Delphi complete works of.., p.203
Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler, page 203
I got Isidore Geoffroy’s “Histoire Naturelle Générale,” which Mr. Darwin commends in the note on the second page of the historical sketch, as giving “an excellent history of opinion” upon the subject of evolution, and a full account of Buffon’s conclusions upon the same subject. This at least is what I supposed Mr. Darwin to mean. What he said was that Isidore Geoffroy gives an excellent history of opinion on the subject of the date of the first publication of Lamarck, and that in his work there is a full account of Buffon’s fluctuating conclusions upon the same subject. But Mr. Darwin is a more than commonly puzzling writer. I read what M. Geoffroy had to say upon Buffon, and was surprised to find that, after all, according to M. Geoffroy, Buffon, and not Lamarck, was the founder of the theory of evolution. His name, as I have already said, was never mentioned in the first edition of the “Origin of Species.”
M. Geoffroy goes into the accusations of having fluctuated in his opinions, which he tells us have been brought against Buffon, and comes to the conclusion that they are unjust, as any one else will do who turns to Buffon himself. Mr. Darwin, however, in the “brief but imperfect sketch,” catches at the accusation, and repeats it while saying nothing whatever about the defence. The following is still all he says: “The first author who in modern times has treated” evolution “in a scientific spirit was Buffon. But as his opinions fluctuated greatly at different periods, and as he does not enter on the causes or means of the transformation of species, I need not here enter on details.” On the next page, in the note last quoted, Mr. Darwin originally repeated the accusation of Buffon’s having been fluctuating in his opinions, and appeared to give it the imprimatur of Isidore Geoffroy’s approval; the fact being that Isidore Geoffroy only quoted the accusation in order to refute it; and though, I suppose, meaning well, did not make half the case he might have done, and abounds with misstatements. My readers will find this matter particularly dealt with in “Evolution, Old and New,” Chapter X.
I gather that some one must have complained to Mr. Darwin of his saying that Isidore Geoffroy gave an account of Buffon’s “fluctuating conclusions” concerning evolution, when he was doing all he knew to maintain that Buffon’s conclusions did not fluctuate; for I see that in the edition of 1876 the word “fluctuating” has dropped out of the note in question, and we now learn that Isidore Geoffroy gives “a full account of Buffon’s conclusions,” without the “fluctuating.” But Buffon has not taken much by this, for his opinions are still left fluctuating greatly at different periods on the preceding page, and though he still was the first to treat evolution in a scientific spirit, he still does not enter upon the causes or means of the transformation of species. No one can understand Mr. Darwin who does not collate the different editions of the “Origin of Species” with some attention. When he has done this, he will know what Newton meant by saying he felt like a child playing with pebbles upon the seashore.
One word more upon this note before I leave it. Mr. Darwin speaks of Isidore Geoffroy’s history of opinion as “excellent,” and his account of Buffon’s opinions as “full.” I wonder how well qualified he is to be a judge of these matters? If he knows much about the earlier writers, he is the more inexcusable for having said so little about them. If little, what is his opinion worth?
To return to the “brief but imperfect sketch.” I do not think I can ever again be surprised at anything Mr. Darwin may say or do, but if I could, I should wonder how a writer who did not “enter upon the causes or means of the transformation of species,” and whose opinions “fluctuated greatly at different periods,” can be held to have treated evolution “in a scientific spirit.” Nevertheless, when I reflect upon the scientific reputation Mr. Darwin has attained, and the means by which he has won it, I suppose the scientific spirit must be much what he here implies. I see Mr. Darwin says of his own father, Dr. Robert Darwin of Shrewsbury, that he does not consider him to have had a scientific mind. Mr. Darwin cannot tell why he does not think his father’s mind to have been fitted for advancing science, “for he was fond of theorising, and was incomparably the best observer” Mr. Darwin ever knew. From the hint given in the “brief but imperfect sketch,” I fancy I can help Mr. Darwin to see why he does not think his father’s mind to have been a scientific one. It is possible that Dr. Robert Darwin’s opinions did not fluctuate sufficiently at different periods, and that Mr. Darwin considered him as having in some way entered upon the causes or means of the transformation of species. Certainly those who read Mr. Darwin’s own works attentively will find no lack of fluctuation in his case; and reflection will show them that a theory of evolution which relies mainly on the accumulation of accidental variations comes very close to not entering upon the causes or means of the transformation of species.
I have shown, however, in “Evolution, Old and New,” that the assertion that Buffon does not enter on the causes or means of the transformation of species is absolutely without foundation, and that, on the contrary, he is continually dealing with this very matter, and devotes to it one of his longest and most important chapters, but I admit that he is less satisfactory on this head than either Dr. Erasmus Darwin or Lamarck.
As a matter of fact, Buffon is much more of a Neo-Darwinian than either Dr. Erasmus Darwin or Lamarck, for with him the variations are sometimes fortuitous. In the case of the dog, he speaks of them as making their appearance “by some chance common enough with Nature,” and being perpetuated by man’s selection. This is exactly the “if any slight favourable variation happen to arise” of Mr. Charles Darwin. Buffon also speaks of the variations among pigeons arising “par hasard.” But these expressions are only ships; his main cause of variation is the direct action of changed conditions of existence, while with Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck the action of the conditions of existence is indirect, the direct action being that of the animals or plants themselves, in consequence of changed sense of need under changed conditions.
I should say that the sketch so often referred to is at first sight now no longer imperfect in Mr. Darwin’s opinion. It was “brief but imperfect” in 1861 and in 1866, but in 1876 I see that it is brief only. Of course, discovering that it was no longer imperfect, I expected to find it briefer. What, then, was my surprise at finding that it had become rather longer? I have found no perfectly satisfactory explanation of this inconsistency, but, on the whole, incline to think that the “greatest of living men” felt himself unequal to prolonging his struggle with the word “but,” and resolved to lay that conjunction at all hazards, even though the doing so might cost him the balance of his adjectives; for I think he must know that his sketch is still imperfect.
From Isidore Geoffroy I turned to Buffon himself, and had not long to wait before I felt that I was now brought into communication with the master-mind of all those who have up to the present time busied themselves with evolution. For a brief and imperfect sketch of him, I must refer my readers to “Evolution, Old and New.”
I have no great respect for the author of the “Vestiges of Creation,” who behaved hardly better to the writers upon whom his own work was founded than Mr. Darwin himself has done. Nevertheless, I could not forget the gravity of the misrepresentation with which he was assailed on page 3 of the first edition of the “Origin of Species,” nor impugn the justice of his rejoinder in the following year, when he replied that it was to be regretted Mr. Darwin had read his work “almost as much amiss as if, like its declared opponents, he had an interest in misrepresenting it.” I could not, again, forget that, though Mr. Darwin did not venture to stand by the passage in question, it was expunged without a word of apology or explanation of how it was that he had come to write it. A writer with any claim to our consideration will never fall into serious error about another writer without hastening to make a public apology as soon as he becomes aware of what he has done.
Reflecting upon the substance of what I have written in the last few pages, I thought it right that people should have a chance of knowing more about the earlier writers on evolution than they were likely to hear from any of our leading scientists (no matter how many lectures they may give on the coming of age of the “Origin of Species”) except Professor Mivart. A book pointing the difference between teleological and non-teleological views of evolution seemed likely to be useful, and would afford me the opportunity I wanted for giving a résumé of the views of each one of the three chief founders of the theory, and of contrasting them with those of Mr. Charles Darwin, as well as for calling attention to Professor Hering’s lecture. I accordingly wrote “Evolution, Old and New,” which was prominently announced in the leading literary periodicals at the end of February, or on the very first days of March 1879, as “a comparison of the theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck, with that of Mr. Charles Darwin, with copious extracts from the works of the three first-named writers.” In this book I was hardly able to conceal the fact that, in spite of the obligations under which we must always remain to Mr. Darwin, I had lost my respect for him and for his work.
I should point out that this announcement, coupled with what I had written in “Life and Habit,” would enable Mr. Darwin and his friends to form a pretty shrewd guess as to what I was likely to say, and to quote from Dr. Erasmus Darwin in my forthcoming book. The announcement, indeed, would tell almost as much as the book itself to those who knew the works of Erasmus Darwin.
As may be supposed, “Evolution, Old and New,” met with a very unfavourable reception at the hands of many of its reviewers. The Saturday Review was furious. “When a writer,” it exclaimed, “who has not given as many weeks to the subject as Mr. Darwin has given years, is not content to air his own crude though clever fallacies, but assumes to criticise Mr. Darwin with the superciliousness of a young schoolmaster looking over a boy’s theme, it is difficult not to take him more seriously than he deserves or perhaps desires. One would think that Mr. Butler was the travelled and laborious observer of Nature, and Mr. Darwin the pert speculator who takes all his facts at secondhand.”
The lady or gentleman who writes in such a strain as this should not be too hard upon others whom she or he may consider to write like schoolmasters. It is true I have travelled — not much, but still as much as many others, and have endeavoured to keep my eyes open to the facts before me; but I cannot think that I made any reference to my travels in “Evolution, Old and New.” I did not quite see what that had to do with the matter. A man may get to know a good deal without ever going beyond the four-mile radius from Charing Cross. Much less did I imply that Mr. Darwin was pert: pert is one of the last words that can be applied to Mr. Darwin. Nor, again, had I blamed him for taking his facts at secondhand; no one is to be blamed for this, provided he takes well-established facts and acknowledges his sources. Mr. Darwin has generally gone to good sources. The ground of complaint against him is that he muddied the water after he had drawn it, and tacitly claimed to be the rightful owner of the spring, on the score of the damage he had effected.
Notwithstanding, however, the generally hostile, or more or less contemptuous, reception which “Evolution, Old and New,” met with, there were some reviews — as, for example, those in the Field, the Daily Chronicle, the Athenæum, the Journal of Science, the British Journal of Homæopathy, the Daily News, the Popular Science Review — which were all I could expect or wish.
Chapter IV
The manner in which Mr. Darwin met “Evolution, Old and New.”
By far the most important notice of “Evolution, Old and New,” was that taken by Mr. Darwin himself; for I can hardly be mistaken in believing that Dr. Krause’s article would have been allowed to repose unaltered in the pages of the well-known German scientific journal, Kosmos, unless something had happened to make Mr. Darwin feel that his reticence concerning his grandfather must now be ended.
Mr. Darwin, indeed, gives me the impression of wishing me to understand that this is not the case. At the beginning of this year he wrote to me, in a letter which I will presently give in full, that he had obtained Dr. Krause’s consent for a translation, and had arranged with Mr. Dallas, before my book was “announced.” “I remember this,” he continues, “because Mr. Dallas wrote to tell me of the advertisement.” But Mr. Darwin is not a clear writer, and it is impossible to say whether he is referring to the announcement of “Evolution, Old and New” — in which case he means that the arrangements for the translation of Dr. Krause’s article were made before the end of February 1879, and before any public intimation could have reached him as to the substance of the book on which I was then engaged — or to the advertisements of its being now published, which appeared at the beginning of May; in which case, as I have said above, Mr. Darwin and his friends had for some time had full opportunity of knowing what I was about. I believe, however, Mr. Darwin to intend that he remembered the arrangements having been made before the beginning of May — his use of the word “announced,” instead of “advertised,” being an accident; but let this pass.
Some time after Mr. Darwin’s work appeared in November 1879, I got it, and looking at the last page of the book, I read as follows: —
“They” (the elder Darwin and Lamarck) “explain the adaptation to purpose of organisms by an obscure impulse or sense of what is purpose-like; yet even with regard to man we are in the habit of saying, that one can never know what so-and-so is good for. The purpose-like is that which approves itself, and not always that which is struggled for by obscure impulses and desires. Just in the same way the beautiful is what pleases.”
I had a sort of feeling as though the writer of the above might have had “Evolution, Old and New,” in his mind, but went on to the next sentence, which ran —
“Erasmus Darwin’s system was in itself a most significant first step in the path of knowledge which his grandson has opened up for us, but to wish to revive it at the present day, as has actually been seriously attempted, shows a weakness of thought and a mental anachronism which no one can envy.”
“That’s me,” said I to myself promptly. I noticed also the position in which the sentence stood, which made it both one of the first that would be likely to catch a reader’s eye, and the last he would carry away with him. I therefore expected to find an open reply to some parts of “Evolution, Old and New,” and turned to Mr. Darwin’s preface.
To my surprise, I there found that what I had been reading could not by any possibility refer to me, for the preface ran as follows: —
“In the February number of a well-known German scientific journal, Kosmos, Dr. Ernest Krause published a sketch of the ‘Life of Erasmus Darwin,’ the author of the ‘Zoonomia,’ ‘Botanic Garden,’ and other works. This article bears the title of a ‘Contribution to the History of the Descent Theory’; and Dr. Krause has kindly allowed my brother Erasmus and myself to have a translation made of it for publication in this country.”
Then came a note as follows: —
“Mr. Dallas has undertaken the translation, and his scientific reputation, together with his knowledge of German, is a guarantee for its accuracy.”
I ought to have suspected inaccuracy where I found so much consciousness of accuracy, but I did not. However this may be, Mr. Darwin pins himself down with every circumstance of preciseness to giving Dr. Krause’s article as it appeared in Kosmos, — the whole article, and nothing but the article. No one could know this better than Mr. Darwin.
On the second page of Mr. Darwin’s preface there is a small-type note saying that my work, “Evolution, Old and New,” had appeared since the publication of Dr. Krause’s article. Mr. Darwin thus distinctly precludes his readers from supposing that any passage they might meet with could have been written in reference to, or by the light of, my book. If anything appeared condemnatory of that book, it was an undesigned coincidence, and would show how little worthy of consideration I must be when my opinions were refuted in advance by one who could have no bias in regard to them.
Knowing that if the article I was about to read appeared in February, it must have been published before my book, which was not out till three months later, I saw nothing in Mr. Darwin’s preface to complain of, and felt that this was only another instance of my absurd vanity having led me to rush to conclusions without sufficient grounds, — as if it was likely, indeed, that Mr. Darwin should think what I had said of sufficient importance to be affected by it. It was plain that some one besides myself, of whom I as yet knew nothing, had been writing about the elder Darwin, and had taken much the same line concerning him that I had done. It was for the benefit of this person, then, that Dr. Krause’s paragraph was intended. I returned to a becoming sense of my own insignificance, and began to read what I supposed to be an accurate translation of Dr. Krause’s article as it originally appeared, before “Evolution, Old and New,” was published.
On p and 4 of Dr. Krause’s part of Mr. Darwin’s book (p and 134 of the book itself), I detected a sub-apologetic tone which a little surprised me, and a notice of the fact that Coleridge when writing on Stillingfleet had used the word “Darwinising.” Mr. R. Garnett had called my attention to this, and I had mentioned it in “Evolution, Old and New,” but the paragraph only struck me as being a little odd.
When I got a few pages farther on ( of Mr. Darwin’s book), I found a long quotation from Buffon about rudimentary organs, which I had quoted in “Evolution, Old and New.” I observed that Dr. Krause used the same edition of Buffon that I did, and began his quotation two lines from the beginning of Buffon’s paragraph, exactly as I had done; also that he had taken his nominative from the omitted part of the sentence across a full stop, as I had myself taken it. A little lower I found a line of Buffon’s omitted which I had given, but I found that at that place I had inadvertently left two pair of inverted commas which ought to have come out, having intended to end my quotation, but changed my mind and continued it without erasing the commas. It seemed to me that these commas had bothered Dr. Krause, and made him think it safer to leave something out, for the line he omits is a very good one. I noticed that he translated “Mais comme nous voulons toujours tout rapporter à un certain but,” “But we, always wishing to refer,” &c., while I had it, “But we, ever on the look-out to refer,” &c.; and “Nous ne faisons pas attention que nous altérons la philosophie,” “We fail to see that thus we deprive philosophy of her true character,” whereas I had “We fail to see that we thus rob philosophy of her true character.” This last was too much; and though it might turn out that Dr. Krause had quoted this passage before I had done so, had used the same edition as I had, had begun two lines from the beginning of a paragraph as I had done, and that the later resemblances were merely due to Mr. Dallas having compared Dr. Krause’s German translation of Buffon with my English, and very properly made use of it when he thought fit, it looked primâ facie more as though my quotation had been copied in English as it stood, and then altered, but not quite altered enough. This, in the face of the preface, was incredible; but so many points had such an unpleasant aspect, that I thought it better to send for Kosmos and see what I could make out.
