LIFE AND HABIT ng 



powers, and so species will get further and further apart." 

 The " bad " so we are left to infer, are left behind or eliminated. 

 In the place of Darwin's statement that although he (Darwin) 

 sees no good evidence of the existence in organic beings of a 

 tendency towards progressive development, yet this necessarily 

 follows through the continued action of natural selection, 

 Butler will have it simply that plants and animals have only 

 an innate power to vary slightly in accordance with changed 

 conditions. Butler further says that they have an innate 

 capability of being affected both in structure and instinct, by 

 causes similar to those which we observe to affect ourselves. 

 The case of Lamarckian " appetency " is put more forcibly still 

 in the following passage, which may be said to foreshadow the 

 coming of a theory of conduct pure and simple : 



One neither finds nor expects much a priori knowledge, whether in man 

 or beast ; but one does find some little in the beginnings of, and through- 

 out the development of, every habit, at the commencement of which, 

 and on every successive improvement in which, deductive and inductive 

 methods are, as it were, fused. Thus the effect where we can best watch 

 its causes, seems mainly produced by a desire for a definite object in 

 some cases a serious and sensible desire, in others an idle one, in others 

 again, a mistaken one ; and sometimes by a. blunder which, in the hands 

 of an otherwise able creature, has turned up trumps. In wild animals 

 and plants the divergences have been accumulated, if they answered to 

 the prolonged desires of the creature itself, and if these desires were to its 

 true ultimate good ; with plants or animals- under domestication they have 

 been accumulated if they answered a little to the original wishes of the 

 creature, and much to the wishes of man. As long as man continued 

 to like them, they would be advantageous to the creature ; when he 

 tired of them, they would be disadvantageous to it, and would accumulate 

 no longer. Surely the results produced in the adaptation of structure 

 to need among many plants and insects are better accounted for on this, 

 which I suppose to be Lamarck's view, namely, by supposing that what 

 goes on amongst ourselves has gone on amongst all creatures, than by 

 supposing that these adaptations are the results of perfectly blind and 

 unintelligent variations. 



What emerges is this : the accumulation of variations is 

 according to " values " rather than " wishes." The clause 

 " if these desires were to its ultimate good " gives away the case 

 for mere " wishes." Moreover, if, by hypothesis, we are to credit 

 creatures with little a priori knowledge, we could scarcely credit 

 them with profound enough wishes to procure the great end of 

 their " true ultimate good." Something bigger than mere 

 wishing is wanted to obtain this. And this something, I contend. 



