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
minded in a certain way—so long, that is to say, as it feels, knows,
remembers, concludes, and forecasts one set of things—it will be in one
form; if it assumes a new one, otherwise than by external violence, no
matter how slight the change may be, it is only through having changed
its mind, through having forgotten and died to some trains of thought,
and having been correspondingly born anew by the adoption of new ones.
What it will adopt depends upon which of the various courses open to it
it considers most to its advantage.
What it will think to its advantage depends mainly on the past habits of
its race. Its past and now invisible lives will influence its desires
more powerfully than anything it may itself be able to add to the sum of
its likes and dislikes; nevertheless, over and above preconceived opinion
and the habits to which all are slaves, there is a small salary, or, as
it were, agency commission, which each may have for himself, and spend
according to his fancy; from this, indeed, income-tax must be deducted;
still there remains a little margin of individual taste, and here, high
up on this narrow, inaccessible ledge of our souls, from year to year a
breed of not unprolific variations build where reason cannot reach them
to despoil them; for _de gustibus non est disputandum_.
Here we are as far as we can go. Fancy, which sometimes sways so much
and is swayed by so little, and which sometimes, again, is so hard to
sway, and moves so little when it is swayed; whose ways have a method of
their own, but are not as our ways—fancy, lies on the extreme borderland
of the realm within which the writs of our thoughts run, and extends into
that unseen world wherein they have no jurisdiction. Fancy is as the
mist upon the horizon which blends earth and sky; where, however, it
approaches nearest to the earth and can be reckoned with, it is seen as
melting into desire, and this as giving birth to design and effort. As
the net result and outcome of these last, living forms grow gradually but
persistently into physical conformity with their own intentions, and
become outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual faiths, or
wants of faith, that have been most within them. They thus very
gradually, but none the less effectually, design themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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