Darwin was not, in his career or in his handling of Butler, a model of the urbane virtues. Butler did right to protest against the sacerdotal attitude which Victorian men of science frequently adopted. But he did wrong not to realise that Darwin did not take him altogether seriously, and why this was so. Butler's challenging manner of writing, the prickly defensiveness which he developed on the smallest provocation, must have been disagreeable to the great investigator who had spent years of careful research into the problems which Butler airily settled at his writing-table in the intervals of other pursuits. Darwin is perhaps to blame, but not so greatly to blame as Butler contended, if he regarded Butler at first as a well-disposed, and then as an ill-disposed, amateur; and that was in effect his view of the whole matter. When he sent _Evolution Old and New_ to Dr. Krause, he expressed the hope that the German writer "would not expend much powder and shot on Mr. Butler, for he really is not worthy of it. His book is merely ephemeral." And it was in fact ephemeral or nearly so. Butler's works on evolution contain many inspired guesses; but the inherent value of these ceases to have much more than a historical interest when they are confirmed by practical observation. If they are not so confirmed they remain open to question, though they may have their uses in suggesting paths for research. Butler's place in science is somewhat below that of Goethe, who did after all make a practical discovery which remains valid to-day. Some of his "mares'-nests," then, were "mares'-nests" from the beginning. Others, neglected when they might have been useful, had begun to be superannuated when they first attracted attention. But Butler, apart from his theories and his discoveries, remains as an observer of life and a teacher of conduct. Passages of this nature exist in all his works; but, generally speaking, his claim to be accepted as a philosopher rests on five books, _Erewhon_, _Erewhon Revisited_, the _Note-books_, _The Way of All Flesh_, and Mr. Festing Jones's biography. Mr. Festing Jones observes that "I was struck by his uncompromising sincerity. If a subject interested him, he took infinite pains to find out all he could about it first-hand, thought it over and formed an opinion of his own, without reference to what anyone else thought or said." In demonstration of this, Mr. Jones relates the following reminiscence: We talked about Charlotte Brontë; Butler did not like her; I said, as though taking the odd trick with the ace of trumps: "Well, at all events, she wrote three splendid novels." He replied in a low voice, reluctantly but decidedly: "They are not splendid." These four words shifted the subject under discussion from the splendour or otherwise of Charlotte Brontë's novels to the sincerity or otherwise of my opinion.