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Luck or Cunning? By: Samuel Butler (1835-1902) |
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LUCK, OR CUNNING AS THE MAIN MEANS OF ORGANIC MODIFICATION
NOTE This second edition of Luck, or Cunning? is a reprint of the first
edition, dated 1887, but actually published in November, 1886. The
only alterations of any consequence are in the Index, which has been
enlarged by the incorporation of several entries made by the author
in a copy of the book which came into my possession on the death of
his literary executor, Mr. R. A. Streatfeild. I thank Mr. G. W.
Webb, of the University Library, Cambridge, for the care and skill
with which he has made the necessary alterations; it was a
troublesome job because owing to the re setting, the pagination was
no longer the same. Luck, or Cunning? is the fourth of Butler's evolution books; it was
followed in 1890 by three articles in The Universal Review entitled
"The Deadlock in Darwinism" (republished in The Humour of Homer),
after which he published no more upon that subject. In this book, as he says in his Introduction, he insists upon two
main points: (1) the substantial identity between heredity and
memory, and (2) the reintroduction of design into organic
development; and these two points he treats as though they have
something of that physical life with which they are so closely
associated. He was aware that what he had to say was likely to
prove more interesting to future generations than to his immediate
public, "but any book that desires to see out a literary three score
years and ten must offer something to future generations as well as
to its own." By next year one half of the three score years and ten
will have passed, and the new generation by their constant enquiries
for the work have already begun to show their appreciation of
Butler's method of treating the subject, and their readiness to
listen to what was addressed to them as well as to their fathers. HENRY FESTING JONES.
March, 1920. AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION This book, as I have said in my concluding chapter, has turned out
very different from the one I had it in my mind to write when I
began it. It arose out of a conversation with the late Mr. Alfred
Tylor soon after his paper on the growth of trees and protoplasmic
continuity was read before the Linnean Society that is to say, in
December, 1884 and I proposed to make the theory concerning the
subdivision of organic life into animal and vegetable, which I have
broached in my concluding chapter, the main feature of the book.
One afternoon, on leaving Mr. Tylor's bedside, much touched at the
deep disappointment he evidently felt at being unable to complete
the work he had begun so ably, it occurred to me that it might be
some pleasure to him if I promised to dedicate my own book to him,
and thus, however unworthy it might be, connect it with his name.
It occurred to me, of course, also that the honour to my own book
would be greater than any it could confer, but the time was not one
for balancing considerations nicely, and when I made my suggestion
to Mr. Tylor on the last occasion that I ever saw him, the manner in
which he received it settled the question. If he had lived I should
no doubt have kept more closely to my plan, and should probably
have been furnished by him with much that would have enriched the
book and made it more worthy of his acceptance; but this was not to
be. In the course of writing I became more and more convinced that no
progress could be made towards a sounder view of the theory of
descent until people came to understand what the late Mr. Charles
Darwin's theory of natural selection amounted to, and how it was
that it ever came to be propounded. Until the mindless theory of
Charles Darwinian natural selection was finally discredited, and a
mindful theory of evolution was substituted in its place, neither
Mr. Tylor's experiments nor my own theories could stand much chance
of being attended to. I therefore devoted myself mainly, as I had
done in "Evolution Old and New," and in "Unconscious Memory," to
considering whether the view taken by the late Mr... Continue reading book >>
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