Complete works of samuel.., p.280
Complete Works of Samuel Butler, page 280
As with the non-living so also with the living. Are we to let it pass beyond the limits of the body, and allow a certain temporary overflow of livingness to ordain as it were machines in use? Then death will fare, if we once let life without the body, as life fares if we once let death within it. It becomes swallowed up in life, just as in the other case life was swallowed up in death. Are we to confine it to the body? If so, to the whole body, or to parts? And if to parts, to what parts, and why? The only way out of the difficulty is to rehabilitate contradiction in terms, and say that everything is both alive and dead at one and the same time — some things being much living and little dead, and others, again, much dead and little living. Having done this we have only got to settle what a thing is — when a thing is a thing pure and simple, and when it is only a congeries of things — and we shall doubtless then live very happily and very philosophically ever afterwards.
But here another difficulty faces us. Common sense does indeed know what is meant by a “thing” or “an individual,” but philosophy cannot settle either of these two points. Professor Mivart made the question “What are Living Beings?” the subject of an article in one of our leading magazines only a very few years ago. He asked, but he did not answer. And so Professor Moseley was reported (Times, January 16, 1885) as having said that it was “almost impossible” to say what an individual was. Surely if it is only “almost” impossible for philosophy to determine this, Professor Moseley should have at any rate tried to do it; if, however, he had tried and failed, which from my own experience I should think most likely, he might have spared his “almost.” “Almost” is a very dangerous word. I once heard a man say that an escape he had had from drowning was “almost” providential. The difficulty about defining an individual arises from the fact that we may look at “almost” everything from two different points of view. If we are in a common-sense humour for simplifying things, treating them broadly, and emphasizing resemblances rather than differences, we can find excellent reasons for ignoring recognised lines of demarcation, calling everything by a new name, and unifying up till we have united the two most distant stars in heaven as meeting and being linked together in the eyes and souls of men; if we are in this humour individuality after individuality disappears, and ere long, if we are consistent, nothing will remain but one universal whole, one true and only atom from which alone nothing can be cut off and thrown away on to something else; if, on the other hand, we are in a subtle philosophically accurate humour for straining at gnats and emphasizing differences rather than resemblances, we can draw distinctions, and give reasons for subdividing and subdividing, till, unless we violate what we choose to call our consistency somewhere, we shall find ourselves with as many names as atoms and possible combinations and permutations of atoms. The lines we draw, the moments we choose for cutting this or that off at this or that place, and thenceforth the dubbing it by another name, are as arbitrary as the moments chosen by a South-Eastern Railway porter for leaving off beating doormats; in each case doubtless there is an approximate equity, but it is of a very rough and ready kind.
What else, however, can we do? We can only escape the Scylla of calling everything by one name, and recognising no individual existences of any kind, by falling into the Charybdis of having a name for everything, or by some piece of intellectual sharp practice like that of the shrewd but unprincipled Ulysses. If we were consistent honourable gentlemen, into Charybdis or on to Scylla we should go like lambs; every subterfuge by the help of which we escape our difficulty is but an arbitrary high-handed act of classification that turns a deaf ear to everything not robust enough to hold its own; nevertheless even the most scrupulous of philosophers pockets his consistency at a pinch, and refuses to let the native hue of resolution be sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, nor yet fobbed by the rusty curb of logic. He is right, for assuredly the poor intellectual abuses of the time want countenancing now as much as ever, but so far as he countenances them, he should bear in mind that he is returning to the ground of common sense, and should not therefore hold himself too stiffly in the matter of logic.
As with life and death so with design and absence of design or luck. So also with union and disunion. There is never either absolute design rigorously pervading every detail, nor yet absolute absence of design pervading any detail rigorously, so, as between substances, there is neither absolute union and homogeneity, not absolute disunion and heterogeneity; there is always a little place left for repentance; that is to say, in theory we should admit that both design and chance, however well defined, each have an aroma, as it were, of the other. Who can think of a case in which his own design — about which he should know more than any other, and from which, indeed, all his ideas of design are derived — was so complete that there was no chance in any part of it? Who, again, can bring forward a case even of the purest chance or good luck into which no element of design had entered directly or indirectly at any juncture? This, nevertheless, does not involve our being unable ever to ascribe a result baldly either to luck or cunning. In some cases a decided preponderance of the action, whether seen as a whole or looked at in detail, is recognised at once as due to design, purpose, forethought, skill, and effort, and then we properly disregard the undesigned element; in others the details cannot without violence be connected with design, however much the position which rendered the main action possible may involve design — as, for example, there is no design in the way in which individual pieces of coal may hit one another when shot out of a sack, but there may be design in the sack’s being brought to the particular place where it is emptied; in others design may be so hard to find that we rightly deny its existence, nevertheless in each case there will be an element of the opposite, and the residuary element would, if seen through a mental microscope, be found to contain a residuary element of its opposite, and this again of its opposite, and so on ad infinitum, as with mirrors standing face to face. This having been explained, and it being understood that when we speak of design in organism we do so with a mental reserve of exceptis excipiendis, there should be no hesitation in holding the various modifications of plants and animals to be in such preponderating measure due to function, that design, which underlies function, is the fittest idea with which to connect them in our minds.
We will now proceed to inquire how Mr. Darwin came to substitute, or try to substitute, the survival of the luckiest fittest, for the survival of the most cunning fittest, as held by Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck; or more briefly how he came to substitute luck for cunning.
Chapter XII. Why Darwin’s Variations were Accidental
Some may perhaps deny that Mr. Darwin did this, and say he laid so much stress on use and disuse as virtually to make function his main factor of evolution.
If, indeed, we confine ourselves to isolated passages, we shall find little difficulty in making out a strong case to this effect. Certainly most people believe this to be Mr. Darwin’s doctrine, and considering how long and fully he had the ear of the public, it is not likely they would think thus if Mr. Darwin had willed otherwise, nor could he have induced them to think as they do if he had not said a good deal that was capable of the construction so commonly put upon it; but it is hardly necessary, when addressing biologists, to insist on the fact that Mr. Darwin’s distinctive doctrine is the denial of the comparative importance of function, or use and disuse, as a purveyor of variations, — with some, but not very considerable, exceptions, chiefly in the cases of domesticated animals.
He did not, however, make his distinctive feature as distinct as he should have done. Sometimes he said one thing, and sometimes the directly opposite. Sometimes, for example, the conditions of existence “included natural selection” or the fact that the best adapted to their surroundings live longest and leave most offspring; sometimes “the principle of natural selection” “fully embraced” “the expression of conditions of existence.” It would not be easy to find more unsatisfactory writing than this is, nor any more clearly indicating a mind ill at ease with itself. Sometimes “ants work by inherited instincts and inherited tools;” sometimes, again, it is surprising that the case of ants working by inherited instincts has not been brought as a demonstrative argument “against the well-known doctrine of inherited habit, as advanced by Lamarck.” Sometimes the winglessness of beetles inhabiting ocean islands is “mainly due to natural selection,” and though we might be tempted to ascribe the rudimentary condition of the wing to disuse, we are on no account to do so — though disuse was probably to some extent “combined with” natural selection; at other times “it is probable that disuse has been the main means of rendering the wings of beetles living on small exposed islands” rudimentary. We may remark in passing that if disuse, as Mr. Darwin admits on this occasion, is the main agent in rendering an organ rudimentary, use should have been the main agent in rendering it the opposite of rudimentary — that is to say, in bringing about its development. The ostensible raison d’être, however, of the “Origin of Species” is to maintain that this is not the case.
There is hardly an opinion on the subject of descent with modification which does not find support in some one passage or another of the “Origin of Species.” If it were desired to show that there is no substantial difference between the doctrine of Erasmus Darwin and that of his grandson, it would be easy to make out a good case for this, in spite of Mr. Darwin’s calling his grandfather’s views “erroneous,” in the historical sketch prefixed to the later editions of the “Origin of Species.” Passing over the passage already quoted on of this book, in which Mr. Darwin declares “habit omnipotent and its effects hereditary” — a sentence, by the way, than which none can be either more unfalteringly Lamarckian or less tainted with the vices of Mr. Darwin’s later style — passing this over as having been written some twenty years before the “Origin of Species” — the last paragraph of the “Origin of Species” itself is purely Lamarckian and Erasmus-Darwinian. It declares the laws in accordance with which organic forms assumed their present shape to be— “Growth with reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life and from use and disuse, &c.” Wherein does this differ from the confession of faith made by Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck? Where are the accidental fortuitous, spontaneous variations now? And if they are not found important enough to demand mention in this peroration and stretto, as it were, of the whole matter, in which special prominence should be given to the special feature of the work, where ought they to be made important?
Mr. Darwin immediately goes on: “A ratio of existence so high as to lead to a struggle for life, and as a consequence to natural selection, entailing divergence of character and the extinction of less improved forms;” so that natural selection turns up after all. Yes — in the letters that compose it, but not in the spirit; not in the special sense up to this time attached to it in the “Origin of Species.” The expression as used here is one with which Erasmus Darwin would have found little fault, for it means not as elsewhere in Mr. Darwin’s book and on his title-page the preservation of “favoured” or lucky varieties, but the preservation of varieties that have come to be varieties through the causes assigned in the preceding two or three lines of Mr. Darwin’s sentence; and these are mainly functional or Erasmus-Darwinian; for the indirect action of the conditions of life is mainly functional, and the direct action is admitted on all hands to be but small.
It now appears more plainly, as insisted upon on an earlier page, that there is not one natural selection and one survival of the fittest, but two, inasmuch as there are two classes of variations from which nature (supposing no exception taken to her personification) can select. The bottles have the same labels, and they are of the same colour, but the one holds brandy, and the other toast and water. Nature can, by a figure of speech, be said to select from variations that are mainly functional or from variations that are mainly accidental; in the first case she will eventually get an accumulation of variation, and widely different types will come into existence; in the second, the variations will not occur with sufficient steadiness for accumulation to be possible. In the body of Mr. Darwin’s book the variations are supposed to be mainly due to accident, and function, though not denied all efficacy, is declared to be the greatly subordinate factor; natural selection, therefore, has been hitherto throughout tantamount to luck; in the peroration the position is reversed in toto; the selection is now made from variations into which luck has entered so little that it may be neglected, the greatly preponderating factor being function; here, then, natural selection is tantamount to cunning. We are such slaves of words that, seeing the words “natural selection” employed — and forgetting that the results ensuing on natural selection will depend entirely on what it is that is selected from, so that the gist of the matter lies in this and not in the words “natural selection” — it escaped us that a change of front had been made, and a conclusion entirely alien to the tenor of the whole book smuggled into the last paragraph as the one which it had been written to support; the book preached luck, the peroration cunning.
And there can be no doubt Mr. Darwin intended that the change of front should escape us; for it cannot be believed that he did not perfectly well know what he had done. Mr. Darwin edited and re-edited with such minuteness of revision that it may be said no detail escaped him provided it was small enough; it is incredible that he should have allowed this paragraph to remain from first to last unchanged (except for the introduction of the words “by the Creator,” which are wanting in the first edition) if they did not convey the conception he most wished his readers to retain. Even if in his first edition he had failed to see that he was abandoning in his last paragraph all that it had been his ostensible object most especially to support in the body of his book, he must have become aware of it long before he revised the “Origin of Species” for the last time; still he never altered it, and never put us on our guard.
It was not Mr. Darwin’s manner to put his reader on his guard; we might as well expect Mr. Gladstone to put us on our guard about the Irish land bills. Caveat lector seems to have been his motto. Mr. Spencer, in the articles already referred to, is at pains to show that Mr. Darwin’s opinions in later life underwent a change in the direction of laying greater stress on functionally produced modifications, and points out that in the sixth edition of the “Origin of Species” Mr. Darwin says, “I think there can be no doubt that use in our domestic animals has strengthened and enlarged certain parts, and disuse diminished them;” whereas in his first edition he said, “I think there can be little doubt” of this. Mr. Spencer also quotes a passage from “The Descent of Man,” in which Mr. Darwin said that even in the first edition of the “Origin of Species” he had attributed great effect to function, as though in the later ones he had attributed still more; but if there was any considerable change of position, it should not have been left to be toilsomely collected by collation of editions, and comparison of passages far removed from one another in other books. If his mind had undergone the modification supposed by Mr. Spencer, Mr. Darwin should have said so in a prominent passage of some later edition of the “Origin of Species.” He should have said— “In my earlier editions I underrated, as now seems probable, the effects of use and disuse as purveyors of the slight successive modifications whose accumulation in the ordinary course of things results in specific difference, and I laid too much stress on the accumulation of merely accidental variations;” having said this, he should have summarised the reasons that had made him change his mind, and given a list of the most important cases in which he has seen fit to alter what he had originally written. If Mr. Darwin had dealt thus with us we should have readily condoned all the mistakes he would have been at all likely to have made, for we should have known him as one who was trying to help us, tidy us up, keep us straight, and enable us to use our judgments to the best advantage. The public will forgive many errors alike of taste and judgment, where it feels that a writer persistently desires this.
I can only remember a couple of sentences in the later editions of the “Origin of Species” in which Mr. Darwin directly admits a change of opinion as regards the main causes of organic modification. How shuffling the first of these is I have already shown in “Life and Habit,” , and in “Evolution, Old and New,” ; I need not, therefore, say more here, especially as there has been no rejoinder to what I then said. Curiously enough the sentence does not bear out Mr. Spencer’s contention that Mr. Darwin in his later years leaned more decidedly towards functionally produced modifications, for it runs:— “In the earlier editions of this work I underrated, as now seems probable, the frequency and importance of modifications due,” not, as Mr. Spencer would have us believe, to use and disuse, but “to spontaneous variability,” by which can only be intended, “to variations in no way connected with use and disuse,” as not being assignable to any known cause of general application, and referable as far as we are concerned to accident only; so that he gives the natural survival of the luckiest, which is indeed his distinctive feature, if it deserve to be called a feature at all, greater prominence than ever. Nevertheless there is no change in his concluding paragraph, which still remains an embodiment of the views of Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck.
The other passage is on of the edition of 1876. It stands:— “I have now recapitulated the facts and considerations which have thoroughly” (why “thoroughly”?) “convinced me that species have been modified during a long course of descent. This has been effected chiefly through the natural selection of numerous, successive, slight, favourable variations; aided in an important manner by the inherited effects of the use and disuse of parts; and in an unimportant manner, that is, in relation to adaptive structures, whether past or present, by the direct action of external conditions, and by variations which seem to us in our ignorance to arise spontaneously. It appears that I formerly underrated the frequency and value of these latter forms of variation as leading to permanent modifications of structure independently of natural selection.”
