Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic ModificationButler, Samuel
Philosophy
Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic Modification
Butler, Samuel
Evolution; Natural selection
Finally, we must have evolution; consent is too spontaneous, instinctive,
and universal among those most able to form an opinion, to admit of
further doubt about this. We must also have mind and design. The
attempt to eliminate intelligence from among the main agencies of the
universe has broken down too signally to be again ventured upon—not until
the recent rout has been forgotten. Nevertheless the old, far-foreseeing
_Deus ex machinâ_ design as from a point outside the universe, which
indeed it directs, but of which it is no part, is negatived by the facts
of organism. What, then, remains, but the view that I have again in this
book endeavoured to uphold—I mean, the supposition that the mind or
cunning of which we see such abundant evidence all round us, is, like the
kingdom of heaven, within us, and within all things at all times
everywhere? There is design, or cunning, but it is a cunning not
despotically fashioning us from without as a potter fashions his clay,
but inhering democratically within the body which is its highest outcome,
as life inheres within an animal or plant.
All animals and plants are corporations, or forms of democracy, and may
be studied by the light of these, as democracies, not infrequently, by
that of animals and plants. The solution of the difficult problem of
reflex action, for example, is thus facilitated, by supposing it to be
departmental in character; that is to say, by supposing it to be action
of which the department that attends to it is alone cognisant, and which
is not referred to the central government so long as things go normally.
As long, therefore, as this is the case, the central government is
unconscious of what is going on, but its being thus unconscious is no
argument that the department is unconscious also.
I know that contradiction in terms lurks within much that I have said,
but the texture of the world is a warp and woof of contradiction in
terms; of continuity in discontinuity, and discontinuity in continuity;
of unity in diversity, and of diversity in unity. As in the development
of a fugue, where, when the subject and counter subject have been
enounced, there must henceforth be nothing new, and yet all must be new,
so throughout organic life—which is as a fugue developed to great length
from a very simple subject—everything is linked on to and grows out of
that which comes next to it in order—errors and omissions excepted. It
crosses and thwarts what comes next to it with difference that involves
resemblance, and resemblance that involves difference, and there is no
juxtaposition of things that differ too widely by omission of necessary
links, or too sudden departure from recognised methods of procedure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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