BIOLOGICAL WRITINGS OF SAMUEL BUTLER 29 



by as much small remedial modification as was found practic- 

 able : so that when a change does come it comes by way of 

 revolution. Or, again (only that it comes to much the same 

 thing), it may be compared to one of those happy thoughts 

 which sometimes come to us unbidden after we have been 

 thinking for a long time what to do, or how to arrange our 

 ideas, and have yet been unable to arrive at any conclusion " 

 (pp. 14, i5).i 



We come to another order of mind in Hans Driesch. At the 

 time he began his work biologists were largely busy in a region 

 indicated by Darwin, and roughly mapped out by Haeckel — that 

 of phylogeny. From the facts of development of the individual, 

 from the comparison of fossils in successive strata, they set 

 to work at the construction of pedigrees, and strove to bring 

 into line the principles of classification with the more or less 

 hypothetical " stem-trees." Driesch considered this futile, since 

 we never could reconstruct from such evidence anything certain 

 in the history of the past. He therefore asserted that a more 

 complete knowledge of the physics and chemistry of the organic 

 world might give a scientific explanation of the phenomena, and 

 maintained that the proper work of the biologist was to deepen 

 our knowledge in these respects. He embodied his views, 

 seeking an explanation on these lines, filling up gaps and tracing 

 projected roads along lines of probable truth in his Analytisclie 

 Theorie der organische Entwickliing. But his own work con- 

 vinced him of the hopelessness of the task he had undertaken 

 and he has become as strenuous a vitalist as Butler, The most 

 complete statement of his present views is to be found in The 

 Philosophy of Life (1908-9), being the Gifford Lectures for 1907-8. 

 Herein he postulates a quality (" psychoid ") in all living beings, 

 directing energy and matter for the purpose of the organism, 

 and to this he applies the Aristotelian designation ** Entelechy. 

 The question of the transmission of acquired characters is re- 

 garded as doubtful, and he does not emphasise — if he accepts — 

 the doctrine of continuous personality. His early youthful 

 impatience with descent theories and hypotheses has, however, 

 disappeared. 



In the next work the influence of Hering and Butler is 

 definitely present and recognised. In 1906 Signor Eugenio 



' Mr. H. Testing Jones first directed my attention to these passages and their 

 bearing on the Mutation Theory. 



