Luck or Cunning as the Main Means of Organic Modification

Luck or Cunning?, by Samuel
Butler

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Title: Luck or Cunning?
Author: Samuel Butler

Release Date: January, 2004 [EBook #4967] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 5, 2002]
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, LUCK OR
CUNNING? ***

Transcribed by David Price, email [email protected] from the
1922 Jonathan Cape edition

LUCK, OR CUNNING AS THE MAIN MEANS OF ORGANIC
MODIFICATION

NOTE

This second edition of Luck, or Cunning? is a reprint of the first edition,
dated 1887, but actually published in November, 1886. The only
alterations of any consequence are in the Index, which has been
enlarged by the incorporation of several entries made by the author in a
copy of the book which came into my possession on the death of his
literary executor, Mr. R. A. Streatfeild. I thank Mr. G. W. Webb, of the
University Library, Cambridge, for the care and skill with which he has
made the necessary alterations; it was a troublesome job because owing
to the re-setting, the pagination was no longer the same.
Luck, or Cunning? is the fourth of Butler's evolution books; it was
followed in 1890 by three articles in The Universal Review entitled

"The Deadlock in Darwinism" (republished in The Humour of Homer),
after which he published no more upon that subject.
In this book, as he says in his Introduction, he insists upon two main
points: (1) the substantial identity between heredity and memory, and
(2) the reintroduction of design into organic development; and these
two points he treats as though they have something of that physical life
with which they are so closely associated. He was aware that what he
had to say was likely to prove more interesting to future generations
than to his immediate public, "but any book that desires to see out a
literary three-score years and ten must offer something to future
generations as well as to its own." By next year one half of the
three-score years and ten will have passed, and the new generation by
their constant enquiries for the work have already begun to show their
appreciation of Butler's method of treating the subject, and their
readiness to listen to what was addressed to them as well as to their
fathers.
HENRY FESTING JONES. March, 1920.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

This book, as I have said in my concluding chapter, has turned out very
different from the one I had it in my mind to write when I began it. It
arose out of a conversation with the late Mr. Alfred Tylor soon after his
paper on the growth of trees and protoplasmic continuity was read
before the Linnean Society--that is to say, in December, 1884--and I
proposed to make the theory concerning the subdivision of organic life
into animal and vegetable, which I have broached in my concluding
chapter, the main feature of the book. One afternoon, on leaving Mr.
Tylor's bedside, much touched at the deep disappointment he evidently
felt at being unable to complete the work he had begun so ably, it
occurred to me that it might be some pleasure to him if I promised to
dedicate my own book to him, and thus, however unworthy it might be,
connect it with his name. It occurred to me, of course, also that the

honour to my own book would be greater than any it could confer, but
the time was not one for balancing considerations nicely, and when I
made my suggestion to Mr. Tylor on the last occasion that I ever saw
him, the manner in which he received it settled the question. If he had
lived I should no doubt have kept more