The next important development occurred in a work by the noted British author Samuel Butler (1838-1902). More a novelist than a formal philosopher, Butler nonetheless offered speculations on philosophical and metaphysical matters, and was an ardent supporter of evolution. He discussed his panspychist view in his 1880 book ‘Unconscious Memory’ www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6605
Like many other thinkers of the time, Butler noted that scientists had determined that the nature of the organic was the same as that of the inorganic, that vitalism had been largely disproved, that organic matter had been shown to be identical with inorganic, and that the same forces were everywhere present -- views that hold to this day. The logical conclusion, then, was that certain essential characteristics of the living must inhere, in some form in the non-living. “If we once break down the will of partition between the organic and inorganic,” Butler writes,
the inorganic must be living and conscious also, up to a point. . . It is more coherent with our other ideas, and therefore more acceptable, to start every molecule as a living thing . . . than to start with inanimate molecules and smuggle life into them; . . .what we call the inorganic world must be regarded as up to a certain point living, and instinct, within certain limits, with consciousness, volition, and power of concerned action.
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