The Note-Books of Samuel Butler Part 12

Language

The reason why words recall ideas is that the word has been artificially introduced among the a.s.sociated ideas, and the presence of one idea recalls the others.

V--VIBRATIONS

Contributions to Evolution

To me it seems that my contributions to the theory of evolution have been mainly these:

1. The identification of heredity and memory and the corollaries relating to sports, the reversion to remote ancestors, the phenomena of old age, the causes of the sterility of hybrids and the principles underlying longevity--all of which follow as a matter of course.

This was Life and Habit. [1877.]

2. The re-introduction of teleology into organic life which, to me, seems hardly (if at all) less important than the Life and Habit theory. This was Evolution Old and New. [1879.]

3. An attempt to suggest an explanation of the physics of memory. I was alarmed by the suggestion and fathered it upon Professor Hering who never, that I can see, meant to say anything of the kind, but I forced my view on him, as it were, by taking hold of a sentence or two in his lecture, on Memory as a Universal Function of Organised Matter and thus connected memory with vibrations. This was Unconscious Memory. [1880.]

What I want to do now [1885] is to connect vibrations not only with memory but with the physical const.i.tution of that body in which the memory resides, thus adopting Newland's law (sometimes called Mendelejeff's law) that there is only one substance, and that the characteristics of the vibrations going on within it at any given time will determine whether it will appear to us as (say) hydrogen, or sodium, or chicken doing this, or chicken doing the other. [This touched upon in the concluding chapter of Luck or Cunning? 1887.]

I would make not only the mind, but the body of the organism to depend on the characteristics of the vibrations going on within it.

The same vibrations which remind the chicken that it wants iron for its blood actually turn the pre-existing matter in the egg into the required material. According to this view the form and characteristics of the elements are as much the living expositions of certain vibrations--are as much our manner of perceiving that the vibrations going on in that part of the one universal substance are such and such--as the colour yellow is our perception that a substance is being struck by vibrations of light, so many to the second, or as the action of a man walking about is our mode of perceiving that such and such another combination of vibrations is, for the present, going on in the substance which, in consequence, has a.s.sumed the shape of the particular man.

It is somewhere in this neighbourhood that I look for the connection between organic and inorganic.

The Universal Substance

i

We shall never get straight till we leave off trying to separate mind and matter. Mind is not a thing or, if it be, we know nothing about it; it is a function of matter. Matter is not a thing or, if it be, we know nothing about it; it is a function of mind.

We should see an omnipotent, universal substance, sometimes in a dynamical and sometimes in a statical condition and, in either condition, always retaining a little of its opposite; and we should see this substance as at once both material and mental, whether it be in the one condition or in the other. The statical condition represents content, the dynamical, discontent; and both content and discontent, each still retaining a little of its opposite, must be carried down to the lowest atom.

Action is the process whereby thought, which is mental, is materialised and whereby substance, which is material, is mentalised.

It is like the present, which unites times past and future and which is the only time worth thinking of and yet is the only time which has no existence.

I do not say that thought actually pa.s.ses into substance, or mind into matter, by way of action--I do not know what thought is--but every thought involves bodily change, i.e. action, and every action involves thought, conscious or unconscious. The action is the point of juncture between bodily change, visible and otherwise sensible, and mental change which is invisible except as revealed through action. So that action is the material symbol of certain states of mind. It translates the thought into a corresponding bodily change.

ii

When the universal substance is at rest, that is, not vibrating at all, it is absolutely imperceptible whether by itself or anything else. It is to all intents and purposes fast asleep or, rather, so completely non-existent that you can walk through it, or it through you, and it knows neither time nor s.p.a.ce but presents all the appearance of perfect vacuum. It is in an absolutely statical state.

But when it is not at rest, it becomes perceptible both to itself and others; that is to say, it a.s.sumes material guise such as makes it imperceptible both to itself and others. It is then tending towards rest, i.e. in a dynamical state. The not being at rest is the being in a vibratory condition. It is the disturbance of the repose of the universal, invisible and altogether imperceptible substance by way of vibration which const.i.tutes matter at all; it is the character of the vibrations which const.i.tutes the particular kind of matter. (May we imagine that some vibrations vibrate with a rhythm which has a tendency to recur like the figures in a recurring decimal, and that here we have the origin of the reproductive system?)

We should realise that all s.p.a.ce is at all times full of a stuff endowed with a mind and that both stuff and mind are immaterial and imperceptible so long as they are undisturbed, but the moment they are disturbed the stuff becomes material and the mind perceptible.

It is not easy to disturb them, for the atmosphere protects them. So long as they are undisturbed they transmit light, etc., just as though they were a rigid substance, for, not being disturbed, they detract nothing from any vibration which enters them.

What will cause a row will be the hitting upon some plan for waking up the ether. It is here that we must look for the extension of the world when it has become over-peopled or when, through its gradual cooling down, it becomes less suitable for a habitation. By and by we shall make new worlds.

Mental and Physical

A strong hope of 20,000 pounds in the heart of a poor but capable man may effect a considerable redistribution of the forces of nature--may even remove mountains. The little, unseen impalpable hope sets up a vibrating movement in a messy substance shut in a dark warm place inside the man's skull. The vibrating substance undergoes a change that none can note, whereupon rings of rhythm circle outwards from it as from a stone thrown into a pond, so that the Alps are pierced in consequence.

Vibrations, Memory and Chemical Properties

The quality of every substance depends upon its vibrations, but so does the quality of all thought and action. Quality is only one mode of action; the action of developing, the desire to make this or that, and do this or that, and the stuff we make are alike due to the nature and characteristics of vibrations.

I want to connect the actual manufacture of the things a chicken makes inside an egg with the desire and memory of the chickens, so as to show that one and the same set of vibrations at once change the universal substratum into the particular phase of it required and awaken a consciousness of, and a memory of and a desire towards, this particular phase on the part of the molecules which are being vibrated into it. So, for example, that a set of vibrations shall at once turn plain white and yolk of egg into the feathers, blood and bones of a chicken and, at the same time, make the mind of the embryo to be such or such as it is.

Protoplasm and Reproduction

The reason why the offspring of protoplasm progressed, and the offspring of nothing else does so, is that the viscid nature of protoplasm allows vibrations to last a very long time, and so very old vibrations get carried into any fragment that is broken off; whereas in the case of air and water, vibrations get soon effaced and only very recent vibrations get carried into the young air and the young water which are, therefore, born fully grown; they cannot grow any more nor can they decay till they are killed outright by something decomposing them. If protoplasm was more viscid it would not vibrate easily enough; if less, it would run away into the surrounding water.

Germs within Germs

When we say that the germ within the hen's egg remembers having made itself into a chicken on past occasions, or that each one of 100,000 salmon germs remembers to have made itself into a salmon (male or female) in the persons of the single pair of salmon its parents, do we intend that each single one of these germs was a witness of, and a concurring agent in, the development of the parent forms from their respective germs, and that each one of them therefore, was shut up within the parent germ, like a small box inside a big one?

If so, then the parent germ with its millions of brothers and sisters was in like manner enclosed within a grand-parental germ, and so on till we are driven to admit, after even a very few generations, that each ancestor has contained more germs than could be expressed by a number written in small numerals, beginning at St. Paul's and ending at Charing Cross. Mr. Darwin's provisional theory of pangenesis comes to something very like this, so far as it can be understood at all.

Therefore it will save trouble (and we should observe no other consideration) to say that the germs that unite to form any given s.e.xually produced individual were not present in the germs, or with the germs, from which the parents sprang, but that they came into the parents' bodies at some later period.

We may perhaps find it convenient to account for their intimate acquaintance with the past history of the body into which they have been introduced by supposing that in virtue of a.s.similation they have acquired certain periodical rhythms already pre-existing in the parental bodies, and that the communication of the characteristics of these rhythms determines at once the physical and psychical development of the individual in a course as nearly like that of the parents as changed surroundings will allow.

For, according to my Life and Habit theory, everything in connection with embryonic development is referred to memory, and this involves that the thing remembering should have been present and an actor in the development which it is supposed to remember; but we have just settled that the germs which unite to form any individual, and which when united proceed to develop according to what I suppose to be their memory of their previous developments, were not partic.i.p.ators in any previous development and cannot therefore remember it. They cannot remember even a single development, much less can they remember that infinite series of developments the recollection and epitomisation of which is a sine qua non for the unconsciousness which we note in normal development. I see no way of getting out of this difficulty so convenient as to say that a memory is the reproduction and recurrence of a rhythm communicated directly or indirectly from one substance to another, and that where a certain rhythm exists there is a certain stock of memories, whether the actual matter in which the rhythm now subsists was present with the matter in which it arose or not.

There is another little difficulty in the question whether the matter that I suppose introduced into the parents' bodies during their life- histories, and that goes to form the germs that afterwards become their offspring, is living or non-living. If living, then it has its own memories and life-histories which must be cancelled and undone before the a.s.similation and the becoming imbued with new rhythms can be complete. That is to say it must become as near non-living as anything can become.

Sooner or later, then, we get this introduced matter to be non-living (as we may call it) and the puzzle is how to get it living again.

For we strenuously deny equivocal generation. When matter is living we contend that it can only have been begotten of other like living matter; we deny that it can have become living from non-living.

Here, however, within the bodies of animals and vegetables we find equivocal generation a necessity; nor do I see any way out of it except by maintaining that nothing is ever either quite dead or quite alive, but that a little leaven of the one is always left in the other. For it would be as difficult to get the thing dead if it is once all alive, as alive if once all dead.

According to this view to beget offspring is to communicate to two pieces of protoplasm (which afterwards combine) certain rhythmic vibrations which, though too feeble to generate visible action until they receive accession of fresh similar rhythms from exterior objects, yet on receipt of such accession set the game of development going and maintain it. It will be observed that the rhythms supposed to be communicated to any germs are such as have been already repeatedly refreshed by rhythms from exterior objects in preceding generations, so that a consonance is rehea.r.s.ed and pre-arranged, as it were, between the rhythm in the germ and those that in the normal course of its ulterior existence are likely to flow into it. If there is too serious a discord between inner and outer rhythms the organism dies.