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

by Samuel Butler

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.