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
Mr. Darwin has told us this on the title-page of the “Origin of Species.”
He there defines it as “The Preservation of Favoured Races;” “Favoured”
is “Fortunate,” and “Fortunate” “Lucky;” it is plain, therefore, that
with Mr. Darwin natural selection comes to “The Preservation of Lucky
Races,” and that he regarded luck as the most important feature in
connection with the development even of so apparently purposive an organ
as the eye, and as the one, therefore, on which it was most proper to
insist. And what is luck but absence of intention or design? What,
then, can Mr. Darwin’s title-page amount to when written out plainly, but
to an assertion that the main means of modification has been the
preservation of races whose variations have been unintentional, that is
to say, not connected with effort or intention, devoid of mind or
meaning, fortuitous, spontaneous, accidental, or whatever kindred word is
least disagreeable to the reader? It is impossible to conceive any more
complete denial of mind as having had anything to do with organic
development, than is involved in the title-page of the “Origin of
Species” when its doubtless carefully considered words are studied—nor,
let me add, is it possible to conceive a title-page more likely to make
the reader’s attention rest much on the main doctrine of evolution, and
little, to use the words now most in vogue concerning it, on Mr. Darwin’s
own “distinctive feature.”
It should be remembered that the full title of the “Origin of Species”
is, “On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the
preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.” The
significance of the expansion of the title escaped the greater number of
Mr. Darwin’s readers. Perhaps it ought not to have done so, but we
certainly failed to catch it. The very words themselves escaped us—and
yet there they were all the time if we had only chosen to look. We
thought the book was called “On the Origin of Species,” and so it was on
the outside; so it was also on the inside fly-leaf; so it was on the
title-page itself as long as the most prominent type was used; the
expanded title was only given once, and then in smaller type; so the
three big “Origins of Species” carried us with them to the exclusion of
the rest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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