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Butler, Samuel, 1835-1902

"The Humour of Homer and Other Essays"

Darwin and Wallace
was unworkable; and secondly, that even though it were workable it
would not justify either of them in claiming evolution. When
biologists show pique at all they generally show a good deal of
pique, but pique or no pique, they shunned Mr. Spencer's objection
above referred to with a persistency more unanimous and obstinate
than I ever remember to have seen displayed even by professional
truth-seekers. I find no rejoinder to it from Mr. Darwin himself,
between 1865 when it was first put forward, and 1882 when Mr. Darwin
died. It has been similarly "ostrichized" by all the leading
apologists of Darwinism, so far at least as I have been able to
observe, and I have followed the matter closely for many years. Mr.
Spencer has repeated and amplified it in his recent work The Factors
of Organic Evolution, but it still remains without so much as an
attempt at serious answer, for the perfunctory and illusory remarks
of Mr. Wallace at the end of his Darwinism cannot be counted as
such.


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