An Introduction to a Biology 



forced to lay some stress on the existence of the other view 

 of evolution to which he makes no reference at all ; that 

 is, the spiritual (as we may call it) view of evolution of 

 Samuel Butler, as opposed to the mechanistic one of Charles 

 Darwin. The problem of evolution will be brought within 

 range of attack by the man who provides an answer to the 

 question, Which comes first, effort or structure ? Does a 

 dog scatter dust with his hind legs because in the past his- 

 tory of his race those dogs have been eliminated which 

 have varied in the minus direction with regard to the dust- 

 scraping capacity (which is presumably determined by the 

 molecular structure of a part of the brain) or for some reason 

 akin to that which prompts our sanitary habits (such as 

 they are) which we may perhaps never be able to under- 

 stand ? The mechanist may object that these feelings in 

 us are the outcome of the structure of a part of the brain, 

 so that everything is ultimately referable to structure. This 

 may be. But an effort (or other manifestation of the spirit) 

 is none the less an effort for being expressible in mechanical 

 terms. And the question of the future will be whether evolu- 

 tion has been brought about by effort or by the elimination 

 of fortuitous structural variations. 



SAMUEL BUTLER'S "LIFE AND HABIT " J 

 Perhaps the most conclusive proof, if one were needed, 

 of the arrogance of the human species is to be found in the 

 fact that the man who was the first to succeed in convincing 

 his fellow men of the truth of evolution was the man who 

 first refused to admit that the intelligence of the living 

 things themselves played any part whatsoever in bringing 

 about the changes to which evolution is due. Buff on per- 

 ceived the fact of evolution ; so did Erasmus Darwin ; so 

 did Lamarck ; but they all believed that the purposive 

 efforts of the living things themselves played at least some 



1 Book notice, English Review, March, 1911. 

 114 



