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NATURE 



[7 an. 27, 1 88 1 



Old and New," should have inferred, as Mr. Butler ob- 

 serves, " what I was about," and forthwith began to 

 tremble in dismay that at last the Buftbon, the French 

 Lord Monboddo, and the forgotten minor poet had found 

 a champion to vindicate their claims. For now the hideous 

 corruption of the monster was about to be exposed who 

 had fed as a parasite upon these " dead men," till he 

 stands before our eyes bloated with honours unde- 

 served, and e.xtending "his power of fascination all 

 over Europe," not only " among the illiterate masses 

 .... but among experts and those most capable of 

 judging." No wonder then that Mr. Darwin, knowing 

 that at last a wise young judge had come to judgment 

 and to open the eyes of the "experts," should at once 

 have set about a boo'^: on his own grandfather to disarm 

 by anticipation the justice of the avenger. But natural 

 as all this unquestionably appears, it scarcely prepares 

 us, as it did not prepare Mr. Butler, for the depths of 

 deceit and depravity to which Mr. Darwin would "con- 

 descend " in order to thwart the arm of justice. Yet the 

 fact is that Mr. Dar.vin entered into a foul conspiracy 

 with Dr. Krause, the editor of Kos??ios, to slay by in- 

 famous means the righteous but damning work of Mr. 

 Butler. " The steps," as he points out, " are perfectly 

 clear." A whole number of Kosmos was devoted to Mr. 

 Darwm and his antecedents in literature, at about the 

 time when " Evolution Old and New " was " announced " 

 as in preparation. Soon afterwards arrangements were 

 made for a translation of Dr. Krause's essay, and were 

 completed by the end of April, 1879. Then " Evolution 

 Old and New " came out, was read by Dr. Krause, who 

 modified a passage or two in a manner that " he thought 

 would best meet ' Evolution Old and New,' and then 

 fell to condemning that book in a finale that was meant 

 to be crushing." So far all was fair enough; but now 

 comes the foul play. "Nothing was said about the re- 

 vision which Dr. Krause's work had undergone, but it 

 ■was expressly and particularly declared in the preface 

 that the English translation was an accurate version of 

 what appeared in the February number of Kostiws, 

 and no less expressly and particularly stated that 

 my book ["Evolution Old and New"] was published 

 subsequently to this. Both these statements are 

 untrue," &c. Having discovered this erroneous con- 

 spiracy, Mr. Butler wrote to Mr. Darivin for an 

 explanation. With almost incredible complacency this 

 arch-hypocrite had the hardihood to answer that it " is 

 so common a practice " to modify articles in translation 

 or republication, that " it never occurred to him to state 

 that the article had been modified," but that now he 

 would do so should there be a reprint. This, as Mr. 

 Butler says, "was going far beyond what was permissible 

 in honourable warfare, and it was time in the interests of 

 literary and scientific morality ... to appeal to public 

 opinion." He therefore communicated the facts to the 

 Athencruiu, expecting as a consequence to raise a " raging 

 controversy." Strange to say, however, the thing fell flat. 

 " Not only did Mr. Darwin remain perfectly quiet, but 

 all reviewers and litti^raieurs remained perfectly quiet 

 also. It seemed ... as if public opinion rather approved 

 of what Mr. Darwin had done." Nevertheless Mr. 

 Butler had a salve to his disappointment in that he saw 

 "the 'Life of Erasmus Darwin' more frequently and 



more prominently advertised than hitherto," and "pre- 

 sently saw Prof Huxley hastening to the rescue with his 

 lecture ' On the Coming of Age of the Origin of Species.' " 

 Truly, therefore, in some, if not quite in full measure, 

 Mr. Butler's "vanity," as he himself observes, "was well 

 fed by the whole transaction" ; for he saw by it that Mr. 

 Darwin "did not meet my work openly," and therefore 

 that Prof. Huxley had to "hasten to the rescue" with a 

 Royal Institution lecture. How sweet it doubtless was, if 

 Mr. Butler attended that lecture, to think what a large 

 proportion of the audience must have seen through the 

 whole plot! Enough, surely, to "feed" any ordinary 

 " vanity." But Mr. Butler's vanity is inordinate, and so 

 requires a more than ordinary amount of nourishment. 

 He therefore felt it desirable to give a detailed exposition 

 of the whole affair, and this we have in some charmingly 

 temperate and judicious chapters of "Op. 5." 



But to be serious. If in charity we could deem Mr. 

 Butler a lunatic, we should not be unprepared for any 

 aberration of common-sense that he might display. His 

 " Op. 5," however, affords ample evidence that he is not a 

 lunatic, but a man who wants to make a mark somewhere, 

 and whose common sense, if he ever had such a thing, 

 has been completely blinded by self-conceit. To us, no 

 less than to him, " the steps are perfectly clear." A 

 certain nobody writes a book accusing the most illustrious 

 man in his generation of burying the claims of certain 

 illustrious predecessors out of the sight of all men. In 

 the hope of gaining some notoriety by deserving and 

 perhaps receiving a contemptuous refutation from the 

 eminent man in question, he publishes this book, which, 

 if it deserved, serious consideration, would be not more 

 of an insult fto the particular man of science whom it 

 accuses of conscious and wholesale plagiarism, than it 

 would be to men of science in general for requiring such 

 elementary instruction on some of the most famous lite- 

 rature in science from an upstart ignoramus who, until 

 two or three years ago, "considered" himself "a 

 painter by profession." The eminent man however did 

 not administer the chastisement : hence these tears of 

 rage and chagrin ; hence too the morbid fancying of 

 the great man's discomfort — of the rallying round of 

 his friends, Krause's article, Huxley's lecture, &c., till 

 such an explosive state of feeling was fermented that 

 a mere omission to supply a reference to a book was 

 magnified into a dark conspiracy — notwithstanding that a 

 moment' s thought might have shown how such a con- 

 spiracy, even if attempted, would not have been worthy 

 of imbeciles. 



But, in conclusion, let us ask what this work on 

 "Evolution, Old and New" contained to produce, as its 

 author imagines, such a scare among the leading 

 "experts" in science. The work has already been re- 

 viewed in these columns (June 12, 1879) by Mr. Wallace, 

 who, while fully exposing its weakness, treats the author 

 with more consideration than he deserves— doubtless be- 

 cause Mr. Wallace is himself so personally associated 

 with the theory of "natural selection." It is therefore 

 sufficient for us here to say that " Evolution, Old and 

 New," conveys a confession on the part of its author that 

 until two or three years ago he was totally ignorant con- 

 cerning the histor>' of biological thought. His attention 

 havinc at length been directed to the fact that some of 



