s theory
is given in The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912) and a resume of
the theory will be found at the end of the last of the essays in
this volume, "The Deadlock in Darwinism." In September, 1877, when
Life and Habit was on the eve of publication, Mr. Francis Darwin
came to lunch with him in Clifford's Inn and, in course of
conversation, told him that Professor Ray Lankester had written
something in Nature about a lecture by Dr. Ewald Hering of Prague,
delivered so long ago as 1870, "On Memory as a Universal Function of
Organized Matter." This rather alarmed Butler, but he deferred
looking up the reference until after December, 1877, when his book
was out, and then, to his relief, he found that Hering's theory was
very similar to his own, so that, instead of having something sprung
upon him which would have caused him to want to alter his book, he
was supported. He at once wrote to the Athenaeum, calling attention
to Hering's lecture, and then pursued his studies in evolution.

Life and Habit was followed in 1879 by Evolution Old and New,
wherein he compared the teleological or purposive view of evolution
taken by Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck with the view taken
by Charles Darwin, and came to the conclusion that the old was
better. But while agreeing with the earlier writers in thinking
that the variations whose accumulation results in species were
originally due to intelligence, he could not take the view that the
intelligence resided in an external personal God. He had done with
all that when he gave up the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
dead. He proposed to place the intelligence inside the creature
("The Deadlock in Darwinism" post).

In 1880 he continued the subject by publishing Unconscious Memory.
Chapter IV of this book is concerned with a personal quarrel between
himself and Charles Darwin which arose out of the publication by
Charles Darwin of Dr. Krause's Life of Erasmus Darwin. We need not
enter into particulars here, the matter is fully dealt with in a
pamphlet, Charles Darwin and Samuel Butler: A Step towards
Reconciliation, which I wrote in 1911, the result of a
correspondence between Mr. Francis Darwin and myself. Before this
correspondence took place Mr. Francis Darwin had made several public
allusions to Life and Habit; and in September, 1908, in his
inaugural address to the British Association at Dublin, he did
Butler the posthumous honour of quoting from his transl