Transcribed from the 1914 A. C. Fifield edition by David
Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

CANTERBURY PIECES

By
Samuel Butler
Author of “Erewhon,”
“The Way of All Flesh,” etc.

Edited by R. A. Streatfeild

London: A. C.
Fifield
1914

CONTENTS

p.
149Darwin on the Origin of Species

Prefatory Note

As the following dialogue
embodies the earliest fruits of Butler’s study of the works
of Charles Darwin, with whose name his own was destined in
later years to be so closely connected, and thus possesses
an interest apart from its intrinsic merit, a few words as
to the circumstances in which it was published will not be out of
place.

Butler arrived in New Zealand in October, 1859, and
about the same time Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species was
published.  Shortly afterwards the book came into
Butler’s hands.  He seems to have read it
carefully, and meditated upon it.  The result
of his meditations took the shape of the following dialogue,
which was published on 20 December, 1862, in
the Press which had been
started in the town of Christ Church in May, 1861. 
The dialogue did not by any means pass unnoticed. 
On the 17th of January, 1863, a leading
article (of course unsigned) appeared in the
Press, under the title
“Barrel-Organs,” discussing Darwin’s
theories, and incidentally referring to Butler’s
dialogue.  A reply to this article, signed
A.M., appeared on the 21st of February, and
the correspondence was continued until the 22nd of
June, 1863.  The dialogue itself, which was
unearthed from the early files of the Press, mainly owing to the exertions of
Mr. Henry Festing Jones, was reprinted, together
with the correspondence that followed its publication, in
the Press of June 8
and 15, 1912.  Soon after the original appearance
of Butler’s dialogue a copy of it fell into the hands of
Charles Darwin, possibly sent to him by a friend in New
Zealand.  Darwin was sufficiently struck by it to
forward it to the editor of some magazine, which has not
been identified, with the following letter:—

Down,
Bromley, Kent, S.E.
March 24 [1863].

(Private).

Mr. Darwin takes the liberty to send by this post to the
Editor a New Zealand newspaper for the very improbable chance of
the Editor having some spare space to reprint a Dialogue on
Species.  This Dialogue, written by some
[sic] quite unknown to Mr. Darwin, is remarkable
from its spirit and from giving so clear and accurate a view of
Mr. D. [sic] theory.  It is also
remarkable from being published in a colony exactly 12
years old, in which it might have [sic]
thought only material interests would have been
regarded.

The autograph of this letter was purchased from Mr.
Tregaskis by Mr. Festing Jones, and subsequently presented
by him to the Museum at Christ Church.  The letter
cannot be dated with certainty, but since Butler’s
dialogue was published in December, 1862, and it is at
least probable that the copy of the Press which contained it was sent to
Darwin shortly after it appeared, we may conclude with
tolerable certainty that the letter was written in March,
1863.  Further light is thrown on the controversy by a
correspondence which took place between Butler and Darwin in
1865, shortly after Butler’s return to
England.  During that year Butler had published a
pamphlet entitled The Evidence for the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ as given by the Four Evangelists
critically examined, of which he afterwards
incorporated the substance into The Fair
Haven.  Butler sent a copy of this pamphlet to
Darwin, and in due course received the following
reply:—

Down,
Bromley, Kent.
September 30 [1865].

My dear Sir,—I am much obliged to you for so
kindly sending me your Evidences, etc.  We
have read it with much interest.  It seems to me
written with much force, vigour, and clearness;
and the main argument to me is quite new.  I
particularly agree with all you say in your preface.

I do not know whether you intend to return to New
Zealand, and, if you are inclined to write,
I should much like to know what your future plans are.

My health has been so bad during the last five months that
I have been confined to my bedroom.  Had it been
otherwise I would have asked you if you could have spared the
time to have paid us a visit; but this at present is
impossible, and I fear will be so for some time.

With my best thanks for your present,

I remain,

My dear Sir,

Yours very faithfully,
Charles Darwin.

To this letter Butler replied as follows:—

15 Clifford’s
Inn, E.C.
October 1st, 1865.

Dear Sir,—I knew you were ill and I never
meant to give you the fatigue of writing to me. 
Please do not trouble yourself to do so again.  As
you kindly ask my plans I may say that, though I very
probably may return to New Zealand in three or four years,
I have no intention of doing so before that time. 
My study is art, and anything else I may indulge in is
only by-play; it may cause you some little wonder that at
my age I should have started as an art student, and I may
perhaps be permitted to explain that this was always my wish for
years, that I had begun six years ago, as soon as
ever I found that I could not conscientiously take orders;
my father so strongly disapproved of the idea that I gave it
up and went out to New Zealand, stayed there for five
years, worked like a common servant, though on a
run of my own, and sold out little more than a year
ago, thinking that prices were going to
fall—which they have since done.  Being
then rather at a loss what to do and my capital being all locked
up, I took the opportunity to return to my old plan,
and have been studying for the last ten years
unremittingly.  I hope that in three or four years
more I shall be able to go on very well by myself, and
then I may go back to New Zealand or no as circumstances shall
seem to render advisable.  I must apologise for so
much detail, but hardly knew how to explain myself without
it.

I always delighted in your Origin
of Species as soon as I saw it out in New
Zealand—not as knowing anything whatsoever of
natural history, but it enters into so many deeply
interesting questions, or rather it suggests so many,
that it thoroughly fascinated me.  I therefore
feel all the greater pleasure that my pamphlet should please
you, however full of errors.

The first dialogue on the Origin which I wrote in the Press called forth a contemptuous
rejoinder from (I believe) the Bishop of
Wellington—(please do not mention the name,
though I think that at this distance of space and time I might
mention it to yourself) I answered it with the
enclosed, which may amuse you.  I assumed
another character because my dialogue was in my hearing very
severely criticised by two or three whose opinion I thought worth
having, and I deferred to their judgment in my
next.  I do not think I should do so now. 
I fear you will be shocked at an appeal to the periodicals
mentioned in my letter, but they form a very staple
article of bush diet, and we used to get a good deal of
superficial knowledge out of them.  I feared to go in
too heavy on the side of the Origin, because I thought that,
having said my say as well as I could, I had better now
take a less impassioned tone; but I was really exceedingly
angry.

Please do not trouble yourself to answer this, and
believe me,

Yours most sincerely,

S. Butler.

This elicited a second letter from Darwin:—

Down,
Bromley, Kent.
October 6.

My dear Sir,—I thank you sincerely for your
kind and frank letter, which has interested me
greatly.  What a singular and varied career you have
already run.  Did you keep any journal or notes in
New Zealand?  For it strikes me that with your rare
powers of writing you might make a very interesting work
descriptive of a colonist’s life in New Zealand.

I return your printed letter, which you might like
to keep.  It has amused me, especially the
part in which you criticise yourself.  To appreciate
the letter fully I ought to have read the bishop’s
letter, which seems to have been very rich.

You tell me not to answer your note, but I could not
resist the wish to thank you for your letter.

With every good wish, believe me, my dear
Sir,

Yours sincerely,
Ch. Darwin.

It is curious that in this correspondence Darwin makes no
reference to the fact that he had already had in his possession a
copy of Butler’s dialogue and had endeavoured to induce the
editor of an English periodical to reprint it.  It is
possible that we have not here the whole of the correspondence
which passed between Darwin and Butler at this period, and
this theory is supported by the fact that Butler seems to take
for granted that Darwin knew all about the appearance of the
original dialogue on the Origin of
Species in the Press.  Enough, however,
has been given to explain the correspondence which the
publication of the dialogue occasioned.  I do not
know what authority Butler had for supposing that Charles John
Abraham, Bishop of Wellington, was the author of
the article entitled “Barrel-Organs,”
and the “Savoyard” of the subsequent
controversy.  However, at that time Butler was
deep in the p.
155counsels of the Press, and he may have received private
information on the subject.  Butler’s own
reappearance over the initials A.M. is sufficiently explained in
his letter to Darwin.

It is worth observing that Butler appears in the dialogue
and ensuing correspondence in a character very different from
that which he was later to assume.  Here we have him
as an ardent supporter of Charles Darwin, and adopting a
contemptuous tone with regard to the claims of Erasmus Darwin to
have sown the seed which was afterwards raised to maturity by his
grandson.  It would be interesting to know if it was
this correspondence that first turned Butler’s attention
seriously to the works of the older evolutionists and ultimately
led to the production of Evolution, Old and
New, in which the indebtedness of Charles Darwin to
Erasmus Darwin, Buffon and Lamarck is demonstrated with
such compelling force.

A Dialogue

[From the Press, 20
December, 1862.]

F.  So you have finished Darwin?  Well, how did you
like him?

C.  You cannot expect me to like him.  He is so hard
and logical, and he treats his subject with such an intensity of
dry reasoning without giving himself the loose rein for a single
moment from one end of the book to the other, that I must confess
I have found it a great effort to read him through.

F.  But I fancy that, if you are to be candid, you will
admit that the fault lies rather with yourself than with the
book.  Your knowledge of natural history is so superficial
that you are constantly baffled by terms of which you do not
understand the meaning, and in which you consequently lose all
interest.  I admit, however, that the book is hard and
laborious reading; and, moreover, that the writer appears to have
predetermined from the commencement to reject all ornament, and
simply to argue from beginning to end, from point to point, till
he conceived that he had made his case sufficiently clear.

C.  I agree with you, and I do not like his book partly
on that very account.  He seems to have no eye but for the
single point at which he is aiming.

F.  But is not that a great virtue in a writer?

C.  A great virtue, but a cold and hard one.

F.  In my opinion it is a grave and wise one. 
Moreover, I conceive that the judicial calmness which so strongly
characterises the whole book, the absence of all passion, the air
of extreme and anxious caution which pervades it throughout, are
rather the result of training and artificially acquired
self-restraint than symptoms of a cold and unimpassioned nature;
at any rate, whether the lawyer-like faculty of swearing both
sides of a question and attaching the full value to both is
acquired or natural in Darwin’s case, you will admit that
such a habit of mind is essential for any really valuable and
scientific investigation.

C.  I admit it.  Science is all head—she has
no heart at all.

F.  You are right.  But a man of science may be a
man of other things besides science, and though he may have, and
ought to have no heart during a scientific investigation, yet
when he has once come to a conclusion he may be hearty enough in
support of it, and in his other capacities may be of as warm a
temperament as even you can desire.

C.  I tell you I do not like the book.

F.  May I catechise you a little upon it?

C.  To your heart’s content.

F.  Firstly, then, I will ask you what is the one great
impression that you have derived from reading it; or, rather,
what do you think to be the main impression that Darwin wanted
you to derive?

C.  Why, I should say some such thing as the
following—that men are descended from monkeys, and monkeys
from something else, and so on back to dogs and horses and
hedge-sparrows and pigeons and cinipedes (what is a cinipede?)
and cheesemites, and then through the plants down to
duckweed.

F.  You express the prevalent idea concerning the book,
which as you express it appears nonsensical enough.

C.  How, then, should you express it yourself?

F.  Hand me the book and I will read it to you through
from beginning to end, for to express it more briefly than Darwin
himself has done is almost impossible.

C.  That is nonsense; as you asked me what impression I
derived from the book, so now I ask you, and I charge you to
answer me.

F.  Well, I assent to the justice of your demand, but I
shall comply with it by requiring your assent to a few principal
statements deducible from the work.

C.  So be it.

F.  You will grant then, firstly, that all plants and
animals increase very rapidly, and that unless they were in some
manner checked, the world would soon be overstocked.  Take
cats, for instance; see with what rapidity they breed on the
different runs in this province where there is little or nothing
to check them; or even take the more slowly breeding sheep, and
see how soon 500 ewes become 5000 sheep under favourable
circumstances.  Suppose this sort of thing to go on for a
hundred million years or so, and where would be the standing room
for all the different plants and animals that would be now
existing, did they not materially check each other’s
increase, or were they not liable in some way to be checked by
other causes?  Remember the quail; how plentiful they were
until the cats came with the settlers from Europe.  Why were
they so abundant?  Simply because they had plenty to eat,
and could get sufficient shelter from the hawks to multiply
freely.  The cats came, and tussocks stood the poor little
creatures in but poor stead.  The cats increased and
multiplied because they had plenty of food and no natural enemy
to check them.  Let them wait a year or two, till they have
materially reduced the larks also, as they have long since
reduced the quail, and let them have to depend solely upon
occasional dead lambs and sheep, and they will find a certain
rather formidable natural enemy called Famine rise slowly but
inexorably against them and slaughter them wholesale.  The
first proposition then to which I demand your assent is that all
plants and animals tend to increase in a high geometrical ratio;
that they all endeavour to get that which is necessary for their
own welfare; that, as unfortunately there are conflicting
interests in Nature, collisions constantly occur between
different animals and plants, whereby the rate of increase of
each species is very materially checked.  Do you admit
this?

C.  Of course; it is obvious.

F.  You admit then that there is in Nature a perpetual
warfare of plant, of bird, of beast, of fish, of reptile; that
each is striving selfishly for its own advantage, and will get
what it wants if it can.

C.  If what?

F.  If it can.  How comes it then that sometimes it
cannot?  Simply because all are not of equal strength, and
the weaker must go to the wall.

C.  You seem to gloat over your devilish statement.

F.  Gloat or no gloat, is it true or no?  I am not
one of those

“Who would unnaturally better Nature
By making out that that which is, is not.”

If the law of Nature is “struggle,” it is better
to look the matter in the face and adapt yourself to the
conditions of your existence.  Nature will not bow to you,
neither will you mend matters by patting her on the back and
telling her that she is not so black as she is painted.  My
dear fellow, my dear sentimental friend, do you eat roast beef or
roast mutton?

C.  Drop that chaff and go back to the matter in
hand.

F.  To continue then with the cats.  Famine comes
and tests them, so to speak; the weaker, the less active, the
less cunning, and the less enduring cats get killed off, and only
the strongest and smartest cats survive; there will be no
favouritism shown to animals in a state of Nature; they will be
weighed in the balance, and the weight of a hair will sometimes
decide whether they shall be found wanting or no.  This
being the case, the cats having been thus naturally culled and
the stronger having been preserved, there will be a gradual
tendency to improve manifested among the cats, even as among our
own mobs of sheep careful culling tends to improve the flock.

C.  This, too, is obvious.

F.  Extend this to all animals and plants, and the same
thing will hold good concerning them all.  I shall now
change the ground and demand assent to another statement. 
You know that though the offspring of all plants and animals is
in the main like the parent, yet that in almost every instance
slight deviations occur, and that sometimes there is even
considerable divergence from the parent type.  It must also
be admitted that these slight variations are often, or at least
sometimes, capable of being perpetuated by inheritance. 
Indeed, it is only in consequence of this fact that our sheep and
cattle have been capable of so much improvement.

C.  I admit this.

F.  Then the whole matter lies in a nutshell. 
Suppose that hundreds of millions of years ago there existed upon
this earth a single primordial form of the very lowest life, or
suppose that three or four such primordial forms existed. 
Change of climate, of food, of any of the circumstances which
surrounded any member of this first and lowest class of life
would tend to alter it in some slight manner, and the alteration
would have a tendency to perpetuate itself by inheritance. 
Many failures would doubtless occur, but with the lapse of time
slight deviations would undoubtedly become permanent and
inheritable, those alone being perpetuated which were beneficial
to individuals in whom they appeared.  Repeat the process
with each deviation and we shall again obtain divergences (in the
course of ages) differing more strongly from the ancestral form,
and again those that enable their possessor to struggle for
existence most efficiently will be preserved.  Repeat this
process for millions and millions of years, and, as it is
impossible to assign any limit to variability, it would seem as
though the present diversities of species must certainly have
come about sooner or later, and that other divergences will
continue to come about to the end of time.  The great agent
in this development of life has been competition.  This has
culled species after species, and secured that those alone should
survive which were best fitted for the conditions by which they
found themselves surrounded.  Endeavour to take a
bird’s-eye view of the whole matter.  See battle after
battle, first in one part of the world, then in another,
sometimes raging more fiercely and sometimes less; even as in
human affairs war has always existed in some part of the world
from the earliest known periods, and probably always will
exist.  While a species is conquering in one part of the
world it is being subdued in another, and while its conquerors
are indulging in their triumph down comes the fiat for their
being culled and drafted out, some to life and some to death, and
so forth ad infinitum.

C.  It is very horrid.

F.  No more horrid than that you should eat roast mutton
or boiled beef.

C.  But it is utterly subversive of Christianity; for if
this theory is true the fall of man is entirely fabulous; and if
the fall, then the redemption, these two being inseparably bound
together.

F.  My dear friend, there I am not bound to follow
you.  I believe in Christianity, and I believe in
Darwin.  The two appear irreconcilable.  My answer to
those who accuse me of inconsistency is, that both being
undoubtedly true, the one must be reconcilable with the other,
and that the impossibility of reconciling them must be only
apparent and temporary, not real.  The reconciliation will
never be effected by planing a little off the one and a little
off the other and then gluing them together with glue. 
People will not stand this sort of dealing, and the rejection of
the one truth or of the other is sure to follow upon any such
attempt being persisted in.  The true course is to use the
freest candour in the acknowledgment of the difficulty; to
estimate precisely its real value, and obtain a correct knowledge
of its precise form.  Then and then only is there a chance
of any satisfactory result being obtained.  For unless the
exact nature of the difficulty be known first, who can attempt to
remove it?  Let me re-state the matter once again.  All
animals and plants in a state of Nature are undergoing constant
competition for the necessaries of life.  Those that can
hold their ground hold it; those that cannot hold it are
destroyed.  But as it also happens that slight changes of
food, of habit, of climate, of circumjacent accident, and so
forth, produce a slight tendency to vary in the offspring of any
plant or animal, it follows that among these slight variations
some may be favourable to the individual in whom they appear, and
may place him in a better position than his fellows as regards
the enemies with whom his interests come into collision.  In
this case he will have a better chance of surviving than his
fellows; he will thus stand also a better chance of continuing
the species, and in his offspring his own slight divergence from
the parent type will be apt to appear.  However slight the
divergence, if it be beneficial to the individual it is likely to
preserve the individual and to reappear in his offspring, and
this process may be repeated ad infinitum.  Once
grant these two things, and the rest is a mere matter of time and
degree.  That the immense differences between the camel and
the pig should have come about in six thousand years is not
believable; but in six hundred million years it is not
incredible, more especially when we consider that by the
assistance of geology a very perfect chain has been formed
between the two.  Let this instance suffice.  Once
grant the principles, once grant that competition is a great
power in Nature, and that changes of circumstances and habits
produce a tendency to variation in the offspring (no matter how
slight such variation may be), and unless you can define the
possible limit of such variation during an infinite series of
generations, unless you can show that there is a limit, and that
Darwin’s theory over-steps it, you have no right to reject
his conclusions.  As for the objections to the theory,
Darwin has treated them with admirable candour, and our time is
too brief to enter into them here.  My recommendation to you
is that you should read the book again.

C.  Thank you, but for my own part I confess to caring
very little whether my millionth ancestor was p. 164a gorilla
or no; and as Darwin’s book does not please me, I shall not
trouble myself further about the matter.

Barrel-Organs

[From the Press, 17 January,
1863.]

Dugald Stewart in his Dissertation on the Progress of
Metaphysics says: “On reflecting on the repeated
reproduction of ancient paradoxes by modern authors one is almost
tempted to suppose that human invention is limited, like a
barrel-organ, to a specific number of tunes.”

It would be a very amusing and instructive task for a man of
reading and reflection to note down the instances he meets with
of these old tunes coming up again and again in regular
succession with hardly any change of note, and with all the old
hitches and involuntary squeaks that the barrel-organ had played
in days gone by.  It is most amusing to see the old
quotations repeated year after year and volume after volume, till
at last some more careful enquirer turns to the passage referred
to and finds that they have all been taken in and have followed
the lead of the first daring inventor of the mis-statement. 
Hallam has had the courage, in the supplement to his History
of the Middle Ages, p. 398, to acknowledge an error of this
sort that he has been led into.

But the particular instance of barrel-organism that is present
to our minds just now is the Darwinian theory of the development
of species by natural selection, of which we hear so much. 
This is nothing new, but a réchauffée of the
old story that his namesake, Dr. Darwin, served up in the end of
the last century to Priestley and his admirers, and Lord Monboddo
had cooked in the beginning of the same century.  We have
all heard of his theory that man was developed directly from the
monkey, and that we all lost our tails by sitting too much upon
that appendage.

We learn from that same great and cautious writer Hallam in
his History of Literature that there are traces of this
theory and of other popular theories of the present day in the
works of Giordano Bruno, the Neapolitan who was burnt at Rome by
the Inquisition in 1600.  It is curious to read the titles
of his works and to think of Dugald Stewart’s remark about
barrel-organs.  For instance he wrote on “The
Plurality of Worlds,” and on the universal
“Monad,” a name familiar enough to the readers of
Vestiges of Creation.  He was a Pantheist, and, as
Hallam says, borrowed all his theories from the eclectic
philosophers, from Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists, and
ultimately they were no doubt of Oriental origin.  This is
just what has been shown again and again to be the history of
German Pantheism; it is a mere barrel-organ repetition of the
Brahman metaphysics found in Hindu cosmogonies. 
Bruno’s theory regarding development of species was in
Hallam’s words: “There is nothing so small or so
unimportant but that a portion of spirit dwells in it; and this
spiritual substance requires a proper subject to become a plant
or an animal”; and Hallam in a note on this passage
observes how the modern theories of equivocal generation
correspond with Bruno’s.

No doubt Hallam is right in saying that they are all of
Oriental origin.  Pythagoras borrowed from thence his
kindred theory of the metempsychosis, or transmigration of
souls.  But he was more consistent than modern philosophers;
he recognised a downward development as well as an upward, and
made morality and immorality the crisis and turning-point of
change—a bold lion developed into a brave warrior, a
drunken sot developed into a wallowing pig, and Darwin’s
slave-making ants, p. 219, would have been formerly Virginian
cotton and tobacco growers.

Perhaps Prometheus was the first Darwin of antiquity, for he
is said to have begun his creation from below, and after passing
from the invertebrate to the sub-vertebrate, from thence to the
backbone, from the backbone to the mammalia, and from the
mammalia to the manco-cerebral, he compounded man of each and
all:—

Fertur Prometheus addere principi
Limo coactus particulam undique
Desectam et insani leonis
Vim stomacho apposuisse nostro.

One word more about barrel-organs.  We have heard on the
undoubted authority of ear and eyewitnesses, that in a
neighbouring province there is a church where the psalms are sung
to a barrel-organ, but unfortunately the psalm tunes come in the
middle of the set, and the jigs and waltzes have to be played
through before the psalm can start.  Just so is it with
Darwinism and all similar theories.  All his fantasias, as
we saw in a late article, are made to come round at last to
religious questions, with which really and truly they have
nothing to do, but were it not for their supposed effect upon
religion, no one would waste p. 167his time in reading about the
possibility of Polar bears swimming about and catching flies so
long that they at last get the fins they wish for.

Darwin on Species
[From the Press, 21 February, 1863.]

To the Editor of the
Press.

Sir—In two of your numbers you have already taken notice
of Darwin’s theory of the origin of species; I would
venture to trespass upon your space in order to criticise briefly
both your notices.

The first is evidently the composition of a warm adherent of
the theory in question; the writer overlooks all the real
difficulties in the way of accepting it, and, caught by the
obvious truth of much that Darwin says, has rushed to the
conclusion that all is equally true.  He writes with the
tone of a partisan, of one deficient in scientific caution, and
from the frequent repetition of the same ideas manifest in his
dialogue one would be led to suspect that he was but little
versed in habits of literary composition and philosophical
argument.  Yet he may fairly claim the merit of having
written in earnest.  He has treated a serious subject
seriously according to his lights; and though his lights are not
brilliant ones, yet he has apparently done his best to show the
theory on which he is writing in its most favourable
aspect.  He is rash, evidently well satisfied with himself,
very possibly mistaken, and just one of those persons who
(without intending it) are more apt to mislead than to lead the
few people that put their trust in them.  A few will always
follow them, for a strong faith is always more or less impressive
upon persons who are too weak to have any definite and original
faith of their own.  The second writer, however, assumes a
very different tone.  His arguments to all practical intents
and purposes run as follows:—

Old fallacies are constantly recurring.  Therefore
Darwin’s theory is a fallacy.

They come again and again, like tunes in a barrel-organ. 
Therefore Darwin’s theory is a fallacy.

Hallam made a mistake, and in his History of the Middle
Ages, p. 398, he corrects himself.  Therefore
Darwin’s theory is wrong.

Dr. Darwin in the last century said the same thing as his son
or grandson says now—will the writer of the article refer
to anything bearing on natural selection and the struggle for
existence in Dr. Darwin’s work?—and a foolish
nobleman said something foolish about monkey’s tails. 
Therefore Darwin’s theory is wrong.

Giordano Bruno was burnt in the year 1600 A.D.; he was a Pantheist; therefore
Darwin’s theory is wrong.

And finally, as a clinching argument, in one of the
neighbouring settlements there is a barrel-organ which plays its
psalm tunes in the middle of its jigs and waltzes.  After
this all lingering doubts concerning the falsehood of
Darwin’s theory must be at an end, and any person of
ordinary common sense must admit that the theory of development
by natural selection is unwarranted by experience and reason.

The articles conclude with an implied statement that Darwin
supposes the Polar bear to swim about catching flies for so long
a period that at last it gets the fins it wishes for.

Now, however sceptical I may yet feel about the truth of all
Darwin’s theory, I cannot sit quietly by and see him
misrepresented in such a scandalously slovenly manner.  What
Darwin does say is that sometimes diversified and changed habits
may be observed in individuals of the same species; that is that
there are eccentric animals just as there are eccentric
men.  He adduces a few instances and winds up by saying that
“in North America the black bear was seen by Hearne
swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus
catching—almost like a whale—insects in the
water.”  This and nothing more.  (See pp. 201 and
202.)

Because Darwin says that a bear of rather eccentric habits
happened to be seen by Hearne swimming for hours and catching
insects almost like a whale, your writer (with a carelessness
hardly to be reprehended in sufficiently strong terms) asserts by
implication that Darwin supposes the whale to be developed from
the bear by the latter having had a strong desire to possess
fins.  This is disgraceful.

I can hardly be mistaken in supposing that I have quoted the
passage your writer alludes to.  Should I be in error, I
trust he will give the reference to the place in which Darwin is
guilty of the nonsense that is fathered upon him in your
article.

It must be remembered that there have been few great
inventions in physics or discoveries in science which have not
been foreshadowed to a certain extent by speculators who were
indeed mistaken, but were yet more or less on the right
scent.  Day is heralded by dawn, Apollo by Aurora, and thus
it often happens that a real discovery may wear to the careless
observer much the same appearance as an exploded fallacy, whereas
in fact it is widely different.  As much caution is due in
the rejection of a theory as in the acceptation of it.  The
first of your writers is too hasty in accepting, the second in
refusing even a candid examination.

Now, when the Saturday Review, the Cornhill
Magazine, Once a Week, and Macmillan’s
Magazine, not to mention other periodicals, have either
actually and completely as in the case of the first two,
provisionally as in the last mentioned, given their adherence to
the theory in question, it may be taken for granted that the
arguments in its favour are sufficiently specious to have
attracted the attention and approbation of a considerable number
of well-educated men in England.  Three months ago the
theory of development by natural selection was openly supported
by Professor Huxley before the British Association at
Cambridge.  I am not adducing Professor Huxley’s
advocacy as a proof that Darwin is right (indeed, Owen opposed
him tooth and nail), but as a proof that there is sufficient to
be said on Darwin’s side to demand more respectful
attention than your last writer has thought it worth while to
give it.  A theory which the British Association is
discussing with great care in England is not to be set down by
off-hand nicknames in Canterbury.

To those, however, who do feel an interest in the question, I
would venture to give a word or two of p.
171advice.  I would strongly deprecate forming a
hurried opinion for or against the theory.  Naturalists in
Europe are canvassing the matter with the utmost diligence, and a
few years must show whether they will accept the theory or
no.  It is plausible; that can be decided by no one. 
Whether it is true or no can be decided only among naturalists
themselves.  We are outsiders, and most of us must be
content to sit on the stairs till the great men come forth and
give us the benefit of their opinion.

I am, Sir,

Your obedient servant,
A. M.

Darwin on Species
[From the Press, March 14th, 1863.]

To the Editor of the
Press.

Sir—A correspondent signing himself “A. M.”
in the issue of February 21st says:—“Will the writer
(of an article on barrel-organs) refer to anything bearing upon
natural selection and the struggle for existence in Dr.
Darwin’s work?”  This is one of the trade forms
by which writers imply that there is no such passage, and yet
leave a loophole if they are proved wrong.  I will, however,
furnish him with a passage from the notes of Darwin’s
Botanic Garden:—

“I am acquainted with a philosopher who, contemplating
this subject, thinks it not impossible that the first insects
were anthers or stigmas of flowers, which had by some means
loosed themselves from their parent plant; and that many insects
have gradually in long process of time been formed from these,
some acquiring wings, others fins, and others claws, from their
ceaseless efforts to procure their food or to secure themselves
from injury.  The anthers or stigmas are therefore separate
beings.”

This passage contains the germ of Mr. Charles Darwin’s
theory of the origin of species by natural selection:—

“Analogy would lead me to the belief that all animals
and plants have descended from one prototype.”

Here are a few specimens, his illustrations of the
theory:—

“There seems to me no great difficulty in believing that
natural selection has actually converted a swim-bladder into a
lung or organ used exclusively for respiration.” 
“A swim-bladder has apparently been converted into an
air-breathing lung.”  “We must be cautious in
concluding that a bat could not have been formed by natural
selection from an animal which at first could only glide through
the air.”  “I can see no insuperable difficulty
in further believing it possible that the membrane-connected
fingers and forearm of the galeopithecus might be greatly
lengthened by natural selection, and this, as far as the organs
of flight are concerned, would convert it into a
bat.”  “The framework of bones being the same in
the hand of a man, wing of a bat, fin of a porpoise, and leg of a
horse, the same number of vertebræ forming the neck of the
giraffe and of the elephant, and innumerable other such facts, at
once explain themselves on the theory of descent with slow and
slight successive modifications.”

p. 173I do
not mean to go through your correspondent’s letter,
otherwise “I could hardly reprehend in sufficiently strong
terms” (and all that sort of thing) the perversion of what
I said about Giordano Bruno.  But “ex uno disce
omnes”—I am, etc.,

“The
Savoyard.”

Darwin on Species
[From the Press, 18 March, 1863.]

To the Editor of the
Press.

Sir—The “Savoyard” of last Saturday has
shown that he has perused Darwin’s Botanic Garden
with greater attention than myself.  I am obliged to him for
his correction of my carelessness, and have not the smallest
desire to make use of any loopholes to avoid being “proved
wrong.”  Let, then, the “Savoyard’s”
assertion that Dr. Darwin had to a certain extent forestalled Mr.
C. Darwin stand, and let my implied denial that in the older
Darwin’s works passages bearing on natural selection, or
the struggle for existence, could be found, go for nought, or
rather let it be set down against me.

What follows?  Has the “Savoyard” (supposing
him to be the author of the article on barrel-organs) adduced one
particle of real argument the more to show that the real
Darwin’s theory is wrong?

The elder Darwin writes in a note that “he is acquainted
with a philosopher who thinks it not impossible that the first
insects were the anthers or stigmas of flowers, which by some
means, etc. etc.”  This is mere speculation, not a
definite theory, and though the passage above as quoted by the
“Savoyard” certainly does contain the germ of
Darwin’s theory, what is it more than the crudest and most
unshapen germ?  And in what conceivable way does this
discovery of the egg invalidate the excellence of the
chicken?

Was there ever a great theory yet which was not more or less
developed from previous speculations which were all to a certain
extent wrong, and all ridiculed, perhaps not undeservedly, at the
time of their appearance?  There is a wide difference
between a speculation and a theory.  A speculation involves
the notion of a man climbing into a lofty position, and descrying
a somewhat remote object which he cannot fully make out.  A
theory implies that the theorist has looked long and steadfastly
till he is clear in his own mind concerning the nature of the
thing which he is beholding.  I submit that the
“Savoyard” has unfairly made use of the failure of
certain speculations in order to show that a distinct theory is
untenable.

Let it be granted that Darwin’s theory has been
foreshadowed by numerous previous writers.  Grant the
“Savoyard” his Giordano Bruno, and give full weight
to the barrel-organ in a neighbouring settlement, I would still
ask, has the theory of natural development of species ever been
placed in anything approaching its present clear and connected
form before the appearance of Mr. Darwin’s book?  Has
it ever received the full attention of the scientific world as a
duly organised theory, one presented in a tangible shape and
demanding investigation, as the conclusion arrived at by a man of
known scientific attainments p. 175after years of patient toil? 
The upshot of the barrel-organs article was to answer this
question in the affirmative and to pooh-pooh all further
discussion.

It would be mere presumption on my part either to attack or
defend Darwin, but my indignation was roused at seeing him
misrepresented and treated disdainfully.  I would wish, too,
that the “Savoyard” would have condescended to notice
that little matter of the bear.  I have searched my copy of
Darwin again and again to find anything relating to the subject
except what I have quoted in my previous letter.

I am, Sir, your obedient
servant,

A. M.

Darwin on Species
[From the Press, April 11th, 1863.]

To the Editor of the
Press.

Sir—Your correspondent “A. M.” is
pertinacious on the subject of the bear being changed into a
whale, which I said Darwin contemplated as not impossible. 
I did not take the trouble in any former letter to answer him on
that point, as his language was so intemperate.  He has
modified his tone in his last letter, and really seems open to
the conviction that he may be the “careless” writer
after all; and so on reflection I have determined to give him the
opportunity of doing me justice.

In his letter of February 21 he says: “I cannot sit by
and see Darwin misrepresented in such a scandalously slovenly
manner.  What Darwin does say is ‘that SOMETIMES diversified and changed habits
may be observed in individuals of the same species; that is, that
there are certain eccentric animals as there are certain
eccentric men.  He adduces a few instances, and winds up by
saying that in North America the black bear was seen by Hearne
swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, ALMOST LIKE A WHALE, insects in the
water.’  This, and nothing more, pp. 201, 202.”

Then follows a passage about my carelessness, which (he says)
is hardly to be reprehended in sufficiently strong terms, and he
ends with saying: “This is disgraceful.”

Now you may well suppose that I was a little puzzled at the
seeming audacity of a writer who should adopt this style, when
the words which follow his quotation from Darwin are (in the
edition from which I quoted) as follows: “Even in so
extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant,
and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the
country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being
rendered by natural selection more and more aquatic in their
structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a
creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.”

Now this passage was a remarkable instance of the idea that I
was illustrating in the article on “Barrel-organs,”
because Buffon in his Histoire Naturelle had conceived a
theory of degeneracy (the exact converse of Darwin’s theory
of ascension) by which the bear might pass into a seal, and that
into a whale.  Trusting now to the fairness of “A.
M.”  I leave to him to say whether he has p. 177quoted from
the same edition as I have, and whether the additional words I
have quoted are in his edition, and if so whether he has not been
guilty of a great injustice to me; and if they are not in his
edition, whether he has not been guilty of great haste and
“carelessness” in taking for granted that I have
acted in so “disgraceful” a manner.

I am, Sir, etc.,
“The Savoyard,” or player
on Barrel-organs.

(The paragraph in question has been the occasion of much
discussion.  The only edition in our hands is the third,
seventh thousand, which contains the paragraph as quoted by
“A. M.”  We have heard that it is different in
earlier editions, but have not been able to find one.  The
difference between “A. M.” and “The
Savoyard” is clearly one of different editions. 
Darwin appears to have been ashamed of the inconsequent inference
suggested, and to have withdrawn it.—Ed. the
Press.)

Darwin on Species
[From the Press, 22nd June, 1863.]

To the Editor of the
Press.

Sir—I extract the following from an article in the
Saturday Review of January 10, 1863, on the vertebrated
animals of the Zoological Gardens.

“As regards the ducks, for example, inter-breeding goes
on to a very great extent among nearly all the genera, which are
well represented in the collection.  We think it unfortunate
that the details of these crosses have not hitherto been made
public.  The Zoological Society has existed about
thirty-five years, and we imagine that evidence must have been
accumulated almost enough to make or mar that part of Mr.
Darwin’s well-known argument which rests on what is known
of the phenomena of hybridism.  The present list reveals
only one fact bearing on the subject, but that is a noteworthy
one, for it completely overthrows the commonly accepted theory
that the mixed offspring of different species are infertile
inter se.  At page 15 (of the list of vertebrated
animals living in the gardens of the Zoological Society of
London, Longman and Co., 1862) we find enumerated three examples
of hybrids between two perfectly distinct species, and even,
according to modern classification, between two distinct genera
of ducks, for three or four generations.  There can be
little doubt that a series of researches in this branch of
experimental physiology, which might be carried on at no great
loss, would place zoologists in a far better position with regard
to a subject which is one of the most interesting if not one of
the most important in natural history.”

I fear that both you and your readers will be dead sick of
Darwin, but the above is worthy of notice.  My compliments
to the “Savoyard.”

Your obedient servant,

May 17th.

A. M.

p.
179Darwin Among the Machines

“Darwin Among the Machines”
originally appeared in the Christ Church Press, 13 June, 1863.  It was
reprinted by Mr. Festing Jones in his edition of The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
(Fifield, London, 1912, Kennerley, New
York), with a prefatory note pointing out its connection
with the genesis of Erewhon, to
which readers desirous of further information may be
referred.

[To the Editor of the Press,
Christchurch, New Zealand, 13 June, 1863.]

Sir—There are few things of
which the present generation is more justly proud than of the
wonderful improvements which are daily taking place in all sorts
of mechanical appliances.  And indeed it is matter for great
congratulation on many grounds.  It is unnecessary to
mention these here, for they are sufficiently obvious; our
present business lies with considerations which may somewhat tend
to humble our pride and to make us think seriously of the future
prospects of the human race.  If we revert to the earliest
primordial types of mechanical life, to the lever, the wedge, the
inclined plane, the screw and the pulley, or (for analogy would
lead us one step further) to that one primordial type from which
all the mechanical kingdom has been developed, we mean to the
lever itself, and if we then examine the machinery of the
Great Eastern, we find ourselves almost awestruck at the
vast development of the mechanical world, at the gigantic strides
with which it has advanced in comparison with the slow progress
of the animal and vegetable kingdom.  We shall find it
impossible to refrain from asking ourselves what the end of this
mighty movement is to be.  In what direction is it
tending?  What will be its upshot?  To give a few
imperfect hints towards a solution of these questions is the
object of the present letter.

We have used the words “mechanical life,”
“the mechanical kingdom,” “the mechanical
world” and so forth, and we have done so advisedly, for as
the vegetable kingdom was slowly developed from the mineral, and
as in like manner the animal supervened upon the vegetable, so
now in these last few ages an entirely new kingdom has sprung up,
of which we as yet have only seen what will one day be considered
the antediluvian prototypes of the race.

We regret deeply that our knowledge both of natural history
and of machinery is too small to enable us to undertake the
gigantic task of classifying machines into the genera and
sub-genera, species, varieties and sub-varieties, and so forth,
of tracing the connecting links between machines of widely
different characters, of pointing out how subservience to the use
of man has played that part among machines which natural
selection has performed in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, of
pointing out rudimentary organs [180] which exist in
some few machines, feebly developed and perfectly useless, yet
serving to mark descent from some ancestral type which has either
perished or been modified into some new phase of mechanical
existence.  We can only point out this field for
investigation; it must be followed by others whose education and
talents have been of a much higher order than any which we can
lay claim to.

Some few hints we have determined to venture upon, though we
do so with the profoundest diffidence.  Firstly, we would
remark that as some of the lowest of the vertebrata attained a
far greater size than has descended to their more highly
organised living representatives, so a diminution in the size of
machines has often attended their development and progress. 
Take the watch for instance.  Examine the beautiful
structure of the little animal, watch the intelligent play of the
minute members which compose it; yet this little creature is but
a development of the cumbrous clocks of the thirteenth
century—it is no deterioration from them.  The day may
come when clocks, which certainly at the present day are not
diminishing in bulk, may be entirely superseded by the universal
use of watches, in which case clocks will become extinct like the
earlier saurians, while the watch (whose tendency has for some
years been rather to decrease in size than the contrary) will
remain the only existing type of an extinct race.

The views of machinery which we are thus feebly indicating
will suggest the solution of one of the greatest and most
mysterious questions of the day.  We refer to the question:
What sort of creature man’s next successor in the supremacy
of the earth is likely to be.  We have often heard this
debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our
own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of
their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater
power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that
self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what
intellect has been to the human race.  In the course of ages
we shall find ourselves the inferior race.  Inferior in
power, inferior in that moral quality of self-control, we shall
look up to them as the acme of all that the best and wisest man
can ever dare to aim at.  No evil passions, no jealousy, no
avarice, no impure desires will disturb the serene might of those
glorious creatures.  Sin, shame, and sorrow will have no
place among them.  Their minds will be in a state of
perpetual calm, the contentment of a spirit that knows no wants,
is disturbed by no regrets.  Ambition will never torture
them.  Ingratitude will never cause them the uneasiness of a
moment.  The guilty conscience, the hope deferred, the pains
of exile, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient
merit of the unworthy takes—these will be entirely unknown
to them.  If they want “feeding” (by the use of
which very word we betray our recognition of them as living
organism) they will be attended by patient slaves whose business
and interest it will be to see that they shall want for
nothing.  If they are out of order they will be promptly
attended to by physicians who are thoroughly acquainted with
their constitutions; if they die, for even these glorious animals
will not be exempt from that necessary and universal
consummation, they will immediately enter into a new phase of
existence, for what machine dies entirely in every part at one
and the same instant?

We take it that when the state of things shall have arrived
which we have been above attempting to describe, man will have
become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to
man.  He will continue to exist, nay even to improve, and
will be probably better off in his state of domestication under
the beneficent rule of the machines than he is in his present
wild state.  We treat our horses, dogs, cattle, and sheep,
on the whole, with great kindness; we give them whatever
experience teaches us to be best for them, and there can be no
doubt that our use of meat has added to the happiness of the
lower animals far more than it has detracted from it; in like
manner it is reasonable to suppose that the machines will treat
us kindly, for their existence is as dependent upon ours as ours
is upon the lower animals.  They cannot kill us and eat us
as we do sheep; they will not only require our services in the
parturition of their young (which branch of their economy will
remain always in our hands), but also in feeding them, in setting
them right when they are sick, and burying their dead or working
up their corpses into new machines.  It is obvious that if
all the animals in Great Britain save man alone were to die, and
if at the same time all intercourse with foreign countries were
by some sudden catastrophe to be rendered perfectly impossible,
it is obvious that under such circumstances the loss of human
life would be something fearful to contemplate—in like
manner were mankind to cease, the machines would be as badly off
or even worse.  The fact is that our interests are
inseparable from theirs, and theirs from ours.  Each race is
dependent upon the other for innumerable benefits, and, until the
reproductive organs of the machines have been developed in a
manner which we are hardly yet able to conceive, they are
entirely dependent upon man for even the continuance of their
species.  It is true that these organs may be ultimately
developed, inasmuch as man’s interest lies in that
direction; there is nothing which our infatuated race would
desire more than to see a fertile union between two steam
engines; it is true that machinery is even at this present time
employed in begetting machinery, in becoming the parent of
machines often after its own kind, but the days of flirtation,
courtship, and matrimony appear to be very remote, and indeed can
hardly be realised by our feeble and imperfect imagination.

Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us;
day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are
daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily
devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of
mechanical life.  The upshot is simply a question of time,
but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real
supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of
a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question.

Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly
proclaimed against them.  Every machine of every sort should
be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species.  Let there
be no exceptions made, no quarter shown; let us at once go back
to the primeval condition of the race.  If it be urged that
this is impossible under the present condition of human affairs,
this at once proves that the mischief is already done, that our
servitude has commenced in good earnest, that we have raised a
race of beings whom it is beyond our power to destroy, and that
we are not only enslaved but are absolutely acquiescent in our
bondage.

For the present we shall leave this subject, which we present
gratis to the members of the Philosophical Society.  Should
they consent to avail themselves of the vast field which we have
pointed out, we shall endeavour to labour in it ourselves at some
future and indefinite period.

I am, Sir, etc.,

Cellarius

p.
186Lucubratio Ebria

“Lucubratio Ebria,”
like “Darwin Among the Machines,”
has already appeared in The Note-Books
of Samuel Butler with a prefatory note by Mr. Festing
Jones, explaining its connection with Erewhon and Life
and Habit.  I need therefore only repeat that it
was written by Butler after his return to England and sent to New
Zealand, where it was published in the Press on July 29, 1865.

[From the Press, 29 July,
1865.]

There is a period in the evening,
or more generally towards the still small hours of the morning,
in which we so far unbend as to take a single glass of hot whisky
and water.  We will neither defend the practice nor excuse
it.  We state it as a fact which must be borne in mind by
the readers of this article; for we know not how, whether it be
the inspiration of the drink or the relief from the harassing
work with which the day has been occupied or from whatever other
cause, yet we are certainly liable about this time to such a
prophetic influence as we seldom else experience.  We are
rapt in a dream such as we ourselves know to be a dream, and
which, like other dreams, we can hardly embody in a distinct
utterance.  We know that what we see is but a sort of
intellectual Siamese twins, of which one is substance and the
other shadow, but we cannot set either free without killing
both.  We are unable to rudely tear away the veil of
phantasy in which the truth is shrouded, so we present the reader
with a draped figure, and his own judgment must discriminate
between the clothes and the body.  A truth’s
prosperity is like a jest’s, it lies in the ear of him that
hears it.  Some may see our lucubration as we saw it, and
others may see nothing but a drunken dream or the nightmare of a
distempered imagination.  To ourselves it is the speaking
with unknown tongues to the early Corinthians; we cannot fully
understand our own speech, and we fear lest there be not a
sufficient number of interpreters present to make our utterance
edify.  But there!  (Go on straight to the body of the
article.)

The limbs of the lower animals have never been modified by any
act of deliberation and forethought on their own part. 
Recent researches have thrown absolutely no light upon the origin
of life—upon the initial force which introduced a sense of
identity and a deliberate faculty into the world; but they do
certainly appear to show very clearly that each species of the
animal and vegetable kingdom has been moulded into its present
shape by chances and changes of many millions of years, by
chances and changes over which the creature modified had no
control whatever, and concerning whose aim it was alike
unconscious and indifferent, by forces which seem insensate to
the pain which they inflict, but by whose inexorably beneficent
cruelty the brave and strong keep coming to the fore, while the
weak and bad drop behind and perish.  There was a moral
government of this world before man came near it—a moral
government suited to the capacities of the governed, and which
unperceived by them has laid fast the foundations of courage,
endurance, and cunning.  It laid them so fast that they
became more and more hereditary.  Horace says well fortes
creantur fortibus et bonis, good men beget good children; the
rule held even in the geological period; good ichthyosauri begot
good ichthyosauri, and would to our discomfort have gone on doing
so to the present time had not better creatures been begetting
better things than ichthyosauri, or famine or fire or convulsion
put an end to them.  Good apes begot good apes, and at last
when human intelligence stole like a late spring upon the mimicry
of our semi-simious ancestry, the creature learnt how he could of
his own forethought add extra-corporaneous limbs to the members
of his own body, and become not only a vertebrate mammal, but a
vertebrate machinate mammal into the bargain.

It was a wise monkey that first learned to carry a stick, and
a useful monkey that mimicked him.  For the race of man has
learned to walk uprightly much as a child learns the same
thing.  At first he crawls on all fours, then he clambers,
laying hold of whatever he can; and lastly he stands upright
alone and walks, but for a long time with an unsteady step. 
So when the human race was in its gorilla-hood it generally
carried a stick; from carrying a stick for many million years it
became accustomed and modified to an upright position.  The
stick wherewith it had learned to walk would now serve to beat
its younger brothers, and then it found out its service as a
lever.  Man would thus learn that the limbs of his body were
not the only limbs that he could command.  His body was
already the most versatile in existence, but he could render it
more versatile still.  With the improvement in his body his
mind improved also.  He learnt to perceive the moral
government under which he held the feudal tenure of his
life—perceiving it he symbolised it, and to this day our
poets and prophets still strive to symbolise it more and more
completely.

The mind grew because the body grew; more things were
perceived, more things were handled, and being handled became
familiar.  But this came about chiefly because there was a
hand to handle with; without the hand there would be no handling,
and no method of holding and examining is comparable to the human
hand.  The tail of an opossum is a prehensile thing, but it
is too far from his eyes; the elephant’s trunk is better,
and it is probably to their trunks that the elephants owe their
sagacity.  It is here that the bee, in spite of her wings,
has failed.  She has a high civilisation, but it is one
whose equilibrium appears to have been already attained; the
appearance is a false one, for the bee changes, though more
slowly than man can watch her; but the reason of the very gradual
nature of the change is chiefly because the physical organisation
of the insect changes, but slowly also.  She is poorly off
for hands, and has never fairly grasped the notion of tacking on
other limbs to the limbs of her own body, and so being short
lived to boot she remains from century to century to human eyes
in statu quo.  Her body never becomes machinate,
whereas this new phase of organism which has been introduced with
man into the mundane economy, has made him a very quicksand for
the foundation of an unchanging civilisation; certain fundamental
principles will always remain, but every century the change in
man’s physical status, as compared with the elements around
him, is greater and greater.  He is a shifting basis on
which no equilibrium of habit and civilisation can be
established.  Were it not for this constant change in our
physical powers, which our mechanical limbs have brought about,
man would have long since apparently attained his limit of
possibility; he would be a creature of as much fixity as the ants
and bees; he would still have advanced, but no faster than other
animals advance.

If there were a race of men without any mechanical appliances
we should see this clearly.  There are none, nor have there
been, so far as we can tell, for millions and millions of
years.  The lowest Australian savage carries weapons for the
fight or the chase, and has his cooking and drinking utensils at
home; a race without these things would be completely
feræ naturæ and not men at all.  We are
unable to point to any example of a race absolutely devoid of
extra-corporaneous limbs, but we can see among the Chinese that
with the failure to invent new limbs a civilisation becomes as
much fixed as that of the ants; and among savage tribes we
observe that few implements involve a state of things scarcely
human at all.  Such tribes only advance pari passu
with the creatures upon which they feed.

It is a mistake, then, to take the view adopted by a previous
correspondent of this paper, to consider the machines as
identities, to animalise them and to anticipate their final
triumph over mankind.  They are to be regarded as the mode
of development by which human organism is most especially
advancing, and every fresh invention is to be considered as an
additional member of the resources of the human body. 
Herein lies the fundamental difference between man and his
inferiors.  As regard his flesh and blood, his senses,
appetites, and affections, the difference is one of degree rather
than of kind, but in the deliberate invention of such unity of
limbs as is exemplified by the railway train—that
seven-leagued foot which five hundred may own at once—he
stands quite alone.

In confirmation of the views concerning mechanism which we
have been advocating above, it must be remembered that men are
not merely the children of their parents, but they are begotten
of the institutions of the state of the mechanical sciences under
which they are born and bred.  These things have made us
what we are.  We are children of the plough, the spade, and
the ship; we are children of the extended liberty and knowledge
which the printing press has diffused.  Our ancestors added
these things to their previously existing members; the new limbs
were preserved by natural selection and incorporated into human
society; they descended with modifications, and hence proceeds
the difference between our ancestors and ourselves.  By the
institutions and state of science under which a man is born it is
determined whether he shall have the limbs of an Australian
savage or those of a nineteenth-century Englishman.  The
former is supplemented with little save a rug and a javelin; the
latter varies his physique with the changes of the season, with
age and with advancing or decreasing wealth.  If it is wet
he is furnished with an organ which is called an umbrella and
which seems designed for the purpose of protecting either his
clothes or his lungs from the injurious effects of rain. 
His watch is of more importance to him than a good deal of his
hair, at any rate than of his whiskers; besides this he carries a
knife and generally a pencil case.  His memory goes in a
pocket-book.  He grows more complex as he becomes older and
he will then be seen with a pair of spectacles, perhaps also with
false teeth and a wig; but, if he be a really well-developed
specimen of the race, he will be furnished with a large box upon
wheels, two horses, and a coachman.

Let the reader ponder over these last remarks and he will see
that the principal varieties and sub-varieties of the human race
are not now to be looked for among the negroes, the Circassians,
the Malays, or the American aborigines, but among the rich and
the poor.  The difference in physical organisation between
these two species of man is far greater than that between the
so-called types of humanity.  The rich man can go from here
to England whenever he feels inclined, the legs of the other are
by an invisible fatality prevented from carrying him beyond
certain narrow limits.  Neither rich nor poor as yet see the
philosophy of the thing, or admit that he who can tack a portion
of one of the P. and O. boats on to his identity is a much more
highly organised being than one who cannot.  Yet the fact is
patent enough, if we once think it over, from the mere
consideration of the respect with which we so often treat those
who are richer than ourselves.  We observe men for the most
part (admitting, however, some few abnormal exceptions) to be
deeply impressed by the superior organisation of those who have
money.  It is wrong to attribute this respect to any
unworthy motive, for the feeling is strictly legitimate and
springs from some of the very highest impulses of our
nature.  It is the same sort of affectionate reverence which
a dog feels for man, and is not infrequently manifested in a
similar manner.

We admit that these last sentences are open to question, and
we should hardly like to commit ourselves irrecoverably to the
sentiments they express; but we will say this much for certain,
namely, that the rich man is the true hundred-handed Gyges of the
poets.  He alone possesses the full complement of limbs who
stands at the summit of opulence, and we may assert with strictly
scientific accuracy that the Rothschilds are the most astonishing
organisms that the world has ever yet seen.  For to the
nerves or tissues, or whatever it be that answers to the helm of
a rich man’s desires, there is a whole army of limbs seen
and unseen attachable; he may be reckoned by his horse-power, by
the number of foot-pounds which he has money enough to set in
motion.  Who, then, will deny that a man whose will
represents the motive power of a thousand horses is a being very
different from the one who is equivalent but to the power of a
single one?

Henceforward, then, instead of saying that a man is hard up,
let us say that his organisation is at a low ebb, or, if we wish
him well, let us hope that he will grow plenty of limbs.  It
must be remembered that we are dealing with physical
organisations only.  We do not say that the thousand-horse
man is better than a one-horse man, we only say that he is more
highly organised and should be recognised as being so by the
scientific leaders of the period.  A man’s will,
truth, endurance, are part of him also, and may, as in the case
of the late Mr. Cobden, have in themselves a power equivalent to
all the horse-power which they can influence; but were we to go
into this part of the question we should never have done, and we
are compelled reluctantly to leave our dream in its present
fragmentary condition.

p. 195A
Note on “The Tempest”
Act III, Scene I

The following brief essay was contributed
by Butler to a small miscellany entitled Literary Foundlings: Verse and Prose, Collected in Canterbury, N.Z., which was
published at Christ Church on the occasion of a bazaar held there
in March, 1864, in aid of the funds of the Christ Church
Orphan Asylum, and offered for sale during the progress of
the bazaar.  The miscellany consisted entirely of the
productions of Canterbury writers, and among the
contributors were Dean Jacobs, Canon Cottrell, and
James Edward FitzGerald, the founder of the Press.

When Prince Ferdinand was wrecked
on the island Miranda was fifteen years old.  We can hardly
suppose that she had ever seen Ariel, and Caliban was a
detestable object whom her father took good care to keep as much
out of her way as possible.  Caliban was like the man cook
on a back-country run.  “’Tis a villain,
sir,” says Miranda.  “I do not love to look
on.”  “But as ’tis,” returns
Prospero, “we cannot miss him; he does make our fire, fetch
in our wood, and serve in offices that profit us.” 
Hands were scarce, and Prospero was obliged to put up with
Caliban in spite of the many drawbacks with which his services
were attended; in fact, no one on the island could have liked
him, for Ariel owed him a grudge on the score of the cruelty with
which he had been treated by Sycorax, and we have already heard
what Miranda and Prospero had to say about him.  He may
therefore pass for nobody.  Prospero was an old man, or at
any rate in all probability some forty years of age; therefore it
is no wonder that when Miranda saw Prince Ferdinand she should
have fallen violently in love with him.  “Nothing
ill,” according to her view, “could dwell in such a
temple—if the ill Spirit have so fair an house, good things
will strive to dwell with ’t.”  A very natural
sentiment for a girl in Miranda’s circumstances, but
nevertheless one which betrayed a charming inexperience of the
ways of the world and of the real value of good looks.  What
surprises us, however, is this, namely the remarkable celerity
with which Miranda in a few hours became so thoroughly wide awake
to the exigencies of the occasion in consequence of her love for
the Prince.  Prospero has set Ferdinand to hump firewood out
of the bush, and to pile it up for the use of the cave. 
Ferdinand is for the present a sort of cadet, a youth of good
family, without cash and unaccustomed to manual labour; his
unlucky stars have landed him on the island, and now it seems
that he “must remove some thousands of these logs and pile
them up, upon a sore injunction.”  Poor fellow! 
Miranda’s heart bleeds for him.  Her “affections
were most humble”; she had been content to take Ferdinand
on speculation.  On first seeing him she had exclaimed,
“I have no ambition to see a goodlier man”; and it
makes her blood boil to see this divine creature compelled to
such an ignominious and painful labour.  What is the family
consumption of firewood to her?  Let Caliban do it; let
Prospero do it; or make Ariel do it; let her do it herself; or
let the lightning come down and “burn up those logs you are
enjoined to pile”;—the logs themselves, while
burning, would weep for having wearied him.  Come what
would, it was a shame to make Ferdinand work so hard, so she
winds up thus: “My father is hard at study; pray now rest
yourself—he’s safe for these three
hours.”  Safe—if she had only said that
“papa was safe,” the sentence would have been purely
modern, and have suited Thackeray as well as Shakspeare. 
See how quickly she has learnt to regard her father as one to be
watched and probably kept in a good humour for the sake of
Ferdinand.  We suppose that the secret of the modern
character of this particular passage lies simply in the fact that
young people make love pretty much in the same way now that they
did three hundred years ago; and possibly, with the exception
that “the governor” may be substituted for the words
“my father” by the young ladies of three hundred
years hence, the passage will sound as fresh and modern then as
it does now.  Let the Prosperos of that age take a lesson,
and either not allow the Ferdinands to pile up firewood, or so to
arrange their studies as not to be “safe” for any
three consecutive hours.  It is true that Prospero’s
objection to the match was only feigned, but Miranda thought
otherwise, and for all purposes of argument we are justified in
supposing that he was in earnest.

p. 198The
English Cricketers

The following lines were written by Butler
in February, 1864, and appeared in the Press.  They refer to a visit paid
to New Zealand by a team of English cricketers, and have
kindly been copied and sent to me by Miss Colborne-Veel,
whose father was editor of the Press at the time that Butler was writing
for it.  Miss Colborne-Veel has further permitted to
me to make use of the following explanatory note:
“The coming of the All England team was naturally a
glorious event in a province only fourteen years old. 
The Mayor and Councillors had ‘a car of
state’—otherwise a
brake—‘with postilions in the English
style.’  Cobb and Co. supplied a six-horse
coach for the English eleven, the yellow paint upon which
suggested the ‘glittering chariot of pure
gold.’  So they drove in triumph from the
station and through the town.  Tinley for England and
Tennant for Canterbury were the heroes of the match. 
At the Wednesday dinner referred to they exchanged compliments
and cricket balls across the table.  This early
esteem for cricket may be explained by a remark made by the All
England captain, that ‘on no cricket ground
in any colony had he met so many public school men,
especially men from old Rugby, as at
Canterbury.’”

[To the Editor, the Press,
February 15th, 1864.]

Sir—The following lines,
which profess to have been written by a friend of mine at three
o’clock in the morning after the dinner of Wednesday last,
have been presented to myself with a request that I should
forward them to you.  I would suggest to the writer of them
the following quotation from “Love’s Labour’s
Lost.”

I am, Sir,

Your obedient servant,
S.B.

“You find not the apostrophes, and so miss the accent;
let me supervise the canzonet.  Here are only numbers
ratified; but for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of
poesy, caret . . . Imitari is nothing.  So
doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse
his rider.”

Love’s Labour’s Lost,
Act IV, S. 2.

Horatio . . .

. . . The whole town rose
Eyes out to meet them; in a car of state
The Mayor and all the Councillors rode down
To give them greeting, while the blue-eyed team
Drawn in Cobb’s glittering chariot of pure gold
Careered it from the station.—But the Mayor—
Thou shouldst have seen the blandness of the man,
And watched the effulgent and unspeakable smiles
With which he beamed upon them.
His beard, by nature tawny, was suffused
With just so much of a most reverend grizzle
That youth and age should kiss in’t.  I assure you
He was a Southern Palmerston, so old
In understanding, yet jocund and jaunty
As though his twentieth summer were as yet
But in the very June o’ the year, and winter
Was never to be dreamt of.  Those who heard
His words stood ravished.  It was all as one
As though Minerva, hid in Mercury’s jaws,
Had counselled some divinest utterance
Of honeyed wisdom.  So profound, so true,
So meet for the occasion, and so—short.
The king sat studying rhetoric as he spoke,
While the lord Abbot heaved half-envious sighs
And hung suspended on his accents.

   Claud.  But will it pay, Horatio?

   Hor.  Let Shylock see to that, but yet
I trust
He’s no great loser.

   Claud.  Which side went in first?

   Hor.       
We did,
And scored a paltry thirty runs in all.
The lissom Lockyer gambolled round the stumps
With many a crafty curvet: you had thought
An Indian rubber monkey were endued
With wicket-keeping instincts; teazing Tinley
Issued his treacherous notices to quit,
Ruthlessly truthful to his fame, and who
Shall speak of Jackson?  Oh! ’twas sad indeed
To watch the downcast faces of our men
Returning from the wickets; one by one,
Like patients at the gratis consultation
Of some skilled leech, they took their turn at physic.
And each came sadly homeward with a face
Awry through inward anguish; they were pale
As ghosts of some dead but deep mourned love,
Grim with a great despair, but forced to smile.

   Claud.  Poor souls!  Th’
unkindest heart had bled for them.
But what came after?

   Hor.       
Fortune turned her wheel,
And Grace, disgracéd for the nonce, was bowled
First ball, and all the welkin roared applause!
As for the rest, they scored a goodly score
And showed some splendid cricket, but their deeds
Were not colossal, and our own brave Tennant
Proved himself all as good a man as they.

* * * * *

Through them we greet our Mother.  In
their coming,
We shake our dear old England by the hand
And watch space dwindling, while the shrinking world
Collapses into nothing.  Mark me well,
Matter as swift as swiftest thought shall fly,
And space itself be nowhere.  Future Tinleys
Shall bowl from London to our Christ Church Tennants,
And all the runs for all the stumps be made
In flying baskets which shall come and go
And do the circuit round about the globe
Within ten seconds.  Do not check me with
The roundness of the intervening world,
The winds, the mountain ranges, and the seas—
These hinder nothing; for the leathern sphere,
Like to a planetary satellite,
Shall wheel its faithful orb and strike the bails
Clean from the centre of the middle stump.

* * * * *

Mirrors shall hang suspended in the air,
Fixed by a chain between two chosen stars,
And every eye shall be a telescope
To read the passing shadows from the world.
Such games shall be hereafter, but as yet
We lay foundations only.

   Claud.  Thou must be drunk,
Horatio.

   Hor.       
So I am.

Footnotes

[180]  We were asked by a learned
brother philosopher who saw this article in MS. what we meant by
alluding to rudimentary organs in machines.  Could we, he
asked, give any example of such organs?  We pointed to the
little protuberance at the bottom of the bowl of our tobacco
pipe.  This organ was originally designed for the same
purpose as the rim at the bottom of a tea-cup, which is but
another form of the same function.  Its purpose was to keep
the heat of the pipe from marking the table on which it
rested.  Originally, as we have seen in very early tobacco
pipes, this protuberance was of a very different shape to what it
is now.  It was broad at the bottom and flat, so that while
the pipe was being smoked the bowl might rest upon the
table.  Use and disuse have here come into play and served
to reduce the function to its present rudimentary
condition.  That these rudimentary organs are rarer in
machinery than in animal life is owing to the more prompt action
of the human selection as compared with the slower but even surer
operation of natural selection.  Man may make mistakes; in
the long run nature never does so.  We have only given an
imperfect example, but the intelligent reader will supply himself
with illustrations.