Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic Modification

by Samuel Butler

And yet in 1839, or thereabouts, Mr. Darwin had pretty nearly grasped the conception from which until the last year or two of his life he so fatally strayed; for in his contribution to the volumes giving an account of the voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, he wrote: “Nature by making habit omnipotent and its effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian for the climate and productions of his country” (p. 237).

What is the secret of the long departure from the simple common-sense view of the matter which he took when he was a young man? I imagine simply what I have referred to in the preceding chapter, over-anxiety to appear to be differing from his grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck.

I believe I may say that Mr. Darwin before he died not only admitted the connection between memory and heredity, but came also to see that he must readmit that design in organism which he had so many years opposed. For in the preface to Hermann Müller’s “Fertilisation of Flowers,” [63a] which bears a date only a very few weeks prior to Mr. Darwin’s death, I find him saying:—“Design in nature has for a long time deeply interested many men, and though the subject must now be looked at from a somewhat different point of view from what was formerly the case, it is not on that account rendered less interesting.” This is mused forth as a general gnome, and may mean anything or nothing: the writer of the letterpress under the hieroglyph in Old Moore’s Almanac could not be more guarded; but I think I know what it does mean.

I cannot, of course, be sure; Mr. Darwin did not probably intend that I should; but I assume with confidence that whether there is design in organism or no, there is at any rate design in this passage of Mr. Darwin’s. This, we may be sure, is not a fortuitous variation; and, moreover, it is introduced for some reason which made Mr. Darwin think it worth while to go out of his way to introduce it. It has no fitness in its connection with Hermann Müller’s book, for what little Hermann Müller says about teleology at all is to condemn it; why, then, should Mr. Darwin muse here of all places in the world about the interest attaching to design in organism? Neither has the passage any connection with the rest of the preface. There is not another word about design, and even here Mr. Darwin seems mainly anxious to face both ways, and pat design as it were on the head while not committing himself to any proposition which could be disputed.

The explanation is sufficiently obvious. Mr Darwin wanted to hedge. He saw that the design which his works had been mainly instrumental in pitchforking out of organisms no less manifestly designed than a burglar’s jemmy is designed, had nevertheless found its way back again, and that though, as I insisted in “Evolution Old and New,” and “Unconscious Memory,” it must now be placed within the organism instead of outside it, as “was formerly the case,” it was not on that account any the less—design, as well as interesting.

I should like to have seen Mr. Darwin say this more explicitly. Indeed I should have liked to have seen Mr. Darwin say anything at all about the meaning of which there could be no mistake, and without contradicting himself elsewhere; but this was not Mr. Darwin’s manner.

In passing I will give another example of Mr Darwin’s manner when he did not quite dare even to hedge. It is to be found in the preface which he wrote to Professor Weismann’s “Studies in the Theory of Descent,” published in 1881.

“Several distinguished naturalists,” says Mr. Darwin, “maintain with much confidence that organic beings tend to vary and to rise in the scale, independently of the conditions to which they and their progenitors have been exposed; whilst others maintain that all variation is due to such exposure, though the manner in which the environment acts is as yet quite unknown. At the present time there is hardly any question in biology of more importance than this of the nature and causes of variability; and the reader will find in the present work an able discussion on the whole subject, which will probably lead him to pause before he admits the existence of an innate tendency to perfectibility”—or towards being able to be perfected.

I could find no able discussion upon the whole subject in Professor Weismann’s book. There was a little something here and there, but not much.

It may be expected that I should say something here about Mr. Romanes’ latest contribution to biology—I mean his theory of physiological selection, of which the two first instalments have appeared in Nature just as these pages are leaving my hands, and many months since the foregoing, and most of the following chapters were written. I admit to feeling a certain sense of thankfulness that they did not appear earlier; as it is, my book is too far advanced to be capable of further embryonic change, and this must be my excuse for saying less about Mr. Romanes’ theory than I might perhaps otherwise do. I cordially, however, agree with the Times, which says that “Mr. George Romanes appears to be the biological investigator on whom the mantle of Mr. Darwin has most conspicuously descended” (August 16, 1886). Mr. Romanes is just the person whom the late Mr. Darwin would select to carry on his work, and Mr. Darwin was just the kind of person towards whom Mr. Romanes would find himself instinctively attracted.