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.
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?
