BIOLOGICAL WRrriNGS OF SAMUEL BUTLER 37 



passage as the following would have commended itself to 

 Butler's admiration : 



" All this indicates a definiteness and specific order in 

 heredity, and therefore in variation. This order cannot by 

 the nature of the case be dependent on Natural Selection for 

 its existence, but must be a consequence of the fundamental 

 chemical and physical nature of living things. The study of 

 Variation had from the first shown that an orderliness of this 

 kind was present. The bodies and properties of living things 

 are cosmic, not chaotic. No matter how low in the scale we 

 go, never do we find the slightest hint of a diminution in that 

 all-pervading orderliness, nor can we conceive an organism 

 existing for one moment in any other state." 



We have now before us the materials to determine the 

 problem of Butler's relation to biology and to biologists. He 

 was, we have seen, anticipated by Hering, but his attitude 

 was his own, fresh and original. He did not hamper his 

 exposition, like Hering, by a subsidiary hypothesis of vibra- 

 tions which may or may not be true, which burdens the theory 

 without giving it greater carrying power or persuasiveness, 

 which is based on no objective facts, and, as Semon has 

 practically demonstrated, is also needless for the detailed 

 working out of the theory. Butler failed to impress the 

 biologists of his day, even those on whom, like Romanes, he 

 might have reasonably counted for understanding and for 

 support. But he kept alive Hering's work when it bade 

 fair to sink into the limbo of obsolete hypotheses. To use 

 Oliver Wendell Holmes's phrase, he " depolarised " evolu- 

 tionary thought. We quote the words of a young biologist, 

 who, when an ardent and dogmatic Weismannist of the most 

 pronounced type, was induced to read Life and Habit: "The 

 book was to me a transformation and an inspiration." Such 

 learned writings as Semon's or Hering's could never produce 

 such an effect : they do not penetrate to the heart of man : they 

 cannot carry conviction to the intellect already filled full with 

 rival theories, and with the unreasoned faith that to-morrow 

 or next day a new discovery will obliterate all distinction 

 between Man and his makings. The mind must be open for 

 the reception of truth, for the rejection of prejudice ; and the 

 violence of a Samuel Butler may in the future, as in the past, 

 be needed to shatter the coat of mail forged by too exclusively 

 professional a training. 



