be classed as "panzoism". He later changed his views, and decided that God was composed not only of all living things, but of all non-living things as well. He argued, however, that "some vaster Person [may] loom ... out behind our God, and ... stand in relation to him as he to us. And behind this vaster and more unknown God there may be yet another, and another, and another." Heredity Samuel Butler argued that each organism was not, in fact, distinct from its parents. Instead, he asserted that each being was merely an extension of its parents at a later stage of evolution. "Birth," he once quipped, "has been made too much of." Evolution Butler accepted evolution, but rejected Darwin's theory of natural selection. In his book Evolution, Old and New (1879) he accused Darwin of borrowing heavily from Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck, while playing down these influences, and giving them little credit.Peter J. Bowler (2003), Evolution: The History of an Idea. University of California Press. p. 259. . In 1912, the biologist Vernon Kellogg summed up Butler's views: Butler, though strongly anti-Darwinian (that is, anti-natural selection and anti-Charles Darwin) is not anti-evolutionist. He professes, indeed, to be very much of an evolutionist, and in particular one who has taken it upon his shoulders to reinstate Buffon and Erasmus Darwin, and, as a follower of these two, Lamarck, in their rightful place as the most believable explainers of the factors and method of evolution. His evolution belief is a sort of Butlerized Lamarckism, tracing back originally to Buffon and Erasmus Darwin. Historian Peter J. Bowler has described Butler as a defender of neo-Lamarckian evolution. Bowler noted that "Butler began to see in Lamarckism the prospect of retaining an indirect form of the design argument. Instead of creating from without, God might exist within the process of living development, represented by its innate creativity."Peter J. Bowler (2001), Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early-Twentieth-Century Britain. University of Chicago Press. p. 142. Butler's writings on evolution were criticized by scientists.Lee Elbert Holt (1989), Samuel Butler. Twayne Publishers. p. 44. Critics have pointed out that Butler admitted to be writing entertainment rather than science, and his writings were not taken seriously by most professional biologists.Peter J. Bowler (1983), The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolutionary Theories in the Decades Around 1900. Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 72. Butler's books were negatively