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.
DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES: 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.
