SCIENCE UP TO DATE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16493, 7 March 1914, Page 8

SCIENCE UP TO DATE.

A NEW ZEALAND ANTI-DAR-WINIAN: SAMUEL BUTLER. (By. JAMES COLLIER.)

Samuel Butler, a satirist into whom the soul of the creator of “ Hudibras " might seem to have migrated, was a quaint, wistful figure in the London of the seventies. Of an evening, just after dinner, he might readily be found either in his rooms at Clifford’s Inn, or in the chambers of some briefless barrister in the Temple, delighting by his quiet humour, exploding paradoxes, and adventuring, not seldom, on serious discussion, in which he took a leading part. His last paradox . that memory recalls was the - exposition of a plan for eliminating death—by means of natural selection, if I rightly remember, but that seems unlikely m so envenomed a blood-hound of Darwinism.

His books resembled his life. They were compounded, in almost equal degrees, of antiquated theories and personal petulances. His conversation excited some resentment, by the wantonness of his paradoxes, and his speculative views were those of an amateur. Had Dr Hutchison Stirling, famed expositor of Hegel and assistant of Darwinism, any knowledge of science? asked Huxley one far-back gloomy afternoon at the .School of Mines in Jermvn Street. He was trained as a medical practitioner, it was replied; and the savant evidently regarded the “ training” as inadequate. Butler had no training at all, save in the Greek and Latin classics, and he,was dependent for his facts on the men he denounced.

GENESIS OF A DARWINIAN. The grandson of a great headmaster and a bishon. Butler was educated at an English University. In accordance with the traditions of his family, lie was destined for the church, and in 1858 he journeyed to London in order to seek admission to the clerical fold. A spirit of restlessness was already stirring within him, however, and instead of accepting it symbolically, as became a would-be shepherd of souls, he took literally the command of Jesus to Peter, “ Feed my sheep.” He voyaged to New Zealand, and out here he came to himself. He purchased apastoral station near the foothills of the Southern Alps, and in those awful solitudes he experienced his intellectual second birth. Living at a distance of eighteen miles from bis nearest neighbour and three days’ journey on horseback from the nearest bookseller’s shop, he knew nothing of what was going on in the great world. But not far away—perhaps that “ nearest neighbour ” —resided another pastoral man of letters, Sir Frederick Napier Broome, once a leader-writer on the “Times,” with his wife, who. as Lady Barker, was known as an accomplished daguerrotvpist of colonial life in South Africa and New Zealand. From Broome, it may be, Butler learned in 1860 of tbe “ Origin of Species,” which was published ir. • 1859, as he. was on his way out to New Zealand. He hastened to procure the fateful volume, which was big with great issues for him.

Leading the easy life of a sheepfarmer in solitary scenes, he ruminated over his “Darwin.” His imagination quickly caught fire from the grand conception' of organic development. He was wrapt up and carried a wav bv it. In 1861 or 1862 he published in a New Zenland journal a philosophical: dialogue on “Darwin and the ‘ Origin of Species.’ ” which lias been reprinted only within the last few years. Another, and more original article appeared in the. same organ, under the title. “ Darwin Among the Machines,” where he applied the theory of evolution to the growth of machines. SHAM DARWINISM. All the while it was a false Darwinism that he knew. All that he then learnt was the doctrine of development—the theory of the descent of species from .still earlier species, with fresh modifications in succeeding generations. Of natural selection, as the grand agency by moans of which those modifications had been 1 brought about, be then knew and learned nothing. Was- it otherwise with the great majority of readers of the book? To the day of Darwin’s death, and doubtless for long afterwards, even, the educated reader identified Darwinism with the doctrine of. descent alone, and by no means with the doctrine of natural selection. Yet this is what Darwinism really was. All else was subsidiary and subordinate.' One day Butler was to discover the error into which die had fallen, and the shock the discovery gave him was great. It- is, in fact, the key to his whole subsequent development. Meanwhile, he occupied himself with the new philosophy “ as continuously as other business would allow.” Ho was not content to assume, with Darwin, the existence of those germs from which the whole organic , world had been derived. He must- discover whence tbe germs came. They could not have come from another planet. They could not have been made by an anthropomorphic Creator. They must have been evolved out of nonliving elements—out of material stances and forces—in a manner analogous to the way man s body had been evolved. MAN A MECHANISM.

But if the germs were of material origin, the whole -organic framework might possibly be no more than an intricate mechanism. Man himself was conceivably a machine, and not a living being at all. From this point Butler made a fresh start. Conceiving man as a mechanism, he asked himself whether machines would ultimately become as complicated and in a manner as living as man. At that view he arrived in 1862 or 1563. and in June. 1863, 1m contributed to :< New Zealand journal an article on “ Darwin among the Machines.” In it he described how machines might become animate. NEW DEVELOPMENTS.

It is characteristic of Butler that he found this view amusing. Selfanuisemerit was. indeed, perhaps Ins primary object in pursuing a speculation or writing a book. But it was equally characteristic of his radically serious nature that he did. not remain at this point—the point of amusement, and he soon abandoned it. He sprang almost to the opposite extreme, and, on reflection, he advanced the view that machines are limbs which we ourselves have made and carry about with us instead of incorporating them with ourselves. This view he embodied in a second article in the same New Zealand journal. HIS BIOGRAPHY.

So far and no further had Butler got while he remained in New Zealand. Meanwhile, in 1864, ho withdrew from the business of feeding sheep, sold his station, and returned to London with the competence thus earned. (In my book, “The Pastoral Ago in Australasia,” I have written of Butler as a cadet on a Canterbury station. This appears to be an error.) In London he led the life of

7 ' " -%-l a recluse, wrote many volumes, pur-.; | sued many researches, engaged in. controversies, and built up a scientific' philosophy that is now attracting more attention than it received in his life-' time. V.. ;

A few dates will punctuate his bio-' graphv. In 1871 he published his utopia, “Erewhon,” which is still read. In 1873 he published “The Fair ♦Haven,” the expansion of (a theological pamphlet written in New, Zealand. In 1874 he dedicated himself to the calling of a painter, aii<j[ enjoyed the distinction of having ia' picture hung at the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy, but he never attained success as an artist. In 1883 he devoted himself to the study ofmusic, especially that of Handel, and in. 1888 he,composed a .cantata called! “Narcissus.” lii 1896 he wrote a. biography of his father, and in the following year ho contended that a Greek-Italian woman was the author of the “ Odyssey.” He translated.the“lliad” and the “Odyssey” into English prose, and in 1901 he revised “Erewhon,” which had-been translated into Dutch and German. On Jun* 18, 1902, he died. SELF-MAKING. :f' Seven or eight years after he wrote the New Zealand articles he was composing the utopia called “Erewhon,? and he then held ■ tenaciously to the view last stated, but three years later still, after he hud written “ The Fair Haven,” he advanced t-o the view that limbs are machines, which we ourselves have made. Here at last, after several waverings, lie gained possession of the key to all his later specular tions.

But how came we to make limbs without knowing anything about \i? By Habit. Habit is at. the bottom of all the facts of heredity. "We ar : e one and the same persons as our ancestors and as the animals from which we are descended. All our embryonic development, all our instinctive, actions, in fact, all actions whatever by means of which our bodily frame is built' up, are repetitions of actions done' in recent or in far-back years by our-' selves at a time when we were diir parents or our ancestors, whether liu-' man or animal. :.'44- ; “LIFE AND HABIT.”

This was the main thesis of Butler’s new book, “Life and Habit,” which put forward four main propositions i (1) the personal identity of parents and offspring; (2) the resemblance in the offspring of certain things done by its ancestors, that is, by itself; (3) the latent character of that resemblance. till kindled by associated ideas; and ! (4) the unconsciousness of such habits. ; Conceived in Canada in 1874-5, it-; was completed in 1876 on his return' to England. Butler himself admits —and the admission is characteristic—that when he began to write.the book,} he “ did not seriously believe in, its central doctrine. But he -Soon: grew; fascinated by the pebble he had picked ' up. In its radiance the world changed its aspect. The pebble proved to be t a talisman that opened pp vistas undreamed of .before.’ Just so had it happened with" “Erewhon.” . He began it as a skit, , and ended it- as a gospel. Just so, perhaps, did the author of “Looking Back’’-begin as a play of fantasy the world-famous book that lie ended as a vision. DISILLUSIONED.

It was something more than a play! turned earnest; it was a comedy coa-i verted into tragedy. Butler’s aocount i of the smashing of the illusion. is I dramatic. While the book was being! written, a friend gave him a copy of Mivart’s “ Genesis of Species,” and from the citation there of a single forgotten or unobserved passage, in the “Origin of Species” he received tho shock of His life, and there stood revealed to him the impassable gulf between Darwin and himself. The hour of disenchantment had come. He was ono of the lost, then? the follower of an exploded charlatan? “I am among the damned,” he confessed. For the first time Butler realised that..ho had never truly understood Darwin’s theory. The Darwin that he imagined that he knew was really Lamarck. ... i Knocked down for a time, he (like Silencer after an encounter with Huxley) was soon on his feet again and. ready for battle. His seyenteeftyears’ old enthusiasm for Darwin? fadfed'.; like a mist at sunrise, and was con- I verted into a fanatical hatred. . For; the rest of his days he was a Darwinwj niastix of the most, ferocious, kind;; “ the most brilliant of Darwin’s op-j ponents,” Professor Bateson called him,; but he was far more than 'that; ho was an infuriated opponent; who treated Darwin as the assassin of his ancestor and his predecessors, and prq-?’ sented himself as tlio avenger of Buf- 1 . foil, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck. Some one,--he hoped,- would-one-day t arise as his own avenger, like the Vir*\.i gilian hero cited by Mr Gladstone inx' a memorable peroration. . 2

HIS SUCCESS? ‘ ' , • . Has. his dying, wish been gratified ?j' Yes and ho, we" might answer. ; ; His ; central doctrine has" [found ..a..//large. measure of acceptance, less- ; not as preached by hini than as argued by, accredited naturalists. That the struc-j ■ ture of a species lias been built up by j habits is the doctrine of Lamarck and! Spencer. That habit, again, rests cn j; memory, is a view advocated first ini 1870 by Professor Ewald Hering, ofj Vienna, next originally expounded byj i Haeckel, in 1875, then closely reasoned; ■ out by Hering in 1876, and almost sim-i : ultaneously elaborated by Butler. j-j Is it well founded? That depends on ’ the phraseology employed to describe! ' it. If we regard it, with Hering, as aif general property of organic matter,! .? “in virtue of which certain processes j : in the living being leave effects behind; > them that facilitate the repetition of j the processes,” there can be no possible; objection to it. We may even go as 1 far as the German chemist, Ostwald, j L who affirms that “in its more general! forms it effects adaptation arid hered-1 ’• itv, in its highest development it produces the conscious memory.” But all these writers, save possibly Ostwald,!'! use the term, memory, for the whole of : the silli-conscious processes through!] which the animal structure is built up, i and they can only mean by it that ani-l mals consciously thus build up their ! bodies. Butler, in particular, expressly says that a plant or animal of any species consciously provides itself with | ail organ or a function, because it remembered that this was done by a previous. member of the same species'—( that is. by itself in a previous state of \’\ existence. 1

AY hat can we say to such a conten t-ion ? Only “non liquet.” It is/ wholly unproved; it is totally improb-i uule. Take a single example. . ./.v : - j Butler, endeavouring to explain the” sterility of hybrids, asserts that ifcf arises from a confusion of memories in] the two alien individuals." What sor*± of an explanation is that? It does nojj? seem to lie on all fours with tho thing;! to be explained. Now take the explan-, ation offered by one who was in sym-i pa thy with Butler—Professor Bateson.) According to him, failure on the part) of the germinal cells to divide (a mer-j istic phenomenon) is in such,eases the! immediate cause of sterility. Arid lie ■ states the factors that arrest or pre-;'. vent cell division. ' T cannot help thinking that Butlerconfused the physical with the mental process. External stimuli leave onft organisms an “engrain” (a trace ofs: record), and this physical basis of mem-fe ory, and hence of thought, almost co-l), incidcs with the most elementary reac-:f tion. In substance, however, he isjf, right, and Bergson, too, holds ‘-that tv memory is the very baso of our •on.-j/-%cious existence. • V.