ABSTRACT
For Butler, the shade of one's posthumous reputation was his alternative to an eternity of heavenly bliss or infernal damnation, and his careful construction of both respectable biological and literary genealogies was calculated to guarantee him the former, as well as to distinguish him from those mercenary professionals who sought only immediate recognition. The decline in Butler's reputation was exacerbated by his association with Lamarckism. A broad acceptance of this theory had always been hindered by the lack of supporting experimental evidence. Lamarckism was eclipsed in the 1920s, within experimental biology at least, by a resurgent Darwinism, which was buoyed by a deeper appreciation of the consequences of Mendelism, and by Paul Kammerer's apparent fraud perpetrated in his attempt to adduce evidence for the transmission of acquired characteristics. Butler was only partly satisfied in the hopes for his afterlife.
