Chapter 1

Transcribed from the 1914 A. C. Fifield edition by David Price, email [email protected]

[Picture: Public domain cover]

CANTERBURY PIECES

By Samuel Butler Author of “Erewhon,” “The Way of All Flesh,” etc.

* * * * *

Edited by R. A. Streatfeild

* * * * *

London: A. C. Fifield 1914

CONTENTS

PAGE Darwin on the Origin of Species 149 A Dialogue 155 Barrel-Organs 164 Letter: 21 February 1863 167 Letter: 14 March 1863 171 Letter: 18 March 1863 173 Letter: 11 April 1863 175 Letter: 22 June 1863 177 Darwin Among the Machines 179 Lucubratio Ebria 186 A Note on “The Tempest” 195 The English Cricketers 198

Darwin on the Origin of Species

Prefatory Note

_AS the following dialogue embodies the earliest fruits of Butler’s study of the works of Charles Darwin_, _with whose name his own was destined in later years to be so closely connected_, _and thus possesses an interest apart from its intrinsic merit_, _a few words as to the circumstances in which it was published will not be out of place_.

_Butler arrived in New Zealand in October_, 1859, _and about the same time Charles Darwin’s_ ORIGIN OF SPECIES _was published_. _Shortly afterwards the book came into Butler’s hands_. _He seems to have read it carefully_, _and meditated upon it_. _The result of his meditations took the shape of the following dialogue_, _which was published on_ 20 _December_, 1862, _in the_ PRESS _which had been started in the town of Christ Church in May_, 1861. _The dialogue did not by any means pass unnoticed_. _On the_ 17_th of January_, 1863, _a leading article_ (_of course unsigned_) _appeared in the_ PRESS, _under the title_ “_Barrel-Organs_,” _discussing Darwin’s theories_, _and incidentally referring to Butler’s dialogue_. _A reply to this article_, _signed A.M._, _appeared on the_ 21_st of February_, _and the correspondence was continued until the_ 22_nd of June_, 1863. _The dialogue itself_, _which was unearthed from the early files of the_ PRESS, _mainly owing to the exertions of Mr. Henry Festing Jones_, _was reprinted_, _together with the correspondence that followed its publication_, _in the_ PRESS _of June_ 8 _and_ 15, 1912. _Soon after the original appearance of Butler’s dialogue a copy of it fell into the hands of Charles Darwin_, _possibly sent to him by a friend in New Zealand_. _Darwin was sufficiently struck by it to forward it to the editor of some magazine_, _which has not been identified_, _with the following letter_:—

_Down_, _Bromley_, _Kent_, _S.E._ _March_ 24 [1863].

(Private).

_Mr. Darwin takes the liberty to send by this post to the Editor a New Zealand newspaper for the very improbable chance of the Editor having some spare space to reprint a Dialogue on Species_. _This Dialogue_, _written by some_ [_sic_] _quite unknown to Mr. Darwin_, _is remarkable from its spirit and from giving so clear and accurate a view of Mr. D._ [_sic_] _theory_. _It is also remarkable from being published in a colony exactly_ 12 _years old_, _in which it might have_ [_sic_] _thought only material interests would have been regarded_.

_The autograph of this letter was purchased from Mr. Tregaskis by Mr. Festing Jones_, _and subsequently presented by him to the Museum at Christ Church_. _The letter cannot be dated with certainty_, _but since Butler’s dialogue was published in December_, 1862, _and it is at least probable that the copy of the_ PRESS _which contained it was sent to Darwin shortly after it appeared_, _we may conclude with tolerable certainty that the letter was written in March_, 1863. _Further light is thrown on the controversy by a correspondence which took place between Butler and Darwin in_ 1865, _shortly after Butler’s return to England_. _During that year Butler had published a pamphlet entitled_ THE EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST AS GIVEN BY THE FOUR EVANGELISTS CRITICALLY EXAMINED, _of which he afterwards incorporated the substance into_ THE FAIR HAVEN. _Butler sent a copy of this pamphlet to Darwin_, _and in due course received the following reply_:—

_Down_, _Bromley_, _Kent_. _September_ 30 [1865].

_My dear Sir_,—_I am much obliged to you for so kindly sending me your Evidences_, _etc._ _We have read it with much interest_. _It seems to me written with much force_, _vigour_, _and clearness_; _and the main argument to me is quite new_. _I particularly agree with all you say in your preface_.

_I do not know whether you intend to return to New Zealand_, _and_, _if you are inclined to write_, _I should much like to know what your future plans are_.

_My health has been so bad during the last five months that I have been confined to my bedroom_. _Had it been otherwise I would have asked you if you could have spared the time to have paid us a visit_; _but this at present is impossible_, _and I fear will be so for some time_.

_With my best thanks for your present_,

_I remain_,

_My dear Sir_,

_Yours very faithfully_, _Charles Darwin_.

_To this letter Butler replied as follows_:—

15 _Clifford’s Inn_, _E.C._ _October_ 1_st_, 1865.

_Dear Sir_,—_I knew you were ill and I never meant to give you the fatigue of writing to me_. _Please do not trouble yourself to do so again_. _As you kindly ask my plans I may say that_, _though I very probably may return to New Zealand in three or four years_, _I have no intention of doing so before that time_. _My study is art_, _and anything else I may indulge in is only by-play_; _it may cause you some little wonder that at my age I should have started as an art student_, _and I may perhaps be permitted to explain that this was always my wish for years_, _that I had begun six years ago_, _as soon as ever I found that I could not conscientiously take orders_; _my father so strongly disapproved of the idea that I gave it up and went out to New Zealand_, _stayed there for five years_, _worked like a common servant_, _though on a run of my own_, _and sold out little more than a year ago_, _thinking that prices were going to fall_—_which they have since done_. _Being then rather at a loss what to do and my capital being all locked up_, _I took the opportunity to return to my old plan_, _and have been studying for the last ten years unremittingly_. _I hope that in three or four years more I shall be able to go on very well by myself_, _and then I may go back to New Zealand or no as circumstances shall seem to render advisable_. _I must apologise for so much detail_, _but hardly knew how to explain myself without it_.

_I always delighted in your_ ORIGIN OF SPECIES _as soon as I saw it out in New Zealand_—_not as knowing anything whatsoever of natural history_, _but it enters into so many deeply interesting questions_, _or rather it suggests so many_, _that it thoroughly fascinated me_. _I therefore feel all the greater pleasure that my pamphlet should please you_, _however full of errors_.

_The first dialogue on the_ ORIGIN _which I wrote in the_ PRESS _called forth a contemptuous rejoinder from_ (_I believe_) _the Bishop of Wellington_—(_please do not mention the name_, _though I think that at this distance of space and time I might mention it to yourself_) _I answered it with the enclosed_, _which may amuse you_. _I assumed another character because my dialogue was in my hearing very severely criticised by two or three whose opinion I thought worth having_, _and I deferred to their judgment in my next_. _I do not think I should do so now_. _I fear you will be shocked at an appeal to the periodicals mentioned in my letter_, _but they form a very staple article of bush diet_, _and we used to get a good deal of superficial knowledge out of them_. _I feared to go in too heavy on the side of the_ ORIGIN, _because I thought that_, _having said my say as well as I could_, _I had better now take a less impassioned tone_; _but I was really exceedingly angry_.

_Please do not trouble yourself to answer this_, _and believe me_,

_Yours most sincerely_,

_S. Butler_.

_This elicited a second letter from Darwin_:—

_Down_, _Bromley_, _Kent_. _October_ 6.

_My dear Sir_,—_I thank you sincerely for your kind and frank letter_, _which has interested me greatly_. _What a singular and varied career you have already run_. _Did you keep any journal or notes in New Zealand_? _For it strikes me that with your rare powers of writing you might make a very interesting work descriptive of a colonist’s life in New Zealand_.

_I return your printed letter_, _which you might like to keep_. _It has amused me_, _especially the part in which you criticise yourself_. _To appreciate the letter fully I ought to have read the bishop’s letter_, _which seems to have been very rich_.

_You tell me not to answer your note_, _but I could not resist the wish to thank you for your letter_.

_With every good wish_, _believe me_, _my dear Sir_,

_Yours sincerely_, _Ch. Darwin_.

_It is curious that in this correspondence Darwin makes no reference to the fact that he had already had in his possession a copy of Butler’s dialogue and had endeavoured to induce the editor of an English periodical to reprint it_. _It is possible that we have not here the whole of the correspondence which passed between Darwin and Butler at this period_, _and this theory is supported by the fact that Butler seems to take for granted that Darwin knew all about the appearance of the original dialogue on the_ ORIGIN OF SPECIES _in the_ PRESS. _Enough_, _however_, _has been given to explain the correspondence which the publication of the dialogue occasioned_. _I do not know what authority Butler had for supposing that Charles John Abraham_, _Bishop of Wellington_, _was the author of the article entitled_ “_Barrel-Organs_,” _and the_ “_Savoyard_” _of the subsequent controversy_. _However_, _at that time Butler was deep in the __counsels of the_ PRESS, _and he may have received private information on the subject_. _Butler’s own reappearance over the initials A.M. is sufficiently explained in his letter to Darwin_.

_It is worth observing that Butler appears in the dialogue and ensuing correspondence in a character very different from that which he was later to assume_. _Here we have him as an ardent supporter of Charles Darwin_, _and adopting a contemptuous tone with regard to the claims of Erasmus Darwin to have sown the seed which was afterwards raised to maturity by his grandson_. _It would be interesting to know if it was this correspondence that first turned Butler’s attention seriously to the works of the older evolutionists and ultimately led to the production of_ EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW, _in which the indebtedness of Charles Darwin to Erasmus Darwin_, _Buffon and Lamarck is demonstrated with such compelling force_.

A Dialogue

[From the _Press_, 20 December, 1862.]

F. So you have finished Darwin? Well, how did you like him?

C. You cannot expect me to like him. He is so hard and logical, and he treats his subject with such an intensity of dry reasoning without giving himself the loose rein for a single moment from one end of the book to the other, that I must confess I have found it a great effort to read him through.

F. But I fancy that, if you are to be candid, you will admit that the fault lies rather with yourself than with the book. Your knowledge of natural history is so superficial that you are constantly baffled by terms of which you do not understand the meaning, and in which you consequently lose all interest. I admit, however, that the book is hard and laborious reading; and, moreover, that the writer appears to have predetermined from the commencement to reject all ornament, and simply to argue from beginning to end, from point to point, till he conceived that he had made his case sufficiently clear.

C. I agree with you, and I do not like his book partly on that very account. He seems to have no eye but for the single point at which he is aiming.

F. But is not that a great virtue in a writer?

C. A great virtue, but a cold and hard one.

F. In my opinion it is a grave and wise one. Moreover, I conceive that the judicial calmness which so strongly characterises the whole book, the absence of all passion, the air of extreme and anxious caution which pervades it throughout, are rather the result of training and artificially acquired self-restraint than symptoms of a cold and unimpassioned nature; at any rate, whether the lawyer-like faculty of swearing both sides of a question and attaching the full value to both is acquired or natural in Darwin’s case, you will admit that such a habit of mind is essential for any really valuable and scientific investigation.

C. I admit it. Science is all head—she has no heart at all.

F. You are right. But a man of science may be a man of other things besides science, and though he may have, and ought to have no heart during a scientific investigation, yet when he has once come to a conclusion he may be hearty enough in support of it, and in his other capacities may be of as warm a temperament as even you can desire.

C. I tell you I do not like the book.

F. May I catechise you a little upon it?

C. To your heart’s content.

F. Firstly, then, I will ask you what is the one great impression that you have derived from reading it; or, rather, what do you think to be the main impression that Darwin wanted you to derive?

C. Why, I should say some such thing as the following—that men are descended from monkeys, and monkeys from something else, and so on back to dogs and horses and hedge-sparrows and pigeons and cinipedes (what is a cinipede?) and cheesemites, and then through the plants down to duckweed.

F. You express the prevalent idea concerning the book, which as you express it appears nonsensical enough.

C. How, then, should you express it yourself?

F. Hand me the book and I will read it to you through from beginning to end, for to express it more briefly than Darwin himself has done is almost impossible.

C. That is nonsense; as you asked me what impression I derived from the book, so now I ask you, and I charge you to answer me.

F. Well, I assent to the justice of your demand, but I shall comply with it by requiring your assent to a few principal statements deducible from the work.

C. So be it.

F. You will grant then, firstly, that all plants and animals increase very rapidly, and that unless they were in some manner checked, the world would soon be overstocked. Take cats, for instance; see with what rapidity they breed on the different runs in this province where there is little or nothing to check them; or even take the more slowly breeding sheep, and see how soon 500 ewes become 5000 sheep under favourable circumstances. Suppose this sort of thing to go on for a hundred million years or so, and where would be the standing room for all the different plants and animals that would be now existing, did they not materially check each other’s increase, or were they not liable in some way to be checked by other causes? Remember the quail; how plentiful they were until the cats came with the settlers from Europe. Why were they so abundant? Simply because they had plenty to eat, and could get sufficient shelter from the hawks to multiply freely. The cats came, and tussocks stood the poor little creatures in but poor stead. The cats increased and multiplied because they had plenty of food and no natural enemy to check them. Let them wait a year or two, till they have materially reduced the larks also, as they have long since reduced the quail, and let them have to depend solely upon occasional dead lambs and sheep, and they will find a certain rather formidable natural enemy called Famine rise slowly but inexorably against them and slaughter them wholesale. The first proposition then to which I demand your assent is that all plants and animals tend to increase in a high geometrical ratio; that they all endeavour to get that which is necessary for their own welfare; that, as unfortunately there are conflicting interests in Nature, collisions constantly occur between different animals and plants, whereby the rate of increase of each species is very materially checked. Do you admit this?

C. Of course; it is obvious.

F. You admit then that there is in Nature a perpetual warfare of plant, of bird, of beast, of fish, of reptile; that each is striving selfishly for its own advantage, and will get what it wants if it can.

C. If what?

F. If it can. How comes it then that sometimes it cannot? Simply because all are not of equal strength, and the weaker must go to the wall.

C. You seem to gloat over your devilish statement.

F. Gloat or no gloat, is it true or no? I am not one of those

“Who would unnaturally better Nature By making out that that which is, is not.”

If the law of Nature is “struggle,” it is better to look the matter in the face and adapt yourself to the conditions of your existence. Nature will not bow to you, neither will you mend matters by patting her on the back and telling her that she is not so black as she is painted. My dear fellow, my dear sentimental friend, do you eat roast beef or roast mutton?

C. Drop that chaff and go back to the matter in hand.

F. To continue then with the cats. Famine comes and tests them, so to speak; the weaker, the less active, the less cunning, and the less enduring cats get killed off, and only the strongest and smartest cats survive; there will be no favouritism shown to animals in a state of Nature; they will be weighed in the balance, and the weight of a hair will sometimes decide whether they shall be found wanting or no. This being the case, the cats having been thus naturally culled and the stronger having been preserved, there will be a gradual tendency to improve manifested among the cats, even as among our own mobs of sheep careful culling tends to improve the flock.

C. This, too, is obvious.

F. Extend this to all animals and plants, and the same thing will hold good concerning them all. I shall now change the ground and demand assent to another statement. You know that though the offspring of all plants and animals is in the main like the parent, yet that in almost every instance slight deviations occur, and that sometimes there is even considerable divergence from the parent type. It must also be admitted that these slight variations are often, or at least sometimes, capable of being perpetuated by inheritance. Indeed, it is only in consequence of this fact that our sheep and cattle have been capable of so much improvement.

C. I admit this.

F. Then the whole matter lies in a nutshell. Suppose that hundreds of millions of years ago there existed upon this earth a single primordial form of the very lowest life, or suppose that three or four such primordial forms existed. Change of climate, of food, of any of the circumstances which surrounded any member of this first and lowest class of life would tend to alter it in some slight manner, and the alteration would have a tendency to perpetuate itself by inheritance. Many failures would doubtless occur, but with the lapse of time slight deviations would undoubtedly become permanent and inheritable, those alone being perpetuated which were beneficial to individuals in whom they appeared. Repeat the process with each deviation and we shall again obtain divergences (in the course of ages) differing more strongly from the ancestral form, and again those that enable their possessor to struggle for existence most efficiently will be preserved. Repeat this process for millions and millions of years, and, as it is impossible to assign any limit to variability, it would seem as though the present diversities of species must certainly have come about sooner or later, and that other divergences will continue to come about to the end of time. The great agent in this development of life has been competition. This has culled species after species, and secured that those alone should survive which were best fitted for the conditions by which they found themselves surrounded. Endeavour to take a bird’s-eye view of the whole matter. See battle after battle, first in one part of the world, then in another, sometimes raging more fiercely and sometimes less; even as in human affairs war has always existed in some part of the world from the earliest known periods, and probably always will exist. While a species is conquering in one part of the world it is being subdued in another, and while its conquerors are indulging in their triumph down comes the fiat for their being culled and drafted out, some to life and some to death, and so forth _ad infinitum_.

C. It is very horrid.

F. No more horrid than that you should eat roast mutton or boiled beef.

C. But it is utterly subversive of Christianity; for if this theory is true the fall of man is entirely fabulous; and if the fall, then the redemption, these two being inseparably bound together.