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Evolution, Old & New, a non-fiction book by Samuel Butler |
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Appendix: Chapter 1. Reviews Of 'Evolution, Old And New' |
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_ APPENDIX: CHAPTER I. REVIEWS OF 'EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW' Those who have been at the pains to read the foregoing book will, perhaps, pardon me if I put before them a short account of the reception it has met with: I will not waste time by arguing with my critics at any length; it will be enough if I place some of their remarks upon my book under the same cover as the book itself, with here and there a word or two of comment. The only reviews which have come under my notice appeared in the 'Academy' and the 'Examiner,' both of May 17, 1879; the 'Edinburgh Daily Review,' May 23, 1879; 'City Press,' May 21, 1879; 'Field,' May 26, 1879; 'Saturday Review,' May 31, 1879; 'Daily Chronicle,' May 31, 1879; 'Graphic' and 'Nature,' both June 12, 1879; 'Pall Mall Gazette,' June 18, 1879; 'Literary World,' June 20, 1879; 'Scotsman,' June 24, 1879; 'British Journal of Homoeopathy' and 'Mind,' both July 1, 1879; 'Journal of Science,' July 18, 1879; 'Westminster Review,' July, 1879; 'Athenaeum,' July 26, 1879; 'Daily News,' July 29, 1879; 'Manchester City News,' August 16, 1879; 'Nonconformist,' November 26, 1879; 'Popular Science Review,' Jan. 1, 1880; 'Morning Post,' Jan. 12, 1880. Some of the most hostile passages in the reviews above referred to are as follows:-- "From beginning to end, our eccentric author treats us to a dazzling flood of epigram, invective, and what appears to be argument; and finally leaves us without a single clear idea as to what he has been driving at." . . . . . . "Mr. Butler comes forward, as it were, to proclaim himself a professional satirist, and a mystifier who will do his best to leave you utterly in the dark with regard to his system of juggling. Is he a teleological theologian making fun of evolution? Is he an evolutionist making fun of teleology? Is he a man of letters making fun of science? Or is he a master of pure irony making fun of all three, and of his audience as well? For our part we decline to commit ourselves, and prefer to observe, as Mr. Butler observes of Von Hartmann, that if his meaning is anything like what he says it is, we can only say that it has not been given us to form any definite conception whatever as to what that meaning may be."--'Academy,' May 17, 1879, Signed Grant Allen. * * * * * Here is another criticism of "Evolution, Old and New"--also, I believe I am warranted in saying, by Mr. Grant Allen. These two criticisms appeared on the same day; how many more Mr. Allen may have written later on I do not know. We find the writer who in the 'Academy' declares that he has been left without "a single clear idea" as to what 'Evolution, Old and New,' has been driving at saying on the same day in the 'Examiner' that 'Evolution, Old and New,' "has a more evident purpose than any of its predecessors." If so, I am afraid the predecessors must have puzzled Mr. Allen very unpleasantly. What the purpose of 'Evolution, Old and New,' is, he proceeds to explain:-- "As to his (Mr. Butler's) main argument, it comes briefly to this: natural selection does not originate favourable varieties, it only passively permits them to exist; therefore it is the unknown cause which produced the variations, not the natural selection which spared them, that ought to count as the mainspring of evolution. That unknown cause Mr. Butler boldly declares to be the will of the organism itself. An intelligent ascidian wanted a pair of eyes,[376] so set to work and made itself a pair, exactly as a man makes a microscope; a talented fish conceived the idea of walking on dry land, so it developed legs, turned its swim bladder into a pair of lungs, and became an amphibian; an aesthetic guinea-fowl admired bright colours, so it bought a paint-box, studied Mr. Whistler's ornamental designs, and, painting itself a gilded and ocellated tail, was thenceforth a peacock. But how about plants? Mr. Butler does not shirk even this difficulty. The theory must be maintained at all hazards.... This is the sort of mystical nonsense from which we had hoped Mr. Darwin had for ever saved us."--'Examiner,' May 17, 1879. * * * * * In this last article, Mr. Allen has said that I am a man of genius, "with the unmistakable signet-mark upon my forehead." I have been subjected to a good deal of obloquy and misrepresentation at one time or another, but this passage by Mr. Allen is the only one I have seen that has made me seriously uneasy about the prospects of my literary reputation. I see Mr. Allen has been lately writing an article in the 'Fortnightly Review' on the decay of criticism. Looking over it somewhat hurriedly, my eye was arrested by the following:-- "Nowadays any man can write, because there are papers enough to give employment to everybody. No reflection, no deliberation, no care; all is haste, fatal facility, stock phrases, commonplace ideas, and a ready pen that can turn itself to any task with equal ease, because supremely ignorant of all alike." . . . . . . "The writer takes to his craft nowadays, not because he has taste for literature, but because he has an incurable faculty for scribbling. He has no culture, and he soon loses the power of taking pains, if he ever possessed it. But he can talk with glib superficiality and imposing confidence about every conceivable subject, from a play or a picture to a sermon or a metaphysical essay. It is the utter indifference to subject-matter, joined with the vulgar unscrupulousness of pretentious ignorance, that strikes the keynote of our existing criticism. Men write without taking the trouble to read or think."[377] * * * * * The 'Saturday Review' attacked 'Evolution, Old and New,' I may almost say savagely. It wrote: "When Mr. Butler's 'Life and Habit' came before us, we doubted whether his ambiguously expressed speculations belonged to the regions of playful but possibly scientific imagination, or of unscientific fancies; and we gave him the benefit of the doubt. In fact, we strained a point or two to find a reasonable meaning for him. He has now settled the question against himself. Not professing to have any particular competence in biology, natural history, or the scientific study of evidence in any shape whatever, and, indeed, rather glorying in his freedom from any such superfluities, he undertakes to assure the overwhelming majority of men of science, and the educated public who have followed their lead, that, while they have done well to be converted to the doctrine of the evolution and transmutation of species, they have been converted on entirely wrong grounds." . . . . . . "When a writer who has not given as many weeks to the subject as Mr. Darwin has given years [as a matter of fact, it is now twenty years since I began to publish on the subject of Evolution] is not content to air his own crude, though clever, fallacies, but presumes to criticize 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." . . . . . . "Let us once more consider how matters stood a year or two before the 'Origin of Species' first appeared. The continuous evolution of animated Nature had in its favour the difficulty of drawing fixed lines between species and even larger divisions, all the indications of comparative anatomy and embryology, and a good deal of general scientific presumption. Several well-known writers, and some eminent enough to command respect, had expressed their belief in it. One or two far-seeing thinkers, among whom the place of honour must be assigned to Mr. Herbert Spencer, had done more. They had used their philosophic insight, which, to science, is the eye of faith, to descry the promised land almost within reach; they knew and announced how rich and spacious the heritage would be, if once the entry could be made good. But on that 'if' everything hung. Nature was not bound to give up her secret, or was bound only in a mocking covenant with an impossible condition: _Si caelum digito tetigeris_; if only some fortunate hand could touch the inaccessible firmament, and bring down the golden chain to earth! But fruition seemed out of sight. Even those who were most willing to advance in this direction, could only regret that they saw no road clear. There was a tempting vision, but nothing proven--many would have said nothing provable. A few years passed, and all this was changed. The doubtful speculation had become a firm and connected theory. In the room of scattered foragers and scouts, there was an irresistibly advancing column. Nature had surrendered her stronghold, and was disarmed of her secret. And if we ask who were the men by whom this was done, the answer is notorious, and there is but one answer possible: the names that are for ever associated with this great triumph are those of Charles Darwin and Wallace."[378] I gave the lady or gentleman who wrote this an opportunity of acknowledging the authorship; but she or he preferred, not I think unnaturally, to remain anonymous. The only other criticism of 'Evolution, Old and New,' to which I would call attention, appeared in 'Nature,' in a review of 'Unconscious Memory,' by Mr. Romanes, and contained the following passages:-- "But to be serious, if in charity we could deem Mr. Butler a lunatic, we should not be unprepared for any aberration of common sense that he might display.... A certain nobody writes a book ['Evolution, Old and New'] accusing the most illustrious man in his generation of burying the claims of certain illustrious predecessors out of the sight of all men. In the hope of gaining some notoriety by deserving, and perhaps receiving a contemptuous refutation from the eminent man in question, he publishes this book which, if it deserved serious consideration, would be not more of an insult to the particular man of science whom it accuses of conscious and wholesale plagiarism [there is no such accusation in 'Evolution, Old and New'] than it would be to men of science in general for requiring such elementary instruction on some of the most famous literature in science from an upstart ignoramus, who, until two or three years ago, considered himself a painter by profession."--'Nature,' Jan. 27, 1881. * * * * * In a subsequent letter to 'Nature,' Mr. Romanes said he had been "acting the part of policeman" by writing as he had done. Any unscrupulous reviewer may call himself a policeman if he likes, but he must not expect those whom he assails to recognize his pretensions. 'Evolution, Old and New,' was not written for the kind of people whom Mr. Romanes calls men of science; if "men of science" means men like Mr. Romanes, I trust they say well who maintain that I am not a man of science; I believe the men to whom Mr. Romanes refers to be men, not of that kind of science which desires to know, but of that kind whose aim is to thrust itself upon the public as actually knowing. 'Evolution, Old and New,' could be of no use to these; certainly, it was not intended as an insult to them, but if they are insulted by it, I do not know that I am sorry, for I value their antipathy and opposition as much as I should dislike their approbation: of one thing, however, I am certain--namely, that before 'Evolution, Old and New,' was written, Professors Huxley and Tyndall, for example, knew very little of the earlier history of Evolution. Professor Huxley, in his article on Evolution in the ninth edition of the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' published in 1878, says of the two great pioneers of Evolution, that Buffon "contributed nothing to the general doctrine of Evolution,"[379] and that Erasmus Darwin "can hardly be said to have made any real advance on his predecessors."[380] Professor Haeckel evidently knew little of Erasmus Darwin, and still less, apparently, about Buffon.[381] Professor Tyndall,[382] in 1878, spoke of Evolution as "Darwin's theory"; and I have just read Mr. Grant Allen as saying that Evolutionism "is an almost exclusively English impulse."[383] Since 'Evolution, Old and New,' was published, I have observed several of the so-called men of science--among them Professor Huxley and Mr. Romanes--airing Buffon; but I never observed any of them do this till within the last three years. I maintain that "men of science" were, and still are, very ignorant concerning the history of Evolution; but, whether they were or were not, I did not write 'Evolution, Old and New,' for them; I wrote for the general public, who have been kind enough to testify their appreciation of it in a sufficiently practical manner. The way in which Mr. Charles Darwin met 'Evolution, Old and New,' has been so fully dealt with in my book, 'Unconscious Memory;' in the 'Athenaeum,' Jan. 31, 1880; the 'St. James's Gazette,' Dec. 8, 1880; and 'Nature,' Feb. 3, 1881, that I need not return to it here, more especially as Mr. Darwin has, by his silence, admitted that he has no defence to make. I have quoted by no means the moat exceptionable parts of Mr. Romanes' article, and have given them a permanence they would not otherwise attain, inasmuch as nothing can better show the temper of the kind of men who are now--as I said in the body of the foregoing work--clamouring for endowment, and who would step into the Pope's shoes to-morrow if we would only let them. FOOTNOTES: [376] See p. 44, and the whole of chap. v., where I say of this supposition, that "nothing could be conceived more foreign to experience and common sense." [377] 'Fortnightly Review,' March 1, 1882, pp. 344, 345. [378] 'Saturday Review,' May 31, 1879, pp. 682-3. [379] P. 748. [380] _Ibid._ [381] See pp. 71-73. [382] 'Nineteenth Century' for November, pp. 360, 361. [383] 'Fortnightly Review,' March, 1882. _ |
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