BUTLERS TELEOLOGY 341 



when its recollection is disturbed, or when it is required to do 

 soviet Ji ing iv/iich it has never done before'' 1 (p. 132). 'It is 

 certainly noteworthy that the embryo is never at a loss, 

 unless something happens to it which has not usually 

 happened to its forefathers, and which in the nature of things 

 it cannot remember" (p. 132). 



Butler's teleological conception of organic evolution was 

 of course completely antagonistic to the naturalistic concep- 

 tions current in his time. In one of his later books he 

 repeats Paley's arguments in favour of design, and to the 

 question, " Where, then, is your designer of beasts and birds, of 

 fishes, and of plants ? " he replies : " Our answer is simple 

 enough ; it is that we can and do point to a living tangible 

 person with flesh, blood, eyes, nose, ears, organs, senses, 

 dimensions, who did of his own cunning, after infinite proof of 

 every kind of hazard and experiment, scheme out and fashion 

 each organ of the human body. This is the person whom we 

 claim as the designer and artificer of that body, and he is the 

 one of all others the best fitted for the task by his antecedents, 

 and his practical knowledge of the requirements of the case 

 for he is man himself. Not man, the individual of any 

 given generation, but man in the entirety of his existence 

 from the dawn of life onwards to the present moment " 

 (Evolution, Old and New, p. 30, 1879). 



Butler's theory of life and habit remained only a sketch, 

 and he was perhaps not fully aware of its philosophical 

 implications. Since Butler's time, a new complexion has 

 been put upon biological philosophy by the profound specu- 

 lations of Bergson. 



But it is not impossible that the future development of 

 biological thought will follow some such lines as those which 

 he tentatively laid down. 



Butler was not the first to suggest that there is a close 

 connection between heredity and memory it is a thought 

 likely to occur to any unprejudiced thinker. The first 

 enunciation of it which attracted general attention was that 

 contained in Hering's famous lecture '' On Memory as a 

 general Function of organised Matter." 1 Butler was not 



1 Ueber das Gedachtnis als erne allgcmeine Funk lion der organisiertcn 

 Materic, Wien, 1870. 



