In 1885 he had written an abstract of these ideas in his notebooks (see
_New Quarterly Review_, 1910, p. 116), and as in “Luck, or Cunning?”
associated them vaguely with the unitary conceptions introduced into
chemistry by Newlands and Mendelejeff. Judging himself as an outsider,
the author of “Life and Habit” would certainly have considered the mild
expression of faith, “I believe they are both substantially true,”
equivalent to one of extreme doubt. Thus “the fact of the Archbishop’s
recognising this as among the number of his beliefs is conclusive
evidence, with those who have devoted attention to the laws of thought,
that his mind is not yet clear” on the matter of the belief avowed (see
“Life and Habit,” pp. 24, 25).
To sum up: Butler’s fundamental attitude to the vibration hypothesis was
all through that taken in “Unconscious Memory”; he played with it as a
pretty pet, and fancied it more and more as time went on; but instead of
backing it for all he was worth, like the main theses of “Life and
Habit,” he put a big stake on it—and then hedged.
* * * * *
The last of Butler’s biological writings is the Essay, “THE DEADLOCK IN
DARWINISM,” containing much valuable criticism on Wallace and Weismann.
It is in allusion to the misnomer of Wallace’s book, “Darwinism,” that he
introduces the term “Wallaceism” {0d} for a theory of descent that
excludes the transmission of acquired characters. This was, indeed, the
chief factor that led Charles Darwin to invent his hypothesis of
pangenesis, which, unacceptable as it has proved, had far more to
recommend it as a formal hypothesis than the equally formal germ-plasm
hypothesis of Weismann.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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