Life and Habit

Samuel Butler (1835 - 1902) was a Victorian novelist who wrote in many genres. The Way of All Flesh and Erewhon are his most famous novels. Besides fiction Butler also wrote about evolution, Christian orthodoxy, Italian art, literary history and translated the Iliad and The Odyssey. Butler states his purpose at the beginning of Life and Habit as follows, "It will be our business in the following chapters to consider whether the unconsciousness, or quasi-unconsciousness, with which we perform certain acquired actions, would seem to throw any light upon Embryology and inherited instincts, and otherwise to follow the train of thought which the class of actions above-mentioned would suggest; more especially in so far as they appear to bear upon the origin of species and the continuation of life by successive generations, whether in the animal or vegetable kingdoms."