Life and Habit

by Samuel Butler

I cannot think that "natural selection," working upon small, fortuitous, indefinite, unintelligent variations, would produce the results we see around us. One wants something that will give a more definite aim to variations, and hence, at times, cause bolder leaps in advance. One cannot but doubt whether so many plants and animals would be being so continually saved "by the skin of their teeth"... -from "Lamarck and Mr. Darwin" George Bernard Shaw called him "the greatest English writer of the latter half of the nineteenth century." Samuel Butler, the son of an Anglican clergyman who grew up to be one of the most prominent freethinkers of the Victorian era, was a vocal apologist for theism, and his Life and Habit, published in 1877, is a beautifully written critique of Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection, one that laments its lack of call for a creative mind behind the evolution of life. This is a vital work for appreciating Butler's other criticisms of scientific rationalism, including his 1879 book Evolution, Old and New, as well as the evolution of the concept of evolution itself. Also available from Cosimo Butler's God the Known and God the Unknown. British author SAMUEL BUTLER (1835-1902) is best known for his satire Erehwon.

Genres: Nonfiction

324 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1878

About the author

For the author of Hudibras, see Samuel Butler.

Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works, including the Utopian satire Erewhon and the posthumous novel The Way of All Flesh, his two best-known works, but also extending to examinations of Christian orthodoxy, substantive studies of evolutionary thought, studies of Italian art, and works of literary history and criticism. Butler also made prose translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey which remain in use to this day.

See also: Samuel H. Butcher, Anglo-Irish classicist, who also undertook prose translations of Homer's works (in collaboration with Andrew Lang.

Reviews

[Jigar]

A forgotten relic among the attempts to explain evolution. Heavily referencing Darwin, but more often harking back to Lamarck, Butler believed that while natural selection explains why certain traits persist through generations it does not support random mutations as the source of variation. His own view was that variations were caused by design; and that this design is defined by a "memory" which may stretch generations.

Criticised by the scientific community of the time, and all but forgotten today, Butler himself admits that this is not a scientific treatise. There are, nevertheless, some interest excerpts which, although now proven incorrect, give some fascinating insights.

As a literary work, I found Life and Habit repetitive and verbose. As a book on science, the lack of sound logic or evidence leaves much to be desired. If you're interested in a summary of Butler's views, the final chapter provides a convenient synopsis. Unfortunately, I did not find this sufficiently enjoyable or informative to explore Butler's other works on evolution.

Selected quotes

Here Butler explains how sexual reproduction is favoured in order to correct unfavourable memories which may exist in one of the parents. Substitute memories with genes and you have the theory of preventing the effect of recessive genes in progeny through being overcome by dominant genes.

We should expect to find a predominance of sexual over asexual generation, in the arrangements of nature for continuing her various species, inasmuch as two heads are better than one, and a locus pœnitentiæ is thus given to the embryo - an opportunity of correcting the experience of one parent by that of the other.  And this is what the more intelligent embryos may be supposed to do; for there would seem little reason to doubt that there are clever embryos and stupid embryos, with better or worse memories, as the case may be, of how they dealt with their protoplasm before, and better or worse able to see how they can do better now; and that embryos differ as widely in intellectual and moral capacity, and in a general sense of the fitness of things, and of what will look well into the bargain, as those larger embryos - to wit, children - do.

Butler is adamant that infertile offspring are not caused by genetics but by conditions which may be out of tune with the offspring's memories. Of course, we know now how mistaken he was:-

After which, however, the conclusion arrived at is, that, “after all, the cause more probably lies in some imperfection in the original act of impregnation, causing the embryo to be imperfectly developed rather than in the conditions to which it is subsequently exposed.” A conclusion which I am not prepared to accept.

The concept of memories being the source of variation is taken a bit too far in this instance. Butler has failed to grasp the fact that food is broken down into nutritional components before being consumed by an animal:

Food, when sufficiently assimilated (the whole question turning upon what is “sufficiently”), becomes stored with all the experience and memories of the assimilating creature; corn becomes hen, and knows nothing but hen, when hen has eaten it.

Some of Butler's views would be considered racist today. In fact, it is likely more an ignorance of other customs or cultures, despite his own travels and wide sphere of learning:-

But if we turn from what “might” or what “would” happen to what “does” happen, we find that a few white families have nearly driven the Indian from the United States, the Australian natives from Australia, and the Maories from New Zealand.  True, these few families have been helped by immigration; but it will be admitted that this has only accelerated a result which would otherwise, none the less surely, have been effected.

[Lisa of Troy]

Part of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s personal library according to Scott Fitzgerald: Romantic and Realist by John Richard Kuehl 1958
*These were books NOT given to Princeton. They were returned to Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald’s daughter, France Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan

[Joshua Leach]

My thoughts: https://sixfootturkey.blogspot.com/20...