Evolution, Old & New

Samuel Butler accepted that species change over time, but he never accepted that Charles Darwin had explained why. This 1879 polemic sets three earlier evolutionists, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, beside the author of the Origin of Species, quoting them at length so readers can weigh for themselves how much of the newer theory was already present in the old. Butler’s charge is double: that Darwin gave his predecessors too little credit, and that natural selection, by treating variation as random, drained evolution of any purpose. In its place he offers a teleology of his own, in which the effort and habit of living creatures help shape what they become. The book set off Butler’s long quarrel with Darwin’s circle, and its case for purposive evolution still hands the standard story a real argument to answer.