by Simon Heffer
This blundering attitude permeates the book: had Gladstone not been offended by its mocking of his faith, he would doubtless have been by the extended nature of the single joke upon which the book is based: that proselytisers are so intellectually inept that they inevitably wreck their own case. Tackling those who doubt the Gospels, Owen says that ‘if it could be shewn that the belief in Christ’s reappearance did not arise until after the death of those who were said to have seen him, when actions and teachings might have been imputed to them that were not theirs, the case would be different; but this cannot be done; there is nothing in history better established than that the men who said that they had seen Christ alive after he had been dead, were themselves the first to lay aside all else in order to maintain their assertion.’125 To compound his projection of Owen’s stupidity, Butler has a friend write to Owen (and the letter is reproduced in the book) begging him to desist from his defence of Christianity, precisely because it is so weak in relying on disregarding the discrepancies in the Gospels. The friend refers him to the weaknesses in Paley’s Natural Theology, one of the best-selling books of the nineteenth century and a vigorous defence of Christianity, and urges him to expose them: but Owen cannot.
The other necessary element in Owen’s idiocy is his lack of understanding of ordinary people in the industrialised, and increasingly secularised, mid-nineteenth century. How wonderful, he surmises, must be the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard to those who have lost their jobs: ‘Few but those who have mixed much with the less educated classes, can have any idea of the priceless comfort which this parable affords daily to those whose lot it has been to remain unemployed when their more fortunate brethren have been in full work.’126
Owen is reduced to assertion, as he must be: since there is no proof of the bases of faith. Butler rubs this in. The Resurrection, he says, ‘is proved externally by the most solid and irrefragable proofs, such as should appeal even to minds which reject all spiritual evidence, and recognise no canons of investigation but those of the purest reason.’127 The absence of self-awareness, as well as of intellect, is glaring: ‘The fact is, that both we and our opponents are agreed that nothing should be believed unless it can be proved to be true. We repudiate the idea that faith means the accepting of historical facts upon evidence which is insufficient to establish them. We do not call this faith; we call it credulity, and oppose it to the utmost of our power.’128 The ultimate assertion is when he writes: ‘As long as we can be sure that our Lord died and rose from the dead, we may leave it to our opponents to contend about the details of the manner in which each event took place.’129
Owen has no doubt, as he has repeatedly told his readers: but nor does he understand that his opponents do not dispute the manner of the Resurrection, but refuse to believe there was a Resurrection at all. The conclusion to his work is similarly absolute, and preposterous: ‘In an age when Rationalism has become recognised as the only basis upon which faith can rest securely, I have established the Christian faith upon a rationalistic basis . . . Christianity and Rationalism are not only ceasing to appear antagonistic to one another, but have each become essential to the very existence of the other. May the reader feel this no less strongly than I do, and may he also feel that I have supplied the missing element which could alone cause them to combine. If he asks me what element I allude to, I answer Candour. This is the pilot that has taken us safely into the Fair Haven of universal brotherhood in Christ.’130 It proved Butler’s point that some churchmen, both Anglican and Catholic, felt he made such a good rebuttal of the rationalist arguments against Christianity that they commended the book highly. Miss Savage, indeed, sent the book to religious acquaintances purely to see their response; many were taken in. When people realised they had been duped, Butler was in the doghouse. In his lifetime, his subsequent works sold poorly, and were ignored by all but a small cognoscenti.
When he was plotting the book he wrote to his friend the Reverend F. S. Fleay, on 2 July 1872, telling him frankly of his intention to get ‘good useful truth into quarters which it is never otherwise likely to reach: if I could only make an artificial fly with a hook in it so cunningly that the church shd rise at it (and I think I could) I fancy good might come of it.’131 He promised that ‘no rat can be smelt – it is deodorised thoroughly through my method.’ He later told Fleay: ‘I had written the first chapter in the character of one who had never doubted: I shall write it now in the character of a converted sceptic, it will make my insisting on people’s understanding our side less suspicious.’ He also made the shocking admission that ‘I shall take it [the book] . . . to Chapman and Hall or Macmillan and give my name and say that I have been converted and have written in consequence – indeed I think I shall let it be known among my friends (except at home – where I shall say nothing) that my opinions are undergoing a change – it will not be published as the author of Erewhon, but simply as “by one who has been reconverted” – or something of that sort.’132
After publication he told Fleay: ‘I am told I have made the satire too quiet, and that it would have been better to have been broader . . . If more open the church papers might have passed it over as they do any serious attack, but now the unwary really go in danger by it. I feel pretty sure that I have taken the course which is most likely to make a row, and that is what I want.’133 He admitted he still doubted what had happened at the ‘resurrection’. ‘If any reliance could be placed upon the gospel narratives of the resurrection – then I should think the resuscitation view most probable: but unfortunately we cannot depend upon a single word of them, and so all becomes conjectural. However, the hallucination theory is too great a jump for the average British mind.’
That section of Butler’s intellectual energy not devoted to exposing organised religion to ridicule and obloquy was used more and more from the 1860s to the 1880s to attack Darwin. Darwin and Canon Butler had known each other at Shrewsbury and at university. Darwin had stimulated the Canon’s lifelong interest in botany on an undergraduate reading holiday in Wales in 1828. Samuel Butler was acquainted with Darwin’s children. A copy of On the Origin of Species – published while Butler was on his ship to New Zealand – had been sent to Butler. He read it intently. He wrote an article for a Christchurch newspaper about evolution in 1863. He noted at the end of his life that ‘The Fair Haven got me into no social disgrace that I have ever been able to discover. I might attack Christianity as much as I chose and nobody cared one straw; but when I attacked Darwin it was a different matter. For many years Evolution Old and New and Unconscious Memory made a shipwreck of my literary prospects.’134
When Erewhon appeared Butler, who then was merely sceptical about Darwin rather than hostile to him, conciliated him about his suspicion that it contained a satire on On the Origin of Species. He twice visited Darwin at Down, and met other members of the family: relations were cordial. However, the more Butler reflected on Darwin’s work, and the more he read elsewhere on the subject, the more his natural perversity drew him into conflict with Darwin. Butler may have been content that he had dealt, by 1877, with the fallaciousness of Christianity. He now decided to deal with the fallaciousness of the cult of Darwin. He did this despite – or, perhaps in his view, because of – his having had no scientific training: and when Darwin’s supporters, many infinitely more expert than Butler, turned on him, he bore the wounds as a self-righteous martyr should.
Butler’s first serious assault was Life and Habit, published in early 1878. He seems to have been motivated to write out of fear that someone would get there before him. ‘Charles Darwin is being a good deal discredited,’ he reflected, ‘and if I do not bring my book out soon it may easily be too late to be effective.’135 Francis Darwin, the great man’s son, was on good terms with Butler, and they corresponded. In November 1877 Butler warned Francis that his imminent book ‘has resolved itself into a downright attack upon your father’s view of evolution, and a defence of what I conceive to be Lamarck’s.’136 He added,
probably not disingenuously: ‘I neither intended nor wished this, but was simply driven to it . . . reading your father more closely, and, I may add, more sceptically, the full antagonism between him and Lamarck came for the first time before me.’ Butler claimed that ‘I have always admitted, and in such way as to leave no sense of arrière pensée, the inestimable service which he [Darwin] has conferred upon us by teaching us to believe in evolution; though maintaining that he has led us to believe in it on grounds which I, for my own part, cannot accept.’ Butler concluded by observing ‘how sorry I was that your father should have been at school under my grandfather, inasmuch as I myself should dislike an attack from a son or grandson of Kennedy’s, when I should not care twopence about it from any one else.’137
The younger Darwin criticised Butler for arguing that, with the exception of the theory of natural selection, his father had simply lifted all of the Origin from Lamarck. ‘I went through the earlier part of my book and cut out all support of “natural selection” and made it square with a teleological view – for such I take it Lamarck’s is.’138 Francis replied:
‘I confess to feeling lost in astonishment at your saying that you have cut out all support for Natural Selection, and also that you consider it a rope of sand. I suppose from this that you deny any effect to Natural Selection? If so you must find it rather a hard position to hold I should guess. Because of course you have to deny that such a thing as variations occur. For if you allow that variations occur you must allow that heredity is the rule, variations being only occasional lapses in perfect heredity. I suppose I am stereotyped from my education and association, but it does seem to me that if you grant this it is logically impossible to say that natural selection has no effect.139
This hit its target, for when Francis read Butler’s Life and Habit over Christmas 1877 it was ‘with great pleasure. I think all the analogy or identity between memory or heredity is very well worked out.’140 Butler had sent two copies, one of which – if Francis thought it wise – was to be passed on to Darwin. Francis recommended to him the writings of Huxley, notably articles in the Contemporary Review entitled ‘Animal Automation’, in which ‘he tried to show that consciousness was something superadded to nervous mechanism, like the striking of a clock is added to the ordinary growing parts.’ However, Francis continued that ‘I don’t think I quite understand what your objection to Natural Selection is’. Darwin’s letter came as a ‘relief’ to Butler, who had been ‘afraid you might have considered Life and Habit unpardonable’.141 He continued: ‘Pitch into it and into me by all means. You cannot do me a greater service than to bundle me neck and crop out of my present position; this is what I try to do to those from whom I differ, and this is what I wish them to do to me if they think it worthwhile.’
The book had occupied almost two years of Butler’s life. He stopped painting and concentrated on literary and intellectual endeavours, spending most mornings in the British Museum reading room. He developed a liking for Disraeli and spent much of 1878 reading his novels, admiring the man ‘very heartily’.142 He found some of the early work ‘rather laborious reading’ in spite of ‘the many brilliant sayings’. Although he discussed some of his ideas with certain friends – notably, and usefully, Francis Darwin – he was seldom up to date on scientific progress. Life and Habit, as with other works where Butler tries to undermine Darwin, is a book of debating points rather than serious research. It shows something about the intellectual currents stirred up by Darwinism in the generation after the publication of On the Origin of Species. When Francis pointed out elementary mistakes, Butler accepted them and protested that he knew his work would require refinement. This led to three further attempts to outline why Darwin was wrong, none any more successful than the first.
Far from causing him to be taken seriously by Darwin and his supporters, each new work caused them to despair. Butler entirely failed to make them revise their views. By 1880 Darwin was writing that Butler considered him ‘a rogue of the deepest dye’, though his dismay was confined to his private letters: in public he made no reference to the dispute.143 Butler could not drop the notion that Darwin was not the great original thinker others claimed: but their dispute (which Butler continued after Darwin’s death in 1882) was only about means, not ends. It says much for the bizarre nature of Butler’s character, and his almost autistic lack of self-awareness, that he persisted. The more the scientific world ignored him, the more determined he became to make them see how important his voice was.
His next attempt was Evolution Old and New, which he started as soon as Life and Habit was out of the hands of the reviewers. As well as reheating arguments from the earlier book, the new work introduced a more ad hominem tone: not because Butler wished to insult Darwin, but because his own desire for recognition for the value of his ideas was starting to override normal considerations of good manners. Matters took an even more unpleasant turn, unfortunately, because Butler believed he had discovered plagiarism. He accused Darwin, always the most upright of men, of failing to credit earlier scientists for their contribution to his theory. This entailed him standing up not merely for Lamarck, but for Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus.
In February 1879, three months before the publication of Evolution Old and New, Dr Ernst Krause, a German biologist, published an article on Erasmus Darwin in a German scientific periodical, Kosmos. Darwin wrote to Krause in March 1879 proposing to have his article translated, accompanied by an introductory biographical sketch he would write himself. Butler’s book was sent to Krause and, he alleged, ‘Darwin expressly asked Dr K not to notice it’.144 Butler’s evidence was a letter from Krause to Nature on 27 January 1881, in which he said: ‘Mr Darwin expressly solicited me to take no notice whatever of Mr Butler’s book.’ Butler then alleged Krause recast his article before translation using material from Evolution Old and New. ‘He wound up with an angry attack on Evol O&N leaving the book as a pistol pointed at my head, but never (in consequence no doubt of Ch Darwin’s request) mentioning it by name.’
Darwin’s work on his grandfather appeared in November 1879. It appeared with what the preface claimed was an accurate translation of Krause, which it was not: this began to stoke Butler’s ire. It said Butler’s book had appeared after the Kosmos piece, but made no mention that it had been rewritten before translation ‘with an eye’ to Evolution Old and New. Darwin said nothing about the article being ‘modified into an attack on it’. Butler said he wrote ‘very civilly’ to Darwin on 2 January 1880 to ask him to explain himself. Darwin immediately conceded the point and said that, when and if a second edition was called for, he would acknowledge what had happened. Butler, however, wanted a letter to The Times or the Athenaeum.
Darwin was shocked by Butler’s vehemence: no wonder he thought himself perceived as a ‘rogue of the deepest dye’. Butler – whose obsession seemed to suggest an unbalanced mind – wrote to the Athenaeum about Darwin’s academic practices. ‘I was so angry’, he said, making an interesting comparison, ‘at finding Darwin treat me exactly as he had treated Erasmus Darwin, Buffon, Lamarck and the Vestiges, that I wrote to The Athenaeum at once and stated the facts.’ Unfortunately for all concerned, the magazine published it. Darwin – who had made a genuine mistake – was outraged and wished to repudiate Butler equally publicly. Huxley warned him against it, as it could only give credit to a man the scientific establishment regarded as something between a joke and a charlatan. Francis Darwin thought Huxley wrong: Darwin’s intellectual force could have crushed Butler once and for all had he chosen to do so. Butler’s own notes on the affair record that ‘there was no reply from any one, which I took to mean no reply was possible.’ As a result, yet another book was written. ‘Knowing that C Darwin did not care about a newspaper letter, I wrote my book Unconscious Memory and stated the facts in full. It appeared November 1880.’
It prompted ‘a savage attack in the St James’s Gazette’ (which pointed out, quite fairly, the lack of scientific research underpinning Butler
’s effusions), followed quickly by a ‘coarsely vituperative’ one by George Romanes, the evolutionary biologist and disciple of Darwin, in Nature. Romanes began: ‘Mr Butler is already known to the public as the author of two or three books which display a certain amount of literary ability. So long therefore as he aimed only at entertaining his readers by such works as “Erewhon”, or “Life and Habit”, he was acting in a suitable sphere.’145
Romanes deplored Butler’s attempts to write about ‘philosophical discussion’. He continued: ‘To this arena, however, he is in no way adapted, either by mental stature or mental equipment; and therefore makes so sorry an exhibition that Mr Darwin may well be glad that his enemy has written a book. But while we may smile at the vanity which has induced so incapable and ill-informed a man gravely to pose before the world as a philosopher, we should not on this account have deemed “Unconscious Memory” worth reviewing.’ In the torrent of abuse, one of the gems was ‘the only good thing in it is the writer’s own opinion of himself.’ Romanes admitted it was the ‘vile and abusive attack upon the personal character of a man in the position of Mr Darwin’, actuated, he thought, by ‘petty malice’, that had spurred him to have Darwin’s revenge for him. Butler did himself no favours by writing to Nature to justify himself, referring to the remark about a ‘vile and abusive attack’ as being, he supposed, ‘Mr Romanes’ way of saying that I had made a vile and abusive personal attack on Mr Darwin himself.’146