Luck or Cunning as the Main Means of Organic Modification | Page 2

closely to my plan, and should
probably have been furnished by him with much that would have
enriched the book and made it more worthy of his acceptance; but this
was not to be.
In the course of writing I became more and more convinced that no
progress could be made towards a sounder view of the theory of
descent until people came to understand what the late Mr. Charles
Darwin's theory of natural selection amounted to, and how it was that it
ever came to be propounded. Until the mindless theory of Charles
Darwinian natural selection was finally discredited, and a mindful
theory of evolution was substituted in its place, neither Mr. Tylor's
experiments nor my own theories could stand much chance of being
attended to. I therefore devoted myself mainly, as I had done in
"Evolution Old and New," and in "Unconscious Memory," to
considering whether the view taken by the late Mr. Darwin, or the one
put forward by his three most illustrious predecessors, should most
command our assent.
The deflection from my original purpose was increased by the
appearance, about a year ago, of Mr. Grant Allen's "Charles Darwin,"
which I imagine to have had a very large circulation. So important,
indeed, did I think it not to leave Mr. Allen's statements unchallenged,
that in November last I recast my book completely, cutting out much
that I had written, and practically starting anew. How far Mr. Tylor
would have liked it, or even sanctioned its being dedicated to him, if he
were now living, I cannot, of course, say. I never heard him speak of
the late Mr. Darwin in any but terms of warm respect, and am by no
means sure that he would have been well pleased at an attempt to
connect him with a book so polemical as the present. On the other hand,
a promise made and received as mine was, cannot be set aside lightly.
The understanding was that my next book was to be dedicated to Mr.
Tylor; I have written the best I could, and indeed never took so much

pains with any other; to Mr. Tylor's memory, therefore, I have most
respectfully, and regretfully, inscribed it.
Desiring that the responsibility for what has been done should rest with
me, I have avoided saying anything about the book while it was in
progress to any of Mr Tylor's family or representatives. They know
nothing, therefore, of its contents, and if they did, would probably feel
with myself very uncertain how far it is right to use Mr. Tylor's name in
connection with it. I can only trust that, on the whole, they may think I
have done most rightly in adhering to the letter of my promise.
October 15, 1886.
CHAPTER I--INTRODUCTION

I shall perhaps best promote the acceptance of the two main points on
which I have been insisting for some years past, I mean, the substantial
identity between heredity and memory, and the reintroduction of design
into organic development, by treating them as if they had something of
that physical life with which they are so closely connected. Ideas are
like plants and animals in this respect also, as in so many others, that
they are more fully understood when their relations to other ideas of
their time, and the history of their development are known and borne in
mind. By development I do not merely mean their growth in the minds
of those who first advanced them, but that larger development which
consists in their subsequent good or evil fortunes--in their reception,
favourable or otherwise, by those to whom they were presented. This is
to an idea what its surroundings are to an organism, and throws much
the same light upon it that knowledge of the conditions under which an
organism lives throws upon the organism itself. I shall, therefore, begin
this new work with a few remarks about its predecessors.
I am aware that what I may say on this head is likely to prove more
interesting to future students of the literature of descent than to my
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. It is a condition of its survival that it shall do this,
and herein lies one of the author's chief difficulties. If books only lived
as long as men and women, we should know better how to grow them;
as matters stand, however, the author lives for one or two generations,
whom he comes in the end to understand fairly well, while the book, if
reasonable pains have been taken with it, should live more or less
usefully for a dozen. About the greater number of these generations the
author