BIOLOGICAL WRITINGS OF SAMUEL BUTLER 21 



" We should endeavour to see the so-called inorganic as 

 living in respect of the qualities it has in common with the 

 organic, rather than the organic as non-living in respect of 

 the qualities it has in common with the inorganic." 



We conclude our survey of this book by mentioning the 

 literary controversial part chiefly to be found in chapter iv. 

 but cropping up elsewhere. It refers to interpolations made 

 in the authorised translation of Krause's Life of Erasmus 

 Darwin. Only one side is presented ; and we are not called 

 upon, here or elsewhere, to discuss the merits of the question. 



" Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic Modifica- 

 tion ? An attempt to throw Additional Light upon the late 

 Mr. Charles Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection" (1887), 

 completes the series of biological books. This is mainly a book 

 of strenuous polemic. It brings out still more forcibly the 

 Hering-Butler doctrine of continued personality from genera- 

 tion to generation and of the working of unconscious memory 

 throughout : it points out that, while this is implicit in 

 much of the teaching of Herbert Spencer, Romanes and 

 others, it was nowhere — even after the appearance of Life 

 and Habit — explicitly recognised by them but, on the con- 

 trary, masked by inconsistent statements and teaching. Not 

 Luck, but Cunning, not the uninspired weeding out by 

 Natural Selection, but the intelligent striving of the organism, 

 is at the bottom of the useful variety of organic life. And 

 the parallel is drawn that not the happy accident of time 

 and place, but the Macchiavellian cunning of Charles Darwin, 

 succeeded in imposing, as entirely his own, on the civilised 

 world a maimed, uninspired and inadequate theory of evolu- 

 tion wherein luck played the leading part; while the more 

 inspired and inspiring views of the older evolutionists had 

 failed by the inferiority of their luck and their failure in 

 cunning. On this controversy I am bound to say that I do 

 not in the very least share Butler's opinions ; and I must 

 ascribe them to his lack of personal familiarity with the 

 biologists of the day and their modes of thought and of 

 work. Butler everywhere undervalues the important work of 

 elimination played by Natural Selection in its widest sense. 



The "conclusion" of Luck, or Cunning? shows a strong 

 advance in monistic views and a yet more marked develop- 



