye to any time or any circumstances;
and, secondly, in maintaining that “accidental,” “fortuitous,”
“spontaneous” variations could be accumulated at all except under
conditions that have never been fulfilled yet, and never will be; in
other words, his weak place lay in the contention (for it comes to this)
that there can be sustained accumulation of bodily wealth, more than of
wealth of any other kind, unless sustained experience, watchfulness, and
good sense preside over the accumulation. In “Life and Habit,” following
Mr. Mivart, and, as I now find, Mr. Herbert Spencer, I showed (pp.
279–281) how impossible it was for variations to accumulate unless they
were for the most part underlain by a sustained general principle; but
this subject will be touched upon more fully later on.
The accumulation of accidental variations which owed nothing to mind
either in their inception, or their accumulation, the pitchforking, in
fact, of mind out of the universe, or at any rate its exclusion from all
share worth talking about in the process of organic development, this was
the pill Mr. Darwin had given us to swallow; but so thickly had he gilded
it with descent with modification, that we did as we were told, swallowed
it without a murmur, were lavish in our expressions of gratitude, and,
for some twenty years or so, through the mouths of our leading
biologists, ordered design peremptorily out of court, if she so much as
dared to show herself. Indeed, we have even given life pensions to some
of the most notable of these biologists, I suppose in order to reward
them for having hoodwinked us so much to our satisfaction.
Happily the old saying, _Naturam expellas furcâ_, _tamen usque recurret_,
still holds true, and the reaction that has been gaining force for some
time will doubtless ere long brush aside the cobwebs with which those who
have a vested interest in Mr. Darwin’s reputation as a philosopher still
try to fog our outlook. Professor Mivart was, as I have said, among the
first to awaken us to Mr. Darwin’s denial of design, and to the absurdity
involved therein. He well showed how incredible Mr Darwin’s system was
found to be, as soon as it was fully realised, but there he rather left
us. He seemed to say that we must have our descent and our design too,
but he did not show how we were to manage this with rudimentary organs
still staring us in the face. His work rather led up to the clearer
statement of the difficulty than either put it before us in so many
words, or tried to remove it. Nevertheless there can be no doubt that
the “Genesis of Species” gave Natural Selection what will prove sooner or
later to be its death-blow, in spite of the persistence with which many
still declare that it has received no hurt, and the sixth edition of the
“Origin of Species,” published in the following year, bore abundant
traces of the fray. Moreover, though Mr. Mivart gave us no overt aid, he
pointed to the source from which help might come, by expressly saying
that his most important objection to Neo-Darwinism had no force against
Lamarck.
To Lamarck, therefore, I naturally turned, and soon saw that the theory
on which I had been insisting in “Life and Habit” was in reality an easy
corollary on his system, though one which he does not appear to have
caught sight of. I saw also that his denial of design was only, so to
speak, skin deep, and that his system was in reality teleological,
inasmuch as, to use Isidore Geoffroy’s words, it makes the organism
design itself. In making variations depend on changed actions, and
these, again, on changed views of life, efforts, and designs, in
consequence of changed conditions of life, he in effect makes effort,
intention, will, all of which involve design (or at any rate which taken
together involve it), underlie progress in organic development. True, he
did not know he was a teleologist, but he was none the less a teleologist
for this. He was an unconscious teleologist, and as such perhaps more
absolutely an upholder of teleology than Paley himself; but this is
neither here nor there; our concern is not with what people think about
themselves, but with what their reasoning makes it evident that they
really hold.
How strange the irony that hides us from ourselves! When Isidore
Geoffroy said that according to Lamarck organisms designed themselves,
{20a} and endorsed this, as to a great extent he did, he still does not
appear to have seen that either he or Lamarck were in reality
reintroducing design into organism; he does not appear to have seen this
more than Lamarck himself had seen it, but, on the contrary, like
Lamarck, remained under the impression that he was opposing teleology or
purposiveness.
Of course in one sense he did oppose it; so do we all, if the word design
be taken to intend a very far-foreseeing of minute details, a riding out
to meet trouble long before it comes, a provision on academic principles
for contingencies that are little likely to arise. We can see no
evidence of any such design as this in nature, and much everywhere that
makes against it. There is no such improvidence as over providence, and
whatever theories we may form about the origin and development of the
universe, we may be sure that it is not the work of one who is unable to
understand how anything can possibly go right unless he sees to it
himself. Nature works departmentally and by way of leaving details to
subordinates. But though those who see nature thus do indeed deny design
of the prescient-from-all-eternity order, they in no way impugn a method
which is far more in accord with all that we commonly think of as design.
A design which is as incredible as that a ewe should give birth to a lion
becomes of a piece with all that we observe most frequently if it be
regarded rather as an aggregation of many small steps than as a single
large one. This principle is very simple, but it seems rather difficult
to understand. It has taken several generations before people would
admit it as regards organism even after it was pointed out to them, and
those who saw it as regards organism still failed to understand it as
regards design; an inexorable “Thus far shalt thou go and no farther”
barred them from fruition of the harvest they should have been the first
to reap. The very men who most insisted that specific difference was the
accumulation of differences so minute as to be often hardly, if at all,
perceptible, could not see that the striking and baffling phenomena of
design in connection with organism admitted of exactly the same solution
as the riddle of organic development, and should be seen not as a result
reached _per saltum_, but as an accumulation of small steps or leaps in a
given direction. It was as though those who had insisted on the
derivation of all forms of the steam-engine from the common kettle, and
who saw that this stands in much the same relations to the engines, we
will say, of the Great Eastern steamship as the amœba to man, were to
declare that the Great Eastern engines were not designed at all, on the
ground that no one in the early kettle days had foreseen so great a
future development, and were unable to understand that a piecemeal
_solvitur ambulando_ design is more omnipresent, all-seeing, and
all-searching, and hence more truly in the strictest sense design, than
any speculative leap of fancy, however bold and even at times successful.
From Lamarck I went on to Buffon and Erasmus Darwin—better men both of
them than Lamarck, and treated by him much as he has himself been treated
by those who have come after him—and found that the system of these three
writers, if considered rightly, and if the corollary that heredity is
only a mode of memory were added, would get us out of our dilemma as
regards descent and design, and enable us to keep both. We could do this
by making the design manifested in organism more like the only design of
which we know anything, and therefore the only design of which we ought
to speak—I mean our own.
Our own design is tentative, and neither very far-foreseeing nor very
retrospective; it is a little of both, but much of neither; it is like a
comet with a little light in front of the nucleus and a good deal more
behind it, which ere long, however, fades away into the darkness; it is
of a kind that, though a little wise before the event, is apt to be much
wiser after it, and to profit even by mischance so long as the disaster
is not an overwhelming one; nevertheless, though it is so interwoven with
luck, there is no doubt about its being design; why, then, should the
design which must have attended organic development be other than this?
If the thing that has been is the thing that also shall be, must not the
thing which is be that which also has been? Was there anything in the
phenomena of organic life to militate against such a view of design as
this? Not only was there nothing, but this view made things plain, as
the connecting of heredity and memory had already done, which till now
had been without explanation. Rudimentary organs were no longer a
hindrance to our acceptance of design, they became weighty arguments in
its favour.
I therefore wrote “Evolution Old and New,” with the object partly of
backing up “Life and Habit,” and showing the easy rider it admitted,
partly to show how superior the old view of descent had been to Mr.
Darwin’s, and partly to reintroduce design into organism. I wrote “Life
and Habit” to show that our mental and bodily acquisitions were mainly
stores of memory: I wrote “Evolution Old and New” to add that the memory
must be a mindful and designing memory.
I followed up these two books with “Unconscious Memory,” the main object
of which was to show how Professor Hering of Prague had treated the
connection between memory and heredity; to show, again, how substantial
was the difference between Von Hartmann and myself in spite of some
little superficial resemblance; to put forward a suggestion as regards
the physics of memory, and to meet the most plausible objection which I
have yet seen brought against “Life and Habit.”
Since writing these three books I have published nothing on the
connection between heredity and memory, except a few pages of remarks on
Mr. Romanes’ “Mental Evolution in Animals” in my book, {23a} from which I
will draw whatever seems to be more properly placed here. I have
collected many facts that make my case stronger, but am precluded from
publishing them by the reflection that it is strong enough already. I
have said enough in “Life and Habit” to satisfy any who wish to be
satisfied, and those who wish to be dissatisfied would probably fail to
see the force of what I said, no matter how long and seriously I held
forth to them; I believe, therefore, that I shall do well to keep my
facts for my own private reading and for that of my executors.
I once saw a copy of “Life and Habit” on Mr. Bogue’s counter, and was
told by the very obliging shopman that a customer had just written
something in it which I might like to see. I said of course I should
like to see, and immediately taking the book read the following—which it
occurs to me that I am not justified in publishing. What was written ran
thus:—
“As a reminder of our pleasant hours on the broad Atlantic, will Mr. —
please accept this book (which I think contains more truth, and less
evidence of it, than any other I have met with) from his friend —?”
I presume the gentleman had met with the Bible—a work which lays itself
open to a somewhat similar comment. I was gratified, however, at what I
had read, and take this opportunity of thanking the writer, an American,
for having liked my book. It was so plain he had been relieved at not
finding the case smothered to death in the weight of its own evidences,
that I resolved not to forget the lesson his words had taught me.
The only writer in connection with “Life and Habit” to whom I am anxious
to reply is Mr. Herbert Spencer, but before doing this I will conclude
the present chapter with a consideration of some general complaints that
have been so often brought against me that it may be worth while to
notice them.
These general criticisms have resolved themselves mainly into two.
Firstly, it is said that I ought not to write about biology on the ground
of my past career, which my critics declare to have been purely literary.
I wish I might indulge a reasonable hope of one day becoming a literary
man; the expression is not a good one, but there is no other in such
common use, and this must excuse it; if a man can be properly called
literary, he must have acquired the habit of reading accurately, thinking
attentively, and expressing himself clearly. He must have endeavoured in
all sorts of ways to enlarge the range of his sympathies so as to be able
to put himself easily _en rapport_ with those whom he is studying, and
those whom he is addressing. If he cannot speak with tongues himself, he
is the interpreter of those who can—without whom they might as well be
silent. I wish I could see more signs of literary culture among my
scientific opponents; I should find their books much more easy and
agreeable reading if I could; and then they tell me to satirise the
follies and abuses of the age, just as if it was not this that I was
doing in writing about themselves.
What, I wonder, would they say if I were to declare that they ought not
to write books at all, on the ground that their past career has been too
purely scientific to entitle them to a hearing? They would reply with
justice that I should not bring vague general condemnations, but should
quote examples of their bad writing. I imagine that I have done this
more than once as regards a good many of them, and I dare say I may do it
again in the course of this book; but though I must own to thinking that
the greater number of our scientific men write abominably, I should not
bring this against them if I believed them to be doing their best to help
us; many such men we happily have, and doubtless always shall have, but
they are not those who push to the fore, and it is these last who are
most angry with me for writing on the subjects I have chosen. They
constantly tell me that I am not a man of science; no one knows this
better than I do, and I am quite used to being told it, but I am not used
to being confronted with the mistakes that I have made in matters of
fact, and trust that this experience is one which I may continue to spare
no pains in trying to avoid.
Nevertheless I again freely grant that I am not a man of science. I have
never said I was. I was educated for the Church. I was once inside the
Linnean Society’s rooms, but have no present wish to go there again;
though not a man of science, however, I have never affected indifference
to the facts and arguments which men of science have made it their
business to lay before us; on the contrary, I have given the greater part
of my time to their consideration for several years past. I should not,
however, say this unless led to do so by regard to the interests of
theories which I believe to be as nearly important as any theories can be
which do not directly involve money or bodily convenience.
The second complaint against me is to the effect that I have made no
original experiments, but have taken all my facts at second hand. This
is true, but I do not see what it has to do with the question. If the
facts are sound, how can it matter whether A or B collected them? If
Professor Huxley, for example, has made a series of valuable original
observations (not that I know of his having done so), why am I to make
them over again? What are fact-collectors worth if the fact
co-ordinators may not rely upon them? It seems to me that no one need do
more than go to the best sources for his facts, and tell his readers
where he got them. If I had had occasion for more facts I daresay I
should have taken the necessary steps to get hold of them, but there was
no difficulty on this score; every text-book supplied me with all, and
more than all, I wanted; my complaint was that the facts which Mr. Darwin
supplied would not bear the construction he tried to put upon them; I
tried, therefore, to make them bear another which seemed at once more
sound and more commodious; rightly or wrongly I set up as a builder, not
as a burner of bricks, and the complaint so often brought against me of
not having made experiments is about as reasonable as complaint against
an architect on the score of his not having quarried with his own hands a
single one of the stones which he has used in building. Let my opponents
show that the facts which they and I use in common are unsound, or that I
have misapplied them, and I will gladly learn my mistake, but this has
hardly, to my knowledge, been attempted. To me it seems that the chief
difference between myself and some of my opponents lies in this, that I
take my facts from them with acknowledgment, and they take their theories
from me—without.
One word more and I have done. I should like to say that I do not return
to the connection between memory and heredity under the impression that I
shall do myself much good by doing so. My own share in the matter was
very small. The theory that heredity is only a mode of memory is not
mine, but Professor Hering’s. He wrote in 1870, and I not till 1877. I
should be only too glad if he would take his theory and follow it up
himself; assuredly he could do so much better than I can; but with the
exception of his one not lengthy address published some fifteen or
sixteen years ago he has said nothing upon the subject, so far at least
as I have been able to ascertain; I tried hard to draw him in 1880, but
could get nothing out of him. If, again, any of our more influential
writers, not a few of whom evidently think on this matter much as I do,
would eschew ambiguities and tell us what they mean in plain language, I
would let the matter rest in their abler hands, but of this there does
not seem much chance at present.
I wish there was, for in spite of the interest I have felt in working the
theory out and the information I have been able to collect while doing
so, I must confess that I have found it somewhat of a white elephant. It
has got me into the hottest of hot water, made a literary Ishmael of me,
lost me friends whom I have been sorry to lose, cost me a good deal of
money, done everything to me, in fact, which a good theory ought not to
do. Still, as it seems to have taken up with me, and no one else is
inclined to treat it fairly, I shall continue to report its developments
from time to time as long as life and health are spared me. Moreover,
Ishmaels are not without their uses, and they are not a drug in the
market just now.
I may now go on to Mr. Spencer.