Mr. Butler's “Unconscious Memory”

Abstract

MR. BUTLER appears to have somewhat misunderstood the aim and scope of my review. He fays, “It is true I have attacked Mr. Darwin, but Mr. Romanes has done nothing to show that I was not warranted in doing so.” Why should Mr. Butler have expected any such consideration of his case from me? If I were to assault a man in the street I should not expect the policeman to show that I was not warranted in doing so; it would be for me to show that I was so warranted. Therefore, while acting the part of policeman in this matter, my only object was that which I stated, viz. the punishment of an offender, not the refutation of charges which I advisedly characterised as “preposterous, and indeed ridiculous.” Truly it would have been a senseless thing had I for a moment imagined that such charges called for anything like a defence of Mr. Darwin. If ever in the world's history there was a book which appealed to all classes of intelligent readers, that book is the “Origin of Species”; and never in the world's history has a book been more studiously criticised or produced a more tremendous change of thought. Can Mr. Butler therefore seriously believe, that after this book has thundered through the world for more than twenty years, it required him to show in what degree it had been anticipated by some of the most celebrated writers within the last two or three generations? Surely common modesty and common sense, were either present, might alike have dictated caution in attributing to all the world an ignorance such as his own, which could be “thrown off the scent of the earlier evolutionists” by anything that Mr. Darwin could say. The publication of the “Origin of Species” could only have had the effect, whether or not its author desired it, of directing renewed attention to the works of “the earlier evolutionists”; and therefore, to put it on no other grounds, it is difficult to imagine a case in which any intentional concealment of the claims of predecessors could well be more impolitic. But the simple fact is that these predecessors had no claims to be concealed, further than those mentioned in my previous communication; that is to say, while they unquestionably and notoriously believed in the fact of evolution, they had nothing which deserves to be called a theory of evolution. Therefore, when Mr. Butler asks of the opening passage in the “Origin of Species,” “What could..... more distinctly imply that the whole theory of evolution that follows was a growth in Mr. Darwin's own mind?” the answer simply is that this whole theory was a growth in Mr. Darwin's own mind. And if Mr. Butler has not judgment enough to distinguish between the scientific value of Mr. Darwin's work and that of “the earlier evolutionists,” at least he might pay sufficient deference to the judgment “of all Europe and those most capable of judging” to explain why it is that the work of all the earlier evolutionists proved barren, while the work of Mr. Darwin has produced results unparalleled in the history of thought.