Transcribed from the 1910 Jonathan Cape edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.lorg Life and Habit _By_ Samuel Butler [Picture: Decorative graphic] * * * * * Jonathan Cape Eleven Gower Street, London * * * * * FIRST PUBLISHED 1878 SECOND EDITION 1878 NEW EDITION WITH ADDENDA AND PREFACE BY R. A. STREATFEILD 1910 REPRINTED 1924 * * * * * PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BUTLER AND TANNER LTD., FROME AND LONDON * * * * * THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED TO CHARLES PAINE PAULI, Esq. BARRISTER-AT-LAW IN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF HIS INVALUABLE CRITICISM OF THE PROOF-SHEETS OF THIS AND OF MY PREVIOUS BOOKS AND IN RECOGNITION OF AN OLD AND WELL-TRIED-FRIENDSHIP PREFACE. SINCE Samuel Butler published “Life and Habit” thirty-three {vii} years have elapsed—years fruitful in change and discovery, during which many of the mighty have been put down from their seat and many of the humble have been exalted. I do not know that Butler can truthfully be called humble, indeed, I think he had very few misgivings as to his ultimate triumph, but he has certainly been exalted with a rapidity that he himself can scarcely have foreseen. During his lifetime he was a literary pariah, the victim of an organized conspiracy of silence. He is now, I think it may be said without exaggeration, universally accepted as one of the most remarkable English writers of the latter part of the nineteenth century. I will not weary my readers by quoting the numerous tributes paid by distinguished contemporary writers to Butler’s originality and force of mind, but I cannot refrain from illustrating the changed attitude of the scientific world to Butler and his theories by a reference to “Darwin and Modern Science,” the collection of essays published in 1909 by the University of Cambridge, in commemoration of the Darwin centenary. In that work Professor Bateson, while referring repeatedly to Butler’s biological works, speaks of him as “the most brilliant and by far the most interesting of Darwin’s opponents, whose works are at length emerging from oblivion.” With the growth of Butler’s reputation “Life and Habit” has had much to do. It was the first and is undoubtedly the most important of his writings on evolution. From its loins, as it were, sprang his three later books, “Evolution Old and New,” “Unconscious