The Note Books Of Samuel Butler

The Note- Books of
Samuel Butler

Author of " Erewhon"

Selections arranged and edited by

HenTy Festing Jones

With photogravure portrait by Emery Walker from a
photograph taken by Alfred Cathie in 1S9S

Second ImprtiSfin

London

A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.C.
19*3

A

NUMISMATIC HISTORY

OF THE REIGN OF

HENRY I.

(1100 1135)
FIRST PJHT.

W. J. AKDBEW,

OF CA.DSTER, WHA.LEY BRIDGE.

WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON', LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH

Preface

ARLY in his life Samuel Butler began to carry a note-

' book and to write down in it anything he wanted to
remember ; it might be something he heard some one say t more
commonly it was something he said himself. In one of these
notes he gives a reason for making them :

" One's thoughts fly so fast that one must shoot them ; it is
no use trying to put salt on their tails."

So he bagged as many as he could hit and preserved them,
re-written on loose sheets of paper which constituted a sort of
museum stored with the wise, beautiful, and strange creatures
that were continually winging their way across the field of his
vision. As he became a more expert marksman his collection
increased and his museum grew so crowded thai he wanted a
catalogue. In 1874 he started an index, and this led to his re-
considering the notes, destroying those that he remembered having
used in his published books and re-writing the remainder. The
re-writing shortened some but it lengthened others and suggested
so many new ones that the index was soon of Utile use and there
seemed to be no finality about it ( <( Making Notes," pp. 100-1
post). In 1891 he attacked the problem afresh and made it a
rule to spend an hour every morning re- editing his notes and
keeping his index up to date. At his death, in 1902, he left
five bound volumes, with the contents dated and indexed, about
225 pages of closely written sermon paper to each volume,
and more than enough unbound and unindexed sheets to make
a sixth volume of equal size.

In accordance with his own advice to a young writer {p. 363
post), he wrote the notes in copying ink and kept a pressed
copy with me as a precaution against fire ; but during his life-
time, unless he wanted to refer to something while he was in my
chambers, I never looked at them. After his death I took them
down and went through them. I knew in a general way what I
should find, but I was not prepared for such a multitude and

A 2 v

vi Preface

variety of thoughts, reflections, conversations, incidents. Then
are entries about his early life at hangar, Handel, school days at
Shrewsbury, Cambridge, Christianity, literature, New Zealand,
sheep farming, philosophy, painting, money, evolution, morality,
Italy, speculation, photography, music, natural history, arche-
ology, botany, religion, book-keeping, psychology, metaphysics,
the Iliad, the Odyssey, Sicily, architecture, ethics, the Sonnets
of Shakespeare. I thought of publishing the books just as they
stand, but too many of the entries are of no general interest and
too many are of a kind that must wait if they are ever to be pub-
lished. In addition to these objections the confusion is very
great. One would look in the earlier volumes for entries about
New Zealand and evolution and in the later ones for entries
about the Odyssey and the Sonnets, but there is no attempt
at arrangement and anywhere one may come upon something
about Handel, or a philosophical reflection, between a note giving
the name of the best hotel in an Italian town and another about
Harry Nicholls and Herbert Campbell as the Babes in the Wood
in the pantomime at the Grecian Theatre. This confusion
has a charm, but it is a charm that would not, I fear, survive
in print and, personally, I find that it makes the books distract-
ing for continuous reading. Moreover they were not intended
to be published as they stand [ u Preface to Vol. II," p. 215
post), they were intended for his own private use as a quarry
from which to take material for his writing, and it is remarkable
that in practice he scarcely ever used them in this way (" These
Notes," p. 261 post). When he had written and re-written a
note and spoken it and repeated it in conversation, it became
so much a part of him that, if he wanted to introduce it in a book,
it was less trouble to re-state it again from memory than to search
through his " precious indexes" for it and copy it (" Gadshill
and Trapani," p. 194, <( At Piora" p. 272 post). But he could
not have re-stated a note from memory if he had not learnt it
by writing it, so that it may be said that he did use the notes
for his books, though not precisely in the way he originally
intended. And the constant re-writing and re-considering were
useful also by forcing him to settle exactly what he thought and
to state it as clearly and tersely as possible. In this way the
making of the notes must have had an influence on the formation
of his style — though here again he had no such idea in his mind
when writing them ("Style," pp. 186-7 P ost )

Preface

vii

In one of the notes he says :

" A man may make, as it were, cash entries of Mmself in a
day-book, but the entries in the ledger and the balancing of the
accounts should be done by others'*

When I began to write the Memoir of Butler on 'which I
am still engaged, I marked all the more autobiographical notes
and had them copied ; again I was struck by the interest, the
variety, and the confusion of those I left untouched. It seemed to
me that any one who undertook to become Butler's accountant
and to post his entries upon himself would have to settle first
how many and what accounts to open in the ledger, and this could
not be done until it had been settled which items were to be selected
for posting. It was the difficulty of those who dare not go into the
water until after they have learnt to swim. I doubt whether I
should ever have made the plunge if it had not been for the in-
terest which Mr. Desmond MacCarthy took in Butler and his
writings. He had occasionally browsed on my copy of the books,
and when he became editor of a review, the New Quarterly,
he asked for some of the notes for publication, thus providing a
practical and simple way of entering itpon the business without
any very alarming plunge. I talked his proposal over with
Mr. R. A. Streatfeild, Butler's literary executor, and, having
obtained his approval, set to work. From November 1907 to
May 1910, inclusive, the New Quarterly published six groups
of notes and the long note on " Genius " {pp. 174-8 post).
The experience gained in selecting, arranging, and editing
the»e items has been of great use to me and I thank the proprietor
and editor of the New Quarterly for permission to republish
such of the notes as appeared in their review.

In preparing this book I began by going through the notes
again and marking all that seemed to fall within certain groups
roughly indicated by the arrangement in the review. I had
these selected items copied, distributed them among those which
were already in print, shuffled them and turned them over,
meditating on them, familiarising myself with them and tenia-
tively forming new groups. While doing this I was continually
gleaning from the books more notes which I had overlooked,
and making such verbal alterations as seemed necessary to avoid
repetition, to correct obvious errors and -to remove causes of
reasonable offence. The ease with which two or more notes would
condense into one was sometimes surprising, but there were

viii

Preface

cases in which the language had io be varied and others in which
a few words had io be added io bridge over a gap ; as a rule,
however, the necessary words were lying ready in some other
note. I also reconsidered the titles and provided titles for many
notes which had none. In making these verbal alterations I
bore in mind Butler's own views on the subject which I found in
a note about editing letters :

" Granted that an editor, like a translator, should keep as
religiously close to the original text as he reasonably can, and,
in every alteration, should consider what the writer would have
wished and done if he or she coidd have been consulted, yet,
subject io these limitations, he should be free io alter according
to his discretion or indiscretion"

My " discretion or indiscretion " was less seriously strained
in making textual changes than in determining how many, and
what, groups to have and which notes, in what order, to include
in each group. Here is a note Butler made about classification :

" Fighting about words is like fighting about accounts, and all
classification is like accounts. Sometimes it is easy to see which
way the balance of convenience lies, sometimes it is very hard io
know whether an item should be carried to one account or to
another."

Except in the group headed " Higgledy-Piggledy," I have
endeavoured to post each note to a suitable account, but some
of Butler's leading ideas, expressed in different forms, will
be found posted to more than one account, and this kind of
repetition is in accordance with his habit in conversation.* It
would probably be correct to say that I have heard him speak the
substance of every note many times in different contexts. In
seeking for the most characteristic context, I have shifted and
shifted the notes and considered and re-considered them under
different aspects, taking hints from the delicate chameleon
changes of significance that came over them as they harmonised
or discorded with their new surroimdings. Presently I caught
myself restoring notes to positions they had previously occupied
instead of finding new places for them, and the increasing
frequency with which difficulties were solved by these resiora-
iions at last forced me to the conclusion, which I accepted only
with very great regret, that my labours ivere at an end,

I do not expect every one to approve of the rcsidt. If I had
been trying to please every one, I should have made only a very

Preface

short and unrepresentative selection which Mr. Fificld would
have refused to publish. I have tried to make such a book as I
believe would have pleased Butler. Thai is to say, I have tried
to please one who, by reason of his intimate knowledge of the
subject and of the difficulties, would have looked with indulgence
upon the many mistakes which it is now too late to correct,
even if I knew how to correct them.. Had it been possible for him
10 see what I have done, he would have detected all my sins, both
of omission and of commission, and I like to imagine that he
would have used some such consoling words as these: " Well,
never mind ; one cannot have everything ; and, after all, { Le
mieux est Vennemi du bien' "

Here will be found much of what he used to say as he talked
with one or two intimate friends in his own chambers or hi
mine at the close of the day, or on a Sunday walk in the country
round London, or as we wandered together through Italy and
Sicily ; and I would it were possible to charge these pages with
some echo of his voice and with some reflection of his manner.
But, again ', one cannot have everything.

" Men's work we have" quoth one, "but we want them —
Them palpable to touch and clear to view."
Is it so nothing, then, to have the gem
But we must cry to have the setting too ?

In the New Quarterly each note was headed with a reference
to its place in the Note-Books. This has not been done here
because, on consideration, it seemed useless, and even irritating,
to keep on putting before the reader references which he coidd not
verify. I intend to give to the British M useum a copy of this
volume wherein each note will show where the material of which
it is composed can be found; thus, if the original Note-Books
are also some day given to the Museum, any one sufficiently
interested will be able to see exactly what I have done in selecting,
omitting, editing, condensing and classifying.

Some items are included that are not actually in the Note-
Books ; the longest of these are the two New Zealand articles
" Darwin among the Machines " and " Lucubratio Ebria "
as to which something is said in the Prefatory Note to " The
Germs of Erewhon and of Life and Habit " (pp. 39-42 post). ;
In thai Prefatory Note a Dialogue on Species by Butler and an
autograph letter from Charles Darwin are mentioned. Since the
note was in type I have received from New Zealand a copy of

X

Preface

the Weekly Press V igih June, 1912, containing the Dialogue
again reprinted and a facsimile reproduction of Darwin's letter.
I thank Mr. W. H. Triggs, the present editor of the Press,
Christchurch, New Zealand, also Miss Colborne-Veel and the
members of the staff for their industry and perseverance in search-
ing for and identifying Butler's early contributions to the news-
paper.

The other principal items not actually in the Note-Books,
the letter to T. W. G. Butler {pp. 53-5 post), "A Psalm
of Montreal" (pp. 388-9 post) and " The Righteous Man"
(pp. 390-1 post). I suppose Butler kept all these out of his
notes because he considered that they had served their purpose ;
but they have not hitherto appeared in a form now accessible to
the general reader.

All the footnotes are mine and so are all those prefatory notes
which are printed in italics and the explanatory remarks in
square brackets which occur occasionally in the text. I have also
preserved, in square brackets, the date of a note when anything
seemed to turn on it. And I have made the index.

The Biographical Statement is founded on a skeleton Diary
which is in the Note-Books. It is intended to show, among other
things, how intimately the great variety of subjects touched
upon in the notes entered into and formed part of Butler's
working life. It does not stop at the 18th of June, 1902, because,
as he says (p. 23 post), " Death is not more the end of some
than it is the beginning of others " ; and, again (p. 13 post),
for those who come to the true birth the life we live beyond flic
grave is our truest life. The Biographical Statement has ac-
cordingly been carried on to the present time so as to include
the principal events that have occurred during the opening period
of the " good average three-score years and ten of immortality "
which he modestly hoped he might inherit in the life of the world
to come.

Henry Festing Jones.

Mount Eryx,

Trapani, Sicily,

August, 1 912.

Contents

Biographical Statement r

I. Lord, What is Man ? 9

II. Elementary Morality 24

III. The Germs of Erewhon and of Life and Habit . 39

IV. Memory and Design 56

V. Vibrations 66

VI. Mind and Matter 74

VII. On the Making of Music, Pictures and Books . . 9?

VIII. Handel and Music .no

IX. A Painter's Views on Painting . . . 135

X. The Position of a Homo Unius Lihri . . .155

- XI. Cash and Credit j6H

XII. The Enfant Terrible of Literature . . .1^3

XIII. Unprofessional Sermons • 200

XIV. Higglcdy-Piggiedy 215

XV. Titles and Subjects ...... 229

XVI. Written Sketches 237

XVII. Material for a Projected Sequel to Alps ami

Sanctuaries . . . . . . .259

XVIII. Material for Erewhon Revisited .... 288

XIX. Truth and Convenience . 297
xi

.. Contents

Xll

XX. First Principles .

XXI. Rebelliousness

XXII. Reconciliation

XXIII. Death .

XXIV. The Life of the World to Come
XXV. Poems •

Index -

The Note- Books of Samuel Butler

Biographical Statement

1835. Dec. 4. Samuel Butler born at Langar Rectory,
Nottingham, son of the Rev. Thomas Butler, who
was the son of Dr. Samuel Butler, Headmaster of
Shrewsbury School from 1798 to 1836, and afterwards
Bishop of Lichfield.

1843-4. Spent the winter in Rome and Naples with his
family.

1846. Went to school at Allesley, near Coventry.

1848. Went to school at Shrewsbury under Dr. Kennedy.

Went to Italy for the second time with his family.

First heard the music of Handel.
1854. Entered at St. John's College, Cambridge.

1858. Bracketed 12th in the first class of the Classical Tripos

and took his degree.
„ • Went to London and began to prepare for ordination,
living among the poor and doing parish work : this
led to his doubting the efficacy of infant baptism
and hence to his declining to take orders.

1859. Sailed for New Zealand and started sheep-farming in

Canterbury Province : while in the colony he wrote
much for the Press of Christchurch, N.Z.

1862. Dec. 20. " Darwin on The Origin of Species. A

Dialogue," unsigned but written by Butler, appeared
in the Press and was followed by correspondence to
which Butler contributed.

1863. A First Year in Canterbury Settlement: made out of

his letters home to his family together with two
articles reprinted from the Eagle (the magazine of
St. John's College, Cambridge) : MS. lost.

2 Biographical Statement

1863. " Darwin among the Machines," a letter signed " Cel-
larius " written by Butler, appeared in the Press.

1S64. Sold out his sheep run and returned to England in
company with Charles Paine Pauli, whose acquaint-
ance he had made in the colony. He brought back
enough to enable him to live quietly, settled for
good at 15 Clifford's Inn, London, and began life as a
painter, studying at Cary's, Heatherley's and the
South Kensington Art Schools and exhibiting pic-
tures occasionally at the Royal Academy and other
exhibitions : while studying art he made the
acquaintance of, among others, Charles Gogin,
William Ballard and Thomas William Gale Butler.
„ " Family Prayers " : a small painting by Butler.

1865. " Lucubratio Ebria," an article, containing variations
of the view in " Darwin among the Machines," sent
by Butler from England, appeared in the Press.
„ The Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ as
contained in the Four Evangelists critically examined :
a pamphlet of VIII+48 pp. written in New
Zealand : the conclusion arrived at is that the
evidence is insufficient to support the belief that
Christ died and rose from the dead : MS. lost,
probably used up in writing The Fair Haven.

1869-70. Was in Italy for four months, his health having
broken down in consequence of over-work.

1870 or 1871. First meeting with Miss Eliza Mary 'Ann
Savage, from whom he drew Alethea in The Way
of All Flesh.

1872. Erewhon or Over the Range : a Work of Satire and

Imagination : MS. in the British Museum.

1873. Erewhon translated into Dutch.

„ The Fair Haven : an ironical work, purporting to be
" in defence of the miraculous element in our Lord's
ministry upon earth, both as against rationalistic
impugners and certain orthodox defenders," written
under the pseudonym of John Pickard Owen, with
a memoir of the supposed author by his brother
William Bickersteth Owen. This book reproduces
the substance of his pamphlet on the resurrection :
MS. at Christchurch, New Zealand.

Biographical Statement 3

1874. "Mr. Heatherley's Holiday,' ' his most important oil
painting, exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition,
now in the National Gallery of British Art,

1876. Having invested his money in various companies that

failed, one of which had its works in Canada, and
having spent much time during the last few years in
that country, trying unsuccessfully to save part of
his capital, he now returned to London, and during
the next ten years experienced serious financial
difficulties.
First meeting with Henry Festing Jones.

1877. Life an & Habit : an Essay after a Completer View

of Evolution : dedicated to Charles Paine Pauli :
although dated 1878 the book was published on
Butler's birthday, 4th December, 1877 : MS. at
the Schools, Shrewsbury.

1878. " A Psalm of Montreal " in the Spectator: There are

probably many MSS. of this poem in existence given
by Butler to friends : one, which he gave to H. F.
Jones, is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
„ A Portrait of Butler, painted in this year by himself,
now at St. John's College, Cambridge.

1879. Evolution Old and New : A comparison of the theories

of Buff on, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck with

that of Charles Darwin : MS. in the Fitzwilliam

Museum, Cambridge.
„ * A Clergyman's Doubts and God the Known and God the

Unknown appeared in the Examiner : MS. lost.
,, Erewhon translated into German.

1880. Unconscious Memory : A comparison between the

theory of Dr. Ewald Hering, Professor of Physiology
in the University of Prague, and the Philosophy of
the Unconscious of Dr. Edward von Hartmann, with
translations from both these authors and preliminary
chapters bearing upon Life and Habit, Evolution
Old and New, and Charles Darwin's Edition of Dr.
Krause's Erasmus Darwin.
„ A Portrait of Butler, painted in this year by himself,
now at the Schools, Shrewsbury. A third portrait
of Butler, painted by himself about this time, is at
Christchurch, New Zealand,

4 Biographical Statement

1881. A property at Shrewsbury, in which under his grand-

father's will he had a reversionary interest contingent
on his surviving his father, was re-settled so as to
make his reversion absolute : he mortgaged this
reversion and bought small property near London :
this temporarily alleviated his financial embarrass-
ment but added to his work, for he spent much time
in the management of the houses, learnt book-
keeping by double-entry and kept elaborate ac-
counts.

„ Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton
Ticino illustrated by the author, Charles Gogin and
Henry Festing Jones : an account of his holiday
travels with dissertations on most of the subjects
that interested him : MS. with H. F. Jones.

1882. A new edition of Evolution Old and New, with a short

preface alluding to the recent death of Charles
Darwin, an appendix and an index.
1S83. Began to compose music as nearly as he could in the
style of Handel.

1884. Selections from Previous Works with " A Psalm of

Montreal " and " Remarks on G. J. Romanes*
Mental Evolution in Animals' 1

1885. Death of Miss Savage.

Gavottes, Minuets, Fugues and other short pieces for
the piano by Samuel Butler and Henry Festing
Jones : MS. with H. F. Jones.

1886. Holbein's La Danse: a note on a drawing in the

Museum at Basel.
Stood, unsuccessfully, for the Professorship of Fine
Arts in the University of Cambridge.
„ Dec. 29. Death of his father and end of his financial
embarrassments.

1887. Engaged Alfred Emery Cathie as clerk and general

attendant.

„ Luck or Cunning as the main means of Organic Modi-
fication ? An attempt to throw additional light
upon Charles Darwin's theory of Natural Selection.

„ Was entertained at dinner by the Municipio of Varallo-
Sesia on the Sacro Monte.

1888. Took up photography.

Biographical Statement 5

1888. Ex Voto : an account of the Sacro Monte or New Jeru-
salem at Varallo-Sesia, with some notice of Taba-
chetti's remaining work at Crea and illustrations from
photographs by the author : MS. at Varallo-Sesia.
,, Narcissus : a Cantata in the Handelian form, words
and music by Samuel Butler and Henry Festing
Jones : MS. of the piano score in the British Museum.
MS. of the orchestral score with H. F. Jones.
In this and the two following years contributed some
articles to the Universal Review, most of which were
republished after his death as Essays on Life, Art,
and Science (1904).

1890. Began to study counterpoint with William Smith
Rockstro and continued to do so until Rockstro's
death in 1895.

1892. The Humour of Homer. A Lecture delivered at the

Working Men's College, Great Ormond Street,
London, January 30, 1892, reprinted with preface and
additional matter from the Eagle.
„ Went to Sicily, the first of many visits, to collect
evidence in support of his theory identifying the
Scheria and Ithaca of the Odyssey with Trapani and
the neighbouring Mount Eryx.

1893. " L'Origine Siciliana dell' Odissea." Extracted from the

Rassegna della Letter atur a Siciliana,
' ' On theTrapanese Origin of the Odyssey ' ' (Translation) .

1894. Ex Voto translated into Italian by Cavaliere Angelo

Rizzetti.

„ " Ancora sulV origine delT Odissea." Extracted from the
Rassegna della Letteratura Siciliana,

1895. Went to Greece and the Troad to make up his mind

about the topography of the Iliad.

1896. The Life and Letters of Dr. Samuel Butler (his grand-

father) in so far as they illustrate the scholastic,
religious and social life of England from 1790-1840 :
MS. at the Shrewsbury Town Library or Museum.
His portrait painted by Charles Gogin, now in the
National Portrait Gallery.

1897. The Authoress of the Odyssey, where and when she wrote,

who she was, the use she made of the Iliad and how
the poem grew under her hands : MS. at Trapani,

6 Biographical Statement

1897. Death of Charles Paine Pauli.

1898. The Iliad rendered into English prose : MS. at St.

John's College, Cambridge.

1899. Shakespeare's Sonnets reconsidered and in part re-

arranged, with introductory chapters, notes and a
reprint of the original 1609 edition : MS. with R. A.
Streatfeild.

1900. The Odyssey rendered into English prose : MS. at

Aci-Reale, Sicily.

1901. Erewhon Revisited twenty years later both by the

Original Discoverer of the Country and by his Son :
this was a return not only to Erewhon but also to the
subject of the pamphlet on the resurrection. MS.
in the British Museum.

1902. June, 18. Death of Samuel Butler.

1902. " Samuel Butler," an article by Richard Alexander

Streatfeild in the Monthly Review (September).
4 ' Samuel Butler/' an obituary notice by Henry Festinf
Jones in the Eagle (December) .

1903. Samuel Butler Records and Memorials, a collection of

obituary notices with a note by R. A. Streatfeild,
his literary executor, printed for private circulation :
with reproduction of a photograph of Butler taken at
Varallo in 1889.
„ The Way of All Flesh, a novel, written between 1872
and 1885, published by R. A. Streatfeild: MS.
with Mr. R. A. Streatfeild.

1904. Seven Sonnets and A Psalm of Montreal printed for

private circulation.
„ Essays on Life, Art and Science, being reprints of
his Universal Review articles, together with two
lectures.

„ Ulysses, an Oratorio : Words and music by Samuel
Butler and Henry Fcsting Jones : MS. of the piano
score in the British Museum, MS. of the orchestral
score with H. F. Jones.
" The Author of Erewhon/' an article by Desmond
MacCarthy in the Independent Review (September).

Biographical Statement 7

1904. Diary of a Journey through North Italy to Sicily (in
the spring of 1903, undertaken for the purpose of
leaving the MSS. of three books by Samuel Butler at
Varallo-Sesia, Aci-Reale and Trapani) by Henry
Festing Jones, with reproduction of Gogin's portrait
of Butler. Printed for private circulation.

1907. Nov. Between this date and May, 1910, some Extracts

from The Note-Books of Samuel Butler appeared in the
New Quarterly Review under the editorship of
Desmond MacCarthy.

1908. July 16. The first Erewhon dinner at Pagani's Restau-

rant, Great Portland Street ; 32 persons present :
the day was fixed by Professor Marcus Hartog.
Second Edition of The Way of All Flesh.

1909. God the Known and God the Unknown republished in

book form from the Examiner (1879) by A. C. Fifield,
with prefatory note by R. A. Streatfeild.
July 15. The second Erewhon dinner at Pagani's ; 53
present : the day was fixed by Mr. George Bernard
Shaw.

1910. Feb. 10. Samuel Butler Author of Erewhon, a Paper

read before the British Association of Homoeopathy
at 43 Russell Square, W.C., by Henry Festing Jones.
Some of Butler's music was performed by Miss
Grainger Kerr, Mr. R. A. Streatfeild, Mr. J. A. Fuller
Maitland and Mr. H. J. T. Wood, the Secretary of the
Association.

„ June. Unconscious Memory, a new edition entirely reset
with a note by R. A. Streatfeild and an introduction
by Professor Marcus Hartog,M.A.,D.sc.,F.L.s.,F.R.H.s.,
Professor of Zoology in University College, Cork.

„ July 14. The third Erewhon dinner at Pagani's
Restaurant ; 58 present : the day was fixed by the
Right Honourable Augustine Birrell, k.c, m.p.

„ Nov. 16. Samuel Butler Author of Erewhon. A paper
read before the Historical Society of St. John's
College, Cambridge, in the Combination-room of the
college, by Henry Festing Jones. The Master
(Mr. R. F. Scott), who was also Vice-Chancellor of
the University, was in the chair and a Vote of
Thanks was proposed by Professor Bateson, f.r.s.

8 Biographical Statement

1910. Nov. 28. Life and Habit, a new edition with a preface

by R. A. Streatfeild and author's addenda, being
three pages containing passages which Butler had
cut out of the original book or had intended to insert
in a future edition.

1911. May 25. The jubilee number of the Press, New Zealand,

contained an account of Butler's connection with the
newspaper and reprinted " Darwin among the
Machines " and " Lucubratio Ebria."

July 15. The fourth Erewhon dinner at Pagani's
Restaurant ; 75 present : the day was fixed by
Sir William Phipson Beale, Bart., k.c., m.p.

Nov. Charles Darwin and Samuel Butler: A Step
towards Reconciliation, by Henry Festing Jones. A
pamphlet giving the substance of a correspondence
between Mr. Francis Darwin and the author and
reproducing letters by Charles Darwin about the
quarrel between himself and Butler referred to in
Chapter IV of Unconscious Memory.
,, Evolution Old and New, a reprint of the second edition
(1882) with prefatory note by R. A. Streatfeild.

1912. June 1. Letter from Henry Festing Jones in the

Press, Christchurch, New Zealand, about Butler's
Dialogue, which had appeared originally in the Press
December 20, 1862, and could not be found.

„ June 8. " Darwin on the Origin of Species. A
Dialogue " discovered in consequence of the foregoing
letter and reprinted in the Press.

„ June 15. The Press reprinted some of the correspon-
dence, etc. which followed on the original appearance
of the Dialogue.
Some of Butler's water-colour drawings having been
given to the British Museum, two were included in
an exhibition held there during the summer.

„ July 12. The Fifth Erewhon Dinner at Pagani's
Restaurant ; 90 present ; the day was fixed by
Mr. Edmund Gosse, c.b., ll.d.

I

Lord, What is Man ?
Man

i

We are like billiard balls in a game played by unskilful
players, continually being nearly sent into a pocket, but hardly
ever getting right into one, except by a fluke.

ii

We are like thistle-down blown about by the wind — up
and down, here and there — but not one in a thousand ever
getting beyond seed-hood.

iii

A man is a passing mood coming and going in the mind of
his country ; he is the twitching of a nerve, a smile, a frown,
a thought of shame or honour, as it may happen.

iv

How loosely our thoughts ir st hang together when the
whiff of a smell, a band playing in the street, a face seen in
the fire, or on the gnarled stem of a tree, will lead them into
such vagaries at a moment's warning.

v

When I was a boy at school at Shrewsbury, old Mrs.
Brown used to keep a tray of spoiled tarts which she sold
cheaper. They most of them looked pretty right till you
handled them. We are all spoiled tarts.

vi

He is a poor creature who does not believe himself to be
better than the whole world else. No matter how ill we may

9

io Lord, What is Man ?

be, or how low we may have fallen, we would not change
identity with any other person. Hence our self-conceit
sustains and always must sustain us till death takes us and
our conceit together so that we need no more sustaining.

vii

Man must always be a consuming fire or be consumed.
As for hell, we are in a burning fiery furnace all our lives —
for what is life but a process of combustion ?

Life
i

We have got into life by stealth and petitio firincipii, by
the free use of that contradiction in terms which we declare
to be the most outrageous violation of our reason. We have
wriggled into it by holding that everything is both one and
many, both infinite in time and space and yet finite, both
like and unlike to the same thing, both itself and not itself,
both free and yet inexorably fettered, both every adjective
in the dictionary and at the same time the flat contradiction
of every one of them.

ii

The beginning of life is the beginning of an illusion to the
effect that there is such a thing as free will and that there
is such another thing as necessity — the recognition of the
fact that there is an "I can " and an "I cannot/' an " I
may " and an " I must."

iii

Life is not so much a riddle to be read as a Gordian knot
that will get cut sooner or later.

iv

Life is the distribution of an error — or errors.

v

Murray (the publisher) said that my Life of Dr. Builer was
an omnium gatherum. Yes, but life is an omnium gatherum.

Lord, What is Man ?

ii

vi

Life is a superstition. But superstitions are not without
their value. The snail's shell is a superstition, slugs ha.ye*i|<&
shells and thrive just as well. But a snail without a sheH :
would not be a slug unless it had also the slug's indifference
to a shell.

vii

Life is one long process of getting tired.

viii

My days run through me as water through a sieve.

ix

% Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from in-
sufficient premises.

x

Life is eight parts cards and two parts play, the unseen
world is made manifest to us in the play.

xi

Lizards generally seem to have lost their tails by the time
they reach middle life. So have most men.

xii

A sense of humour keen enough to show a man his own
absurdities, as well as those of other people, will keep him
from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those
that are worth committing.

xiii

Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling
and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know
the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases — though
not often.

xiv

There are two great rules of life, the one general and the
other particular. The first is that every one can, in the end,
get what he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule.
The particular rule is that every individual is, more or less,
an exception to the general rule.

12

Lord, What is Man ?

XV

Nature is essentially mean, mediocre. You can have
schemes for raising the level of this mean, but not for making
every one two inches taller than his neighbour, and this is
what people really care about.

xvi

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the
part of every organism to live beyond its income.

The World

i

The world is a gambling-table so arranged that all who
enter the casino must play and all must lose more or less
heavily in the long run, though they win occasionally by the
way.

ii

We play out our days as we play out cards, taking them
as they come, not knowing what they will be, hoping for a
lucky card and sometimes getting one, often getting just the
wrong one.

iii

The world may not be particularly wise — still, we know of
nothing wiser.

iv

The world will always be governed by self-interest. We
should not try to stop this, we should try to make the self-
interest of cads a little more coincident with that of decent
people.

The Individual and the World

There is an eternal antagonism of interest between the
individual and the world at large. The individual will
not so much care how much he may suffer in this world
provided he can live in men's good thoughts long after lie
has left it. The world at large does not so much care how
much suffering the individual may either endure or cause
in this life, provided he will take himself clean away out of
men's thoughts, whether for good or ill, when he has left it.

Lord, What is Man ?

13

My Life
i

I imagine that life can give nothing much better or much
worse than what I have myself experienced. I should say
I had proved pretty well the extremes of mental pleasure
and pain ; and so I believe each in his own way does, almost
every man.

ii

I have squandered my life as a schoolboy squanders a
tip. But then half, or more than half the fun a schoolboy
gets out of a tip consists in the mere fact of having something
to squander. Squandering is in itself delightful, and so I
found it with my life in my younger days. I do not squander
it now, but I am not sorry that I have squandered a good deal
of it. What a heap of rubbish there would have been if I had
not ! Had I not better set about squandering what is left
of it ?

The Life we Live in Others

A man should spend his life or, rather, does spend his
life in being born. His life is his birth throes. But most
men mis-carry and never come to the true birth at all and
some live but a very short time in a very little world and none
are eternal. Still, the life we live beyond the grave is our
truest life, and our happiest, for we pass it in the profoundest
sleep as though we were children in our cradles. If we are
wronged it hurts us not ; if we wrong others, we do not suffer
for it ; and when we die, as even the Handels and Bellinis
and Shakespeares sooner or later do, we die easily, know
neither fear nor pain and live anew in the lives of those
who have been begotten of our work and who have for the
time come up in our room.

An immortal like Shakespeare knows nothing of his own
immortality about which we are so keenly conscious. As he
knows nothing of it when it is in its highest vitality, centuries,
it may be, after his apparent death, so it is best and happiest
if during his bodily life he should think little or nothing about
it and perhaps hardly suspect that he will live after his death
at all

i4 Lord, What is Man ?

And yet I do not know — I could not keep myself going at
all if I did not believe that I was likely to inherit a good average
three-score years and ten of immortality. There are very
few workers who are not sustained by this belief, or at least
hope, but it may well be doubted whether this is not a sign
that they are not going to be immortal — and I am content
(or try to be) to fare as my neighbours.

The World Made to Enjoy-
When we grumble about the vanity of all human things,
inasmuch as even the noblest works are not eternal but must
become sooner or later as though they had never been, we
should remember that the world, so far as we can see, was
made to enjoy rather than to last. Come-and-go pervades
everything of which we have knowledge, and though great
things go more slowly, they are built up of small ones and
must fare as that which makes them.

Are we to have our enjoyment of Handel and Shakespeare
weakened because a day will come when there will be no
more of either Handel or Shakespeare nor yet of ears to hear
them ? Is it not enough that they should stir such countless
multitudes so profoundly and kindle such intense and affec-
tionate admiration for so many ages as they have done and
probably will continue to do ? The life of a great thing may
be so long as practically to come to immortality even now,
but that is not the point. The point is that if anything was
aimed at at all when things began to shape or to be shaped,
it seems to have been a short life and a merry one, with an
extension of time in certain favoured cases, rather than a
permanency even of the very best and noblest. And, when
one comes to think of it, death and birth are so closely cor-
related that one could not destroy either without destroying
the other at the same time. It is extinction that makes
creation possible.

If, however, any work is to have long life it is not
enough that it should be good of its kind. Many
ephemeral things are perfect in their way. It must be of
a durable kind as well.

Lord, What is Man ?

15

Living in Others

We had better live in others as much as we can if only
because we thus live more in the race, which God really does
seem to care about a good deal, and less in the individual,
to whom, so far as I can see, he is indifferent. After we
are dead it matters not to the life we have led in ourselves
what people may say of us, but it matters much to the life
we lead in others and this should be our true life.

Karma

When I am inclined to complain about having worked
so many years and taken nothing but debt, though I feel
the want of money so continually (much more, doubtless,
than I ought to feel it), let me remember that I come in free,
gratis, to the work of hundreds and thousands of better men
than myself who often were much worse paid than I have been.
If a man's true self is his karma — the life which his work lives
but which he knows very little about and by which he takes
nothing — let him remember at least that he can enjoy the
karma of others, and this about squares the account — or
rather far more than squares it. [1883.]

Birth and Death
i

They are functions one of the other and if you get rid
of one you must get rid of the other also. There is birth
in death and death in birth. We are always dying and being
born again.

ii

Life is the gathering of waves to a head, at death they
break into a million fragments each one of which, however,
is absorbed at once into the sea of life and helps to form a
later generation which comes rolling on till it too breaks.

iii

What happens to you when you die ? But what happens
to you when you are born ? In the one case we are born

i6 Lord, What is Man ?

and in the other we die, but it is not possible to get much
further.

iv

We commonly know that we are going to die though we
do not know that we are going to be born. But are we sure
this is so ? We may have had the most gloomy forebodings
on this head and forgotten all about them. At any rate we
know no more about the very end of our lives than about
the very beginning. We come up unconsciously, and go down
unconsciously; and we rarely r ither birth or death. We
see people, as consciousness, .n the two extremes.

Reproduction

Its base must be looked for not in the desire of the parents
to reproduce but in the discontent of the germs with their
surroundings inside those parents, and a desire on their part
to have a separate maintenance.* [1880.]

Thinking almost Identically

The ova, spermatozoa and embryos not only of all human
races but of all things that live, whether animal or vegetable,
think little, but that little almost identically on every sub-
ject. That " almost " is the little rift within the lute which
by and by will give such different character to the music.

[1889.]

* " The doctrine preached by Weismann was that to start with
the body and inquire how its characters got into the germ was to
view the sequence from the wrong end ; the proper starting point
was the germ, and the real question was not ' How do the characters
of the organism get into the germ-cell which it produces ? ' but ' How
are the characters of an organism represented in the germ which
produces it ? * Or, as Samuel Butler has it, the proper statement of
the relation between successive generations is not to say that a hen
produces another hen through the medium of an egg, but to say that
a hen is merely an egg's way of producing another egg." Breeding
and the Mendelian Discovery, bv A, D. Darbishire. Cassell & Co., 191 1,
p. 187-8.

" It has, I believe, been often remarked that a hen is only an egg's
way of making another egg." Life and Habit, Trubner & Co., 1878,
chapter viii, p. 134.

And compare the idea underlying " The World of the Unborn " in
Erewhon.

Lord, What is Man ?

17

Is Life Worth Living ?
This is a question for an embryo, not for a man. [1883.]

Evacuations

There is a resemblance, greater or less, between the
pleasure we derive from all the evacuations. I believe
that in all cases the pleasure arises from rest — rest, that
is to say, from the considerable, though in most cases
unconscious labour of retaining that which it is a relief to
us to be rid of.

In ordinary cases the effort whereby we retain those things
that we would get rid of is unperceived by the central govern-
ment, being, I suppose, departmentally made ; we — as
distinguished from the subordinate personalities of which
we are composed—know nothing about it, though the sub-
ordinates in question doubtless do. But when the desirability
of removing is abnormally great, we know about the effort
of retaining perfectly well, and the gradual increase in our
perception of the effort suggests strongly that there has
been effort all the time, descending to conscious and
great through unconscious and normal from unconscious
and hardly any at all. The relaxation of this effort is
what causes the sense of refreshment that follows all
healthy discharges.

All our limbs and sensual organs, in fact our whole body
and life, are but an accretion round and a fostering of the
spermatozoa. They are the real " He." A man's eyes,
ears, tongue, nose, legs and arms are but so many organs
and tools that minister to the protection, education, increased
intelligence and multiplication of the spermatozoa ; so that
our whole life is in reality a series of complex efforts in respect
of these, conscious or unconscious according to their com-
parative commonness. They are the central fact in our
existence, the point towards which all effort is directed.
Relaxation of effort here, therefore, is the most complete
and comprehensive of all relaxations and, as such, the supreme
gratification — the most complete rest we can have, short of
sleep and death.

c

1 8 Lord, What is Man ?

Man and His Organism

i

Man is but a perambulating tool-box and workshop, or
office, fashioned for itself by a piece of very clever slime,
as the result of long experience ; and truth is but its own
most enlarged, general and enduring sense of the coming
togetherness or con-venience of the various conventional
arrangements which, for some reason or other, it has been
led to sanction. Hence we speak of man's body as his
" trunk."

ii

The body is but a pair of pincers set over a bellows and a
stewpan and the whole fixed upon stilts.

iii

A man should see himself as a kind of tool-box ; this is
simple enough ; the difficulty is that it is the tools them-
selves that make and work the tools. The skill which now
guides our organs and us in arts and inventions was at one
time exercised upon the invention of these very organs
themselves. Tentative bankruptcy acts afford good illus-
trations of the manner in which organisms have been de-
veloped. The ligaments which bind the tendons of our feet
or the valves of our blood vessels are the ingenious enter-
prises of individual cells who saw a want, felt that they could
supply it, and have thus won themselves a position among
the old aristocracy of the body politic.

The most incorporate tool — as an eye or a tooth or the
fist, when a blow is struck with it — has still something of
the non-ego about it ; and in like manner such a tool as a
locomotive engine, apparently entirely separated from the
body, must still from time to time, as it were, kiss the soil
of the human body and be handled, and thus become in-
corporate with man, if it is to remain in working order.

Tools

A tool is anything whatsoever which is used by an in-
telligent being for realising its object. The idea of a desired

Lord, What is Man ? 19

end is inseparable from a tool. The very essence of a tool
is the being an instrument for the achievement of a purpose.
We say that a man is the tool of another, meaning that
he is being used for the furtherance of that other's ends,
and this constitutes him a machine in use. Therefore the
word " tool " implies also the existence of a living, intelligent
being capable of desiring the end for which the tool is used,
for this is involved in the idea of a desired end. And as few
tools grow naturally fit for use (for even a stick or a fuller's
teasel must be cut from their places and modified to some
extent before they can be called tools), the word "tool"
implies not only a purpose and a purposer, but a purposer
who can see in what manner his purpose can be achieved,
and who can contrive (or find ready-made and fetch and
employ) the tool which shall achieve it.

Strictly speaking, nothing is a tool unless during actual
use. Nevertheless, if a thing has been made for the express
purpose of being used as a tool it is commonly called a tool,
whether it is in actual use or no. Thus hammers, chisels,
etc., are called tools, though lying idle in a tool-box. What
is meant is that, though not actually being used as instru-
ments at the present moment, they bear the impress of their
object, and are so often in use that we may speak of them
as though they always were so. Strictly, a thing is a tool
or not a tool just as it may happen to be in use or not. Thus
a stone may be picked up and used to hammer a nail with,
but the stone is not a tool until picked up with an eye to
use ; it is a tool as soon as this happens, and, if thrown away
immediately the nail has been driven home, the stone is
a tool no longer. We see, therefore, matter alternating
between a toolish or organic state and an untoolish or in-
organic. Where there is intention it is organic, where there
is no intention it is inorganic. Perhaps, however, the word
" tool " should cover also the remains of a tool so long as
there are manifest signs that the object was a tool once.

The simplest tool I can think of is a piece of gravel used
for making a road. Nothing is done to it, it owes its being
a tool simply to the fact that it subserves a purpose. A
broken piece of granite used for macadamising a road is
a more complex instrument, about the toolishness of which
no doubt can be entertained. It will, however, I think, be

20 Lord, What is Man ?

held that even a piece of gravel found in situ and left there
untouched, provided it is so left because it was deemed
suitable for a road which was designed to pass over the spot,
would become a tool in virtue of the recognition of its utility,
while a similar piece of gravel a yard ofi on either side the
proposed road would not be a tool.

The essence of a tool, therefore, lies in something outside
the tool itself. It is not in the head of the hammer, nor in
the handle, nor in the combination of the two that the essence
of mechanical characteristics exists, but in the recognition
of its utility and in the forces directed through it in virtue
of this recognition. This appears more plainly when we
reflect that a very complex machine, if intended for use by
children whose aim is not serious, ceases to rank in our
minds as a tool, and becomes a toy. It is seriousness of aim
and recognition of suitability for the achievement of that aim,
and not anything in the tool itself, that makes the tool.

The goodness or badness, again, of a tool depends not
upon anything within the tool as regarded without relation
to the user, but upon the ease or difficulty experienced by
the person using it in comparison with what he or others
of average capacity would experience if they had used a
tool of a different kind. Thus the same tool may be good
for one man and bad for another.

It seems to me that all tools resolve themselves into the
hammer and the lever, and that the lever is only an inverted
hammer, or the hammer only an inverted lever, whichever
one wills ; so that all the problems of mechanics are present
to us in the simple stone which may be used as a hammer,
or in the stick that may be used as a lever, as much as in
the most complicated machine. These are the primordial
cells of mechanics. And an organ is only another name for
a tool.

Organs and Makeshifts

I have gone out sketching and forgotten my water-dipper ;
among my traps I always find something that will do, for
example, the top of my tin case (for holding pencils). This
is how organs come to change their uses and hence their
forms, or at any rate partly how.

Lord, What is Man ?

21

Joining and Disjoining

These are the essence of change.

One of the earliest notes I made, when I began to make
notes at all, I found not long ago in an old book, since
destroyed, which I had in New Zealand. It was to the effect
that all things are either of the nature of a piece of string or
a knife. That is, they are either for bringing and keeping
things together, or for sending and keeping them apart.
Nevertheless each kind contains a little of its opposite and
some, as the railway train and the hedge, combine many
examples of both. Thus the train, on the whole, is used for
bringing things together, but it is also used for sending them
apart, and its divisions into classes are alike for separating
and keeping together. The hedge is also both for joining
things (as a flock of sheep) and for disjoining (as for keeping
the sheep from getting into corn). These are the more im-
mediate ends. The ulterior ends, both of train and hedge,
so far as w r e are concerned, and so far as anything can have
an end, are the bringing or helping to bring meat or dairy
produce into contact with man's inside, or wool on to his
back, or that he may go in comfort somewhere to converse
with people and join his soul on to theirs, or please himself
by getting something to come within the range of his senses
or imagination.

A piece of string is a thing that, in the main, makes for
togetheriness ; whereas a knife is, in the main, a thing that
makes for splitty-uppiness ; still, there is an odour of to-
getheriness hanging about a knife also, for it tends to bring
potatoes into a man's stomach.

In high philosophy one should never look at a knife with-
out considering it also as a piece of string, nor at a piece of
string without considering it also as a knife.

Cotton Factories

Surely the w r ork done by the body is, in one way, more
its true life than its limbs and organisation are. Which
is the more true life of a great cotton factory — the bales
of goods which it turns out for the world's wearing or the

22 Lord, What is Man ?

machinery whereby its ends are achieved ? The manufacture
is only possible by reason of the machinery ; it is produced
by this. The machinery only exists in virtue of its being
capable of producing the manufacture ; it is produced for
this. The machinery represents the work done by the factory
that turned it out.

Somehow or other when we think of a factory we think
rather of the fabric and mechanism than of the work, and so
we think of a man's life and living body as constituting
himself rather than of the work that the life and living body
turn out. The instinct being as strong as it is, I suppose
it sound, but it seems as though the life should be held to be
quite as much in the work itself as in the tools that produce
it — and perhaps more.

Our Trivial Bodies

i

Though we think so much of our body, it is in reality
a small part of us. Before birth we get together our tools,
in life we use them, and thus fashion our true life which
consists not in our tools and tool-box but in the work we
have done with our tools. It is Handel's work, not the body
with which he did the work, that pulls us half over London.
There is not an action of a muscle in a horse's leg upon a
winter's night as it drags a carriage to the Albert Hall
but is in connection with, and part outcome of, the force
generated when Handel sat in his room at Gopsall and wrote
the Messiah. Think of all the forces which that force has
controlled, and think, also, how small was the amount of
molecular disturbance from which it proceeded. It is as
though we saw a conflagration which a spark had kindled.
This is the true Handel, who is a more living power among
us one hundred and twenty-two years after his death than
during the time he was amongst us in the body.

ii

The whole life of some people is a kind of partial death —
a long, lingering death-bed, so to speak, of stagnation and
nonentity on which death is but the seal, or solemn signing,
as the abnegation of all further act and deed on the part

Lord, What is Man ?

23

of the signer. Death robs these people of even that little
strength which they appeared to have and gives them nothing
but repose.

On others, again, death confers a more living kind of
life than they can ever possibly have enjoyed while to those
about them they seemed to be alive. Look at Shakespeare ;
can he be properly said to have lived in anything like his
real life till a hundred years or so after his death ? His
physical life was but as a dawn preceding the sunrise of that
life of the world to come which he was to enjoy hereafter.
True, there was a little stir — a little abiding of shepherds
in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night — a
little buzzing in knots of men waiting to be hired before
the daybreak — a little stealthy movement as of a burglar or
two here and there — an inchoation of life. But the true
life of the man was after death and not before it.

Death is not more the end of some than it is the beginning
of others. So he that loses his soul may find it, and he that
finds may lose it.

II

Elementary Morality

The Foundations of Morality

i

These are like all other foundations ; if you dig too much
about them the superstructure will come tumbling down.

ii

The foundations which we would dig about and find are
within us, like the Kingdom of Heaven, rather than without.

iii

To attempt to get at the foundations is to try to recover
consciousness about things that have passed into the un-
conscious stage ; it is pretty sure to disturb and derange
those who try it on too much.

Counsels of Imperfection

It is all very well for mischievous writers to maintain
that we cannot serve God and Mammon. Granted that i1
is not easy, but nothing that is worth doing ever is easy.
Easy or difficult, possible or impossible, not only has the
thing got to be done, but it is exactly in doing it that the
whole duty of man consists. And when the righteous man
turneth away from his righteousness that he hath committed
and doeth that which is neither quite lawful nor quite right,
he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what
he has lost in holiness.

If there are two worlds at all (and that there are I have

24

Elementary Morality 25

no doubt) it stands to reason that we ought to make the best
of both of them, and more particularly of the one with which
we are most immediately concerned. It is as immoral to be
too good as to be too anything else. The Christian morality
is just as immoral as any other. It is at once very moral
and very immoral. How often do we not see children ruined
through the virtues, real or supposed, of their parents ?
Truly he visiteth the virtues of the fathers upon the children
unto the third and fourth generation. The most that
can be said for virtue is that there is a considerable
balance in its favour, and that it is a good deal better to
be for it than against it ; but it lets people in very badly
sometimes.

If you wish to understand virtue you must be sub-
vicious ; for the really virtuous man, who is fully under
grace, will be virtuous unconsciously and will know nothing
about it. Unless a man is out-and-out virtuous he is sub-
vicious.

Virtue is, as it were, the repose of sleep or death. Vice
is the awakening to the knowledge of good and evil — without
which there is no life worthy of the name. Sleep is, in a
way, a happier, more peaceful state than waking and, in
a way, death may be said to be better than life, but it is
in a very small way. We feel such talk to be blasphemy
against good life and, whatever we may say in death's favour,
so long as we do not blow our brains out we show that we do
not mean to be taken seriously. To know good, other than
as a heavy sleeper, we must know vice also. There cannot,
as Bacon said, be a " Hold fast that which is good " without
a " Prove all things " going before it. There is no knowledge
of good without a knowledge of evil also, and this is why
all nations have devils as well as gods, and regard them with
sneaking kindness. God without the devil is dead, being
alone.

Lucifer

We call him at once the Angel of Light and the Angel of
Darkness : is this because we instinctively feel that no one
can know much till he has sinned much — or because we feel
that extremes meet, or how ?

26 Elementary Morality

The Oracle in Erewhon

The answer given by the oracle was originally written
concerning any vice — say drunkenness, but it applies to many
another — and I wrote not " sins " but " knows " : *

He who knows aught
Knows more than he ought ;
But he who knows nought
Has much to be taught.

God's Laws
The true laws of God are the laws of our own well-being.

Physical Excellence

The question whether such and such a course of conduct
does or does not do physical harm is the safest test by which
to try the question whether it is moral or no. If it does no
harm to the body we ought to be very chary of calling it
immoral, while if it tends towards physical excellence there
should be no hesitation in calling it moral. In the case
of those who are not forced to over-work themselves — and
there are many who work themselves to death from mere
inability to restrain the passion for work, which masters
them as the craving for drink masters a drunkard — over-
work in these cases is as immoral as over-eating or drinking.
This, so far as the individual is concerned. With regard
to the body politic as a whole, it is, no doubt, well that there
should be some men and women so built that they cannot
be stopped from working themselves to death, just as it
is unquestionably well that there should be some who cannot
be stopped from drinking themselves to death, if only that
they may keep the horror of the habit well in evidence.

* The two chapters entitled " The Rights of Animals " and " The
Rights of Vegetables " appeared first in the new and revised edition
of Erewhon 1901 and form part of the additions referred to in the
preface to that book.

Elementary Morality 27

Intellectual Self-indulgence

Intellectual over-indulgence is the most gratuitous and
disgraceful form which excess can take, nor is there any the
consequences of which are more disastrous.

Dodging Fatigue

When fatigued, I find it rests me to write very slowly
with attention to the formation of each letter. I am often
thus able to go on when I could not otherwise do so.

Vice and Virtue

i

Virtue is something which it would be impossible to over-
rate if it had not been over-rated. The world can ill spare
any vice which has obtained long and largely among civilised
people. Such a vice must have some good along with its
deformities. The question " How, if every one were to do
so and so ? " may be met with another " How, if no one were
to do it ? " We are a body corporate as well as a collection
of individuals.

As a matter of private policy I doubt whether the
moderately vicious are more unhappy than the moderately
virtuous ; " Very vicious " is certainly less happy than " Toler-
ably virtuous/' but this is about all. What pass muster as
the extremes of virtue probably make people quite as unhappy
as extremes of vice do.

The truest virtue has ever inclined toward excess rather
than asceticism ; that she should do this is reasonable as
well as observable, for virtue should be as nice a calculator
of chances as other people and will make due allowance for
the chance of not being found out. Virtue knows that it is
impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself,
as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in
playing. So the Psalmist says, " If thou, Lord, wilt be ex-
treme to mark what is done amiss : 0 Lord who may abide
it ? " and by this he admits that the highest conceivable
form of virtue still leaves room for some compromise with

2$ Elementary Morality

vice. So again Shakespeare writes, "They say, best men
are moulded out of faults ; And, for the most, become much
more the better For being a little bad."

ii

The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable ;
absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is,
let alone the dullnesses of it and the pomposities of it.

iii

God does not intend people, and does not like people, to
be too good. He likes them neither too good nor too bad, but
a little too bad is more venial with him than a little too good.

iv

As there is less difference than we generally think between
the happiness of men who seem to differ widely in fortune,
so is there also 'less between their moral natures; the best
are not so much better than the worst, nor the worst so
much below the best as we suppose ; and the bad are just
as important an element in the general progress as the good,
or perhaps more so. It is in strife that life lies, and were there
no opposing forces there would be neither moral nor immoral,
neither victory nor defeat.

v

If virtue had everything her own way she would be as
insufferable as dominant factions generally are. It is the
function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

vi

Virtue has never yet been adequately represented by any
who have had any claim to be considered virtuous. It is
the sub- vicious who best understand virtue. Let the virtuous
people stick to describing vice — which they can do well
enough.

My Virtuous Life

I have led a more virtuous life than I intended, or thought
I was leading. When I was young I thought I was vicious :
now I know that I was not and that my unconscious know-

Elementary Morality 29

ledge was sounder than my conscious. I regret some things
that I have done, but not many. I regret that so many
should think I did much which I never did, and should
know of what I did in so garbled and distorted a fashion as
to have done me much mischief. But if things were known
as they actually happened, I believe I should have less to be
ashamed of than a good many of my neighbours — and less
also to be proud of.

Sin

Sin is like a mountain with two aspects according to
whether it is viewed before or after it has been reached : yet
both aspects are real.

Morality

turns on whether the pleasure precedes or follows the pain.
Thus, it is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes
after the drinking, but if the headache came first, and the
drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk.

Change and Immorality

Every discovery and, indeed, every change of any sort
is immoral, as tending to unsettle men's minds, and hence
their custom and hence their morals, which are the net
residuum of their " mores " or customs. Wherefrom it
should follow that there is nothing so absolutely moral as
stagnation, except for this that, if perfect, it would destroy
all mores whatever. So there must always be an immorality
in morality and, in like manner, a morality in immorality.
For there will be an element of habitual and legitimate
custom even in the most unhabitual and detestable things
that can be done at all.

Cannibalism

Morality is the custom of one's country and the current
feeling of one's peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal
country.

30 Elementary Morality

Abnormal Developments

If a man can get no other food it is more natural for him
to kill another man and eat him than to starve. Our horror
is rather at the circumstances that make it natural for the
man to do this than at the man himself. So with other things
the desire for which is inherited through countless ancestors,
it is more natural for men to obtain the nearest thing they
can to these, even by the most abnormal means if the ordinary
channels are closed, than to forego them altogether. The
abnormal growth should be regarded as disease but, never-
theless, as showing more health and vigour than no growth
at all would do. I said this in Life and Habit (ch. hi. p. 52)
when I wrote " it is more righteous in a man that he should
eat strange food and that his cheek so much as lank not,
than that he should starve if the strange food be at his com-
mand." *

Young People

With regard to sexual matters, the best opinion of our
best medical men, the practice of those nations which have
proved most vigorous and comely, the evils that have followed
this or that, the good that has attended upon the other
should be ascertained by men who, being neither moral
nor immoral and not caring two straws what the conclusion
arrived at might be, should desire only to get hold of the
best available information. The result should be written
down with some fulness and put before the young of both
sexes as soon as they are old enough to understand such
matters at all. There should be no mystery or reserve.
None but the corrupt will wish to corrupt facts ; honest
people will accept them eagerly, whatever they may prove
to be, and will convey them to others as accurately as they
can. On what pretext therefore can it be well that knowledge
should be withheld from the universal gaze upon a matter

* On the Alps

It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,

Which some did die to look on : and all this —

It wounds thine honour that I speak it now —

Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek

So much as lank'd not. — Ant. & Cleop., I. iv 66-71.

Elementary Morality 31

of such universal interest ? It cannot be pretended that
there is nothing to be known on these matters beyond what
unaided boys and girls can be left without risk to find out
for themselves. Not one in a hundred who remembers
his own boyhood will say this. How, then, are they excusable
who have the care of young people and yet leave a matter
of such vital importance so almost absolutely to take care
of itself, although they well know how common error is,
how easy to fall into and how disastrous in its effects both
upon the individual and the race ?

Next to sexual matters there are none upon which there
is such complete reserve between parents and children as
on those connected with money. The father keeps his affairs
as closely as he can to himself and is most jealous of letting
his children into a knowledge of how he manages his money.
His children are like monks in a monastery as regards money
and he calls this training them up with the strictest regard
to principle. Nevertheless he thinks himself ill-used if his
son, on entering life, falls a victim to designing persons whose
knowledge of how money is made and lost is greater than his
own.

The Family

i

I believe that more unhappiness comes from this source
than from any other — I mean from the attempt to prolong
family connection unduly and to make people hang together
artificially who would never naturally do so. The mischief
among the lower classes is not so great, but among the middle
and upper classes it is killing a large number daily. And the
old people do not really like it much better than the young.

ii

On my way down to Shrewsbury some time since I read
the Bishop of Carlisle's Walks in the Regions of Science and
Faith* then just published, and found the following on p. 129
in the essay which is entitled " Man's Place in Nature."
After saying that young sparrows or robins soon lose sight

* Walks in the Regions of Science and Faith, by Harvey Goodwin,
d.d., Lord Bishop of Carlisle. John Murray, 1883.

32 Elementary Morality

of their fellow-nestlings and leave off caring for them, the
bishop continues : —

" Whereas ' children of one family ' are constantly found
joined together by a love which only grows with years,
and they part for their posts of duty in the world with the
hope of having joyful meetings from time to time, ana of
meeting in a higher world when their life on earth is finished."

I am sure my great-grandfather did not look forward
to meeting his father in heaven— his father had cut nim out
of his will ; nor can I credit my grandfather with any great
longing to rejoin my great-grandfather — a worthy man
enough, but one with whom nothing ever prospered. I
am certain my father, after he was 40, did not wish to see
my grandfather any more — indeed, long before reaching that
age he had decided that Dr. Butler's life should not be written,
though R. W. Evans would have been only too glad to write
it. Speaking for myself, I have no wish to see my father
again, and I think it likely that the Bishop of Carlisle would
not be more eager to see his than I mine.

Unconscious Humour

" Writing to the Hon. Mrs. Watson in 1856, Charles Dickens
says : ' I have always observed within my experience that
the men who have left home very young have, many long years
afterwards, had the tenderest regard for it. That's a pleasant
thing to think of as one of the wise adjustments of this life
of ours. 1 " *

Homer's Odyssey

From the description of the meeting between Ulysses
and Telemachus it is plain that Homer considered it quite
as dreadful for relations who had long been separated to
come together again as for them to separate in the first
instance. And this is about true.f

* This quotation occurs on the title page of Charles Dickens and
Rochester by Robert Langton. Chapman & Hall, 1880. Reprinted
with additions from the Papers of the Manchester Literary Club,
Vol. VI, 1880. But the italics are Butler's.

f This is Butler's note as he left it. He made it just about the
time he hit upon the theory that the Odyssey was written by a woman.
If it had caught his eye after that theory had become established in

Elementary Morality 33

Melchisedec

He was a really happy man. He was without father,
without mother and without descent. He was an incarnate
bachelor. He was a born orphan.

Bacon for Breakfast

Now [1893] when I am abroad, being older and taking
less exercise, I do not want any breakfast beyond coffee
and bread and butter, but when this note was written [1880]
I liked a modest rasher of bacon in addition, and used to
notice the jealous indignation with which heads of families
who enjoyed the privilege of Cephas and the brethren of
our Lord regarded it. There were they with three or four
elderly unmarried daughters as well as old mamma — how
could they afford bacon ? And there was I, a selfish bachelor — .
The appetising, savoury smell of my rasher seemed to drive
them mad. I used to feel very uncomfortable, very small
and quite aware how low it was of me to have bacon for
breakfast and no daughters instead of daughters and no
bacon. But when I consulted the oracles of heaven about
it, I was always told to stick to my bacon and not to make
a fool of myself. I despised myself but have not withered
under my own contempt so completely as I ought to have
done.

God and Man

To love God is to have good health, good looks, good sense,
experience, a kindly nature and a fair balance of cash in
hand. " We know that all things work together for good to
them that love God." To be loved by God is the same as
to love Him. We love Him because He first loved us.

The Homeric Deity and the Pall Mall Gazette

A writer in the Pall Mall Gazette (I think in 1874 or 1875,
and in the autumn months, but I cannot now remember)

his mind, he would have edited it so as to avoid speaking of Homer as
the author of the poem.

D

34 Elementary Morality

summed up Homer's conception of a god as that of a " super-
latively strong, amorous, beautiful, brave and cunning man."
This is pretty much what a good working god ought to be,
but he should also be kind and have a strong sense of humour,
together with a contempt for the vices of meanness and
for the meannesses of virtue. After saying what I have
quoted above the writer in the Pall Mall Gazette goes on,
"An impartial critic can judge for himself how far, if at all,
this is elevated above the level of mere fetish worship."
Perhaps it is that I am not an impartial critic, but, if I am
allowed to be so, I should say that the elevation above mere
fetish worship was very considerable.

Good Breeding the Summum Bonum

When people ask what faith we would substitute for that
which we would destroy, we answer that we destroy no faith
and need substitute none. We hold the glory of God to be
the summum bonum, and so do Christians generally. It is
on the question of what is the glory of God that we join
issue. We say it varies with the varying phases of God as
made manifest in his works, but that, so far as we are our-
selves concerned, the glory of God is best advanced by ad-
vancing that of man. If asked what is the glory of man we
answer " Good breeding " — using the words in their double
sense and meaning both the continuance of the race and that
grace of manner which the words are more commonly taken
to signify. The double sense of the words is all the more
significant for the unconsciousness with which it is passed
over.

Advice to the Young

You will sometimes find your elders laying their heads
together and saying what a bad thing it is for young men
to come into a little money — that those always do best
who have no expectancy, and the like. They will then quote
some drivel from one of the Kingsleys about the deadening
effect an income of £300 a year will have upon a man. Avoid
any one whom you may hear talk in this way. The fault
lies not with the legacy (which would certainly be better
if there were more of it) but with those who have so mis-

Elementary Morality 35

managed our education that we go in even greater danger
of losing the money than other people are.

Religion

Is there any religion whose followers can be pointed to
as distinctly more amiable and trustworthy than those
of any other? If so, this should be enough. I find the
nicest and best people generally profess no religion at all,
but are ready to like the best men of all religions.

Heaven and Hell

Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women.
Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-
tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of both.

Priggishness

The essence of priggishness is setting up to be better
than one's neighbour. Better may mean more virtuous,
more clever, more agreeable or what not. The worst of it
is that one cannot do anything outside eating one's dinner
or taking a walk without setting up to know more than
one's neighbours. It was this that made me say in Life
and Habit [close of ch. ii.] that I was among the damned
in that I wrote at all. So I am ; and I am often very sorry
that I was never able to reach those more saintly classes
who do not set up as instructors of other people. But one
must take one's lot.

Lohengrin

He was a prig. In the bedroom scene with Elsa he should
have said that her question put him rather up a tree but that,
as she wanted to know who he was, he would tell her and would
let the Holy Grail slide.

Swells

People ask complainingly what swells have done, or do,
for society that they should be able to live without working.
The good swell is the creature towards which all nature has.

36 Elementary Morality-

been groaning and travailing together until now. He is an
ideal. He shows what may be done in the way of good breed-
ing, health, looks, temper and fortune. He realises men's
dreams of themselves, at any rate vicariously. He preaches
the gospel of grace. The world is like a spoilt child, it has
this good thing given it at great expense and then says it is
useless !

Science and Religion

These are reconciled in amiable and sensible people but
nowhere else.

Gentleman

If we are asked what is the most essential characteristic
that underlies this word, the word itself will guide us to
gentleness, to absence of such things as brow-beating, over-
bearing manners and fuss, and generally to consideration for
other people.

The Finest Men

I suppose an Italian peasant or a Breton, Norman or
English fisherman, is about the best thing nature does in
the way of men — the richer and the poorer being alike mis-
takes.

On being a Swell all Round

I have never in my life succeeded in being this. Some-
times I get a new suit and am tidy for a while in part, mean-
while the hat, tie, boots, gloves and underclothing all clamour
for attention and, before I have got them well in hand, the
new suit has lost its freshness. Still, if ever I do get any
money, I will try and make myself really spruce all round
till I find out, as I probably shall in about a week, that if
I give my clothes an inch they will take an ell. [1880.]

Money

is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there
is flesh there is money — or the want of money ; but money
is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable
order.

Elementary Morality 37

A Luxurious Death

Death in anything like luxury is one of the most expensive
things a man can indulge himself in. It costs a lot of money
to die comfortably, unless one goes off pretty quickly.

Money, Health and Reputation

Money, if it live at all, that is to say if it be reproductive
and put out at any interest, however low, is mortal and
doomed to be lost one day, though it may go on living through
many generations of one single family if it be taken care of.
No man is absolutely safe. It may be said to any man,
" Thou fool, this night thy money shall be required of thee."
And reputation is like money : it may be required of us with-
out warning. The little unsuspected evil on which we trip
may swell up in a moment and prove to be the huge, Janus-
like mountain of unpardonable sin. And his health may be
required of any fool, any night or any day.

A man will feel loss of money more keenly than loss of
bodily health, so long as he can keep his money. Take bis
money away and deprive him of the means of earning any
more, and his health will soon break up ; but leave him his
money and, even though his health breaks up and he dies,
he does not mind it so much as we think. Money losses are
the worst, loss of health is next worst and loss of reputation
comes in a bad third. All other things are amusements
provided money, health and good name are untouched.

Solicitors

A man must not think he can save himself the trouble
of being a sensible man and a gentleman by going to his
solicitor, any more than he can get himself a sound consti-
tution by going to his doctor ; but a solicitor can do more
to keep a tolerably well-meaning fool straight than a doctor
can do for an invalid. Money is to the solicitor what souls
are to the parson or life to the plvysician. He is our money-
doctor.

38 Elementary Morality

Doctors

Going to your doctor is having such a row with your cells
that you refer them to your solicitor. Sometimes you, as it
were, strike against them and stop their food, when they go
on strike against yourself. Sometimes you file a bill in
Chancery against them and go to bed.

Priests

We may find an argument in favour of priests if we con-
sider whether man is capable of doing for himself in respect
of his moral and spiritual welfare (than which nothing cani
be more difficult and intricate) what it is so clearly better for
him to leave to professional advisers in the case of his money
and his body which are comparatively simple and unim-
portant.

Ill

The Germs of Erewhon and of Life
and Habit

Prefatory Note

The Origin of Species was published in the autumn of 1859,
and Builer arrived in New Zealand about the same time and
read the book soon afterwards. In 1880 he wrote in Unconscious
Memory {close of Chapter I): "As a member of the general
public, at that time residing eighteen miles from the nearest
human habitation, and three days' journey on horseback from
a bookseller's shop, I became o?ie of Mr. Darivirts many en-
thusiastic admirers, and xvrote a philosophic dialogue (the most
offensive form, except poetry and books of travel into supposed
unknown countries, that even literature can assume) upon the
Origin of Species. This production appeared in the Press,
Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1861 or 1862, but I have long lost
the only copy I had"

The Press was founded by James Edward FitzGerald, the
first Superintendent of the Province of Canterbury. Builer
was an intimate friend of FitzGerald, was closely associated
with the newspaper and frequently wrote for it. The first
number appeared 25th May, 1861, and on 25th May, 1911, the
Press celebrated its jubilee with a member which contained
particulars of its early life, of its editors, and of Builer ; it also
contained reprints of two of Butler's contributions, viz. Darwin
among the Machines, which originally appeared in its columns
13 June, 1863, and Lucubratio Ebria, which originally
appeared 29 July, 1865. The Dialogue was not reprinted
because, although the editor knew of its existence and searched
for it, he could not find it. At my request, after the appearance

39

40

The Germs of Brewhon

of ike jubilee number, a further search was made, bid the Dialogue
was not found and I gave it up for lost.

In March, 1912, Mr. R. A. Strcatfeild pointed out to me that
Mr. Tregaskis, in Holbom, was advertising for sale an auto-
graph letter by Charles Darwin sending to an unknown editor
a Dialogue on Species from a New Zealand newspaper, described
in the letter as being " remarkable from its spirit and from giving
so clear and accurate a view of Mr. D.'s theory" Having
no doubt that this referred to Butler's lost contribution tc the
Press, I bought the autograph letter and sent it to New Zealand,
where it now is in the Canterbury Museum, Chrisichurch.
With it I sent a letter to the editor of the Press, giving all fvrther
information in my possession about the Dialogue. This letter,
which appeared 1 June, 1912, together tenth the presentation of
Darwin's autograph, stimulated further search, and in the
issue for 20th December, 1862, the Dialogue was found by Miss
Colborne-Veel, whose father was editor of the paper at the time
Butler was writing for it. The Press reprinted the Dialogue
Mi June, 1912.

When the Dialogue first appeared it excited a great deal of
discussion in the colony and, to quote Butler's words in a letter
to Darwin (1865), " called forth a contemptuous rejoinder j'rom
(I believe) the Bishop of Wellington" This rejoinder was. an
article headed 11 Barrel-Organs," the idea being that there was
nothing new in Darwin's book, it was only a grinding out of
old tunes with which we were all familiar.' Butler alludes to
this controversy in a note made on a letter from Darwin which
he gave to the British Museum. " I remember answering an
attack (in the Press, New Zealand) on me by Bishop Abraham,
of Wellington, as though I were someone else, and, to keep up
the deception, attacking myself also. But it was all very young
and silly." The bishop's article and Butler's reply, whicJi
was a letter signed A. M. and some of the resulting correspondence
were reprinted in the Press, 15th June, 1912.

At first I thought of including here the Dialogue, and perhaps
the letter signed A. M. They are interesting as showing that
Butler was among the earliest to study closely the Origin of
Species, and also as showing the state of his mind before he
began to think for himself, before he wrote Darwin among the
Machines from which so much followed ; but they can hardly
be properly considered as germs o/Erewhon and Life and Habit.

and of Life and Hahit 41

They rather show the preparation of the soil in which those
germs sprouted and grew ; and } remembering Ms last remark on
the subject that " it was all very young and silly' 3 I decided to
omit them. The Dialogue is no longer lost, and the numbers of
- the Press containing it and the correspondence that ensued can
be seen in the British Museum.

Butler's other two contributions to the Press mentioned above
do contain the germs of the machine chapters in Erewhon, and
led him to the theory put forward in Life and Habit. In 1901
he wrote in the preface to the new and revised edition of Erewhon :
" The first part of Erewhon written was an article headed
Darwin among the Machines and signed ' Cellarhis. 3 It was
written in the Upper Rangitata district of Canterbury Province
(as it then was) of New Zealand, and appeared at Christ-
church in the Press newspaper, June 13, 1863. A copy of
this article is indexed under my books in the British Museum
catalogue"

The article is in the form of a letter, and the copy spoken of by
Butler, as indexed under his name in the British Museum,
being defective, the reprint which appeared in the jubilee number
of the Press has been used in completing the version which
follows.

Further on in the preface to the 1901 edition of Erewhon he
writes : " A second article on the same subject as the one just
referred to appeared in the Press shortly after the first, but I
have no copy. It treated machines from a different point of
view and was the basis of pp. 270-274 of the present edition of
Erewhon. This view ultimately led me to the theory I put
forward in Life and Habit, published in November, 1877.* ^
have put a bare outline of this theory (which I believe to be quite
sound) into the mouth of an Erewhonian professor in Chapter
XXVII of this bookr

This second article was Lucubratio Ebria, and was sent by
Butler from England to the editor of the Press in 1865, with a
letter from which this is an extract :

11 1 send you an article which you can give to FitzGerald
or not, just as you think it most expedient— for him. Is not
the subject worked out, and are not the Canterbury people tired
of Darwinism ? For me — is it an article to my credit ? I do

* Life and Habit is dated 1S7S, but it actually appeared on Butler's
birthday, 4th December, 1S77.

42 The Germs of Brewhon

not send it to FitzGerald because I am sure he would put it
into the paper. ... I know the undue lenience which he lends
to my performances, and believe you to be the sterner critic
of the two. That there are some good things in it you will,
I think, feel ; but I am almost sure that considering usque ad
nauseam etc., you will think it had better not appear. ... J
think you and he will like that sentence : ' There was a
moral government of the world before man came into it!
There is hardly a sentence in it written without deliberation ;
but I need hardly say that it was done upon tea, not upon
whiskey. . . .

11 P.S. If you are in any doubt about the expediency of the
article take it to M.

" P.P.S. Perhaps better take it to him anyhow. 11

The preface to the 1901 edition of Erewhon contains some
further particulars of the genesis of that work, and there are
still further particulars in Unconscious Memory, Chapter II,
" How I wrote Life and Habit."

The first tentative sketch of the Life and Habit theory occurs
in the letter to Thomas William Gale Butler which is given post.
This T. W. G. Butler was not related to Butler, they met first
as art-students at Heatherley 1 s , and Butler used to speak of him
as the most brilliant man he had ever known. He died many
years ago. He was the writer of the " letter from a friend now
in New Zealand, 11 from which a quotation is given in Life and
Habit, Chapter V [pp. 83, 84). Butler kept a copy of his letter-
to T. W. G. Butler, but it was imperfectly pressed ; he after-
wards supplied some of the missing words from memory, and
gave it to the British Museum.

Darwin among the Machines

[To the Editor of the Press, Christchurch, New Zealand —
13 June, 1863.]

Sir — There are few things of which the present generation
is more justly proud than of the wonderful improvements
which are daily taking place in all sorts of mechanical ap-
pliances. And indeed it is matter for great congratulation
on many grounds. It is unnecessary to mention these here,
for they are sufficiently obvious ; our present business lies
with considerations which may somewhat tend to humble

and of Life and Hahit 43

our pride and to make us think seriously of the future pros-
pects of the human race. If we revert to the earliest primor-
dial types of mechanical life, to the lever, the wedge, the
inclined plane, the screw and the pulley, or (for analogy
would lead us one step further) to that one primordial type
from which all the mechanical kingdom has been developed,
we mean to the lever itself, and if we then examine the
machinery of the Great Eastern, we find ourselves almost
awestruck at the vast development of the mechanical world,
at the gigantic strides with which it has advanced in com-
parison with the slow progress of the animal and vegetable
kingdom. We shall find it impossible to refrain from asking
ourselves what the end of this mighty movement is to be.
In what direction is it tending ? What will be its upshot ?
To give a few imperfect hints towards a solution of these
I questions is the object of the present letter.

We have used the words ' ' mechanical life," " the
mechanical kingdom," " the mechanical world " and so
forth, and we have done so advisedly, for as the vegetable
kingdom was slowly developed from the mineral, and as, in
like manner, the animal supervened upon the vegetable, so
now, in these last few ages, an entirely new kingdom has
sprung up of which we as yet have only seen what will
one day be considered the antediluvian prototypes of the
race.

We regret deeply that our knowledge both of natural
history and of machinery is too small to enable us to under-
take the gigantic task of classifying machines into the genera
and sub-genera, species, varieties and sub-varieties, and so
forth, of tracing the connecting links between machines of
widely different characters, of pointing out how subservience
to the use of man has played that part among machines
which natural selection has performed in the animal and
vegetable kingdom, of pointing out rudimentary organs
[see note] which exist in some few machines, feebly developed
and perfectly useless, yet serving to mark descent from some
ancestral type which has either perished or been modified
into some new phase of mechanical existence. We can only
point out this field for investigation ; it must be followed by
others whose education and talents have been of a much
higher order than any which we can lay claim to.

44 The Germs of Brewhon

Some few hints we have determined to venture upon,
though we do so with the profoundest diffidence. Firstly we
would remark that as some of the lowest of the vertebrata
attained a far greater size than has descended to their more
highly organised living representatives, so a_ diminution in
the size of machines has often attended their development
and progress. Take the watch for instance. Examine the
beautiful structure of the little animal, watch the intelligent
play of the minute members which compose it ; yet this
little creature is but a development of the cumbrous clocks
of the thirteenth century— it is no deterioration from them.
The day may come when clocks, which certainly at the
present day are not diminishing in bulk, may be entirely
superseded by the universal use of watches, in which case
clocks will become extinct like the earlier saurians, while the
watch (whose tendency has for some years been rather to
decrease in size than the contrary) will remain the only
existing type of an extinct race.

The views of machinery which we are thus feebly indi-
cating will suggest the solution of one of the greatest and
most mysterious questions of the day. We refer to the
question : What sort of creature man's next successor in the
supremacy of the earth is likely to be. We have often heard
this debated ; but it appeal's to us that we are ourselves
creating our own successors ; w T e are daily adding to the
beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation ; we are
daily giving them greater power and supplying, by all sorts
of ingenious contrivances, that self-regulating, self-acting
power which will be to them what intellect has been to the
human race. In the course of ages we shall find ourselves
the inferior race. Inferior in power, inferior in that moral
quality of self-control, we shall look up to them as the acme
of all that the best and wisest man can ever dare to aim at.
No evil passions, no jealousy, no avarice, no impure desires
will disturb the serene might of those glorious creatures.
Sin, shame and sorrow will have no place among them.
Their minds will be in a state of perpetual calm, the content-
ment of a spirit that knows no w r ants, is disturbed by no
regrets. Ambition will never torture them. Ingratitude will
never cause them the uneasiness of a moment. The guilty
conscience, the hope deferred, the pains of exile, the insolence

and of Life and Habit 45

of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy
takes— these will be entirely unknown to them. If they
want " feeding " (by the use of which very word we betray
our recognition of them as living organism) they will be
attended by patient slaves whose business and interest it
will be to see that they shall want for nothing. If they are
out of order they will be promptly attended to by physicians
who are thoroughly acquainted with their constitutions ;
if they die, for even these glorious animals will not be exempt
from that necessary and universal consummation, they will
immediately enter into a new phase of existence, for what
machine dies entirely m every part at one and the same
instant ?

We take it that when the state of things shall have arrived
which we have been above attempting to describe, man will
have become to the machine what the horse and the dog are
to man. He will continue to exist, nay even to improve, and
will be probably better off in his state of domestication under
the beneficent rule of the machines than he is in his present
wild state. We treat our horses, dogs, cattle and sheep, on
the whole, with great kindness, we give them whatever ex-
perience teaches us to be best for them, and there can be no
doubt that our use of meat has added to the happiness of the
lower animals far more than it has detracted from it ; in
like manner it is reasonable to suppose that the machines
will treat us kindly, for their existence is as dependent upon
ours as ours is upon the lower animals. They cannot kill us
and eat us as we do sheep, they will not only require our
services in the parturition of their young (which branch of
their economy will remain always in our hands) but also in
feeding them, in setting them right if they are sick, and
burying their dead or working up their corpses into new
machines. It is obvious that if all the animals in Great
Britain save man alone were to die, and if at the same time
all intercourse with foreign countries were by some sudden
• catastrophe to be rendered perfectly impossible, it is obvious
that under such circumstances the loss of human life would
be something fearful to contemplate — in like manner, were
mankind to cease, the machines would be as badly off or even
worse. The fact is that our interests are inseparable from
theirs, and theirs from ours. Each race is dependent upon

46 The Germs of Srewhon

the other for innumerable benefits, and, until the reproduc-
tive organs of the machines have been developed in a manner
which we are hardly yet able to conceive, they are entirely
dependent upon man for even the continuance of their
species. It is true that these organs may be ultimately
developed, inasmuch as man's interest lies in that direction ;
there is nothing which our infatuated race would desire more
than to see a fertile union between two steam engines ; it is
true that machinery is even at this present time employed in
begetting machinery, in becoming the parent of machines
often after its own kind, but the days of flirtation, courtship
and matrimony appear to be very remote and indeed can
hardly be realised by our feeble and imperfect imagination.

Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground
upon us ; day by day we are becoming more subservient to
them ; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend
them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their
whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The
upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will
come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over
the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly
philosophic mind can for a moment question.

Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly
proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort
should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let
there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown ; let us at
once go back to the primeval condition of the race. If it be
urged that this is impossible under the present condition of
human affairs, this at once proves that the mischief is already
done, that our servitude has commenced in good earnest,
that we have raised a race of beings whom it is beyond our
power to destroy and that we are not only enslaved but are
absolutely acquiescent in our bondage.

For "the present we shall leave this subject which we
present gratis to the members of the Philosophical Society.
Should they consent to avail themselves of the vast field
which we have pointed out, we shall endeavour to labour in
it ourselves at some future and indefinite period.

I am, Sir, &c,

Cellarius,

and of Life and Habit 47

Note. — We were asked by a learned brother philosopher
who saw this article in MS. what we meant by alluding to
rudimentary organs in machines. Could we, he asked, give
any example of such organs ? We pointed to the little pro-
tuberance at the bottom of the bowl of our tobacco pipe.
This organ was originally designed for the same purpose as
the rim at the bottom of a tea-cup, which is but another form
of the same function. Its purpose was to keep the heat of
the pipe from marking the table on which it rested. Originally,
as we have seen in very early tobacco pipes, this protuberance
was of a very different shape to what it is now. It was broad
at the bottom and flat, so that while the pipe was being
smoked, the bowl might rest upon the table. Use and disuse
have here come into play and served to reduce the function
to its present rudimentary condition. That these rudimentary
organs are rarer in machinery than in animal life is owing to
the more prompt action of the human selection as compared
with the slow T er but even surer operation of natural selection.
Man may make mistakes ; in the long run nature never does
so. We have only given an imperfect example, but the
intelligent reader will supply himself with illustrations.

Lucubratio Ebria

[From the Press, 29 July, 1865]

There is a period in the evening, or more generally towards
the still small hours of the morning, in which we so far un-
bend as to take a single glass of hot whisky and water. We
will neither defend the practice nor excuse it. We state it as
a fact which must be borne in mind by the readers of this
article ; for we know not how, whether it be the inspiration
of the drink, or the relief from the harassing work with which
the day has been occupied, or from whatever other cause,
yet we are certainly liable about this time to such a pro-
phetic influence as we seldom else experience. We are rapt
in a dream such as we ourselves know to be a dream, and
which, like other dreams, we can hardly embody in a distinct
utterance. We know that what we see is but a sort of in-
tellectual Siamese twins, of which one is substance and the
other shadow, but w T e cannot set either free without killing
both. We are unable to rudely tear away the veil of phantasy

48 The Germs of Srewhon

in which the truth is shrouded, so we present the reader
with a draped figure, and his own judgment must discriminate
between the clothes and the body. A truth's prosperity is
like a jest's, it lies in the ear of him that hears it. Some may
see our lucubration as we saw it ; and others may see nothing
but a drunken dream, or the nightmare of a distempered
imagination. To ourselves it as the speaking with unknown
tongues to the early Corinthians ; we cannot fully under-
stand our own speech, and we fear lest there be not a sufficient
number of interpreters present to make our utterance edify.
But there ! (Go on straight to the body of the article.)

The limbs of the lower animals have never been modified
by any act of deliberation and forethought on their own part.
Recent researches have thrown absolutely no light upon the
origin of life — upon the initial force which introduced a
sense of identity, and a deliberate faculty into the world ;
but they do certainly appear to show very clearly that each
species of the animal and vegetable kingdom has been moulded
into its present shape by chances and changes of many millions
of years, by chances and changes over which the creature
modified had no control whatever, and concerning whose
aim it was alike unconscious and indifferent, by forces which
seem insensate to the pain which they inflict, but by whose
inexorably beneficent cruelty the brave and strong keep
coming to the fore, while the weak and bad drop behind and
perish. There was a moral government of this world before
man came near it — a moral government suited to the capacities
of the governed, and which, unperceived by them, has laid
fast the foundations of courage, endurance and cunning.
It laid them so fast that they became more and more heredi-
tary. Horace says well, fortes creantur fortibus et bonis —
good men beget good children ; the rule held even in the
geological period ; good ichthyosauri begat good ichthyosauri,
and would to our discomfort have gone on doing so to the
present time, had not better creatures been begetting better
things than ichthyosauri, or famine, or fire, or convulsion
put an end to them. Good apes begat good apes, and at
last when human intelligence stole like a late spring upon
the mimicry of our semi-simious ancestry, the creature
learnt how he could, of his own forethought, add extra-
corporaneous limbs to the members of his body and become

and of Life and Habit 49

not only a vertebrate mammal, but a vertebrate machinate
mammal into the bargain.

It was a wise monkey that first learned to carry a stick
and a useful monkey that mimicked him. For the race of
man has learned to walk uprightly much as a child learns
the same thing. At first he crawls on all fours, then he
clambers, laying hold of whatever he can ; and lastly he
stands upright alone and walks, but for a long time with
an unsteady step. So when the human race was in its gorilla-
hood it generally carried a stick ; from carrying a stick for
many 'million years it became accustomed and modified
to an upright position. The stick wherewith it had learned
to walk would now serve it to beat its younger brothers
and then it found out its service as a lever. Man would
thus learn that the limbs of his body were not the only limbs
that he could command. His body was already the most
versatile in existence, but he could render it more versatile
still. With the improvement in his body his mind improved
also. He learnt to perceive the moral government under
which he held the feudal tenure of his life — perceiving it
he symbolised it, and to this day our poets and prophets
still strive to symbolise it more and more completely.

The mind grew because the body grew — more things were
perceived — more things were handled, and being handled
became familiar. But this came about chiefly because
there was a hand to handle with ; without the hand there
would be no handling ; and no method of holding and examin-
ing is comparable to the human hand. The tail of an opos-
sum is a prehensile thing, but it is too far from his eyes —
the elephant's trunk is better, and it is probably to their
trunks that the elephants owe their sagacity. It is here that
the bee in spite of her wings has failed. She has a high
civilisation but it is one whose equilibrium appears to have
been already attained ; the appearance is a false one, for the
bee changes, though more slowly than man can watch her ;
but the reason of the very gradual nature of the change is
chiefly because the physical organisation of the insect changes,
but slowly also. She is poorly off for hands, and has never
fairly grasped the notion of tacking on other limbs to the
limbs of her own body and so, being short-lived to boot,
she remains from century to century to human eyes in statu
s

50 The Germs of Srewhon

quo. Her body never becomes machinate, whereas this new
phase of organism, which has been introduced with man
into the mundane economy, has made him a very quicksand
for the foundation of an unchanging civilisation ; certain
fundamental principles will always remain, but every century
the change in man's physical status, as compared with the
elements around him, is greater and greater ; lie is a shifting
basis on which no equilibrium of habit and civilisation can
be established; were it not for this ^ constant change in our
physical powers, which our mechanical limbs have brought
about, man would have long since apparently attained his
limit of possibility ; he would be a creature of as much fixity
as the ants and bees — he would still have advanced, but no
faster than other animals advance.

If there were a race of men without any mechanical ap-
pliances we should see this clearly. There are none, nor
have there been, so far as we can tell, for millions and millions
of years. The lowest Australian savage carries weapons for
the fight or the chase, and has his cooking and drinking
utensils at home ; a race without these things would be
completely ferae naturae and not men at all. We are unable
to point to any example of a race absolutely devoid of extra-
corporaneous limbs, but we can see among the Chinese
that with the failure to invent new limbs, a civilisation
becomes as much fixed as that of the ants ; and among savage
tribes we observe that few implements involve a state of
things scarcely human at all. Such tribes only advance
pari passu with the creatures upon which they feed.

It is a mistake, then, to take the view adopted by a previous
correspondent of this paper ; to consider the machines as
identities, to animalise them, and to anticipate their final
triumph over mankind. They are to be regarded as the mode
of development by which human organism is most especially
advancing, and every fresh invention is to be considered as
an additional member of the resources of the human body.
Herein lies the fundamental difference between man and his
inferiors. As regards his flesh and blood, his senses, appetites,
and affections, the difference is one ot degree rather than of
kind, but in the deliberate invention of such unity of limbs
as is exemplified by the railway train — that seven-leagued foot
which five hundred may own at once — he stands quite alone.

and of Life and Habit 51

In confirmation of the views concerning mechanism which
we have been advocating above, it must be remembered
that men are not merely the children of their parents, but
they are begotten of the institutions of the state of the
mechanical sciences under which they are born and bred.
These things have made us what we are. We are children of
the plough, the spade, and the ship ; we are children of the
extended liberty and knowledge which the printing press
has diffused. Our ancestors added these things to their
previously existing members ; the new limbs were preserved
by natural selection, and incorporated into human society ;
they descended with modifications, and hence proceeds the
difference between our ancestors and ourselves. By the
institutions and state of science under which a man is born
it is determined whether he shall have the limbs of an
Australian savage or those of a nineteenth century English-
man. The former is supplemented with little save a rug
and a javelin ; the latter varies his physique with the changes
of the season, with age, and with advancing or decreasing
wealth. If it is wet he is furnished with an organ which is
called an umbrella and which seems designed for the purpose
of protecting either his clothes or his lungs from the injurious
effects of rain. His watch is of more importance to him
than a good deal of his hair, at any rate than of his whiskers ;
besides this he carries a knife, and generally a pencil case.
His memory goes in a pocket book. He grows more complex
as he becomes older and he will then be seen with a pair of
spectacles, perhaps also with false teeth and a wig ; but, if he
be a really well-developed specimen of the race, he will be
furnished with a large box upon wheels, two horses, and a
coachman.

Let the reader ponder over these last remarks, and he will
see that the principal varieties and sub-varieties of the
human race are not now to be looked for among the negroes,
the Circassians, the Malays, or the American aborigines, but
among the rich and the poor. The difference in physical
organisation between these two species of man is far greater
than that between the so-called types of humanity. The
rich man can go from here to England whenever he feels
so inclined. The legs of the other are by an invisible fatality
prevented from carrying him beyond certain narrow limits.

52 The Germs of Srewhon

Neither rich nor poor as yet see the philosophy of the thing,
or admit that he who can tack a portion of one of the P. & 0.
boats on to his identity is a much more highly organised
being than one who cannot. Yet the fact is patent enough,
if we once think it over, from the mere consideration of the
respect with which we so often treat those who are richer
than ourselves. We observe men for the most part (admitting
however some few abnormal exceptions) to be deeply im-
pressed by the superior organisation of those who have
money. It is wrong to attribute this respect to any unworthy
motive, for the feeling is strictly legitimate and springs from
some of the very highest impulses of our nature. It is the
same sort of affectionate reverence which a dog feels for man,
and is not infrequently manifested in a similar manner.

We admit that these last sentences are open to question,
and we should hardly like to commit ourselves irrecoverably
to the sentiments they express ; but we will say this much
for certain, namely, that the rich man is the true hundred-
handed Gyges of the poets. He alone possesses the full
complement of limbs who stands at the summit of opulence,
and we may assert with strictly scientific accuracy that the
Rothschilds are the most astonishing organisms that the
world has ever yet seen. For to the nerves or tissues, or
whatever it be that answers to the helm of a rich man's
desires, there is a whole army of limbs seen and unseen
attachable : he may be reckoned by his horse-power — by the
number of foot-pounds which he has money enough to set
in motion. Who, then, will deny that a man whose will
represents the motive power of a thousand horses is a being
very different from the one who is equivalent but to the power
of a single one ?

Henceforward, then, instead of saying that a man is hard
up, let us say that his organisation is at a low ebb, or, if
we wish him well, let us hope that he will grow plenty of
limbs. It must be remembered that we are dealing with
physical organisations only. We do not say that the thousand-
horse man is better than a one-horse man, we only say that
he is more highly organised, and should be recognised as
being so by the scientific leaders of the period. A man's will,
truth, endurance are part of him also, and may, as in the
case of the late Mr. Cobden, have in themselves a power

and of Life and Habit 53

equivalent to all the horse-power which they can influence ;
but were we to go into this part of the question we should
never have done, and we are compelled reluctantly to leave
our dream in its present fragmentary condition.

Letter to Thomas William Gale Butler

My dear Namesake . . . February i8th, 1876.

My present literary business is a little essay some 25 or
30 pp. long, which is still all in the rough and I don't know
how it will shape, but the gist of it is somewhat as follows : —

1. Actions which we have acquired with difficulty and
now perform almost unconsciously — as in playing a difficult
piece of music, reading, talking, walking and the multitude of
actions which escape our notice inside other actions, etc. — all
this worked out with some detail, say, four or five pages.

General deduction that we never do anything in this
unconscious or semi-conscious manner unless we know how
to do it exceedingly well and have had long practice.

Also that consciousness is a vanishing quantity and that as
soon as we know a thing really well we become unconscious in
respect of it — consciousness being of attention and attention
of uncertainty — and hence the paradox comes clear, that
as long as we know that we know a thing (or do an action
knowingly) we do not know it (or do the action with thorough
knowledge of our business) and that we only know it when
we do not know of our knowledge.

2. Whatever we do in this way is all one and the same
in kind — the difference being only in degree. Playing
[almost ?] unconsciously — writing, more unconsciously (as
to each letter) — reading, very unconsciously — talking, still
more unconsciously (it is almost impossible for us to notice
the action of our tongue in every letter) — walking, much the
same — breathing, still to a certain extent within our own
control — heart's beating, perceivable but beyond our control
— digestion, unperceivable and beyond our control, digestion
being the oldest of the . . . habits.

3. A baby, therefore, has known how to grow itself in
the womb and has only done it because it wanted to, on a
balance of considerations, in the same way as a man who goes
into the City to buy Great Northern A Shares. ... It is only

54 The Germs of Brewhon

unconscious of these operations because it has done them
a very large number of times already. A man may do a
thing by a fluke once, but to say that a foetus can perform
so difficult an operation as the growth of a pair of eyes out
of pure protoplasm without knowing how to do it, and with-
out ever having done it before, is to contradict all human
experience. Ipso facto that it does it, it knows how to do it,
and ipso facto that it knows how to do it, it has done it before.
Its unconsciousness (or speedy loss of memory) is simply the
result of over-knowledge, not of under-knowledge. It knows
so well and has done it so often that its power of self-analysis
is gone. If it knew what it was doing, or was conscious of
its own act in oxidising its blood after birth, I should suspect
that it had not done it so often before ; as it is I am confident
that it must have done it more of ten— much more of ten— than
any act which we perform consciously during our whole lives.

4. When, then, did it do it ? Clearly when last it was
an impregnate ovum or some still lower form of life which
resulted in that impregnate ovum.

5. How is it, then, that it has not gained perceptible
experience ? Simply because a single repetition makes little
or no difference ; but go back 20,000 repetitions and you will
find that it has gained in experience and modified its per-
formance very materially.

6. But how about the identity? What is identity?
Identity of matter ? Surely no. There is no identity of
matter between me as I now am, and me as an impregnate
ovum. Continuity of existence ? Then there is identity
between me as an impregnate ovum and my father and
mother as impregnate ova. Drop out my father's and
mother's lives between the dates of their being impregnate
ova and the moment when I became an impregnate ovum.
See the ova only and consider the second ovum as the first
two ova's means not of reproducing themselves but of con-
tinuing themselves — repeating themselves — the intermediate
lives being nothing but, as it were, a long potato shoot from
one eye to the place where it will grow its next tuber.

7. Given a single creature capable of reproducing itself
and it must go on reproducing itself for ever, for it would
not reproduce itself, unless it reproduced a creature that was
going to reproduce itself, and so on ad infinitum.

and of Life and Habit 55

Then comes Descent with Modification. Similarity tem-
pered with dissimilarity, and dissimilarity tempered with
similarity — a contradiction in terms, like almost everything
else that is true or useful or indeed intelligible at all. In
each case of what we call descent, it is still the first repro-
ducing creature identically the same — doing what it has done
before — only with such modifications as the struggle for
existence and natural selection have induced. No matter
how highly it has been developed, it can never be other than
the primordial cell and must always begin as the primordial
cell and repeat its last performance most nearly, but also,
more or less, all its previous performances.

A begets A ; which is A with the additional experience of
a dash. A' begets A" which is A with the additional ex-
periences of A' and A" ; and so on to A u , but you can never
eliminate the A.

8. Let A 11 stand for a man. He begins as the primordial
cell — being verily nothing but the primordial cell which goes
on splitting itself up for ever, but gaining continually in
experience. Put him in the same position as he was in before
and he will do as he did before. First he will do his tadpoles
by rote, so to speak, on his head, from long practice ; then he
does his fish trick ; then he grows arms and legs, all uncon-
sciously from the inveteracy of the habit, till he comes to
doing his man, and this lesson he has not yet learnt so thor-
oughly. Some part of it, as the breathing and oxidisation
business, he is well up to, inasmuch as they form part of
previous roles, but the teeth and hair, the upright position,
the power of speech, though all tolerably familiar, give him
more trouble — for he is very stupid — a regular dunce in fact.
Then comes his newer and more complex environment, and
this puzzles him — arrests his attention — whereon conscious-
ness springs into existence, as a spark from a horse's hoof.

To be continued — I see it will have to be more than 30 pp.
It is still foggy in parts, but I must clear it a little. It will
go on to show that we are all one animal and that death
(which was at first voluntary, and has only come to be, dis-
liked because those who did not dislike it committed suicide
too easily) and reproduction are only phases of the ordinary
waste and repair which goes on in our bodies daily.

Always very truly yours, S. Butler.

IV

Memory and Design

Clergymen and Chickens

{Extract from a lecture On Memory as a Key to the Pheno-
mena of Heredity delivered by Butler at the Working Men's
College, Great Ormond Street, on Saturday, 2nd December, 1882.]

Why, let me ask, should a hen lay an egg which egg can
become a chicken in about three weeks and a full-grown hen
in less than a twelvemonth, while a clergyman and his wife
lay no eggs but give birth to a baby which will take three-
and-twenty years before it can become another clergyman ?
Why should not chickens be born and clergymen be laid and
hatched ? Or why, at any rate, should not the clergyman
be born full grown and in Holy Orders, not to say already
beneficed ? The present arrangement is not convenient, it
is not cheap, it is not free from danger, it is not only not
perfect but is so much the reverse that we could hardly find
words to express our sense of its awkwardness if we could look
upon it with new eyes, or as the cuckoo perhaps observes it.

The explanation usually given is that it is a law of nature
that children should be born as they are, but this is like the
parched pea which St. Anthony set before the devil when he
came to supper with him and of which the devil said that it
was good as far as it went. We want more ; we want to
know with what familiar set of facts we are to connect the
one in question which, though in our midst, at present dwells
apart as a mysterious stranger of whose belongings, reason
for coming amongst us, antecedents, and so forth, we believe
ourselves to be ignorant, though we know him by sight and
name and have a fair idea what sort of man he is to deal
with.

56

Memory* and Design 57

We say it is a phenomenon of heredity that chickens
should be laid as eggs in the first instance and clergymen
born as babies, but, beyond the fact that we know heredity
extremely well to look at and to do business with, we say
that we know nothing about it. I have for some years main-
tained this to be a mistake and have urged, in company with
Professor Hering, of Prague, and others, that the connection
between memory and heredity is so close that there is no
reason for regarding the two as generically different, though
for convenience sake it may be well to specify them by
different names. If I can persuade you that this is so, I
believe I shall be able to make you understand why it is
that chickens are hatched as eggs and clergymen bom as
babies.

When I say I can make you understand why this is so, I
only mean that I can answer the first " why " that anyone is
likely to ask about it, and perhaps a " why " or two behind
this. Then I must stop. This is all that is ever meant by
those who say they can tell us why a thing is so and so. No
one professes to be able to reach back to the last " why "
that any one can ask, and to answer it. Fortunately for
philosophers, people generally become fatigued after they
have heard the answer to two or three " whys " and are
glad enough to let the matter drop. If, however, any one
will insist on pushing question behind question long enough,
he will compel us to admit that we come to the end of our
knowledge which is based ultimately upon ignorance. To
get knowledge out of ignorance seems almost as hopeless a
task as to get something out of any number of nothings, but
this in practice is what we have to do and the less fuss we
make over it the better.

When, therefore, we say that we know " why " a thing is
so and so, we mean that we know its immediate antecedents
and connections, and find them familiar to us. I say that
the immediate antecedent of, and the phenomenon most
closely connected with, heredity is memory. I do not profess
to show why anything can remember at all, I only maintain
that whereas, to borrow an illustration from mathematics,
life was formerly an equation of, say, 100 unknown quantities,
it is now one of 99 only, inasmuch as memory and heredity
have been shown to be one and the same thing.

6o Memory and Design

Personal Identity

We are so far identical with our ancestors and our con-
temporaries that it is very rarely we can see anything that
they do not see. It is not unjust that the sins of the fathers
should be visited upon the children, for the children com-
mitted the sins when in the persons of their fathers ; they
ate the sour grapes before they were born : true, they have
forgotten the pleasure now, but so has a man with a sick
headache forgotten the pleasure of getting drunk the night
before.

Sensations

Our sensations are only distinguishable because we feel
them in different places and at different times. If we feel
them at very nearly the same time and place we cannot
distinguish them.

Cobwebs in the Dark

If you walk at night and your face comes up against a
spider's web woven across the road, what a shock that thin
line gives you ! You fristle through every nerve of your
body.

Shocks and Memory

Memory is our sense that we are being shocked now as we
were shocked then.

Shocks

Given matter conscious in one part of itself of a shock in
another part (i.e. knowing in what part of itself it is shocked)
retaining a memory of each shock for a little while after-
wards, able to feel whether two shocks are simultaneous or
in succession, and able to know whether it has been shocked
much or little — given also that association does not stick to
the letter of its bond — and the rest will follow.

Design
i

There is often connection but no design, as when I stamp
my foot with design and shake something down without

Memory and Design 61

design, or as when a man runs up against another in the
street and knocks him down without intending it. This is
undesign within design.

Fancied insults are felt by people who see design in a con-
nection where they should see little connection, and no design.

Connection with design is sometimes hard to distinguish
from connection without design ; as when a man treads on
another's corns, it is not always easy to say whether he has
done so accidentally or on purpose.

Men have been fond in all ages of ascribing connection
where there is none. Thus astrology has been believed in.
Before last Christmas I said I had neglected the feasts of
the Church too much, and that I should probably be more
prosperous if I paid more attention to them : so I hung up
three pieces of ivy in my rooms on Xmas Eve. A few months
afterwards I got the entail cut off my reversion, but I should
hardly think there was much connection between the two
things. Nevertheless I shall hang some holly up this } r ear.

ii

It seems also designed, ab extra (though who can say
whether this is so ?), that no one should know anything what-
ever about the ultimate, or even deeper springs of growth
and action. If not designed the result is arrived at as effectu-
ally as though it were so.

Accident, Design and Memory

It is right to say cither that heredity and memory are one
and the same thing, or that heredity is a mode of memory,
or that heredity is due to memory, if it is thereby intended
that animals can only grow in virtue of being able to recollect.
Memory and heredity are the means of preserving experiences,
of building them together, of uniting a mass of often confused
detail into homogeneous and consistent mind and matter,
but they do not originate. The increment in each generation,
at the moment of its being an increment, has nothing to do
with memory or heredity, it is due to the chances and changes
of this mortal state. Design comes in at the moment that a
living being either feels a want and forecasts for its gratifi-
cation, or utilises some waif or stray of accident on the

62 Memory and Design

principle, which underlies all development, that enough is a
little more than what one has. It is the business of memory
and heredity to conserve and to transmit from one generation
to another that which has been furnished by design, or by
accident designedly turned to account.

It is therefore not right to say, as some have supposed me
to mean, that we can do nothing which we do not remember
to have done before. We can do nothing very difficult or
complicated which we have not done before, unless as by a
tour de force, once in a way, under exceptionally favourable
circumstances, but our whole conscious life is the perform-
ance of acts either imperfectly remembered or not remem-
bered at all. There are rain-drops of new experiences in
every life which are not within the hold of our memory or
past experience, and, as each one of these rain-drops came
originally from something outside, the whole river of our life
has in its inception nothing to do with memory, though it is
only through memory that the rain-drops of new experience
can ever unite to form a full flowing river of variously
organised life and intelligence.

Memory and Mistakes

Memory vanishes with extremes of resemblance or differ-
ence. Things which put us in mind of others must be neither
too like nor too unlike them. It is our sense that a position
is not quite the same which makes us find it so nearly the
same. We remember by the aid of differences as much as by
that of samenesses. If there could be no difference there
would be no memory, for the two positions would become
absolutely one and the same, and the universe would repeat
itself for ever and ever as between these two points.

When ninety-nine hundredths of one set of phenomena
are presented while the hundredth is withdrawn without
apparent cause, so that we can no longer do something which
according to our past experience we ought to find no difficulty
in doing, then we may guess what a bee must feel as it goes
flying up and down a window-pane. Then we have doubts
thrown upon the fundamental axiom of life, i.e. that like
antecedents will be followed by like consequents. On this
we go mad and die in a short time.

Memory and Design 63

Mistaken memory may be as potent as genuine recollection,
so far as its effects go, unless it happens to come more into
collision with other and not mistaken memories than it is able
to contend against.

Mistakes or delusions occur mainly in two ways.

First, when the circumstances have changed a little but
not enough to make us recognise the fact : this may happen
either because of want of attention on our part or because
of the hidden nature of the alteration, or because of its
slightness in itself, the importance depending upon its relations
to something else which make a very small change have an
importance it would not otherwise have : in these cases the
memory reverts to the old circumstances unmodified, a
sufficient number of the associated ideas having been repro-
duced to make us assume the remainder without further
inspection, and hence follows a want of harmony between
. action and circumstances which results in trouble somewhere.

Secondly, through the memory not reverting in full per-
fection, though the circumstances are reproduced fully and
accurately.

Remembering

When asked to remember " something " indefinitely you
cannot : you look round at once for something to suggest
what you shall try and remember. For thought must be
always about some u thing " which thing must either be a
thing by courtesy, as an air oi Handel's, or else a solid,
tangible object, as a piano or an organ, but always the thing
must be linked on to matter by a longer or shorter chain as
the case may be. I was thinking of this once while walking
by the side of the Serpentine and, looking round, saw some
ducks alighting on the water ; their feet reminded me of the
way the sea-birds used to alight when I was going to New
Zealand and I set to work recalling attendant tacts. Without
help from outside I should have remembered nothing.

A Torn Finger-Nail

Henry Hoare [a college friend], when a young man of
about five-and-twenty, one day tore the quick of his finger-
nail — I mean he separated the fleshy part of the finger from

64 Memory and Design

the nail — and this reminded him that many years previously,
while quite a child, he had done the same thing. Thereon he
fell to thinking of that time which was impressed upon his
memory partly because there was a great disturbance in the
house about a missing five-pound note and partly because it
was while he had the scarlet fever.

Following the train of thought aroused by his torn finger,
he asked himself how he had torn it, and after a while it came
back to him that he had been lying ill in bed as a child of
seven at the house of an aunt who lived in Hertfordshire.
His arms often hung out of the bed and, as his hands wandered
over the wooden frame, he felt that there was a place where a
nut had come out so that he could put his fingers in. One
day, in trying to stuff a piece of paper into this hole, he
stuffed it in so far and so tightly that he tore the quick of his
nail. The whole thing came back vividly and, though he had
not thought of it for nearly twenty years, he could see the
room in his aunt's house and remembered how his aunt used
to sit by his bedside writing at a little table from which he
had got the piece of paper which he had stuffed into the hole.

So far so good. But then there flashed upon him an idea
that was not so pleasant. I mean it came upon him with
irresistible force that the piece of paper he had stuffed into
the hole in the bedstead was the missing five-pound note
about which there had been so much disturbance. At that
time he was so young that a five-pound note was to him only
a piece of paper ; when he heard that the money was missing,
he had thought it was five sovereigns ; or perhaps he was
too ill to think anything, or to be questioned ; I forget what I
was told about this — at any rate he had no idea of the value
of the piece of paper he was stuffing into the hole. But now
the matter had recurred to him at all he felt so sure that it
was the note that he immediately went down to Hertford-
shire, where his aunt was still living, and asked, to the sur-
prise of every one, to be allowed to wash his hands in the
room he had occupied as a child. He was told that there
were friends staying in the house who had the room at
present, but, on his saying he had a reason and particularly
begging to be allowed to remain alone a little while in this
room, he was taken upstairs and left there.

He went to the bed, lifted up the chintz which then covered

Memory and Design 65

the frame, and found his old friend the hole. A nut had been
supplied and he could no longer get his finger into it. He
rang the bell and when the servant came asked for a bed-key.
All this time he was rapidly acquiring the reputation of
being a lunatic throughout the whole house, but the key was
brought, and by the help of it he got the nut off. When he
had done so, there, sure enough, by dint of picking with his
pocket-knife, he found the missing five-pound note.

See how the return of a given present brings back the
presents that have been associated with it.

Unconscious Association

One morning I was whistling to myself the air " In Sweetest
Harmony ,} from Saul. Jones heard me and said :
" Do you know why you are whistling that ? "
I said I did not.

Then he said : " Did you not hear me, two minutes ago,
whistling 1 Eagles were not so Swift ' ? "

I had not noticed his doing so, and it was so long since
I 'had played that chorus myself that I doubt whether I
should have consciously recognised it. That I did recognise it
unconsciously is tolerably clear from my having gone on with
" In Sweetest Harmony," which is the air that follows it.

Association

If you say " Hallelujah " to a cat, it will excite no fixed
set of fibres in connection with any other set and the cat
will exhibit none of the phenomena of consciousness. But
if you say " Me-e-at," the cat will be there in a moment,
for the due connection between the sets of fibres has been
established.

Language

The reason why words recall ideas is that the word has
been artificially introduced among the associated 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 evolu-
tion 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
end 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 Un-
conscious Memory. [1880.]

What I want to do now [1885] is to connect vibrations
not only with memory but with the physical constitution of
that body in which the memory resides, thus adopting New-
land's law (sometimes called MendelejefFs 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 is
touched upon in the concluding chapter of Luck or Cunning ?
1887.]

66

Vibrations

67

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 vibra-
tions — are as much our manner of perceiving that the vibra-
tions 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 assumed the shape of the par-
ticular 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, some-
times 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.

68

Vibrations

I do not say that thought actually passes 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 un-
conscious. 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 space 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 assumes material guise such as makes it
perceptible 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 im-
perceptible substance by way of vibration which constitutes
matter at all ; it is the character of the vibrations which
constitutes 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 space 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 un-
disturbed 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

Vibrations

69

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 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

70 Vibrations

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 under-
stood 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 sexually 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 assimilation they have acquired certain periodical rhythms

Vibrations

7i

already pre-existing in the parental bodies, and that the
communication of the characteristics of these rhythms de-
termines 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
participators in any previous development and cannot there-
fore 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 1
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
assimilation 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

72

Vibrations

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 oi
such accession set the game of development going and main-
tain 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 rehearsed 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.

Atoms and Fixed Laws

When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are
either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to
atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is' no obedience
unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.

No objection can lie to our supposing potential or elementary
volition and consciousness to exist in atoms, on the score
that their action would be less regular or uniform if they had
free will than if they had not. By giving them free will we
do no more than those who make them bound to obey fixed
laws. They will be as certain to use their freedom of will
only in particular ways as to be driven into those ways by
obedience to fixed laws.

The little element of individual caprice (supposing we start
with free will), or (supposing we start with necessity) the
little element of stiffneckedness, both of which elements we
find everywhere in nature, these are the things that prevent
even the most reliable things from being absolutely reliable.
It is they that form the point of contact between this universe

Vibrations

73

and something else quite different in which none of those
fundamental ideas obtain without which we cannot think at
all. So we say that nitrous acid is more reliable than nitric
for etching.

Atoms have a mind as much smaller and less complex
than ours as their bodies are smaller and less complex.

Complex mind involves complex matter and vice versa.
On the whole I think it would be most convenient to endow
all atoms with a something of consciousness and volition,
and to hold them to be pro tanto y living. We must suppose
them able to remember and forget, i.e. to retain certain
vibrations that have been once established — gradually to
lose them and to receive others instead. We must suppose
some more intelligent, versatile and of greater associative
power than others.

Thinking

All thinking is of disturbance, dynamical, a state of unrest
tending towards equilibrium. It is all a mode of classifying
and of criticising with a view of knowing whether it gives us,
or is likely to give us, pleasure or no.

Equilibrium

In the highest consciousness there is still unconsciousness,
in the lowest unconsciousness there is still consciousness. If
there is no consciousness there is no thing, or nothing. To
understand perfectly would be to cease to understand at all.

It is in the essence of heaven that we are not to be thwarted
or irritated, this involves absolute equilibrium and absolute
equilibrium involves absolute unconsciousness. Christ is
equilibrium — the not wanting anything, either more or less.
Death also is equilibrium. But Christ is a more living Icind
of death than death is.

VI

Mind and Matter

Motion

We cannot define either motion or matter, but we have
certain rough and ready ideas concerning them which, right
or wrong, we must make the best of without more words,
for the chances are ten to one that attempted definition will
fuzz more than it will clear.

Roughly, matter and motion are functions one of another,
as are mind and matter; they are essentially concomitant
with one another, and neither can vary but the other varies
also. You cannot have a thing " matter " by itself which
shall have no motion in it, nor yet a thing " motion " by
itself which shall exist apart from matter ; you must have
both or neither. You can have matter moving much, or
little, and in all conceivable ways ; but you cannot have
matter without any motion more than you can have motion
without any matter that is moving.

Its states, its behaviour under varying circumstances,
that is to say the characteristics of its motions, are all that
we can cognise in respect of matter. We recognise certain
varying states or conditions of matter and give one state
one name, and another another, as though it were a man or
a dog ; but it is the state not the matter that we cognise,
just as it is the man's moods and outward semblance that
we alone note, while knowing nothing of the man. Of matter
in its ultimate essence and apart from motion we know
nothing whatever. As far as we are concerned there is no
such thing : it has no existence : for de non apparentibus et
non existentibus eadem est ratio.

It is a mistake, therefore, to speak about an " eternal

74

Mind and Matter

75

unchangeable underlying substance " as I am afraid I did
in the last pages of Luck or Cunning ? but I am not going to
be at the trouble of seeing. For, if the substance is eternal
and unknowable and unchangeable, it is tantamount to
nothing. Nothing can be nearer non-existence than eternal
unknowableness and unchangeableness.

If, on the other hand, the substance changes, then it is
not unknowable, or uncognisable, for by cognising its changes
we cognise it. Changes are the only things that we can
cognise. Besides, we cannot have substance changing without
condition changing, and if we could we might as well ignore
condition. Does it not seem as though, since the motions or
states are all that we cognise, they should be all that we
need take account of ? Change of condition is change of
substance* Then what do we want with substance ? Why
have two ideas when one will do ?

I suppose it has all come about because there are so many
tables and chairs and stones that appear not to be moving,
and this gave us the idea of a solid substance without any
motion in it.

How would it be to start with motion approximately
patent, and motion approximately latent (absolute patency
and absolute latency being unattainable), and lay down that
motion latent as motion becomes patent as substance, or
matter of chair-and-table order ; and that when patent as
motion it is latent as matter and substance ?

I am only just recovering from severe influenza and have
no doubt I have been writing nonsense.

Matter and Mind
i

People say we can conceive the existence of matter and
the existence of mind. I doubt it. I doubt how far we have
any definite conception of mind or of matter, pure and
simple.

What is meant by conceiving a thing or understanding it ?

When we hear of a piece of matter instinct with mind, as
protoplasm, for example, there certainly comes up before
our closed eyes an idea, a picture which we imagine to bear
some resemblance to the thing we are hearing of. But when

76 Mind and Matter

we try to think of matter apart from every attribute of
matter (and this I suspect comes ultimately to apart from
every attribute of mind ") we get no image before our closed
eyes— we realise nothing to ourselves. Perhaps we sur-
reptitiously introduce some little attribute, and then we
think we have conceived of matter pure and simple, but this
I think is as far as we can go. The like holds good for mind :
we must smuggle in a little matter before we get any definite
idea at all.

ii

Matter and mind are as heat and cold, as life and death,
certainty and uncertainty, union and separateness. There is
no absolute heat, life, certainty, union, nor is there any
absolute cold, death, uncertainty or separateness.

We can conceive of no ultimate limit beyond which a
thing cannot become either hotter or colder, there is no
limit ; there are degrees of heat and cold, but there is no
heat so great that we cannot fancy its becoming a little
hotter, that is we cannot fancy its not having still a few
degrees of cold in it which can be extracted. Heat and cold
are always relative to one another, they are never absolute.
So with life and death, there is neither perfect life nor perfect
death, but in the highest life there is some death and in the
lowest death there is still some life. The fraction is so small
that in practice it may and must be neglected ; it is neglected,
however, not as of right but as of grace, and the right to
insist on it is never finally and indefeasibly waived.

iii

An energy is a soul — a something working in us.

As we cannot imagine heat apart from something which is
hot, nor motion without something that is moving, so we
cannot imagine an energy, or working power, without matter
through which it manifests itself.

On the other hand, we cannot imagine matter without
thinking of it as capable of some kind of working power or
energy — we cannot think of matter without thinking of it as
in some way ensouled.

iv

Matter and mind form one another, i.e. they give to one
another the form in which we see them. They are the help-

Mind and Matter

77

meets to one another that cross each other and undo each
other and, in the undoing, do and, in the doing, undo, and so
see-saw ad infinitum.

Organic and Inorganic

Animals and plants cannot understand our business, so we
have denied that they can understand their own. What we
call inorganic matter cannot understand the animals' and
plants' business, we have therefore denied that it can under-
stand anything whatever.

What we call inorganic is not so really, but the organisa-
tion is too subtle for our senses or for any of those appliances
with which we assist them. It is deducible however as a
necessity by an exercise of the reasoning faculties.

People looked at glaciers for thousands of years before
they found out that ice was a fluid, so it has taken them and
will continue to take them not less before they see that the
inorganic is not wholly inorganic.

The Power to make Mistakes

This is one of the criteria of life as we commonly think of
it. If oxygen could go wrong and mistake some other gas
for hydrogen and thus learn not to mistake it any more, we
should say ox3- T gen was alive. The older life is, the more
unerring it becomes in respect of things about which it is
conversant — the more like, in fact, it becomes to such a
thing as the force of gravity, both as regards unerringness
and unconsciousness.

Is life such a force as gravity in process of formation, and
was gravity once — or rather, were things once liable to make
mistakes on such a subject as gravity ?

If any one will tell me what life is I will tell him whether
the inorganic is alive or not.

The Omnipresence of Intelligence

A little while ago no one would admit that animals had
intelligence. This is now conceded. At any rate, then,
vegetables had no intelligence. This is being fast disputed,

73

Mind and Matter

Even Darwin leans towards the view that they have intelli-
gence. At any rate, then, the inorganic world has not got
an intelligence. Even this is now being denied. Death is
being defeated at all points. No sooner do we think we have
got a bona fide barrier than it breaks down. The divisions
between varieties, species, genus, all gone ; between in-
stinct and reason, gone ; between animals and plants, gone ;
between man and the lower animals, gone ; so, ere long, the
division between organic and inorganic will go and will take
with it the division between mind and matter.

The Super-Organic Kingdom

As the solid inorganic kingdom supervened upon the
gaseous (vestiges of the old being, nevertheless, carried over
into and still persisting in the new) and as the organic king-
dom supervened upon the inorganic (vestiges of the old
being, again, carried over into and still persisting in the new)
so a third kingdom is now in process of development, the
super-organic, of which we see the germs in the less practical
and more emotional side of our nature.

Man, for example, is the only creature that interests him-
self in his own past, or forecasts his future to any consider-
able extent. This tendency I would see as the monad of a
new regime — a regime that will be no more governed by the
ideas and habits now prevailing among ourselves than we
are by those still obtaining among stones or water. Never-
theless, if a man be shot out of a cannon, or fall from a great
height, he is to all intents and purposes a mere stone. Place
anything in circumstances entirely foreign to its immediate
antecedents, and those antecedents become non-existent to
it, it returns to what it was before they existed, to the last
stage that it can recollect as at all analogous to its present.

Feeling

Man is a substance, he knows not what, feeling, he knows
not how, a rest and unrest that he can only in part distin-
guish. He is a substance feeling equilibrium or want of
equilibrium ; that is to say, he is a substance in a statical

Mind and Matter

79

or dynamical condition and feeling the passage from one
state into the other.

Feeling is an art and, like any other art, can be acquired
by taking pains. The analogy between feelings and words
is very close. Both have their foundation in volition and
deal largely in convention ; as we should not be word-ridden
so neither should we be feeling-ridden ; feelings can deceive
us ; they can lie ; they can be used in a non-natural, arti-
ficial sense ; they can be forced ; they can carry us away ;
they can be restrained.

When the surroundings are familiar, we know the right
feeling and feel it accordingly, or if " we " (that is the central
government of our personality) do not feel it, the subordinate
departmental personality, whose business it is, feels it in the
usual way and then goes on to something else. When the
surroundings are less familiar and the departmental person-
ality cannot deal with them, the position is reported through
the nervous system to the central government which is fre-
quently at a loss to know what feeling to apply. Sometimes
it happens to discern the right feeling and apply it, some-
times it hits upon an inappropriate one and is thus induced
to proceed from solecism to solecism till the consequences
lead to a crisis from which we recover and which, then be-
coming a leading case, forms one of the decisions on which
our future action is based. Sometimes it applies a feeling
that is too inappropriate, as when the position is too horribly
novel for us to have had any experience that can guide the
central government in knowing how to feel about it, and this
results in a cessation of the effort involved in trying to feel.
Hence we may hope that the mcst horrible apparent suffering
is not felt beyond a certain point, but is passed through un-
consciously under a natural, automatic anaesthetic — the
unconsciousness, in extreme cases, leading to death.

It is generally held that animals feel ; it will soon be
generally held that plants feel ; after that it will be held
that stones also can feel. For, as no matter is so organic
that there is not some of the inorganic in it, so, also, no
matter is so inorganic that there is not some of the organic
in it. We know that we have nerves and that we feel, it
does not follow that other things do not feel because they
have no nerves — it only follows that they do not feel as we

8o

Mind and Matter

do. The difference between the organic and the inorganic
kingdoms will some day be seen to lie in the greater power
of discriminating its feelings which is possessed by the
former. Both are made of the same universal substance,
but, in the case of the organic world, this substance is
able to feel more fully and discreetly and to show us that
it feels.

Animals and plants, as they advance in the scale of life,
differentiate their feelings more and more highly ; they
record them better and recognise them more readily. They
get to know what they are doing and feeling, not step by step
only, nor sentence by sentence, but in long flights, forming
chapters and whole books of action and sensation. The
difference as regards feeling between man and the lower
animals is one of degree and not of kind. The inorganic is
less expert in differentiating its feelings, therefore its memory
of them must be less enduring ; it cannot re-cognise what it
could scarcely cognise. One might as w r ell for some purposes,
perhaps, say at once, as indeed people generally do for most
purposes, that the inorganic does not feel ; nevertheless the
somewhat periphrastic way of putting it, by saying that the
inorganic feels but does not know, or knows only very slightly,
how to differentiate its feelings, has the advantage of ex-
pressing the fact that feeling depends upon differentiation
and sense of relation inter se of the things differentiated — a
fact which, if never expressed, is apt to be lost sight of.

As, therefore, human discrimination is to that of the lower
animals, so the discrimination of the lower animals and
plants is to that of inorganic things. In each case it is
greater discriminating power (and this is mental power) that
underlies the differentiation, but in no case can there be a
denial of mental power altogether.

Opinion and Matter

Moral force and material force do pass into one another ;
a conflict of opinion often ends in a fight. Putting it the
other way, there is no material conflict without attendant
clash of opinion. Opinion and matter act and react as do all
things else ; they come up hand in hand out of something
which is both and neither, but, so far as we can catch sight

Mind and Matter

81

of either first on our mental horizon, it is opinion that is the
prior of the two.

Moral Influence

The caracal lies on a shelf in its den in the Zoological
Gardens quietly licking its fur. I go up and stand near it.
It makes a face at me. I come a little nearer. It makes a
worse face and raises itself up on its haunches. I stand and
look. It jumps down from its shelf and makes as if it intended
to go for me. I move back. The caracal has exerted a moral
influence over me which I have been unable to resist.

Moral influence means persuading another that one can
make that other more uncomfortable than that other can
make oneself.

Mental and Physical Pabulum

When we go up to the shelves in the reading-room of the
British Museum, how like it is to wasps flying up and down
an apricot tree that is trained against a wall, or cattle coming
down to drink at a pool !

Eating and Proselytising

All eating is a kind of proselytising — a kind of dogmatising
— a maintaining that the eater's way of looking at things is
better than the eatee's. We convert the food, or try to do
so, to our own way of thinking, and, when it sticks to its own
opinion and refuses to be converted, we say it disagrees with
us. An animal that refuses to let another eat it has the
courage of its convictions and, if it gets eaten, dies a martyr
to them. So we can only proselytise fresh meat, the con-
victions of putrid meat begin to be too strong for us.

It is good for a man that he should not be thwarted —
that he should have his own way as far, and with as little
difficulty, as possible. Cooking is good because it makes,
matters easier by unsettling the meat's mind and preparing
it for new ideas. All food must first be prepared for us by
animals and plants, or we cannot assimilate it ; and so
thoughts are more easily assimilated that have been already
digested by other minds. A man should avoid converse with

82 Mind and Matter

things that have been stunted or starved, and should not eat
such meat as has been overdriven or underfed or afflicted
with disease, nor should he touch fruit or vegetables that
have not been well grown.

Sitting quiet after eating is akin to sitting still during
divine service so as not to disturb the congregation. We are
catechising and converting our proselytes, and there should
be no row. As we get older we must digest more quietly
still, our appetite is less, our gastric juices are no longer so
eloquent, they have lost that cogent fluency which carried
away all that came in contact with it. They have become
sluggish and unconciliatory. This is what happens to any
man when he suffers from an attack of indigestion.

Sea-Sickness

Or, indeed, any other sickness is the inarticulate expres-
sion of the pain we feel on seeing a proselyte escape us just
as we were on the point of converting it.

Indigestion

This, as I have said above, may be due to the naughtiness
of the stiff-necked things that we have eaten, or to the poverty
of our own arguments ; but it may also arise from an attempt
on the part of the stomach to be too damned clever, and to
depart from precedent inconsiderately. The healthy stomach
is nothing if not conservative. Few radicals have good
digestions.

Assimilation and Persecution

We cannot get rid of persecution ; if we feel at all we
must persecute something ; the mere acts of feeding and
growing are acts of persecution. Our aim should be to
persecute nothing but such things as are absolutely incapable
of resisting us. Man is the only animal that can remain on
friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he
eats them.

Matter Infinitely Subdivisible

We must suppose it to be so, but it does not follow that
we can know anything about it if it is divided into pieces

Mind and Matter

83

smaller than a certain size ; and, if we can know nothing
about it when so divided, then, qua us, it has no existence
and therefore matter, qua us, is not infinitely subdivisible.

JDifferences

We often say that things differ in degree but not in kind,
as though there were a fixed line at which degree ends and
kind begins. There is no such line. All differences resolve
themselves into differences of degree. Everything can in
the end be united with everything by easy stages if a way
long enough and round-about enough be taken. Hence to
the metaphysician everything will become one, being united
with everything else by degrees so subtle that there is no
escape from seeing the universe as a single whole. This in
theory ; but in practice it would get us into such a mess
that we had better go on talking about differences of kind as
well as of degree.

Union and Separation

. In the closest union there is still some separate existence
of component parts ; in the most complete separation there
is still a reminiscence of union. When they are most separate,
the atoms seem to bear in mind that they may one day have
to come together again ; when most united, they still re-
member that they may come to fall out some day and do not
give each other their full, unreserved confidence.

The difficulty is how to get unity and separateness at one
and the same time. The two main ideas underlying all
action are desire for closer unity and desire for more separate-
ness. Nature is the puzzled sense of a vast number of things
which feel they are in an illogical position and should be
more either of one thing or the other than they are. So they
will first be this and then that, and act and re-act and keep
the balance as near equal as they can, yet they know all the
time that it isn't right and, as they incline one way or the
other, they will love or hate.

When we love, we draw what we love closer to us ; when
we hate a thing, we fling it away from us. All disruption
and dissolution is a mode of hating ; and all that we call
affinity is a mode of loving.

8 4

Mind and Matter

The puzzle which puzzles every atom is the puzzle which
puzzles ourselves — a conflict of duties—our duty towards
ourselves, and our duty as members of a body politic. ^ It
is swayed by its sense of being a separate thing — of having
a life to itself which nothing can share ; it is also swayed
by the feeling that, in spite of this, it is only part of an indi-
viduality which is greater than itself and which absorbs it-
Its action will vary with the predominance of either of these
two states of opinion.

Unity and Multitude

We can no longer separate things as we once could : every-
thing tends towards unity; one thing, one action, in one
place, at one time. On the other hand, we can no longer
unify things as we once could ; we are driven to ultimate
atoms, each one of which is an individuality. So that we
have an infinite multitude of things doing an infinite multi-
tude of actions in infinite time and space ; and yet they are
not many things, but one thing.

The Atom

The idea of an indivisible, ultimate atom is inconceivable
by the lay mind. If we can conceive an idea of the atom
at all, we can conceive it as capable of being cut in half ;
indeed, we cannot conceive it at all unless we so conceive
it. The only true atom, the only thing which we cannot
subdivide and cut in half, is the universe. We cannot cut a
bit off the universe and put it somewhere else. Therefore,
the universe is a true atom and, indeed, is the smallest piece
of indivisible matter which our minds can conceive ; and they
cannot conceive it any more than they can the indivisible,
ultimate atom.

Our Cells

A string of young ducklings as they sidle along through
grass beside a ditch — how like they are to a single serpent !
I said in Life and Habit that a colossal being, looking at the
earth through a microscope, would probably think the ants
and flies of one year the same as those of the preceding year.

Mind and Matter 85

I should have added : — So we think we are composed of the
same cells from year to year, whereas in truth the cells are a
succession of generations. The most continuous, homo-
geneous things we know are only like a lot of cow-bells on an
alpine pasture.

Nerves and Postmen

A letter, so long as it is connected with one set of nerves,
is one thing ; loose it from connection with those nerves —
open your fingers and drop it in the opening of a pillar box —
and it becomes part and parcel of another nervous system.
Letters in transitu contain all manner of varied stimuli and
shocks, yet to the postman, who is the nerve that conveys
them, they are all alike, except as regards mere size and weight.
I should think, therefore, that our nerves and ganglia really
see no difference in the stimuli that they convey.

And yet the postman does see some difference : he knows
a business letter from a valentine at a glance and practice
teaches him to know much else which escapes ourselves.
Who, then, shall say what the nerves and ganglia know and
what they do not know ? True, to us, as we think of a piece
of brain inside our own heads, it seems as absurd to consider
that it knows anything at all as it seems to consider that a
hen's egg knows anything ; but then if the brain could see us,
perhaps the brain might say it was absurd to suppose that that
thing could know this or that. Besides what is the self of
which we say that we are self-conscious ? No one can say
what it is that we are conscious of. This is one of the things
which lie altogether outside the sphere of words.

The postman can open a letter if he likes and know all
about the message he is conveying, but, if he does this, he is
diseased qua postman. So, maybe, a nerve might open a
stimulus or a shock on the way sometimes, but it would not
be a good nerve.

Night-Shirts and Babies

On Hindhead, last Easter, we saw a family wash hung out
to dry. There were papa's two great night-shirts and mamma's
two lesser night-gowns and then the children's smaller articles
of clothing and mamma's drawers and the girls' drawers, all
full swollen with a strong north-east wind. But mamma's

86

Mind and Matter

night-gown was not so well pinned on and, instead of being
full of steady wind like the others, kept blowing up and down
as though she were preaching wildly. We stood and laughed
for ten minutes. The housewife came to the window and
wondered at us, but w T e could not resist the pleasure of watch-
ing the absurdly life-like gestures which the night-gowns
made. I should like a Santa Famiglia with clothes drying in
the background.

A love story might be told in a series of sketches of the
clothes of two families hanging out to dry in adjacent gardens.
Then a gentleman's night-shirt from one garden, and a lady's
night-gown from the other should be shown hanging in a
third garden by themselves. By and by there should be
added a little night-shirt.

A philosopher might be tempted, on seeing the little
night-shirt, to suppose that the big night-shirts had made it.
What we do is much the same, for the body of a baby is not
much more made by the two old babies, after whose pattern
it has cut itself out, than the little night-shirt is made by the
big ones. The thing that makes either the little night-shirt
or the little baby is something about which we know nothing
whatever at all.

Our Organism

Man is a walking tool-box, manufactory, workshop and
bazaar worked from behind the scenes by someone or some-
thing that we never see. We are so used to never seeing more
than the tools, and these work so smoothly, that we call
them the workman himself, making much the same mistake
as though we should call the saw the carpenter. The only
workman of whom we know anything at all is the one that
runs ourselves and even this is not perceivable by any of our
gross palpable senses.

The senses seem to be the link between mind and matter —
never forgetting that we can never have either mind or matter
pure and without alloy of the other.

Beer and My Cat

Spilt beer or water seems sometimes almost human in its
uncertainty whether or no it is worth while to get ever such

Mind and Matter 87

a little nearer to the earth's centre by such and such a slight
trickle forward.

I saw my cat undecided in his mind whether he should get
up on the table and steal the remains of my dinner or not.
The chair was some eighteen inches away with its back
towards the table, so it was a little troublesome for him to
get his feet first on the bar and then on the table. He was
not at all hungry but he tried, saw it would not be quite
easy and gave it up ; then he thought better of it and tried
again, and saw again that it was not all perfectly plain
sailing ; and so backwards and forwards with the first-he-
would-and-then-he-wouldn 5 tism of a mind so nearly in
equilibrium that a hair's weight would turn the scale one
way or the other.

I thought how closely it resembled the action of beer
trickling on a slightly sloping table.

The Union Bank

There is a settlement in the Union Bank building, Chancery
Lane, which has made three large cracks in the main door
steps. I remember these cracks more than twenty years ago,
just after the bank was built, as mere thin lines and now they
must be some half an inch wide and are still slowly widening.
They have altered veiy gradually, but not an hour or a minute
has passed without a groaning and travailing together on the
part of every stone and piece of timber in the building to
settle how a modus vivendi should be arrived at. This is why
the crack is said to be caused by a settlement — some parts
of the building willing this and some that, and the battle
going on, as even the steadiest and most unbroken battles
must go, "by fits and starts which, though to us appearing
as an even tenor, would, if we could see them under a micro-
scope, prove to be a succession of bloody engagements
between regiments that sometimes lost and sometimes won.
Sometimes, doubtless, strained relations have got settled by
peaceful arbitration and reference to the solicitors of the
contending parts without open visible rupture ; at other
times, again, discontent has gathered on discontent as the
snow upon a sub-alpine slope, flake by flake, till the last is
one too many and the whole comes crashing down —

88

Mind and Matter

whereon the cracks have opened some minute fraction of an
inch wider.

Of this we see nothing. All we note is that a score of years
have gone by and that the cracks are rather wider. So,
doubtless, if the materials of which the bank is built could
speak, they would say they knew nothing of the varied
interests that sometimes coalesce and sometimes conflict
within the building. The joys of the rich depositor, the
anguish of the bankrupt are nothing to them ; the stream of
people coming in and going out is as steady, continuous a
thing to them as a blowing wind or a running river to our-
selves ; all they know or care about is that they have a trifle
more weight of books and clerks and bullion than they once
had, and that this hinders them somewhat in their effort
after a permanent settlement.

The Unity of Nature

I meet a melancholy old Savoyard playing on a hurdy-
gurdy, grisly, dejected, dirty, with a look upon him as though
the iron had long since entered into his soul. It is a frosty
morning but he has very little clothing, and there is a dumb
despairing look about him which is surely genuine. There
passes- him a young butcher boy with his tray of meat upon
his shoulder. He is ruddy, lusty, full of life and health and
spirits, and he vents these in a shrill whistle which eclipses
the hurdy-gurdy of the Savoyard.

The like holds good with the horses and cats and dogs
which I meet daily, with the flies in window panes and with
plants, some are successful, other have now passed their
prime. Look at the failures per se and they make one very
unhappy, but it helps matters to look at them in their
capacities as parts of a whole rather than as isolated.

I cannot see things round about me without feeling that
they are all parts of one whole which is trying to do some-
thing ; it has not perhaps a perfectly clear idea of what it is
trying after, but it is doing its best. I see old age, decay and
failure as the relaxation, after effort, of a muscle in the cor-
poration of things, or as a tentative effort in a wrong direction,
or as the dropping off of particles of skin from a healthy limb.
This dropping off is the death of any given generation of our

Mind and Matter

89

cells as they work their way nearer and nearer to our skins
and then get nibbed off and go away. It is as though we sent
people to live nearer and nearer the churchyard the older they
grew. As for the skin that is shed, in the first place it has had
its turn, in the second it starts anew under fresh auspices, for
it can at no time cease to be part of the universe, it must
always live in one way or another.

Croesus and His Kitchen-Maid

I want people to see either their cells as less parts of them-
selves than they do, or their servants as more.

Croesus's kitchen-maid is part of him, bone of his bone and
flesh of his flesh, for she eats what comes from his table and,
being fed of one flesh, are they not brother and sister to one
another in virtue of community of nutriment which is but
a thinly veiled travesty of descent ? When she eats peas
with her knife, he does so too ; there is not a bit of bread and
butter she puts into her mouth, nor a lump of sugar she drops
into her tea, but he knoweth it altogether, though he knows
nothing whatever about it. She is en-Croesused and he en-
scullery-maided so long as she remains linked to him by the
golden chain which passes from his pocket to hers, and which
is greatest of all unifiers.

True, neither party is aware of the connection at all as long
as things go smoothly. Croesus no more knows the name of,
or feels the existence of, his kitchen-maid than a peasant in
health knows about his liver ; nevertheless he is awakened to
a dim sense of an undefined something when he pays his grocer
or his baker. She is more definitely aware of him than he of
her, but it is by way of an overshadowing presence rather than
a clear and intelligent comprehension. And though Croesus
does not eat his kitchen-maid's meals otherwise than vicari-
ously, still to eat vicariously is to eat : the meals so eaten by
his kitchen-maid nourish the better ordering of the dinner/
which nourishes and engenders the better ordering of Croesus
himself. He is fed therefore by the feeding of his kitchen-
maid.

And so with sleep. When she goes to bed he, in part, does
so too. When she gets up and lays the fire in the back-
kitchen he, in part, does so. He lays it through her and in

90

Mind and Matter

her, though knowing no more what he is doing than we know
when we digest, but still doing it as by what we call a reflex
action. Qui facit per alium facit per se, and when the back-
kitchen fire is lighted on Croesus's behalf, it is Croesus who
lights it, though he is all the time fast asleep in bed.

Sometimes things do not go smoothly. Suppose the
kitchen-maid to be taken with fits just before dinner-time ;
there will be a reverberating echo of disturbance throughout
the whole organisation of the palace. But the oftener she
has fits, the more easily will the household know what it is
all about when she is taken with them. On the first occasion
Lady Croesus will send some one rushing down into the
kitchen, there will, in fact, be a general flow of blood (i.e.
household) to the part affected (that is to say, to the scullery-
maid) ; the doctor will be sent for and all the rest of it. On
each repetition of the fits the neighbouring organs, reverting
to a more primary undifferentiated condition, will discharge
duties for which they were not engaged, in a manner for which
no one would have given them credit, and the disturbance
will be less and less each time, till by and by, at the sound of
the crockery smashing below, Lady Croesus will just look up
to papa and say :

" My dear, I am afraid Sarah has got another fit."

And papa will say she will probably be better again soon,
and will go on reading his newspaper.

In course of time the whole thing will come to be managed
automatically downstairs without any reference either to
papa, the cerebrum, or to mamma, the cerebellum, or even
to the medulla oblongata, the housekeeper. A precedent or
routine will be established, after which everything will work
quite smoothly.

But though papa and mamma are unconscious of the reflex
action which has been going on within their organisation,
the kitchen-maid and the cells in her immediate vicinity
(that is to say her fellow-servants) will know all about it.
Perhaps the neighbours will think that nobody in the house
knows, and that because the master and mistress show no
sign of disturbance therefore there is no consciousness. They
forget that the scullery-maid becomes more and more conscious
of the fits if they grow upon her, as they probably will, and
that Croesus and his lady do show more signs of consciousness,

Mind and Matter

91

if they are watched closely, than can be detected on first
inspection. There is not the same violent perturbation that
there was on the previous occasions, but the tone of the
palace is lowered. A dinner party has to be put off ; the
cooking is more homogeneous and uncertain, it is less highly
differentiated than when the scullery-maid was well; and
there is a grumble when the doctor has to be paid and also
when the smashed crockery has to be replaced.

If Croesus discharges his kitchen-maid and gets another,
it is as though he cut out a small piece of his finger and re-
placed it in due course by growth. But even the slightest
cut may lead to blood-poisoning, and so even the dismissal
of a kitchen-maid may be big with the fate of empires. Thus
the cook, a valued servant, may take the kitchen-maid's
part and go too. The next cook may spoil the dinner and
upset Croesus's temper, and from this all manner of conse-
quences may be evolved, even to the dethronement and death
of the king himself. Nevertheless as a general rule an injury
to such a low part of a great monarch's organism as a kitchen-
maid has no important results. It is only when we are at-
tacked in such vital organs as the solicitor or the banker that
we need be uneasy. A wound in the solicitor is a very serious
thing, and many a man has died from failure of his bank's
action.

It is certain, as we have seen, that when the kitchen-maid
lights the fire it is really Croesus who is lighting it, but it is
less obvious that when Croesus goes to a ball the scullery-maid
goes also. Still this should be held in the same way as it
should be also held that she eats vicariously when Croesus
dines. For he must return the balls and the dinner parties
and this comes out in his requiring to keep a large establish-
ment whereby the scullery-maid retains her place as part of
his organism and is nourished and amused also.

On the other hand, when Croesus dies it does not follow
that the scullery-maid should die at the same time. She
may grow a new Croesus, as Croesus, if the maid dies, will
probably grow a new kitchen-maid, Croesus's son or successor
may take over the kingdom and palace, and the kitchen-maid,
beyond having to wash up a few extra plates and dishes at
coronation time, will know little about the change. It is as
though the establishment had had its hair cut and its beard

92 Mind and Matter

trimmed ; it is smartened up a little, but there is no other
change. If, on the other hand, he goes bankrupt, or his
kingdom is taken from him and his whole establishment is
broken up and dissipated at the auction mart, then, even
though not one of its component cells actually dies, the
organism as a whole does so, and it is interesting to see that
the lowest, least specialised and least highly differentiated
parts of the organism, such as the scullery-maid and the
stable-boys, most readily find an entry into the life of some
new system, while the more specialised and highly differenti-
ated parts, such as the steward, the old housekeeper and,
still more so, the librarian or the chaplain may never be able
to attach themselves to any new combination, and may die
in consequence. I heard once of a large builder who retired
unexpectedly from business and broke up his establishment
to the actual death of several of his older employes. So a bit
of flesh or even a finger may be taken from one body and
grafted on to another, but a leg cannot be grafted ; if a leg is
cut off it must die. It may, however, be maintained that the
owner dies too, even though he recovers, for a man who has
lost a leg is not the man he was.*

* The five notes here amalgamated together into " Croesus and his
Kitchen-Maid " were to have been part of an article for the Universal
Review, but, before Butler wrote it, the review died. I suppose, but I
do not now remember, that the article would have been about Mind
and Matter or Organs and Tools, and, possibly, all the concluding
notes of this group, beginning with "Our Cells," would have been
introduced as illustrations.

VII

On the Making of Music, Pictures and

Books

Thought and Word

i

Thought pure and simple is as near to God as we can get ;
it is through this that we are linked with God. The highest
thought is ineffable ; it must be felt from one person to
another but cannot be articulated. All the most essential
and thinking part of thought is done without words or con-
sciousness. It is not till doubt and consciousness enter that
words become possible.

The moment a thing is written, or even can be written, and
reasoned about, it has changed its nature by becoming tangible,
and hence finite, and hence it will have an end in disin-
tegration. It has entered into death. And yet till it can be
thought about and realised more or less definitely it has not
entered into life. Both life and death are necessary factors
of each other. But our profoundest and most important
convictions are unspeakable.

So it is with unwritten and indefinable codes of honour,
conventions, art-rules — things that can be felt but not
explained — these are the most important, and the less we
try to understand them, or even to think about them, the
better.

ii

Words are organised thoughts, as living forms are organised
actions. How a thought can find embodiment in words is
nearly, though perhaps not quite, as mysterious as how an
action can find embodiment in form, and appears to involve a

93

94 On the Making of Music,

somewhat analogous transformation and contradiction in
terms.

There was a time when language was as rare an accomplish-
ment as writing was in the days when it was first invented.
Probably talking was originally confined to a few scholars,
as writing was in the middle ages, and gradually became
general. Even now speech is still growing ; poor folks cannot
understand the talk of educated people. Perhaps reading
and writing will indeed one day come by nature. Analogy
points in this direction, and though analogy is often mis-
leading, it is the least misleading thing we have.

iii

Communications between God and man must always be
either above words or below them ; for with words come in
translations, and all the interminable questions therewith
connected.

iv

The mere fact that a thought or idea can be expressed
articulately in words involves that it is still open to question ;
and the mere fact that a difficulty can be definitely conceived
involves that it is open to solution.

v

We want words to do more than they can. We try to do
with them what comes to very much like trying to mend a
watch with a pickaxe or to paint a miniature with a mop ;
we expect them to help us to grip and dissect that which
in ultimate essence is as ungrippable as shadow. Nevertheless
there they are ; we have got to live with them, and the wise
course is to treat them as we do our neighbours, and make
the best and not the worst of them. But they are parvenu
people as compared with thought and action. What we should
read is not the words but the man whom we feel to be behind
the words.

vi

Words impede and either kill, or are killed by, perfect
thought ; but they are, as a scaffolding, useful, if not in-
dispensable, for the building up of imperfect thought and help-
ing to perfect it.

Pictures and Books

95

vii

All words are juggles. To call a thing a juggle of words is
often a bigger juggle than the juggle it is intended to complain
of. The question is whether it is a greater juggle than is
generally considered fair trading.

viii

Words are like money ; there is nothing so useless, unless
when in actual use.

ix

Gold and silver coins are only the tokens, symbols, out-
ward and visible signs and sacraments of money. When not
in actual process of being applied in purchase they are no
more money than words not in use are language. Books are
like imprisoned souls until some one takes them down from
a shelf and reads them. The coins are potential money as
the words are potential language, it is the power and will to
apply the counters that make them vibrate with life ; when
the power and the will are in abeyance the counters lie dead
as a log.

The Law

The written law is binding, but the unwritten law is much
more so. You may break the written law at a pinch and on
the sly if you can, but the unwritten law — which often com-
prises the written — must not be broken. Not being written,
it is not always easy to know what it is, but this has got to be
done.

Ideas

They are like shadows — substantial enough until we try
to grasp them.

Expression

The fact that every mental state is intensified by expres-
sion is of a piece with the fact that nothing has any existence
at all save in its expression.

Development

All things are like exposed photographic plates that have
no visible image on them till they have been developed.

96 On the Making of Music,

Acquired Characteristics

If there is any truth in the theory that these are inherited
— and who can doubt it ? — the eye and the finger are but
the aspiration, or word, made manifest in flesh.

Physical and Spiritual

The bodies of many abandoned undertakings lie rotting
unburied up and down the country and their ghosts haunt
the law-courts.

Trail and Writing

Before the invention of writing the range of one man's
influence over another was limited to the range of sight,
sound and scent ; besides this there was trail, of many kinds.
Trail unintentionally left is, as it were, hidden sight. Left
intentionally, it is the unit of literature. It is the first mode
of writing, from which grew that power of extending men's
influence over one another by the help of written symbols of
all kinds without which the development of modern civilisa-
tion would have been impossible.

Conveyancing and the Arts

In conveyancing the ultimately potent thing is not the deed
but the invisible intention and desire of the parties to the
deed ; the written document itself is only evidence of this
intention and desire. So it is with music, the written notes
are not the main thing, nor is even the heard performance ;
these are only evidences of an internal invisible emotion that
can be felt but never fully expressed. And so it is with the
words of literature and with the forms and colours of painting.

The Rules for Making Literature, Music and
Pictures

The arts of the musician, the painter and the writer are
essentially the same. In composing a fugue, after you have
exposed your subject, which must not be too unwieldy, you
introduce an episode or episodes which must arise out of your

Pictures and Books 97

subject. The great thing is that all shall be new, and yet
nothing new, at the same time ; the details must minister to
the main effect and not obscure it ; in other words, you must
have a subject, develop it and not wander from it very far.
This holds just as true for literature and painting and for art
of all kinds.

No man should try even to allude to the greater part of
what he sees in his subject, and there is hardly a limit to
what he may omit. What is required is that he shall say
what he elects to say discreetly ; that he shall be quick to
see the gist of a matter, and give it pithily without either
prolixity or stint of words.

Relative Importances

It is the painter's business to help memory and imagination,
not to supersede them. He cannot put the whole before the
spectator, nothing can do this short of the thing itself ; he
should, therefore, not try to realise, and the less he looks as
if he were trying to do so the more signs of judgment he will
show. His business is to supply those details which will most
readily bring the whole before the mind along with them.
He must not give too few, but it is still more imperative on
him not to give too many.

Seeing, thought and expression are rendered possible only
by the fact that our minds are always ready to compromise
and to take the part for the whole. We associate a number
of ideas with any given object, and if a few of the most
characteristic of these are put before us we take the rest as
read, jump to a conclusion and realise the whole. If we did
not conduct our thought on this principle — simplifying by
suppression of detail and breadth of treatment — it would
take us a twelvemonth to say that it was a fine morning and
another for the hearer to apprehend our statement. Any
other principle reduces thought to an absurdity.

All painting depends upon simplification. All simplifica-
tion depends upon a perception of relative importances. All
perception of relative importances depends upon a just
appreciation of which letters in association's bond associa-
tion will most readily dispense with. This depends upon the
sympathy of the painter both with his subject and with him
h

98 On the Making of Music,

who is to look at the picture. And this depends upon a man's
common sense.

He therefore tells best in painting, as in literature, who
has best estimated the relative values or importances of the
more special features characterising his subject : that is to
say, who appreciates most accurately how much and how
fast each one of them will carry, and is at most pains to give
those only that will say most in the fewest words or touches.
It is here that the most difficult, the most important, and the
most generally neglected part of an artist's business will be
found to lie.

The difficulties of doing are serious enough, nevertheless
we can most of us overcome them with ordinary perseverance
for they are small as compared with those of knowing what
not to do — with those of learning to disregard the incessant
importunity of small nobody-details that persist in trying
to thrust themselves above their betters. It is less trouble
to give in to these than to snub them duly and keep them in
their proper places, yet it is precisely here that strength or
weakness resides. It is success or failure in this respect that
constitutes the difference between the artist who may claim
to rank as a statesman and one who can rise no higher than
a village vestryman.

It is here, moreover, that effort is most remunerative.
For when we feel that a painter has made simplicity and sub-
ordination of importances his first aim, it is surprising how
much shortcoming we will condone as regards actual execu-
tion. Whereas, let the execution be perfect, if the details
given be ill-chosen in respect of relative importance, the
whole effect is lost — it becomes top-heavy, as it were, and
collapses. As for the number of details given, this does not
matter : a man may give as few or as many as he chooses ;
he may stop at outline, or he may go on to Jean Van Eyck ;
what is essential is that, no matter how far or how small a
distance he may go, he should have begun with the most
important point and added each subsequent feature in due
order of importance, so that if he stopped at any moment
there should be no detail ungiven more important than
another which has been insisted on.

Supposing, by way of illustration, that the details are as
grapes in a bunch, they should be eaten from the best grape

Pictures and Books 99

to the next best, and so on downwards, never eating a worse
grape while a better one remains uneaten.

Personally, I think that, as the painter cannot go the
whole way, the sooner he makes it clear that he has no inten-
tion of trying to do so the better. When we look at a very
highly finished picture (so called), unless we are in the hands
of one who has attended successfully to the considerations
insisted on above, we feel as though we were with a trouble-
some cicerone who will not let us look at things with our
own eyes but keeps intruding himself at every touch and
turn and trying to exercise that undue influence upon us
which generally proves to have been the accompaniment of
concealment and fraud. This is exactly what we feel with
Van Mieris and, though in a less degree, with Gerard Dow ;
whereas with Jean Van Eyck and Metsu, no matter how far
they may have gone, we find them essentially as impressionist
as Rembrandt or Velasquez.

For impressionism only means that due attention has been
paid to the relative importances of the impressions made by
the various characteristics of a given subject, and that they
have been presented to us in order of precedence.

Eating Grapes Downwards

Always eat grapes downwards — that is, always eat the
best grape first ; in this way there will be none better left
on the bunch, and each grape will seem good down to the
last. If you eat the other way, you will not have a good
grape in the lot. Besides, you will be tempting Providence
to kill you before you come to the best. This is why autumn
seems better than spring : in the autumn we are eating our
days downwards, in the spring each day still seems " very
bad." People should live on this principle more than they
do, but they do live on it a good deal ; from the age of, say,
fifty we eat our days downwards.

In New Zealand for a long time I had to do the washing-up
after each meal. I used to do the knives first, for it might
please God to take me before I came to the forks, and then
what a sell it would have been to have done the forks rather
than the knives !

ioo On the Making of Music,

Terseness

Talking with Gogin last night, I said that in writing it
took more time and trouble to get a thing short than long.
He said it was the same in painting. It was harder not to
paint a detail than to paint it, easier to put in all that one
can see than to judge what may go without saying, omit it
and range the irreducible minima in due order of precedence.
Hence we all lean towards prolixity.

The difficulty lies in the nice appreciation of relative
importances and in the giving each detail neither more nor
less than its due. This is the difference between Gerard Dow
and Metsu. Gerard Dow gives all he can, but unreflectingly ;
hence it does not reflect the subject effectively into the
spectator. We see it, but it does not come home to us. Metsu
on the other hand omits all he can, but omits intelligently,
and his reflection excites responsive enthusiasm in ourselves.
We are continually trying to see as much as we can, and to
put it down. More wisely we should consider how much we
can avoid seeing and dispense with.

So it is also in music. Cherubini says the number of
things that can be done in fugue with a very simple subject
is endless, but that the trouble lies in knowing which to
choose from all these infinite possibilities.

As regards painting, any one can paint anything in the
minute manner with a little practice, but it takes an exceed-
ingly able man to paint so much as an egg broadly and simply.
Bearing in mind the shortness of life and the complexity of
affairs, it stands to reason that we owe most to him who
packs our trunks for us, so to speak, most intelligently,
neither omitting what we are likely to want, nor including
what we can dispense with, and who, at the same time,
arranges things so that they will travel most safely and be
got at most conveniently. So we speak of composition and
arrangement in all arts.

Making Notes

My notes always grow longer if I shorten them. I mean
the process of compression makes them more pregnant and

Pictures and Books 101

they breed new notes. I never try to lengthen them, so I do
not know whether they would grow shorter if I did. Perhaps
that might be a good way of getting them shorter.

Shortening

A young author is tempted to leave anything he has
written through fear of not having enough to say if he goes
cutting out too freely. But it is easier to be long than short.
I have always found compressing, cutting out, and tersifying
a passage suggest more than anything else does. Things
pruned off in this way are like the heads of the hydra, two
grow for every one that is lopped off.

Omission

If a writer will go on the principle of stopping everywhere
and anywhere to put down his notes, as the true painter will
stop anywhere and everywhere to sketch, he will be able to
cut down his works liberally. He will become prodigal not
of writing — any fool can be this — but of omission. You
become brief because you have more things to say than time
to say them in. One of the chief arts is that of knowing what
to neglect and the more talk increases the more necessary
does this art become.

Brevity

Handel's jig in the ninth Suite de Pieces, in G minor, is
very fine but it is perhaps a little long. Probably Handel was
in a hurry, for it takes much more time to get a thing short
than to leave it a little long. Brevity is not only the soul of
wit, but the soul of making oneself agreeable and of getting
on with people, and, indeed, of everything that makes life
worth living. So precious a thing, however, cannot be got
without more expense and trouble than most of us have the
moral wealth to lay out.

Diffuseness

This sometim.es helps, as, for instance, when the subject is
hard ; words that may be, strictly speaking, unnecessary

102 On the Making of Music,

still may make things easier for the reader by giving him
more time to master the thought while his eye is running
over the verbiage. So, a little water may prevent a strong
drink from burning throat and stomach. A style that is too
terse is as fatiguing as one that is too diffuse. But when a
passage is written a little long, with consciousness and com-
punction but still deliberately, as what will probably be
most easy for the reader, it can hardly be called diffuse.

Difficulties in Art, Literature and Music

The difficult and the unintelligible are only conceivable at
all in virtue of their catching on to something less difficult
and less unintelligible and, through this, to things easily
done and understood. It is at these joints in their armour
that difficulties should be attacked.

Never tackle a serious difficulty as long as something
which must be done, and about which you see your way
fairly well, remains undone ; the settling of this is sure to
throw light upon the way in which the serious difficulty is to
be resolved. It is doing the What-you-can that will best help
you to do the What-you-cannot.

Arrears of small things to be attended to, if allowed to
accumulate, worry and depress like unpaid debts. The main
work should always stand aside for these, not these for the
main work, as large debts should stand aside for small ones,
or truth for common charity and good feeling. If we attend
continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we
shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we
cannot do.

Knowledge is Power

Yes, but it must be practical knowledge. There is nothing
less powerful than knowledge unattached, and incapable of
application. That is why what little knowledge I have has
done myself personally so much harm. I do not know much,
but if I knew a good deal less than that little I should be far
more powerful. The rule should be never to learn a thing
till one is pretty sure one wants it, or that one will want it
before long so badly as not to be able to get on without it.
This is what sensible people do about money, and there is no

Pictures and Books 103

reason why people should throw away their time and trouble
more than their money. There are plenty of things that most
boys would give their ears to know, these and these only are
the proper things for them to sharpen their wits upon.

If a boy is idle and does not want to learn anything at all,
the same principle should guide those who have the care of
him — he should never be made to learn anything till it is
pretty obvious that he cannot get on without it. This will
save trouble both to boys and teachers, moreover it will be
far more likely to increase a boy's desire to learn. I know in
my own case no earthly power could make me learn till I had
my head given me ; and nothing hag been able to stop me
from incessant study from that day to this.

Academicism

Handicapped people sometimes owe their success to the
misfortune which weights them. They seldom know before-
hand how far they are going to reach, and this helps them ;
for if they knew the greatness of the task before them they
would not attempt it. He who knows he is infirm, and would
yet climb, does not think of the summit which he believes
to be beyond his reach but climbs slowly onwards, taking
very short steps, looking below as often as he likes but not
above him, never trying his powers but seldom stopping,
and then, sometimes, behold ! he is on the top, which he
would never have even aimed at could he have seen it from
below. It is only in novels and sensational biographies that
handicapped people, " fired by a knowledge of the difficulties
that others have overcome, resolve to triumph over every
obstacle by dint of sheer determination, and in the end carry
everything before them." In real life the person who starts
thus almost invariably fails. This is the worst kind of start.

The greatest secret of good work whether in music, literature
or painting lies in not attempting too much ; if it be asked,
" What is too much ? " the answer is, " Anything that we
find difficult or unpleasant." We should not ask whether
others find this same thing difficult or no. If we find the
difficulty so great that the overcoming it is a labour and not
a pleasure, we should either change our aim altogether, or
aim, at any rate for a time, at some lower point. It must be

io4 On the Making of Music,

remembered that no work is required to be more than right
as far as it goes ; the greatest work cannot get beyond this
and the least comes strangely near the greatest if this can be
said of it.

The more I see of academicism the more I distrust it. If
I had approached painting as I have approached bookwriting
and music, that is to say by beginning at once to do what I
wanted, or as near as I could to what I could find out of this,
and taking pains not by way of solving academic difficulties,
in order to provide against practical ones, but by waiting till
a difficulty arose in practice and then tackling it, thus making
the arising of each difficulty be the occasion for learning what
had to be learnt about it— if I had approached painting in
this way I should have been all right. As it is I have been
all wrong, and it was South Kensington and Heatherley's
that set me wrong. I listened to the nonsense about how I
ought to study before beginning to paint, and about never
painting without nature, and the result was that I learned
to study but not to paint. Now I have got too much to do
and am too old to do what I might easily have done, and
should have done, if I had found out earlier what writing
Life and Habit was the chief thing to teach me.

So I painted study after study, as a priest reads his
breviary, and at the end of ten years knew no more what the
face of nature was like, unless I had it immediately before
me, than I did at the beginning. I am free to confess that in
respect of painting I am a failure. I have spent far more
time on painting than I have on anything else, and have
failed at it more than I have failed in any other respect
almost solely for the reasons given above. I tried very hard,
but I tried the wrong way.

Fortunately for me there are no academies for teaching
people how to write books, or I should have fallen into them
as I did into those for painting and, instead of writing, should
have spent my time and money in being told that I was
learning how to write. If I had one thing to say to students
before I died (I mean, if I had got to die, but might tell
students one thing first) I should say : —

" Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not
be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in
the rough and tumble of the world ; only, of course, let them

Pictures and Books 105

be on a small scale in the first instance till you feel
safe under you. Act more and rehearse less."

A friend once asked me whether I liked writii
composing music or painting pictures best. I said
know. I like them all ; but I never find time to paint a
picture now and only do small sketches and studies. I know in
which I am strongest — writing ; I know in which I am weakest
—painting ; I am weakest where I have taken most pains and
studied most.

Agonising

In art, never try to find out anything, or" try to learn
anything until the not knowing it has come to be a nuisance
to you for some time. Then }. r ou will remember it, but not
otherwise. Let knowledge importune you before you will
hear it. Our schools and universities go on the precisely
opposite system.

Never consciously agonise ; the race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong. Moments of extreme issue are
unconscious and must be left to take care of themselves.
During conscious moments take reasonable pains but no
more and, above all, work so slowly as never to get out of
breath. Take it easy, in fact, until forced not to do so.

There is no mystery about art. Do the things that you
can see ; they will show you those that you cannot see. By
doing what you can you will gradually get to know what it is
that you want to do and cannot do, and so to be able to do it.

The Choice of Subjects

Do not hunt for subjects, let them choose you, not you
them. Only do that which insists upon being done and runs
right up against you, hitting you in the eye until you do it.
This calls you and you had better attend to it, and do it as
well as you can. But till called in this way do nothing.

Imaginary Countries

Each man's mind is an unknown land to himself, so that
we need not be at such pains to frame a mechanism of ad-
venture for getting to undiscovered countries. We have not

106 On the Making of Music,

far to go before we reach them. They are, like the Kingdom
of Heaven, within us.

My Books

I never make them : they grow ; they come to me and
insist on being written, and on being such and such. I did not
want to write Erewhon, I wanted to go on painting and found
it an abominable nuisance being dragged willy-nilly into
writing it. So with all my books — the subjects were never
of my own choosing ; they pressed themselves upon me
with more force than I could resist. If I had not liked the
subjects I should have kicked, and nothing would have got
me to do them at all. As I did like the subjects and the
books came and said they were to be written, I grumbled a
little and wrote them.*

Great Works

These have always something of the " de profundis "
about them.

New Ideas

Every new idea has something of the pain and peril of
childbirth about it ; ideas are just as mortal and just as
immortal as organised beings are.

Books and Children

If the literary offspring is not to die young, almost as much
trouble must be taken with it as with the bringing up of a
physical child. Still, the physical child is the harder work of
the two.

The Life of Books

Some writers think about the life of books as some savages
think about the life of men — that there are books which never
die. They all die sooner or later ; but that will not hinder
an author from trying to give his book as long a life as he can
get for it. The fact that it will have to die is no valid reason
for letting it die sooner than can be helped.

* Cf. the note <f Reproduction/ ' p. 16 ante.

Pictures and Books 107

Criticism

Critics generally come to be critics by reason not of their
fitness for this but of their unfitness for anything else. Books
should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were
crimes, and counsel should be heard on both sides.

Le Style c'est THomme

It is with books, music, painting and all the arts as with
children — only those live that have drained much of their
author's own life into them. The personality of the author is
what interests us more than his work. When we have once
got well hold of the personality of the author we care com-
paratively little about the history of the work or what it
means or even its technique ; we enjoy the work without
thinking of more than its beauty, and of how much we like
the workman. " Le style c'est Thomme " — that style of
which, if I may quote from memory, Buffon, again, says
that it is like happiness, and " vient de la douceur de Tame " *
— and we care more about knowing what kind of person a
man was than about knowing of his achievements, no matter
how considerable they may have been. If he has made it
clear that he was trying to do what we like, and meant what
we should like him to have meant, it is enough ; but if the
work does not attract us to the workman, neither does it
attract us to itself.

Portraits

A great portrait is always more a portrait of the painter
than of the painted. When we look at a portrait by Holbein
or Rembrandt it is of Holbein or Rembrandt that we think
more than of the subject of their picture. Even a portrait
of Shakespeare by Holbein or Rembrandt could tell us very
little about Shakespeare. It would, however, tell us a great
deal about Holbein or Rembrandt.

A Man's Style

A man's style in any art should be like his dress — it should
attract as little attention as possible.

* Evolution Old 6- New, p. 77.

io8 On the Making of Music,

The Gauntlet of Youth

Everything that is to age well must have run the gauntlet
of its youth. Hardly ever does a work of art hold its own
against time if it was not treated somewhat savagely at first—
I should say " artist " rather than " work of art."

Greatness in Art

If a work of art — music, literature or painting — is for all
time, it must be independent of the conventions, dialects,
costumes and fashions of any time ; if not great without
help from such unessential accessories, no help from them
can greaten it. A man must wear the dress of his own time,
but no dressing can make a strong man of a weak one.

Literary Power

They say the test of this is whether a man can write an
inscription. I say " Can he name a kitten ? " And by this
test I am condemned, for I cannot.

Subject and Treatment

It is often said that treatment is more important than
subject, but no treatment can make a repulsive subject not
repulsive. It can make a trivial, or even a stupid, subject
interesting, but a really bad flaw in a subject cannot be
treated out. Happily the man who has sense enough to
treat a subject well will generally have sense enough to choose
a good one, so that the case of a really repulsive subject
treated in a masterly manner does not often arise. It is
often said to have arisen, but in nine cases out of ten the
treatment will be found to have been overpraised.

Public Opinion

People say how strong it is ; and indeed it is strong while it
is in its prime. In its childhood and old age it is as weak as
any other organism. I try to make my own work belong to
the youth of a public opinion. The history of the world is

Pictures and Books 109

the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion,
as geology is the record of the decay of those bodily organisms
in which opinions have found material expression.

A Literary Man's Test

Moliere's reading to his housemaid has, I think, been mis-
understood as though he in some way wanted to see the effect
upon the housemaid and make her a judge of his work. If
she was an unusually clever, smart girl, this might be well
enough, but the supposition commonly is that she was a
typical housemaid and nothing more.

If Moliere ever did read to her, it was because the mere
act of reading aloud put his work before him in a new light
and, by constraining his attention to every line, made him
judge it more rigorously. I always intend to read, and
generally do read, what I write aloud to some one ; any one
almost will do, but he should not be so clever that I am afraid
of him. I feel weak places at once when I read aloud where
I thought, as long as I read to myself only, that the passage
was all right.

What Audience to Write for

People between the ages of twenty and thirty read a good
deal, after thirty their reading drops off and by forty is
confined to each person's special subject, newspapers and
magazines ; so that the most important part of one's audience,
and that which should be mainly written for, consists of
specialists and people between twenty and thirty.

Writing for a Hundred Years Hence

When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing,
it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a
hundred years hence.

VIII

Handel and Music

Handel and Beethoven

As a boy, from 12 years old or so, I always worshipped
Handel. Beethoven was a terra incognita to me till I went
up to Cambridge ; I knew and liked a few of his waltzes
but did not so much as know that he had written any sonatas
or symphonies. At Cambridge Sykes tried to teach me
Beethoven but I disliked his music and would go away as
soon as Sykes began with any of his sonatas. After a long
while I began to like some of the slow movements and then
some entire sonatas, several of which I could play once
fairly well without notes. I used also to play Bach and
Mendelssohn's Songs without Words and thought them lovely,
but I always liked Handel best. Little by little, however,
I was talked over into placing Bach and Beethoven on a
par as the greatest and I said I did not know which was the
best man. I cannot tell now whether I really liked Beethoven
or found myself carried away by the strength of the Beethoven
current which surrounded me ; at any rate I spent a great
deal of time on him, for some ten or a dozen years.

One night, when I was about 30, 1 was at an evening party
at Mrs. Longden's and met an old West End clergyman of
the name of Smalley (Rector, I think, of Bayswater). I
said I did not know which was greatest Handel, Bach or
Beethoven.

He said : "lam surprised at that ; I should have thought
you would have known.' '

" Which," said I, " is the greatest ? "
" Handel."

I knew he was right and have never wavered since. I

110

Handel and Music in

suppose I was really of this opinion already, but it was not
till I got a little touch from outside that I knew it. From
that moment Beethoven began to go back, and now I feel
towards him much as I did when I first heard his work,
except, of course, that I see a gnosis in him of which as a
young man I knew nothing. But I do not greatly care about
gnosis, I want agape; and Beethoven's agape is not the
healthy robust tenderness of Handel, it is a sickly maudlin
thing in comparison. Anyhow I do not like him. I like
Mozart and Haydn better, but not so much better as I should
like to like them.

Handel and Domenico Scarlatti

Handel and Domenico Scarlatti were contemporaries
almost to a year, both as regards birth and death. They
knew each other very well in Italy and Scarlatti never men-
tioned Handel's name without crossing himself, but I have
not heard that Handel crossed himself at the mention of
Scarlatti's name. I know very little of Scarlatti's music
and have not even that little well enough in my head to
write about it; I retain only a residuary impression that
it is often very charming and links Haydn with Bach, more-
over that it is distinctly un-Handelian.

Handel must have known and comprehended Scarlatti's
tendencies perfectly well : his rejection, therefore, of the
principles that lead to them must have been deliberate.
Scarlatti leads to Haydn, Haydn to Mozart and hence,
through Beethoven, to modern music. That Handel fore-
saw this I do not doubt, nor yet that he felt, as I do myself,
that modern music means something, I know not what,
which is not what I mean by music. It is playing another
game and has set itself aims which, no doubt, are excellent
but which are not mine.

Of course I know that this may be all wrong : I know how
very limited and superficial my own acquaintance with music
is. Still I have a strong feeling as though from John Dunstable,
or whoever it may have been, to Handel the tide of music
was rising, intermittently no doubt but still rising, and that
since Handel's time it has been falling. Or, rather perhaps
I should say that music bifurcated with Handel and Bach —

112

Handel and Music

Handel dying musically as well as physically childless, while
Bach was as prolific in respect of musical disciples as lie was
in that of children.

What, then, was it, supposing I am right at all, that Handel
distrusted in the principles of Scarlatti as deduced from
those of Bach ? I imagine that he distrusted chiefly the
abuse of the appoggiatura, the abuse of the unlimited power
of modulation which equal temperament placed at the
musician's disposition and departure from well-marked
rhythm, beat or measured tread. At any rate I believe the
music I like best myself to be sparing of the appoggiatura, to
keep pretty close to tonic and dominant and to have a well-
marked beat, measure and rhythm.

Handel and Homer

Handel was a greater man than Homer (I mean the author
of the Iliad) ; but the very people who are most angry with
me for (as they incorrectly suppose) sneering at Homer are
generally the ones who never miss an opportunity of cheapen-
ing and belittling Handel, and, which is very painful to myself,
they say I was laughing at him in Narcissus, Perhaps — but
surely one can laugh at a person and adore him at the same
time.

Handel and Bach

i

If you tie Handel's hands by debarring him from the
rendering of human emotion, and if you set Bach's free by
giving him no human emotion to render — if, in fact, you
rob Handel of his opportunities and Bach of his difficulties —
the two men can fight after a fashion, but Handel will even
so come off victorious. Otherwise it is absurd to let Bach
compete at all. Nevertheless the cultured vulgar have at all
times preferred gymnastics and display to reticence and the
healthy, graceful, normal movements of a man of birth and
education, and Bach is esteemed a more profound musician
than Handel in virtue of his frequent and more involved
complexity of construction. In reality Handel was profound
enough to eschew such wildernesses of counterpoint as Bach
instinctively resorted to, but he knew also that public opinion

Handel and Music 113

would be sure to place Bach on a level with himself, if not
above him, and this probably made him look askance at
Bach. At any rate he twice went to Germany without being
at any pains to meet him, and once, if not twice, refused
Bach's invitation.

ii

Rockstro says that Handel keeps much more closely to
the old Palestrina rules of counterpoint than Bach does, and
that when Handel takes a licence it is a good bold one taken
rarely, whereas Bach is niggling away with small licences
from first to last.

Handel and the British Public

People say the generous British public supported Handel.
It did nothing of the kind. On the contrary, for some 30
years it did its best to ruin him, twice drove him to bank-
ruptcy, badgered him till in 1737 he had a paralytic seizure
which was as near as might be the death of him and, if he
had died then, we should have no Israel, nor Messiah, nor
Samson, nor any of his greatest oratorios. The British public
only relented when he had become old and presently blind.
Handel, by the way, is a rare instance of a man doing his
greatest work . subsequently to an attack of paralysis. What
kept Handel up w T as not the public but the court. It was
the pensions given him by George I and George II that
enabled him to carry on at all. So that, in point of fact,
it is to these two very prosaic kings that we owe the finest
musical poems the world knows anything about.

Handel and Madame Patey

Rockstro told me that Sir Michael Costa, after his severe
paralytic stroke, had to conduct at some great performance
— I cannot be sure, but I think he said a Birmingham Festival
— at any rate he came in looking very white and feeble and
sat down in front of the orchestra to conduct a morning
rehearsal. Madame Patey was there, went up to the poor
old gentleman and kissed his forehead.

It is a curious thing about this great singer that not only
should she have been (as she has always seemed to me)

ii4 Handel and Music

strikingly like . Handel in the face, and not only should she
have been such an incomparable renderer of Handel's music
— I cannot think that I shall ever again hear any one who
seemed to have the spirit of Handel's music so thoroughly
penetrating his or her whole being — but that she should have
been struck with paralysis at, so far as I can remember, the
same age that Handel was. Handel was struck in 1737 when
he was 53 years old, but happily recovered. I forget Madame
Patey's exact age, but it was somewhere about this.

Handel and Shakespeare

Jones and I had been listening to Gaetano Meo's girls
playing Handel and were talking about him and Shakespeare,
and how those two men can alike stir us more than any one
else can. Neither were self-conscious in production, but
when the thing had come out Shakespeare looks at it and
wonders, whereas Handel takes it as a matter of course.

A Yankee Handelian

I only ever met one American who seemed to like and
understand Handel. How far he did so in reality I do not
know, but inter alia he said that Handel " struck ile with
the Messiah'' and that " it panned out well, the Messiah
did."

Waste

Handel and Shakespeare have left us the best that any
have left us ; yet, in spite of this, how much of their lives
was wasted. Fancy Handel expending himself upon the
Moabites and Ammonites, or even the Jews themselves,
year after year, as he did in the fulness of his power ; and
fancy what we might have had from Shakespeare if he had
gossipped to us about himself and his times and the people
he met in London and at Stratford-on-Avon instead of writing
some of what he did write. Nevertheless we have the men,
seen through their work notwithstanding their subjects, who
stand and live to us. It is the figure of Handel as a man,
and of Shakespeare as a man, which we value even more than

Handel and Music 115

their work. I feel the presence of Handel behind every note
of his music.

Handel a Conservative

He left no school because he was a protest. There were
men in his time, whose music he perfectly well knew, who are
far more modern than Handel. He was opposed to the
musically radical tendencies of his age and, as a musician,
was a decided conservative in all essential respects — though
ready, of course, to go any length in any direction if he had
a fancy at the moment for doing so.

Handel and Ernest Pontifex

It cost me a great deal to make Ernest [in The Way of All
Flesh) play Beethoven and Mendelssohn ; I did it simply
ad captandum. As a matter of fact he played only the music
of Handel and of the early Italian and old English composers
— but Handel most of all.

Handel's Commonplaces

It takes as great a composer as Handel — or rather it
would take as great a composer if he could be found — to be
able to be as easily and triumphantly, commonplace as Handel
often is, just as it takes — or rather would take — as great a
composer as Handel to write another Hallelujah chorus. It
is only the man who can do the latter who can do the former
as Handel has done it. Handel is so great and so simple
that no one but a professional musician is unable to under-
stand him.

Handel and Dr. Morell

After all, Dr. Morell suited Handel exactly well— far
better than Tennyson would have done. I don't believe
even Handel could have set Tennyson to music comfortably.
What a mercy it is that he did not live in Handel's time !
Even though Handel had set him ever so well he would have
spoiled the music, and this Dr. Morell does not in the least
do.

n6 Handel and Music

Wordsworth

And I have been as far as Hull to see
What clothes he left or other property.

I am told that these lines occur in a poem by Wordsworth.
(Think of the expense !) How thankful we ought to be
that Wordsworth was only a poet and not a musician. Fancy
a symphony by Wordsworth ! Fancy having to sit it out !
And fancy what it would have been if he had written fugues !

Sleeping Beauties

There are plenty of them. Take Handel ; look at such an
air as " Loathsome urns, disclose your treasure " or " Come,
O Time, and thy broad wings displaying/' both in The Triumph
of Time and Truth, or at " Convey me to some peaceful
shore," in Alexander Bolus, especially when he comes to
" Forgetting and forgot the will of fate." Who know these ?
And yet, can human genius do more ?

" And the Glory of the Lord "

It would be hard to find a more satisfactory chorus even
in the Messiah, but I do not think the music was originally
intended for these words :

And the glo - ry, the glo - ry of the Lord.

If Handel had approached these words without having in
his head a subject the spirit of which would do, and which he
thought the words with a little management might be made
to fit, he would not, I think, have repeated " the glory " at
all, or at any rate not here. If these words had been measured,
as it were, for a new suit instead of being, as I suppose,
furnished with a good second-hand one, the word " the "
would not have been tacked on to the " glory " which pre-
cedes it and made to belong to it rather than to the " glory "
which follows. It does not matter one straw, and if Handel
had asked me whether I minded his forcing the words a little,

Handel and Music 117

I should have said, " Certainly not, nor more than a little, if
you like." Nevertheless I think as a matter of fact that
there is a little forcing. I remember that as a boy this always
struck me as a strange arrangement of the words, but it was
not until I came to write a chorus myself that I saw how it
came about. I do not suspect any forcing when it comes to
" And all flesh shall see it together."

Handel and the Speaking Voice

First Tenor _ ^

tj While now with - out mea - - sure we re - - - vel in plea-sure.

Soprano

n8 Handel and Music

The former of these two extracts is from the chorus
" Venus laughing from the skies " in Theodora; the other is
from the air " Wise men flattering " in Judas Maccab&us.
I know no better examples of the way Handel sometimes
derives his melody from the natural intonation of the speak-
ing voice. The " pleasure " (in bar four of the chorus)
suggests a man saying " with pleasure " when accepting
an invitation to dinner. Of course one can say, " with
pleasure " in a variety of tones, but a sudden exaltation on
the second syllable is very common.

In the other example, the first bar of the accompaniment
puts the argument in a most persuasive manner ; the second
simply re-states it ; the third is the clincher, I cannot under-
stand any man's holding out against bar three. The fourth
bar re-states the clincher, but at a lower pitch, as by one who
is quite satisfied that he has convinced his adversary.

Handel and the Wetterhorn

When last I saw the Wetterhorn I caught myself involun-
tarily humming : —

Alio w -rr

And the government shall be up-on his shoul - der.

The big shoulder of the Wetterhorn seemed to fall just like
the run on " shoulder."

" Tyrants now no more shall Dread "

The music to this chorus in Hercules is written from the
tyrant's point of view. This is plain from the jubilant
defiance with which the chorus opens, and becomes still
plainer when the magnificent strain to which he has set
the words " All fear of punishment, all fear is o'er " bursts
upon us. Here he flings aside all considerations save that
of the gospel of doing whatever we please without having
to pay for it. He has, however, remembered himself and
become almost puritanical over " The world's avenger is no
more." Here he is quite proper.

Handel and Music 119

From a dramatic point of view Handel's treatment of
these words must be condemned for reasons in respect of
which Handel was very rarely at fault. It puzzles the listener
who expects the words to be treated from the point of view
of the vanquished slaves and not from that of the tyrants.
There is no pretence that these particular tyrants are not
so bad as ordinary tyrants, nor these particular vanquished
slaves not so good as ordinary vanquished slaves, and, unless
this has been made clear in some way, it is dramatically
de rigueiiY that the tyrants should come to grief, or be about
to come to grief. The hearer should know which way his
sympathies are expected to go, and here we have the music
dragging us one way and the words another.

Nevertheless, we pardon the departure from the strict
rules of the game, partly because of the welcome nature of
good tidings so exultantly announced to us about all fear of
punishment being o'er, and partly because the music is,
throughout, so much stronger than the words that we lose
sight of them almost entirely. Handel probably wrote as
he did from a profound, though perhaps unconscious, per-
ception of the fact that even in his day there was a great
deal of humanitarian nonsense talked and that, after all,
the tyrants were generally quite as good sort of people as
the vanquished slaves. Having begun on this tack, it was
easy to throw morality to the winds when he came to the
words about all fear of punishment being over.

Handel and Marriage

To man God's universal law

Gave power to keep the wife in awe

sings Handel in a comically dogmatic little chorus in Samson.
But the universality of the law must be held to have failed in
the case of Mr. and Mrs. M'Culloch.

Handel and a Letter to a Solicitor

Jones showed me a letter that had been received by the
solicitor in whose office he was working :

" Dear Sir ; I enclose the name of the lawyer of the lady

120 Handel and Music

I am engaged to and her name and address are Miss B.
Richmond. His address is W. W. Esq. Manchester.
" I remain, Yours truly W. D. C."

I said it reminded me of the opening bars of "Welcome,
welcome, Mighty King " in Saul :

h- 1 1

-h--J —

Handel's Shower of Rain

The falling shower in the air " As cheers the sun " in
Joshua is, I think, the finest description of a warm sunny
refreshing rain that I have ever come across and one of the
most wonderfully descriptive pieces of music that even
Handel ever did.

Theodora and Susanna

In my preface to Evolution Old and New I imply a certain
dissatisfaction with Theodora and Susanna, and imply also
that Handel himself was so far dissatisfied that in his next
work, Jephiha (which I see I inadvertently called his last),
he returned to his earlier manner. It is true that these
works are not in Handel's usual manner ; they are more
difficult and more in the style of Bach. I am glad that
Handel gave us these two examples of a slightly (for it
is not much) varied manner and I am interested to
observe that he did not adhere to that manner in Jephtha,
but I should be sorry to convey an impression that I
think Theodora and Susanna are in any way unworthy
of Handel. I prefer both to Judas Maccabceus which, in
spite of the many fine things it contains, I like perhaps
the least of all his oratorios. I have played Theodora and

Handel and Music 121

Susanna all through, and most parts (except the recita-
tives) many times over, Jones and I have gone through them
again and again ; I have heard Susanna performed once, and
Theodora twice, and I find no single piece in either work which
I do not admire, while many are as good as anything which
it is in my power to conceive. I like the chorus " He saw
the lovely youth " the least of anything in Theodora so far
as I remember at this moment, but knowing it to have been
a favourite with Handel himself I am sure that I must have
missed understanding it.

How comes it, I wonder, that the chorale-like air " Blessing,
Honour, Adoration " is omitted in Novello's edition ? It is
given in Clarke's edition and is very beautiful.

Jones says of " With darkness deep", that in the accom-
paniment to this air the monotony of dazed grief is just
varied now and again with a little writhing passage. Whether
Handel meant this or no, the interpretation put upon the
passage fits the feeling of the air.

John Sebastian Bach

It is imputed to him for righteousness that he goes over
the heads of the general public and appeals mainly to
musicians. But the greatest men do not go over the heads
of the masses, they take them rather by the hand. The true
musician would not snub so much as a musical critic. His
instinct is towards the man in the street rather than the
Academy. Perhaps I say this as being myself a man in the
street musically. I do not know, but I know that Bach
does not appeal to me and that I do appeal from Bach to
the man in the street and not to the Academy, because
I believe the first of these to be the sounder.

Still, I own Bach does appeal to me sometimes. In my
own poor music I have taken passages from him before now,
and have my eye on others which I have no doubt will suit
me somewhere. Whether Bach would know them again
when I have worked my will on them, and much more whether
he would own them, I neither know nor care. I take or leave
as I choose, and alter or leave untouched as I choose. I
prefer my music to be an outgrowth from a germ whose source
I know, rather than a waif and stray which I fancy to be my

t22 Handel and Music

own child when it was all the time begotten of a barrel organ.
It is a wise tune that knows its own father and I like my music
to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents. Roughly,
however, as I have said over and over again, if I think some-
thing that I know and greatly like in music, no matter whose,
is appropriate, I appropriate it. I should say I was under
most obligations to Handel, Purcell and Beethoven.

For example, any one who looked at my song "Man in
Vain " in Ulysses might think it was taken from " Batti,
batti." I should like to say it was taken from, or suggested
by, a few bars in the opening of Beethoven's pianoforte
sonata op. 78, and a few bars in the accompaniment to the
duet " Hark how the Songsters " in Purcell's Timon of Athens.
I am not aware of having borrowed more in the song than
what follows as natural development of these two passages
which run thus :

Beethoven

doke

i

Purcell

1

From the pianoforte arrangement in The Beauties of Purcell
by John Clarke, Mus. Doc.

Honesty

Honesty consists not in never stealing but in knowing
where to stop in stealing, and how to make good use of what
one does steal. It is only great proprietors who can steal
well and wisely. A good stealer, a good user of what he takes,

Handel and Music 123

is ipso facto a good inventor. Two men can invent after a
fashion to one who knows how to make the best use of what
has been done already.

Musical Criticism

I went to the Bach Choir concert and heard Mozart's
Requiem. I did not rise warmly to it. Then I heard an
extract from Parsifal which I disliked very much. If Bach
wriggles, Wagner writhes. Yet next morning in the Times
I saw this able, heartless failure, compact of gnosis as much
as any one pleases but without one spark of either true pathos
or true humour, called " the crowning achievement of
dramatic music." The writer continues : " To the unin-
telligent, music of this order does not appeal " ; which only
means " I am intelligent and you had better think as I tell
you." I am glad that such people should call Handel a
thieving plagiarist.

On Borrowing in Music

In books it is easy to make mention of the forgotten dead
to whom we are indebted, and to acknowledge an obligation
at the same time and place that we incur it. The more
original a writer is, the more pleasure will he take in calling
attention to the forgotten work of those who have gone before
him. The conventions of painting and music, on the other
hand, while they admit of borrowing no less freely than
literature does, do not admit of acknowledgement ; it is
impossible to interrupt a piece of music, or paint some words
upon a picture to explain that the composer or painter
was at such and such a point indebted to such and such a
source for his inspiration, but it is not less impossible to avoid
occasionally borrowing, or rather taking, for there is no need
of euphemism, from earlier work. Where, then, is the line
to be drawn between lawful and unlawful adoption of what
has been done by others ? This question is such a nice one
that there are almost as many opinions upon it as there are
painters and musicians.

To leave painting on one side, if a musician wants some
forgotten passage in an earlier writer, is he, knowing where

124 Handel and Music

this sleeping ' beauty lies, to let it sleep on unknown and
unenjoyed, or shall he not rather wake it and take it — as
likely enough the earlier master did before him — with, or
without modification ? It may be said this should be done
by republishing the original work with its composer's name,
giving him his due laurels. So it should, if the work will
bear it ; but more commonly times will have so changed
that it will not. A composer may want a bar, or bar and a
half, out of, say, a dozen pages — he may not want even this
much without more or less modification — is he to be told
that he must republish the ten or dozen original pages within
which the passage he wants lies buried, as the only righteous
way of giving it new life ? No one should be allowed such
dog-in-the-manger-like ownership in beauty that because it
has once been revealed to him therefore none for ever after
shall enjoy it unless he be their cicerone. If this rule were
sanctioned, he who first produced anything beautiful would
sign its death warrant for an earlier or later date, or at best
would tether that which should forthwith begin putting
girdles round the world.

Beauty lives not for the self-glorification of the priests
of any art, but for the enjoyment of priests and laity alike.
He is the best art-priest who brings most beauty most home
to the hearts of most men. If any one tells an artist that
part of what he has brought home is not his but another's,
" Yea, let him take all," should be his answer. He should
know no self in the matter. He is a fisher of men's hearts
from love of winning them, and baits his hook with what will
best take them without much heed where he gets it from.
He can gain nothing by offering people what they know or
ought to know already, he will not therefore take from the
living or lately dead ; for the same reason he will instinctively
avoid anything with which his hearers will be familiar,
except as recognised common form, but beyond these limits
he should take freely even as he hopes to be one day taken
from.

True, there is a hidden mocking spirit in things which
ensures that he alone can take well who can also make well,
but it is no less true that he alone makes well who takes well.
A man must command all the resources of his art, and of
these none is greater than knowledge of what has been done

Handel and Music 125

by predecessors. What, I wonder, may he take from these —
how may he build himself upon them and grow out of them
— if he is to make it his chief business to steer clear of them ?
A safer canon is that the development of a musician should
be like that of a fugue or first movement, in which, the subject
having been enounced, it is essential that thenceforward
everything shall be both new and old at one and the same
time — new, but not too new — old, but not too old.

Indeed no musician can be original in respect of any large
percentage of his work. For independently of his turning to
his own use the past labour involved in musical notation,
which he makes his own as of right without more thanks to
those who thought it out than we give to him who invented
wheels when we hire a cab, independently of this, it is sur-
prising how large a part even of the most original music consists
of common form scale passages, and closes. Mutatis mutandis,
the same holds good with even the most original book or
picture ; these passages or forms are as light and air, common
to all of us ; but the principle having been once admitted
that some parts of a man's work cannot be original — not,
that is to say, if he has descended with only a reasonable
amount of modification — where is the line to be drawn ?
Where does common form begin and end ?

The answer is that it is not mere familiarity that should
forbid borrowing, but familiarity with a passage as associated
with special surroundings. If certain musical progressions
are already associated with many different sets of ante-
cedents and consequents, they have no special association,
except in so far as they may be connected with a school or
epoch ; no one, therefore, is offended at finding them associ-
ated with one set the more. Familiarity beyond a certain
point ceases to be familiarity, or at any rate ceases to be
open to the objections that lie against that which, though
familiar, is still not familiar as common form. Those on the
other hand who hold that a musician should never knowingly
borrow will doubtless say that common form passages are
an obvious and notorious exception to their rule, and the
one the limits of which are easily recognised in practice
however hard it may be to define them neatly on paper.

It is not suggested that when a musician wants to compose
an air or chorus he is to cast about for some little-known

i26 Handel and Music

similar piece and lay it under contribution. This is not to
spring from the loins of living ancestors but to batten on
dead men's bones. He who takes thus will ere long lose
even what little power to take he may have ever had. On
the other hand there is no enjoyable work in any art which
is not easily recognised as the affiliated outcome of something
that has gone before it. This is more especially true of music,
whose grammar and stock in trade are so much simpler than
those of any other art. He who loves music will know what
the best men have done, and hence will have numberless
passages from older writers floating at all times in his mind,
like germs in the air, ready to hook themselves on to anything
of an associated character. Some of these he will reject at
once, as already too strongly wedded to associations of their
own ; some are tried and found not so suitable as was thought ;
some one, however, will probably soon assert itself as either
suitable, or easily altered so as to become exactly what is
wanted ; if, indeed, it is the right passage in the right man's
mind, it will have modified itself unbidden already. How,
then, let me ask again, is the musician to comport himself
towards those uninvited guests of his thoughts ? Is he to
give them shelter, cherish them, and be thankful ? or is he
to shake them rudely off, bid them begone, and go out of his
way so as not to fall in with them again ?

Can there be a doubt what the answer to this question
should be ? As it is fatal deliberately to steer on to the
work of other composers, so it is no less fatal deliberately to
steer clear of it ; music to be of any value must be a man's
freest and most instinctive expression. Instinct in the case
of all the greatest artists, whatever their art may be, bids
them attach themselves to, and grow out of those predecessors
who are most congenial to them. Beethoven grew out of
Mozart and Haydn, adding a leaven which in the end leavened
the whole lump, but in the outset adding little ; Mozart grew
out of Haydn, in the outset adding little ; Haydn grew out of
Domenico Scarlatti and Emmanuel Bach, adding, in the
outset, little. These men grew out of John Sebastian Bach,
for much as both of them admired Handel I cannot see that
they allowed his music to influence theirs. Handel even in
his own lifetime was more or less of a survival and protest ;
he saw the rocks on to which music was drifting and steered

Handel and Music 127

his own good ship wide of them ; as for his musical parentage,
he grew out of the early Italians and out of Purcell.

The more original a composer is the more certain is he to
have made himself a strong base of operations in the works
of earlier men, striking his roots deep into them, so that he,
as it were, gets inside them and lives in them, they in him,
and he in them ; then, this firm foothold having been obtained,
he sallies forth as opportunity directs, with the result that
his works will reflect at once the experiences of his own
musical life and of those musical progenitors to whom a loving
instinct has more particularly attached him. The fact
that his work is deeply imbued with their ideas and little
ways, is not due to his deliberately taking from them. He
makes their ways his own as children model themselves upon
those older persons who are kind to them. He loves them
because he feels they felt as he does, and looked on men and
things much as he looks upon them himself ; he is an outgrowth
in the same direction as that in which they grew ; he is their
son, bound by every law of heredity to be no less them than
himself ; the manner, therefore, which came most naturally
to them will be the one which comes also most naturally
to him as being their descendant. Nevertheless no matter
how strong a family likeness may be, (and it is sometimes, as
between Handel and his forerunners, startlingly close) two
men of different generations will never be so much alike that
the work of each will not have a character of its own — unless
indeed the one is masquerading as the other, which is not
tolerable except on rare occasions and on a very small scale.
No matter how like his father a man may be we can always
tell the two apart ; but this once given, so that he has a clear
life of his own, then a strong family likeness to some one else
is no more to be regretted or concealed if it exists than to be
affected if it does not.

It is on these terms alone that attractive music can be
written, and it is a musician's business to write attractive
music. He is, as it were, tenant for life of the estate of and
trustee for that school to which he belongs. Normally, that
school will be the one which has obtained the firmest hold
upon his own countrymen. An Englishman cannot success-
fully write like a German or a Hungarian, nor is it desirable
that he should try. If, by way of variety, we want German

i28 Handel and Music

or Hungarian music we shall get a more genuine article by
going direct to German or Hungarian composers. For the
most part, however, the soundest Englishmen will be stay-
at-homes, in spite of their being much given to summer
flings upon the continent. Whether as writers, therefore,
or as listeners, Englishmen should stick chiefly to Purcell,
Handel, and Sir Arthur Sullivan. True, Handel was not an
Englishman by birth, but no one was ever more thoroughly
English in respect of all the best and most distinguishing
features of Englishmen. As a young man, though Italy
and Germany were open to him, he adopted the country of
Purcell, feeling it, doubtless, to be, as far as he was concerned,
more Saxon than Saxony itself. He chose England ; nor
can there be a doubt that he chose it because he believed
it to be the country in which his music had the best chance
of being appreciated. And what does this involve, if not
that England, take it all round, is the most musically minded
country in the world ? That this is so, that it has produced
the finest music the world has known, and is therefore the
finest school of music in the world, cannot be reasonably
disputed.

To the born musician, it is hardly necessary to say, neither
the foregoing remarks nor any others about music, except
those that may be found in every text book, can be of the
smallest use. Handel knew this and no man ever said less
about his art — or did more in it. There are some semi-
apocryphal * rules for tuning the harpsichord that pretend,
with what truth I know not, to hail from him, but here his
theoretical contributions to music begin and end. The rules
begin " In this chord " (the tonic major triad) " tune the
fifth pretty flat, and the third considerably too sharp."
There is an absence of fuss about these words which suggests
Handel himself.

The written and spoken words of great painters or musicians
who can talk or write is seldom lasting — artists are a dumb
inarticulate folk, whose speech is in their hands not in their

* Tivelve Voluntaries and Fugues for the Organ or Harpsichord
with Rules for Tuning. By the celebrated Mr. Handel. Butler had
a copy of this book and gave it to the British Museum (Press
Mark, e. 1089). We showed the rules to Rockstro, who said they were
very interesting and probably authentic ; they would tune the in-
strument in one of the mean tone temperaments.

Handel and Music 129

tongues. They look at us like seals, but cannot talk to us.
To the musician, therefore, what has been said above is
useless, if not worse ; its object will have been attained if it
aids the uncreative reader to criticise what he hears with
more intelligence.

Music

So far as I can see, this is the least stable of the arts.
From the earliest records we learn that there were musicians,
and people seem to have been just as fond of music as we are
ourselves, but, whereas we find the old sculpture, painting
(what there is of it) and literature to have been in all essen-
tials like our own, and not only this but whereas we find
them essentially the same in existing nations in Europe, Asia,
Africa and America, this is not so as regards music either
looking to antiquity or to the various existing nations. I
believe we should find old Greek and Roman music as hideous
as we do Persian and Japanese, or as Persians and Japanese
find our own.

I believe therefore that the charm of music rests on a
more unreasoning basis, and is more dependent on what we
are accustomed to, than the pleasure given by the other arts.
We now find all the ecclesiastical modes, except the Ionian
and the iEolian, unsatisfactory, indeed almost intolerable,
but I question whether, if we were as much in the habit of
using the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian and Mixo-Lydian modes
as we are of using the later ^olian mode (the minor scale),
we should not find these just as satisfactory. Is it not
possible that our indisputable preference for the Ionian
mode (the major scale) is simply the result of its being the
one to which we are most accustomed ? If another mode
were to become habitual, might not this scale or mode be-
come first a kind of supplementary moon-like mode (as the
iEolian now is) and finally might it not become intolerable
to us ? Happily it will last my time as it is.

Discords

Formerly all discords were prepared, and Monteverde's
innovation of taking the dominant seventh unprepared was
held to be cataclysmic, but in modern music almost any

K

iso Handel and Music

conceivable discord may be taken unprepared. We have
grown so used to this now that we think nothing of it, still,
whenever it can be done without sacrificing something more
important, I think even a dominant seventh is better pre-
pared.

It is only the preparation, however, of discords which is
now less rigorously insisted on ; their resolution — generally
by the climbing down of the offending note — is as necessary
as ever if the music is to flow on smoothly.

This holds good exactly in our daily life. If a discord has
to be introduced, it is better to prepare it as a concord, take
it on a strong beat, and resolve it downwards on a weak one.
The preparation being often difficult or impossible may be
dispensed with, but the resolution is still de rigueur.

Anachronism

It has been said " Thou shalt not masquerade in costumes
not of thine own period/' but the history of art is the history
of revivals. Musical criticism, so far as I can see, is the least
intelligent of the criticisms on this score. Unless a man
writes in the exotic style of Brahms, Wagner, Dvorak and
I know not what other Slav, Czech, Teuton or Hebrew, the
critics are sure to accuse him of being an anachronism. The
only man in England who is permitted to write in a style
which is in the main of home growth is the Irish Jew, Sir
Arthur Sullivan. If we may go to a foreign style why may
we not go to one of an earlier period ? But surely we may do
whatever we like, and the better we like it the better w r e shall
do it. The great thing is to make sure that we like the style
we choose better than we like any other, that we engraft on
it whatever we hear that we think will be a good addition,
and depart from it wherever we dislike it. If a man does this
he may write in the style of the year one and he will be no
anachronism ; the musical critics may call him one but they
cannot make him one.

Chapters in Music

The analogy between literature, painting and music, so
close in so many respects, suggests that the modern custom

Handel and Music 131

of making a whole scene, act or even drama into a single,
unbroken movement without subdivision is like making a
book without chapters, or a picture, like Bernardino Luini's
great Lugano fresco in which a long subject is treated within
the compass of a single piece. Better advised, as it seems to
me, Gaudenzio Ferrari broke up a space of the same shape
and size at Varallo into many compartments, each more or
less complete in itself, grouped round a central scene. The
subdivision of books into chapters, each with a more or less
emphatic full close in its own key, is found to be a help as
giving the attention halting places by the way. Everything
that is worth attending to fatigues as well as delights, much
as the climbing of a mountain does so. Chapters and short
pieces give rests during which the attention gathers renewed
strength and attacks with fresh ardour a new stretch of the
ascent. Each bar is, as it were, a step cut in ice and one does
not see, if set pieces are objected to, why phrases and bars
should not be attacked next.

At the Opera

Jones and I went last Friday to Don Giovanni, Mr. Kemp *
putting us in free. It bored us both, and we like Narcissus
better. We admit the beauty of many of the beginnings of
the airs, but this beauty is not maintained, in every case the
air tails off into something that is much too near being tire-
some. The plot, of course, is stupid to a degree, but plot has
very little to do with it ; what can be more uninteresting
than the plot of many of Handel's oratorios ? We both
believe the scheme of Italian opera to be a bad one ; we
think that music should never be combined with acting to a
greater extent than 'is done, we will say, in the Mikado ;
that the oratorio form is far more satisfactory than opera ;
and we agreed that we had neither of us ever yet been to an
opera (I mean a Grand Opera) without being bored by it.
I am not sorry to remember that Handel never abandoned
oratorio after he had once fairly taken to it.

* Mr. Kemp lived in Barnard's Inn on my staircase. He was in
the box-office at Drury Lane Theatre. See a further note about him
on p. 153 post.

132 Handel and Music

At a Philharmonic Concert

We went last night to the Philharmonic and sat in the
shilling orchestra, just behind the drums, so that we could
see and hear what each instrument was doing. The concert
began with Mozart's G Minor Symphony. We liked this
fairly well, especially the last movement, but we found all the
movements too long and, speaking for myself, if I had a
tame orchestra for which I might write programmes, I should
probably put it down once or twice again, not from any
spontaneous wish to hear more of it but as a matter of duty
that I might judge it with fuller comprehension — still, if
each movement had been half as long I should probably have
felt cordially enough towards it, except of course in so far as
that the spirit of the music is alien to that of the early Italian
school with which alone I am in genuine sympathy and of
which Handel is the climax.

Then came a terribly long-winded recitative by Beethoven
and an air with a good deal of " Che faro " in it. I do not
mind this, and if it had been " Che far 6 " absolutely I should,
I daresay, have liked it better. I never want to hear it again
and my orchestra should never play it.

Beethoven's Concerto for violin and orchestra (op. 61)
which followed was longer and more tedious still. I have
not a single good word for it. If the subject of the last move-
ment was the tune of one of Arthur Robert's comic songs, or
of any music-hall song, it would do very nicely and I daresay
we should often hum it. I do not mean at the opening of the
movement but about half way through, where the character
is just that of a common music-hall song and, so far, good.

Part II opened with a suite in F Major for orchestra (op. 39)
by Moszkowski. This was much more clear and, in every
way, interesting than the Beethoven ; every now and then
there were passages that were pleasing, not to say more.
Jones liked it better than I did ; still, one could not feel that
any of the movements were the mere drivelling show stuff of
which the concerto had been full. But it, like everything
else done at these concerts, is too long, cut down one-half it
w T ould have been all right and we should have liked to hear
it twice. As it was, all we could say was that it was much

Handel and Music 133

better than we had expected. I did not like the look of the
young man who wrote it and who also conducted. He had
long yellowish hair and kept tossing his head to fling it back
on to his shoulders, instead of keeping it short as Jones and I
keep ours.

Then came Schubert's "Erl Kdnig," which, I daresay, is very
fine but with which I have absolutely nothing in common.

And finally there was a tiresome characteristic overture
by Berlioz, which, if Jones could by any possibility have
written anything so dreary, I should certainly have begged
him not to publish.

The general impression left upon me by the concert is that
all the movements were too long, and that, no matter how
clever the development may be, it spoils even the most
pleasing and interesting subject if there is too much of it.
Handel knew when to stop and, when he meant stopping, he
stopped much as a horse stops, with little, if any, peroration.
Who can doubt that he kept his movements short because
he knew that the worst music within a reasonable compass
is better than the best which is made tiresome by being spun
out unduly ? I only know one concerted piece of Handel's
which I think too long, I mean the overture to Saul, but I
have no doubt that if I were to try to cut it down I should
find some excellent reason that had made Handel decide on
keeping it as it is.

At the Wind Concerts

There have been some interesting wind concerts lately;
I say interesting, because they brought home to us the un-
satisfactory character of wind unsupported by strings. I
rather pleased Jones by saying that the hautbois was the
clarionet with a cold in its head, and the bassoon the same
with a cold on its chest.

At a Handel Festival

i

The large sweeps of sound floated over the orchestra like
the wind playing upon a hill-side covered with young heather,
and I sat and wondered which of the Alpine passes Handel

i34 Handel and Music

crossed when he went into Italy. What time of the year was
it ? What kind of weather did he have ? Were the spring
flowers out ? Did he walk the greater part of the way as we
do now ? And what did he hear ? For he must sometimes
have heard music inside him — and that, too, as much above
what he has written down as what he has written down is
above all other music. No man can catch all, or always the
best, of what is put for a moment or two within his reach.
Handel took as much and as near the best, doubtless, as
mortal man can take ; but he must have had moments and
glimpses which were given to him alone and which he could
tell no man.

ii

I saw the world a great orchestra filled with angels whose
instruments were of gold. And I saw the organ on the top
of the axis round which all should turn, but nothing turned
and nothing moved and the angels stirred not and all was as
still as a stone, and I was myself also, like the rest, as still as
a stone.

Then I saw some huge, cloud-like forms nearing, and
behold ! it was the Lord bringing two of his children by the
hand.

" O Papa ! " said one, " isn't it pretty ? "

" Yes, my dear," said the Lord, " and if you drop a penny
into the box the figures will work."

Then I saw that what I had taken for the keyboard of the
organ was no keyboard but only a slit, and one of the little
Lords dropped a plaque of metal into it. And then the angels
played and the world turned round and the organ made a
noise and the people began killing one another and the two
little Lords clapped their hands and were delighted.

Handel and Dickens

They buried Dickens in the very next grave, cheek by
jowl with Handel. It does not matter, but it pained me to
think that people who could do this could become Deans of
Westminster.

IX

A Painter's Views on Painting

The Old Masters and Their Pupils

The old masters taught, not because they liked teaching, nor
yet from any idea of serving the cause of art, nor yet because
they were paid to teach by the parents of their pupils. The
parents probably paid no money at first. The masters took
pupils and taught them because they had more work to do
than they could get through and wanted some one to help
them. They sold the pupil's work as their own, just as people
do now who take apprentices. When people can sell a pupil's
work, they will teach the pupil all they know and will see
he learns it. This is the secret of the whole matter.

The modern schoolmaster does not aim at learning from
his pupils, he hardly can, but the old masters did. See how
Giovanni Bellini learned from Titian and Giorgione who both
came to him in the same year, as boys, when Bellini was 63
years old. What a day for painting was that ! All Bellini's
best work was done thenceforward. I know nothing in the
history of art so touching as this. [1883.]

P.S. I have changed my mind about Titian. I don't like
him. [1897.]

The Academic System and Repentance

The academic system goes almost on the principle of offer-
ing places for repentance, and letting people fall soft, by
assuming that they should be taught how to do things before
they do them, and not by the doing of them. Good economy
requires that there should be little place for repentance, and
that when people fall they should fall hard enough to re-
member it.

135

136

A Painter's Views

The Jubilee Sixpence

We have spent hundreds of thousands, or more probably
of millions, on national art collections, schools of art, pre-
liminary training and academicism, without wanting anything
in particular, but when the nation did at last try all it knew
to design a sixpence, it failed.* The other coins are all very
well in their way, and so are the stamps — the letters get car-
ried, and the money passes ; but both stamps and coins w r ould
have been just as good, and very likely better, if there had
not been an art-school in the country. [1888.]

Studying from Nature

When is a man studying from nature, and when is he only
flattering himself that he is doing so because he is painting
with a model or lay-figure before him ? A man may be work-
ing his eight or nine hours a day from the model and yet not
be studying from nature. He is painting but not studying.
He is like the man in the Bible who looks at himself in a glass
and goeth away forgetting what manner of man he was. He
will know no more about nature at the end of twenty years
than a priest who has been reading his breviary day after day
without committing it to memory will know of its contents.
Unless he gets what he has seen well into his memory, so as
to have it at his fingers' ends as familiarly as the characters
with which he writes a letter, he can be no more held to be
familiar with, and to have command over, nature than a man
who only copies his signature from a copy kept in his pocket,
as I have known French Canadians do, can be said to be able
to write. It is painting without nature that will give a man
this, and not painting directly from her. He must do both
the one and the other, and the one as much as the other.

The Model and the Lay-Figure

It may be doubted whether they have not done more harm
than good. They are an attempt to get a bit of stuffed nature

* If I remember right, the original Jubilee sixpence had to be
altered because it was so like a half-sovereign that, on being gilded, it
passed as one.

on Painting 137

and to study from that instead of studying from the thing
itself. Indeed, the man who never has a model but studies
the faces of people as they sit opposite him in an omnibus,
and goes straight home and puts down what little he can of
what he has seen, dragging it out piecemeal from his memory,
and going into another omnibus to look again for what he
has forgotten as near as he can find it — that man is studying
from nature as much as he who has a model four or five hours
daily — and probably more. For you may be painting from
nature as much without nature actually before you as with ;
and you may have nature before you all the while you are
painting and yet not be painting from her.

Sketching from Nature

Is very like trying to put a pinch of salt on her tail. And
yet many manage to do it very nicely.

Great Art and Sham Art

Art has no end in view save the emphasising and recording
in the most effective way some strongly felt interest or affec-
tion. Where there is neither interest nor desire to record
with good effect, there is but sham art, or none at all : where
both these are fully present, no matter how rudely and in-
articulately, there is great art. Art is at best a dress, im-
portant, yet still nothing in comparison with the wearer, and,
as a general rule, the less it attracts attention the better.

Inarticulate Touches

An artist's touches are sometimes no more articulate than
the barking of a dog who would call attention to something
without exactly knowing what. This is as it should be, and
he is a great artist who can be depended on not to bark at
nothing.

Detail

One reason why it is as well not to give very much detail
is that, no matter how much is given, the eye will always want
more ; it will know very well that it is not being paid in full.

138 A Painter's Views

On the other hand, no matter how little one gives, the eye
will generally compromise by wanting only a little more. In
either case the eye will want more, so one may as well stop
sooner as later. Sensible painting, like sensible law, sensible
writing, or sensible anything else, consists as much in knowing
what to omit as what to insist upon. It consists in the tact
that tells the painter where to stop.

Painting and Association

Painting is only possible by reason of association's not stick-
ing to the letter of its bond, so that we jump to conclusions.

The Credulous Eye

Painters should remember that the eye, as a general rule, is
a good, simple, credulous organ — very ready to take things on
trust if it be told them with any confidence of assertion.

Truths from Nature

We must take as many as we can, but the difficulty is that
it is often so hard to know what the truths of nature are.

Accuracy

After having spent years striving to be accurate, we must
spend as many more in discovering when and how to be in-
accurate.

Herbert Spencer
He is like nature to Fuseli — he puts me out.

Shade Colour and Reputation

When a thing is near and in light, colour and form are im<
portant ; when far and in shadow, they are unimportant.
Form and colour are like reputations which when they be-
come shady are much of a muchness.

on Painting 139

Money and Technique

Money is very like technique (or vice versa). We see that
both musicians or painters with great command of technique
seldom know what to do with it, while those who have little
often know how to use what they have.

Action and Study

These things are antagonistic. The composer is seldom a
great theorist ; the theorist is never a great composer. Each
is equally fatal to and essential in the other.

Sacred and Profane Statues

I have never seen statues of Jove, Neptune, Apollo or any
of the pagan gods that are not as great failures as the statues of
Christ and the Apostles.

Seeing

If a man has not studied painting, or at any rate black and
white drawing, his eyes are wild ; learning to draw tames
them. The first step towards taming the eyes is to teach
them not to see too much.

Quickness in seeing as in everything else comes from long
sustained effort after rightness and comes unsought. It never
comes from effort after quickness.

Improvement in Art

Painting depends upon seeing ; seeing depends upon look-
ing for this or that, at least in great part it does so.

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by
your enemy. If you look at it to admire it you are lost.

Any man, as old Heatherley used to say, will go on im-
proving as long as he is bona fide dissatisfied with his work.

Improvement in one's painting depends upon how we look
at our work. If we look at it to see where it is wrong, we
shall see this and make it righter. If we look at it to see

140

A Painter's Views

where it is right, we shall see this and shall not make it righter.
We cannot see it both wrong and right at the same time.

Light and Shade

Tell the young artist that he wants a black piece here or
there, when he sees no such black piece in nature, and that
he must continue this or that shadow thus, and break this
light into this or that other, when in nature he sees none of
these things, and you will puzzle him very much. He is try-
ing to put down what he sees ; he does not care two straws
about composition or light and shade ; if he sees two tones
of such and such relative intensity in nature, he will give
them as near as he can the same relative intensity in his
picture, and to tell him that he is perhaps exactly to reverse
the natural order in deference to some canon of the academi-
cians, and that at the same time he is drawing from nature,
is what he cannot understand.

I am very doubtful how far people do not arrange their
light and shade too much with the result with which we are
familiar in drawing-masters* copies ; it may be right or it
may not, I don't know — I am afraid I ought to know, but I
don't ; but I do know that those pictures please me best
which were painted without the slightest regard to any of
these rules.

I suppose the justification of those who talk as above lies
in the fact that, as we cannot give all nature, we lie by sup-
pressio veri whether we like it or no, and that you sometimes
lie less by putting in something which does not exist at the
moment, but which easily might exist and which gives a lot
of facts which you otherwise could not give at all, than by
giving so much as you can alone give if you adhere rigidly to
the facts. If this is so the young painter would understand
the matter, if it were thus explained to him, better than he is
likely to do if he is merely given it as a canon.

At the same time, I admit it to be true that one never sees
light but it has got dark in it, nor vice versa, and that this
comes to saying that if you are to be true to nature you must
break your lights into your shadows and vice versa ; and so
usual is this that, if there happens here or there to be an ex-
ception, the painter had better say nothing about it, for it is

on Painting 141

more true to nature's general practice not to have it so than
to have it.

Certainly as regards colour, I never remember to have
seen a piece of one colour without finding a bit of a very
similar colour not far off, but having no connection with it.
This holds good in such an extraordinary way that if it
happens to fail the matter should be passed over in silence.

Colour

The expression " seeing colour " used to puzzle me. I
was aware that some painters made their pictures more
pleasing in colour than others and more like the colour of
the actual thing as a whole, still there were any number
of bits of brilliant colour in their work which for the life
of me I could not see in nature. I used to hear people say
of a man who got pleasing and natural colour, " Does he
not see colour well ? " and I used to say he did, but, as far
as I was concerned, it would have been more true to say that
he put down colour which he did not see well, or at any
rate that he put down colour which I could not see myself.

In course of time I got to understand that seeing colour
does not mean inventing colour, or exaggerating it, but being
on the look out for it, thus seeing it where another will not
see it, and giving it the preference as among things to be
preserved and rendered amid the wholesale slaughter of
innocents which is inevitable in any painting. Painting is
only possible as a quasi-hieroglyphic epitomising of nature ;
this means that the half goes for the whole, whereon the
question arises which half is to be taken and which made to
go ? The colourist will insist by preference on the coloured
half, the man who has no liking for colour, however much
else he may sacrifice, will not be careful to preserve this
and, as a natural consequence, he will not preserve it.

Good, that is to say, pleasing, beautiful, or even pretty
colour cannot be got by putting patches of pleasing, beautiful
or pretty colour upon one's canvas and, which is a harder
matter, leaving them when they have been put. It is said of
money that it is more easily made than kept and this is true
of many things, such as friendship ; and even life itself is
more easily got than kept. The same holds good of colour.

142

A Painter's Views

It is also true that, as with money, more is made by saving
than in any other way, and the surest way to lose colour
is to play with it inconsiderately, not knowing how to leave
well alone. A touch of pleasing colour should on no account
be stirred without consideration.

That we can see in a natural object more colour than
strikes us at a glance, if we look for it attentively, will not
be denied by any who have tried to look for it. Thus, take
a dull, dead, level, grimy old London wall : at a first glance
we can see no colour in it, nothing but a more or less purplish
mass, got, perhaps as nearly as in any other way, by a tint
mixed with black, Indian red and white. If, however, we
look for colour in this, we shall find here and there a broken
brick with a small surface of brilliant crimson, hard by there
will be another with a warm orange hue perceivable through
the grime by one who is on the look out for it, but by no one
else. Then there may be bits of old advertisement of which
here and there a gaily coloured fragment may remain, or a
rusty iron hook or a bit of bright green moss ; few indeed are
the old walls, even in the grimiest parts of London, on which
no redeeming bits of colour can be found by those who are
practised in looking for them. To like colour, to wish to
find it, and thus to have got naturally into a habit of looking
for it, this alone will enable a man to see colour and to make
a note of it when he has seen it, and this alone will lead him
towards a pleasing and natural scheme of colour in his work.

Good colour can never be got by putting down colour
which is not seen ; at any rate only a master who has long
served accuracy can venture on occasional inaccuracy —
telling a lie, knowing it to be a lie, and as, se non vera, ben
trovata. The grown man in his art may do this, and indeed
is not a man at all unless he knows how to do it daily and
hourly without departure from the truth even in his boldest
lie ; but the child in art must stick to what he sees. If he
looks harder he will see more, and may put more, but till he
sees it without being in any doubt about it, he must not
put it. There is no such sure way of corrupting one's colour
sense as the habitual practice of putting down colour which one
does not see ; this and the neglecting to look for it are equal
faults. The first error leads to melodramatic vulgarity, the
other to torpid dullness, and it is hard to say which is worse.

on Painting

i43

It may be said that the preservation of all the little episodes
of colour which can be discovered in an object whose general
effect is dingy and the suppression of nothing but the un-
interesting colourless details amount to what is really a
forcing and exaggeration of nature, differing but little from
downright fraud, so far as its effect goes, since it gives an
undue preference to the colour side of the matter. In equity,
if the exigencies of the convention under which we are working
require a sacrifice of a hundred details, the majority of which
are uncoloured, while in the minority colour can be found
if looked for, the sacrifice should be made pro rata from
coloured and uncoloured alike. If the facts of nature are
a hundred, of which ninety are dull in colour and ten interest-
ing, and the painter can only give ten, he must not give the
ten interesting bits of colour and neglect the ninety soberly
coloured details. Strictly, he should sacrifice eighty-one
sober details and nine coloured ones ; he will thus at any
rate preserve the balance and relation which obtain in nature
between coloured and uncoloured.

This, no doubt, is what he ought to do if he leaves the
creative, poetic and more properly artistic aspect of his
own function out of the question ; if he is making himself
a mere transcriber, holding the mirror up to nature with
such entire forgetfulness of self as to be rather looking-glass
than man, this is what he must do. But the moment he
approaches nature in this spirit he ceases to be an artist,
and the better he succeeds as painter of something that might
pass for a coloured photograph, the more inevitably must
he fail to satisfy, or indeed to appeal to us at all as poet —
as one whose sympathies with nature extend beyond her
superficial aspect, or as one who is so much at home with
her as to be able readily to dissociate the permanent and
essential from the accidental which may be here to-day and
gone to-morrow. If he is to come before us as an artist,
he must do so as a poet or creator of that which is not, as
well as a mirror of that which is. True, experience in all
kinds of poetical work shows that the less a man creates the
better, that the more, in fact, he makes, the less is he of a
maker ; but experience also shows that the course of true
nature, like that of true love, never does run smooth, and
that occasional, judicious, slight departures from the actual

144

A Painter's Views

facts, by one who knows the value of a lie too well to waste
it, bring nature more vividly and admirably before us than
any amount of adherence to the letter of strict accuracy.
It is the old story, the letter killeth but the spirit giveth
life.

With colour, then, he who does not look for it will begin
by not seeing it unless it is so obtrusive that there is no
escaping it ; he will therefore, in his rendering of the hundred
facts of nature above referred to, not see the ten coloured
bits at all, supposing them to be, even at their brightest,
somewhat sober, and his work will be colourless or disagreeable
in colour. The faithful copyist, who is still a mere copyist,
will give nine details of dull uninteresting colour and one of
interesting. The artist or poet will find some reason for
slightly emphasising the coloured details and will scatter here
and there a few slight, hardly perceptible, allusions to more
coloured details than come within the letter of his bond, but
will be careful not to overdo it. The vulgar sensational
painter will force in his colour everywhere, and of all colourists
he must be pronounced the worst.

Briefly then, to see colour is simply to have got into a
habit of not overlooking the patches of colour which are
seldom far to seek or hard to see by those who look for them.
It is not the making one's self believe that one sees all
manner of colours which are not there, it is only the getting
oneself into a mental habit of looking out for episodes of
colour, and of giving them a somewhat undue preference
in the struggle for rendering, wherever anything like a reason-
able pretext can be found for doing so. For if a picture is to
be pleasing in colour, pleasing colours must be put upon the
canvas, and reasons have got to be found for putting them
there. [1886.]

P.S. — The foregoing note wants a great deal of reconsidera-
tion for which I cannot find time just now. Jan. 31, 1898.

Words and Colour

A man cannot be a great colourist unless he is a great
deal more. A great colourist is no better than a great wordist
unless the colour is well applied to a subject which at any
rate is not repellent.

on Painting 145

Amateurs and Professionals

There is no excuse for amateur work being bad. Amateurs
often excuse their shortcomings on the ground that they are
not professionals, the professional could plead with greater
justice" that he is not an amateur. The professional has not,
he might well say, the leisure and freedom from money
anxieties which will let him devote himself to his art in single-
ness of heart, telling of things as he sees them without fear
of what man shall say unto him ; he must think not of what
appears to him right and loveable but of what his patrons
will think and of what the -critics will tell his patrons to say
they think ; he has got to square everyone all round and will
assuredly fail to make his way unless he does this ; if, then,
he betrays his trust he does so under temptation. Whereas
the amateur who works with no higher aim than that of
immediate recognition betrays it from the vanity and wanton-
ness of his spirit. The one is naughty because he is needy,
the other from natural depravity. Besides, the amateur
can keep his work to himself, whereas the professional man
must exhibit or starve.

The question is what is the amateur an amateur of ? What
is he really in love with ? Is he in love with other people,
thinking he sees something which he would like to show
them, which he feels sure they would enjoy if they could only
see it as he does, which he is therefore trying as best he can
to put before the few nice people whom he knows ? If this
is his position he can do no wrong, the spirit in which he
works will ensure that his defects will be only as bad spelling
or bad grammar in some pretty saying of a child. If, on the
other hand, he is playing for social success and to get a
reputation for being clever, then no matter how dexterous
his work may be, it is but another mode of the speaking
with the tongues of men and angels without charity ; it is as
sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, full of sound and fury
signifying nothing.

The Ansidei Raffaelle

This picture is inspired by no deeper feeling than a de-
termination to adhere to the conventions of the time. These

L

146

A Painter's Views

conventions ensure an effect of more or less devotional
character, and this, coupled with our reverence for the name
of Raffaelle, the sentiments arising from antiquity and foreign-
ness, and the inability of most people to judge of the work on
technical grounds, because they can neither paint nor draw,
prevents us from seeing what a mere business picture it is
and how poor the painting is throughout. A master in any
art should be first man, then poet, then craftsman ; this
picture must have been painted by one who was first worldling,
then religious-property-manufacturer, then painter with
brains not more than average and no heart.

The Madonna's head has indeed a certain prettiness of a
not very uncommon kind ; the paint has been sweetened with
a soft brush and licked smooth till all texture as of flesh is
gone and the head is wooden and tight ; I can see no ex-
pression in it ; the hand upon the open book is as badly drawn
as the hand of S. Catharine (also by Raffaelle) in our gallery,
or even worse ; so is the part of the other hand which can be
seen ; they are better drawn than the hands in the Ecce homo
of Correggio in our gallery, for the fingers appear to have
the right number of joints, which none of those in the Cor-
reggio have, but this is as much as can be said.

The dress is poorly painted, the gold thread work being
of the cheapest, commonest kind, both as regards pattern
and the quantity allowed ; especially note the meagre allow-
ance and poor pattern of the embroidery on the virgin's
bosom ; it is done as by one who knew she ought to have,
and must have, a little gold work, but was determined she
should have no more than he could help. This is so where-
ever there is gold thread work in the picture. It is so on
S. Nicholas's cloak where a larger space is covered, but the
pattern is dull and the smallest quantity of gold is made to
go the longest way. The gold cording which binds this is
more particularly badly done. Compare the embroidery
and gold thread work in " The Virgin adoring the Infant
Christ," ascribed to Andrea Verrocchio, No. 296, Room V ;
" The Annunciation " by Carlo Crivelli, No. 739, Room VIII ;
in "The Angel Raphael accompanies Tobias on his Journey
into Media " attributed to Botticini, No. 781, Room V ; in
" Portrait of a Lady," school of Pollaiuolo, No. 585, Room V;
in "A Canon of the Church with his Patron Saints " by

on Painting 147

Gheeraert David, No. 1045, Room XI ; or indeed the general
run of the gold embroidery of the period as shown in our
gallery.*

So with the jewels ; there are examples of jewels in most
of the pictures named above, none of them, perhaps, very
first-rate, but all of them painted with more care and serious
aim than the eighteen-penny trinket which serves S. Nicholas
for a brooch. The jewels in the mitre are rather better than
this, but much depends upon the kind of day on which the
picture is seen ; on a clear bright day they, and indeed every
part of the picture, look much worse than on a dull one because
the badness can be more clearly seen. As for the mitre itself,
it is made of the same hard unyielding material as the portico
behind the saint, whatever this may be, presumably wood.

Observe also the crozier which S. Nicholas is holding ;
observe the cheap streak of high light exactly the same thick-
ness all the way and only broken in one place ; so with the
folds in the draperies ; all is monotonous, unobservant, un-
imaginative — the work of a feeble man whose pains will
never extend much beyond those necessary to make him
pass as stronger than he is ; especially the folds in the white
linen over S. Nicholas's throat, and about his girdle — weaker
drapery can hardly be than this, unless, perhaps, that from
under which S. Nicholas's hands come. There is not only no
art here to conceal, but there is not even pains to conceal the
want of art. As for the hands themselves, and indeed all the
hands and feet throughout the picture, there is not one which
is even tolerably drawn if judged by the standard which
Royal Academicians apply to Royal Academy students now.

Granted that this is an early work, nevertheless I submit
that the drawing here is not that of one who is going to do
better by and by, it is that of one who is essentially insincere
and who will never aim higher than immediate success.

* Raffaelle's picture " The Virgin and Child attended by S. John
the Baptist and S. Nicholas of Bari " (commonly known as the " Ma-
donna degli Ansidei No. 1171, Room VI in the National Gallery,
London, was purchased in 1885. Butler made this note in the same
year ; he revised the note in 1897 but, owing to changes in the gallery
and in the attributions, I have found it necessary to modernise his
descriptions of the other pictures with gold thread work so as to make
them agree with the descriptions now (1912) on the pictures them-
selves.

148

A Painter's Views

Those who grow to the best work almost always begin by
laying great stress on details which are all they as yet have
strength for ; they cannot do much, but the little they can
do they do and never tire of doing ; they grow by getting
juster notions of proportion and subordination of parts to
the whole rather than by any greater amount of care and
patience bestowed upon details. Here there are no bits of
detail worked out as by one who was interested in them and
enjoyed them. Wherever a thing can be scamped it is scamped.
As the whole is, so are the details, and as the details are, so is
the whole ; all is tainted with eye-service and with a vulgarity
not the less profound for being veiled by a due observance of
conventionality.

I shall be told that Raffaelle did come to draw and paint
much better than he has done here. I demur to this. He
did a little better ; he just took so much pains as to prevent
him from going down-hill headlong, and, with practice,
he gained facility, but he was never very good, either as a
draughtsman or as a painter. His reputation, indeed, rests
mainly on his supposed exquisitely pure and tender feeling.
His colour is admittedly inferior, his handling is not highly
praised by any one, his drawing has been much praised,
but it is of a penmanship freehand kind which is particularly
apt to take people in. Of course he could draw in some ways,
no one giving all his time to art and living in Raffaelle's
surroundings could, with even ordinary pains, help becoming
a facile draughtsman, but it is the expression and sentiment
of his pictures which are supposed to be so ineffable and to
make him the prince of painters.

I do not think this reputation will be maintained much
longer. I can see no ineffable expression in the Ansidei
Madonna's head, nor yet in that of the Garvagh Madonna
in our gallery, nor in the S. Catharine. He has the saint-
touch, as some painters have the tree-touch and others the
water-touch. I remember the time when I used to think
I saw religious feeling in these last two pictures, but each
time I see them I wonder more and more how I can have
been taken in by them. I hear people admire the head of
S. Nicholas in the Ansidei picture. I can see nothing in it
beyond the power of a very ordinary painter, and nothing
that a painter of more than very ordinary power would be

on Painting 149

satisfied with. When I look at the head of Bellini's Doge,
Loredano Loredani, I can see defects, as every one can see
defects in every picture, but the more I see it the more I
marvel at it, and the more profoundly I respect the painter.
With Raffaelle I find exactly the reverse ; I am carried away
at first, as I was when a young man by Mendelssohn's Songs
Without Words, only to be very angry with myself presently
on finding that I could have believed even for a short time
in something that has no real hold upon me. I know the
S. Catharine in our gallery has been said by some not to be by
Raffaelle. No one will doubt its genuineness who compares
the drawing, painting and feeling of S. Catharine's eyes and
nose with those of the S. John in the Ansidei picture. The
doubts have only been raised owing to the fact that the
picture, being hung on a level with the eye, is so easily
seen to be bad that people think Raffaelle cannot have
painted it.

Returning to the S. Nicholas ; apart from the expression,
or as it seems to me want of expression, the modelling of the
head is not only poor but very poor* The forehead is formless
and boneless, the nose is entirely wanting in that play of line
and surface which an old man's nose affords ; no one ever
yet drew or painted a nose absolutely as nature has made
it, but he who compares carefully drawn noses, as that in
Rembrandt's younger portrait of himself, in his old woman,
in the three Van Eycks, in the Andrea Solario, in the Lore-
dano Loredani by Bellini, all in our gallery, with the nose of
Raffaelle's S. Nicholas will not be long in finding out how
slovenly Raffaelle's treatment in reality is. Eyes, eyebrows,
mouth, cheeks and chin are treated with the same weakness,
and this not the weakness of a child who is taking much pains to
do something beyond his strength, and whose intention can be
felt through and above the imperfections of his performance
(as in the case of the two Apostles' heads by Giotto in our
gallery), but of one who is not even conscious of weakness
save by way of impatience that his work should cost him time
and trouble at all, and who is satisfied if he can turn it out
well enough to take in patrons who have themselves never
either drawn or painted.

Finally, let the spectator turn to the sky and landscape.
It is the cheapest kind of sky with no clouds and going down

A Painter's Views

as low as possible, so as to save doing more country details
than could be helped. As for the little landscape there is,
let the reader compare it with any of the examples by Bellini,
Basaiti, or even Cima da Conegliano, which may be found in
the same or the adjoining rooms.

How, then, did Raffaelle get his reputation ? It may be
answered, How did Virgil get his ? or Dante ? or Bacon ? or
Plato ? or Mendelssohn ? or a score of others who not only
get the public ear but keep it sometimes for centuries ?
How did Guido, Guercino and Domenichino get their repu-
tations ? A hundred years ago these men were held as hardly
inferior to Raffaelle himself. They had a couple of hundred
years or so of triumph — why so much ? And if so much,
why not more ? If we begin asking questions, we may ask
why anything at all ? Pofiulus vult decipi is the only answer,
and nine men out of ten will follow on with et decifiiatur. The
immediate question, however, is not how Raffaelle came by
his reputation but whether, having got it, he will continue
to hold it now that we have a fair amount of his work at the
National Gallery.

I grant that the general effect of the picture if looked at
as a mere piece of decoration is agreeable, but I have seen
many a picture which though not bearing consideration as a
serious work yet looked well from a purely decorative stand-
point. I believe, however, that at least half of those who
sit gazing before this Ansidei Raffaelle by the half-hour at
a time do so rather that they may be seen than see ; half,
again, of the remaining half come because they are made to
do so, the rest see rather what they bring with them and
put into the picture than what the picture puts into them.

And then there is the charm of mere age. Any Italian
picture of the early part of the sixteenth century, even though
by a worse painter than Raffaelle, can hardly fail to call up
in us a solemn, old-world feeling, as though we had stumbled
unexpectedly on some holy, peaceful survivors of an age
long gone by, when the struggle was not so fierce and the
world was a sweeter, happier place than we now find it,
when men and women were comelier, and we should like to
have lived among them, to have been golden-hued as they,
to have done as they did ; we dream of what might have
been if our lines had been cast in more pleasant places —

on Painting 151

and so on, all of it rubbish, but still not wholly unpleasant
rubbish so long as it is not dwelt upon.

Bearing in mind the natural tendency to accept anything
which gives us a peep as it were into a golden age, real or
imaginary, bearing in mind also the way in which this par-
ticular picture has been written up by critics, and the prestige
of Raffaelle's name, the wonder is not that so many let
themselves be taken in and carried away with it but that
there should not be a greater gathering before it than there
generally is.

Buying a Rembrandt

As an example of the evenness of the balance of advantages
between the principles of staying still and taking what comes,
and going about to look for things,* I might mention my small
Rembrandt, " The Robing of Joseph before Pharaoh." I have
wanted a Rembrandt all my life, and I have wanted not to
give more than a few shillings for it. I might have travelled
all Europe over for no one can say how many years, looking
for a good, well-preserved, forty-shilling Rembrandt (and
this was what I wanted), but on two occasions of my life
cheap Rembrandts have run right up against me. The first
was a head cut out of a mined picture that had only in part
escaped destruction when Belvoir Castle was burned down
at the beginning of this century. I did not see the head but
have little doubt it was genuine. It was offered me for a
pound ; I was not equal to the occasion and did not at once
go to see it as I ought, and when I attended to it some months
later the thing had gone. My only excuse must be that I
was very young.

I never got another chance till a few weeks ago when I
saw what I took, and take, to be an early, but very interesting,
work by Rembrandt in the window of a pawnbroker opposite
St. Clement Danes Church in the Strand. I very nearly let
this slip too. I saw it and was very much struck with it,
but, knowing that I am a little apt to be too sanguine, dis-

* Cf. the passage in Alps and Sanctuaries, Chapter XIII, be-
ginning " The question whether it is better to abide quiet and take
advantages of opportunities that come or to go further afield in search
of them is one of the oldest which living beings have had to deal
with. . . . The schism still lasts and has resulted in two great sects —
animals and plants/'

A Painter's Views

trusted my judgment ; in the evening I mentioned the picture
to Gogin who went and looked at it ; finding him not less
impressed than I had been with the idea that the work was
an early one by Rembrandt, I bought it, and the more I look
at it the more satisfied I am that we are right.

People talk as though the making the best of what comes
was such an easy matter, whereas nothing in reality requires
more experience and good sense. It is only those who know
how not to let the luck that runs against them slip, who will
be able to find things, no matter how long and how far they
go in search of them. [1887.]

Trying to Buy a Bellini

Flushed with triumph in the matter of Rembrandt, a
fortnight or so afterwards I was at Christie's and saw two
pictures that fired me. One was a Madonna and Child by
Giovanni Bellini, I do not doubt genuine, not in a very good
state, but still not repainted. The Madonna was lovely,
the Child very good, the landscape sweet and Belliniesque.
I was much smitten and determined to bid up to a hundred
pounds ; I knew this would be dirt cheap and was not going
to buy at all unless I could get good value. I bid up to a
hundred guineas, but there was someone else bent on having
it and when he bid 105 guineas I let him have it, not without
regret. I saw in the Times that the purchaser's name was
Lesser.

The other picture I tried to get at the same sale (this
day week) ; it was a small sketch numbered 72 (I think) and
purporting to be by Giorgione but, I fully believe, by Titian.
I bid up to £10 and then let it go. It went for £28, and I
should say would have been well bought at £40. [1887.]

Watts

I was telling Gogin how I had seen at Christie's some
pictures by Watts and how much I had disliked them. He
said some of them had been exhibited in Paris a few years
ago and a friend of his led him up to one of them and said
in a serious, puzzled, injured tone :

" Mon cher ami, racontez-moi done ceci, s'il vous plait,"

on Painting 153

as though their appearance in such a place at all were some-
thing that must have an explanation not obvious upon the
face of it.

Lombard Portals

The crouching beasts, on whose backs the pillars stand,
generally have a little one beneath them or some animal
which they have killed, or something, in fact, to give them
occupation ; it was felt that, though an animal by itself
was well, an animal doing something was much better.
The mere fact of companionship and silent sympathy is
enough to interest, but without this, sculptured animals
are stupid, as our lions in Trafalgar Square — which, among
other faults, have that of being much too well done.

So Jones's cat, Prince, picked up a little waif in the court
and brought it home, and the two lay together and were
much lovelier than Prince was by himself.*

Holbein at Basle

How well he has done Night in his " Crucifixion " I Also he
has tried to do the Alps, putting them as background to the
city, but he has not done them as we should do them now.
I think the tower on the hill behind the city is the tower
which we see on leaving Basle on the road for Lucerne, I
mean I think Holbein had this tower in his head.

Van Eyck

Van Eyck is delightful rather in spite of his high finish
than because of it. De Hooghe finishes as highly as any one
need do. Van Eyck's finish is saved because up to the last
he is essentially impressionist, that is, he keeps a just account
of relative importances and keeps them in their true sub-
ordination one to another. The only difference between him
and Rembrandt or Velasquez is that these, as a general rule,
stay their hand at an earlier stage of impressionism.

* Prince was my cat when I lived in Barnard's Inn. He used to
stray into Mr. Kemp's rooms on my landing (see p. 131 ante). Mrs.
Kemp's sister brought her child to see them, and the child, playing with
Prince one day, made a discovery and exclaimed :

" Oh ! it's got pins in its toes."

Butler put this into The Way of all Flesh

i54 A Painter's Views on Painting

Giotto

There are few modern painters who are not greater
technically than Giotto,- but I cannot call to mind a single
one whose work impresses me as profoundly as his does. How
is it that our so greatly better should be so greatly worse —
that the farther we go beyond him the higher he stands above
us ? Time no doubt has much to do with it, for, great as
Giotto was, there are painters of to-day not less so, if they
only dared express themselves as frankly and unaffectedly
as he did.

Early Art

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else,
its most interesting period. When it has come to the know-
ledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.

Sincerity

It is not enough that the painter should make the spectator
feel what he meant him to feel ; he must also make him feel
that this feeling was shared by the painter himself bona fide
and without affectation. Of all the lies a painter can tell the
worst is saying that he likes what he does not like. But the
poor wretch seldom knows himself ; for the art of knowing
what gives him pleasure has been so neglected that it has
been lost to all but a very few. The old Italians knew well
enough what they liked and were as children in saying it.

X

The Position of a Homo Unius Libri

Triibner and Myself

When I went back to Triibner, after Bogue had failed,
I had a talk with him and his partner. I could see they
had lost all faith in my literary prospects. Triibner told me
I was a homo unius libri, meaning Erewhon. He said I was
in a very solitary position. I replied that I knew I was, but
it suited me. I said :

" I pay my way ; wheri, I was with you before, I never
owed you money ; you find me now not owing my publisher
money, but my publisher in debt to me ; I never owe so much
as a tailor's bill ; beyond secured debts, I do not owe £5 in
the world and never have" (which is quite true). " I get
my summer's holiday in Italy every year ; I live very quietly
and cheaply, but it suits my health and tastes, and I have
no acquaintances but those I value. My friends stick by
me. If I was to get in with these literary and scientific
people I should hate them and they me. I should fritter
away my time and my freedom without getting a quid pro
quo : as it is, I am free and I give the swells every now and
then such a facer as they get- from no one else. Of course
I don't expect to get on in a commercial sense at present,
I do not go the right way to work for this ; but I am going
the right way to secure a lasting reputation and this is what
I do care for. A man cannot have both, he must make up
his mind which he means going in for. I have gone in for
posthumous fame and I see no step in my literary career
which I do not think calculated to promote my being held
in esteem when the heat of passion has subsided."

Triibner shrugged his shoulders. He plainly does not

i55

156 The Position

believe that I shall succeed in getting a hearing ; he thinks
the combination of the religious and cultured world too
strong for me to stand against.

If he means that the reviewers will burke me as far as
they can, no doubt he is right; but when I am dead there
will be other reviewers and I have already done enough to
secure that they shall from time to time look me up. They
won't bore me then but they will be just like the present
ones. [1882.]

Capping a Success

When I had written Erewhon people wanted me at once
to set to work and write another book like it. How could
I ? I cannot think how I escaped plunging into writing some
laboured stupid book. I am very glad I did escape. Nothing
is so cruel as to try and force a man beyond his natural
pace. If he has got more stuff in him it will come out in
its own time and its own way : if he has not — let the poor
wretch alone ; to have done one decent book should be enough ;
the very worst way to get another out of him is to press him.
The more promise a young writer has given, the more his
friends should urge him not to over-tax himself.

A Lady Critic

A lady, whom I meet frequently in the British Museum
reading-room and elsewhere, said to me the other day :

" Why don't you write another Erewhon ? "

" Why, my dear lady," I replied, " Life and Habit was
another Erewhon."

They say these things to me continually to plague me
and make out that I could do one good book but never
any more. She is the sort of person who if she had known
Shakespeare would have said to him, when he wrote Henry
ike IVth :

" Ah, Mr. Shakespeare, why don't you write us another
Titus Andronicus ? Now that was a sweet play, that
was."

And when he had done Antony and Cleopatra she would
have told him that her favourite plays were the three parts
of King Henry VI.

of a Homo Unius Libri

i57

Compensation

If I die prematurely, at any rate I shall be saved from
being bored by my own success.

Hudibras and Erewhon

I was completing the purchase of some small houses at
Lewisham and had to sign my name. The vendor, merely
seeing the name and knowing none of my books, said to me,
rather rudely, but without meaning any mischief :

" Have you written any books like Hudibras ? "

I said promptly : " Certainly ; Erewhon is quite as good a
book as Hudibras."

This was coming it too strong for him, so he thought I
had not heard and repeated his question. I said again as
before, and he shut up. I sent him a copy of Erewhon im-
mediately after w r e had completed. It was rather tall talk
on my part, I admit, but he should not have challenged
me unprovoked.

Life and Habit and Myself

At the Century Club I was talking with a man who asked
me why I did not publish the substance of what I had been
saying. I believed he knew me and said :

" Well, you know, there's Life and Habit.' 1

He did not seem to rise at all, so I asked him if he had seen
the book.

" Seen it ? " he answered. " Why, I should think every
one has seen Life and Habit: but what's that got to do with
it ? "

I said it had taken me so much time lately that I had
had none to spare for anything else. Again he did not seem
to see the force of the remark and a friend, who was close by,
said :

" You know, Butler wrote Life and Habit"
He would not believe it, and it was only after repeated
assurance that he accepted it. It was plain he thought
a great deal of Life and Habit and had idealised its author,

158 The Position

whom he was disappointed to find so very commonplace a
person. Exactly the same thing happened to me with Ere-
whon. I was glad to find that Life and Habit had made so
deep an impression at any rate upon one person.

A Disappointing Person

I suspect I am rather a disappointing person, for every
now and then there is a fuss and I am to meet some one who
would very much like to make my acquaintance, or some
one writes me a letter and says he has long admired my
books, and may he, etc. ? Of course I say " Yes," but ex-
perience has taught me that it always ends in turning some
one who w r as more or less inclined to run me into one who
considers he has a grievance against me for not being a very
different kind of person from what I am. These people
however (and this happens on an average once or twice a
year) do not come solely to see me, they generally tell me
all about themselves and the impression is left upon me
that they have really come in order to be praised. I am as
civil to them as I know how to be but enthusiastic I never
am, for they have never any of them been nice people, and
it is my want of enthusiasm for themselves as much as any-
thing else which disappoints them. They seldom come
again. Mr. Alfred Tylor was the only acquaintance I have
ever made through being sent for to be looked at, or letting
some one come to look at me, who turned out a valuable ally ;
but then he sent for me through mutual friends in the usual
way.

Entertaining Angels

I doubt whether any angel would find me very entertaining.
As for myself, if ever I do entertain one it will have to be
unawares. When people entertain others without an intro-
duction they generally turn out more like devils than angels.

Myself and My Books

The balance against them is now over £350. How com-
pletely they must have been squashed unless I had had a
little money of my own. Is it not likely that many a better

of a Homo Unius Libri 159

writer than I am is squashed through want of money ?
Whatever I do I must not die poor ; these examples of ill-
requited labour are immoral, they discourage the effort
of those who could and would do good things if they did
not know that it would ruin themselves and their families ;
moreover, they set people on to pamper a dozen fools for
each neglected man of merit, out of compunction. Genius,
they say, always wears an invisible cloak ; these men wear
invisible cloaks — therefore they are geniuses ; and it flatters
them to think that they can see more than their neighbours.
The neglect of one such man as the author of Hudibras
is compensated for by the petting of a dozen others who
would be the first to jump upon the author of Hudibras
if he were to come back to life.

Heaven forbid that I should compare myself to the author
of Hudibras, but still, if my books succeed after my death —
which they may or may not, I know nothing about it — any
way, if they do succeed, let it be understood that they failed
during my life for a few very obvious reasons of which I
was quite aware, for the effect of which I was prepared before
I wrote my books, and which on consideration I found in-
sufficient to deter me. I attacked people who were at once
unscrupulous and powerful, and I made no alliances. I did
this because I did not want to be bored and have my time
wasted and my pleasures curtailed. I had money enough
to live on, and preferred addressing myself to posterity
rather than to any except a very few of my own contem-
poraries. Those few I have always kept well in mind. I
think of them continually when in doubt about any passage,
but beyond those few I will not go. Posterity will give a
man a fair hearing ; his own times will not do so if he is
attacking vested interests, and I have attacked two powerful
sets of vested interests at once. [The Church and Science.]
What is the good of addressing people who will not listen ?
I have addressed the next generation and have therefore
said many things which want time before they become
palatable. Any man who wishes his work to stand will
sacrifice a good deal of his immediate audience for the sake
of being attractive to a much larger number of people later
on. He cannot gain this later audience unless he has been fear-
less and thorough-going, and if he is this he is sure to have to

i6o

The Position

tread on the corns of a great many of those who live at the same
time with him, however little he may wish to do so. He must
not expect these people to help him on, nor wonder if, for
a time, they succeed in snuffing him out. It is part of the
swim that it should be so. Only, as one who believes himself
to have practised what he preaches, let me assure any one
who has money of his own that to write fearlessly for posterity
and not get paid for it is much better fun than I can imagine
its being to write like, we will say, George Eliot and make
a lot of money by it. [1883.]

Dragons

People say that there are neither dragons to be killed
nor distressed maidens to be rescued nowadays. I do not
know, but I think I have dropped across one or two, nor
do I feel sure whether the most mortal wounds have been
inflicted by the dragons or by myself.

Trying to Know

There are some things which it is madness not to try to
know but which it is almost as much madness to try to know.
Sometimes publishers, hoping to buy the Holy Ghost with
a price, fee a man to read for them and advise them. This
is but as the vain tossing of insomnia. God will not have any
human being know what will sell, nor when any one is going
to die, nor anything about the ultimate, or even the deeper,
springs of growth and action, nor yet such* a little thing as
whether it is going to rain to-morrow. I do not say that the
impossibility of being certain about these and similar matters
was designed, but it is as complete as though it had been not
only designed but designed exceedingly well.

Squaring Accounts

We owe past generations not only for the master discoveries
of music, science, literature and art — few of which brought
profit to those to whom they were revealed — but also for
our organism itself which is an inheritance gathered and

of a Homo Unius Libri 161

garnered by those who have gone before us. What money
have we paid not for Handel and Shakespeare only but for
our eyes and ears ?

And so with regard to our contemporaries. ' A man is
sometimes tempted to exclaim that he does not fare well
at the hands of his own generation ; that, although he may
play pretty assiduously, he is received with more hisses
than applause ; that the public is hard to please, slow to
praise, and bent on driving as hard a bargain as it can.
This, however, is only what he should expect. No sensible
man will suppose himself to be of so much importance that
his contemporaries should be at much pains to get at the
truth concerning him. As for my own position, if I say the
things I want to say without troubling myself about the
public, why should I grumble at the public for not troubling
about me ? Besides, not being paid myself, I can in better
conscience use the works of others, as I daily do, without
paying for them and without being at the trouble of praising
or thanking them more than I have a mind to. And, after
all, how can I say I am not paid ? In addition to all that
I inherit from past generations I receive from my own every-
thing that makes life worth living — London, with its infinite
sources of pleasure and amusement, good theatres, concerts,
picture galleries, the British Museum Reading-Room, news-
papers, a comfortable dwelling, railways and, above all,
the society of the friends I value.

Charles Darwin on what Sells a Book

I remember when I was at Down we were talking of what
it is that sells a book. Mr. Darwin said he did not believe it
was reviews or advertisements, but simply " being talked
about " that sold a book.

I believe he is quite right here, but surely a good flaming
review helps to get a book talked about. I have often in-
quired at my publishers' after a review and I never found one
that made any perceptible increase or decrease of sale, and
the same with advertisements. I think, however, that the
review of Erewhon in the Spectator did sell a few copies of
Erewhon, but then it was such a very strong one and the
anonymousness of the book stimulated curiosity. A percep-

M

l62

The Position

tion of the value of a review, whether friendly or hostile, is
as old as St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians.*

Hoodwinking the Public

Sincerity or honesty is a low and very rudimentary form
of virtue that is only to be found to any considerable extent
among the protozoa. Compare, for example, the integrity,
sincerity and absolute refusal either to deceive or be deceived
that exists in the germ-cells of any individual, with the in-
stinctive aptitude for lying that is to be observed in the full-
grown man. The full-grown man is compacted of lies and
shams which are to him as the breath of his nostrils. Whereas
the germ-cells will not be humbugged ; they will tell the
truth as near as they can. They know their ancestors meant
well and will tend to become even more sincere themselves.

Thus, if a painter has not tried hard to paint well and has
tried hard to hoodwink the public, his offspring is not likely
to show hereditary aptitude for painting, but. is likely to
have an improved power of hoodwinking the public. So it
is with music, literature, science or anything else. The only
thing the public can do against this is to try hard to develop
a hereditary power of not being hoodwinked. From the small
success it has met with hitherto we may think that the effort
on its part can have been neither severe nor long sustained.
Indeed, all ages seem to have held that " the pleasure is as
great of being cheated as to cheat."

The Public Ear

Those who have squatted upon it may be trusted to keep
off other squatters if they can. The public ear is like the land
which looks infinite but is all parcelled out into fields and

* Philippians i. 15-18: —

Some indeed preach. Christ even of envy and strife ; and some also
of good will :

The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to
add affliction to my bonds :

But the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the
gospeL

What then ? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence,
or in truth, Christ is preached ; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will
rejoice*

of a Homo Unius Libri 163

private ownerships — barring, of course, highways and com-
mons. So the universe, which looks so big, may be supposed
as really all parcelled out among the stars that stud it.

Or the public ear is like a common ; there is not much to
be got off it, but that little is for the most part grazed down
by geese and donkeys.

Those who wish to gain the public ear should bear in mind
that people do not generally want to be made less foolish or
less wicked. What they want is to be told that they are not
foolish and not wicked. Now it is only a fool or a liar or
both who can tell them this ; the masses therefore cannot be
expected to like any but fools or liars or both. So when a
lady gets photographed, what she wants is not to be made
beautiful but to be told that she is beautiful.

Secular Thinking

The ages do their thinking much as the individual does.
When considering a difficult question, we think alternately
for several seconds together of - details, even the minutest
seeming important, and then of broad general principles,
whereupon even large details become unimportant ; again we
have bouts during which rules, logic and technicalities en-
gross us, followed by others in which the unwritten and un-
writable common sense of grace defies and over-rides the law..
That is to say, we have our inductive fits and our deductive
fits, our arrangements according to the letter and according
to the spirit, our conclusions drawn from logic secundum
artem and from absurdity and the character of the arguer.
This heterogeneous mass of considerations forms the mental
pabulum with which we feed our minds. How that pabulum
becomes amalgamated, reduced to uniformity and turned into
the growth of complete opinion we can no more tell than we
can say when, how and where food becomes flesh and blood.
All we can say is that the miracle, stupendous as it is and
involving the stultification of every intelligible principle on
which thought and action are based, is nevertheless worked a
thousand times an hour by every one of us.

The formation of public opinion is as mysterious as that of
individual, but, so far as we can form any opinion about that
which forms our opinions in such large measure, the pro-

164

The Position

cesses appear to resemble one another much as rain drops
resemble one another. There is essential agreement in
spite of essential difference. So that here, as everywhere
else, we no sooner scratch the soil than we come upon
the granite of contradiction in terms and can scratch no
further.

As for ourselves, we are passing through an inductive,
technical, speculative period and have gone such lengths in
this direction that a- reaction, during which we shall pass to
the other extreme, may be confidently predicted.

The Art of Propagating Opinion

He who would propagate an opinion must begin by making
sure of his ground and holding it firmly. There is as little
use in trying to breed from weak opinion as from other weak
stock, animal or vegetable.

The more securely a man holds an opinion, the more
temperate he can afford to be, and the more temperate he is,
the more weight he will carry with those who are in the long
run weightiest. Ideas and opinions, like living organisms,
have a normal rate of growth which cannot be either checked
or forced beyond a certain point. They can be held in check
more safely than they can be hurried. They can also be
killed ; and one of the surest ways to kill them is to try to
hurry them.

The more unpopular an opinion is, the more necessary is
it that the holder should be somewhat punctilious in his
observance of conventionalities generally, and that, if
possible, he should get the reputation of being well-to-do in
the world.

Arguments are not so good as assertion. Arguments are
like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not
carry about with him. Indirect assertion, leaving the hearer
to point the inference, is, as a rule, to be preferred. The
one great argument with most people is that another should
think this or that. The reasons of the belief are details and,
in nine cases out of ten, best omitted as confusing and
weakening the general impression.

Many, if not most, good ideas die young — mainly from
neglect on the part of the parents, but sometimes from over-

of a Homo Unius Libri 165

fondness. Once well started, an opinion had better be left
to shift for itself.

Insist as far as possible on the insignificance of the points
of difference as compared with the resemblances to opinions
generally accepted.

Gladstone as a Financier

I said to my tobacconist that Gladstone was not a financier
because he bought a lot of china at high prices and it fetched
very little when it was sold at Christie's.

" Did he give high prices ? " said the tobacconist.

" Enormous prices," said I emphatically.

Now, to tell the truth, I did not know whether Mr. Glad-
stone had ever bought the china at all, much less what he
gave for it, if he did ; he may have had it all left him for
aught I knew. But I was going to appeal to my tobacconist
by arguments that he could understand, and I could see he
was much impressed.

Argument

Argument is generally waste of time and trouble. It is
better to present one's opinion and leave it to stick or no
as it may happen. If sound, it will probably in the end
stick, and the sticking is the main thing.

Humour

What a frightful thing it would be if true humour were
more common or, rather, more easy to see, for it is more
common than those are who can see it. It would block the
way of everything. Perhaps this is what people rather feel.
It would be like Music in the Ode for St. Cecilia* s Day, it
would " untune the sky."

I do not know quite what is meant by untuning the sky
and, if I did, I cannot think that there is anything to be
particularly gained by having the sky untuned ; still, if it
has got to be untuned at all, I am sure music is the only
thing that can untune it. Rapson, however, whom I used
to see in the coin room at the British Museum, told me it

i66

The Position

should be " entune the sky " and it sounds as though he
were right.

Myself and " Unconscious Humour "

The phrase " unconscious humour " is the one contribu-
tion I have made to the current literature of the day. I am
continually seeing unconscious humour (without quotation
marks) alluded to in Times articles and other like places, but
I never remember to have come across it as a synonym for
dullness till I wrote Life and Habit.

My Humour

The thing to say about me just now is that my humour is
forced. This began to reach me in connection with my
article " Quis Desiderio . . . ? " [Universal Review, 1888] and
is now, [1889] I understand, pretty generally perceived even
by those who had not found it out for themselves.

I am not aware of forcing myself to say anything which
has not amused me, which is not apposite and which I do not
believe will amuse a neutral reader, but I may very well do
so without knowing it. As for my humour, I am like my
father and grandfather, both of whom liked a good thing
heartily enough if it was told them, but I do not often say a
good thing myself. Very likely my humour, what little there
is of it, is forced enough. I do not care so long as it amuses
me and, such as it is, I shall vent it in my own way and at
my own time.

Myself and My Publishers

I see my publishers are bringing out a new magazine with
all the usual contributors. Of course they don't ask me to
write and this shows that they do not think my name would
help their magazine. This, I imagine, means that Andrew
Lang has told them that my humour is forced. I should not
myself say that Andrew Lang's humour would lose by a
little forcing.

I have seen enough of my publishers to know that they
have no ideas of their own about literature save what they

of a Homo Unius Libri 167

can clutch at as believing it to be a straight tip from, a business
point of view. Heaven forbid that I should blame them for
doing exactly what I should do myself in their place, but,
things being as they are, they are no use to me. They have
no confidence in me and they must have this or they will do
nothing for me beyond keeping my books on their shelves.

Perhaps it is better that I should not have a chance of be-
coming a hack-writer, for I should grasp it at once if it were
offered me.

XI

Cash and Credit

The Unseen World

I believe there is an unseen world about which we know
nothing as firmly as any one can believe it. I see things
coming up from it into the visible world and going down
again from the seen world to the unseen. But my unseen
world is to be bona fide unseen and, in so far as I say I know
anything about it, I stultify myself. It should no more be
described than God should be represented in painting or
sculpture. It is as the other side of the moon ; we know it
must be there but we know also that, in the nature of things,
we can never see it. Sometimes, some trifle of it may sway
into sight and out again, but it is so little that it is not worth
counting as having been seen.

The Kingdom of Heaven

The world admits that there is another world, that there
is a kingdom, veritable and worth having, which, neverthe-
less, is invisible and has nothing to do with any kingdom
such as we now see. It agrees that the wisdom of this other
kingdom is foolishness here on earth, while the wisdom of
the world is foolishness in the Kingdom of Heaven. In our
hearts we know that the Kingdom of Heaven is the higher of
the two and the better worth living and dying for, and that,
if it is to be won, it must be sought steadfastly and in single-
ness of heart by those who put all else on one side and, shrink-
ing from no sacrifice, are ready to face shame, poverty and
torture here rather than abandon the hope of the prize of

168

Cash and Credit

i6g

their high calling. Nobody who doubts any of this is worth
talking with.

The question is, where is this Heavenly Kingdom, and
what way are we to take to find it ? Happily the answer is
easy, for we are not likely to go wrong if in all simplicity,
humility and good faith we heartily desire to find it and
follow the dictates of ordinary common-sense.

The Philosopher

He should have made many mistakes and been saved often
by the skin of his teeth, for the skin of one's teeth is the
most teaching thing about one. He should have been, or at
any rate believed himself, a great fool and a great criminal.
He should have cut himself adrift from society, and yet not
be without society. He should have given up all, even
Christ himself, for Christ's sake. He should be above fear or
love or hate, and yet know them extremely well. He should
have lost all save a small competence and know what a
vantage ground it is to be an outcast. Destruction and Death
say they have heard the fame of Wisdom with their ears, and
the philosopher must have been close up to these if he too
would hear it.

The Artist and the Shopkeeper

Most artists, whether in religion, music, literature, paint-
ing, or what not, are shopkeepers in disguise. They hide
their shop as much as they can, and keep pretending that
it does not exist, but they are essentially shopkeepers and
nothing else. Why do I try to sell my books and feel regret
at never seeing them pay their expenses if I am not a shop-
keeper ? Of course I am, only I keep a bad shop — a shop
that does not pay.

In like manner, the professed shopkeeper has generally a
taint of the artist somewhere about him which he tries to
conceal as much as the professed artist tries to conceal his
shopkeeping.

The business man and the artist are like matter and mind.
We can never get either pure and without some alloy of the
other.

170

Cash and Credit

Art and Trade

People confound literature and article-dealing because
the plant in both cases is similar, but no two things can be
more distinct. Neither the question of money nor that of
friend or foe can enter into literature proper. Here, right
feeling — or good taste, if this expression be preferred — is
alone considered. If a bona fide writer thinks a thing wants
saying, he will say it as tersely, clearly and elegantly as he
can. The question whether it will do him personally good or
harm, or how it will affect this or that friend, never enters
his head, or, if it does, it is instantly ordered out again. The
only personal gratifications allowed him (apart, of course, from
such as are conceded to every one, writer or no) are those
of keeping his good name spotless among those whose opinion
is alone worth having and of maintaining the highest tradi-
tions of a noble calling. If a man lives in fear and trembling
lest he should fail in these respects, if he finds these considera-
tions alone weigh with him, if he never writes without think-
ing how he shall best serve good causes and damage bad
ones, then he is a genuine man of letters. If in addition to
this he succeeds in making his manner attractive, he will
become a classic. He knows this. He knows, although the
Greeks in their mythology forgot to say so, that Conceit was
saved to mankind as well as Hope when Pandora clapped
the lid on to her box.

With the article-dealer, on the other hand, money is, and
ought to be, the first consideration. Literature is an art ;
article-writing, when a man is paid for it, is a trade and none
the worse for that ; but pot-boilers are one thing and genuine
pictures are another. People have indeed been paid for
some of the most genuine pictures ever painted, and so with
music, and so with literature itself — hard-and-fast lines ever
cut the fingers of those who draw them — but, as a general
rule, most lasting art has been poorly paid, so far as money
goes, till the artist was near the end of his time, and, whether
money passed or no, we may be sure that it was not thought
of. Such work is done as a bird sings — for the love of the
thing ; it is persevered in as long as body and soul can be
kept together, whether there be pay or no, and perhaps better
if there be no pay.

Cash and Credit 171

Nevertheless, though art disregards money and trade
disregards art, the artist may stand not a little trade-alloy
and be even toughened by it, and the tradesmen may be
more than half an artist. Art is in the world but not of it ;
it lives in a kingdom of its own, governed by laws that none
but artists can understand. This, at least, is the ideal to-
wards which an artist tends, though we all very well know
we none of us reach it. With the trade it is exactly the
reverse ; this world is, and ought to be, everything, and the
invisible world is as little to the trade as this visible world is
to the artist.

When I say the artist tends towards such a world, I mean
not that he tends consciously and reasoningly but that his
instinct to take this direction will be too strong to let him
take any other. He is incapable of reasoning on the subject ;
if he could reason he would be lost qua artist ; for, by every
test that reason can apply, those who sell themselves for a
price are in the right. The artist is guided by a faith that
for him transcends all reason. Granted that this faith has
been in great measure founded on reason, that it has grown
up along with reason, that if it lose touch with reason it is no
longer faith but madness ; granted, again, that reason is in
great measure founded on faith, that it has grown up along
with faith, that if it lose touch with faith it is no longer
reason but mechanism ; granted, therefore, that faith grows
with reason as will with power, as demand with supply, as
mind with body, each stimulating and augmenting the other
until an invisible, minute nucleus attains colossal growth —
nevertheless the difference between the man of the world
and the man who lives by faith is that the first is drawn
towards the one and the second towards the other of two
principles which, so far as we can see, are co-extensive and
co-equal in importance.

Money

It is curious that money, which is the most valuable thing
in life, exceptis excifiiendis, should be the most fatal corrupter
of music, literature, painting and all the arts. As soon as
any art is pursued with a view to money, then farewell, in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good

Cash and Credit

work. If a man has money at his back, he may touch these
things and do "Something which will live a long while, and he
may be very happy in doing it ; if he has no money, he may
do good work, but the chances are he will be killed in doing
it and for having done it ; or he may make himself happy
by doing bad work and getting money out of it, and there is
no great harm in this, provided he knows his work is done in
this spirit and rates it for its commercial value only. Still,
as a rule, a man should not touch any of the arts as a creator
unless he has a discreta posizionina behind him.

Modern Simony

It is not the dealing in livings but the thinking they can
buy the Holy Ghost for money which vulgar rich people
indulge in when they dabble in literature, music and painting.

Nevertheless, on reflection it must be admitted that the
Holy Ghost is very hard to come by without money. For the
Holy Ghost is only another term for the Fear of the Lord,
which is Wisdom. And though Wisdom cannot be gotten for
gold, still less can it be gotten without it. Gold, or the value
that is equivalent to gold, lies at the root of Wisdom, and
enters so largely into the very essence of the Holy Ghost
that " No gold, no Holy Ghost " may pass as an axiom. This
is perhaps why it is not easy to buy Wisdom by whatever
name it be called — I mean, because it is almost impossible
to sell it. It is a very unmarketable commodity, as those
who have received it truly know to their own great bane
and boon.

My Grandfather and Myself

My grandfather worked very hard all his life, and was
making money all the time until he became a bishop. I have
worked very hard all my life, but have never been able to
earn money. As usefulness is generally counted, no one can
be more useless. This I believe to be largely due to the
public-school and university teaching through which my
grandfather made his money. Yes, but then if he is largely
responsible for that which has made me useless, has he not
also left me the hardly- won money which makes my useless-

Cash and Credit

i73

ness sufficiently agreeable to myself ? And would not the
poor old gentleman gladly change lots with me, if he could ?
I do not know ; but I should be sorry to change lots with
him or with any one else, so I need not grumble. I said in
Luck or Cunning? that the only way (at least I think I
said so) in which a teacher can thoroughly imbue an un-
willing learner with his own opinions is for the teacher to eat
the pupil up and thus assimilate him — if he can, for it is
possible that the pupil may continue to disagree with the
teacher. And as a matter of fact, school-masters do live
upon their pupils, and I, as my grandfather's grandson,
continue to batten upon old pupil.

Art and Usefulness

Tedder, the Librarian of the Athenaeum, said to me when
I told him (I have only seen him twice) what poor success my
books had met with :

" Yes, but you have made the great mistake of being
useful."

This, for the moment, displeased me, for I know that I
have always tried to make my work useful and should not
care about doing it at all unless I believed it to subserve use
more or less directly. Yet when I look at those works which
we all hold to be the crowning glories of the world as, for
example, the Iliad, the Odyssey, Hamlet, the Messiah,
Rembrandt's portraits, or Holbein's, or Giovanni Bellini's,
the connection between them and use is, to say the least of
it, far from obvious. Music, indeed, can hardly be tortured
into being useful at all, unless to drown the cries of the
wounded in battle, or to enable people to talk more freely at
evening parties. The uses, again, of painting in its highest
forms are very doubtful — I mean in any material sense ; in
its lower forms, when it becomes more diagrammatic, it is
materially useful. Literature may be useful from its lowest
forms to nearly its highest, but the highest cannot be put in
harness to any but spiritual uses ; and the fact remains that
the " Hallelujah Chorus," the speech of Hamlet to the players,
Bellini's "Doge" have their only uses in a spiritual world where-
to the word 11 uses " is as alien as bodily flesh is to a choir
of angels. As it is fatal to the highest art that it should have

174

Cash and Credit

been done for money, so it seems hardly less fatal that it
should be done with a view to those uses that tend towards
money.

And yet, was not the Iliad written mainly with a view to
money ? Did not Shakespeare make money by his plays,
Handel by his music, and the noblest painters by their art ?
True ; but in all these cases, I take it, love of fame and that
most potent and, at the same time, unpractical form of it,
the lust after fame beyond the grave, was the mainspring of
the action, the money being but a concomitant accident.
Money is like the wind that bloweth whithersoever it listeth,
sometimes it chooses to attach itself to high feats of litera-
ture and art and music, but more commonly it prefers lower
company. . . .

I can continue this note no further, for there is no end to
it. Briefly, the world resolves itself into two great classes —
those who hold that honour after death is better worth
having than any honour a man can get and know anything
about, and those who doubt this ; to my mind, those who
hold it, and hold it firmly, are the only people worth thinking
about. They will also hold that, important as the physical
world obviously is, the spiritual world, of which we know
little beyond its bare existence, is more important still.

Genius
i

Genius is akin both to madness and inspiration and, as
eveiy one is both more or less inspired and more or less mad,
every one has more or less genius. When, therefore, we
speak of genius we do not mean an absolute thing which
some men have and others have not, but a small scale-
turning overweight of a something which we all have but
which we cannot either define or apprehend — the quantum
which we all have being allowed to go without saying.

This small excess weight has been defined as a supreme
capacity for taking trouble, but he who thus denned it can
hardly claim genius in respect of his own definition — his
capacity for taking trouble does not seem to have been
abnormal. It might be more fitly described as a supreme
capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds

Cash and Credit

i75

and keeping them therein so long as the genius remains.
People who are credited with genius have, indeed, been
sometimes very painstaking, but they would often show
more signs of genius if they had taken less. " You have
taken too much trouble with your opera/' said Handel to
Gluck. It is not likely that the " Hailstone Chorus " or Mrs.
Quickly cost their creators much pains, indeed, we commonly
feel the ease with which a difficult feat has been performed
to be a more distinctive mark of genius than the fact that the
performer took great pains before he could achieve it. Pains
can serve genius, or even mar it, but they cannot make it.

We can rarely, however, say what pains have or have not
been taken in any particular case, for, over and above the
spent pains of a man's early efforts, the force of which may
carry him far beyond all trace of themselves, there are the
still more remote and invisible ancestral pains, repeated
we know not how often or in what fortunate correlation
with pains taken in some other and unseen direction. This
points to the conclusion that, though it is wrong to suppose
the essence of genius to lie in a capacity for taking pains,
it is right to hold that it must have been rooted in pains
and that it cannot have grown up without them.

Genius, again, might, perhaps almost as well, be defined
as a supreme capacity for saving other people from having
to take pains, if the highest flights of genius did not seem
to know nothing about pains one way or the other. What
trouble can Hamlet or the Iliad save to any one ? Genius
can, and does, save it sometimes ; the genius of Newton may
have saved a good deal of trouble one way or another, but it
has probably engendered as much new as it has saved old.

This, however, is all a matter of chance, for genius never
seems to care whether it makes the burden or bears it. The
only certain thing is that there will be a burden, for the
Holy Ghost has ever tended towards a breach of the peace,
and the New Jerusalem, when it comes, will probably be
found so far to resemble the old as to stone its prophets
freely. The world thy world is a jealous world, and thou
shalt have none other worlds but it. Genius points to change,
and change is a hankering after another world, so the old
world suspects it. Genius disturbs order, it unsettles mores
and hence it is immoral. On a small scale it is intolerable,

176

Cash and Credit

but genius will have no small scales ; it is even more immoral
for a man to be too far in front than to lag too far behind.
The only absolute morality is absolute stagnation, but this
is unpractical, so a peck of change is permitted to every one,
but it must be a peck only, whereas genius would have ever
so many sacks full. There is a myth among some Eastern
nation that at the birth of Genius an unkind fairy marred
all the good gifts of the other fairies by depriving it of the
power of knowing where to stop.

Nor does genius care more about money than about trouble.
It is no respecter of time, trouble, money or persons, the
four things round which human affairs turn most persistently.
It will not go a hair's breadth from its way either to embrace
fortune or to avoid her. It is, like Love, " too young to
know the worth of gold." * It knows, indeed, both love and
hate, but not as we know them, for it will fly for help to
its bitterest foe, or attack its dearest friend in the interests
of the art it serves.

Yet this genius, which so despises the world, is the only
thing of which the world is permanently enamoured, and the
more it flouts the world, the more the world worships it,
when it has once well killed it in the flesh. Who can under-
stand this eternal crossing in love and contradiction in terms
which warps the woof of actions and things from the atom
to the universe ? The more a man despises time, trouble,
money, persons, place and everything on which the world
insists as most essential to salvation, the more pious will
this same world hold him to have been. What a fund of
universal unconscious scepticism must underlie the world's
opinions ! For we are all alike in our worship of genius that
has passed through the fire. Nor can this universal instinctive
consent be explained otherwise than as the welling up of a
spring whose sources lie deep in the conviction that great
as this world is, it masks a greater wherein its wisdom is
folly and which we know as blind men know where the sun
is shining, certainly, but not distinctly.

This should in itself be enough to prove that such a world
exists, but there is still another proof in the fact that so many
come among us showing instinctive and ineradicable famili-
arity with a state of things which has no counterpart here,
* Narcissus, " Should Riches mate with Love,"

Cash and Credit

177

and cannot, therefore, have been acquired here. From such
a world we come, every one of us, but some seem to have a
more living recollection of it than others. Perfect recollection
of it no man can have, for to put on flesh is to have all one's
other memories jarred beyond power of conscious recognition
And genius must put on flesh, for it is only by the hook and
crook of taint and flesh that tainted beings like ourselves
can apprehend it, only in and through flesh can it be made
manifest to us at all. The flesh and the shop will return
no matter with how many pitchforks we expel them, for we
cannot conceivably expel them thoroughly ; therefore it is
better not to be too hard upon them. And yet this same
flesh cloaks genius at the very time that it reveals it. It
seems as though the flesh must have been on and must have
gone clean off before genius can be discerned, and also that
we must stand a long way from it, for the world grows more
and more myopic as it grows older. And this brings another
trouble, for by the time the flesh has gone off it enough, and it
is far enough away for us to see it without glasses, the chances
are we shall have forgotten its very existence and lose the
wish to see at the very moment of becoming able to do so.
Hence there appears to be no remedy for the oft-repeated
complaint that the world knows nothing of its greatest men.
How can it be expected to do so ? And how can its greatest
men be expected to know more than a very little of the world?
At any rate, they .seldom do, and it is just because they cannot
and do not that, if they ever happen to be found out at all,
they are recognised as the greatest and the world weeps and
wrings its hands that it cannot know more about them.

Lastly, if genius cannot be bought with money, still less
can it sell what it produces. The only price that can be
paid for genius is suffering, and this is the only wages it can
receive. The only work that has any considerable permanence
is written, more or less consciously, in the blood of the writer,
or in that of his or her forefathers. Genius is like money,
or, again, like crime, every one has a little, if it be only a half-
penny, and he can beg or steal this much if he has not got it ;
but those who have little are rarely very fond of millionaires.
People generally like and understand best those who are
of much about the same social standing and money status
as their own ; and so it is for the most part as between those

N

i 7 8

Cash and Credit

who have only the average amount of genius and the Homers,
Shakespeares and Handels of the race.

And yet, so paradoxical is everything connected with
genius, that it almost seems as though the nearer people
stood to one another in respect either of money or genius,
the more jealous they become of one another. I have read
somewhere that Thackeray was one day flattening his nose
against a grocer's window and saw two bags of sugar, one
marked tenpence halfpenny and the other elevenpence
(for sugar has come down since Thackeray's time). As he
left the window he was heard to say, " How they must hate
one another ! " So it is in the animal and vegetable worlds.
The war of extermination is generally fiercest between the
most nearly allied species, for these stand most in one another's
light. So here again the same old paradox and contradiction
in terms meets us, like a stone wall, in the fact that we love
best those who are in the main like ourselves, but when they
get too like, we hate them, and, at the same time, we hate
most those who are unlike ourselves, but if they become un-
like enough, we may often be very fond of them.

Genius must make those that have it think apart, and to
think apart is to take one's view of things instead of being,
like Poins, a blessed fellow to think as every man thinks.
A man who thinks for himself knows what others do not,
but does not know what others know. Hence the belli causa,
for he cannot serve two masters, the God of his own inward
light and the Mammon of common sense, at one and the same
time. How can a man think apart and not apart ? But if
he is a genius this is the riddle he must solve. The uncommon
sense of genius and the common sense of the rest of the world
are thus as husband and wife to one another ; they are always
quarrelling, and common sense, who must be taken to be
the husband, always fancies himself the master — nevertheless
genius is generally admitted to be the better half.

He who would know more of genius must turn to what
he can find in the poets, or to whatever other sources he may
discover, for I can help him no further.

ii

The destruction of great works of literature and art is
as necessary for the continued development of either one or

Cash and Credit

179

the other as death is for that of organic life. We fight
against it as long as we can, and often stave it off success-
fully both for ourselves and others, but there is nothing
so great — not Homer, Shakespeare, Handel, Rembrandt,
Giovanni Bellini, De Hooghe, Velasquez and the goodly
company of other great men for whose lives we would gladly
give our own — but it has got to go sooner or later and leave
no visible traces, though the invisible ones endure from ever-
lasting to everlasting. It is idle to regret this for ourselves
•or others, our effort should tend towards enjoying and being
enjoyed as highly and for as long time as we can, and then
chancing the rest.

iii

Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration
at the time. True inspiration always steals on a person ; its
importance not being fully recognised for some time. So
men of genius always escape their own immediate belongings,
and indeed generally their own age.

iv

Dullness is so much stronger than genius because there is
so much more of it, and it is better organised and more
naturally cohesive inter se. So the arctic volcano can do
nothing against arctic ice.

v

America will have her geniuses, as every other country
has, in fact she has already had one in Walt Whitman, but
I do not think America is a good place in which to be a genius.
A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if
he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place
in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of
any kind.

Great Things

All men can do great things, if they know what great
things are. So hard is this last that even where it exists the
knowledge is as much unknown as known to them that have it
and is more a leaning upon the Lord than a willing of one
that willeth. And yet all the leaning on the Lord in Christen-
dom fails if there be not a will of him that willeth to back it
up. God and the man are powerless without one another.

i8o

Cash and Credit

Genius and Providence

Among all the evidences for the existence of an over-
ruling Providence that I can discover, I see none more con-
vincing than the elaborate and for the most part effectual
provision that has been made for the suppression of genius.
The more I see of the world, the more necessary I see it to
be that by far the greater part of what is written or done
should be of so fleeting a character as to take itself away
quickly. That is the advantage in the fact that so much
of our literature is journalism.

Schools and colleges are not intended to foster genius
and to bring it out. Genius is a nuisance, and it is the duty
of schools and colleges to abate it by setting genius-traps in
its way. They are as the artificial obstructions in a hurdle
race — tests of skill and endurance, but in themselves useless.
Still, so necessary is it that genius and originality should
be abated that, did not academies exist, we should have had
to invent them.

The Art of Covery

This is as important and interesting as Dis-covery. Surely
the glory of finally getting rid of and burying a long and
troublesome matter should be as great as that of making
an important discovery. The trouble is that the coverer is like
Samson who perished in the wreck of what he had destroyed ;
if he gets rid of a thing effectually he gets rid of himself too.

Wanted

We want a Society for the Suppression of Erudite Research
and the Decent Burial of the Past. The ghosts of the dead
past want quite as much laying as raising.

Ephemeral and Permanent Success

The supposition that the world is ever in league to put
a man down is childish. Hardly less childish is it for an
author to lay the blame on reviewers. A good sturdy author

Cash and Credit

is a match for a hundred reviewers. He, I grant, knows
nothing of either literature or science who does not know
that a mot d'ordre given by a few wire-pullers can, for a time,
make or mar any man's success. People neither know what
it is they like nor do they want to find out, all they care
about is the being supposed to derive their likings from the
best West-end magazines, so they look to the shop with
the largest plate-glass windows and take what the shop-
man gives them. But no amount of plate-glass can carry
off more than a certain amount of false pretences, and there
is no mot d'ordre that can keep a man permanently down if
he is as intent on winning lasting good name as I have been.
If I had played for immediate popularity I think I could
have won it. Having played for lasting credit I doubt not
that it will in the end be given me. A man should not be
held to be ill-used for not getting what he has not played
for. I am not saying that it is better or more honourable
to play for lasting than for immediate success. I know which
I myself find pleasanter, but that has nothing to do with it.

It is a nice question whether the light or the heavy armed
soldier of literature and art is the more useful. I joined
the plodders and have aimed at permanent good name rather
than brilliancy. I have no doubt I did this because instinct
told me (for I never thought about it) that this would be
the easier and less thorny path. I have more of perseverance
than of those, perhaps, even more valuable gifts — facility
and readiness of resource. I hate being hurried. Moreover
I am too fond of independence to get on with the leaders
of literature and science. Independence is essential for
permanent but fatal to immediate success. Besides, luck
enters much more into ephemeral than into permanent
success and I have always distrusted luck. Those who
play a waiting game have matters more in their own hands,
time gives them double chances ; whereas if success does
not come at once to the ephemerid he misses it altogether.

I know that the ordinary reviewer who either snarls at
my work or misrepresents it or ignores it or, again, who pats
it sub-contemptuously on the back is as honourably and
usefully employed as . I am. In the kingdom of literature
(as I have just been saying in the Universal Review about
Science) there are many mansions and what is intolerable

182

Cash and Credit

in one is common form in another. It is a case of the division
of labour and a man will gravitate towards one class of
workers or another according as he is built. There is neither
higher nor lower about it.

I should like to put it on record that I understand it and
am not inclined to regret the arrangements that have made
me possible.

My Birthright

I had to steal my own birthright. I stole it and was bitterly
punished. But I saved my soul alive.

XII

The Enfant Terrible of Literature

Myself

I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I
cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific
big- wigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heave
bricks into the middle of them.

Blake, Dante, Virgil and Tennyson

Talking it over, we agreed that Blake was no good because
he learnt Italian at 60 in order to study Dante, and we knew
Dante was no good because he was so fond of Virgil, and
Virgil was no good because Tennyson ran him, and as for
Tennyson — well, Tennyson goes without saying.

My Father and Shakespeare

My father is one of the few men I know who say they do
not like Shakespeare. I could forgive my father for not
liking Shakespeare if it was only because Shakespeare wrote
poetry ; but this is not the reason. He dislikes Shakespeare
because he finds him so very coarse. He also says he likes
Tennyson and this seriously aggravates his offence.

Tennyson

We were saying what a delightful dispensation of providence
it was that prosperous people will write their memoirs. We
hoped Tennyson was writing his. [1890.]

P.S. — We think his son has done nearly as well. [1898.]

1S3

1 84 The Enfant Terrible of Literature

Walter Pater and Matthew Arnold

Mr. Walter Pater's style is, to me, like the face of some
old woman who has been to Madame Rachel and had herself
enamelled. The bloom is nothing but powder and paint and
the odour is cherry-blossom. Mr. Matthew Arnold's odour is
as the faint sickliness of hawthorn.

My Random Passages

At the Century Club a friend very kindty and hesitatingly
ventured to suggest to me that I should get some one to go
over my MS. before printing ; a judicious editor, he said,
would have prevented me from printing many a bit which, it
seemed to him, was written too recklessly and offhand. The
fact is that the more reckless and random a passage appears
to be, the more carefully it has been submitted to friends
and considered and re-considered ; without the support of
friends I should never have dared to print one half of what
I have printed.

I am not one of those who can repeat the General Confession
unreservedly. I should say rather :

" I have left unsaid much that I am sorry I did not say,
but I have said little that I am sorry for having said, and
I am pretty well on the whole, thank you."

Moral Try-Your-Strengths

There are people who, if they only had a slot, might turn
a pretty penny as moral try-your-strengths, like those we
see in railway-stations for telling people their physical strength
when they have dropped a penny in the slot. In a way they
have a slot, which is their mouths, and people drop pennies
in by asking them to dinner, and then they try their strength
against them and get snubbed ; but this way is roundabout
and expensive. We want a good automatic asinomcter by
which we can tell at a moderate cost how great or how little
of a fool we are.

Populus Vult

If people like being deceived — and this can hardly be
doubted — there can rarely have been a time during which

The Enfant Terrible of Literature 185

they can have had more of the wish than now. The literary,
scientific and religious worlds vie with one another in trying
to gratify the public.

Men and Monkeys

In his latest article (Feb. 1892) Prof. Garner says that
the chatter of monkeys is not meaningless, but that they are
conveying ideas to one another. This seems to me hazardous.
The monkeys might with equal justice conclude that in our
magazine articles, or literary and artistic criticisms, we are
not chattering idly but are conveying ideas to one another.

" One Touch of Nature "

" One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." Should
it not be " marks," not " makes " ? There is one touch of
nature, or natural feature, which marks all mankind as of
one family.

P.S.— Surely it should be "of ill-nature." "One touch
of ill-nature marks — or several touches of ill-nature mark
the whole world kin."

Genuine Feeling

In the Times of to-day, June 4, 1887, there is an obituary
notice of a Rev. Mr. Knight who wrote about 200 songs,
among others " She wore a wreath of roses." The Times
says that, though these songs have no artistic merit, they
are full of genuine feeling, or words to this effect ; as though
a song which was full of genuine feeling could by any possi-
bility be without artistic merit.

George Meredith

The Times in a leading article says (Jany. 3, 1899) " a
talker," as Mr. George Meredith has somewhere said, " in-
volves the existence of a talkee," or words to this effect.

I said what comes to the same thing as this in Life and
Habit in 1877, and I repeated it in the preface to my trans-
lation of the Iliad in 1898. I do not believe George Meredith
has said anything to the same effect, but I have read so very

1 86 The Enfant Terrible of Literature

little of that writer, and have so utterly rejected what I did
read, that he may well have done so without my knowing it.
He damned Erewhon, as Chapman and Hall's reader, in 1871,
and, as I am still raw about this after 28 years, (I am afraid
unless I say something more I shall be taken as writing these
words seriously) I prefer to assert that the Times writer was
quoting from my preface to the Iliad, published a few weeks
earlier, and fathering the remark on George Meredith. By
the way the Times did not give so much as a line to my trans-
lation in its " Books of the Week/' though it was duly sent
to them.

Froude and Freeman

I think it was last Saturday (Ap. 9) (at any rate it was a
day just thereabouts) the Times had a leader on Froudc's
appointment as Reg. Prof, of Mod. Hist, at Oxford. It said
Froude was perhaps our greatest living master of style, or
words to that effect, only that, like Freeman, he was too
long : i.e. only he is an habitual offender against the most
fundamental principles of his art. If then Froude is our
greatest master of style, what are the rest of us ?

There was a much better article yesterday on Marbot, on
which my namesake A. J. Butler got a dressing for talking
rubbish about style. [1892.]

Style

In this day's Sunday Times there is an article on Mrs.
Browning's letters which begins with some remarks about
style. " It is recorded," says the writer, " of Plato, that in
a rough draft of one of his Dialogues, found after his death,
the first paragraph was written in seventy different forms.
Wordsworth spared no pains to sharpen and polish to the
utmost the gifts with which nature had endowed him ; and
Cardinal Newman, one of the greatest masters of English
style, has related in an amusing essay the pains he took to
acquire his style."

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains
with his style and was at the same time readable. Plato's
having had seventy shies at one sentence is quite enough to
explain to me why I dislike him. A man may, and ought to

The Enfant Terrible of Literature 187

take a great deal of pains to write clearly, tersely and euphe-
mistically : he will write many a sentence three or four
times over— -to do much more than this is worse than not re-
writing at all : he will be at great pains to see that he does
not repeat himself, to arrange his matter in the way that
shall best enable the reader to master it, to cut out super-
fluous words and, even more, to eschew irrelevant matter :
but in each case he will be thinking not of his own style but
of his reader's convenience.

Men like Newman and R. L. Stevenson seem to have taken
pains to acquire what they called a style as a preliminary
measure — as something that they had to form before their
writings could be of any value. I should like to put it on
record that I never took the smallest pains with my style,
have never thought about it, and do not know or want to
know whether it is a style at all or whether it is not, as I
believe and hope, just common, simple straightforwardness.
I cannot conceive how any man can take thought for his
style without loss to himself and his readers.

I have, however, taken all the pains that I had patience
to endure in the improvement of my handwriting (which,
by the way, has a constant tendency to resume feral character-
istics) and also with my MS. generally to keep it clean and
legible. I am having a great tidying just now, in the course
of which the MS. of Erewhon turned up, and I was struck
with the great difference between it and the MS. of The
Authoress of the Odyssey. I have also taken great pains, with
what success I know not, to correct impatience, irritability
and other like faults in my own character — and this not
because I care two straws about my own character, but
because I find the correction of such faults as I have been
able to correct makes life easier and saves me from getting
into scrapes, and attaches nice people to me more readily.
But I suppose this really is attending to style after all. [1897.]

Diderot on Criticism

" II est si difficile de produire une chose meme mediocre ;
il est si facile de sentir la mediocrite."

I have lately seen this quoted as having been said by Diderot.
It is easy to say we feel the mediocrity when we have heard

1 88 The Enfant Terrible of Literature

a good many people say that the work is mediocre, but, un-
less in matters about which he has been long conversant, no
man can easily form an independent judgment as to whether
or not a work is mediocre. I know that in the matter of
books, painting and music I constantly find myself unable to
form a settled opinion till I have heard what many men of
varied tastes have to say, and have also made myself ac-
quainted with details about a man's antecedents and ways
of life which are generally held to be irrelevant.

Often, of course, this is unnecessary ; a. man's character,
if he has left much work behind him, or if he is not coming
before us for the first time, is generally easily discovered
without extraneous aid. We want no one to give us any
clues to the nature of sucli men as Giovanni Bellini, or De
Hooghe. Hogarth's character is written upon his work so
plainly that he who runs may read it, so is Handel's upon his,
so is Purcell's, so is Corelli's, so, indeed, are the characters of
most men ; but often where only little work has been left,
or where a work is by a new hand, it is exceedingly difficult
" sentir la mediocrite " and, it might be added, " ou memo
sentir du tout."

How many years, I wonder, was it before I learned to dis-
like Thackeray and Tennyson as cordially as I now do ? For
how many years did I not almost worship them ?

Bunyan and Others

I have been reading The Pilgrim's Progress again — the
third part and all — and wish that some one would tell one
what to think about it.

The English is racy, vigorous and often very beautiful ;
but the language of any book is nothing except in so far as it
reveals the writer. The words in which a man clothes his
thoughts are like all other clothes-— the cut raises presump-
tions about his thoughts, and these generally turn out to be
just, but the words are no more the thoughts than a man's
coat is himself. I am not sure, however, that in Bunyan 's
case the dress in which he has clothed his ideas does not
reveal him more justly than the ideas do.

The Pilgrim's Progress consists mainly of a series of in-
famous libels upon life and things ; it is a blasphemy agairst

The Enfant Terrible of Literature 189

certain fundamental ideas of right and wrong which our
consciences most instinctively approve ; its notion of heaven
is hardly higher than a transformation scene at Drury Lane ;
it is essentially infidel. " Hold out to me the chance of a
golden crown and harp with freedom from all further worries,
give me angels to flatter me and fetch and carry for me, and
I shall think the game worth playing, notwithstanding the
great and horrible risk of failure ; but no crown, no cross for
me. Pay me well and I will wait for payment, but if I have
to give credit I shall expect to be paid better in the end."

There is no conception of the faith that a man should do
his duty cheerfully with all his might though, as far as he
can see, he will never be paid directly or indirectly either
here or hereafter. Still less is there any conception that
unless a man has this faith he is not worth thinking about.
There is no sense that as we have received freely so we should
give freely and be only too thankful that we have anything
to give at all. Furthermore there does not appear to be even
the remotest conception that' this honourable, comfortable
and sustaining faith is, like all other high faiths, to be brushed
aside very peremptorily at the bidding of common-sense.

What a pity it is that Christian never met Mr. Common-
Sense with his daughter, Good-Humour, and her affianced
husband, Mr. Hate-Cant ; but if he ever saw them in the
distance he steered clear of them, probably as feeling that
they would be more dangerous than Giant Despair, Vanity
Fair and Apollyon all together — for they would have stuck
to him if he had let them get in with him. Among other
things they would have told him that, if there was any truth
in his opinions, neither man nor woman ought to become a
father or mother at all, inasmuch as their doing so would
probably entail eternity of torture on the wretched creature
whom they were launching into the world. Life in this world
is risk enough to inflict on another person who has not been
consulted in the matter, but death will give quittance in full.
To weaken our faith in this sure and certain hope of peace
eternal (except so far as we have so lived as to win life in
others after we are gone) would be a cruel thing, even though
the evidence against it were overwhelming, but to rob us of
it on no evidence worth a moment's consideration and,
apparently, from no other motive than the pecuniary ad-

i go The Enfant Terrible of Literature

vantage of the robbers themselves is infamy. For* the
Churches are but institutions for the saving of men's souls
from hell.

This is true enough. Nevertheless it is untrue that in
practice any Christian minister, knowing what he preaches
to be both very false and very cruel, yet insists on it because
it is to the advantage of his own order. In a way the
preachers believe what they preach, but it is as men who
have taken a bad £10 note and refuse to look at the evidence
that makes for its badness, though, if the note were not theirs,
they would see at a glance that it was not a good one. For
the man in the street it is enough that what the priests teach
in respect of a future state is palpably both cruel and absurd
while, at the same time, they make "their living by teaching
it and thus prey upon other men's fears of the unknown. If
the Churches do not wish to be misunderstood they should
not allow themselves to remain in such an equivocal position.

But let this pass. Bunyan, we may be sure, took all that
he preached in its most literal interpretation ; he could
never have made his book so interesting had he not done so.
The interest of it depends almost entirely on the unquestion-
able good faith of the writer and the strength of the impulse
that compelled him to speak that which was within him. He
was not writing a book which he might sell, he was speaking
what was borne in upon him from heaven. The message he
uttered was, to my thinking, both low and false, but it was
truth of truths to Bunyan.

No. This will not do. The Epistles of St. Paul were truth
of truths to Paul, but they do not attract us to the man who
wrote them, and, except here and there, they are very un-
interesting. Mere strength of conviction on a writer's part
is not enough to make his work take permanent rank. Yet I
know that I could read the whole of The Pilgrim's Progress
(except occasional episodical sermons) without being at all
bored by it, whereas, having spent a penny upon Mr. Stead's
abridgement of Joseph Andrews, I had to give it up as putting
me out of all patience. I then spent another penny on an
abridgement of Gulliver's Travels, and was enchanted by it.
What is it that makes one book so readable and another so
unreadable ? Swift, from all I can make out, was a far more
human and genuine person than he is generally represented,

The Enfant Terrible of Literature 191

but I do not think I should have liked him, whereas Fielding,
I am sure, must have been delightful. Why do the faults of
his work overweigh its many great excellences, while the
less great excellences of the Voyage to Lilli-put outweigh its
more serious defects ?

I suppose it is the prolixity of Fielding that fatigues me.
Swift is terse, he gets through what he has to say on any
matter as quickly as he can and takes the reader on to the
next, whereas Fielding is not only long, but his length is
made still longer by the disconnectedness of the episodes
that appear to have been padded into the books — episodes
that do not help one forward, and are generally so exaggerated,
and often so full of horse-play as to put one out of conceit
with the parts that are really excellent.

Whatever else Bunyan is he is never long ; he takes you
quickly on from incident to incident and, however little his
incidents may appeal to us, we feel that he is never giving us
one that is not bona fide so far as he is concerned. His
episodes and incidents are introduced not because he wants
to make his book longer but because he cannot be satisfied
without these particular ones, even though he may feel that
his book is getting longer than he likes.

And here I must break away from this problem, leaving
it unsolved. [1897.]

Bunyan and the Odyssey

Anything worse than The Pilgrim's Progress in the matter
of defiance of literary canons can hardly be conceived. The
allegory halts continually ; it professes to be spiritual, but
nothing can be more carnal than the golden splendour of the
eternal city ; the view of life and the world generally is flat
blasphemy against the order of things with which we are sur-
rounded. Yet, like the Odyssey, which flatly defies sense and.
criticism (no, it doesn't ; still, it defies them a good deal),
no one can doubt that it must rank among the very greatest
books that have ever been written. How Odyssean it is in
its sincerity and downrightness, as well as in the marvellous
beauty of its language, its freedom from all taint of the schools

192 The Enfant Terrible of Literature

and, not least, in complete victory of genuine internal zeal
over a scheme initially so faulty as to appear hopeless.

I read that part where Christian passes the lions which he
thought were free but which were really chained and it
occurred to me that all lions are chained until they actually
eat us and that, the moment they do this, they chain them-
selves up again automatically, as far as we are concerned.
If one dissects this passage it fares as many a passage in the
Odyssey does when we dissect it. Christian did not, after all,
venture to pass the lions till he was assured that they were
chained. And really it is more excusable to refuse point-
blank to pass a couple of lions till one knows whether they
are chained or not — and the poor wicked people seem to have
done nothing more than this, — than it would be to pass them.
Besides, by being told, Christian fights, as it were, with
loaded dice.

Poetry

The greatest poets never write poetry. The Homers and
Shakespeares are not the greatest — they are only the greatest
that we can know. And so with Handel among musicians.
For the highest poetry, whether in music or literature, is
ineffable — it must be felt from one person to another, it
cannot be articulated.

Verse

Versifying is the lowest form of poetry ; and the last
thing a great poet will do in these days is to write verses. '

I have been trying to read Venus and Adonis and the Rape
of Lucrece but cannot get on with them. They teem with fine
things, but they are got-up fine things. I do not know
whether this is quite what I mean but, come what may, I find
the poems bore me. Were I a schoolmaster I should think I
was setting a boy a very severe punishment if I told him to
read Venus and Adonis through in three sittings. If, then,
the magic of Shakespeare's name, let alone the great beauty
of occasional passages, cannot reconcile us (for I find most
people of the same mind) to verse, and especially rhymed
verse as a medium of sustained expression, what chance has
any one else ? It seems to me that a sonnet is the utmost
length to which a rhymed poem should extend.

The Enfant Terrible of Literature 193

Verse, Poetry and Prose

The preface to Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is verse, but
it is not poetry. The body of the work is poetry, but it is
not verse.

Ancient Work

If a person would understand either the Odyssey or any
other ancient work, he must never look at the dead without
seeing the living in them, nor at the living without thinking
of the dead. We are too fond of seeing the ancients as one
thing and the moderns as another.

Nausicaa and Myself

I am elderly, grey-bearded and, according to my clerk,
Alfred, disgustingly fat ; I wear spectacles and get more and
more bronchitic as I grow older. Still no young prince in a
fairy story ever found an invisible princess more effectually
hidden behind a hedge of dullness or more fast asleep than
Nausicaa. was when I woke her and hailed her as Authoress
of the Odyssey. And there was no difficulty about it either
—all one had to do was to go up to the front door and ring
the bell.

Telemachus and Nicholas Nickleby

The virtuous young man defending a virtuous mother
against a number of powerful enemies is one of the ignes
fatui of literature. The scheme ought to be very interesting,
and often is so, but it always fails as regards the hero who,
from Telemachus to Nicholas Nickleby, is always too much
of the good young" man to please.

Gadshill and Trapani

While getting our lunch one Sunday at the east end of the
long room in the Sir John Falstaff Inn, Gadshill, we over-
heard some waterside-looking dwellers in the neighbourhood
talking among themselves. I wrote down the following : —

Bill : Oh, yes. IVe got a mate that works in my shop ;
o

194 The Enfant Terrible of Literature

he's chucked the Dining Room because they give him too
much to eat. He found another place where they gave him
four pennyworth of meat and two vegetables and it was
quite as much as he could put up with.

George : You can't kid me, Bill, that they give you too
much to eat, but I'll believe it to oblige you, Bill. Shall I
see you to-night ?

Bill : No, I must go to church.

George : Well, so must I ; I've got to go.

So at Trapani, I heard two small boys one night on the
quay (I am sure I have written this down somewhere, but it
is less trouble to write it again than to hunt for it) singing
with all their might, with their arms round one another's
necks. I should say they were about ten years old, not
more.

I asked Ignazio Giacalone : " What are they singing ? "

He replied that it was a favourite song among the popolino
of Trapani about a girl who did not want to be seen going
about with a man. " The people in this place," says the song,
" are very ill-natured, and if they see you and me together,
they will talk," &c.

I do not say that there was any descent here from
Nausicaa's speech to Ulysses, but I felt as though that
speech was still in the air. [Od. VI. 273.]

I reckon Gadshill and Trapani as perhaps the two most
classic grounds that I frequent familiarly, and at each I have
seemed to hear echoes of the scenes that have made them
famous. Not that what I heard at Gadshill is like any
particular passage in Shakespeare.

Waiting to be Hired

At Castelvetrano (about thirty miles from Trapani) I had
to start the next morning at 4 a.m. to see the ruins of
Selinunte, and slept lightly with my window open. About
two o'clock I began to hear a buzz of conversation in the
piazza outside and it kept me awake, so I got up to shut the
window and see what it was. I found it came from a long
knot of men standing about, two deep, but not strictly
marshalled. When I got up at half-past three, it was still
dark and the men were still there, though perhaps not so

The Enfant Terrible of Literature 195

many. I enquired and found they were standing to be hired
for the day, any one wanting labourers would come there,
engage as many as he wanted and go off with them, others
would come up, and so on till about four o'clock, after which
no one would hire, the day being regarded as short in weight
after that hour. Being so collected the men gossip over
their own and other people's affairs — wonder who was that
fine-looking stranger going about yesterday with Nausicaa,
and so on. [Od. VI. 273.] This, in fact, is their club and the
place where the public opinion of the district is formed.

Ilium and Padua

The story of the Trojan horse is more nearly within possi-
bility than we should readily suppose. In 1848, during the
rebellion of the North Italians against the Austrians, eight
or nine young men, for whom the authorities were hunting,
hid themselves inside Donatello's wooden horse in the Salone
at Padua and lay there for five days, being fed through the
trap door on the back of the horse with the connivance of the
custode of the Salone. No doubt they were let out for a
time at night. When pursuit had become less hot, their
friends smuggled them away. One of those who had been
shut up was still living in 1898 and, on the occasion of the
jubilee festivities, was carried round the town in triumph.

Eumaeus and Lord Burleigh

The inference which Arthur Piatt {Journal of Philology,
Vol. 24, No. 47) wishes to draw from Eumaeus being told to
bring Ulysses' bow ava Sahara (Od. XXI. 234) suggests to
me the difference which some people in future ages may wish
to draw between the character of Lord Burleigh's steps in
Tennyson's poem, according as he was walking up or pacing
down. Wherefrom also the critic will argue that the scene
of Lord Burleigh's weeping must have been on an inclined
plane.

Weeping, weeping late and early,

Walking up and pacing down,
Deeply mourned the Lord of Burleigh,

Burleigh-house by Stamford-town,

196 The Enfant Terrible of Literature

My Reviewers' Sense of Need

My reviewers felt no sense of need to understand me — if
they had they would have developed the mental organism
which would have enabled them to do so. When the time
comes that they want to do so they will throw out a little
mental pseudopodium without much difficulty. They threw
it out when they wanted to misunderstand me — with a good
deal of the pseudo in it, too.

The Authoress of the Odyssey

The amount of pains which my reviewers have taken to
understand this book is not so great as to encourage the
belief that they w r ould understand the Odyssey, however
much they studied it. Again, the people who could read the
Odyssey without coming to much the same conclusions as
mine are not likely to admit that they ought to have done so.

If a man tells me that a house in which I have long lived
is inconvenient, not to say unwholesome, and that I have
been very stupid in not finding this out for myself, I should
be apt in the first instance to tell him that he knew nothing
about it, and that I was quite comfortable ; by and by, I
should begin to be aware that I was not so comfortable as I
thought I was, and in the end I should probably make the
suggested alterations in my house if, on reflection, I found
them sensibly conceived. But I should kick hard at first.

Homer and his Commentators

Homeric commentators have been blind so long that
nothing will do for them but Homer must be blind too.
They have transferred their own blindness to the poet.

The Iliad

In the Iliad, civilisation bursts upon us as a strong stream
out of a rock. We know that the w r ater has gathered from
many a distant vein underground, but we do not see these.
Or it is like the drawing up the curtain on the opening of a
play — the scene is then first revealed.

The Enfant Terrible of Literature 197

Glacial Periods of Folly

The moraines left by secular glacial periods of folly stretch
out over many a plain of our civilisation. So in the Odyssey,
especially in the second twelve books, whenever any one
eats meat it is called " sacrificing " it, as though we were
descended from a race that did not eat meat. Then it was
said that meat might be eaten if one did not eat the life.
What was the life ? Clearly the blood, for when you stick a
pig it lives till the blood is gone. You must sacrifice the
blood, therefore, to the gods, but so long as you abstain
from things strangled and from blood, and so long as you
call it sacrificing, you may eat as much meat as you please.

What a mountain of lies— what a huge geological forma-
tion of falsehood, with displacement of all kinds, and strata
twisted every conceivable way, must have accreted before the
Odyssey was possible !

Translations from Verse into Prose

Whenever this is attempted, great licence must be allowed
to the translator in getting rid of all those poetical common
forms which are foreign to the genius of prose. If the work
is to be translated into prose, let it be into such prose as
we write and speak among ourselves. A volume of poetical
prose, i.e. affected prose, had better be in verse outright
at once. Poetical prose is never tolerable for more than a
very short bit at a time. And it may be questioned whether
poetry itself is not better kept short in ninety-nine cases out
of a hundred.

Translating the Odyssey

If you wish to preserve the spirit of a dead author, you
must not skin him, stuff him, and set him up in a case. You
must eat him, digest him and let him live in you, with such
life as you have, for better or worse. The difference between
the Andrew Lang manner of translating the Odyssey and
mine is that between making a mummy and a baby. He
tries to preserve a corpse (for the Odyssey is a corpse to all
who need Lang's translation), whereas I try to originate a

198 The Enfant Terrible of Literature

new life and one that is instinct (as far as I can effect this)
with the spirit though not the form of the original.

They say no woman could possibly have written the Odyssey.
To me, on the other hand, it seems even less possible that a
man could have done so. As for its being by a practised and
elderly writer, nothing but youth and inexperience could
produce anything so naive and so lovely. That is where
the work will suffer by my translation. I am male, practised
and elderly, and the trail of sex, age and experience is certain
to be over my translation. If the poem is ever to be well
translated, it must be by some high-spirited English girl
who has been brought up at Athens and who, therefore, has
not been jaded by academic study of the language.

A translation is at best a dislocation, a translation from
verse to prose is a double dislocation and corresponding
further dislocations are necessary if an effect of deformity
is to be avoided.

The people who, when they read "Athene" translated
by "Minerva," cannot bear in mind that every Athene
varies more or less with, and takes colour from, the country
and temperament of the writer who is being translated, will
not be greatly helped by translating 14 Athene " and not
" Minerva." Besides many readers would pronounce the
word as a dissyllable or an anapa?st.

The Odyssey and a Tomb at Carcassonne

There is a tomb at some place in France, I think at Car-
cassonne, on which there is some sculpture representing the
friends and relations of the deceased in paroxysms of grief
with their cheeks all cracked, and crying like Gaudenzio's
angels on the Sacro Monte at Varallo-Sesia. Round the
corner, however, just out of sight till one searches, there is
a man holding both his sides and splitting with laughter.
In some parts of the Odyssey, especially about Ulysses and
Penelope, I fancy that laughing man as being round the
corner. [Oct. 1891.]

Getting it Wrong

Zeffirino Carestia, a sculptor, told me we had a great
sculptor in England named Simpson. I demurred, and

The Enfant Terrible of Literature 199

asked about his work. It seemed he had made a monument
to Nelson in Westminster Abbey. Of course I saw he meant
Stevens, who had made a monument to Wellington in St.
Paul's. I cross-questioned him and found I was right.

Suppose that in some ancient writer I had come upon a
similar error about which I felt no less certain than I did
here, ought I to be debarred from my conclusion merely
by the accident that I have not the wretched muddler at
my elbow and cannot ask him personally ? People are
always getting things wrong. It is the critic's business to
know how and when to believe on insufficient evidence
and to know how far to go in the matter of setting people
right without going too far ; the question of what is too far
and what is sufficient evidence can only be settled by the
higgling and haggling of the literary market.

So I justify my emendation of the " grotta del toro "
at Trapani. [The Authoress of the Odyssey, Chap. VIII.]
" II toro macigna tin tesoro di oro." [The bull is grinding
a treasure of gold] in the grotto in which (for other reasons)
I am convinced Ulysses hid the gifts the Phoeacians had
, given him. And so the grotto is called " La grotta del toro "
[The grotto of the bull]. I make no doubt it was originally
called "La grotta del tesoro" [The grotto of the treasure],
but children got it wrong, and corrupted " tesoro " into
" toro " ; then, it being known that the " tesoro " was in it
somehow, the " toro " was made to grind the " tesoro."

XIII

Unprofessional Sermons

Righteousness

According to Mr. Matthew Arnold, as we find the highest
traditions of grace, beauty and the heroic virtues among the
Greeks and Romans, so we derive our highest ideal of righ-
teousness from Jewish sources. Righteousness was to the
Jew what strength and beauty were to the Greek or fortitude
to the Roman.

This sounds well, but can we think that the Jews taken
as a nation were really more righteous than the Greeks
and Romans? Could they indeed be so if they were less
strong, graceful and enduring ? In some respects they
may have been — every nation has its strong points — but
surely there has been a nearly unanimous verdict for many
generations that the typical Greek or Roman' is a higher,
nobler person than the typical Jew — and this referring not
to the modern Jew, who may perhaps be held to have been
injured by centuries of oppression, but to the Hebrew of
the time of the old prophets and of the most prosperous
eras in the history of the nation. If three men could be set
before us as the most perfect Greek, Roman and Jew re-
spectively, and if we could choose which we would have
our only son most resemble, is it not likely we should find
ourselves preferring the Greek or Roman to the Jew ? And
does not this involve that we hold the two former to be the
more righteous in a broad sense of the word ?

I dare not say that we owe no benefits to the Jewish nation,
I do not feel sure whether we do or do not, but I can see no
good thing that I can point to as a notoriously Hebrew con-

200

Unprofessional Sermons 201

tribution to our moral and intellectual well-being as I can
point to our law and say that it is Roman, or to our fine arts
and say that they are based on what the Greeks and Italians
taught us. On the contrary, if asked what feature of post-
Christian life we had derived most distinctly from Hebrew
sources I should say at once " intolerance " — the desire
to dogmatise about matters whereon the Greek and Roman
held certainty to be at once unimportant and unattainable.
This, with all its train of bloodshed and family disunion,
is chargeable to the Jewish rather than to any other account.

There is yet another vice which occurs readily to any
one who reckons up the characteristics which we derive
mainly from the Jews ; it is one that we call, after a Jewish
sect, " Pharisaism." I do not mean to say that no Greek
or Roman was ever a sanctimonious hypocrite, still, sancti-
moniousness does not readily enter into our notions of Greeks
and Romans and it does so enter into our notions of the
old Hebrews. Of course, we are all of us sanctimonious
sometimes ; Horace himself is so when he talks about aurum
irrepertum et sic melius siium, and as for Virgil he was a prig,
pure and simple ; still, on the whole, sanctimoniousness
was not a Greek and Roman vice and it was a Hebrew one.
True, they stoned their prophets freely ; but these are not
the Hebrews to whom Mr. Arnold is referring, they are
the ones whom it is the custom to leave out of sight and out
of mind as far as possible, so that they should hardly count
as Hebrews at all, and none of our characteristics should be
ascribed to them.

Taking their literature I cannot see that it deserves the
praises that have been lavished upon it. The Song of Solomon
and the book of Esther are the most interesting in the Old
Testament, but these are the very ones that make the smallest
pretensions to holiness, and even these are neither of them
of very transcendent merit. They would stand no chance of
being accepted by Messrs. Cassell and Co. or by any biblical
publisher of the present day. Chatto and Windus might
take the Song of Solomon, but, with this exception, I doubt
if there is a publisher in London who would give a guinea for
the pair. Ecclesiastes contains some fine things but is strongly
tinged with pessimism, cynicism and affectation. Some of
the Proverbs are good, but not many of them are in common

202 Unprofessional Sermons

use. Job contains some fine passages, and so do some of
the Psalms ; but the Psalms generally are poor and, for the
most part, querulous, spiteful and introspective into the
bargain. Mudie would not take thirteen copies of the lot
if they were to appear now for the first time — unless indeed
their royal authorship were to arouse an adventitious interest
in them, or unless the author were a rich man who played
his cards judiciously with the reviewers. As for the prophets
— we know what appears to have been the opinion formed
concerning them by those who should have been best ac-
quainted with them ; I am no judge as to the merits of the
controversy between them and their fellow-countrymen,
but I have read their works and am of opinion that they
will not hold their own against such masterpieces of modern
literature as, we will say, The Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson
Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels or Tom Jones. " Whether there
be prophecies/' exclaims the Apostle, " they shall fail."
On the whole I should say that Isaiah and Jeremiah must
be held to have failed.

I would join issue with Mr. Matthew Arnold on yet another
point. I understand him to imply that righteousness should
be a man's highest aim in life. I do not like setting up
righteousness, nor yet anything else, as the highest aim in
life ; a man should have any number of little aims about
which he should be conscious and for which he should have
names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness
concerning the main aim of his life. Whatever we do we
must try and do it rightly — this is obvious — but righteousness
implies something much more than this : it conveys to our
minds not only the desire to get whatever we have taken
in hand as nearly right as possible, but also the general
reference of our lives to the supposed will of an unseen but
supreme power. Granted that there is such a power, and
granted that we should obey its will, we are the more likely
to do this the less we concern ourselves about the matter
and the more we confine our attention to the things immedi-
ately round about us which seem, so to speak, entrusted to
us as the natural and legitimate sphere of our activity.
I believe a man will get the most useful information on these
matters from modern European sources ; next to these he
will get most from Athens and ancient Rome. Mr. Matthew

Unprofessional Sermons 203

Arnold notwithstanding, I do not think he will get anything
from' Jerusalem which he will not find better and more easily
elsewhere. [1883.]

Wisdom

But where shall wisdom be found ? (Job xxviii. 12).

If the writer of these words meant exactly what he said,
he had so little wisdom that he might w T ell seek more. He
should have known that wisdom spends most of her time
crying in the streets and public-houses, and he should have
gone thither to look for her. It is written :

" Wisdom crieth without ; she uttereth her voice in the
streets :

" She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the open-
ings of the gates : in the city she uttereth her words "
(Pro v. i. 20, 21.)

If however he meant rather " Where shall wisdom be
regarded ? " this, again, is not a very sensible question.
People have had wisdom before them for some time, and they
may be presumed to be the best judges of their own affairs,
yet they do not generally show much regard for wisdom.
We may conclude, therefore, that they have found her less
profitable than by her own estimate she would appear to
be. This indeed is what one of the wisest men who ever
lived — the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes — definitely
concludes to be the case, when he tells his readers that they
had better not overdo either their virtue or their wisdom.
They must not, on the other hand, overdo their wickedness nor,
presumably, their ignorance, still the writer evidently thinks
that error is safer on the side of too little than of too much.*

Reflection will show that this must always have been
true, and must always remain so, for this is the side on which
error is both least disastrous and offers most place for re-
pentance. He who finds himself inconvenienced by knowing

* All things have I seen in the days of my vanity : there is a just
man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man
that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.

Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise:
why shouldest thou destroy thyself ?

Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish : why shouldest
thou die before thy time ? (Eccles. vii. 15, 16, 17).

204 Unprofessional Sermons

too little can go to the British Museum, or to the Working
Men's College, and learn more ; but when a thing is once
well learnt it is even harder to unlearn it than it was to learn
it. Would it be possible to unlearn the art of speech or the arts
of reading and writing even if we wished to do so ? Wisdom
and knowledge are, like a bad reputation, more easily won than
lost ; we got on fairly well without knowing that the earth
went round the sun ; we thought the sun went round the
earth until we found it made us uncomfortable to think
so any longer, then we altered our opinion ; it was not very
easy to alter it, but it was easier than it would be to alter it
back again. Vestigia nulla rctrorsum ; the earth itself does
not pursue its course more steadily than mind does when it
has once committed itself, and if we could sec the movements of
the stars in slow time we should probably find that there was
much more throb and tremor in detail than we can take note of.

How, I wonder, will it be if in our pursuit of knowledge
we stumble upon some awkward fact as disturbing for the
human race as an enquiry into the state of his own finances
may sometimes prove to the individual ? The pursuit of
knowledge can never be anything but a leap in the dark, and
a leap in the dark is a very uncomfortable thing. I have
sometimes thought that if the human race ever loses its
ascendancy it will not be through plague, famine or cata-
clysm, but by getting to know some little microbe, as it
were, of knowledge which shall get into its system and breed
there till it makes an end of us.* It is well, therefore, that
there should be a substratum of mankind who cannot by
any inducement be persuaded to know anything whatever
at all, and who are resolutely determined to know nothing
among us but what the parson tells them, and not to be too
sure even about that.

Whence then cometh wisdom and where is the place of
understanding ? How does Job solve his problem ?

" Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom : and to
depart from evil is understanding."

The answer is all very well as far as it goes, but it only
amounts to saying that wisdom is wisdom. We know no
better what the fear of the Lord is than what wisdom is,

* Cf. "Imaginary Worlds," p. 233 post.

Unprofessional Sermons 205

and we often do not depart from evil simply becatis&we do
not know that what we are cleaving to is evil.

Loving and Hating

I have often said that there is no true love short of eating
and consequent assimilation ; the embryonic processes are
but a long course of eating and assimilation — the sperm
and germ cells, or the two elements that go to form the new
animal, whatever they should be called, eat one another up,
and then the mother assimilates them, more or less, through
mutual inter-feeding and inter-breeding between her and
them. But the curious point is that the more profound
our love is the less we are conscious of it as love. True, a
nurse tells her child that she would like to eat it, but this
is only an expression that shows an instinctive recognition
of the fact that eating is a mode of, or rather the acme of,
love — no nurse loves her child half well enough to want
really to eat it ; put to such proof as this the love of which
she is so profoundly, as she imagines, sentient proves to be
but skin deep. So with our horses and dogs : we think we
dote upon them, but we do not really love them.

What, on the other hand, can awaken less consciousness
of warm affection than an oyster ? Who would press an
oyster to his heart, or pat it and want to kiss it ? Yet nothing
short of its complete absorption into our own being can in
the least satisfy us. No merely superficial temporary con-
tact of exterior form to exterior form will serve us. The
embrace must be consummate, not achieved by a mocking
environment of draped and muffled arms that leaves no
lasting trace on organisation or consciousness, but by an en-
folding within the bare and warm bosom of an open mouth —
a grinding out of all differences of opinion by the sweet
persuasion of the jaws, and the eloquence of a tongue that
now convinces all the more powerfully because it is inarticu-
late and deals but with the one universal language of aggluti-
nation. Then we become made one with what we love —
not heart to heart, but protoplasm to protoplasm, and this
is far more to the purpose.

The proof of love, then, like that of any other pleasant
pudding, is in the eating, and tested by this proof see

206 Unprofessional Sermons

that consciousness of love, like all other consciousness,
vanishes on becoming intense. While we are yet fully aware
of it, we do not love as well as we think we do. When we
really mean business and are hungry with affection, we do
not know that we are in love, but simply go into the love-
shop — for so any eating-house should be more fitly called —
ask the price, pay our money down, and love till we can
either love or pay no longer.

And so with hate. When we really hate a thing it makes
us sick, and we use this expression to symbolise the utmost
hatred of which our nature is capable ; but when we know
we hate, our hatred is in reality mild and inoffensive. I,
for example, think 1 hate all those people whose photographs
I see in the shop windows, but I am so conscious of this that
I am convinced, in reality, nothing would please me better
than to be in the shop windows too. So when I see the
universities conferring degrees on any one, or the learned
societies moulting the yearly medals as peacocks moult
their tails, I am so conscious of disapproval as to feel sure I
should like a degree or a medal too if they would only give
me one, and hence I conclude that my disapproval is grounded
in nothing more serious than a superficial, transient jealousy.

The Roman Empire

Nothing will ever die so long as it knows what to do under
the circumstances, in other words so long as it knows its
business. The Roman Empire must have died of inexperience
of some kind, I should think most likely it w r as puzzled to
death by the Christian religion. But the question is not so
much how the Roman Empire or any other great thing
came to an end — everything must come to an end some time,
it is only scientists who wonder that a state should die —
the interesting question is how did the Romans become so
great, under what circumstances were they born and bred ?
We should watch childhood and schooldays rather than old
age and death-beds.

As I sit writing on the top of a wild-beast pen of the amphi-
theatre of Aosta I may note, for one thing, that the Romans
were not squeamish, they had no Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals. Again, their ladies did not write

Unprofessional Sermons 207

in the newspapers. Fancy Miss Cato reviewing Horace !
They had no Frances Power Cobbes, no ... s, no ... s ; yet they
seem to have got along quite nicely without these powerful
moral engines. The comeliest and most enjoyable races
that we know of were the ancient Greeks, the Italians and
the South Sea Islanders, and they have none of them been
purists.

Italians and Englishmen

Italians, and perhaps Frenchmen, consider first whether
they like or want to do a thing and then whether, on the
whole, it will do them any harm. Englishmen, and perhaps
Germans, consider first whether they ought to like a thing
and often never reach the questions whether they do like
it and whether it will hurt. There is much to be said for
both systems, but I suppose it is best to combine them as far
as possible.

On Knowing what Gives us Pleasure

i

One can bring no greater reproach against a man than to
say that he does not set sufficient value upon pleasure,
and there is no greater sign of a fool than the thinking that
he can tell at once and easily what it is that pleases him.
To know this is not easy, and how to extend our knowledge
of it is the highest and the most neglected of all arts and
branches of education. Indeed, if we could solve the diffi-
culty of knowing what gives us pleasure, if we could find
its springs, its inception and earliest modus operandi, we
should have discovered the secret of life and development, for
the same difficulty has attended the development of every
sense from touch onwards, and no new sense was ever de-
veloped without pains. A man had better stick to known
and proved pleasures, but, if he will venture in quest of new
ones, he should not do so with a light heart.

One reason why we find it so hard to know our own likings
is because we are so little accustomed to try ; we have our
likings found for us in respect of by far the greater number
of the matters that concern us ; thus we have grown all our
limbs on the strength of the likings of our ancestors and adopt
these without question.

208 Unprofessional Sermons

Another reason is that, except in mere matters of eating
and drinking, people do not realise the importance of finding
out what it is that gives them pleasure if, that is to say, they
would make themselves as comfortable here as they reason-
ably can. Very few, however, seem to care greatly whether
they are comfortable or no. There are some men so ignorant
and careless of what gives them pleasure that they cannot be
said ever to have been really bom as living beings at all.
They present some of the phenomena of having been born —
they reproduce, in fact, so many of the ideas which we
associate with having been born that it is hard not to think
of them as living beings — but in spite of all appearances the
central idea is wanting. At least one half of the misery
which meets us daily might be removed or, at any rate,
greatly alleviated, if those who suffer by it would think it
worth their while to be at any pains to get rid of it. That
they do not so think is proof that they neither know, nor
care to know, more than in a very languid way, what it is
that will relieve them most effectually or, in other words,
that the shoe does not really pinch them so hard as we think
it does. For when it really pinches, as when a man is being
flogged, he will seek relief by any means in his power. So
my great namesake said, " Surely the pleasure is as great Of
being cheated as to cheat " ; and so, again, I remember to
have seen a poem many years ago in Punch according to
which a certain young lady, being discontented at home,
went out into the world in quest to " Some burden make
or burden bear, But which she did not greatly care — Oh
Miseree ! " So long as there was discomfort somewhere it
was all right.

To those, however, who are desirous of knowing what
gives them pleasure but do not quite know how to set about
it I have no better advice to give than that they must take
the same pains about acquiring this difficult art as about any
other, and must acquire it in the same way — that is by
attending to one thing at a time and not being in too great a
hurry. Proficiency is not to be attained here, any more than
elsewhere, by short cuts or by getting other people to do
work that no other than oneself can do. Above all things it
is necessary here, as in all other branches of study, not to
think we know a thing before we do know it — to make sure

Unprofessional Sermons 209

of our ground and be quite certain that we really do like a
thing before we say we do. When you cannot decide whether
you like a thing or not, nothing is easier than to say so and
to hang it up among the uncertainties. Or when you know
you do not know and are in such doubt as to see no chance
of deciding, then you may take one side or the other pro-
visionally and throw yourself into it. This will sometimes
make you uncomfortable, and you will feel you have taken
the wrong side and thus learn that the other was the right
one. Sometimes you will feel you have done right. Any way
ere long you will know more about it. But there must have
been a secret treaty with yourself to the effect that the
decision was provisional only. For, after all, the most im-
portant first principle in this matter is the not lightly think-
ing you know what you like till you have made sure of your
ground. I was nearly forty before I felt how stupid it was to
pretend to know things that I did not know and I still often
catch myself doing so. Not one of my school-masters taught
me this, but altogether otherwise.

ii

I should like to like Schumann's music better than I do ;
I dare say I could make myself like it better if I tried ; but
I do not like having to try to make myself like things ; I
like things that make me like them at once and no trying
at all.

iii

To know whether you are enjoying a piece of music or not
you must see whether you find yourself looking at the adver-
tisements of Pear's soap at the end of the programme.

De Minimis non Curat Lex
i

Yes, but what is a minimum ? Sometimes a maximum is
a minimum, and sometimes the other way about. If you
know you know, and if you don't you don't.

ii

Yes, but what is a minimum ? So increased material weight
involves increased moral weight, but where docs there begin

210 Unprofessional Sermons

to be any weight at all ? There is a miracle somewhere. At
the point where two very large nothings have united to
form a very little something.

iii

There is no such complete assimilation as assimilation of
rhythm. In fact it is in assimilation of rhythm that what we
see as assimilation consists.

When two liquid bodies come together with nearly the
same rhythms, as, say, two tumblers of water, differing but
very slightly, the two assimilate rapidly — becoming homo-
geneous throughout. So with wine and water which assimi-
late, or at any rate form a new homogeneous substance, very
rapidly. Not so with oil and water. Still, I should like to
know whether it would not be possible to have so much water
and so little oil that the water would in time absorb the oil.

I have not thought about it, but it seems as though the
maxim de minimis non curat lex — the fact that a wrong, a
contradiction in terms, a violation of all our ordinary canons
does not matter and should be brushed aside — it seems as
though this maxim went very low down in the scale of nature,
as though it were the one principle rendering combination
(integration) and, I suppose, dissolution (disintegration) also,
possible. For combination of any kind involves contra-
diction in terms ; it involves a self-stultification on the part
of one or more things, more or less complete in both of them.
For one or both cease to be, and to cease to be is to contradict
all one's fundamental axioms or terms.

And this is always going on in the mental world as much
as in the material ; everything is always changing and
stultifying itself more or less completely. There is no per-
manence of identity so absolute, either in the physical world,
or in our conception of the word " identity/' that it is not
crossed with the notion of perpetual change which, pro tanto,
destroys identity. Perfect, absolute identity is like perfect,
absolute anything — as near an approach to nothing, or
nonsense, as our minds can grasp. It is, then, in the essence
of our conception of identity that nothing should maintain
a perfect identity ; there is an element of disintegration in
the only conception of integration that we can form.

What is it, then, that makes this conflict not only possible

Unprofessional Sermons 211

and bearable but even pleasant ? What is it that so oils
the machinery of our thoughts that things which would
otherwise cause intolerable friction and heat produce no
jar ?

Surely it is the principle that a very overwhelming
majority rides rough-shod with impunity over a very small
minority ; that a drop of brandy in a gallon of water is
practically no brandy ; that a dozen maniacs among a
hundred thousand people produce no unsettling effect upon
our minds ; that a well-written i will go as an i even though
the dot be omitted — it seems to me that it is this principle,
which is embodied in dc minimis nan curat lex, that makes it
possible that there should be major a and a lex to care about
them. This is saying in another form that association does
not stick to the letter of its bond.

Saints

Saints are always grumbling because the world will not
take them at their own estimate ; so they cry out upon this
place and upon that, saying it docs not know the things be-
longing to its peace and that it will be too late soon and that
people will be very sorry then that they did not make more
of the grumbler, whoever he may be, inasmuch as he will
make it hot for them and pay them out generally.

All this means : " Put me in a better social and financial
position than I now occupy ; give me more of the good
things of this life, if not actual money yet authority (which
is better loved by most men than even money itself), to
reward me because I am to have such an extraordinary good
fortune and high position in the world which is to come."

When their contemporaries do not see this and tell them
that they cannot expect to have it both ways, they lose their
tempers, shake the dust from their feet and go sulking off
into the wilderness.

This is as regards themselves ; to their followers they
say : " You must not expect to be able to make the best of
both worlds. The thing is absurd ; it cannot be done. You
must choose which you prefer, go in for it and leave the other,
for you cannot have both."

When a saint complains that people do not know the

212 Unprofessional Sermons

things belonging to their peace, what he really means is that
they do not sufficiently care about the things belonging to
his own peace.

Prayer

i

Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days : that
I may be certified how long I have to live (Ps. xxxix. 5) .

Of all prayers this is the insanest. That the one who
uttered it should have made and retained a reputation is a
strong argument in favour of his having been surrounded
with courtiers. " Lord, let me not know mine end " would
be better, only it would be praying for what God has already
granted us. " Lord, let me know A.B.'s end " would be bad
enough. Even though A.B. were Mr. Gladstone — we might
hear he was not to die yet. " Lord, stop A.B. from knowing
my end " would be reasonable, if there were any use in pray-
ing that A.B. might not be able to do what he never can do.
Or can the prayer refer to the other end of life ? " Lord, let
me know my beginning.' ' This again would not be always
prudent.

The prayer is a silly piece of petulance and it would have
served the maker of it right to have had it granted. " A
painful and lingering disease followed by death " or " Ninety,
a burden to yourself and every one else " — there is not so
much to pick and choose between them. Surely, " I thank
thee, 0 Lord, that thou hast hidden mine end from me "
would be better. The sting of death is in foreknowledge of
the when and the how.

If again he had prayed that he might be able to make his
psalms a little more lively, and be saved from becoming the
bore which he has been to so many generations of sick persons
and young children — or that he might find a publisher for
them with greater facility — but there is no end to it. The
prayer he did pray was about the worst he could have prayed
and the psalmist, being the psalmist, naturally prayed it —
unless I have misquoted him.

ii

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not
without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very

Unprofessional Sermons 213

seriously. I dropped saying mine suddenly once for all with-
out malice prepense, on the night of the 29th of September,
1S59, when I went on board the Roman Emperor to sail for
New Zealand. I had said them the night before and doubted
not that I was always going to say them as I always had done
hitherto. That night, I suppose, the sense of change was so
great that it shook them quietly off. I was not then a sceptic ;
I had got as far as disbelief in infant baptism but no further.
I felt no compunction of conscience, however, about leaving
off my morning and evening prayers — simply I could no
longer say them.

iii

Lead us not into temptation (Matt. vi. 13).

For example ; I am crossing from Calais to Dover and
there is a well-known popular preacher on board, say Arch-
deacon Farrar.

I have my camera in my hand and though the sea is rough
the sun is brilliant. I see the archdeacon come on board at
Calais and seat himself upon the upper deck, looking as
though he had just stepped out of a band-box. Can I be
expected to resist the temptation of snapping him ? Suppose
that in the train for an hour before reaching Calais I had said
any number of times, " Lead us not into temptation," is it
likely that the archdeacon would have been made to take
some other boat or to stay in Calais, or that I myself, by
being delayed on my homeward journey, should have been
led into some other temptation, though perhaps smaller ?
Had I not better snap him and have done with it ? Is there
enough chance of good result to make it worth while to try
the experiment ? The general consensus of opinion is that
there is not.

And as for praying for strength to resist temptation —
granted that if, when I saw the archdeacon in the band-box
stage, I had immediately prayed for strength I might have
been enabled to put the evil thing from me for a time, how
long would this have been likely to last when I saw his face
grow saintlier and saintlier ? I am an excellent sailor myself,
but he is not, and when I see him there, his eyes closed and
his head thrown back, like a sleeping St. Joseph in a shovel
hat, with a basin beside him, can I expect to be saved from
snapping him by such a formula as " Deliver us from evil " ?

214 Unprofessional Sermons

Is it in photographer's nature to do so ? When David found
himself in the cave with Saul he cut off one of Saul's coat-
tails ; if he had had a camera and there had been enough
light he would have photographed him ; but would it have
been in flesh and blood for him neither to cut off his coat-tail
nor to snap him ?

There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a
roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

iv

Teach me to live that I may dread
The grave as little as my bed.

This is from the evening hymn which all respectable
children are taught. It sounds well, but it is immoral.

Our own death is a premium which we must pay for the
far greater benefit we have derived from the fact that so
many people have not only lived but also died lief ore us.
For if the old ones had not in course of time gone there would
nave been no progress ; all our civilisation is due to the
arrangement whereby no man shall live for ever, and to this
huge mass of advantage we must each contribute our mite ;
that is to say, when our turn comes we too must die. The
hardship is that interested persons should be able to scare us
into thinking the change we call death to be the desperate
business which they make it out to be. There is no hardship
in having to suffer that change.

Bishop Ken, however, goes too far. Undesirable, of course,
death must always be to those who are fairly well off, but
it is undesirable that any living being should live in habitual
indifference to death. The indifference should be kept for
worthy occasions, and even then, though death be gladly
faced, it is not healthy that it should be faced as though it
were a mere undressing and going to bed.

XIV

Higgledy-Piggledy

Preface to Vol. II

On indexing this volume, as with Vols. I and IV which are
already indexed and as, no doubt, will be the case with any
that I may live to index later, I am alarmed at the triviality
of many of these notes, the ineptitude of many and the
obvious untenableness of many that I should have done
much better to destroy.

Elmsley, in one of his letters to Dr. Butler, says that an
author is the worst person to put one of his own w 7 orks through
the press (Life of Dr. Butler, I, 88). It seems to me that he
is the worst person also to make selections from his own
notes or indeed even, in my case, to write them. I cannot
help it. They grew as, with little disturbance, they now
stand ; they are not meant for publication ; the bad ones
serve as bread for* the jam of the good ones ; it was less
trouble to let them go than to think whether they ought not
to be destroyed. The retort, however, is obvious ; no think-
ing should have been required in respect of many — a glance
should have consigned them to the waste-paper basket. I
know it and I know that many a one of those who look over
these books — for that they will be looked over by not a few
I doubt not — will think me to have been a greater fool than
I probably was. I cannot help it. I have at any rate the
consolation of also knowing that, however much I may have
irritated, displeased or disappointed them, they will not be
able to tell me so ; and I think that, to some, such a record
of passing moods and thoughts good, bad -and indifferent
will be more valuable as throwing light upon the period to
which it relates than it would have been if it had been edited
with greater judgment.

***

2 1 6 Higgl edy-Piggledy

Besides, Vols. I and IV being already bound, I should not
have enough to form Vols- II and III if I cut out all those
that ought to be cut out. [June, 1898.]

P.S.— If I had re-read my preface to Vol. IV, I need not
have written the above.

Waste-Paper Baskets

Every one should keep a mental waste-paper basket and
the older he grows the more things he will consign to it —
torn up to irrecoverable tatters.

Flies in the Milk- Jug

Saving scraps is like picking flies out of the milk- jug. We
do not mind doing this, I suppose, because wc feel sure the
flies will never want to borrow money off us. We do not feel
so sure about anything much bigger than a fly. If it were a
mouse that had got into the milk-jug, we should call the cat
at once.

My Thoughts

They are like persons met upon a journey ; I think them
very agreeable at first but soon find, as a rule, that I am
tired of them.

Our Ideas

They are for the most part like bad sixpences and we
spend our lives in trying to pass them on one another.

Cat-Ideas and Mouse-Ideas

We can never get rid of mouse-ideas completely, they keep
turning up again and again, and nibble, nibble — no matter
how often we drive them off. The best way to keep them
down is to have a few good strong cat-ideas which will em-
brace them and ensure their not reappearing till they do so in
another shape.

Incoherency of New Ideas

An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and
incoherent ; all new ideas are shy when introduced first

Higgledy -Piggledy 2 1 7

among our old ones. We should have patience and see
whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on,
in which latter case the sooner we get rid of them the better.

An Apology for the Devil

It must be remembered that we have only heard one side
of the case. God has written all the books.

Hallelujah

When we exclaim so triumphantly " Hallelujah I for the
Lord God omnipotent reigneth " we only mean that we think
no small beer of ourselves, that our God is a much greater
God than any one else's God, that he was our father's God
before us, and that it is all right, respectable and as it should
be.

Hating

It does not matter much what a man hates provided he
hates something.

Hamlet, Don Quixote, Mr. Pickwick and others

The great characters of fiction live as truly as the memories
of dead men. For the life after death it is not necessary that
a man or woman should have lived.

Reputation

The evil that men do lives after them. Yes, and a good
deal of the evil that they never did as well.

Science and Business

The best class of scientific mind is the same as the best
class of business mind. The great desideratum in either case
is to know how much evidence is enough to warrant action.
It is as unbusinesslike to want too much evidence before
buying or selling as to be content with too little. The same
kind of qualities are wanted in either case. The difference is

218 Higgledy-Piggledy

that if the business man makes a mistake, he commonly has
to suffer for it, whereas it is rarely that scientific blundering,
so long as it is confined to theory, entails loss on the blunderer.
On the contrary it very often brings him fame, money and a
pension. Hence the business man, if he is a good one, will
take greater care not to overdo or underdo things than the
scientific man can reasonably be expected to take.

Scientists

There are two classes, those who want to know and do
not care whether others think they know or not, and those
who do not much care about knowing but care very greatly
about being reputed as knowing.

Scientific Terminology

This is the Scylla's cave which men of science are preparing
for themselves to be able to pounce out upon us from it, and
into which we cannot penetrate.

Scientists and Drapers

Why should the botanist, geologist or other-i'st give him-
self such airs over the draper's assistant ? Is it because
he names his plants or specimens with Latin names and
divides them into genera and species, whereas the draper
does not formulate his classifications, or at any rate only
uses his mother tongue when he does ? Yet how like the
sub-divisions of textile life are to those of the animal and
vegetable kingdoms ! A few great families — cotton, linen,
hempen, woollen, silk, mohair, alpaca — into what an infinite
variety of genera and species do not these great families
subdivide themselves ? And does it take less labour, with
less intelligence, to master all these and to acquire familiarity
with their various habits, habitats and prices than it does
to master the details of any other great branch of science ?
I do not know. But when I think of Shoolbred's on the one
hand and, say, the ornithological collections of the British
Museum upon the other, I feel as though it would take me
less trouble to master the second than the first.

Higgledy-Piggledy 219

Men of Science

If they are worthy oi the name they are indeed about God's
path and about his bed and spying out all his ways.

Sparks

Everything matters more than we think it does, and,
at the same time, nothing matters so much as we think
it does- The merest spark may set all Europe in a blaze,
but though all Europe be set in a blaze twenty times over,
the world will wag itself right again.

Dumb-Bells
I regard them with suspicion as academic.

Purgatory
Time is the only true purgatory.

Greatness

He is greatest who is most often in men's good thoughts.

The Vanity of Human Wishes

There is only one thing vainer and that is the having no
wishes.

Jones's Conscience

He said he had not much conscience, and what little he
had was guilty.

Nihilism

The Nihilists do not believe in nothing ; they only believe
in nothing that does not commend itself to themselves ;
that is, they will not allow that anything may be beyond
their comprehension. As their comprehension is not great
their creed is, after all, very nearly nihil.

220 Higgledy-Piggledy

On Breaking Habits

To begin knocking off the habit in the evening, then
the afternoon as well and, finally, the morning too is better
than to begin cutting it off in the morning and then go on
to the afternoon and evening. I speak from experience
as regards smoking and can say that when one comes to
within an hour or two of smoke-time one begins to be im-
patient for it, whereas there will be no impatience after
the time for knocking off has been confirmed as a habit.

Dogs

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool
of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but
he will make a fool of himself too.

Future and Past

The Will-be and the Has-been touch us more nearly than
the Is. So we are more tender towards children and old
people than to those who are in the prime of life.

Nature

As the word is now commonly used it excludes nature's
most interesting productions — the works of man. Nature
is usually taken to mean mountains, rivers, clouds and un-
domesticated animals and plants. I am not indifferent
to this half of nature, but it interests me much less than the
other half.

Lucky and Unlucky

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what
they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between
what they get and what they have been led to expect.

Definitions

i

As, no matter what cunning system of checks we devise,
we must in the end trust some one whom we do not check,

Higgledy-Piggledy 221

but to whom we give unreserved confidence, so there is a
point at which the understanding and mental processes
must be taken as understood without further question or
definition in words. And I should say that this point should
be fixed pretty early in the discussion.

ii

There is one class of mind that loves to lean on rules and
definitions, and another that discards them as far as possible.
A faddist will generally ask for a definition of faddism, and
one who is not a faddist will be impatient of being asked to
give one.

iii

A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a
wall of words.

iv

Definitions are a kind of scratching and generally leave a
sore place more sore than it was before.

v

As Love is too young to know what conscience is, so Truth
and Genius are too old to know what definition is.

Money

It has such an inherent power to run itself clear of taint
that human ingenuity cannot devise the means of making
it work permanent mischief, any more than means can be
found of torturing people beyond what they can bear. Even
if a man founds a College of Technical Instruction, the
chances are ten to one that no one will be taught anything
and that it will have been practically left to a number of
excellent professors who will know very well what to do
with it.

Wit

There is no Professor of Wit at either University. Surely
they might as reasonably have a professor of wit as of
poetry.

222 Higgledy-Piggledy

Oxford and Cambridge

The dons are too busy educating the young men to be
able to teach them anything.

Cooking

There is a higher average of good cooking at Oxford and
Cambridge than elsewhere. The cooking is better than
the curriculum. But there is no Chair of Cookery, it is
taught by apprenticeship in the kitchens.

Perseus and St. George

These dragon-slayers did not take lessons in dragon-
slaying, nor do leaders of forlorn hopes generally rehearse
their parts beforehand. Small things' may be rehearsed,
but the greatest are always do-or-die, neck-or-nothing
matters.

Specialism and Generalism

Woe to the specialist who is not a pretty fair generalist,
and woe to the generalist who is not also a bit of a specialist.

Silence and Tact

Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not
silence.

Truth-tellers

Professional truth-tellers may be trusted to profess that
they are telling the truth.

Street Preachers

These are the costermongers and barrow men of the re-
ligious world.

Higgledy-Piggledy 223

Providence and Othello

Providence, in making the rain fall also upon the sea,
was like the man who, when he was to play Othello, must
needs black himself all over.

Providence and Improvidence

i

We should no longer say : Put your trust in Providence,
but in Improvidence, for this is what we mean.

ii

To put one's trust in God is only a longer way of saying
that one will chance it.

iii

There is nothing so imprudent or so improvident as over-
prudence or over-providence.

Epiphany

If Providence could be seen at all, he would probably
turn out to be a very disappointing person — a little wizened
old gentleman with a cold in his head, a red nose and a com-
forter round his neck, whistling o'er the furrow'd land or
crooning to himself as he goes aimlessly along the streets,
poking his way about and loitering continually at shop-
windows and second-hand book-stalls.

Fortune

Like Wisdom, Fortune crieth in the streets, and no man
regardeth. There is not an advertisement supplement
to the Times — nay, hardly a half sheet of newspaper that
comes into a house wrapping up this or that, but it gives
information which would make a man's fortune, if he could
only spot it and detect the one paragraph that would do
this among the 99 which would wreck him if he had anything
to do with them.

224 Higgledy-Piggledy

Gold-Mines

Gold is not found in quartz alone ; its richest lodes are in
the eyes and ears of the public, but these are harder to work
and to prospect than any quartz vein.

Things and Purses

Everything is like a purse — there may be money in it,
and we can generally say by the feel of it whether there is
or is not. Sometimes, however, we must turn it inside out
before we can be quite sure whether there is anything in it
or no. When I have turned a proposition inside out, put
it to stand on its head, and shaken it, I have often been
surprised to find how much came out of it.

Solomon in all his Glory

But, in the first place, the lilies do toil and spin after their
own fashion, and, in the next, it was not desirable that
Solomon should be dressed like a lily of the valley.

David's Teachers

David said he had more understanding than his teachers.
If his teachers were anything like mine this need not imply
much understanding on David's part. And if his teachers
did not know more than the Psalms — it is absurd. It is
merely swagger, like the German Emperor. [1S97.]

S. Michael

He contended with the devil about the body of Moses.
Now, I do not believe that any reasonable person would
contend about the body of Moses with the devil or with any
one else.

One Form of Failure

From a worldly point of view there is no mistake so great
as that of being always right.

Higgledy- Piggledy 225

Andromeda

The dragon was never in better health and spirits than
on the morning when Perseus came down upon him. It
is said that Andromeda told Perseus she had been thinking
how remarkably well he was looking. He had got up quite
in his usual health — and so on.

When I said this to Ballard [a fellow art-student at Heather-
ley's] and that other thing which I said about Andromeda in
Life and Habit* he remarked that he wished it had been so
in the poets.

I looked at him. " Ballard," I said, " I also am ' the
poets/ "

Self-Confidence

Nothing is ever any good unless it is thwarted with self-
distrust though in the main self-confident.

Wandering

When the inclination is not obvious, the mind meanders,
or maunders, as a stream in a flat meadow.

Poverty

I shun it because I have found it so apt to become con-
tagious ; but I fancy my constitution is more seasoned against
it now than formerly. I hope that what I have gone through
may have made me immune.

Pedals or Drones

The discords of every age are rendered possible by being
taken on a drone or pedal of cant, common form and con-
ventionality. This drone is, as it were, the flour and suet of
a plum pudding.

* " So, again, it is said that when Andromeda and Perseus had
travelled but a little way from the rock where Andromeda had so
long been chained, she began upbraiding him with the loss of her
dragon who, on the whole, she said, had been very good to her. The
only things we really hate are unfamiliar things." Life <S- Habit,
Chapter VIII, p. 138/9.

Q

226 Higgledy-Piggledy

Evasive Nature

She is one long This-way-and-it-isness and, at the same
time, That-way-and-it-isn'tness. She flies so like a snipe
that she is hard to hit.

Fashion

Fashion is like God, man cannot see it in its holy of holies
and live. And it is, like God, increate, springing out of
nothing, yet the maker of all things— ever changing yet
the same yesterday, to-day and for ever.

Doctors and Clergymen

A physician's physiology has much the same relation to
his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of
influencing conduct.

God is Love
I dare say. But what a mischievous devil Love is !

Common Chords

If Man is the tonic and God the dominant, the Devil is
certainly the sub-dominant and Woman is the relative minor.

God and the Devil

God and the Devil are an effort after specialisation and
division of labour.

Sex

The sexes are the first — or are among the first great ex-
periments in the social subdivision of labour.

Women

If you choose to insist on the analogies and points of
resemblance between men and women, they are so great
that the differences seem indeed small. If, on the other
hand, you are in a mood for emphasising the points of differ-

Higgledy-Piggledy 227

ence, you can show that men and women have hardly any-
thing in common. And so with anything : if a man'wants
to make a case he can generally find - a way of doing so.

Offers of Marriage

Women sometimes say that they have had no offers,
and only wish that some one had ever proposed to them.
This is not the right way to put it. What they should say
is that though, like all women, they have been proposing
to men all their lives, yet they grieve to remember that
they have been invariably refused.

Marriage
i

The question of marriage or non-marriage is only the
question of whether it is better to be spoiled one way or
another.

ii

In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.

iii

Inoculation, or a hair of the dog that is going to bite you —
this principle should be introduced in respect of marriage
and speculation.

Life and Love

To live is like to love — all reason is against it, and all
healthy instinct for it.

The Basis of Life
We may say what we will, but Life is, au fond, sensual.

Woman Suffrage

I will vote for it when women have left off making
a noise in the reading-room of the British Museum, when
they leave off wearing high head-dresses in the pit of a theatre
and when I have seen as many as twelve women in all catch
hold of the strap or bar on getting into an omnibus.

228 Higgledy-Piggledy

Manners Makyth Man
Yes, but they make woman still more.

Women and Religion

It has been said that all sensible men are of the same
religion and that no sensible man ever says what that religion
is. So all sensible men are of the same opinion about women
and no sensible man ever says what that opinion is.

Happiness

Behold and see if there be any happiness like unto the
: happiness of the devils when they found themselves cast out
of Mary Magdalene.

Sorrow within Sorrow

He was in reality damned glad ; he told people he was
sorry he was not more sorry, and here began the first genuine
sorrow, for he was really sorry that people would not believe
he was sorry that he was not more sorry.

Going Away

I can generally bear the separation, but I don't like the
leave-taking.

XV

Titles and Subjects
Titles

A good title should aim at making what follows as far as
possible superfluous to those who know anything of the
subject.

" The Ancient Mariner "

This poem would not have taken so well if it had been
called " The Old Sailor," so that Wardour Street has its
uses.

For Unwritten Articles, Essays, Stories

The Art of Quarrelling.

Christian Death-beds.

The Book of Babes and Sucklings.

Literary Struldbrugs.

The Life ot the World to Come.

The Limits oi Good Faith.

Art, Money and Religion.

The Third Class Excursion Train, or Steam-boat, as the
Church of the Future.

The Utter Speculation involved in much of the good advice
that is commonly given — as never to sell a reversion, etc.

Tracts for Children, warning them against the virtues of
their ciders.

Making Ready for Death as a Means of Prolonging Life.

An Essay concerning Human Misunderstanding. So
McCulloch [a fellow art-student at Heatherley's, a very fine
draughtsman] used to say that he drew a great many lines
and saved the best of them. Illusion, mistake, action taken

230 Titles and Subjects

in the dark — these are among the main sources of our pro-
gress.

The Elements of Immorality for the Use of Earnest School-
masters.

Family Prayers : A series of perfectly plain and sensible
ones asking for what people really do want without any kind
of humbug.

A Penitential Psalm as David would have written it if he
had been reading Herbert Spencer.

A Few Little Crows which I have to pick with various
people.

The Scylla of Atheism and the Charybdis of Christianity.

The Battle of the Prigs and Blackguards.

That Good may Come.

The Marriage of Inconvenience.

The Judicious Separation.

Fooling Around.

Higgledy-Piggledy.

The Diseases and Ordinary Causes of Mortality among
Friendships.

The finding a lot of old photographs at Herculaneum or
Thebes ; and they should turn out to be of no interest.

On the points of resemblance and difference between the
dropping of of leaves from a tree and the dropping off of
guests from a dinner or a concert.

The Sense of Touch : An essay showing that all the senses
resolve themselves ultimately into a sense of touch, and
that eating is touch carried to the bitter end. So there is
but one sense — touch — and the amoeba has it. When I look
upon the foraminifera I look upon myself.

The China Shepherdess with Lamb on public-house chim-
nev-pieces in England as against the Virgin with Child in
Italy.

For a Medical pamphlet : Cant as a means of Prolonging
Life.

For an Art book: The Complete Pot-boiler; or what
to paint and how to paint it, with illustrations reproduced
from contemporary exhibitions and explanatory notes.

For a Picture : St. Francis preaching to Silenus. Fra
Angelico and Rubens might collaborate to produce this
picture.

Titles and Subjects 231

The Happy Mistress. Fifteen mistresses apply for three
cooks and the mistress who thought herself nobody is chosen
by the beautiful and accomplished cook.

"The Complete Drunkard. He would not give money to
sober people, he said they would only eat it and send their
children to school with it.

The Contented Porpoise. It knew it was to be stuffed
and set up in a glass case after death, and looked forward
to this as to a life of endless happiness.

The Flying Balance. The ghost of an old cashier haunts
a ledger, so that the books always refuse to balance by the
sum of, say, £1.15.11. No matter how many accountants
are called in, year after year the same error always turns
up ; sometimes they think they have it right and it turns
out there was a mistake, so the old error reappears. At
last a son and heir is born, and at some festivities the
old cashier's name is mentioned with honour. This lays
his ghost. Next morning the books are found correct and
remain so.

A Dialogue between Isaac and Lshmael on the night that
Isaac came down from the mountain with his father. The
rebellious lshmael tries to stir up Isaac, and that good young
man explains the righteousness of the transaction — without
much effect.

Bad Habits : on the dropping them gradually, as one
leaves off requiring them, on the evolution principle.

A Story about a Freethinking Father who has an illegiti-
mate son which he considers the proper thing ; he finds
this son taking to immoral ways, e.g. he turns Christian,
becomes a clergyman and insists on marrying.

For a Ballad : Two sets of rooms in some alms-houses
at Cobham near Gravesend have an inscription stating
that they belong to " the Hundred of Hoo in the Isle of
Grain." These words would make a lovely refrain for a
ballad.

A story about a man who suffered from atrophy of the
purse, or atrophy of the opinions ; but whatever the disease
some plausible Latin, or imitation-Latin name must be
found for it and also some cure.

A Fairy Story modelled on the Ugly Duckling of Hans
Andersen about a bumptious boy whom all the nice boys

232 Titles and Subjects

hated. He finds out that he was really at last caressed by
the Huxleys and Tyndalls as one of themselves.

A Collection of the letters of people who have committed
suicide ; and also of people who only threaten to do so.
The first may be got abundantly from reports of coroners*
inquests, the second would be harder to come by.

The Structure and Comparative Anatomy of Fads, Fancies
and Theories ; showing, moreover, that men and women
exist only as the organs and tools of the ideas that dominate
them ; it is the fad that is alone living.

An Astronomical Speculation : Each fixed star has a
separate god whose body is his own particular solar system,
and these gods know each other, move about among each
other as we do, laugh at each other and criticise one another's
work. Write some of their discourses with and about one
another.

Imaginary Worlds

A world exactly, to the minutest detail, a duplicate of
our own, but as we shall be five hundred, or from that
to twenty thousand, years hence. Let there be also
another world, a duplicate of what we were five hundred
to twenty thousand years ago. There should be many
worlds of each kind at different dates behind us and ahead
of us.

I send a visitor from a world ahead of us to a world behind
us, after which he comes to us, and so we learn what happened
in the Homeric age. My visitor will not tell me what has
happened in his own world since the time corresponding to
the present moment in our world, because the knowledge
of the future would be not only fatal to ourselves but would
upset the similarity between the two worlds, so they would
be no longer able to refer to us for information on any point
of history from the moment of the introduction of the dis-
turbing element.

When they are in doubt about a point in their past history
that we have not yet reached they make preparation and
forecast its occurrence in our world as we foretell eclip-w*^
and transits of Venus, and all their most accomplished his-
torians investigate it ; but if the conditions for observation
have been unfavourable, or if they postpone consideration

Titles and Subjects 233

of the point till the time of its happening here has gone by,
then they must wait for many years till the same combination
occurs in some other world. Thus they say, " The next
beheading of King Charles I will be in Aid. b. x. 23 1| — or
whatever the name of the star may be — " on such and such
a day of such and such a year, and there will not be another
in the lifetime of any man now living/ 1 or there will, in such
and such a star, as the case may be.

Communication with a world twenty thousand years ahead
of us might ruin the human race as effectually as if we had
fallen into the sun. It would be too wide a cross. The
people in my supposed world know this and if, for any reason,
they want to kill a civilisation, stuff it* and put it into a
museum, they tell it something that is too much ahead of
its other ideas, something that travels faster than thought,
thus setting an avalanche of new ideas tumbling in upon
it and utterly destroying everything. Sometimes they
merely introduce a little poisonous microbe of thought
which the cells in the world where it is introduced do not
know how to deal with — some such trifle as that two and
two make seven, or that you can weigh time in scales by
the pound ; a single such microbe of knowledge placed in
the brain of a fitting subject would breed like wild fire and
kill all that came in contact with it.

And so on.

An Idyll

I knew a South Italian of the old Greek blood whose
sister told him when he was a boy that he had eyes like a
cow.

Raging with despair and grief he haunted the fountains
and looked into the mirror of their waters. " Are my eyes/'
he asked himself with horror, " are they really like the eyes
of a cow ? " " Alas ! " he was compelled to answer, " they
are only too sadly, sadly like them."

And he asked those of his playmates whom he best knew
and trusted whether it was indeed true that his eyes were
like the eyes of a cow, but he got no comfort from any of
them, for they one and all laughed at him and said that they
were not only like, but very like. Then grief consumed his

234 Titles and Subjects

soul, and he could eat no food, till one day the loveliest girl
in. the place said to him :

" Gaetano, my grandmother is ill and cannot get her fire-
wood ; come with me to the bosco this evening and help me
to bring her a load or two, will you ? "

And he said he would go.

So when the sun was well down and the cool night air
was sauntering under the chestnuts, the pair sat together
cheek to cheek and with their arms round each other's
waists.

" 0 Gaetano/' she exclaimed, " 1 do love you so very
dearly. When you look at me your eyes are like — they are
like the eyes '—here she faltered a little—" the eyes of a
cow."

Thenceforward he cared not. . . .
And so on.

A Divorce Novelette

The hero and heroine are engaged against their wishes.
They like one another very well but each is in love with
some one else; nevertheless, under an uncle's will, they
forfeit large property unless they marry one another, so
they get married, making no secret to one another that they
dislike it very much.

On the evening of their wedding day they broach the
subject that has long been nearest to their hearts — the
possibility of being divorced. They discuss it tearfully,
but the obstacles seem insuperable. Nevertheless they
agree that faint heart never yet got rid of fair lady, " None
but the brave," exclaims the husband, " deserve to lose
the fair," and they plight their most solemn vows that they
will henceforth live but for the object of getting divorced
from one another.

But the course of true divorce never did run smooth,
and the plot turns upon the difficulties that meet them
and how they try to overcome them. At one time they
seem almost certain of success, but the cup is dashed from
their lips and is farther off than ever.

At last an opportunity occurs in an unlooked-for manner.
They are divorced and live happily apart ever afterwards.

Titles and Subjects 235

The Moral Painter
A Tale of Double Personality

Once upon a time there was a painter who divided his
life into two halves ; in the cne half he painted pot-boilers
for the market, setting every consideration aside except
that of doing for his master, the public, something for which
he could get paid the money on which he lived. He was
great at floods and never looked at nature except in order
to see what would make most show with least expense.
On the whole he found nothing so cheap to make and easy
to sell as veiled heads.

The other half of his time he studied and painted with
the sincerity of Giovanni Bellini, Rembrandt, Holbein or
De Hooghe. He was then his own master and thought
only of doing his work as well as he could, regardless of
whether it would bring him anything but debt and abuse
or not. He gave his best without receiving so much as
thanks.

He avoided the temptation of telling either half about
the other.

Two Writers

One left little or nothing about himself and the world
complained that it was puzzled. Another, mindful of this,
left copious details about himself, whereon the world said
that it was even more puzzled about him than about the
man who had left nothing, till presently it found out that
it was also bored, and troubled itself no more about either.

The Archbishop of Heligoland

The Archbishop of Heligoland believes his faith, and it
.nakes him so unhappy that he finds it impossible to advise
any one to accept it. He summons the Devil, makes a compact
with him and is relieved by being made to see that there was
nothing in it — whereon he is very good and happy and leads
a most beneficent life, but is haunted by the thought that on
his death the Devil will claim his bond. This terror grows

236 Titles and Subjects

greater and greater, and he determines to see the Devi!
again.

The upshot of it all is that the Devil turns out to have
been Christ who has a dual life and appears sometimes as
Christ and sometimes as the Devil.*

* Butler gave this as a subject to Mr. E. P. Larken who made it into
a short story entitled " The Priest's Bargain/' which appeared in the
Pall Mall Magazine, May, 1897.

XVI

Written Sketches

Literary Sketch-Books

The true writer will stop everywhere and anywhere to put
down his notes, as the true painter will stop everywhere and
anywhere to sketch.

I do not see why an author should not have a sale of literary
sketches, each one short, slight and capable of being framed
and glazed in small compass. They would make excellent
library decorations and ought to fetch as much as an artist's
sketches. They might be cut up in suitable lots, if the fashion
were once set, and many a man might be making provision
for his family at odd times with his notes as an artist does
with his sketches.

London

If I were asked what part of London I was most identified
with after Clifford's Inn itself, I should say Fetter Lane —
every part of it. Just by the Record Office is one of the places
where I am especially prone to get ideas ; so also is the other
end, about the butcher's shop near Holborn. The reason in
both cases is the same, namely, that I have about had tiiha to
settle down to reflection after leaving, on the one hand, my
rooms in Clifford's Inn and, on the other, Jones's rooms in
Barnard's Inn where I usually spend the evening. The subject
which has occupied my mind during the day being approached
anew after an interval and a shake, some fresh idea in con-
nection with it often strikes me. But long before I knew Jones,
Fetter Lane was always a street which I was more in than per-
haps any other in London. Leather Lane, the road through
Lincoln's Inn Fields to the Museum, the Embankment, Fleet
Street, the Strand and Charing Cross come next.

2 37

2 3 8

Written Sketches

A Clifford's Inn Euphemism

People when they want to get rid of their cats, and do not
like killing them, bring them to the garden of Clifford's Inn,
drop them there and go away. In spite of all that is said
about cats being able to find their way so wonderfully, they
seldom do find it, and once in Clifford's Inn the cat generally
remains there. The technical word among the laundresses in
the inn for this is, " losing " a cat :

" Poor thing, poor thing," said one old woman to me a few
days ago, " it's got no fur on its head at all, and no doubt
that's why the people she lived with lost her/'

London Trees

They are making a great outcry about the ventilators on
the Thames Embankment, just as they made a great outcry
about the Griffin in Fleet Street. [See Alps and Sanctuaries.
Introduction.] They say the ventilators have spoiled the
Thames Embankment. They do not spoil it half so much as
the statues do — indeed, I do not see that they spoil it at all.
The trees that are planted everywhere are, or will be, a more
serious nuisance. Trees are all very well where there is plenty
of room, otherwise they are a mistake ; they keep in the
moisture, exclude light and air, and their roots disturb
foundations ; most of our London Squares would look much
better if the trees were thinned. I should like to cut down all
the plane trees in the garden of Clifford's Inn and leave only
the others.

What I Said to the Milkman

One afternoon I heard a knock at the door and found it was
the milkman. Mrs. Doncaster [his laundress] was not there,
so I took in the milk myself. The milkman is a very nice man,
and, by way of making himself pleasant, said, rather com-
plainingly, that the weather kept very dry.

I looked at him significantly and said : " Ah, yes, of course
for your business you must find it very inconvenient," and
laughed.

He saw he had been caught and laughed too. It was a very

Written Sketches

239

old joke, but he had not expected it at that particular moment,
and on the top of such an innocent remark.

The Return of the Jews to Palestine

A man called on me last week and proposed gravely that I
should write a book upon an idea which had occurred to a
friend of his, a Jew living in New Bond Street. It was a plan
requiring the co-operation of a brilliant writer and that was
why he had come to me. If only I would help, the return of
the Jews to Palestine would be rendered certain and easy.
There was no trouble about the poor Jews, he knew how he
could get them back at any time ; the difficulty lay with the
Rothschilds, the Oppenheims and such ; with my assistance,
however, the thing could be done.

I am afraid I was rude enough to decline to go into the
scheme on the ground that I did not care twopence whether
the Rothschilds and Oppenheims went back to Palestine or
not. This was felt to be an obstacle ; but then he began to
try and make me care, whereupon, of course, I had to get
rid of him. [1883.]

The Great Bear's Barley-Water

Last night Jones was walking down with me from Staple Inn
to Clifford's Inn, about 10 o'clock, and we saw the Great Bear
standing upright on the tip of his tail which was coming out
of a chimney pot. Jones said it wanted attending to. I said :

" Yes, but to attend to it properly we ought to sit up with
it all night, and if the Great Bear thinks that I am going to sit
by his bed-side and give him a spoonful of barley-water every
ten minutes, he will find himself much mistaken." [1892.3

The Cock Tavern

I went into Fleet Street one Sunday morning last November
[1882] with my camera lucida to see whether I should like to
make a sketch of the gap made by the demolition of the Cock
Tavern. It was rather pretty, with an old roof or two behind
and scaffolding about and torn paper hanging to an exposed
party-wall and old fireplaces and so on, but it was not very

240

Written Sketches

much out of the way. Still I would have taken it if it had not
been the Cock. I thought of all the trash that has been written
about it and of Tennyson's plump head waiter (who by the
way used to swear that he did not know Tennyson and that
Tennyson never did resort to the Cock) and I said to myself :
" No — you may go. I will put out no hand to save you."

Myself in Dowie's Shop

I always buy ready-made boots and insist on taking those
which the shopman says are much too large for mc. By this
means I keep free from corns, but I have a great deal of trouble
generally with the shopman. I had got on a pair once which
I thought would do, and the shopman said for the third or
fourth time :

" But really, sir, these boots are much too large for you. ,,
I turned to him and said rather sternly, " Now, you made
that remark before/'

There was nothing in it, but all at once I became aware that
I was being watched, and, looking up, saw a middle-aged
gentleman eyeing the whole proceedings with much amuse-
ment. He was quite polite but he was obviously exceedingly
amused. I can hardly tell why, nor why I should put such a
trifle down, but somehow or other an impression was made
upon me by the affair quite out of proportion to that usually
produced by so small a matter.

My Dentist

Mr. Forsyth had been stopping a tooth for me and then
talked a little, as he generally does, and asked me if I knew
a certain distinguished literary man, or rather journalist. I
said No, and that I did not want to know him. The paper
edited by the gentleman in question was not to my taste. I
was a literary Ishmael, and preferred to remain so. It was
my role.

" It seems to me," I continued, " that if a man will only
be careful not to write about things that he does not under-
stand, if he will use the tooth-pick freely and the spirit twice
a day, and come to you again in October, he will get on very
well without knowing any of the big-wigs."

Written Sketches 241

" The tooth-pick freely " and " the spirit twice a clay "
being tags of Mr. Forsyth's, he laughed.

Furber the Violin-Maker

From what my cousin [Reginald E. Worsley] and Gogin
both tell me I am sure that Furber is one of the best men we
have. My cousin did not like to send Hyam to him for a
violin : he did not think him worthy to have one. Furber
does not want you to buy a violin unless you can appreciate
it when you have it. My cousin says of him :

''He is generally a little tight on a Saturday afternoon.
He always speaks the truth, but on Saturday afternoons it
comes pouring out more."

" His joints [i.e. the joints of the violins he makes] are the
closest and neatest that were ever made."

" He always speaks of the corners of a fiddle ; Haweis
would call them the points. Haweis calls it the neck of a
fiddle. Furber always the handle/'

My cousin says he would like to take his violins to bed
with him.

Speaking of Strad violins Furber said : " Rough, rough
linings, but they look as if they grew together/'

One day my cousin called and Furber, on opening the door,
before saying " How do you do ? " or any word of greeting,
said very quietly :

" The dog is dead."

My cousin, having said what he thought sufficient, took up
a violin and played a few notes. Furber evidently did not like
it. Rose, the dog, was still unburied ; she was laid out in that
very room. My cousin stopped. Then Mrs. Furber came in.

R. E. W. "I am very sorry, Mrs. Furber, to hear about
Rose."

Mrs. F. " Well, yes sir. But I suppose it is all for the best."

R. E. W. " I am afraid you will miss her a great deal."

Mrs. F. "No doubt we shall, sir ; but you see she is only
gone a little while before us."

R. E. W. " Oh, Mrs. Furber, I hope a good long while."

Mrs. F. (brightening). " Well, yes sir, I don't want to go
just yet, though Mr. Furber does say it is a happy thing to
die."

R ♦

242

Written Sketches

My cousin says that Furber hardly knows any one by their
real name. He identifies them by some nickname in connec-
tion with the fiddles they buy from him or get him to repair,
or by some personal peculiarity.

" There is one man/' said my cousin, " whom he calls
' diaphragm ' because he wanted a fiddle made with what he
called a diaphragm in it. He knows Dando and Carrodus and
Jenny Lind, but hardly any one else."

" Who is Dando ? " said I.

" Why, Dando ? Not know Dando ? He was George the
Fourth's music master, and is now one of the oldest members
of the profession."

Window Cleaning in the British Museum
Reading-Room

Once a year or so the figures on the Assyrian bas-reliefs
break adrift and may be seen, with their scaling ladders and
all, cleaning the outside of the windows in the dome of the
reading-room. It is very pretty to watch them and they
would photograph beautifully. If I live to see them do it
again I must certainly snapshot them. You can see them
smoking and sparring, and this year they have left a little
hole in the window above the clock.

The Electric Light in its Infancy

I heard a woman in a 'bus boring her lover about the
electric light. She wanted to know this and that, and the
poor lover was helpless. Then she said she wanted to know
how it was regulated. At last she settled down by saying
that she knew it was in its infanc}'. The word " infancy "
seemed to have a soothing effect upon her, for she said no
more but, leaning her head against her lover's shoulder, com-
posed herself to slumber.

Fire .

1 was at one the other night and heard a man say : " That
corner stack is alight now quite nicely." People's sympathies
seem generally to be with the fire so long as no one is in danger
of being burned.

Written Sketches

243

Adam and Eve

A little boy and a little girl were looking at a picture of
Adam and Eve.

" Which is Adam and which is Eve ? " said one.

" I do not know/' said the other, " but I could tell if they
had their clothes on."

Does Mamma Know ?

A father was telling his eldest daughter, aged about six,
that she had a little sister, and was explaining to her how nice
it all was. The child said it was delightful and added :

" Does Mamma know ? Let's go and tell her."

Mr. Darwin in the Zoological Gardens

Frank Darwin told me his father was once standing near
the hippopotamus cage when a little boy and girl, aged four
and five, came up. The hippopotamus shut his eyes for a
minute.

" That bird's dead," said the little girl; " come along."
Terbourg

Gogin told me that Berg, an impulsive Swede whom he had
known in Laurens's studio in Paris and w T ho painted very well,
came to London and was taken by an artist friend [Henry
Scott Tuke, A.R.A.] to the National Gallery where he became
very enthusiastic about the Terbourgs. They then went for
a walk and, in Kensington Gore, near one of the entrances to
Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens, there was an old Irish
apple-woman sitting with her feet in a basket, smoking a pipe
and selling oranges.

" Arranges two a penny, sorr," said the old woman in a
general way.

And Berg, turning to her and throwing out his hands
appealingly, said :

4< 0, madame, avez-vous vu les Terbourgs? Allez voir les
Terbourgs."

He felt that such a big note had been left out of the life of
any one who had not seen them.

244

Written Sketches

At Doctors' Commons

A woman once stopped me at the entrance to Doctors'
Commons and said :

" If you please, sir, can you tell me — is this the place that
I came to before ? "

Not knowing where she had been before I could not tell her.

The Sack of Khartoum

As I was getting out of a 'bus the conductor said to me in a
confidential tone :

" I say, what does that mean ? ' Sack of Khartoum ' ?
What does ' Sack of Khartoum ' mean ? "

" It means," said I, " that they've taken Khartoum and
played hell with it all round."

He understood that and thanked me, whereon we parted.

Missolonghi

Ballard [a fellow art-student with Butler at Heatherley's]
told me that an old governess, some twenty years since, was
teaching some girls modern geography. One of them did
not know the name Missolonghi. The old lady wrung her
hands :

" Why, me dear," she exclaimed, " when I was your age I
could never hear the name mentioned without bursting into
tears."

I should perhaps add that Byron died there.

Memnon

I saw the driver of the Hampstead 'bus once, near St.
Giles's Church — an old, fat, red-faced man sitting bolt up-
right on the top of his 'bus in a driving storm of snow, fast
asleep with a huge waterproof over his great-coat which
descended with sweeping lines on to a tarpaulin. All this rose
out of a cloud of steam from the horses. He had a short clay
pipe in his mouth but, for the moment, he looked just like
Memnon.

Written Sketches

245

Manzi the Model

They had promised him sittings at the Royal Academy
and then refused him on the ground that his legs were too
hairy. He complained to Gogin :

" Why," said he, " I sat at the Slade School for the figure
only last week, and there were five ladies, but not one of them
told me my legs were too hairy."

A Sailor Boy and Some Chickens

A pretty girl in the train had some chirping chickens
about ten days' old in a box labelled " German egg powders.
One packet equal to six eggs." A sailor boy got in at Basing-
stoke, a quiet, reserved youth, well behaved and unusually
good-looking. By and by the chickens were taken out of the
box and fed with biscuit on the carriage seat. This thawed
the boy who, though he fought against it for some lime,
yielded to irresistible fascination and said :

"What are they ? "

" Chickens," said the girl.

" Will they grow bigger ? "

" Yes."

Then the boy said with an expression of infinite wonder :
" And did you hatch them from they powders ? "

We all laughed till the boy blushed and I was very sorry
for him. If we had said they had been hatched from the
powders he would have certainly believed us.

Gogin, the Japanese Gentleman and the
Dead Dog

Gogin was one day going down Cleveland Street and saw an
old, lean, careworn man crying over the body of his dog which
had been just run over and killed by the old man's own cart.
I have no doubt it was the dog's fault, for the man was in great
distress ; as for the dog there it lay all swelled and livid where
the wheel had gone over it, its eyes protruded from their
sockets and its tongue lolled out, but it was dead. The old
man gazed on it, helplessly weeping, for some time and then

246

Written Sketches

got a large piece of brown paper in which he wrapped up the
body of his favourite ; he tied it neatly with a piece of string
and, placing it in his cart, went homeward with a heavy heart.
The day was dull, the gutters were full of cabbage stalks and
the air resounded with the cry of costermongers.

On this a Japanese gentleman, who had watched the scene,
lifted up his voice and made the bystanders a set oration. He
was very yellow, had long black hair, gold spectacles and a
top hat ; he was a typical Japanese, but he spoke English per-
fectly. He said the scene they had all just witnessed was a
very sad one and that it ought not to be passed over entirely
without comment. He explained that it was very nice of the
good old man to be so sorry about his dog and to be so careful
of its remains and that he and all the bystanders must sym-
pathise with him in his grief, and as the expression of their
sympathy, both with the man and with the poor dog, he had
thought fit, with all respect, to make them his present speech.

I have not the man's words but Gogin said they were like
a Japanese drawing, that is to say, wonderfully charming, and
showing great knowledge but not done in the least after the
manner in which a European would do them. The bystanders
stood open-mouthed and could make nothing of it, but they
liked it, and the Japanese gentleman liked addressing them.
When he left off and went away they followed him with their
eyes, speechless.

St. Pandas' Bells

Gogin lives at 164 Euston Road, just opposite St. Pancras
Church, and the bells play doleful hymn tunes opposite his
window which worries him. My St. Dunstan's bells near
Clifford's Inn play doleful hymn tunes which enter in at my
window ; I not only do not dislike them, but rather like them ;
they are so silly and the bells are out of tune. I never yet was
annoyed by either bells or street music except when a loud
piano organ strikes up outside the public-house opposite my
bedroom window after I am in bed and when I am just going
to sleep. How T ever, Jones was at Gogin's one summer evening
and the bells struck up their dingy old burden as usual. The
tonic bell on which the tune concluded was the most stuffy
and out of tune. Gogin said it was like the smell of a bug.

Written Sketches

247

At Eynsford

I saw a man painting there the other day but passed his
work without . looking at it and sat down to sketch some
hundred of yards off. In course of time he came strolling
round to see what I was doing and I, not knowing but what
he might paint much better than I, was apologetic and said
I was not a painter by profession.

" What are you ? " said he.

I said I was a writer.

" Dear me," said he. " Why that's my line — I'm a
writer."

I laughed and said I hoped he made it pay better than I
did. He said it paid very well and asked me where I lived
and in what neighbourhood my connection lay. I said I had
no connection but only wrote books.

" Oh ! I see. You mean you are an author. I'm not
an author ; I didn't mean that. I paint people's names
up over their shops, and that's what we call being a writer.
There isn't a touch on my work as good as any touch on
yours."

I was gratified by so much modesty and, on my way back
to dinner, called to see his work. I am afraid that he was not
far wrong — it was awful.

Omnc ignotum pro magnifico holds with painters perhaps
more than elsewhere ; we never see a man sketching, or even
carrying a paint-box, without rushing to the conclusion that
he can paint very well. There is no cheaper way of getting a
reputation than that of going about with easel, paint-box, etc.,
provided one can ensure one's work not being seen. And the
more traps one carries the cleverer people think one.

Mrs. Hicks

She and her husband, an old army sergeant who was all
through the Indian Mutiny, are two very remarkable people ;
they keep a public-house where we often get our beer when out
for our Sunday walk. She owns to sixty-seven, I should think
she was a full seventy-five, and her husband, say, sixty-five.
She is a tall, raw-boned Gothic woman with a strong family

248

Written Sketches

likeness to the crooked old crusader who lies in the church
transept, and one would expect to find her body scrawled over
with dates ranging from 400 years ago to the present time,
just as the marble figure itself is. She has a great beard
and moustaches and three projecting teeth in her lower jaw
but no more in any part of her mouth. She moves slowly and
is always a little in liquor besides being singularly dirty in her
person. Her husband is like unto her.

For all this they are hard-working industrious people,
keep no servant, pay cash for everything, are clearly going up
rather than down in the world and live well. She always shows
us what she is going to have for dinner and it is excellent —
" And I made the stuffing over night and the gravy first thing
this morning." Each time we go we find the house a little
more done up. She dotes on Mr. Hicks — we never go there
without her wedding day being referred to. She has earned
her own living ever since she was ten years old, and lived
twenty-nine and a half years in the house from which Mr.
Hicks married her. " I am as happy," she said, " as the day
is long." She dearly loves a joke and a little flirtation. I
always say something perhaps a little impudently broad to
her and she likes it extremely. Last time she sailed smilingly
out of the room, doubtless to tell Mr. Hicks, and came back
still smiling.

When we come we find her as though she had lien among
the pots, but as soon as she has given us our beer, she goes
upstairs and puts on a cap and a clean apron and washes her
face — that is to say, she washes a round piece in the middle
of her face, leaving a great glory of dirt showing all round it.
It is plain the pair are respected by the manner in which all
w 7 ho come in treat them.

Last time we were there she said she hoped she should not
die yet.

" You see," she said, " I am beginning now to know how
to live."

These were her own words and, considering the circum-
stances under which they were spoken, they are enough to
stamp the speaker as a remarkable woman. She has got as
much from age and lost as little from youth as woman can
well do. Nevertheless, to look at, she is like one of the witches
in Macbeth.

Written Sketches

249

New-Laid Eggs

When I take my Sunday walks in the country, I try to buy
a few really new-laid eggs warm from the nest. At this time
of the year (January) they are very hard to come by, and I
have long since invented a sick wife who has implored me to
get her a few eggs laid not earlier than the self-same morning.
Of late, as I am getting older, it has become my daughter
who has just had a little baby. This will generally draw a
new-laid egg, if there is one about the place at all.

At Harrow Weald it has always been my wife who for years
has been a great sufferer and finds a really new-laid egg the
one thing she can digest in the way of solid food. So I turned
her on as movingly as I could not long since, and was at last
sold some eggs that were no better than common shop eggs,
if so good. Next time I went I said my poor wife had been
made seriously ill by them ; it was no good trying to deceive
her ; she could tell a new-laid egg from a bad one as well as
any woman in London, and she had such a high temper that
it was very unpleasant for me when she found herself dis-
appointed.

"Ah ! sir," said the landlady, " but you would not like to
lose her."

" Ma'am," I replied, " I must not allow my thoughts to
wander in that direction. But it's no use bringing her stale
eggs, anyhow."

"The Egg that Hen Belonged to"

I got some new-laid eggs a few Sundays ago. The landlady
said they were her own, and talked about them a good deal.
She pointed to one of them and said :

" Now, would you believe it ? The egg that hen belonged
to laid 53 hens running and never stopped."

She called the egg a hen and the hen an egg. One would
have thought she had been reading Life and Habit [p. 134 and
passim].

At Englefield Green

As an example of how anything can be made out of any-
thing or done with anything by those who want to do it (as I

Written Sketches

said in Life and Habit that a bullock can take an eyelash out
of its eye with its hind-foot — which I saw one of my bullocks
in New Zealand do), at the Barley Mow, Englefield Green,
they have a picture of a horse and dog talking to one another,
made entirely of butterflies' wings, and very well and spiritedly
done too.

They have another picture, done in the same way, of a grey-
hound running after a hare, also good but not so good.

At Abbey Wood

I heard a man say to another : " I went to live there just
about the time that beer came down from 5d. to 4d. a pot.
That will give you an idea when it was."

At Ightham Mote

We took Ightham on one of our Sunday walks about a fort-
night ago, and Jones and I wanted to go inside over the house.

My cousin said, " You'd much better not, it will only un-
settle your history."

We felt, however, that we had so little history to unsettle
that we left him outside and went in.

Dr. Mandell Creighton and Mr. W. S. Rockstro

" The Bishop had been reading Mr. Samuel Butler's en-
chanting book Alps and Sanctuaries and determined to visit
some of the places there described. We divided our time between
the Italian lakes and the lower slopes of the Alps and explored
many mountain sanctuaries. . . . As a result of this journey the
Bishop got to know Mr. S. Butler. He wrote to tell him the
pleasure his books had given us and asked him to visit us.
After this he came frequently and the Bishop was much attracted
by his original mind and stores of out-of-the-way knowledge: "
(The Life and Letters of Dr. Mandell Creighton by his Wife,
Vol II, p. 83.)

The first time that Dr. Creighton asked me to come down
to Peterborough in 1894 before he became Bishop of London,
I was a little doubtful whether to go or not. As usual, I con-
sulted my good clerk, Alfred, who said :

Written Sketches 251

" Let me have a look at his letter, sir."
I gave him the letter, and he said :

" I see, sir, there is a crumb of tobacco in it ; I think you
may go."

I went and enjoyed myself very much. I should like to
add that there are very few men who have ever impressed me
so profoundly and so favourably as Dr. Creighton. I have
often seen him since, both at Peterborough and at Fulham,
and like and admire him most cordially.*

I paid my first visit to Peterborough at a time when that
learned musician and incomparable teacher, Mr. W. S.
Rockstro, was giving me lessons in medieval counterpoint ;
so I particularly noticed the music at divine service. The
hymns were very silly, and of the usual Gounod-Barnby
character. Their numbers were posted up in a frame and I
saw there were to be five, so I called the first Farringdon
Street, the second King's Cross, the third Gower Street, the
fourth Portland Road, and the fifth Baker Street, those being
stations on my way to Rickmansworth, where I frequently
go for a walk in the country.

In his private chapel at night the bishop began his verse
of the psalms always well before we had done the response
to the preceding verse. It reminded me of what Rockstro
had said a few weeks earlier to the effect that a point of
imitation was always more effective if introduced before the
other voices had finished. I told Rockstro about it and said
that the bishop's instinct had guided him correctly — certainly
I found his method more satisfactory than if he had waited
till we had finished. Rockstro smiled, and knowing that I
was at the time forbidden to work, said :

" Satan finds some mischief still for idle brains to do."

* This note is one of those that appeared in the New Quarterly
Review. The Hon. Mrs. Richard Grosvenor did not see it there, but
a few years later I lent her my copy. She wrote to me 31 December,
1911 :

" The notes are delightful. By the way I can add to one. When
Mr. Butler came to tell me he was going to stay with Dr. Creighton,
he told me that Alfred had decided he might go on finding the little
flake of tobacco in the letter. Then he asked me if I would lend him
a prayer-book as he thought the bishop's man ought to find one in his
portmanteau when he unpacked, the visit being from a Saturday to
Monday. I fetched one and he said :

" ' Is it cut ? ' "

252

Written Sketches

Talking of Rockstro, he scolded me once and said he
wondered how I could have done such a thing as to call
Handel " one of the greatest of all musicians," referring to
the great chords in Erewhon. I said that if he would look again
at the passage he would find I had said not that Handel was
" one of the greatest " but that he was " the greatest of all
musicians/' on which he apologised.

Pigs

We often walk from Rickmansworth across Moor Park to
Pinner. On getting out of Moor Park there is a public-house
just to the left where we generally have some shandy-gaff and
buy some eggs. The landlord had a noble sow which I
photographed for him ; some months afterwards I asked how
the sow was. She had been sold. The landlord knew she
ought to be killed and made into bacon, but he had been
intimate with her for three years and some one else must eat
her, not he.

" And what/' said I, " became of her daughter ? "

" Oh, we killed her and ate her. You see we had only
known her eighteen months."

I wonder how he settled the exact line beyond which
intimacy with a pig must not go if the pig is to be eaten.

Mozart

An old Scotchman at Boulogne was holding forth on the
beauties of Mozart, which he exemplified by singing thus :

Dih ... vi - c - ni al - la fe - - nes - tra

I maliciously assented, but said it was strange how strongly
that air always reminded me of " Voi che sapete."

Divorce

There was a man in the hotel at Harwich with an ugly
disagreeable woman who I supposed was his wife. I did not

c

Written Sketches

^53

care about him, but he began to make up to me in the smoking-
room.

" This divorce case/' said he, referring to one that was
being reported in the papers, " doesn't seem to move very
fast."

I put on my sweetest smile and said : " I have not observed
it. I am not married myself, and naturally take less interest
in divorce."

He dropped me.

Ravens

Mr. Latham, the Master of Jones's College, Trinity Hall,
Cambridge, has two ravens named Agrippa and Agrippina.
Mr. Latham throws Agrippa a piece of cheese ; Agrippa takes
it, hides it carefully and then goes away contented ; but
Agrippina has had her eye upon him and immediately goes
and steals it, hiding it somewhere else ; Agrippa, however,
has always one eye upon Agrippina and no sooner is her back
turned than he steals it and buries it anew ; then it becomes
Agrippina's turn, and thus they pass the time, making believe
that they want the cheese though neither of them really
wants it. One day Agrippa had a small fight with a spaniel
and got rather the worst of it. He immediately flew at
Agrippina and gave her a beating. Jones said he could almost
hear him say, " It's all your fault."

Calais to Dover

When I got on board the steamer at Calais I saw Lewis Day,
who writes books about decoration, and began to talk with
him. Also I saw A. B., Editor of the X.Y.Z. Review. I met
him some years ago at Phipson Beale's, but we do not speak.
Recently I wanted him to let me write an article in his review
and he would not, so I was spiteful and, when I saw him come
on board, said to Day :

" I see we are to have the Editor of the X.Y.Z. on board."

" Yes," said Day.

" He's an owl," said I sententiously.
"I wonder," said Day, "how he got the editorship of his
review ? "

" Oh," said I, " I suppose he married some one."

254

Written Sketches

On this the conversation dropped, and we parted. Later
on we met again and Day said :

" Do you know who that lady was— the one standing at
your elbow when we were talking just now ? "

" No," said I.

"That," he replied, "was Mrs.' A. B."
And it was so.

Snapshotting a Bishop

I must some day write about how I hunted" the late Bishop
of Carlisle with my camera, hoping to shoot him when he was
sea-sick crossing from Calais to Dover, and how St. Somebody
protected him and said I might shoot him when he was well,
but not when he was sea-sick. I should like to do it in the
manner of the Odyssey :

. . . And the steward went round and laid them all on the
sofas and benches and he set a beautiful basin by each,
variegated and adorned with flowers, but it contained no
water for washing the hands, and Neptune sent great waves
that washed over the eyelet-holes of the cabin. But when
it was now the middle of the passage and a great roaring arose
as of beasts in the Zoological Gardens, and they promised
hecatombs to Neptune if he would still the raging of the
waves. . . .

At any rate I shot him and have him in my snap-shot book,
but he was not sea-sick. [1892.]

Homer and the Basins

When I returned from Calais last December, after spending
Christmas at Boulogne according to my custom, the sea was
rough as I crossed to Dover and, having a cold upon me, I
went down into the second-class cabin, cleared the railway
books off one of the tables, spread out my papers and con-
tinued my translation, or rather analysis, of the Iliad. Several
people of all ages and sexes were on the sofas and they soon
began to be sea-sick. There was no steward, so I got them
each a basin and placed it for them as well as I could ; then
I sat down again at my table in the middle and went on with
my translation while they were sick all round me. I had to

Written Sketches

255

get the Iliad well into my head before I began my lecture on
The Humour of Homer and I could not afford to throw away
a couple of hours, but I doubt whether Homer was ever
before translated under such circumstances. [1892.]

The Channel Passage

How holy people look when they are sea-sick ! There was
a patient Parsee near me who seemed purified once and for
ever from all taint of the flesh. Buddha was a low, worldly
minded, music-hall comic singer in comparison. He sat like
this for a long time until . . . and he made a noise like cows
coming home to be milked on an April evening.

The Two Barristers at Ypres

When Gogin and I were taking our Easter holiday this
year we went, among other places, to Ypres. We put up at
the Hotel Tete d'Or and found it exquisitely clean, comfort-
able and cheap, with a charming old-world, last-century
feeling. It was Good Friday, and we were to dine maigre ;
this was so clearly de rigueur that we did not venture even
the feeblest protest.

When we came down to dinner we were told that there
were two other gentlemen, also English, who were to dine
with us, and in due course they appeared — the one a man
verging towards fifty-eight, a kind of cross between Cardinal
Manning and the late Mr. John Parry, the other some ten
years younger, amiable-looking and, I should say, not so
shining a light in his own sphere as his companion. These
two sat on one side ot the table and we opposite them. There
was an air about them both winch said : " You are not to
try to get into conversation with us ; we shall not let you
if you do ; we dare say you are very good sort of people,
but we have nothing m common ; so long as you keep quiet
we will not hurt you ; but if you so much as ask us to pass the
melted butter we will shoot you." We saw this and so, during
the first two courses, talked sotto voce to one another, and made
no attempt to open up communications.

With the third course, however, there was a new arrival in
the person of a portly gentleman of about fifty-five, or from

Written Sketches

that to sixty, who was told to sit at the head of the table, and
accordingly did so. This gentleman had a decided manner
and carried quite as many guns as the two barristers (for
barristers they were) who sat opposite to us. He had rather
a red nose, he dined maigre because he had to, but he did not
like it. I do not think he dined maigre often. He had some-
thing of the air of a half, if not wholly, broken-down black-
guard of a gambler who had seen much but had moved in
good society and been accustomed to have things more or
less his own way.

This gentleman, who before he went gave us his card,
immediately opened up conversation both with us and with
our neighbours, addressing his remarks alternately and im-
partially to each. He said he was an Italian who had the
profoundest admiration for England. I said at once —

" Lei non pud amare V Inghilterra phi che io amo ed ammiro
r Italia."

The Manning-Parry barrister looked up with an air of
slightly offended surprise. Conversation was from this
point carried on between both parties through the Italian
who acted, as Gogin said afterwards, like one of those stones
in times of plague on which people from the country put their
butter and eggs and people from the town their money.

By and by dealings became more direct between us and at
last, I know not how, I found myself in full discussion with
the elder barrister as to whether Jean Van Eyck's picture in
the National Gallery commonly called tf Portrait of John
Arnolfini and his Wife " should not properly be held to be a
portrait of Van Eyck himself (which, by the way, I suppose
there is no doubt that it should not, though I have never
gone into the evidence for the present inscription). Then
they spoke of the tricks of light practised by De Hooghe ; so
we rebelled, and said De Hooghe had no tricks — no one less —
and that what they called trick was only observation and
direct rendering of nature. Then they applauded Tintoretto >
and so did we, but still as men who were bowing the knee to
Baal. We put in a word for Gaudenzio Ferrari, but they had
never heard of him. Then they played Raffaelle as a safe
card and we said he was a master of line and a facile decorator,
but nothing more.

On this all the fat was in the fire, for they had invested in

Written Sketches

257

Raffaelle as believing him to be the Three per Cents of artistic
securities. Did I not like the " Madonna di S. Sisto " ? I said,
44 No." I said the large photo looked well at a distance
because the work was so concealed under a dark and sloppy
glaze that any one might see into it pretty much what one
chose to bring, while the small photo looked well because it
had gained so greatly by reduction. I said the Child was all
very well as a child but a failure as a Christ, as all infant
Christs must be to the end of time. I said the Pope and female
saint, whoever she was, were commonplace, as also the angels
at the bottom. I admitted the beauty of line in the Virgin's
drapery and also that the w r ork was an effective piece of
decoration, but I said it was not inspired by devotional or
serious feeling of any kind and for impressiveness could not
hold its own with even a very average Madonna by Giovanni
Bellini. They appealed to the Italian, but he said there was
a great reaction against Raffaelle in Italy now and that few
of the younger men thought of him as their fathers had done.
Gogin, of course, backed me up, so they were in a minority.
It was not at all what they expected or were accustomed to.
I yielded wherever I could and never differed without giving
a reason which they could understand. They must have seen
that there was no malice prepense, but it always came round
to this in the end that we did not agree with them.

Then they played Leonardo Da Vinci. I had not intended
saying how cordially I dislike him, but presently they became
enthusiastic about the head of the Virgin in the " Vierge aux
Rochers " in our Gallery. I said Leonardo had not succeeded
with this head ; he had succeeded with the angel's head
lower down to the right (I think) of the picture, but had failed
with the Madonna. They did not like my talking about
Leonardo Da Vinci as now succeeding and now failing, just
like other people. I said it was perhaps fortunate that we
knew the " Last Supper " only by engravings and might fancy
the original to have been more full of individuality than the
engravings are, and I greatly questioned whether I should
have liked the work if I had seen it as it was when Leonardo
left it. As for his caricatures he should not have done them,
much less preserved them ; the fact of his having set store
by them was enough to show that there was a screw loose
about him somewhere and that he had no sense of humour,

s

258 Written Sketches

Still, I admitted that I liked him better than I did Michael
Angelo.

Whatever we touched upon the same fatality attended us.
Fortunately neither evolution nor politics came under dis-
cussion, nor yet, happily, music, or they would have praised
Beethoven and very likely Mendelssohn too. They did begin
to run Nuremberg and it was on the tip of my tongue to say,
" Yes, but there's the flavour of Faust and Goethe " ; however,
I did not. In course of time the seance ended, though not
till nearly ten o'clock, and we all went to bed.

Next morning we saw them at breakfast and they were
quite tame. As Gogin said afterwards :

" They came and sat on our fingers and ate crumbs out of
our hands." [1887.]

At Montreuil-sur-Mer

Jones and I lunched at the Hotel de France where we found
everything very good. As we were going out, the landlady,
getting on towards eighty, with a hookish nose, pale blue eyes
and a Giovanni Bellini's Loredano Loredani kind of expression,
came up to us and said, in sweetly apologetic accents : —

" Avez-vous done dejeune k peu pres selon vos id6es,
Messieurs ? "

It would have been too much for her to suppose that she
had been able to give us a repast that had fully realised our
ideals, still she hoped that these had been, at any rate, adum-
brated in the luncheon she had provided. Dear old thing :
of course they had and a great deal more than adumbrated.
[26 December, 1901.]

XVII

Material for a Projected Sequel to

Alps and Sanctuaries

Mrs. Dowe on Alps and Sanctuaries

After reading Alps and Sanctuaries Mrs. Dowe said to
Ballard : " You seem to hear him talking to you all the time
you are reading.' '

I don't think I ever heard a criticism of my books which
pleased me better, especially as Mrs. Dowe is one of the women
I have always liked.

Not to be Omitted

I must get in about the people one meets. The man who
did not like parrots because they were too intelligent. And
the man who told me that Handel's Messiah was " tr£s chic,"
and the smell of the cyclamens " stupendous." And the man
who said it was hard to think the world was not more than
6000 years old, and we encouraged him by telling him we
thought it must be even more than 7000. And the English
lady who said of some one that " being an artist, you know,
of course he had a great deal of poetical feeling." And the
man who was sketching and said he had a very good eye for
colour in the light, but would I be good enough to tell him
what colour was best for the shadows.

" An amateur," he said, " might do very decent things in
water-colour, but oils require genius."

So I said : " What is genius ? "

" Millet's picture of the Angelus sold for 700,000 francs.
Now that," he said, " is genius."

*59

260 Material for a Projected Sequel

After which I was very civil to him.

At Bellinzona a man told me that one of the two towers
was built by the Visconti and the other by Julius Caesar, a
hundred years earlier. So, poor old Mrs. Barratt at Langar
could conceive no longer time than a hundred years. The
Trojan war did not last ten years, but ten years was as big a
lie as Homer knew.

We went over the Albula Pass to St. Moritz in two dili-
gences and could not settle which was tonic and which was
dominant ; but the carriage behind us was the relative minor.

There was a picture in the dining-room but we could not
get near enough to see it ; we thought it must be either Christ
disputing with the Doctors or Louis XVI saying farewell to
his family — or something of that sort.

The Sacro Monte at Varese

The Sacro Monte is a kind of ecclesiastical Rosherville
Gardens, eminently the place to spend a happy day.

The processions were best at the last part of the ascent ;
there were pilgrims, all decked out with coloured feathers,
and priests and banners and music and crimson and gold and
white and glittering brass against the cloudless blue sky.
The old priest sat at his open window to receive the offerings
of the devout as they passed, but he did not seem to get more
than a few bambini modelled in wax. Perhaps he was used
to it. And the band played the barocco music on the barocco
little piazza and we were all barocco together. It was as
though the clergymen at Ladywell had given out that, instead
of having service as usual, the congregation would go in pro-
cession to the Crystal Palace with all their traps, and that the
band had been practising " Wait till the clouds roll by " for
some time, and on Sunday, as a great treat, they should
have it.

The Pope has issued an order saying he will not have masses
written like operas. It is no use. The Pope can do much, but
he will not be able to get contrapuntal music into Varese. He
will not be able to get anything more solemn than La Fille de
Madame Angot into Varese. As for fugues — I I would as soon
take an English bishop to the Surrey pantomime as to the
Sacro Monte on a festa.

to Alps and Sanctuaries 261

Then the pilgrims went into the shadow of a great rock
behind the sanctuary, spread themselves out over the grass
and dined.

The Albergo Grotta Crimea

The entrance to this hotel at Chiavenna is through a covered
court-yard ; steps lead up to the roof of the court-yard, which
is a terrace where one dines in fine weather. A great tree
grows in the court-yard below, its trunk pierces the floor of
the terrace, and its branches shade the open-air dining-room.
The w T alls of the house are painted in fresco, with a check
pattern like the late Lord Brougham's trousers, and there are
also pictures. One represents Mendelssohn. He is not called
Mendelssohn, but I knew him by his legs. He is in the costume
of a dandy of some five-and-forty years ago, is smoking a
cigar and appears to be making an offer of marriage to his
cook.* Down below is a fresco of a man sitting on a barrel
with a glass in his hand. A more absolutely worldly minded,
uncultured individual it would be impossible to conceive.
When I saw these frescoes I knew I should get along all right
and not be over-charged.

Public Opinion

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in
its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to
keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

These Notes

I make them under the impression that I may use them in
my books, but I never do unless I happen to remember them
at the right time. When I wrote " Ramblings in Cheapside "
[in the Universal Review, reprinted in Essays on Life, Art and
Science] the preceding note about Public Opinion would have
come in admirably ; it was in my pocket, in my little black
note-book, but I forgot all about it till I came to post my
pocket-book into my note-book.

* " Ramblings in Cheapside " in Essays on Life, Art and Science*

262 Material for a Projected Sequel

The Wife of Bath

There are Canterbury Pilgrims every Sunday in summer
who start from close to the old Tabard, only they go by the
South-Eastern Railway and come back the same day for five
shillings. And, what is more, they are just the same sort of
people. If they do not go to Canterbury they go by the
Clacton Belle to Clacton-on-Sea. There is not a Sunday the
whole summer through but you may find all Chaucer's
pilgrims, man and woman for man and woman, on board the
Lord of the Isles or the Clacton Belle. Why, I have seen the
Wife of Bath on the Lord of the Isles myself. She was eating
her luncheon off an Ally Sloper's Half-Holiday, which was
spread out upon her knees. Whether it was I who had had
too much beer or she I cannot tell, God knoweth ; and whether
or no I was caught up into Paradise, again I cannot tell ; but
I certainly did hear unspeakable words which it is not lawful
for a man to utter, and that not above fourteen years ago but
the very last Sunday that ever was. The Wife of Bath heard
them too, but she never turned a hair. Luckily I had my
detective camera with me, so I snapped her there and then.
She put her hand up to her mouth at that very moment and
rather spoiled herself, but not much. [1891.]

Horace at the Post-Office in Rome

When I was in Rome last summer whom should I meet but
Horace.

I did not know him at first, and told him enquiringly that
the post-office was in the Piazza Venezia ?

He smiled benignly, shrugged his shoulders, said " Prego "
and pointed to the post-office itself, which was over the way
and, of course, in the Piazza S. Silvestro.

Then I knew him. I believe he went straight home and
wrote an epistle to Mecaenas, or whatever the man's name was,
asking how it comes about that people who travel hundreds
of miles to see things can never see what is all the time under
their noses. In fact, I saw him take out his note-book and
begin making notes at once. He need not talk. He was not
a good man of business and I do not believe his books sold

to Alps and Sanctuaries 263

much better than my own. But this does not matter to him
now, for he has not the faintest idea that he ever wrote any
of them and, more likely than not, has never even refreshed
his memory by reading them.

Beethoven at Faido and at Boulogne

I have twice seen people so unmistakably like Beethoven
(just as Madame Patey is unmistakably like Handel and only
wants dressing in costume to be the image of him not in
features only but in figure and air and manner) that I always
think of them as Beethoven.

Once, at Faido in the Val Leventina, in 1876 or 1877, when
the engineers were there surveying for the tunnel, there was
among them a rather fine-looking young German with wild,
ginger hair that rang out to the wild sky like the bells in In
Memoriam, and a strong Edmund Gurney cut,* who played
Wagner and was great upon the overture to Lohengrin ; as for
Handel — he was not worth consideration, etc. Well, this
young man rather took a fancy to me and I did not dislike
him, but one day, to tease him, I told him that a little in-
significant-looking engineer, the most commonplace mortal
imaginable, who was sitting at the head of the table, was like
Beethoven. He was very like him indeed, and Muller saw it,
smiled and flushed at the same time. He was short, getting
on in years and was a little thick, though not fat. A few days
afterwards he went away and Muller and I happened to meet
his box — an enormous cube of a trunk — coming down the
stairs.

" That's Beethoven's box," said Muller to me.

" Oh," I said, and, looking at it curiously for a moment,
asked gravely, " And is he inside it ? " It seemed to fit him
and to correspond so perfectly with him in every way that one
felt as though if he were not inside it he ought to be.

The second time was at Boulogne this spring. There were
three Germans at the Hotel de Paris who sat together, went
in and out together, smoked together and did everything as
though they were a unity in trinity and a trinity in unity.
We settled that they must be the Heckmann Quartet, minus

* Edmund Gurney, author of The Power of Sound, and Secretary
of the Society for Psychical Research.

264 Material for a Projected Sequel

Heckmann : we had not the smallest reason for thinking this
but we settled it at once. The middle one of these was like
Beethoven also. On Easter Sunday, after dinner, when he
was a little — well, it was after dinner and his hair went rather
mad — Jones said to me :

" Do you see that Beethoven has got into the posthumous
quartet stage ? " [1885.]

Silvio

In the autumn of 1884, Butler spent some time at Promon-
togno and Soglio in the Val Bregaglia, sketching and making
notes. Among the children of the Italian families in the
albergo was Silvio, a boy of ten or twelve. He knew a little
English and was very fond of poetry. He could repeat, <{ How
doth the little huzzy bee" The poem which pleased him best,
however, was :

Hey diddle diddle,

The Cat and the Fiddle,

The Cow jumped over the Moon.

They had nothing, he said, in Italian literature so good as
this. Silvio used to talk to Butler while he was sketching.

" And you shall read Longfellow much in England ? "

" No," I replied, " I don't think we read him very much."

" But how is that ? He is a very pretty poet."

" Oh yes, but I don't greatly like poetry myself."

" Why don't you like poetry ? "

" You see, poetry . resembles metaphysics, one does not
mind one's own, but one does not like any one else's."

" Oh ! And what you call metaphysic ? "

This was too much. It was like the lady who attributed
the decline of the Italian opera to the fact that singers would
no longer " podge " their voices.

" And what, pray, is ' podging ' ? " enquired my informant
of the lady.

" Why, don't you understand what ' podging ' is ? Well,
I don't know that I can exactly tell you, but I am sure Edith
and Blanche podge beautifully."

However, I said that metaphysics were la filosofia and this
quieted him. He left poetry and turned to prose.

to Alps and Sanctuaries 265

"Then you shall like much the works of Washington
Irving ? " 5

I was grieved to say that I did not ; but I dislike Washington
Irving so cordially that I determined to chance another " No."

" Then you shall like better Fenimore Cooper ? "

I was becoming reckless. I could not go on saying " No "
after " No," and yet to ask me to be ever so little enthusiastic
about Fenimore Cooper was laying a burden upon me heavier
than I could bear, so I said I did not like him.

" Oh, I see," said the boy ; " then it is Uncle Tom's Cabin
that you shall like ? "

Here I gave in. More " Noes " I could not say, so, thinking
I might as well be hung for a sheep as for a mutton chop, I
said that I thought Uncle Tom's Cabin one of the most
wonderful and beautiful books that ever were written.
Having got at a writer whom I admired, he was satisfied, but
not for long.

" And you think very much of the theories of Darwin in
England, do you not ? "
I groaned inwardly and said we did.
" And what are the theories of Darwin ? "
Imagine what followed !
After which :

" Why do you not like poctr} 7 ? — You shall have a very
good university in London ? " and so on.

Sunday Morning at Soglio

The quarantine men sat on the wall, dangling their legs
over the parapet and singing the same old tune over and over
agnin and the same old words over and over again. " Fu
tradito, fu tradito da una donna." To them it was a holiday.

Two gnomes came along and looked at me. I asked the first
how old it was ; it said fourteen. They both looked about
eight. I said that the flies and the fowls ought to be put into
quarantine, and the gnomes grinned and showed their teeth
till the corners of their mouths met at the backs of their heads.

The skeleton of a bird was nailed up against a barn, and I
said to a man : " Aquila ? "

He replied : " Aquila," and I passed on.

The village boys came round me and sighed while they

266 Material for a Projected Sequel

watched me sketching. And the women came and exclaimed :
" Oh che testa, che testa ! "

And the bells in the windows of the campanile began, and
I turned and looked up at their beautiful lolling and watched
their fitful tumble-aboutiness. They swung open-mouthed
like elephants with uplifted trunks, and I wished I could have
fed them with buns. They were not like English bells, and
yet they rang more all Tnglese than bells mostly do in Italy—
they had got it, but they had not got it right.

There used to be two crows, and when one disappeared the
other came to the house where it had not been for a month.
While I was sketching it played with a woman who was
weeding ; it got on her back and tried to bite her hat ; then it
got down and pecked at the nails in her boots and tried to
steal them. It let her catch it, and then made a little fuss,
but it did not fly away when she let it go, it continued playing
with her. Then it came to exploit me but would not come
close up. Signor Scartazzini says it will play with all the
women of the place but not with men or boys, except with him.

Then there came a monk and passed by me, and I knew I
had seen him before but could not think where till, of a sudden,
it flashed across me that he was Valoroso XXIV, King of
Paphlagonia, no doubt expiating his offences.

And I watched the ants that were busy near my feet, and
listened to them as they talked about me and discussed
whether man has instinct.

" What is he doing here ? " they said ; " he wasn't here
yesterday. Certainly they have no instinct. They may have
a low kind of reason, but nothing approaching to instinct.
Some of the London houses show signs of instinct— Gower
Street, for example, does really seem to suggest instinct ; but
it is all delusive. It is curious that these cities of theirs should
always exist in places where there are no ants. They certainly
anthropomorphise too freely. Or is it perhaps that we formi-
comorphise more than we should ? "

And Silvio came by on his way to church. It was he who
taught all the boys in Soglio to make a noise. Before he came
up there was no sound to be heard in the streets, except the
fountains and the bells. I asked him whether the curate was
good to him.

" Si," he replied, " e abbastanza buono."

to Alps and Sanctuaries 267

I should think Auld Robin Gray was " abbastanza buono "
to Mrs. Gray.

One of the little girls told me that Silvio had so many
centesimi and she had none. I said at once :
" You don't want any centesimi."

As soon as these words fell from my lips, I knew I must be
getting old.

And presently the Devil came up to me. He was a nice,
clean old man, but he dropped his h's, and that was where he
spoiled himself — or perhaps it was just this that threw me off
my guard, for I had always heard that the Prince of Darkness
was a perfect gentleman. He whispered to me that in the
winter the monks of St. Bernard sometimes say matins over-
night.

The blue of the mountains looks bluer through the chestnuts
than through the pines. The river is snowy against the
" Verdi prati e selve amene." The great fat tobacco plant
agrees with itself if not with us ; I never saw any plant look
in better health. The briar knows perfectly well what it
wants to do and that it does not want to be disturbed ; it
knows, in fact, all that it cares to know. The question is how
and why it got to care to know just these things and no others.

Two cheeky goats came tumbling down upon me and de-
manded salt, and the man came from the saw-mill and, with
his great brown hands, scooped the mud from the dams of the
rills that watered his meadow, for the hour had come when it
was his turn to use the stream.

There were cow-bells, mountain elder-berries and lots of
flowers in the grass. There was the glacier, the roar of the
river and a plaintive little chapel on a green knoll under the
great cliff of ice which cut the sky. There was a fat, crumby
woman making hay. She said :

" Buon giorno."

And the " i o r " of the " giorno " came out like oil and
honey. I saw she wanted a gossip. She and her husband
tuned their scythes in two-part, note-against-note counter-
point ; but I could hear that it was she who was the canto
fermo and he who was the counterpoint. I peered down over
the edge of the steep slippery slope which all had to be mown
from top to bottom ; if hay grew on the dome of St. Paul's
these dreadful traders would gather it in, and presently the

268 Material for a Projected Sequel

autumn crocuses would begin to push up their delicate, naked
snouts through the closely shaven surface. I expressed my
wonder.

" Siamo esatti," said the fat, crumby woman.

For what little things will not people risk their lives ? So
Smith and I crossed the Rangitata. So Esau sold his birth-
right.

It was noon, and I was so sheer above the floor of the valley
and the sun was so sheer above me that the chestnuts in the
meadow of Bondo squatted upon their own shadows and the
gardens were as though the valley had been paved with bricks
of various colours. The old grass-grown road ran below,
nearer the river, where many a good man had gone up and
down on his journey to that larger road where the reader and
the writer shall alike join him.

Fascination

I know a man, and one whom people generally call a very
clever one, who, when his eye catches mine, if I meet him at
an at home or an evening party, beams upon me from afar
with the expression of an intellectual rattlesnake on having
espied an intellectual rabbit. Through any crowd that man
will come sidling towards me, ruthless and irresistible as
fate ; while I, foreknowing my doom, sidle also him-wards,
and flatter myself that no sign of my inward apprehension
has escaped me.

Supreme Occasions

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme
occasions. I knew of an old gentleman who insisted on having
the original polka played to him as he lay upon his death-bed.
In the only well-authenticated words I have ever met with
as spoken by a man who knew he was going to be murdered,
there is a commonness which may almost be called Shake-
spearean. There had been many murders on or near some
gold-fields in New Zealand about the years 1863 or 1864, I
forget where but I think near the Nelson gold-fields, and at
last the murderers were taken. One was allowed to turn
Queen's evidence and gave an account of the circumstances

to Alps and Sanctuaries 269

of each murder. One of the victims, it appeared, on being
told they were about to kill him, said :

" If you murder me, I shall be foully murdered."

Whereupon they murdered him and he was foully murdered.

It is a mistake to expect people to rise to the occasion unless
the occasion is only a little above their ordinary limit. People
seldom rise to their greater occasions, they almost always fall
to them. It is only supreme men who are supreme at supreme
moments. They differ from the rest of us in this that, when
the moment for rising comes, they rise at once and instinc-
tively.

The Aurora Borealis

I saw one once in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence off the island
of Anticosti. We were in the middle of it, and seemed to be
looking up through a great cone of light millions and millions
of miles into the sky. Then we saw it farther off and the
pillars of fire stalked up and down the face of heaven like one
of Handel's great basses.

In front of my room at Montreal there was a verandah from
which a rope was stretched across a small yard to a chimney
on a stable roof over the way. Clothes were hung to dry on
this rope. As I lay in bed of a morning I could see the shadows
and reflected lights from these clothes moving on the ceiling
as the clothes were blown about by the wind. The movement
of these shadows and reflected lights was exactly that of the
rays of an Aurora Borealis, minus colour. I can conceive no
resemblance more perfect. They stalked across the ceiling
with the same kind of movement absolutely.

A Tragic Expression

The three occasions when I have seen a really tragic ex-
pression upon a face were as follows : —

(1) When Mrs. Inglis in my room at Montreal heard my
sausages frying, as she thought, too furiously in the kitchen,
she left me hurriedly with a glance, and the folds of her dress
as she swept out of the room were Niobean.

(2) Once at dinner I sat opposite a certain lady who had a
tureen of soup before her and also a plate of the same to which
she had just helped herself. There was meat in the soup and

270 Material for a Projected Sequel

I suppose she got a bit she did not like ; instead of leaving it,
she swiftly, stealthily, picked it up from her plate when she
thought no one was looking and, with an expression which
Mrs. Siddons might have studied for a performance of Clytem-
nestra, popped it back into the tureen.

(3) There was an alarm of fire on an emigrant ship in
mid-ocean when I was going to New Zealand and the
women rushed aft with faces as in a Massacre of the
Innocents.

The Wrath to Come

On the Monte Generoso a lady who sat next me at the
table-d'hote was complaining of a man in the hotel. She said
he was a nuisance because he practised on the violin. I ex-
cused him by saying that I supposed some one had warned
him to fly from the wrath to come, meaning that he had con-
ceptions of an ideal world and was trying to get into it. (I
heard a man say something like this many years ago and it
stuck by me.)

The Beauties of Nature

A man told me that at some Swiss hotel he had been speak-
ing enthusiastically about the beauty of the scenery to a
Frenchman who said to him :

" Aimez-vous done les beaut£s de la nature ? Pour moi je
les abhorre."

The Late King Vittorio Emanuele

Cavaliere Negri, at Casale-Monferrato, told me not long
since that when he was a child, during the troubles of 1848 and
1849, tlle King was lunching with his (Cav. Negri's ) father who
had provided the best possible luncheon in honour of his guest.
The King said :

" I can eat no such luncheon in times like these — give me
some garlic."

The garlic being brought, he ate it along with a great hunch
of bread, but would touch nothing else.

r

to Alps and Sanctuaries 271

The Bishop of Chichester at Faido

When I was at Faido in the Val Leventina last summer
there was a lady there who remembered me in New Zealand ;
she had brought her children to Switzerland for their holiday ;
good people, all of them. They had friends coming to them,
a certain canon and his sister, and there was a talk that the
Bishop of Chichester might possibly come too. In course of
time the canon and his sister came. At first the sister, who
was put to sit next me at dinner, was below zero and her
brother opposite was hardly less freezing ; but as dinner wore
on they thawed and, from regarding me as the monster which
in the first instance they clearly did, began to see that I
agreed with them in much more than they had thought
possible. By and by they were reassured, became cordial and
proved on acquaintance to be most kind and good. They
soon saw that I liked them, and the canon let me take him
where I chose. I took him to the place where the Woodsias
grow and we found some splendid specimens. I took him to
Mairengo and showed him the double chancel. Coming back
he said I had promised to show him some Alternifolium. I
stopped him and said :

" Here is some/' for there happened to be a bit in the wall
by the side of the path.

This quite finished the conquest, and before long I was
given to understand that the bishop really would come and we
were to take him pretty near the Woodsias and not tell him,
and he was to find them out for himself. I have no doubt that
the bishop had meant coming with the canon, but then the
canon had heard from the New Zealand lady that I was there,
and this would not do at all for the bishop. Anyhow the canon
had better exploit me by going first and seeing how bad I was.
So the canon came, said I was all right and in a couple of days
or so the bishop and his daughters arrived.

The bishop did not speak to me at dinner, but after dinner,
in the salon, he made an advance in the matter of the news-
paper and, I replying, he began a conversation which lasted
the best part of an hour, and during which I trust I behaved
discreetly. Then I bade him " Good-night " and left the
room.

272 Material for a Projected Sequel

Next morning I saw him eating his breakfast and said
" Good-morning " to him. He was quite ready to talk. We
discussed the Woodsia Ilvensis and agreed that it was a
mythical species. It was said in botany books to grow near
Guildford. We dismissed this assertion. But he remarked
that it was extraordinary in what odd places we sometimes do
find plants ; he knew a single plant of Asplenium Trichomanes
which had no other within thirty miles of it ; it was growing
on a tombstone which had come from a long distance and
from a Trichomanes country. It almost seemed as if the seeds
and germs were always going about in the air and grew
wherever they found a suitable environment. I said it was the
same with our thoughts ; the germs of all manner of thoughts
and ideas are always floating about unperceived in our minds
and it was astonishing sometimes in what strange places they
found the soil which enabled them to take root and grow into
perceived thought and action. The bishop looked up from
his egg and said :

" That is a very striking remark," and then he went on with
his egg as though if I were going to talk like that he should
not play any more.

Thinking I was not likely to do better than this, I retreated
immediately and went away down to Claro where there was a
confirmation and so on to Bellinzona.

In the morning I had asked the waitress how she liked the
bishop.

" Oh ! beaucoup, beaucoup," she exclaimed, " et je trouve
son nez vraiment noble." [1886.]

At Piora

I am confident that I have written the following note in
one or other of the earlier of these volumes, but I have searched
my precious indexes in vain to find it. No doubt as soon as I
have retold the story I shall stumble upon it.

One day in the autumn of 1886 I walked up to Piora from
Airolo, returning the same day. At Piora I met a very nice
quiet man whose name I presently discovered, and who, I have
since learned, is a well-known and most liberal employer of
labour somewhere in the north of England. He told me that
he had been induced to visit Piora by a book which had made

to Alps and Sanctuaries 273

a great impression upon him. He could not recollect its title,
but it had made a great impression upon him ; nor yet could
he recollect the author's name, but the book had made a
great impression upon him ; he could not remember even what
else there was in the book ; the only thing he knew was that
it had made a great impression upon him.

This is a good example of what is called a residuary im-
pression. Whether or no I told him that the book which had
made such a great impression upon him was called Alps and
Sanctuaries (see Chap. VI), and that it had been written by
the person he was addressing, I cannot tell. It would be very
like me to have blurted it all out and given him to understand
how fortunate he had been in meeting me ; this would be so
fatally like me that the chances are ten to one that I did it ;
but I have, thank Heaven, no recollection of sin in this respect,
and have rather a strong impression that, for once in my life,
I smiled to myself and said nothing.

At Ferentino

After dinner I ordered a coffee ; the landlord, who also had
had his dinner, asked me to be good enough to defer it for
another year and I assented. I then asked him which was the
best inn at Segni. He replied that it did not matter, that
when a man had quattrini one albergo was as good as another.
I said, No ; that more depended on what kind of blood was
running about inside the albergatore than on how many
quattrini the guest had in his pocket. He smiled and offered
me a pinch of the most delicious snuff. His wife came and
cleared the table, having done which she shed the water
bottle over the floor to keep the dust down. I am sure she
did it all to all the blessed gods that live in heaven, though
she did not say so.

The Imperfect Lady

There was one at a country house in Sicily where I was
staying. She had been lent to my host for change of air by
his friend the marchese. She dined at table with us and we
all liked her very much. She was extremely pretty and not
less amiable than pretty. In order to reach the dining-room

T

274 Material for a Projected Sequel

we had to go through her bedroom as also through my host's.
When the monsignore came, she dined with us just the same,
and the old priest evidently did not mind at all. In Sicily
they do not bring the scent of the incense across the dining-
room table. And one would hardly expect the attempt to be
made by people who use the oath " Santo Diavolo."

Siena and S. Gimignano

At Siena last spring, prowling round outside the cathedral,
we saw an English ecclesiastic in a stringed, sub-shovel hat.
He had a young lady with him, presumably a daughter or
niece. He eyed us with much the same incurious curiosity
as that with which we eyed him. We passed them and
went inside the duomo. How far less impressive is the
interior (indeed I had almost said also the exterior) than
that of San Domenico ! Nothing palls so soon as over-
omamentation.

A few minutes afterwards my Lord and the young lady
came in too. It was Sunday and mass was being celebrated.
The pair passed us and, when they reached the fringe of the
kneeling folk, the bishop knelt down too on the bare floor,
kneeling bolt upright from the knees, a few feet in front of
where we stood. We saw him and I am sure he knew we
were looking at him. The lady seemed to hesitate but,
after a minute or so, she knuckled down by his side and
we left them kneeling bolt upright from the knees on the
hard floor.

I always cross myself and genuflect when I go into a Roman
Catholic church, as a mark of respect, but Jones and Gogin
say that any one can see I am not an old hand at it. How
rudimentary is the action of an old priest ! I saw one once
at Venice in the dining-room of the Hotel la Luna who crossed
himself by a rapid motion of his fork just before he began to
eat, and Miss Bertha Thomas told me she saw an Italian lady
at Varallo at the table-d'hote cross herself with her fan. I do
not cross myself before eating nor do I think it incumbent
upon me to kneel down on the hard floor in church —
perhaps because I am not an English bishop. We were
sorry for this one and for his young lady, but it was their
own doing.

to Alps and Sanctuaries 275

We then went into the Libreria to see the frescoes by
Pintuxicchio— which we did not like — and spent some little
time in attending to them. On leaving we were told to sign
our names in a book and did so. As we were going out we met
the bishop and his lady coming in ; whether they had been
kneeling all the time, or whether they had got up as soon as
we were gone and had spent the time in looking round I cannot
say, but, when they had seen the frescoes, they would be told
to sign their names and, when they signed, they would see
ours and, I flatter myself, know who we were.

On returning to our hotel we were able to collect enough
information to settle in our own minds which particular
bishop he was.

A day or two later we went to Poggibonsi, which must have
been an important place once ; nothing but the walls remain
now, the city within them having been razed by Charles V.
At the station we took a carriage, and our driver, Ulisse Pogni,
was a delightful person, second baritone at the Poggibonsi
Opera and principal fly-owner of the town. He drove
us up to S. Gimignano and told us that the people
still hold the figures in Benozzo Gozzoli's frescoes to be
portraits of themselves and say : " That's me/' and " That's
so and so."

Of course we went to see the frescoes, and as we were
coming down the main street, from the Piazza on which the
Municipio stands, who should be mounting the incline but our
bishop and his lady. The moment he saw us, he looked cross,
stood still and began inspecting the tops oi the houses on the
other side of the street ; so also did the lady. There was
nothing of the smallest interest in these and we neither of us
had the smallest doubt that he was embarrassed at meeting
us and was pretending not to notice us. I have seldom seen
any like attempt more clumsily and fatuously done. Whether
he was saying to himself, " Good Lord ! that wretch will be
putting my kneeling down into another Alps and Sanctuaries
or Ex Voto " ; or whether it was only that we were a couple of
blackguard atheists who contaminated the air all round us,
I cannot tell ; but on venturing to look back a second or two
after we had passed them, the bishop and the lady had got a
considerable distance away.

As we returned our driver took us about 4 kilometres

276 Material for a Projected Sequel

outside Poggibonsi to San Lucchese, a church of the 12th
or 13th century, greatly decayed, but still very beautiful
and containing a few naif frescoes. He told us he had sung
the Sanctus here at the festa on the preceding Sunday. In a
room adjoining the church, formerly, we were told, a refectory,
there is a very good fresco representing the "Miraculous
Draught of Fishes 11 by Gerino da Pistoja (I think, but one for-
gets these names at once unless one writes them down then
and there). It is dated— I think (again !)— about 1509,
betrays the influence of Perugino but is more lively and in-
teresting than anything I know by that painter, for I cannot
call him master. It is in good preservation and deserves to be
better, though perhaps not very much better, known than it
is. Our driver pointed out that the baskets in which the fishes
are being collected are portraits of the baskets still in use in
the neighbourhood.

After we had returned to London we found, in the Royal
Academy Exhibition, a portrait of our bishop which, though
not good, was quite good enough to assure us that we had not
been mistaken as to his diocese.

The Etruscan Urns at Volterra

As regards the way in which the Etruscan artists kept to a
few stock subjects, this has been so in all times and countries.

When Christianity convulsed the world and displaced the
older mythology, she did but introduce new subjects of her
own, to which her artists kept as closely as their pagan an-
cestors had kept to their heathen gods and goddesses. We
now make believe to have freed ourselves from these trammels,
but the departure is more apparent than real. Our works of
art fall into a few well-marked groups and the pictures of each
group, though differing in detail, present the same general
characters. We have, however, broken much new ground,
whereas until the last three or four hundred years it almost
seems either as if artists had thought subject a detail beneath
their notice, or publics had insisted on being told only what
they knew already.

The principle of living only to see and to hear some new
thing, and the other principle of avoiding everything with
which we are not perfectly familiar are equally old, equally

to Alps and Sanctuaries 277

universal, equally useful. They are the principles of con-
servation and accumulation on the one hand, and of adventure,
speculation and progress on the other, each equally indis-
pensable. The money has been, and will probably always be
more persistently in the hands of the first of these two groups.
But, after all, is not money an art ? Nay, is it not the most
difficult on earth and the parent of all ? And if life is short
and art long, is not money still longer ? And are not works of
art, for the most part, more or less works of money also ? In
so far as a work of art is a work of money, it must not complain
of being bound by the laws of money ; in so far as it is a work
of art, it has nothing to do with money and, again, cannot
complain.

It is a great help to the spectator to know the subject of a
picture and not to be bothered with having to find out all
about the story. Subjects should be such as either tell their
own story instantly on the face of them, or things with which
all spectators may be supposed familiar. It must not be for-
gotten that a work exposed to public view is addressed to a
great many people and should accordingly consider many
people rather than one. I saw an English family not long
since looking at a fine collection of the coins of all nations.
They hardly pretended even to take a languid interest in the
French, German, Dutch and Italian coins, but brightened up
at once on being shown a shilling, a florin and a half-crown.
So children do not want new stories ; they look for old ones.

" Mamma dear, will you please tell us the story of ' The
Three Bears ' ? ,;

" No, my love, not to-day, I have told it you very often
lately and I am busy."

" Very well, Mamma dear, then we will tell you the story
of 'The Three Bears.' "

The Iliad and the Odyssey are only " The Three Bears "
upon a larger scale. Just as the life of a man is only the fission
of two amcebas on a larger scale. Cut non dicius Hylas fuer
el Latonia Delos ? That was no argument against telling it
again, but rather for repeating it. So people look out in the
newspapers for what they know rather than for what they do
not know, and the better they know it the more interested
they are to see it in print and, as a general rule, unless they
get what they expect — or think they know already — they are

2 7 8 Material for a Projected Sequel

angry. This tendency of our nature culminates in the well-
known lines repeated for ever and ever :

The battle of the Nile
I was there all the while;
I was there ail the while
At the battle of the Nile.
The battle of . . .

And so on ad lib. Even this will please very young children.
As they grow older they want to hear about nothing but " The
Three Bears.' ' As they mature still further they want the
greater invention and freer play of fancy manifested by such
people as Homer and our west-end upholsterers, beyond which
there is no liberty, but only eccentricity and extravagance.

So it is with all fashion. Fashions change, but not radically
except after convulsion and, even then, the change is more
apparent than real, the older fashions continually coming back
as new ones.

So it is not only as regards choice of subject but also as
regards treatment of subject within the limits of the work
itself, after the subject is chosen. No matter whether the
utterance of a man's inner mind is attempted by way of words,
painting, or music, the same principle underlies all these three
arts and, of course, also those arts that are akin to them. In
each case a man should have but one subject easily recognisable
as the main motive, and in each case he must develop, treat
and illustrate this by means of episodes and details that are
neither so alien to the subject as to appear lugged in by the
heels, nor yet so germane to it as to be identical. The treat-
ment grows out of the subject as the family from the parents
and the race from the family — each new-born member being
the same and yet not the same with those that have preceded
him. So it is with all the arts and all the sciences — they
flourish best by the addition of but little new at a time in
comparison with the old.

And so, lastly, it is with the ars artium itself, that art of arts
and science of sciences, that guild of arts and crafts which is
comprised within each one of us, I mean our bodies. In the
detail they are nourished from day to day by food which must
not be too alien from past food or from the body itself, nor yet
too germane to either ; and in the gross, that is to say, in the

to Alps and Sanctuaries 279

history of the development of a race or species, the evolution
is admittedly for the most part exceedingly gradual, by means
of many generations, as it were, of episodes that are kindred
to and yet not identical with the subject.

And when we come to think of it, we find in the evolution
of bodily form (which along with modification involves per-
sistence of type) the explanation why persistence of type in
subjects chosen for treatment in works of art should be so
universal. It is because we are so averse to great changes
and at the same time so averse to no change at all, that we
have a bodily form, in the main, persistent and yet, at the
same time, capable of modifications. Without a strong aver-
sion to change its habits and, with its habits, the pabulum of
its mind, there would be no fixity of type in any species and,
indeed, there would be no life at all, as we are accustomed to
think of life, for organs would disappear before they could be
developed, and to try to build life on such a shifting foundation
would be as hopeless as it would be to try and build a material
building on an actual quicksand. Hence the habits, cries,
abodes, food, hopes and fears of each species (and what are
these but the realities of which human arts are as the shadow?)
tell the same old tales in the same old ways from generation to
generation, and it is only because they do so that they appear
to us as species at all.

Returning now to the Etruscan cinerary urns — I have no
doubt that, perhaps three or four thousand years hence, a
collection of the tombstones from some of our suburban ceme-
teries will be thought exceedingly interesting, but I confess
to having found the urns in the Museum at Volterra a little
monotonous and, after looking at about three urns, I hurried
over the remaining 397 as fast as I could. [1889.]

The Quick and the Dead

The walls of the houses [in an Italian village] are built of
brick and the roofs are covered with stone. They call the
stone " vivo." It is as though they thought bricks were like
veal or mutton and stones like bits out of the living calf or
sheep.*

* Cf. Wamba's explanation of the Saxon swine being converted
into Norman pork on their death. Ivanhoe, Chap. I.

s8o Material for a Projected Sequel

The Grape-Filter

When the water of a place is bad, it is safest to drink none
that has not been filtered through either the berry of a grape,
or else a tub of malt. These are the most reliable filters yet
invented.

Bertoli and his Bees

Giacomo Bertoli of Varallo-Sesia keeps a watch and clock
shop in the street. He is a cheery little old gentleman, though
I do not see why I should call him old for I doubt his being so
old as I am. He and I have been very good friends for years
and he is always among the first to welcome me when I go to
Varallo.

He is one of the most famous bee-masters in Europe. He
keeps some of his bees during the winter at Camasco not very
far from Varallo, others in other places near and moves them
up to Alagna, at the head of the Val Sesia, towards the end of
May that they may make their honey from the spring flowers
—-and excellent honey they make.

About a fortnight ago I happened to meet him bringing
down ten of his hives. He was walking in front and was im- *
mediately followed by two women each with crates on their
backs, and each carrying five hives. They seemed to me to be
ordinary deal boxes, open at the top, but covered over with
gauze which would keep the bees in but not exclude air. I
asked him if the bees minded the journey, and he replied that
they were very angry and had a great deal to say about it ;
he was sure to be stung when he let them out. He said it was
" un lavoro improbo," and cost him a great deal of anxiety.

" The Lost Chord "

It should be " The Lost Progression," for the young lady
was mistaken in supposing she had ever heard any single
chord " like the sound of a great Amen." Unless we are to
suppose that she had already found the chord of C Major for
the final syllable of the word and was seeking the chord for the
first syllable ; and there she is on the walls of a Milanese
restaurant arpeggioing experimental harmonies in a transport

to Alps and Sanctuaries 281

of delight to advertise Somebody and Someone's pianos and
holding the loud pedal solidly down all the time. Her family
had always been unsympathetic about her music. They said
it was like a loose bundle of fire-wood which you never can
get across the room without dropping sticks ; they said she
would have been so much better employed doing anything
else.

Fancy being in the room with her while she was strumming
ubout and hunting after her chord ! Fancy being in heaven
vith her when she had found it !

Introduction of Foreign Plants

I have brought back this year some mountain auriculas and
the seed of some salvia and Fusio tiger-lily, and mean to
plant the auriculas and to sow the seeds in Epping Forest and
elsewhere round about London. I wish people would more
generally bring back the seeds of pleasing foreign plants and
introduce them broadcast, sowing them by our waysides and
in our fields, or in whatever situation is most likely to suit
them. It is true, this would puzzle botanists, but there is no
reason why botanists should not be puzzled. A botanist is a
person whose aim is to uproot, kill and exterminate every
plant that is at all remarkable for rarity or any special virtue,
and the rarer it is the more bitterly he will hunt it down.

Saint Cosimo and Saint Damiano at Siena

Sano di Pietro shows us a heartless practical joke played by
these two very naughty saints, both medical men, who should
be uncanonised immediately. It seems they laid their heads
together and for some reason, best known to themselves, re-
solved to cut a leg off a dead negro and put it on to a white
man. In the one compartment they are seen in high glee
cutting the negro's leg off. In the next they have gone to the
white man who is in bed, obviously asleep, and are substituting
the black leg for his own. Then, no doubt, they will stand
behind the door and see what he does when he wakes. They
must be saints because they have glories on, but it looks as
though a glory is not much more to be relied on than a gig as
a test of respectability. [1889.]

282 Material for a Projected Sequel

At Pienza

At Pienza, after having seen the Museum with a custode
whom I photoed as being more like death, though in excellent
health and spirits, than any one I ever saw, I was taken to the
leading college for young ladies, the Conservatorio di S. Carlo,
under the direction of Signora (or Signorina, I do not know
which) Cesira Carletti, to see the wonderful Viale of the
twelfth or thirteenth century given to Pienza by Pope ^Eneas
Sylvius Piccolomini (Pius II) and stolen a few years since, but
recovered. Signora Carletti was copying parts of it in needle-
work, nor can I think that the original was ever better than
the parts which she had already done. The work would take
weeks or even months to examine with any fullness, and
volumes to describe. It is as prodigal of labour, design and
colour as nature herself is. In fact it is one of those things
that nature has a right to do but not art. It fatigues one to
look at it or think upon it and, bathos though it be to say so,
it won the first prize at the Exhibitions of Ecclesiastical Art
Work held a few years ago at Rome and at Siena. It has taken
Signora Carletti months to do even the little she has done, but
that little must be seen to be believed, for no words can do
justice to it.

Having seen the Viale, I was shown round the whole es-
tablishment, and can imagine nothing better ordered. I was
taken over the dormitories — very nice and comfortable — and,
finally, not without being much abashed, into the room where
the young ladies were engaged upon needlework. It reminded
me of nothing so much as of the Education of the Virgin
Chapel at Oropa.* I was taken to each young lady and did
my best to acquit myself properly in praising her beautiful
work but, beautiful as the work of one and all was, it could not
compare with that of Signora Carletti. I asked her if she
could not get some of the young ladies to help her in the less
important parts of her work, but she said she preferred doing
it all herself. They all looked well and happy and as though
they were well cared for, as I am sure they are.

Then Signora Carletti took me to the top of the house to
show me the meteorological room of winch she is superin-

* See "A Medieval Girl School " in Essays on Life, Art & Science

to Alps and Sanctuaries 283

tendent, and which is in connection with the main meteoro-
logical observatory at Rome. Again I found everything in
admirable order, and left the house not a little pleased and
impressed with everything I had seen. [1889.]

Homer's Hot and Cold Springs

The following extract is taken from a memorandum Butler
made of a visit he paid to Greece and the Troad in the spring of
1895. In the Iliad (xxii. 145) Homer mentions hot and cold
springs where the Trojan women used to wash their clothes.
There are no such springs near Hissarlik, where they ought to
be, but the American Consul at the Dardanelles told Butler there
was something of the kind on Mount Ida, at the sources of the
Scamander, and he determined to see them after visiting Hissarlik.
He was provided with an interpreter, Yakoub, an attendant,
Ahmed, an escort of one soldier and a horse. He went first to the
Consul's farm at Thymbva, about five miles from Hissarlik,
where he spent the night and found it " all very like a -first- class
New Zealand sheep-station." The next day he went to Hissarlik
and saw no reason for disagreeing with the received opinion that
it is the site of Troy. He then proceeded to Bunarbashi and so to
Bairemitch, passing on the way a saw-mill where there was a
Government official with twenty soldiers under him. This
official was much interested in the traveller and directed his men
to take carpets and a dish of trout, caught that morning in the
Scamander, and carry them up to the hot and cold springs while
he himself accompanied Butler. So they set off and the official,
Ismail, showed him the way and pointed out the springs, and
there is a long note about the hot and cold water.

And now let me return to Ismail Gusbashi, the excellent
Turkish official who, by the way, was with me during all my
examination of the springs, and whose assurances of their
twofold temperature I should have found it impossible to
doubt, even though I had not caught one warmer cupful
myself. His men, while we were at the springs, had spread a
large Turkey carpet on the flower-bespangled grass under the
trees, and there were three smaller rugs at three of the corners.
On these Ismail and Yakoub and I took our places. The
other two were cross-legged, but I reclining anyhow. The
sun shimmered through the spring foliage. I saw two hoopoes

284 Material for a Projected Sequel

and many beautiful birds whose names I knew not. Through
the trees I could see the snow-fields of Ida far above me, but
it was hopeless to think of reaching them. The soldiers and
Ahmed cooked the trout and the eggs all together ; then we
had boiled eggs, bread and cheese and, of course, more lamb's
liver done on skewers like cats' meat. I ate with my pocket-
knife, the others using their fingers in true Homeric fashion.

When we had put from us " the desire of meat and drink,"
Ismail began to talk to me. He said he had now for the first
time in his life found himself in familiar conversation with
Wisdom from the West (that was me), and that, as he greatly
doubted whether such another opportunity would be ever
vouchsafed to him, he should wish to consult me upon a
matter which had greatly exercised him. He was now fifty
years old and had never married. Sometimes he thought he
had done a wise thing, and sometimes it seemed to him that
he had been very foolish. Would I kindly tell him which it
was and advise him as to the future ? I said he was addressing
one who was in much the same condition as himself, only that
I was some ten years older. We had a saying in England that
if a man marries he will regret it, and that if he does not
marry he will regret it.

" Ah ! " said Ismail, who was leaning towards me and trying
to catch every word I spoke, though he could not understand
a syllable till Yakoub interpreted my Italian into Turkish.
" Ah ! " he said, " that is a true word."

In my younger days, I said (may Heaven forgive me!), I
had been passionately in love with a most beautiful young
lady, but — and here my voice faltered, and I looked very sad,
waiting for Yakoub to interpret what I had said — but it had
been the will of Allah that she should marry another gentle-
man, and this had broken my heart for many years. After a
time, however, I concluded that these things were all settled
for us by a higher Power.

<l Ah ! that is a true word."

" And so, my dear sir, in your case I should reflect that if
Allah " (and I raised my hand to Heaven) " had desired your
being married, he would have signified his will to you in some
way that you could hardly mistake. As he does not appear to
have done so, I should recommend you to remain single until
you receive some distinct intimation that you are to marry."

to Alps and Sanctuaries 285

" Ah ! that is a true word."

" Besides/' I continued, " suppose you marry a woman with
whom you think you are in love and then find out, after you
have been married to her for three months, that you do not
like her. This would be a very painful situation."

" Ah, yes, indeed ! that is a true word."

" And if you had children who were good and dutiful, it
would be delightful ; but suppose they turned out disobedient
and ungrateful — and I have known many such cases — could
anything be more distressing to a parent in his declining
years ? "

" Ah ! that is a true word that you have spoken/'
" We have a great Imaum," I continued, " in England ; he
is called the Archbishop of Canterbury and gives answers to
people who are in any kind of doubt or difficulty. I knew one
gentleman who asked his advice upon the very question that
you have done me the honour of propounding to myself."
" Ah ! and what was his answer ? "

" He told him," said I, " that it was cheaper to buy the
milk than to keep a cow."

" Ah ! ah 1 that is a most true word."

Here I closed the conversation, and we began packing up
to make a start. When we were about to mount, I said to
him, hat in hand :

" Sir, it occurs to me with great sadness that, though you
will, no doubt, often revisit this lovely spot, yet it is most
certain that I shall never do so. Promise me that when you
come here you will sometimes think of the stupid old English-
man who has had the pleasure of lunching with you to-day,
and I promise that I will often think of you when I am at
home again in London."

He was much touched, and we started. After we had gone
about a mile, I suddenly missed my knife. I knew I should
want it badly many a time before we got to the Dardanelles,
and I knew perfectly well where I should find it : so I stopped
the cavalcade and said I must ride back for it. I did so, found
it immediately and returned. Then I said to Ismail :

" Sir, I understand now why I was led to leave my knife
behind me. I had said it was certain I should never see that
enchanting spot again, but I spoke presumptuously, forgetting
that if Allah" (and I raised my hand to Heaven) "willed it I

286 Material for a Projected Sequel

should assuredly do so. I am corrected, and with great
leniency."

Ismail was much affected. The good fellow immediately
took off his watch-chain (happily of brass and of no intrinsic
value) and gave it me, assuring me that it was given him by a
very dear friend, that he had worn it for many years, and
valued it greatly — would I keep it as a memorial of himself ?
Fortunately I had with me a little silver match-box which
Alfred had given me and which had my name engraved on it.
I gave it to him, but had some difficulty in making him accept
it. Then we rode on till we came to the saw-mills. I ordered
two lambs for the ten soldiers who had accompanied us,
having understood from Yakoub that this would be an
acceptable present. And so I parted from this most kind and
friendly gentleman with every warm expression of cordiality
on both sides.

I sent him his photograph which I had taken, and I sent
his soldiers their groups also — one for each man — and in due
course I received the following letter of thanks. Alas ! I
have never written in answer. I knew not how to do it. I
knew, however, that I could not keep up a correspondence,
even though I wrote once. But few unanswered letters
more often rise up and smite me. How the Post Office people
ever read " Bueter, Ciforzin St." into " Butler, Clifford's Inn "
I cannot tell. What splendid emendators of a corrupt text
they ought to make ! But I could almost wish that they had
failed, for it has pained me not a little that I have not replied.

Mr. Samuel Bueter,

No. 15 Ciforzin St. London, England.

Dardanelles,

August 4/95.

Mr. Samuel. England.

My dear Friend,

Many thanks for the phothograph you have send me.
It was very kind of you to think of me to send me this token
of your remembrance. I certainly appreciate it, and shall
think of you whenever I look at it Ah My Dear Brother, it is
impossible for me to forget you. under favorable circumstance
I confess I must prefer you. I have a grate desire to have the

to Alps and Sanctuaries 287

beautifull chance to meet you. Ah then with the tears of
gladness to be the result of the great love of our friendness
A my Sir what pen can describe the meeting that shall be
come with your second visit if it please God.

It is my pray to Our Lord God to protect you and to keep
you glad and happy for ever.

Though we are far from each other yet we can speak with
letters.

Thank God to have your love of friendness with me and
mine with your noble person.
Hopeing to hear from you,

Yours truly,

Ismayel, from
Byramich hizar memuerue iuse bashi.

XVIII

Material for Erewhon Revisited

Apologise for the names in Erewhon. I was an unpractised
writer and had no idea the names could matter so much.

Give a map showing the geography of Erewhon in so far as
the entrance into the country goes, and explain somewhere, if
possible, about Butler's stones.

Up as far as the top of the pass, where the statues are,
keeps to the actual geography of the upper Rangitata district
except that I have doubled the gorge. There was no gorge up
above my place [Mesopotamia] and I wanted one, so I took
the gorge some 10 or a dozen miles lower down and repeated it
and then came upon my own country again, but made it bare
of grass and useless instead of (as it actually was) excellent
country. Baker and I went up the last saddle we tried and
thought it was a pass to the West Coast, but found it looked
down on to the headwaters of the Rakaia : however we saw a
true pass opposite, just as I have described in Erewhon, only
that there were no clouds and we never went straight down as
I said I did, but took two days going round by Lake Heron.
And there is no lake at the top of the true pass. This is the
pass over which, in consequence of our report, Whitcombe was
sent and got drowned on the other side. We went up to the
top of the pass but found it too rough to go down without more
help than we had. I rather think I have told this in A First
Year in Canterbury Settlement, but am so much ashamed of
that book that I dare not look to see. I don't mean to say
that the later books are much better ; still they are better.

They show a lot of stones on the Hokitika pass, so Mr. Slade
told me, which they call mine and say I intended them in

288

Material for Erewhon Revisited 289

Erewhon [for the statues] . I never saw them and knew nothing
about them.

Refer to the agony and settled melancholy with which
unborn children in the womb regard birth as the extinction of
their being, and how some declare that there is a world beyond
the womb and others deny this. " We must all one day be
born/' " Birth is certain " and so on, just as we say of death.
Birth involves with it an original sin. It must be sin, for the
wages of sin is death (what else, I should like to know, is the
wages of virtue ?) and assuredly the wages of birth is death.

They consider " wilful procreation/ ' as they call it, much
as we do murder and will not allow it to be a moral ailment at
all. Sometimes a jury will recommend to mercy and sometimes
they bring in a verdict of " justifiable baby-getting," but they
treat these cases as a rule with great severity.

Every baby has a month of heaven and a month of hell
before birth, so that it may make its choice with its eyes open.

The hour of birth should be prayed for in the litany as well
as that of death, and so it would be if we could remember the
agony of horror which, no doubt, we felt at birth — surpassing,
no doubt, the utmost agony of apprehension that can be felt
on death.

Let automata increase in variety and ingenuity till at last
they present so many of the phenomena of life that the
religious world declares they were designed and created by
God as an independent species. The scientific world, on the
other hand, denies that there is any design in connection with
them, and holds that if any slight variation happened to
arise by which a fortuitous combination of atoms occurred
which was more suitable for advertising purposes (the auto-
mata were chiefly used for advertising) it was seized upon and
preserved by natural selection.

They have schools where they teach the arts of forgetting
and of not seeing. Young ladies are taught the art of pro-
posing. Lists of successful matches are advertised with the
prospectuses of all the girls' schools.

They have professors of all the languages of the principal
beasts and birds. I stayed with the Professor of Feline

290 Material for Erewhon Revisited

Languages who had invented a kind of Ollendorfnan system
for teaching the Art of Polite Conversation among cats.

They have an art-class in which the first thing insisted on
is that the pupils should know the price of all the leading
modern pictures that have been sold during the last twenty
years at Christie's, and the fluctuations in their values. Give
an examination paper on this subject. The artist being a
picture-dealer, the first thing he must do is to know how to
sell his pictures, and therefore how to adapt them to the
market. What is the use of being able to paint a picture unless
one can sell it when one has painted it ?

Add that the secret of the success of modern French art
lies in its recognition of values.

Let there be monks who have taken vows of modest com-
petency (about £1000 a year, derived from consols), who
spurn popularity as medieval monks spurned money — and
with about as much sincerity. Their great object is to try and
find out what they like and then get it. They do not live in
one building, and there are no vows of celibacy, but, in prac-
tice, when any member marries he drifts away from the society.
They have no profession of faith or articles of association, but,
as they who hunted for the Holy Grail, so do these hunt in all
things, whether of art or science, for that which commends
itself to them as comfortable and worthy to be accepted.
Their liberty of thought and speech and their reasonable en-
joyment of the good things of this life are what they alone
live for.

Let the Erewhonians have Westminster Abbeys of the first,
second and third class, and in one of these let them raise
monuments to dead theories which were once celebrated.

Let them study those arts whereby the opinions of a
minority may be made to seem those of a majority.

Introduce an Erewhonian sermon to the effect that if
people are wicked they may perhaps have to go to heaven
when they die.

Let them have a Regius Professor of Studied Ambiguity.

Let the Professor of Worldly Wisdom pluck a man for want
of sufficient vagueness in his saving-clauses paper.

Another poor fellow may be floored for having written
an article on a scientific subject without having made free
enough use of the words " patiently " and " carefully,"

Material for Erewhon Revisited 291

and for having shown too obvious signs of thinking for
himself.

Let them attach disgrace to any who do not rapidly become
obscure after death.

Let them have a Professor of Mischief. They found that
people always did harm when they meant well and that all the
professorships founded with an avowedly laudable object
failed, so they aim at mischief in the hope that they may miss
the mark here as when they aimed at what they thought
advantageous.

The Professor of Worldly Wisdom plucked a man for buying
an egg that had a date stamped upon it. And another for
being too often and too seriously in the right. And another
for telling people what they did not want to know. He
plucked several for insufficient mistrust in printed matter.
It appeared that the Professor had written an article teeming
with plausible blunders, and had had it inserted in a leading
weekly. He then set his paper so that the men were sure to
tumble into these blunders themselves ; then he plucked them.
This occasioned a good deal of comment at the time.

One man who entered for the Chancellor's medal declined
to answer any of the questions set. He said he saw they were
intended more to show off the ingenuity of the examiner than
either to assist or test the judgment of the examined. He
observed, moreover, that the view taken of his answers would
in great measure depend upon what the examiner had had for
dinner and, since it was not in his power to control this, he
was not going to waste time where the result was, at best, so
much a matter of chance. Briefly, his view of life was that the
longer you lived and the less you thought or talked about it
the better. He should go pretty straight in the main himself
because it saved trouble on the whole, and he should be guided
mainly by a sense of humour in deciding when to deviate from
the path of technical honesty, and he would take care that his
errors, if any, should be rather on the side of excess than of
asceticism.

This man won the Chancellor's medal.

They have a review class in which the pupils are taught not
to mind what is written in newspapers. As a natural result
they grow up more keenly sensitive than ever.

Round the margin of the newspapers sentences are printed

2Q2 Material for Erewhon Revisited

j ^o^c+ Thieving the criticisms they

They'derend the *^J&^£m*

ground that but for ^rpieces to an

that the world would become clog|ea« d sense

SSp'XfbS;™^^^.^

which truth may be etoted. , that is beyond

<• And you succeed, sir, I , re P^ Q A ere woui d be no limit to

all praise, But consider-

the supply of trath that ougntxo " iess ^ m

Tb, live their li.es Thave
women, with » m ^°af Sure about as clearly as we
of the future, -»5 {o J«^ Sto the womb as though
see the past, winding up by entente " tMs sub ^

S^u^ifSi?^ m„?h the same thing,

provided one is used to it.

of perfection as murder."

Therewas no more space for theses » .what was
worse, there was no m ore sp m ™ J e vast cmC erous
^^■rSel'omontWnides, nothing but

chronicles. m .

living person to suppress any kind of originality.

Material for Erew/wn Revisited 293

" It is not our business," he used to say, " to help students
to think for themselves — surely this is the very last thing that
one who wishes them well would do by them. Our business is
to make them think as we do, or at any rate as we consider it
expedient to say we do."

He was President of the Society for the Suppression of
Useless Knowledge and for the Complete Obliteration of the
Past.

They have professional mind-dressers, as we have hair-
dressers, and before going out to dinner or fashionable At-
homes, people go and get themselves primed with smart
sayings or moral reflections according to the style which
they think will be most becoming to them in the kind of
company they expect.

They deify as God something which I can only translate by
a word as underivable as God — I mean Gumption. But it is
part of their religion that there should be no temple to Gump-
tion, nor are there priests or professors of Gumption Gump-
tion being too ineffable to hit the sense of human definition
and analysis.

They hold that the function of universities is to make
learning repellent and thus to prevent its becoming danger-
ously common. And they discharge this beneficent function
all the more efficiently because they do it unconsciously and
automatically. The professors think they are advancing
healthy intellectual assimilation and digestion when they are
in reality little better than cancer on the stomach.

Let them be afflicted by an epidemic of the fear-of-giving-
themselves-away disease. Enumerate its symptoms. There
is a new discovery whereby the invisible rays that emanate
from the soul can be caught and all the details of a man's
spiritual nature, his character, disposition, principles, &c. be
photographed on a plate as easily as his face or the bones of
his hands, but no cure for the f. o. g. th. a. disease has yet
been discovered.

They have a company for ameliorating the condition of
those who are in a future state, and for improving the future
state itself.

People are buried alive for a week before they are married

294 Material for Ereiv&on Revisited

so that their offspring may know something about the grave,
of which, otherwise, heredity could teach it nothing.

It has long been held that those constitutions are best
which promote most effectually the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. Now the greatest number are none too wise
and none too honest, and to arrange our systems with a view
to the greater happiness of sensible straightforward people-
indeed to give these people a chance at all if it can be avoided
—is to interfere with the greatest happiness of the greatest
number. Dull, slovenly and arrogant people do not like those
who are quick, painstaking and unassuming ; how can we
then consistently with the first principles of either morality
or political economy encourage such people when we can
bring sincerity and modesty fairly home to them ?

Much we have to tolerate, partly because we cannot always
discover in time who are. really insincere and who are only
masking sincerity under a garb of flippancy, and partly also
because we wish to err on the side of letting the guilty escape
rather than of punishing the innocent. Thus many people
who are perfectly well known to belong to the straightforward
class are allowed to remain at large and may even be seen
hobnobbing and on the best of possible terms with the guar-
dians of public immorality. We all feel, as indeed has been
said in other nations, that the poor abuses of the time want
countenance, and this moreover in the interests of the uses
themselves, for the presence of a small modicum of sincerity
acts as a wholesome stimulant and irritant to the prevailing
spirit of academicism ; moreover, we hold it useful to have
a certain number of melancholy examples whose notorious
failure shall serve as a warning to those who do not cultivate
a power of immoral self-control which shall prevent them from
saying, or indeed even thinking, anything that shall not be to
their immediate and palpable advantage with the greatest
number.

It is a point of good breeding with the Erewhonians to keep
their opinions as far as possible in the background in all cases
where controversy is even remotely possible, that is to say
whenever conversation gets beyond the discussion of the
weather. It is found necessary, however, to recognise some
means of ventilating points on which differences of opinion

Material for Erewhon Revisited 295

may exist, and the convention adopted is that whenever a
man finds occasion to speak strongly he should express himself
by dwelling as forcibly as he can on the views most opposed
to his own ; even this, however, is tolerated rather than ap-
proved, for it is counted the perfection of scholarship and good
breeding not to express, and much more not even to have a
definite opinion upon any subject whatsoever.

Thus their " yea " is " nay " and their " nay," " yea," but
it comes to the same thing in the end, for it does not matter
whether " yea " is called " yea " or " nay " so long as it is
understood as " yea." They go a long way round only to find
themselves at the point from which they started, but there is
no accounting for tastes. With us such tactics are incon-
ceivable, but so far do the Erewhonians carry them that it is
common for them to write whole reviews and articles between
the lines of which a practised reader will detect a sense exactly
contrary to that ostensibly put forward ; nor is a man held
to be more than a tyro in the arts of polite society unless he
instinctively suspects a hidden sense in every proposition
that meets him. I was more than once misled by these
plover-like tactics, and on one occasion was near getting into
a serious scrape. It happened thus : —

A man of venerable aspect was maintaining that pain was a
sad thing and should not be permitted under any circum-
stances. People ought not even to be allowed to suffer for the
consequences of their own folly, and should be punished for it
severely if they did. If they could only be kept from making
fools of themselves by the loss of freedom or, if necessary, by
some polite and painless method of extinction — which meant
hanging — then they ought to be extinguished. If permanent
improvement can only be won through ages of mistake and
suffering, which must be all begun de novo for every fresh im-
provement, let us be content to forego improvement, and let
those who suffer their lawless thoughts to stray in this direc-
tion be improved from off the face of the earth as fast as
possible. No remedy can be too drastic for such a disease as
the pain felt by another person. We find we can generally
bear the pain ourselves when we have to do so, but it is in-
tolerable that we should know it is being borne by any one
else. The mere sight of pain unfits people for ordinary life,
the wear and tear of which would be very much reduced if we

296 Material for Erewhon Revisited

would be at any trouble to restrain the present almost un-
bounded licence in the matter of suffering — a licence that
people take advantage of to make themselves as miserable as
they please, without so much as a thought for the feelings of
others. Hence, he maintained, the practice of putting dupes
in the same category as the physically diseased or the unlucky
was founded on the eternal and inherent nature of things, and
could no more be interfered with than the revolution of the
earth on its axis.

He said a good deal more to the same effect, and I was
beginning to wonder how much longer he would think it
necessary to insist on what was so obvious, when his hearers
began to differ from him. One dilated on the correlation
between pain and pleasure which ensured that neither could
be extinguished without the extinguishing along with it of
the other. Another said that throughout the animal and
vegetable worlds there was found what might be counted as
a system of rewards and punishments ; this, he contended,
must cease to exist (and hence virtue must cease) if the pain
attaching to misconduct were less notoriously advertised.
Another maintained that the horror so freely expressed by
many at the sight of pain was as much selfish as not — and so on.

Let Erewhon be revisited by the son of the original writer —
let him hint that his father used to write the advertisements
for Mother Seigel's Syrup. He gradually worked his way up
to this from being a mere writer of penny tracts. [Dec. 1896.]

On reaching the country he finds that divine honours are
being paid him, churches erected to him, and a copious
mythology daily swelling, with accounts of the miracles he
had worked and all his sayings and doings. If any child got
hurt he used to kiss the place and it would get well at once.

Everything has been turned topsy-turvy in consequence of
his flight in the balloon being ascribed to miraculous agency.

Among other things, he had maintained that sermons
should be always preached by two people, one taking one side
and another the opposite, while a third summed up and the
congregation decided by a show of hands.

This system had been adopted and he goes to hear a sermon
On the Growing Habit of Careful Patient Investigation as
Encouraging Casuistry. [October 1897.]

XIX

Truth and Convenience

Opposites

You may have all growth or nothing growth, just as you may
have all mechanism or nothing mechanism, all chance or
nothing chance, but you must not mix them. Having settled
this, you must proceed at once to mix them.

Two Points of View

Everything must be studied from the point of view of itself,
as near as we can get to this, and from the point of view of its
relations, as near as we can get to them. If we try to see it
absolutely in itself, unalloyed with relations, we shall find, by
and by, that we have, as it were, whittled it away. If we try
to see it in its relations to the bitter end, we shall find that
there is no corner of the universe into which it does not enter.
Either way the thing eludes us if we try to grasp it with the
horny hands of language and conscious thought. Either way
we can think it perfectly well — so long as we don't think about
thinking about it. The pale cast of thought sicklies over
everything.

Practically everything should be seen as itself pure and
simple, so far as we can comfortably see it, and at the same
time as not itself, so far as we can comfortably see it, and then
the two views should be combined, so far as we can comfort-
ably combine them. If we cannot comfortably combine them,
we should think of something else.

Truth

i

We can neither define what we mean by truth nor be in
doubt as to our meaning. And this I suppose must be due to

297

298 Truth and Convenience

the antiquity of the instinct that, on the whole, directs us
towards truth. We cannot self- vivisect ourselves in respect
of such a vital function, though we can discharge it normally
and easily enough so long as we do not think about it.

ii

The pursuit of truth is chimerical. That is why it is so hard
to say what truth is. There is no permanent absolute un-
changeable truth ; what we should pursue is the most con-
venient arrangement of our ideas.

iii

There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute
truth.

iv

A. B. was so impressed with the greatness and certain
ultimate victory of truth that he considered it unnecessary
to encourage her or do anything to defend her.

v

He who can best read men best knows all truth that need
concern him ; for it is not what the thing is, apart from man's
thoughts in respect of it, but how to reach the fairest compro-
mise between men's past and future opinions that is the fittest
object of consideration ; and this we get by reading men and
women.

vi

Truth should not be absolutely lost sight of, but it should
not be talked about.

vii

Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in con-
tinual fear lest she should catch cold on over-exposure.

viii

The firmest line that can be drawn upon the smoothest
paper has still jagged edges if seen through a microscope.
This does not matter until important deductions are made on
the supposition that there are no jagged edges.

Truth and Convenience 299

ix

Truth should never be allowed to become extreme ; other-
wise it will be apt to meet and to run into the extreme of
falsehood. It should be played pretty low down — to the pit
and gallery rather than the stalls. Pit-truth is more true to
the stalls than stall-truth to the pit.

x

An absolute lie may live — for it is a true lie, and is saved by
being flecked with a grain of its opposite. Not so absolute
truth.

xi

Whenever we push truth hard she runs to earth in contra-
diction in terms, that is to say, in falsehood. An essential
contradiction in terms meets us at the end of every enquiry.

xii

In Alps and Sanctuaries (Chapter V) I implied that I was
lying when I told the novice that Handel was a Catholic. But
I was not lying ; Handel was a Catholic, and so am I, and so is
every well-disposed person. It shows how careful we ought
to be when we lie — we can never be sure but what we may
be speaking the truth.

xiii

Perhaps a little bit of absolute truth on any one question
might prove a general solvent, and dissipate the universe.

xiv

Truth generally is kindness, but where the two diverge or
collide, kindness should override truth.

Falsehood
i

Truth consists not in never lying but in knowing when to
lie and when not to do so. De minimis non curat Veritas. »

Yes, but what is a minimum ? Sometimes a maximum is a
minimum and sometimes it is the other way.

ii

Lying is like borrowing or appropriating in music. It is

3oo Truth and Convenience

only a good, sound, truthful person who can lie to any good
purpose ; if a man is not habitually truthful his very lies will
be false to him and betray him. The converse also is true ; if
a man is not a good, sound, honest, capable liar there is no
truth in him.

hi

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some
sense to know how to lie well.

iv

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

v

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two
that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how
to forget.

vi

Cursed is he that does not know when to shut his mind.
An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to
be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it.
It should be capable of shutting its doors sometimes, or it may
be found a little draughty.

vii

He who knows not how to wink knows not how to see ; and
he who knows not how to lie knows not how to speak the
truth. So he who cannot suppress his opinions cannot express
them.

viii

There can no more be a true statement without falsehood
distributed through it, than a note on a well-tuned piano that
is not intentionally and deliberately put out of tune to some
extent in order to have the piano in the most perfect possible
tune. Any perfection of tune as regards one key can only be
got at the expense of all the rest,

ix

Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay
a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority
whenever we lie to him.

Truth and Convenience 301

X

I seem to see lies crowding and crushing at a narrow gate
and working their way in along with truths into the domain
of history.

Nature's Double Falsehood

That one great lie she told about the earth being flat when
she knew it was round all the time ! And again how she stuck
to it that the sun went round us when it was we who were
going round the sun ! This double falsehood has irretrievably
ruined my confidence in her. There is no lie which she will
not tell and stick to like a Gladstonian. How plausibly she
told her tale, and how many ages was it before she was so
much as suspected ! And then when things did begin to look
bad for her, how she brazened it out, and what a desperate
business it was to bring her shifts and prevarications to book 1

Convenience
i

We wonder at its being as hard often to discover con-
venience as it is to discover truth. But surely convenience is
truth.

ii

The use of truth is like the use of words ; both truth and
words depend greatly upon custom.

iii

We do with truth much as we do with God. We create it
according to our own requirements and then say that it has
created us, or requires that we shall do or think so and so —
whatever we find convenient.

iv

. " What is Truth ? " is often asked, as though it were harder
to say what truth is than what anything else is. But what is
Justice ? What is anything ? An eternal contradiction in
terms meets us at the end of every enquiry. We are not re-
quired to know what truth is, but to speak the truth, and so
with justice.

302 Truth and Convenience

V

The search after truth is like the search after perpetual
motion or the attempt to square the circle. All we should aim
at is the most convenient way of looking at a thing — the way
that most sensible people are likely to find give them least
trouble for some time to come. It is not true that the sun
used to go round the earth until Copernicus^ time, but it is
true that until Copernicus's time it was most convenient to us
to hold this. Still, we had certain ideas which could only fit
in comfortably with our other ideas when we came to consider
the sun as the centre of the planetary system.

Obvious convenience often takes a long time before it is
fully recognised and acted upon, but there will be a nisus
towards it as long and as widely spread as the desire of men
to be saved trouble. If truth is not trouble-saving in the long
run it is not truth : truth is only that which is most largely and
permanently trouble-saving. The ultimate triumph, there-
fore, of truth rests on a very tangible basis — much more so
than when it is made to depend upon the will of an unseen
and unknowable agency. If my views about the Odyssey, for
example, will, in the long run, save students from perplexity,
the students will be sure to adopt them, and I have no wish
that they should adopt them otherwise.

It does not matter much what the truth is, but our knowing
the truth — that is to say our hitting on the most permanently
convenient arrangement of our ideas upon a subject whatever
it may be — matters very much ; at least it matters, or may
matter, very much in some relations. And however little it
matters, yet it matters, and however much it matters yet it
does not matter. In the utmost importance there is un-
importance, and in the utmost unimportance there is im-
portance. So also it is with certainty, life, matter, necessity,
consciousness and, indeed, with everything which can form
an object of human sensation at all, or of those after-reason-
ings which spring ultimately from sensations. This is a
round-about way of saying that every question has two sides.

vi

Our concern is with the views we shall choose to take and
to let other people take concerning things, and as to the way
of expressing those views which shall give least trouble. If

Truth and Convenience 303

we express ourselves in one way we find our ideas in confusion
and our action impotent : if in another our ideas cohere har-
moniously, and our action is edifying. The convenience of
least disturbing vested ideas, and at the same time rearranging
our views in accordance with new facts that come to our know-
ledge, this is our proper care. But it is idle to say we do not
know anything about things — perhaps we do, perhaps we
don't — but we at any rate know what sane people think and
are likely to think about things, and this to all intents and
purposes is knowing the things themselves. For the things
only are what sensible people agree to say and think they are.

vii

The arrangement of our ideas is as much a matter of con-
venience as the packing of goods in a druggist's or draper's
store and leads to exactly the same kind of difficulties in the
matter of classifying them. We all admit the arbitrariness of
classifications in a languid way, but we do not think of it more
than we can help — I suppose because it is so inconvenient to
do so. The great advantage of classification is to conceal the
fact that subdivisions are as arbitrary as they are.

Classification

There can be no perfect way, for classification presupposes
that a thing has absolute limits whereas there is nothing that
does not partake of the universal infinity — nothing whose
boundaries do not vary. Everything is one thing at one time
and in some respects, and another at other times and in other
respects. We want a new mode of measurement altogether ; at
present we take what gaps we can find, set up milestones, and
declare them irremovable. We want a measure which shall
express, or at any rate recognise, the harmonics of resemblance
that lurk even in the most absolute differences and vice versa.

Attempts at Classification

are like nailing battens of our own flesh and blood upon our-
selves as an inclined plane that we may walk up ourselves
more easily ; and yet it answers very sufficiently.

304 Truth and Convenience

A Clergyman's Doubts

Under this heading a correspondence appeared in the
Examiner, 15th February to 14th June, 1879. Butler wrote
all the letters under various signatures except one or perhaps two.
His first letter purported to come from "An Earnest Clergyman "
aged forty-five, with a wife, five children, a country living worth
£400 a year, and a house, but no private means. He had ceased
to believe in the doctrines he was called upon to teach. Ought he
to continue to lead a life that was a lie or ought he to throw up his
orders and plunge himself, his wife and children into poverty ?
The dilemma interested Butler deeply : he might so easily have
found himself in it if he had not begun to doubt the efficacy of
infant baptism when he did. Fifteen letters followed, signed
" Cantab," " Oxoniensis" and so forth, some recommending one
course, some another. One, signed " X.Y.Z.," included " The
Righteous Man " which will be found in the last group of this
volume, headed "Poems." From the following letter signed
" Ethics " Butler afterwards took two passages {which I have
enclosed, one between single asterisks the other between double
asterisks), and used them for the "dissertation on Lying"
which is in Chapter V of Alps and Sanctuaries.

To the Editor of the Examiner.

Sir : I am sorry for your correspondent " An Earnest
Clergyman " for, though he may say he has " come to smile at
his troubles/' his smile seems to be a grim one. We must all
of us eat a peck of moral dirt before we die, but some must
know more precisely than others when they are eating it ;
some, again, can bolt it without wry faces in one shape, while
they cannot endure even the smell of it in another. " An
Earnest Clergyman " admits that he is in the habit of telling
people certain things which he does not believe, but says he
has no great fancy for deceiving himself. " Cantab " must, I
fear, deceive himself before he can tolerate the notion of de-
ceiving other people. For my own part I prefer to be deceived
by one who does not deceive himself rather than by one who
does, for the first will know better when to stop, and will not
commonly deceive me more than he can help. As for the
other — if he does not know how to invest his own thoughts
safely he will invest mine still worse ; he will hold God's most

Truth and Convenience 305

precious gift of falsehood too cheap ; he has comette it too
easily ; cheaply come, cheaply go will be his maxW^ The
good liar should be the converse of the poet ; he shH$flfc t^'
made, not born. *

It is not loss of confidence in a man's strict adherence to the
letter of truth that shakes my confidence in him. I know what
I do myself and what I must lose all social elasticity if I were
not to do. *Turning for moral guidance to my cousins the
lower animals — whose unsophisticated instinct proclaims
what God has taught them with a directness we may some-
times study — I find the plover lying when she reads us truly
and, knowing that we shall hit her if we think her to be down,
lures us from her young ones under the fiction of a broken
wing. Is God angry, think you, with this pretty deviation
from the letter of strict accuracy ? or was it not He who
whispered to her to tell the falsehood, to tell it with a circum-
stance, without conscientious scruples, and not once only but
to make a practice of it, so as to be an habitual liar for at least
six weeks in the year ? I imagine so. When I was young I
used to read in good books that it was God who taught the
bird to make her nest, and, if so, He probably taught each
species the other domestic arrangements which should be best
suited to it. Or did the nest-building information come from
God and was there an Evil One among the birds also who
taught them to steer clear of pedantry ? Then there is the
spider — an ugly creature, but I suppose God likes it — can any-
thing be meaner than that web which naturalists extol as such
a marvel of Providential ingenuity ?

Ingenuity ! The word reeks with lying. Once, on a summer
afternoon, in a distant country I met one of those orchids
whose main idea consists in the imitation of a fly ; this lie
they dispose so plausibly upon their petals that other flies
who would steal their honey leave them unmolested. Watch-
ing intently and keeping very still, methought I heard this
person speaking to the offspring which she felt within her
though I saw them not.

" My children/' she exclaimed, " I must soon leave you ;
think upon the fly, my loved ones ; make it look as terrible as
possible ; cling to this thought in your passage through life,
for it is the one thing needful ; once lose sight of it and you are
lost."

X

306 Truth and Convenience

Over and over again she sang this burden in a small, still
voice, and so I left her. Then straightway I came upon some
butterflies whose' profession it was to pretend to believe in all
manner of vital truths which in their inner practice they re-
jected ; thus, pretending to be certain other and hateful
butterflies which no bird will eat by reason of their abominable
smell, these cunning ones conceal their own sweetness, live
long in the land and see good days. Think of that, 0 Earnest
Clergyman, my friend ! No. Lying is like Nature, you may
expel her with a fork, but she will always come back again.
Lying is like the poor, we must have it always with us. The
question is, How much, when, where, to whom and, under what
circumstances is lying right ? For, once admit that a plover
may pretend to have a broken wing and yet be without sin if
she have pretended well enough, and the thin edge of the
wedge has been introduced so that there is no more saying
that we must never lie.*

It is not, then, the discovery that a man has the power to lie
that shakes my confidence in him ; it is loss of confidence in his
mendacity that I find it impossible to get over. I forgive him
for telling me lies, but I cannot forgive him for not telling me
the same lies, or nearly so, about the same things. This shows
he has a slipshod memory, which is unpardonable, or else that
he tells so many lies that he finds it impossible to remember all
of them, and this is like having too many of the poor always
with us. The plover and the spider have each of them their
stock of half a dozen lies or so which we may expect them to
tell .when occasion arises ; they are plausible and consistent,
but we know where to have them ; otherwise, if they were
liable, like self-deceivers, to spring mines upon us in unex-
pected places, man would soon make it his business to reform
them — not from within, but from without.

And now it is time I came to the drift of my letter, which is
that if " An Earnest Clergyman " has not cheated himself into
thinking he is telling the truth, he will do no great harm by
stopping where he is. Do not let him make too much fuss
about trifles. The solemnity of the truths which he professes
to uphold is very doubtful ; there is a tacit consent that it
exists more on paper than in reality. If he is a man of any
tact, he can say all he is compelled to say and do all the Church
requires of him — like a gentleman, with neither undue slovenli-

Truth and Convenience 307

ness nor undue unction—yet it shall be perfectly plain to all
his parishioners who are worth considering that he is acting as
a mouthpiece and that his words are spoken dramatically. As
for the unimaginative, they are as children ; they cannot and
should not be taken into account. Men must live as they must
write or act— for a certain average standard which each must
guess at for himself as best he can ; those who are above this
standard he cannot reach ; those, again, who are below it
must be so at their own risk.

Pilate did well when he would not stay for an answer to his
question, What is truth ? for there is no such thing apart
from the sayer and the sayee. **There is that irony in nature
which brings it to pass that if the sayer be a man with any
stuff in him, provided he tells no lies wittingly to himself and
is never unkindly, he may lie and lie and lie all the day long,
and he will no more be false to any man than the sun will
shine by night ; his lies will become truths as they pass into the
hearer's soul. But if a man deceives himself and is unkind,
the truth is not in him, it turns to falsehood while yet in his
mouth, like the quails in the wilderness of Sinai. How this is
so or why, I know not, but that the Lord hath mercy on
whom He will have mercy and whom He willeth He hardeneth,
and that the bad man can do no right and the good no
wrong.**

A great French writer has said that the mainspring of our
existence does not lie in those veins and nerves and arteries
which have been described with so much care — these are but
its masks and mouthpieces through which it acts but behind
which it is for ever hidden ; so in like manner the faiths and
formulae of a Church may be as its bones and animal mechan-
ism, but they are not the life of the Church, which is something
rather that cannot be holden in words, and one should know
how to put them off, yet put them off gracefully, if they wish
"to come too prominently forward. Do not let " An Earnest
Clergyman " take things too much au serieux. He seems to be
fairly contented where he is ; let him take the word of one who
is old enough to be his father, that if he has a talent for con-
scientious scruples he will find plenty of scope for them in
other professions as well as in the Church. I, for aught he
knows, may be a doctor and I might tell my own story ; or I
may be a barrister and have found it my duty to win a case

308 Truth and Convenience

which I thought a very poor one, whereby others, whose cir-
cumstances were sufficiently pitiable, lost their all ; yet doctors
and barristers do not write to the newspapers to air their poor
consciences in broad daylight. Why should An Earnest
(I hate the word) Clergyman do so ? Let me give him a last
word or two of fatherly advice.

Men may settle small things for themselves — as what they
will have for dinner or where they will spend the vacation —
but the great ones — such as the choice of a profession, of the
part of England they will live in, whether they will marry or
no — they had better leave the force of circumstances to settle
for them ; if they prefer the phraseology, as I do myself, let
them leave these matters to God. When He has arranged
things for them, do not let them be in too great a hurry to
upset His arrangement in a tiff. If they do not like their
present and another opening suggests itself easily and natur-
ally, let them take that as a sign that they make a change ;
otherwise, let them see to it that they do not leave the frying-
pan for the fire. A man, finding himself in the field of a pro-
fession, should do as cows do when they are put into a field of
grass. They do not like any field ; they like the open prairie
of their ancestors. They walk, however, all round their new
abode, surveying the hedges and gates with much interest.
If there is a gap in any hedge they will commonly go through
it at once, otherwise they will resign themselves contentedly
enough to the task of feeding.

I am, Sir,

One who thinks he knows a thing or two about

Ethics.

XX

First Principles

The Baselessness of Our Ideas

That our ideas are baseless, or rotten at the roots, is what few
who study them will deny ; but they are rotten in the same
way as property is robbery, and property is robbery in the
same way as our ideas are rotten at the roots, that is to say it
is a robbery and it is not. No title to property, no idea and
no livir ; form (which is the embodiment of idea) is indefeasible
if searcn be made far enough. Granted that our thoughts are
baseless, yet they are so in the same way as the earth itself is
both baseless and most firmly based, or again most stable and
yet most in motion.

Our ideas, or rather, I should say, our realities, are all of
them like our Gods, based on superstitious foundations. If
man is a microcosm then kosmos is a megalanthrope and that
is how we come to anthropomorphise the deity. In the eternal
pendulum swing of thought we make God in our own image,
and then make him make us, and then find it out and cry
because we have no God and so on, over and over again as a
child has new toys given to it, tires of them, breaks them and
is disconsolate till it gets new ones which it will again tire of
and break. If the man who first made God in his own image
had been a good model, all might have been well ; but he was
impressed with an undue sense of his own importance and, as
a natural consequence, he had no sense of humour. Both
these imperfections he has fully and faithfully reproduced in
his work and with the result we are familiar. All our most
solid and tangible realities are but as lies that we have told too
often henceforth to question them. But we have to question
them sometimes. It is not the sun that goes round the world
but we who go round the sun.

If any one is for examining and making requisitions on title

309

3io First Principles

we can search too, and can require the title of the state as
against any other state, or against the world at large. But
suppose we succeed in this, we must search further still and
show by what title mankind has ousted the lower animals, and
by what title we eat them, or they themselves eat grass or one
another.

See what quicksands we fall into if we wade out too far from
the terra firma of common consent ! The error springs from
supposing that there is any absolute right or absolute truth,
and also from supposing that truth and right are any the less
real for being not absolute but relative. In the complex of
human affairs we should aim not at a supposed absolute
standard but at the greatest coming-together-ness or con-
venience of all our ideas and practices ; that is to say, at their
most harmonious working with one another. Hit ourselves
somewhere we are bound to do : no idea will travel far without
colliding with some other idea. Thus, if we pursue one line of
probable convenience, we find it convenient to see all things
as ultimately one : that is, if we insist rather on the points of
agreement between things than on those of disagreement. If
we insist on the opposite view, namely, on the points of dis-
agreement, we find ourselves driven to the conclusion that
each atom is an individual entity, and that the unity between
even the most united things is apparent only. If we did not
unduly insist upon — that is to say, emphasise and exaggerate
— the part which concerns us for the time, we should never get
to understand anything ; the proper way is to exaggerate first
one view and then the other, and then let the two exaggerations
collide, but good-temperedly and according to the laws of
civilised mental warfare. So we see first all things as one,
then all things as many and, in the end, a multitude in unity
and a unity in multitude. Care must be taken not to accept
ideas which though very agreeable at first disagree with us
afterwards, and keep rising on our mental stomachs, as
garlic does upon our bodily.

Imagination

i

Imagination depends mainly upon memory, but there is a
small percentage of creation of something out of nothing with

First Principles 311

it. We can invent a trifle more than can be got at by mere
combination of remembered things.

ii

When we are impressed by a few only, or perhaps only one
of a number of ideas which are bonded pleasantly together,
there is hope ; when we see a good many there is expectation ;
when we have had so many presented to us that we have ex-
pected confidently and the remaining ideas have not turned
up^ there is disappointment. So the sailor says in the play :

" Here are my arms, here is my manly bosom, but where's
my Mary ? "

iii

What tricks imagination plays ! Thus, if we expect a person
in the street we transform a dozen impossible people into him
while they are still too far off to be seen distinctly ; and when
we expect to hear a footstep on the stairs — as, we will say, the
postman's — we hear footsteps in every sound. Imagination
will make us see a billiard ball as likely to travel farther than
it will travel, if we hope that it will do so. It will make us
think we feel a train begin to move as soon as the guard has
said " All right," though the train has not yet begun to move ;
if another train alongside begins to move exactly at this
juncture, there is no man who will not be deceived. And we
omit as much as we insert. We often do not notice that a man
has grown a beard.

iv

I read once of a man who was cured of a dangerous illness
by eating his doctor's prescription which he understood was
the medicine itself. So William Sefton Moorhouse [in New
Zealand] imagined he was being converted to Christianity by
reading Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, which he had got by
mistake for Butler's Analogy, on the recommendation of a
friend. But it puzzled him a good deal.

v

At Ivy Hatch, while we were getting our beer in the inner
parlour, there was a confused melee of voices in the bar, amid
which I distinguished a voice saying :

" Imagination will do any bloody thing almost."

I was writing Life and Habit at the time and was much

3i2 First Principles

tempted to put this passage in. Nothing truer has ever been
said about imagination. Then the voice was heard addressing
the barman and saying :

" I suppose you wouldn't trust me with a quart of beer,
would you ? "

Inexperience

Kant says that all our knowledge is founded on experience.
But each new small increment of knowledge is not so founded,
and our whole knowledge is made up of the accumulation of
these small new increments not one of which is founded upon
experience. Our knowledge, then, is founded not on experience
but on inexperience ; for where there is no novelty, that is to
say no inexperience, there is no increment in experience. Our
knowledge is really founded upon something which we do not
know, but it is converted into experience by memory.

It is like species — we do not know the cause of the variations
whose accumulation results in species and any explanation
which leaves this out of sight ignores the whole difficulty. We
want to know the cause of the effect that inexperience pro-
duces on us.

Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit

We say that everything has a beginning. This is one side of
the matter. There is another according to which everything is
without a beginning — beginnings, and endings also, being, but
as it were, steps cut in a slope of ice without which we could
not climb it. They are for convenience and the hardness of
the hearts of men who make an idol of classification, but they
do not exist apart from our sense of our own convenience.

It was a favourite saying with William Sefton Moorhouse
[in New Zealand] that men cannot get rich by swopping knives.
Nevertheless nature does seem to go upon this principle.
Everybody does eat everybody up. Man eats birds, birds eat
worms and worms eat man again. It is a vicious circle, yet,
somehow or other, there is an increment. I begin to doubt
the principle ex nihilo nihil fit.

We very much want a way of getting something out of
nothing and back into it again. Whether or no we ever shall
get such a way, we see the clearly perceptible arising out of
and returning into the absolutely imperceptible and, so far as

First Principles 313

we are concerned, this is much the same thing. To assume an
unknowable substratum as the source from which all things
proceed or are evolved is equivalent to assuming that they
come up out of nothing ; for that which does not exist for us
is for us nothing ; that which we do not know does not exist
qua us, and therefore it does not exist. When I say " we," I
mean mankind generally, for things may exist qua one man and
not qua another. And when I say " nothing " I postulate
something of which we have no experience.

And yet we cannot say that a thing does not exist till it is
known to exist. The planet Neptune existed though, qua us,
it did not exist before Adams and Leverrier discovered it, and
we cannot hold that its continued non-existence to my laun-
dress and her husband makes it any the less an entity. We
cannot say that it did not exist at all till it was discovered, that
it exists only partially and vaguely to most of us, that to many
it still does not exist at all, that there are few to whom it even
exists in any force or fullness and none who can realise more
than the broad facts of its existence. Neptune has been dis-
turbing the orbits of the planets nearest to him for more
centuries than we can reckon, and whether or not he is
known to have been doing so has nothing to do with the
matter. If A is robbed, he is robbed, whether he knows it
or not.

In one sense, then, we cannot say that the planet Neptune
did not exist till he was discovered, but in another we can and
ought to do so. De non appareniibus et non existentibus eadem
est ratio ; as long, therefore, as Neptune did not appear he
did not exist qua us. The only way out of it is through the
contradiction in terms of maintaining that a thing exists and
does not exist at one and the same time. So A may be both
robbed, and not robbed.

We consider, therefore, that things have assumed their
present shape by course of evolution from a something which,
qua us, is a nothing, from a potential something but not an
actual, from an actual nothing but a potential not-nothing,
from a nothing which might become a something to us with any
modification on our parts but which, till such modification has
arisen, does not exist in relation to us, though very con-
ceivably doing so in relation to other entities. But this Pro-
tean nothing, capable of appearing as something, is not the

3 i4 First Principles

absolute, eternal, unchangeable nothing that we mean when
we say ex nihilo nihil fit.

The alternative is that something should not have come out
of nothing, and this is saying that something has always
existed. But the eternal increateness of matter seems as
troublesome to conceive as its having been created out of
nothing. I say " seems/' for I am not sure how far it really is
so. We never saw something come out of nothing, that is to
say, we never saw a beginning of anything except as the be-
ginning of a new phase of something pre-existent. We ought
therefore to find the notion of eternal being familiar, it ought
to be the only conception of matter which we are able to form :
nevertheless, we are so carried away by being accustomed to
see phases have their beginnings and endings that we forget
that the matter, of which we see the phase begin and end, did
not begin or end with the phase.

Eternal matter permeated by eternal mind, matter and
mind being functions of one another, is the least uncomfortable
way of looking at the universe ; but as it is beyond our com-
prehension, and cannot therefore be comfortable, sensible
persons will not look at the universe at all except in such
details as may concern them.

Contradiction in Terms

We pay higher and higher in proportion to the service
rendered till we get to the highest services, such as becoming
a Member of Parliament, and this must not be paid at all. If
a man would go yet higher and found a new and permanent
system, or create some new idea or work of art which remains
to give delight to ages — he must not only not be paid, but he
will have to pay very heavily out of his own pocket into the
bargain.

Again, we are to get all men to speak well of us if we can ;
yet we are to be cursed if all men speak well of us.

So when the universe has gathered itself into a single ball
(which I don't for a moment believe it ever will, but I don't
care) it will no sooner have done so, than the bubble will
burst and it will go back to its gases again.

Contradiction in terms is so omnipresent that we treat it
as we treat death, or free-will, or fate, or air, or God, or the

First Principles 315

Devil — taking these things so much as matters of course
that, though they are visible enough if we choose to see them,
we neglect them normally altogether, without for a moment
intending to deny their existence. This neglect is convenient
as preventing repetitions the monotony of which would
defeat their own purpose, but people are tempted neverthe-
less to forget the underlying omnipresence in the superficial
omniabsence. They forget that its opposite lurks in every- ,
thing — that there are harmonics of God in the Devil and*
harmonics of the Devil in God.

Contradiction in terms is not only to be excused but there
can be no proposition which does not more or less involve
one.

It is the fact of there being contradictions in terms, which
have to be smoothed away and fused into harmonious ac-
quiescence with their surroundings, that makes life and
consciousness possible at all. Unless the unexpected were
sprung upon us continually to enliven us we should pass life,
as it were, in sleep. To a living being no " It is " can be
absolute ; wherever there is an " Is," there, among its har-
monics, lurks an " Is not." When there is absolute absence
of " Is not " the " Is " goes too. And the " Is not " does not
go completely till the " Is " is gone along with it. Every
proposition has got a skeleton in its cupboard.

Extremes

i

Intuition and evidence seem to have something of the
same relation that faith and reason, luck and cunning, free-
will and necessity and demand and supply have. They grow
up hand in hand and no man can say which comes first. It
is the same with life and death, which lurk one within the
other as do rest and unrest, change and persistence, heat and
cold, poverty and riches, harmony and counterpoint, night
and day, summer and winter.

And so with pantheism and atheism ; loving everybody is
loving nobody, and God everywhere is, practically, God
nowhere. I once asked a man if he was a free-thinker ; he
replied that he did not think he was. And so, I have heard
of a man exclaiming "I am an atheist, thank God!"

316 First Principles

Those who say there is a God are wrong unless they mean at
the same time that there is no God, and vice versa. The
difference is the same as that between plus nothing and
minus nothing, and it is hard to say which we ought to
admire and thank most— the first theist or the first atheist.
Nevertheless, for many reasons, the plus nothing is to be
preferred.

ii

To be poor is to be contemptible, to be very poor is worse
still, and so on ; but to be actually at the point of death
through poverty is to be sublime. So " when weakness is
utter, honour ceaseth." [The Righteous Man, p. 390, post]

iii

The meeting of extremes is never clearer than in the case
of moral and intellectual strength and weakness. We may
say with Hesiod " How much the half is greater than the
whole ! " or with S. Paul " My strength is made perfect in
weakness " ; they come to much the same thing. We all
know strength so strong as to be weaker than weakness and
weakness so great as to be stronger than strength.

iv

The Queen travels as the Countess of Balmoral and would
probably be very glad, if she could, to travel as plain Mrs.
Smith. There is a good deal of the Queen lurking in every
Mrs. Smith and, conversely, a good deal of Mrs. Smith lurk-
ing in every queen.

Free-Will and Necessity

As I am tidying up, and the following beginning of a paper
on the above subject has been littering about my table since
December 1889, which is the date on the top of page i, I will
shoot it on to this dust-heap and bury it out of my sight.
It runs :

The difficulty has arisen from our forgetting that contra-
diction in terms lies at the foundation of all our thoughts
as a condition and sine qua non of our being able to think at
all. We imagine that we must either have all free-will and
no necessity, or all necessity and no free-will, and, it being

First Principles 317

obvious that our free-will is often overridden by force of
circumstances while the evidence that necessity is overridden
by free-will is harder to find (if indeed it can be found, for
I have not fully considered the matter), most people who
theorise upon this question will deny in theory that there is
any free-will at all, though in practice they take care to
act as if there was. For if we admit that like causes are
followed by like effects (and everything that we do is based
upon this hypothesis), it follows that every combination of
causes must have some one consequent which can alone
follow it and which free-will cannot touch.

(Yes, but it will generally be found that free-will entered
into the original combination and the repetition of the com-
bination will not be exact unless a like free-will is repeated
along with all the other factors.)

From which it follows that free-will is apparent only, and
that, as I said years ago in Erewhon, we are not free to choose
what seems best on each occasion but bound to do so, being
fettered to the freedom of our wills throughout our lives.

But to deny free-will is to deny moral responsibility, and
we are landed in absurdity at once — for there is nothing
more patent than that moral responsibility exists. Never-
theless, at first sight, it would seem as though we ought not
to hang a man for murder if there was no escape for him but
that he must commit one. Of course the answer to one who
makes this objection is that our hanging him is as much a
matter of necessity as his committing the murder.

If, again, necessity, as involved in the certainty that like
combinations will be followed by like consequence, is a
basis on which all our actions are founded, so also is free-
will. This is quite as much a sine qua non for action as
necessity is ; for who would try to act if he did not think
that his trying would influence the result ?

We have therefore two apparently incompatible and
mutually destructive faiths, each equally and self-evidently
demonstrable, each equally necessary for salvation of any
kind, and each equally entering into every thought and
action of our whole lives, yet utterly contradictory and
irreconcilable.

Can any dilemma seem more hopeless ? It is not a case
of being able to live happily with either were t'other dear

318 First Principles

charmer away ; it is indispensable that we should embrace
both, and embrace them with equal cordiality at the same
time, though each annihilates the other. It is as though it
were indispensable to our existence to be equally dead and
equally alive at one and the same moment.

Here we have an illustration which may help us. For,
after all, we are both dead and alive at one and the same
moment. There is no life without a taint of death and no
death that is not instinct with a residuum of past life and
with germs of the new that is to succeed it. Let those who
deny this show us an example of pure life and pure death.
Any one who has considered these matters will know this to
be impossible. And yet in spite of this, the cases where we
are in doubt whether a thing is to be more fitly called dead
or alive are so few that they may be disregarded.

I take it, then, that as, though alive, we are in part dead
and, though dead, in part alive, so, though bound by necessity,
we are in part free, and, though free, yet in part bound by
necessity. At least I can think of no case of such absolute
necessity in human affairs as that free-will should have no
part in it, nor of such absolute free-will that no part of the
action should be limited and controlled by necessity.

Thus, when a man walks to the gallows, he is under large
necessity, yet he retains much small freedom ; when pinioned,
he is less free, but he can open his eyes and mouth and pray
aloud or no as he pleases ; even when the drop has fallen, so
long as he is " he " at all, he can exercise some, though in-
finitely small, choice.

It may be answered that throughout the foregoing chain
of actions, the freedom, what little there is of it, is apparent
only, and that even in the small freedoms, which are not so
obviously controlled by necessity, the necessity is still present
as effectually as when the man, though apparently free to
walk to the gallows, is in reality bound to do so. For in
respect of the small details of his manner of walking to the
gallows, which compulsion does not so glaringly reach, what
is it that the man is free to do ? He is free to do as he likes,
but he is not free to do as he does not like ; and a man's
likings are determined by outside things and by antecedents,
pre-natal and post-natal, whose effect is so powerful that the
individual who makes the choice proves to be only the

First Principles 319

resultant of certain forces which have been brought to bear
upon him but which are not the man. So that it seems there
is no detail, no nook or corner of action, into which necessity
does not penetrate.

This seems logical, but it is as logical to follow instinct and
common sense as to follow logic, and both instinct and
common sense assure us that there is no nook or corner of
action into which free-will does not penetrate, unless it be
those into which mind does not enter at all, as when a man
is struck by lightning or is overwhelmed suddenly by an
avalanche.

Besides, those who maintain that action is bound to
follow choice, while choice can only follow opinion as to
advantage, neglect the very considerable number of cases in
which opinion as to advantage does not exist — when, for in-
stance, a man feels, as we all of us sometimes do, that he
is utterly incapable of forming any opinion whatever as to
his most advantageous course.

But this again is fallacious. For suppose he decides to
toss up and be guided by the result, this is still what he has
chosen to do, and his action, therefore, is following his choice.
Or suppose, again, that he remains passive and does nothing
— his passivity is his choice.

I can see no way out of it unless either frankly to admit
that contradiction in terms is the bedrock on which all our
thoughts and deeds are founded, and to acquiesce cheerfully
in the fact that whenever we try to go below the surface of
any enquiry we find ourselves utterly baffled — or to redefine
freedom and necessity, admitting each as a potent factor
of the other. And this I do not see my way to doing. I am
therefore necessitated to choose freely the admission that
our understanding can burrow but a very small way into the
foundations of our beliefs, and can only weaken rather than
strengthen them by burrowing at all.

Free-Will otherwise Cunning

The element of free-will, cunning, spontaneity, indi-
viduality — so omnipresent, so essential, yet so unreasonable,
and so inconsistent with the other element not less omni-
present and not less essential, I mean necessity, luck, fate —

3 2o First Principles

this element of free-will, which comes from the unseen king-
dom within which the writs of our thoughts run not, must be
carried down to the most tenuous atoms whose action is
supposed most purely chemical and mechanical; it can
never be held as absolutely eliminated, for if it be so held,
there is no getting it back again, and that it exists, even in
the lowest forms of life, cannot be disputed. Its existence is
one of the proofs of the existence of an unseen world, and a
means whereby we know the little that we do know of that
world.

Necessity otherwise Luck

It is all very well to insist upon the free-will or cunning
side of living action, more especially now when it has been
so persistently ignored, but though the fortunes of birth and
surroundings have all been built up by cunning, yet it is by
ancestral, vicarious cunning, and this, to each individual,
comes to much the same as luck pure and simple ; in fact,
luck is seldom seriously intended to mean a total denial of
cunning, but is for the most part only an expression whereby
we summarise and express our sense of a cunning too complex
and impalpable for conscious following and apprehension.

When we consider how little we have to do with our parent-
age, country and education, or even with our genus and
species, how vitally these things affect us both in life and
death, and how, practically, the cunning in connection with
them is so spent as to be no cunning at all, it is plain that the
drifts, currents, and storms of what is virtually luck will be
often more than the little helm of cunning can control. And
so with death. Nothing can aff ect us less, but at the same
time nothing can affect us more ; and how little can cunning
do against it ? At the best it can only defer it. Cunning is
nine-tenths luck, and luck is nine-tenths cunning ; but the
fact that nine-tenths of cunning is luck leaves still a tenth
part unaccounted for.

Choice

m Our choice is apparently most free, and we are least ob-
viously driven to determine our course, in those cases where
the future is most obscure, that is, when the balance of ad-
vantage appears most doubtful.

Truth and Convenience 307

ness nor undue unction— yet it shall be perfectly plain to all
his parishioners who are worth considering that he is acting as
a mouthpiece and that his words are spoken dramatically. As
for the unimaginative, they are as children ; they cannot and
should not be taken into account. Men must live as they must
write or act — for a certain average standard which each must
guess at for himself as best he can ; those who are above this
standard he cannot reach ; those, again, who are below it
must be so at their own risk.

Pilate did well when he would not stay for an answer to his
question, What is truth ? for there is no such thing apart
from the sayer and the sayee. **There is that irony in nature
which brings it to pass that if the sayer be a man with any
stuff in him, provided he tells no lies wittingly to himself and
is never unkindly, he may lie and lie and lie all the day long,
and he will no more be false to any man than the sun will
shine by night ; his lies will become truths as they pass into the
hearer's soul. But if a man deceives himself and is unkind,
the truth is not in him, it turns to falsehood while yet in his
mouth, like the quails in the wilderness of Sinai. How this is
so or why, I know not, but that the Lord hath mercy on
whom He will have mercy and whom He willeth He hardeneth,
and that the bad man can do no right and the good no
wrong.**

A great French writer has said that the mainspring of our
existence does not lie in those veins and nerves and arteries
which have been described with so much care — these are but
its masks and mouthpieces through which it acts but behind
which it is for ever hidden ; so in like manner the faiths and
formulae of a Church may be as its bones and animal mechan-
ism, but they are not the life of the Church, which is something
rather that cannot be holden in words, and one should know
how to put them off, yet put them off gracefully, if they wish
to come too prominently forward. Do not let " An Earnest
Clergyman " take things too much au serieux. He seems to be
fairly contented where he is ; let him take the word of one who
is old enough to be his father, that if he has a talent for con-
scientious scruples he will find plenty of scope for them in
other professions as well as in the Church. I, for aught he
knows, may be a doctor and I might tell my own story ; or I
may be a barrister and have found it my duty to win a case

308 Truth and Convenience

which I thought a very poor one, whereby others, whose cir-
cumstances were sufficiently pitiable, lost their all ; yet doctors
and barristers do not write to the newspapers to air their poor
consciences in broad daylight. Why should An Earnest
(I hate the word) Clergyman do so ? Let me give him a last
word or two of fatherly advice.

Men may settle small things for themselves — as what they
will have for dinner or where they will spend the vacation —
but the great ones — such as the choice of a profession, of the
part of England they will live in, whether they will marry or
no — they had better leave the force of circumstances to settle
for them ; if they prefer the phraseology, as I do myself, let
them leave these matters to God. When He has arranged
things for them, do not let them be in too great a hurry to
upset His arrangement in a tiff. If they do not like their
present and another opening suggests itself easily and natur-
ally, let them take that as a sign that they make a change ;
otherwise, let them see to it that they do not leave the frying-
pan for the fire. A man, finding himself in the field of a pro-
fession, should do as cows do when they are put into a field of
grass. They do not like any field ; they like the open prairie
of their ancestors. They walk, however, all round their new
abode, surveying the hedges and gates with much interest.
If there is a gap in any hedge they will commonly go through
it at once, otherwise they will resign themselves contentedly
enough to the task of feeding.

I am, Sir,

One who thinks he knows a thing or two about

Ethics.

XX

First Principles

The Baselessness of Our Ideas

That our ideas are baseless, or rotten at the roots, is what few
who study them will deny ; but they are rotten in the same
way as property is robbery, and property is robbery in the
same way as our ideas are rotten at the roots, that is to say it
is a robbery and it is not. No title to property, no idea and
no living form (which is the embodiment of idea) is indefeasible
if search be made far enough. Granted that our thoughts are
baseless, yet they are so in the same way as the earth itself is
both baseless and most firmly based, or again most stable and
yet most in motion.

Our ideas, or rather, I she uld say, our realities, are all of
them like our Gods, based o_ superstitious foundations. If
man is a microcosm then kosmos is a megalanthrope and that
is how we come to anthropomorphise the deity. In the eternal
pendulum swing of thought we make God in our own image,
and then make him make us, and then find it out and cry
because we have no God and so on, over and over again as a
child has new toys given to it, tires of them, breaks them and
is disconsolate till it gets new ones which it will again tire of
and break. If the man who first made God in his own image
had been a good model, all might have been well ; but he was
impressed with an undue sense of his own importance and, as
a natural consequence, he had no sense of humour. Both
these imperfections he has fully and faithfully reproduced in
his work and with the result we are familiar. All our most
solid and tangible realities are but as lies that we have told too
often henceforth to question them. But we have to question
them sometimes. It is not the sun that goes round the world
but we who go round the sun.

If any one is for examining and making requisitions on title

309

3 io First Principles

we can search too, and can require the title of the state as
against any other state, or against the world at large. But
suppose we succeed in this, we must search further still and
show by what title mankind has ousted the lower animals, and
by what title we eat them, or they themselves eat grass or one
another.

See what quicksands we fall into if we wade out too far from
the terra firma of common consent ! The error springs from
supposing that there is any absolute right or absolute truth,
and also from supposing that truth and right are any the less
real for being not absolute but relative. In the complex of
human affairs we should aim not at a supposed absolute
standard but at the greatest coming-together-ness or con-
venience of all our ideas and practices ; that is to say, at their
most harmonious working with one another. Hit ourselves
somewhere we are bound to do : no idea will travel far without
colliding with some other idea. Thus, if we pursue one line of
probable convenience, we find it convenient to see all things
as ultimately one : that is, if we insist rather on the points of
agreement between things than on those of disagreement. If
we insist on the opposite view, namely, on the points of dis-
agreement, we find ourselves driven to the conclusion that
each atom is an individual entity, and that the unity between
even the most united things is apparent only. If we did not
unduly insist upon — that is to say, emphasise and exaggerate
— the part which concerns us for the time, we should never get
to understand anything ; the proper way is to exaggerate first
one view and then the other, and then let the two exaggerations
collide, but good-temperedly and according to the laws of
civilised mental warfare. So we see first all things as one,
then all things as many and, in the end, a multitude in unity
and a unity in multitude. Care must be taken not to accept
ideas which though very agreeable at first disagree with us
afterwards, and keep rising on our mental stomachs, as
garlic does upon our bodily.

Imagination

i

Imagination depends mainly upon memory, but there is a
small percentage of creation of something out of nothing with

First Principles 311

it. We can invent a trifle more than can be got at by mere
combination of remembered things.

ii

When we are impressed by a few only, or perhaps only one
of a number of ideas which are bonded pleasantly together,
there is hope ; when we see a good many there is expectation ;
when we have had so many presented to us that we have ex-
pected confidently and the remaining ideas have not turned
up, there is disappointment. So the sailor says in the play :

" Here are my arms, here is my manly bosom, but where's
my Mary ? "

iii

What tricks imagination plays ! Thus, if we expect a person
in the street we transform a dozen impossible people into him
while they are still too far off to be seen distinctly ; and when
we expect to hear a footstep on the stairs — as, we will say, the
postman's — we hear footsteps in every sound. Imagination
will make us see a billiard ball as likely to travel farther than
it will travel, if we hope that it will do so. It will make us
think we feel a train begin to move as soon as the guard has
said " All right/ ' though the train has not yet begun to move ;
if another train alongside begins to move exactly at this
juncture, there is no man who will not be deceived. And we
omit as much as we insert. We often do not notice that a man
has grown a beard.

iv

k I read once of a man who was cured of a dangerous illness
by eating his doctor's prescription which he understood was
the medicine itself. So William Sefton Moorhouse [in New
Zealand] imagined he was being converted to Christianity by
reading Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, which he had got by
mistake for Butler's Analogy, on the recommendation of a
friend. But it puzzled him a good deal.

v

At Ivy Hatch, while we were getting our beer in the inner
parlour, there was a confused melee of voices in the bar, amid
which I distinguished a voice saying :

" Imagination will do any bloody thing almost.''

I was writing Life and Habil at the time and was much

$12 First Principles

tempted to put this passage in. Nothing truer has ever been
said about imagination. Then the voice was heard addressing
the barman and saying :

" I suppose you wouldn't trust me with a quart of beer,
would you ? "

Inexperience

Kant says that all our knowledge is founded on experience.
But each new small increment of knowledge is not so founded,
and our whole knowledge is made up of the accumulation of
these small new increments not one of which is founded upon
experience. Our knowledge, then, is founded not on experience
but on inexperience \ for where there is no novelty, that is to
say no inexperience, there is no increment in experience. Our
knowledge is really founded upon something which we do not
know, but it is converted into experience by memory.

It is like species — we do not know the cause of the variations
whose accumulation results in species and any explanation
which leaves this out of sight ignores the whole difficulty. We
want to know the cause of the effect that inexperience pro-
duces on us.

Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit

We say that everything has a beginning. This is one side of
the matter. There is another according to which everything is
without a beginning — beginnings, and endings also, being, but
as it were, steps cut in a slope of ice without which we could
not climb it. They are for convenience and the hardness of
the hearts of men who make an idol of classification, but they
do not exist apart from our sense of our own convenience.

It was a favourite saying with William Sefton Moorhouse
[in New Zealand] that men cannot get rich by swopping knives.
Nevertheless nature does seem to go upon this principle.
Everybody does eat everybody up. Man eats birds, birds eat
worms and worms eat man again. It is a vicious circle, yet,
somehow or other, there is an increment. I begin to doubt
the principle ex nihilo nihil fit.

We very much want a way of getting something out of
nothing and back into it again. Whether or no we ever shall
get such a way, we see the clearly perceptible arising out of
and returning into the absolutely imperceptible and, so far as

First Principles 313

we are concerned, this is much the same thing. To assume an
unknowable substratum as the source from which all things
proceed or are evolved is equivalent to assuming that they
come up out of nothing ; for that which does not exist for us
is for us nothing ; that which we do not know does not exist
qua us, and therefore it does not exist. When I say " we," I
mean mankind generally, for things may exist qua one man and
not qua another. And when I say " nothing " I postulate
something of which we have no experience.

And yet we cannot say that a thing does not exist till it is
known to exist. The planet Neptune existed though, qua us,
it did not exist before Adams and Leverrier discovered it, and
we cannot hold that its continued non-existence to my laun-
dress and her husband makes it any the less an entity. We
cannot say that it did not exist at all till it was discovered, that
it exists only partially and vaguely to most of us, that to many
it still does not exist at all, that there are few to whom it even
exists in any force or fullness and none who can realise more
than the broad facts of its existence. Neptune has been dis-
turbing the orbits of the planets nearest to him for more
centuries than we can reckon, and whether or not he is
known to have been doing so has nothing to do with the
matter. If A is robbed, he is robbed, whether he knows it
or not.

In one sense, then, we cannot say that the planet Neptune
did not exist till he was discovered, but in another we can and
ought to do so. De non aftparentibus et non existentibus eadem
est ratio; as long, therefore, as Neptune did not appear he
did not exist qua us. The only way out of it is through the
contradiction in terms of maintaining that a thing exists and
does not exist at one and the same time. So A may be both
robbed, and not robbed.

We consider, therefore, that things have assumed their
present shape by course of evolution from a something which,
qua us, is a nothing, from a potential something but not an
actual, from an actual nothing but a potential not-nothing,
from a nothing which might become a something to us with any
modification on our parts but which, till such modification has
arisen, does not exist in relation to us, though very con-
ceivably doing so in relation to other entities. But this Pro-
tean nothing, capable of appearing as something, is not the

3 T4 First Principles

absolute, eternal, unchangeable nothing that we mean when
we say ex nihilo nihil fit

The alternative is that something should not have come out
of nothing, and this is saying that something has always
existed. But the eternal increateness of matter seems as
troublesome to conceive as its having been created out of
nothing. I say " seems/' for I am not sure how far it really is
so. We never saw something come out of nothing, that is to
say, we never saw a beginning of anything except as the be-
ginning of a new phase of something pre-existent. We ought
therefore to find the notion of eternal being familiar, it ought
to be the only conception of matter which we are able to form :
nevertheless, we are so carried away by being accustomed to
see phases have their beginnings and endings that we forget
that the matter, of which we see the phase begin and end, did
not begin or end with the phase.

Eternal matter permeated by eternal mind, matter and
mind being functions of one another, is the least uncomfortable
way of looking at the universe ; but as it is beyond our com-
prehension, and cannot therefore be comfortable, sensible
persons will not look at the universe at all except in such
details as may concern them.

Contradiction in Terms

We pay higher and higher in proportion to the service
rendered till we get to the highest services, such as becoming
a Member of Parliament, and this must not be paid at all. If
a man would go yet higher and found a new and permanent
system, or create some new idea or work of art which remains
to give delight to ages — he must not only not be paid, but he
will have to pay very heavily out of his own pocket into the
bargain.

Again, we are to get all men to speak well of us if we can ;
yet we are to be cursed if all men speak well of us.

So when the universe has gathered itself into a single ball
(which I don't for a moment believe it ever will, but I don't
care) it will no sooner have done so, than the bubble will
burst and it will go back to its gases again.

Contradiction in terms is so omnipresent that we treat it
as we treat death, or free-will, or fate, or air, or God, or the

First Principles 315

Devil — taking these things so much as matters of course
that, though they are visible enough if we choose to see them,
we neglect them normally altogether, without for a moment
intending to deny their existence. This neglect is convenient
as preventing repetitions the monotony of which would
defeat their own purpose, but people are tempted neverthe-
less to forget the underlying omnipresence in the superficial
omniabsence. They forget that its opposite lurks in every- <
thing — that there are harmonics of God in the Devil and '
harmonics of the Devil in God.

Contradiction in terms is not only to be excused but there
can be no proposition which does not more or less involve
one.

It is the fact of there being contradictions in terms, which
have to be smoothed away and fused into harmonious ac-
quiescence with their surroundings, that makes life and
consciousness possible at all. Unless the unexpected were
sprung upon us continually to enliven us we should pass life,
as it were, in sleep. To a living being no " It is " can be
absolute ; wherever there is an " Is," there, among its har-
monics, lurks an "Is not." When there is absolute absence
of " Is not " the " Is " goes too. And the " Is not " does not
go completely till the " Is " is gone along with it. Every
proposition has got a skeleton in its cupboard.

Extremes
i

Intuition and evidence seem to have something of the
same relation that faith and reason, luck and cunning, free-
will and necessity and demand and supply have. They grow
up hand in hand and no man can say which comes first. It
is the same with life and death, which lurk one within the
other as do rest and unrest, change and persistence, heat and
cold, poverty and riches, harmony and counterpoint, night
and day, summer and winter.

And so with pantheism and atheism ; loving everybody is
loving nobody, and God everywhere is, practically, God
nowhere. I once asked a man if he was a free-thinker ; he
replied that he did not think he was. And so, I have heard
of a man exclaiming " I am an atheist, thank God ! "

318 First Principles

charmer away ; it is indispensable that we should embrace
both, and embrace them with equal cordiality at the same
time, though each annihilates the other. It is as though it
were indispensable to our existence to be equally dead and
equally alive at one and the same moment.

Here we have an illustration which may help us. For,
after all, we are both dead and alive at one and the same
moment. There is no life without a taint of death and no
death that is not instinct with a residuum of past life and
with germs of the new that is to succeed it. Let those who
deny this show us an example of pure life and pure death.
Any one who has considered these matters will know this to
be impossible. And yet in spite of this, the cases where we
are in doubt whether a thing is to be more fitly called dead
or alive are so few that they may be disregarded.

I take it, then, that as, though alive, we are in part dead
and, though dead, in part alive, so, though bound by necessity,
we are in part free, and, though free, yet in part bound by
necessity. At least I can think of no case of such absolute
necessity in human affairs as that free-will should have no
part in it, nor of such absolute free-will that no part of the
action should be limited and controlled by necessity.

Thus, when a man walks to the gallows, he is under large
necessity, yet he retains much small freedom ; when pinioned,
he is less free, but he can open his eyes and mouth and pray
aloud or no as he pleases ; even when the drop has fallen, so
long as he is " he " at all, he can exercise some, though in-
finitely small, choice.

It may be answered that throughout the foregoing chain
of actions, the freedom, what little there is of it, is apparent
only, and that even in the small freedoms, which are not so
obviously controlled by necessity, the necessity is still present
as effectually as when the man, though apparently free to
walk to the gallows, is in reality bound to do so. For in
respect of the small details of his manner of walking to the
gallows, which compulsion does not so glaringly reach, what
is it that the man is free to do ? He is free to do as he likes,
but he is not free to do as he does not like ; and a man's
likings are determined by outside things and by antecedents,
pre-natal and post-natal, whose effect is so powerful that the
individual who makes the choice proves to be only the

First Principles 319

resultant of certain forces which have been brought to bear
upon him but which are not the man. So that it seems there
is no detail, no nook or corner of action, into which necessity-
does not penetrate.

This seems logical, but it is as logical to follow instinct and
common sense as to follow logic, and both instinct and
common sense assure us that there is no nook or corner of
action into which free-will does not penetrate, unless it be
those into which mind does not enter at all, as when a man
is struck by lightning or is overwhelmed suddenly by an
avalanche.

Besides, those who maintain that action is bound to
follow choice, while choice can only follow opinion as to
advantage, neglect the very considerable number of cases in
which opinion as to advantage does not exist — when, for in-
stance, a man feels, as we all of us sometimes do, that he
is utterly incapable of forming any opinion whatever as to
his most advantageous course.

But this again is fallacious. For suppose he decides to
toss up and be guided by the result, this is still what he has
chosen to do, and his action, therefore, is following his choice.
Or suppose, again, that he remains passive and does nothing
— his passivity is his choice.

I can see no way out of it unless either frankly to admit
that contradiction in terms is the bedrock on which all our
thoughts and deeds are founded, and to acquiesce cheerfully
in the fact that whenever we try to go below the surface of
any enquiry we find ourselves utterly baffled — or to redefine
freedom and necessity, admitting each as a potent factor
of the other. And this I do not see my way to doing. I am
therefore necessitated to choose freely the admission that
our understanding can burrow but a very small way into the
foundations of our beliefs, and can only weaken rather than
strengthen them by burrowing at all.

Free-Will otherwise Cunning

The element of free-will, cunning, spontaneity, indi-
viduality — so omnipresent, so essential, yet so unreasonable,
and so inconsistent with the other element not less omni-
present and not less essential, I mean necessity, luck, fate —

3 2o First Principles

this element of free-will, which comes from the unseen king-
dom within which the writs of our thoughts run not, must be
carried down to the most tenuous atoms whose action is
supposed most purely chemical and mechanical ; it can
never be held as absolutely eliminated, for if it be so held,
there is no getting it back again, and that it exists, even in
the lowest forms of life, cannot be disputed. Its existence is
one of the proofs of the existence of an unseen world, and a
means whereby we know the little that we do know of that
world.

Necessity otherwise Luck

It is all very well to insist upon the free-will or cunning
side of living action, more especially now when it has been
so persistently ignored, but though the fortunes of birth and
surroundings have all been built up by cunning, yet it is by
ancestral, vicarious cunning, and this, to each individual,
comes to much the same as luck pure and simple ; in fact,
luck is seldom seriously intended to mean a total denial of
cunning, but is for the most part only an expression whereby
we summarise and express our sense of a cunning too complex
and impalpable for conscious following and apprehension.

When we consider how little we have to do with our parent-
age, country and education, or even with our genus and
species, how vitally these things affect us both in life and
death, and how, practically, the cunning in connection with
them is so spent as to be no cunning at all, it is plain that the
drifts, currents, and storms of what is virtually luck will be
often more than the little helm of cunning can control. And
so with death. Nothing can affect us less, but at the same
time nothing can affect us more ; and how little can cunning
do against it ? At the best it can only defer it. Cunning is
nine-tenths luck, and luck is nine- tenths cunning ; but the
fact that nine-tenths of cunning is luck leaves still a tenth
part unaccounted for.

Choice

^ Our choice is apparently most free, and we are least ob-
viously driven to determine our course, in those cases where
the future is most obscure, that is, when the balance of ad-
vantage appears most doubtful.

First Principles 321

Where we have an opinion that assures us promptly which
way the balance of advantage will incline — whether it be an
instinctive, hereditarily acquired opinion or one rapidly and
decisively formed as the result of post-natal experience —
then our action is determined at once by that opinion, and
freedom of choice practically vanishes.

Ego and Non-Ego

You can have all ego, or all non-ego, but in theory you
cannot have half one and half the other — yet in practice
this is exactly what you must have, for everything is both
itself and not itself at one and the same time.

A living thing is itself in so far as it has wants and gratifies
them. It is not itself in so far as it uses itself as a tool for
the gratifying of its wants. Thus an amoeba is aware of a
piece of meat which it wants to eat. It has nothing except
its own body to fling at the meat and catch it with. If it had
a little hand-net, or even such an organ as our own hand, it
would use it, but it has only got itself ; so it takes itself by
the scruff of its own neck, as it were, and flings itself at the
piece of meat, as though it were not itself but something
which it is using in order to gratify itself. So we make our
own bodies into carriages every time we walk. Our body is
our tool-box — and our bodily organs are the simplest tools
we can catch hold of.

When the amoeba has got the piece of meat and has done
digesting it, it leaves off being not itself and becomes itself
again. A thing is only itself when it is doing nothing ; as
long as it is doing something it is its own tool and not itself.

Or you may have it that everything is itself in respect of
the pleasure or pain it is feeling, but not itself in respect of
the using of itself by itself as a tool with which to work its
will. Or perhaps we should say that the ego remains always
ego in part ; it does not become all non-ego at one and the
same time. We throw our fist into a man's face as though
it were a stick we had picked up to beat him with. For the
moment, our fist is hardly " us," but it becomes " us " again
as we feel the resistance it encounters from the man's eye.
Anyway, we can only chuck about a part of ourselves at a
time, we cannot chuck the lot — and yet I do not know this,
v

322 First Principles

for we may jump off the ground and fling ourselves on to a
man.

The fact that both elements are present and are of such
nearly equal value explains the obstinacy of the conflict
between the upholders of Necessity and Free- Will which,
indeed, are only luck and cunning under other names.

For, on the one hand, the surroundings so obviously and
powerfully mould us, body and soul, and even the little
modifying power which at first we seem to have is found, on
examination, to spring so completely from surroundings
formerly beyond the control of our ancestors, that a logical
thinker, who starts with these premises, is soon driven to the
total denial of free-will, except, of course, as an illusion ; in
other words, he perceives the connection between ego and
non-ego, tries to disunite them so as to know when he is
talking about what, and finds to his surprise that he cannot
do so without violence to one or both. Being, above all
things, a logical thinker, and abhorring the contradiction in
terms involved in admitting anything to be both itself and
something other than itself at one and the same time, he
makes the manner in which the one is rooted into the other a
pretext for merging the ego, as the less bulky of the two, in
the non-ego ; hence practically he declares the ego to have
no further existence, except as a mere appendage and adjunct
of the non-ego the existence of which he alone recognises
(though how he can recognise it without recognising also that
he is recognising it as something foreign to himself it is not
easy to see). As for the action and interaction that goes on
in the non-ego, he refers it to fate, fortune, chance, luck,
necessity, immutable law, providence (meaning generally im-
providence) or to whatever kindred term he has most fancy
for. In other words, he is so much impressed with the con-
nection between luck and cunning, and so anxious to avoid
contradiction in terms, that he tries to abolish cunning, and
dwells, as Mr. Darwin did, almost exclusively upon the luck
side of the matter.

Others, on the other hand, find the ego no less striking
than their opponents find the non-ego. Every hour they
mould things so considerably to their pleasure that, even
though they may for argument's sake admit free-will to be
an illusion, they say with reason that no reality can be more

First Principles 323

real than an illusion which is so strong, so persistent and
so universal ; this contention, indeed, cannot be disputed
except at the cost of invalidating the reality of all even our
most assured convictions. They admit that there is an
apparent connection between their ego and non-ego, their
necessity and free-will, their luck and cunning ; they grant
that the difference is resolvable into a difference of degree
and not of kind ; but, on the other hand, they say that in
each degree there still lurks a little kind, and that a differ-
ence of many degrees makes a difference of kind — there
being, in fact, no difference between differences of degree and
those of kind, except that the second are an accumulation of
the first. The all-powerfulness of the surroundings is declared
by them to be as completely an illusion, if examined closely,
as the power of the individual was declared to be by their
opponents, inasmuch as the antecedents of the non-ego,
when examined by them, prove to be not less due to the
personal individual element everywhere recognisable, than
the ego, when examined by their opponents, proved to be
mergeable in the universal. They claim, therefore, to be
able to resolve everything into spontaneity and free-will
with no less logical consistency than that with which free-
will can be resolved into an outcome of necessity.

Two Incomprehensibles

You may assume life of some kind omnipresent for ever
throughout matter. This is one way. Another way is to
assume an act of spontaneous generation, i.e. a transition
somewhere and somewhen from absolutely non-living to
absolutely living. You cannot have it both ways. But it
seems to me that you must have it both ways. You must
not begin with life (or potential life) everywhere alone, nor
must you begin with a single spontaneous generation alone,
but you must carry your spontaneous generation (or denial
of the continuity of life) down, ad infinitum, just as you
must carry your continuity of life (or denial of spontaneous
generation) down ad infinitum and, compatible or incom-
patible, you must write a scientific Athanasian Creed to
comprehend these two incomprehensibles.

If, then, it is only an escape from one incomprehensible

3 2 4 First Principles

position to another, cm bono to make a change ? Why not
stay quietly in the Athanasian Creed as we are ? And, after
all, the Athanasian Creed is light and comprehensible read-
ing in comparison with much that now passes for science.

I can give no answer to this as regards the unintelligible
clauses, for what we come to in the end is just as abhorrent
to and inconceivable by reason as what they offer us ; but
as regards what may be called the intelligible parts— that
Christ was born of a Virgin, died, rose from the dead— we
say that, if it were not for the prestige that belief m these
alleged facts has obtained, we should refuse attention to
them. Out of respect, however, for the mass of opinion that
accepts them we have looked into the matter with care, and
we have found the evidence break down. The same reasoning
and canons of criticism which convince me that Christ was
crucified convince me at the same time that he was insuffi-
ciently crucified. I can only accept his death and resurrection
at the cost of rejecting everything that I have been taught
to hold most strongly. I can only accept the so-called
testimony in support of these alleged facts at the cost of
rejecting, or at any rate invalidating, all the testimony on
which I have based all comfortable assurance of any kind
whatsoever.

God and the Unknown

God is the unknown, and hence the nothing qua us. He
is also the ensemble of all we know, and hence the everything
qua us. So that the most absolute nothing and the most
absolute everything are extremes that meet (like all other
extremes) in God.

Men think they mean by God something like what Raffaelle
and Michael Angelo have painted ; unless this were so
Raffaelle and Michael Angelo would not have painted as
they did. But to get at our truer thoughts we should look
at our less conscious and deliberate utterances. From these
it has been gathered that God is our expression for all forces
and powers which we do not understand, or with which we
are unfamiliar, and for the highest ideal of wisdom, goodness
and power which we can conceive, but for nothing else.

Thus God makes the grass grow because we do not under-
stand how the air and earth and water near a piece of grass

First Principles 325

are seized by the grass and converted into more grass ; but
God does not mow the grass and make hay of it. It is Paul
and Apollos who plant and water, but God who giveth the
increase. We never say that God does anything which we
can do ourselves, or ask him for anything which we know
how to get in any other way. As soon as we understand a
thing we remove it from the sphere of God's action.

As long as there is an unknown there will be a God for all
practical purposes ; the name of God has never yet been
given to a known thing except by way of flattery, as to
Roman Emperors, or through the attempt to symbolise the
unknown generally, as in fetish worship, and then the priests
had to tell the people that there was something more about
the fetish than they knew of, or they would soon have ceased
to think of it as God.

To understand a thing is to feel as though we could stand
under or alongside of it in all its parts and form a picture of
it in our minds throughout. We understand how a violin is
made if our minds can follow the manufacture in all its
detail and picture it to ourselves. If we feel that we can
identify ourselves with the steam and machinery of a steam
engine, so as to travel in imagination with the steam through
all the pipes and valves, if we can see the movement of each
part of the piston, connecting rod, &c., so as to be mentally
one with both the steam and the mechanism throughout
their whole action and construction, then we say we under-
stand the steam engine, and the idea of God never crosses
our minds in connection with it.

When we feel that we can neither do a thing ourselves,
nor even learn to do it by reason of its intricacy and diffi-
culty, and that no one else ever can or will, and yet we see
the thing none the less done daily and hourly all round us,
then we are not content to say we do not understand how
the thing is done, we go further and ascribe the action to
God. As soon as there is felt to be an unknown and ap-
parently unknowable element, then, but not till then, does
the idea God present itself to us. So at coroners' inquests
juries never say the deceased died by the visitation of God if
they know any of the more proximate causes.

It is not God, therefore, who sows the corn — we could
sow corn ourselves, we can see the man with a bag in his hand

326 First Principles

walking over ploughed fields and sowing the corn broadcast
—but it is God who made the man who goes about with the
bag, and who makes the corn sprout, for we do not follow
the processes that take place here.

As long as we knew nothing about what caused this or that
weather we used to ascribe it to God's direct action and pray
him to change it according to our wants : now that we know
more about the weather there is a growing disinclination
among clergymen to pray for rain or dry weather, while
laymen look to nothing but the barometer. So people do
not say God has shown them this or that when they have
just seen it in the newspapers ; they would only say that
God had shown it them if it had come into their heads suddenly
and after they had tried long and vainly to get at this par-
ticular point.

To lament that we cannot be more conscious of God and
understand him better is much like lamenting that we are
not more conscious of our circulation and digestion. Pro-
vided we live according to familiar laws of health, the less
we think about circulation and digestion trie better ; and so
with the ordinary rules of good conduct, the less we think
about God the better.

To know God better is only to realise more fully how
impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I
cannot tell which is the more childish — to deny him, or to
attempt to define him.

Scylla and Charybdis

They are everywhere. Just now coming up Great Russell
Street I loitered outside a print shop. There they were as
usual — Hogarth's Idle and Virtuous Apprentices. The idle
apprentice is certainly Scylla, but is not the virtuous ap-
prentice just as much Charybdis? Is he so greatly prefer-
able ? Is not the right thing somewhere between the two ?
And does not the art of good living consist mainly in a' fine
perception of when to edge towards the idle and when to-
wards the virtuous apprentice ?

When John Bunyan (or Richard Baxter, or whoever it
was) said " There went John Bunyan, but for the grace of
God " (or whatever he did say), had he a right to be so cock-

First Principles 327

sure that the criminal on whom he was looking was not say-
ing much the same thing as he looked upon John Bunyan ?
Does any one who knows me doubt that if I were offered my
choice between a bishopric and a halter, I should choose the
halter ? I believe half the bishops would choose the halter
themselves if they had to do it over again.

Philosophy

As a general rule philosophy is like stirring mud or not
letting a sleeping dog lie. It is an attempt to deny, circum-
vent or otherwise escape from the consequences of the inter-
lacing of the roots of things with one another. It professes
to appease our ultimate " Why ? " though in truth it is
generally the solution of a simplex ignotum by a complex
ignotius. This, at least, is my experience of everything that
has been presented to me as philosophy. I have often had
my " Why " answered with so much mystifying matter that I
have left off pressing it through fatigue. But this is not
having my ultimate " Why ? " appeased. It is being knocked
out of time.

Philosophy and Equal Temperament

It is with philosophy as with just intonation on a piano,
if you get everything quite straight and on all fours in one
department, in perfect tune, it is delightful so long as you
keep well in the middle of the key ; but as soon as you
modulate you find the new key is out of tune and the more
remotely you modulate the more out of tune you get. The
only way is to distribute your error by equal temperament
and leave common sense to make the correction in philo-
sophy which the ear does instantaneously and involuntarily
in music.

Hedging the Cuckoo

People will still keep trying to find some formula that
shall hedge-in the cuckoo of mental phenomena to their
satisfaction. Half the books — nay, all of them that deal
with thought and its ways in the academic spirit — are but so
many of these hedges in various stages of decay.

328 First Principles

God and Philosophies

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense ;
but some are greater nonsense than others. It is perhaps
because God does not set much store by or wish to encourage
them that he has attached such very slender rewards to
them.

Common Sense, Reason and Faith

Reason is not the ultimate test of truth nor is it the court
of first instance.

For example : A man questions his own existence ; he
applies first to the court of mother-wit and is promptly told
that he exists ; he appeals next to reason and, after some
wrangling, is told that the matter is very doubtful ; he pro-
ceeds to the equity of that reasonable faith which inspires
and transcends reason, and the judgment of the court of first
instance is upheld while that of reason is reversed.

Nevertheless it is folly to appeal from reason to faith
unless one is pretty sure of a verdict and, in most cases
about which we dispute seriously, reason is as far as we
need go.

The Credit System

The whole world is carried on on the credit system ; if
every one were to demand payment in hard cash, there would
be universal bankruptcy. We think as we do mainly because
other people think so. But if every one stands on every one
else, what does the bottom man stand on ? Faith is no
foundation, for it rests in the end on reason. Reason is no
foundation, for it rests upon faith.

Argument

We are not won by argument, which is like reading and
writing and disappears when there is need of such vanity,
or like colour that vanishes with too much light or shade, or
like sound that becomes silence in the extremes. Argument
is useless when there is either no conviction at all or a very
strong conviction. It is a means of conviction and as such

First Principles 329

belongs to the means of conviction, not to the extremes.
We are not won by arguments that we can analyse, but by
tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.

Logic and Philosophy

When you have got all the rules and all the lore of philo-
sophy and logic well into your head, and have spent years
in getting to understand at any rate what they mean and
have them at command, you will know less for practical
purposes than one who has never studied logic or philosophy.

Science

If it tends to thicken the crust of ice on which, as it were,
we are skating, it is all right. If it tries to find, or professes
to have found, the solid ground at the bottom of the water,
it is all wrong. Our business is with the thickening of this
crust by extending our knowledge downward from above, as
ice gets thicker while the frost lasts ; we should not try to
freeze upwards from the bottom.

Religion

A religion only means something so certainly posed that
nothing can ever displace it. It is an attempt to settle first
principles so authoritatively that no one need so much as
even think of ever re-opening them for himself or feel any,
even the faintest, misgiving upon the matter. It is an
attempt to get an irrefragably safe investment, and this can-
not be got, no matter how low the interest, which in the case
of religion is about as low as it can be.

Any religion that cannot be founded on half a sheet of
note-paper will be bottom-heavy, and this, in a matter so
essentially of sentiment as religion, is as bad as being top-
heavy in a material construction. It must of course catch
on to reason, but the less it emphasises the fact the better.

Logic

Logic has no place save with that which can be defined in
words. It has nothing to do, therefore, with those deeper

330 First Principles

questions that have got beyond words and consciousness.
To apply logic here is as fatuous as to disregard it in cases
where it is applicable. The difficulty lies, as it always does,
on the border lines between the respective spheres of influence.

Logic and Faith

Logic is like the sword — those who appeal to it shall
perish by it. Faith is appealing to the living God, and
one may perish by that too, but somehow one would rather
perish that way than the other, and one has got to perish
sooner or later.

Common Sense and Philosophy

The voices of common sense and of high philosophy some-
times cross ; but common sense is the unalterable canto
fermo and philosophy is the variable counterpoint.

First Principles

It is said we can build no superstructure without a founda-
tion of unshakable principles. There are no such principles.
Or, if there be any, they are beyond our reach — we cannot
fathom them ; therefore, qua us, they have no existence,
for there is no other " is not " than inconceivableness by our-
selves. There is one thing certain, namely, that we can have
nothing certain ; therefore it is not certain that we can have
nothing certain. We are as men who will insist on looking
over the brink of a precipice ; some few can gaze into the
abyss below without losing their heads, but most men will
grow dizzy and fall. The only thing to do is to glance at the
chaos on which our thoughts are founded, recognise that it
is a chaos and that, in the nature of things, no theoretically
firm ground is even conceivable, and then to turn aside with
the disgust, fear and horror of one who has been looking into
his own entrails.

Even Euclid cannot lay a demonstrable premise, he re-
quires postulates and axioms which transcend demonstration
and without which he can do nothing. His superstructure is
demonstration, his ground is faith. And so his ultima ratio

First Principles 331

is to tell a man that he is a fool by saying " Which is absurd."
If his opponent chooses to hold out in spite of this, Euclid
can do no more. Faith and authority are as necessary for
him as for any one else. True, he does not want us to believe
very much ,* his yoke is tolerably easy, and he will not call
a man a fool until he will have public opinion generally on
his side ; but none the less does he begin with dogmatism
and end with persecution.

There is nothing one cannot wrangle about. Sensible
people will agree to a middle course founded upon a few
general axioms and propositions about which, right or wrong,
they will not think it worth while to wrangle for some time,
and those who reject these can be put into mad-houses. The
middle way may be as full of hidden rocks as the other ways
are of manifest ones, but it is the pleasantest while we can
keep to it and the dangers, being hidden, are less alarming.

In practice it is seldom very hard to do one's duty when
one knows what it is, but it is sometimes exceedingly diffi-
cult to find this out. The difficulty is, however, often re-
ducible into that of knowing what gives one pleasure, and
this, though difficult, is a safer guide and more easily dis-
tinguished. In all cases of doubt, the promptings of a kindly
disposition are more trustworthy than the conclusions of
logic, and sense is better than science.

Why I should have been at the pains to write such truisms
I know not.

XXI
Rebelliousness

God and Life

We regard these as two distinct things and say that the
first made the second, much as, till lately, we regarded
memory and heredity as two distinct things having less con-
nection than even that supposed to exist between God and
life. Now, however, that we know heredity to be only a
necessary outcome, development and manifestation of
memory — so that, given such a faculty as memory, the
faculty of heredity follows as being inherent therein and
bound to issue from it — in like manner presently, instead of
seeing life as a thing created by God, we shall see God and
life as one thing, there being no life without God nor God
without life, where there is life there is God and where there
is God there is life.

They say that God is love, but life and love are co-extensive ;
for hate is but a mode of love, as life and death lurk always
in one another ; and " God is life " is not far off saying
" God is love." Again, they say, " Where there is life there
is hope," but hope is of the essence of God, for it is faith
and hope that have underlain all evolution.

God and Flesh

The course of true God never did run smooth. God to be
of any use must be made manifest, and he can only be made
manifest in and through flesh. And flesh to be of any use
(except for eating) must be alive, and it can only be alive
by being inspired of God. The trouble lies in the getting the
flesh and the God together in the right proportions. There
is lots of God and lots of flesh, but the flesh has always got

332

Rebelliousness

333

too much God or too little, and the God has always too little
flesh or too much.

Gods and Prophets

It is the manner of gods and prophets to begin : " Thou
shalt have none other God or Prophet but me." If I were to
start as a god or a prophet, I think I should take the line :
" Thou shalt not believe in me. Thou shalt not have me for
a god. Thou shalt worship any damned thing thou likest
except me." This should be my first and great command-
ment, and my second should be like unto it.*

Faith and Reason

The instinct towards brushing faith aside and being
strictly reasonable is strong and natural ; so also is the
instinct towards brushing logic and consistency on one side
if they become troublesome, in other words — so is the instinct
towards basing action on a faith which is beyond reason. It
is because both instincts are so natural that so many accept
and so many reject Catholicism. The two go along for some
time as very good friends and then fight ; sometimes one
beats and sometimes the other, but they always make it up
again and jog along as before, for they have a great respect
for one another.

God and the Devil

God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising
his faults should be in reasonable proportion. The faults are,
indeed, on such a scale that, when looked at without relation
to the merits with which they are interwoven, they become
so appalling that people shrink from ascribing them to the
Deity and have invented the Devil, without seeing that there
would be more excuse for God's killing the Devil, and so

* " Above all things, let no unwary reader do me the injustice
of believing in me. In that I write at all I am among the damned. If
he must believe in anything, let him believe in the music of Handel,
the painting of Giovanni Bellini, and in the thirteenth chapter of
St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians " {Life and Habit, close of
Chapter II).

334

Rebelliousness

getting rid of evil, than there can be for his failing to be
everything that he would like to be.

For God is not so white as he is painted, and he gets on
better with the Devil than people think. The Devil is too
useful for him to wish him ill and, in like manner, half the
Devil's trade would be at an end should any great mishap
bring God well down in the world. For all the mouths they
make at one another they play into each other's hands and
have got on so well as partners, playing Spenlow and Jorkins
to one another, for so many years that there seems no reason
why they should cease to do so. The conception of them as
the one absolutely void of evil and the other of good is a
vulgar notion taken from science whose priests have ever
sought to get every idea and every substance pure of all
alloy.

God and the Devil are about as four to three. There is
enough preponderance of God to make it far safer to be on
his side than on the Devil's, but the excess is not so great as
his professional claqueurs pretend it is. It is like gambling
at Monte Carlo ; if you play long enough you are sure to
lose, but now and again you may win a great deal of excellent
money if you will only cease playing the moment you have
won it.

Christianity

i

As an instrument of warfare against vice, or as a tool for
making virtue, Christianity is a mere flint implement.

ii

Christianity is a woman's religion, invented by women and
womanish men for themselves. The Church's one foundation
is not Christ, as is commonly said, it is woman ; and calling
the Madonna the Queen of Heaven is only a poetical way of
acknowledging that women are the main support of the
priests.

iii

It is not the church in a village that is the source of the
mischief, but the rectory. I would not touch a church from
one end of England to the other.

Rebelliousness

335

iv

Christianity is only seriously pretended by some among
the idle, bourgeois middle-classes. The working classes and
the most cultured intelligence of the time reach by short
cuts what the highways of our schools and universities mis-
lead us from by many a winding bout, if they do not prevent
our ever reaching it.

v

It is not easy to say which is the more obvious, the ante-
cedent improbability of the Christian scheme and miracles,
or the breakdown of the evidences on which these are supposed
to rest. And yet Christianity has overrun the world.

vi

If there is any moral in Christianity, if there is anything
to be learned from it, if the whole story is not profitless
from first to last, it comes to this that a man should back his
own opinion against the world's — and this is a very risky
and immoral thing to do, but the Lord hath mercy on whom
he will have mercy.

vii

Christianity is true in so far as it has fostered beauty and
false in so far as it has fostered ugliness. It is therefore not
a little true and not a little false.

viii

Christ said he came not to destroy but to fulfil — but he
destroyed more than he fulfilled. Every system that is to
live must both destroy and fulfil.

Miracles

They do more to unsettle faith in the existing order than
to settle it in any other ; similarly, missionaries are more
valuable as underminers of old faiths than as propagators of
new. Miracles are not impossible ; nothing is impossible till
we have got an incontrovertible first premise. The question
is not " Are the Christian miracles possible ? " but " Are
they convenient ? Do they fit comfortably with our other
ideas ? "

336

Rebelliousness

Wants and Creeds

As in the organic world there is no organ, so in the world
of thought there is no thought, which may not be called into
existence by long persistent eff ort. If a man wants either to
believe or disbelieve the Christian miracles he can do so if
he tries hard enough ; but if he does not care whether he
believes or disbelieves and simply wants to find out which
side has the best of it, this he will find a more difficult matter.
Nevertheless he will probably be able to do this too if he
tries.

Faith

i

The reason why the early Christians held faith in such
account was because they felt it to be a feat of such super-
human difficulty.

ii

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing
without it.

iii

We are all agreed that too much faith is as bad as too
little, and too little as bad as too much ; but we differ as
to what is too much and what too little.

iv

It is because both Catholics and myself make faith, not
reason, the basis of our system that I am able to be easy in
mind about not becoming a Catholic. Not that I ever wanted
to become a Catholic, but I mean I believe I can beat them
with their own weapons.

v

A man may have faith as a mountain, but he will not be
able to say to a grain of mustard seed : " Be thou removed,
and be thou cast into the sea " — not at least with any effect
upon the mustard seed — unless he goes the right way to work
by putting the mustard seed into his pocket and taking the
train to Brighton.

vi

The just live by faith, but they not infrequently also die
by it.

Rebelliousness

337

The Cuckoo and the Moon

The difference between the Christian and the Mahomedan
is only as the difference between one who will turn his money
when he first hears the cuckoo, but thinks it folly to do so on
seeing the new moon, and one who will turn it religiously at
the new moon, but will scout the notion that he need do so
on hearing the cuckoo.

Buddhism

This seems to be a jumble of Christianity and Life and
Habit

Theist and Atheist

The fight between them is as to whether God shall be
called God or shall have some other name.

The Peculiar People

The only people in England who really believe in God are
the Peculiar People. Perhaps that is why they are called
peculiar. See how belief in an anthropomorphic God divides
allegiance and disturbs civil order as soon as it becomes
vital.

Renan

There is an article on him in the Times, April 30, 1883,
of the worst Times kind, and that is saying much. It appears
he whines about his lost faith and professes to wish that he
could believe as he believed when young. No sincere man
will regret having attained a truer view concerning anything
which he has ever believed. And then he talks about the
difficulties of coming to disbelieve the Christian miracles as
though it were a great intellectual feat. This is very childish.
I hope no one will say I was sorry when I found out that
there was no reason for believing in heaven and hell. My
contempt for Renan has no limits. (Has he an accent to his
name ? I despise him too much to find out.)
z

338

Rebelliousness •

The Spiritual Treadmill

The Church of England has something in her liturgy of the
spiritual treadmill. It is a very nice treadmill no doubt, but
Sunday after Sunday we keep step with the same old " We
have left undone that which we ought to have done ; And we
have done those things which we ought not to have done "
without making any progress. With the Church of Rome, I
understand that those whose piety is sufficiently approved are
told they may consider themselves as a finished article and
that, except on some few rare festivals, they need no longer
keep on going to church and confessing. The picture is
completed and may be framed, glazed and hung up.

The Dim Religious Light

A light cannot be religious if it is not dim. Religion be-
longs to the twilight of our thoughts, just as business of all
kinds to their full daylight. So a picture which may be
impressive while seen in a dark light will not hold its own in
a bright one.

The Greeks and Romans did not enquire into the evidences
on which their belief that Minerva sprang full-armed from
the brain of Jupiter was based. If they had written books of
evidences to show how certainly it all happened, &c. — well,
I suppose if they had had an endowed Church with some
considerable prizes, they would have found means to hood-
wink the public.

The Peace that Passeth Understanding

Yes, But as there is a peace more comfortable than any
understanding, so also there is an understanding more covet-
able than any peace.

The New Testament

If it is a testamentary disposition at all, it is so drawn that
it has given rise to incessant litigation during the last nearly
two thousand years and seems likely to continue doing so

Rebelliousness

339

for a good many years longer. It ought never to have been
admitted to probate. Either the testator drew it himself,
in which case we have another example of the folly of trying
to make one's own will, or if he left it to the authors of the
several books — this is like employing many lawyers to do
the work of one.

Christ and the L. & N.W. Railway

Admitting for the moment that Christ can be said to have
died for me in any sense, it is only pretended that he did so
in the same sort of way as the London and North Western
Railway was made for me. Granted that I am very glad the
railway was made and use it when I find it convenient, I do
not suppose that those who projected and made the line
allowed me to enter into their thoughts ; the debt of my
gratitude is divided among so many that the amount due
from each one is practically nil.

The Jumping Cat

God is only a less jumping kind of jumping cat ; and
those who worship God are still worshippers of the jumping
cat all the time. There is no getting away from the jumping
cat — if I climb up into heaven, it is there ; if I go down to
hell, it is there also ; if I take the wings of the morning and
remain in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there, and so
on ; it is about my path and about my bed and spieth out
all my ways. It is the eternal underlying verity or the eternal
underlying lie, as people may choose to call it.

Personified Science

Science is being daily more and more personified and
anthropomorphised into a god. By and by they will say that
science took our nature upon him, and sent down his only
begotten son, Charles Darwin, or Huxley, into the world so
that those who believe in him, &c. ; and they will burn
people for saying that science, after all, is only an expression
for our ignorance of our own ignorance.

34o

Rebelliousness

Science and Theology

We should endow neither ; we should treat them as we
treat conservatism and liberalism, encouraging both, so that
they may keep watch upon one another, and letting them go
in and out of power with the popular vote concerning them.

The world is better carried on upon the barrister principle
of special pleading upon two sides before an impartial ignorant
tribunal, to whom things have got to be explained, than it
would be if nobody were to maintain any opinion in which
he did not personally believe.

What we want is to reconcile both science and theology
with sincerity and good breeding, to make our experts under-
stand that they are nothing if they are not single-minded and
urbane. Get them to understand this, and there will be no
difficulty about reconciling science and theology.

The Church and the Supernatural

If we saw the Church wishing to back out of the super-
natural and anxious to explain it away where possible, we
would keep our disbelief in the supernatural in the back-
ground, as far as we could, and would explain away our re-
jection of the miracles, as far as was decent ; furthermore we
would approximate our language to theirs wherever possible,
and insist on the points on which we are all agreed, rather
than on points of difference ; in fact, we would meet them
half way and be only too glad to do it. I maintain that in
my books I actually do this as much as is possible, but I shall
try and do it still more. As a matter of fact, however, the
Church clings to the miraculous element of Christianity
more fondly than ever ; she parades it more and more, and
shows no sign of wishing to give up even the smallest part of
it. It is this which makes us despair of being able to do any-
thing with her and feel that either she or we must go.

Gratitude and Revenge

Gratitude is as much an evil to be minimised as revenge
is. Justice, our law and our law courts are for the taming

Rebelliousness

34i

and regulating of revenge. Current prices and markets and
commercial regulations are for the taming of gratitude and
its reduction from a public nuisance to something which
shall at least be tolerable. Revenge and gratitude are cor-
relative terms. Our system of commerce is a protest against
the unbridled licence of gratitude. Gratitude, in fact, like
revenge, is a mistake unless under certain securities.

Cant and Hypocrisy

We should organise a legitimate channel for instincts so
profound as these, just as we have found it necessary to do
with lust and revenge by the institutions of marriage and the
law courts. This is the raison d'etre of the church. You
kill a man just as much whether you murder him or hang him
after the formalities of a trial. And so with lust and marriage,
mutatis mutandis. So again with the professions of religion
and medicine. You swindle a man as much when you sell
him a drug of whose action you are ignorant, and tell him it
will protect him from disease, as when you give him a bit of
bread, which you assure him is the body of Jesus Christ, and
then send a plate round for a j subscription. You swindle him
as much by these acts as if you picked his pocket, or obtained
money from him under false pretences in any other way ; but
you swindle him according to the rules and in an authorised
way.

Real Blasphemy

On one of our Sunday walks near London we passed a
forlorn and dilapidated Primitive Methodist Chapel. The
windows were a good deal broken and there was a notice up
offering io/~ reward to any one who should give such informa-
tion as should lead to the, &c. Cut in stone over the door was
this inscription, and we thought it as good an example of
real blasphemy as we had ever seen :

When God makes up his last account
Of holy children in his mount,
'Twill be an honour to appear
As one new born and nourished here.

342

Rebelliousness

The English Church Abroad

People say you must not try to abolish Christianity until
you have something better to put in its place. They might as
well say we must not take away turnpikes and corn laws till
we have some other hindrances to put in their place. ^ Besides
no one wants to abolish Christianity — all we want is not to
be snubbed and bullied if w r e reject the miraculous part of it
for ourselves.

At Biella an English clergyman asked if I was a Roman
Catholic. I said, quite civilly, that I was not a Catholic.
He replied that he had asked me not if I was a Catholic but
if I was a Roman Catholic. What was I ? Was I an Anglican
Catholic ? So, seeing that he meant to argue, I replied :

" I do not know. I am a Londoner and of the same religion
as people generally are in London/ '

This made him angry. He snorted :

" Oh, that's nothing at all ; " and almost immediately
left the table.

As much as possible I keep away from English-frequented
hotels in Italy and Switzerland because I find that if I do
not go to service on Sunday I am made uncomfortable. It is
this bullying that I want to do away with. As regards Chris-
tianity I should hope and think that I am more Christian
than not.

People ought to be allowed to leave their cards at church,
instead of going inside. I have half a mind to try this next
time I am in a foreign hotel among English people.

Drunkenness

When w r e were at Shrewsbury the other day, coming up the
Abbey Foregate, we met a funeral and debated whether or
not to take our hats off. We always do in Italy, that is to
say in the country and in villages and small towns, but w r e
have been told that it is not the custom to do so in large
towns and in cities, which raises a question as to the exact
figure that should be reached by the population of a place
before one need not take off one's hat to a funeral in one of
its streets. At Shrewsbury seeing no one doing it we thought

Rebelliousness 343

Ml

it might look singular and kept ours on. My friend Mr.
Phillips, the tailor, was in one carriage, I did not see him,
but he saw me and afterwards told me he had pointed me
out to a clergyman who was in the carriage with him.

" Oh," said the clergyman, " then that's the man who
says England owes all her greatness to intoxication."

This is rather a free translation of what I did say ; but
it only shows how impossible it is to please those who do not
wish to be pleased. Tennyson may talk about the slow sad
hours that bring us all things ill and all good things from
evil, because this is vague and indefinite ; but I may not say
that, in spite of the terrible consequences of drunkenness,
man's intellectual development would not have reached its
present stage without the stimulus of alcohol — which I believe
to be both perfectly true and pretty generally admitted —
because this is definite. I do not think I said more than this
and am sure that no one can detest drunkenness more than I
do.* It seems to me it will be wiser in me not to try to make
headway at Shrewsbury.

Hell-Fire

If Vesuvius does not frighten those who live under it, is it
likely that Hell-fire should frighten any reasonable person ?

I met a traveller who had returned from Hades where he
had conversed with Tantalus and with others of the shades.
They all agreed that for the first six, or perhaps twelve,
months they disliked their punishment very much ; but
after that, it was like shelling peas on a hot afternoon in
July. They began by discovering (no doubt long after the
fact had been apparent enough to every one else) that they
had not been noticing what they were doing so much as
usual, and that they had been even thinking of something
else. From this moment, the automatic stage of action
having set in, the progress towards always thinking of some-
thing else was rapid and they soon forgot that they were
undergoing any punishment.

* " No one can hate drunkenness more than I do, but I am con-
fident the human intellect owes its superiority over that of the lower
animals in great measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given to
imagination — imagination being little else than another name for
illusion " (Alps and Sanctuaries, Chapter III).

344

Rebelliousness

Tantalus did get a little something not infrequently;
water stuck to the hairs of his body and he gathered it up in
his hand ; he also got many an apple when the wind was
napping as it had to do sometimes. Perhaps he could have
done with more, but he got enough to keep him going quite
comfortably. His sufferings were nothing as compared with
those of a needy heir to a fortune whose father, or whoever
it may be, catches a dangerous bronchitis every winter but
invariably recovers and lives to 91, while the heir survives
him a month having been worn out with long expectation.

Sisyphus had never found any pleasure in life comparable
to the delight of seeing his stone bound down-hill, and in so
timing its rush as to inflict the greatest possible scare on any
unwary shade who might be wandering below. He got so
great and such varied amusement out of this that his labour
had become the automatism of reflex action — which is, I
understand, the name applied by men of science to all actions
that are done without reflection. He was a pompous, pon-
derous old gentleman, very irritable and always thinking that
the other shades w r ere laughing at him or trying to take ad-
vantage of him. There were two, however, whom he hated
with a fury that tormented him far more seriously than any-
thing else ever did. The first of these was Archimedes who
had instituted a series of experiments in regard to various
questions connected with mechanics and had conceived a
scheme by which he hoped to utilise the motive power of the
stone for the purpose of lighting Hades with electricity. The
other was Agamemnon, who took good care to keep out of
the stone's way when it was more than a quarter of the
distance up the slope, but who delighted in teasing Sisyphus
so long as he considered it safe to do so. Many of the other
shades took daily pleasure in gathering together about stone-
time to enjoy the fun and to bet on how far the stone would
roll.

As for Tityus— what is a bird more or less on a body that
covers nine acres ? He found the vultures a gentle stimulant
to the liver without which it would have become congested.

Sir Isaac Newton was intensely interested in the hygro-
metric and barometric proceedings of the Danaids.

" At any rate," said one of them to my informant, " if we
really are being punished, for goodness' sake don't say any-

Rebelliousness

345

thing about it or we may be put to other work. You see, we
must be doing something, and now we know how to do this,
we don't want the bother of learning something new. You
may be right, but we have not got to make our living by it,
and what in the name of reason can it matter whether the
sieves ever get full or not ? "

My traveller reported much the same with regard to the
eternal happiness on Mount Olympus. Hercules found Hebe
a fool and could never get her off his everlasting knee. He
would have sold his soul to find another ;*Egisthus.

So Jove saw all this and it set him thinking.

" It seems to me," said he, " that Olympus and Hades are
both failures."

Then he summoned a council and the whole matter was
thoroughly discussed. In the end Jove abdicated, and the
gods came down from Olympus and assumed mortality.
They had some years of very enjoyable Bohemian existence
going about as a company of strolling players at French and
Belgian town fairs ; after which they died in the usual way,
having discovered at last that it does not matter how high
up or how low down you are, that happiness and misery are
not absolute but depend on the direction in which you are
tending and consist in a progression towards better or worse,
and that pleasure, like pain and like everything that grows,
holds in perfection but a little moment.

XXII

Reconciliation

Religion

By religion I mean a living sense that man proposes and God
disposes, that we must watch and pray that we enter not into
temptation, that he who thinketh he standeth must take heed
lest he fall, and the countless other like elementary maxims
which a man must hold as he holds life itself if he is to be
a man at all.

If religion, then, is to be formulated and made tangible
to the people, it can only be by means of symbols, counters
and analogies, more or less misleading, for no man professes
to have got to the root of the matter and to have seen the
eternal underlying verity face to face — and even though he
could see it he could not grip it and hold it and convey it
to another who has not. Therefore either these feelings must
be left altogether unexpressed and, if unexpressed, then soon
undeveloped and atrophied, or they must be expressed by
the help of images or idols — by the help of something
not more actually true than a child's doll is to a child,
but yet helpful to our weakness of understanding, as the
doll no doubt gratifies and stimulates the motherly instinct
in the child.

Therefore we ought not to cavil at the visible superstition
and absurdity of much on which religion is made to rest, for
the unknown can never be satisfactorily rendered into the
known. To get the known from the unknown is to get some-
thing out of nothing, a thing which, though it is being done
daily in every fraction of every second everywhere, is logically
impossible of conception, and we can only think by logic, for
what is not in logic is not in thought. So that the attempt

346

Reconciliation

347

to symbolise the unknown is certain to involve inconsistencies
and absurdities of all kinds and it is childish to complain
of their existence unless one is prepared to advocate the
stifling of all religious sentiment, and this is like trying to
stifle hunger or thirst. To be at all is to be religious more or
less. There never was any man who did not feel that behind
this world and above it and about it there is an unseen world
greater and more incomprehensible than anything he can
conceive, and this feeling, so profound and so universal,
needs expression. If expressed it can only be so by the help
of inconsistencies and errors. These, then, are not to be
ordered impatiently out of court ; they have grown up as
the best guesses at truth that could be made at any given time,
but they must become more or less obsolete as our knowledge
of truth is enlarged. Things become known which were
formerly unknown and, though this brings us no nearer to
ultimate universal truth, yet it shows us that many of our
guesses were wrong. Everything that catches on to realism
and naturalism as much as Christianity does must be affected
by any profound modification in our views of realism and
naturalism.

God and Convenience

I do not know or care whether the expression " God " has
scientific accuracy or no, nor yet whether it has theological
value ; I know nothing either of one or the other, beyond
looking upon the recognised exponents both of science and
theology with equal distrust; but for convenience, I am
sure that there is nothing like it — I mean for convenience of
getting quickly at the right or wrong of a matter. While you
are fumbling away with your political economy or your
biblical precepts to know whether you shall let old Mrs. So-
and-so have 5/- or no, another, who has just asked himself
which would be most well-pleasing in the sight of God, will be
told in a moment that he should give her — or not give her —
the 5 /-. As a general rule she had better have the 5 /- at once,
but sometimes we must give God to understand that, though
we should be very glad to do what he would have of us if we
reasonably could, yet the present is one of those occasions
on which we must decline to do so.

348

Reconciliation

The World

Even the world, so mondain as it is, still holds instinctively
and as a matter of faith unquestionable that those who have
died by the altar are worthier than those who have lived by it,
when to die was duty.

Blasphemy

I begin to understand now what Christ meant when he
said that blasphemy against the Holy Ghost was unf orgiveable,
while speaking against the Son of Man might be forgiven.
He must have meant that a man may be pardoned for being
unable to believe in the Christian mythology, but that if he
made light of that spirit which the common conscience of
all men, whatever their particular creed, recognises as divine,
there was no hope for him. No more there is.

Gaining One's Point

It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who
scores most in controversy, but he who has shown the most
forbearance and the better temper.

The Voice of Common Sense

It is this, and not the Voice of the Lord, which maketh
men to be of one mind in an house. But then, the Voice of
the Lord is the voice of common sense which is shared by all
that is.

Amendes Honorables

There is hardly an offence so great but if it be frankly
apologised for it is easily both forgiven and forgotten. There
is hardly an offence so small but it rankles if he who has
committed it does not express proportionate regret. Ex-
pressions of regret help genuine regret and induce amendment
of life, much as digging a channel helps water to flow 7 ,
though it does not make the water. If a man refuses to
make them and habitually indulges his own selfishness at the
expense of what is due to other people, he is no better than a

Reconciliation 349

i

drunkard or a debauchee, and I have no more respect for him
than I have for the others.

We all like to forgive, and we all love best not those who
offend us least, nor those who have done most for us, but
those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.

So a man may lose both his legs and live for years in
health if the amputation has been clean and skilful, whereas
a pea in his boot may set up irritation which must last as
long as the pea is there and may in the end kill him.

Forgiveness and Retribution

It is no part of the bargain that we are never to commit
trespasses. The bargain is that if we would be forgiven we
must forgive them that trespass against us. Nor again is it
part of the bargain that we are to let a man hob-nob with us
when we know him to be a thorough blackguard, merely on
the plea that unless we do so we shall not be forgiving him his
trespasses. No hard and fast rule can be laid down, each
case must be settled instinctively as it arises.

As a sinner I am interested in the principle of forgiveness ;
as sinned against, in that of retribution. I have what is to me
a considerable vested interest in both these principles, but
I should say I had more in forgiveness than in retribution.
And so it probably is with most people or we should have had
a clause in the Lord's prayer : " And pay out those who have
sinned against us as they whom we have sinned against
generally pay us out."

Inaccuracy

I am not sure that I do not begin to like the correction of
a mistake, even when it involves my having shown much
ignorance and stupidity, as well as I like hitting on a new
idea. It does comfort one so to be able to feel sure that one
knows how to tumble and how to retreat promptly and
without chagrin. Being bowled over in inaccuracy, when I
have tried to verify, makes me careful. But if I have not
tried to verify and then turn out wrong, this, if I find it out,
upsets me very much and I pray that I may be found out
whenever I do it.

35°

Reconciliation

Jutland and " Waitee "

I made a mistake in The Authoress of the Odyssey [in a
note on p. 31] when I said " Scheria means Jutland — a piece
of land jutting out into the sea." Jutland means the Land of
the Jutes.

And I made a mistake in Alps and Sanctuaries [Chap. Ill],
speaking of the peasants in the Val Leventina knowing
English, when I said " One English word has become uni-
versally adopted by the Ticinesi themselves. They say
'Waitee' just as we should say 'Wait' to stop some one
from going away. It is abhorrent to them to end a word with a
consonant so they have added ' ee,' but there can be no doubt
about the origin of the word." The Avvocato Negri of
Casale-Monferrato says that they have a word in their dialetto
which, if ever written, would appear as "vuaitee," it means
"stop" or "look here," and is used to attract attention.
This, or something like it, no doubt is what they really say
and has no more to do with waiting than Jutland has to do
with jutting.

The Parables

The people do not act reasonably in a single instance. The
sower was a bad sower ; the shepherd who left his ninety and
nine sheep in the wilderness was a foolish shepherd ; the
husbandman who would not have his corn weeded was no
farmer — and so on. None of them go nearly on all fours,
they halt so much as to have neither literary nor moral value
to any but slipshod thinkers.

Granted, but are we not all slipshod thinkers ?

The Irreligion of Orthodoxy

We do not fall foul of Christians for their religion, but for
what we hold to be their want of religion — for the low views
they take of God and of his glory, and for the unworthiness
with which they try to serve him.

Society and Christianity

The burden of society is really a very light one. She does
not require us to believe the Christian religion, she has very

j Reconciliation 351

vague ideas as to what the Christian religion is, much less
does she require us to practise it. She is quite satisfied if
we do not obtrude our disbelief in it in an offensive manner.
Surely this is no very grievous burden.

Sanctified by Faith

No matter how great a fraud a thing may have been or be,
if it has passed through many minds an aroma of life attaches
to it and it must be handled with a certain reverence. A thing
or a thought becomes hallowed if it has been long and strongly
believed in, for veneration, after a time, seems to get into the
thing venerated. Look at Delphi — fraud of frauds, yet sancti-
fied by centuries of hope and fear and faith. If greater
knowledge shows Christianity to have been founded upon
error, still greater knowledge shows that it was aiming at a
truth.

Ourselves and the Clergy

As regards the best of the clergy, whether English or
foreign, I feel that they and we mean in substance the same
thing, and that the difference is only about the way this
thing should be put and the evidence on which it should be
considered to rest.

We say that they jeopardise the acceptance of the prin-
ciples which they and we alike cordially regard as fundamental
by basing them on assertions which a little investigation shows
to be untenable. They reply that by declaring the assertions
to be untenable we jeopardise the principles. We answer that
this is not so and that moreover we can find better, safer and
more obvious assertions on which to base them.

The Rules of Life

Whether it is right to say that one believes in God and
Christianity without intending what one knows the hearer in-
tends one to intend depends on how much or how little the
hearer can understand. Life is not an exact science, it is
an art. Just as the contention, excellent so far as it goes,
that each is to do what is right in his own eyes leads, when
ridden to death, to anarchy and chaos, so the contention

352

Reconciliation

that every one should be either self-effacing or truthful to
the bitter end reduces life to an absurdity. If we seek real
rather than technical truth, it is more true to be considerately
untruthful within limits than to be inconsiderately truthful
without them. What the limits are we generally know but
cannot say.

There is an unbridgeable chasm between thought and
words that we must jump as best we can, and it is just here
that the two hitch on to one another. The higher rules of
life transcend the sphere of language ; they cannot be gotten
by speech, neither shall logic be weighed for the price
thereof. They have their being in the fear of the Lord and in
the departing from evil without even knowing in words what
the Lord is, nor the fear of the Lord, nor yet evil.

Common straightforwardness and kindliness are the
highest points that man or woman can reach, but they should
no more be made matters of conversation than should the
lowest vices. Extremes meet here as elsewhere and the
extremes of vice and virtue are alike common and un-
mentionable.

There is nothing for it but a very humble hope that from
the Great Unknown Source our daily insight and daily strength
may be given us with our daily bread. And what is this but
Christianity, whether we believe that Jesus Christ rose from
the dead or not ? So that Christianity is like a man's soul —
he who finds may lose it and he who loses may find it.

If, then, a man may be a Christian while believing himself
hostile to all that some consider most essential in Christianity,
may he not also be a free-thinker (in the common use of the
word) while believing himself hostile to free-thought ?

XXIII

Death

Fore-knowledge of Death

No one thinks he will escape death, so there is no disappoint-
ment and, as long as we know neither the when nor the how,
the mere fact that we shall one day have to go does not much
affect tis ; we do not care, even though we know vaguely that
we have not long to live. The serious trouble begins when
death becomes definite in time and shape. It is in precise
fore-knowledge, rather than in sin, that the sting of death is
to be found ; and such fore-knowledge is generally withheld ;
though, strangely enough, many would have it if they could.

Continued Identity

I do not doubt that a person who will grow out of me as
I now am, but of whom I know nothing now and in whom
therefore I can take none but the vaguest interest, will one
day undergo so sudden and complete a change that his friends
must notice it and call him dead ; but as I have no definite
ideas concerning this person, not knowing whether he will be a
man of 59 or 79 or any age between these two, so this person
will, I am sure, have forgotten the very existence of me as I
am at this present moment. If it is said that no matter how-
wide a difference of condition may exist between myself now
and_myself at the moment of death, or how complete the
forgetfulness of connection on either side may be, yet the
fact of the one's having grown out of the other by an infinite
series of gradations makes the second personally identical
with the first, then I say that the difference between the corpse
and the till recently living body is not great enough, either
in respect of material change or of want of memory concerning
2 A 353

354 Death

the earlier existence, to bar personal identity w and prevent us
from seeeing the corpse as alive and a continuation of the man
from whom it was developed, though having tastes and other
characteristics very different from those it had while it was
a man.

From this point of view there is no such thing as death —
I mean no such thing as the death which we have commonly
conceived of hitherto. A man is much more alive when he is
what we call alive than when he is what we call dead ; but
no matter how much he is alive, he is still in part dead, and
no matter how much he is dead, he is still in part alive, and
his corpse-hood is connected with his living body-hood by
gradations which even at the moment of death are ordinarily
subtle ; and the corpse does not forget the living body more
completely than the living body has forgotten a thousand or a
hundred thousand of its own previous states ; so that we should
see the corpse as a person, of greatly and abruptly changed
habits it is true, but still of habits of some sort, for hair and
nails continue to grow after death, and with an individuality
which is as much identical with that of the person from whom
it has arisen as this person was with himself as an embryo of a
week old, or indeed more so.

If we have identity between the embryo and the octogen-
arian, we must have it also between the octogenarian and the
corpse, and do away with death except as a rather striking
change of thought and habit, greater indeed in degree than,
but still, in kind, substantially the same as any of the changes
which we have experienced from moment to moment through-
out that fragment of existence which we commonly call our
life ; so that in sober seriousness there is no such thing as
absolute death, just as there is no such thing as absolute
life.

Either this, or we must keep death at the expense of
personal identity, and deny identity between any two states
which present considerable differences and neither of which
has any fore-knowledge of, or recollection of the other. In
this case, if there be death at all, it is some one else who dies
and not we, because while we are alive we are not dead, and as
soon as we are dead we are no longer ourselves.

So that it comes in the end to this, that either there is no
such thing as death at all, or else that, if there is, it is some one

j Death 355

else who dies and not we. We cannot blow hot and cold
with the same breath. If we would retain personal identity
at all, we must continue it beyond what we call death, in
which case death ceases to be what we have hitherto thought
it, that is to say, the end of our being. We cannot have both
personal identity and death too.

Complete Death

To die completely, a person must not only forget but be
forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead. This is
as old as non omnis moriar and a great deal older, but very
few people realise it.

Life and Death

When I was young I used to think the only certain thing
about life was that I should one day die. Now I think the
only certain thing about life is that there is no such thing
as death.

The Defeat of Death

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so
little as his own death. It is a case in which the going-to-
happen-ness of a thing is of greater importance than the actual
thing itself which cannot be of importance to the man who
dies, for Death cuts his own throat in the matter of hurting
people. As a bee that can sting once but in the stinging
dies, so Death is dead to him who is dead already. While he
is shaking his wings, there is bruium fulmen but the man goes
on living, frightened, perhaps, but unhurt ; pain and sickness
may hurt him but the moment Death strikes him both he and
Death are beyond feeling. It is as though Death were born
anew with every man ; the two protect one another so long
as they keep one another at arm's length, but if they once
embrace it is all over with both.

The Torture of Death

The fabled pains of Tantalus, Sisyphus and all the rest of
them show what an instinctive longing there is in all men

356 Death

both for end and endlessness of both good and ill, but as
torture they are the merest mockery when compared with the
fruitless chase to which poor Death has been condemned for
ever and ever. Does it not seem as though he too must have
committed some crime for which his sentence is to be for ever
grasping after that which becomes non-existent the moment
he grasps it ? But then I suppose it would be with him as
with the rest of the tortured, he must either die himself,
which he has not done, or become used to it and enjoy the
frightening as much as the killing. Any pain through which a
man can live at all becomes unfelt as soon as it becomes habi-
tual. Pain consists not in that which is now endured but in
the strong memory of something better that is still recent.
And so, happiness lies in the memory of a recent worse and
the expectation of a better that is to come soon.

Ignorance of Death

i

The fear of death is instinctive because in so many past
generations we have feared it. But how did we come to know
what death is so that we should fear it ? The answer is
that we do not know what death is and that this is why we
fear it.

ii

If a man know not life which he hath seen how shall he
know death which he hath not seen ?

iii

If a man has sent his teeth and his hair and perhaps two
or three limbs to the grave before him, the presumption
should be that, as he knows nothing further of these when
they have once left him, so will he know nothing of the rest
of him when it too is dead. The whole may surely be argued
from the parts.

iv

To write about death is to write about that of which we
have had little practical experience. We can write about con-
scious life, but we have no consciousness of the deaths we
daily die. Besides, we cannot eat our cake and have it. We

Death 357

cannot have tabula rasca and tabula scrifitce at the same time.
We cannot be at once dead enough to be reasonably registered
as such, and alive enough to be able to tell people all about it.

v

There will come a supreme moment in which there will
be care neither for ourselves nor for others, but a complete
abandon, a sans souci of unspeakable indifference, and this
moment will never be taken from us ; time cannot rob us of it
but, as far as we are concerned, it will last for ever and ever
without flying. So that, even for the most wretched and
most guilty, there is a heaven at last where neither moth nor
rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break through nor
steal. To himself every one is an immortal : he may know
that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is
dead.

vi

If life is an illusion, then so is death — the greatest of all
illusions. If life must not be taken too seriously — then so
neither must death.

vii

The dead are often just as living to us as the living are,
only we cannot get them to believe it. They can come to us,
but till we die we cannot go to them. To be dead is to be
unable to understand that one is alive.

Dissolution

Death is the dissolving of a partnership, the partners to
which survive and go elsewhere. It is the corruption or
breaking up of that society which we have called Ourself . The
corporation is at an end, both its soul and its body cease as
a whole, but the immortal constituents do not cease and never
will. The souls of some men transmigrate in great part into
their children, but there is a large alloy in respect both of
body and mind through sexual generation ; the souls of other
men migrate into books, pictures, music, or what not ; and
every one's mind migrates somewhere, whether remembered
and admired or the reverse. The living souls of Handel,
Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Giovanni Bellini and the other great

358 Death

ones appear and speak to us in their works 'with less alloy
than they could ever speak through their children; but
men's bodies disappear absolutely on death, except they be in
some measure preserved in their children and in so far as
harmonics of all that has been remain.

On death we do not lose life, we only lose individuality ;
we live henceforth in others not in ourselves. Our mistake
has been in not seeing that death is indeed, like birth, a
salient feature in the history of the individual, but one which
wants exploding as the end of the individual, no less than
birth wanted exploding as his beginning.

Dying is only a mode of forgetting. We shall see this more
easily if we consider forgetting to be a mode of dying. So
the ancients called their River of Death, Lethe — the River
of Forgetfulness. They ought also to have called their River
of Life, Mnemosyne — the River of Memory. We should learn
to tune death a good deal flatter than according to received
notions.

The Dislike of Death

We cannot like both life and death at once ; no one can
be expected to like two such opposite things at the same time ;
if we like life we must dislike death, and if we leave off dis-
liking death we shall soon die. Death will always be more
avoided than sought ; for living involves effort, perceived or
unperceived, central or departmental, and this will only be
made by those who dislike the consequences of not making it
more than the trouble of making it. A race, therefore, which
is to exist at all must be a death-disliking race, for it is only
at the cost of death that we can rid ourselves of all aversion
to the idea of dying, so that the hunt after a philosophy which
shall strip death of bis terrors is like trying to find the philo-
sopher's stone which cannot be found and which, if found,
would defeat its own object.

Moreover, as a discovery which should rid us of the fear
of death would be the vainest, so also it would be the most
immoral of discoveries, for the . very essence of morality is
involved in the dislike (within reasonable limits) of death.
Morality aims at a maximum of comfortable life and a
minimum of death; if then, a minimum of death and a
maximum of life were no longer held worth striving for, the

Death 359

whole fabric oi morality would collapse, as indeed we have
it on record that it is apt to do among classes that from
one cause or another have come to live in disregard and
expectation of death.

However much we may abuse death for robbing us of our
friends — and there is no one who is not sooner or later hit
hard in this respect — yet time heals these wounds sooner than
we like to own ; if the heyday of grief does not shortly kill
outright, it passes ; and I doubt whether most men, if they
were to search their hearts, would not find that, could they
command death for some single occasion, they would be more
likely to bid him take than restore.

Moreover, death does not blight love as the accidents of
time and life do. Even the fondest grow apart if parted ;
they cannot come together again, not in any closeness or
for any long time. Can death do worse than this ?

The memory of a love that has been cut short by death
remains still fragrant though enfeebled, but no recollection
of its past can keep sweet a 'ove that has dried up and withered
through accidents of time and life.

XXIV

The Life of the World to Come

Posthumous Life

i

To try to live in posterity is to be like an actor who leaps
over the footlights and talks to the orchestra.

ii

He who wants posthumous fame is as one who would entail
land, and tie up his money after his death as tightly and for
as long a time as possible. Still we each of us in our own
small way try to get what little posthumous fame we can.

The Test of Faith

Why should we be so avid of honourable and affectionate
remembrance after death ? Why should we hold this the one
thing worth living or dying for ? Why should all that we can
know or feel seem but a very little thing as compared with
that which we never either feel or know ? What a reversal
of all the canons of action which commonly guide mankind
is there not here ? But however this may be, if we have faith
in the life after death we can have little in that which is before
it, and if we have faith in this life we can have small faith in
any other.

Nevertheless there is a deeply rooted conviction, even in
many of those in whom its existence is least apparent, that
honourable and affectionate remembrance after death with a
full and certain hope that it will be ours is the highest prize
to which the highest calling can aspire. Few pass through this
world without feeling the vanity of all human ambitions ;
their faith may fail them here, but it will not fail them — not

360

The Life of the World to Come 361
i

for a moment, never — if they possess it as regards posthumous
respect and affection. The world may prove hollow but a
well-earned good fame in death will never do so. And all
men feel this whether they admit it to themselves or no.

Faith in this is easy enough. We are born with it. What
is less easy is to possess one's soul in peace and not be shaken
in faith and broken in spirit on seeing the way in which men
crowd themselves, or are crowded, into honourable remem-
brance when, if the truth concerning them were known, no pit
of oblivion should be deep enough for them. See, again, how
many who have richly earned esteem never get it either before
or after death. It is here that faith comes in. To see that
the infinite corruptions of this life penetrate into and infect
that which is to come, and yet to hold that even infamy
after death, with obscure and penurious life before it, is a
prize which will bring a man more peace at the last than all
the good things of this life put together and joined with an
immortality as lasting as Virgil's, provided the infamy and
failure of the one be unmerited, as also the success and immor-
tality of the other. Here is the test of faith— will you do
your duty with all your might at any cost of goods or reputa-
tion either in this world or beyond the grave ? If you will —
well, the chances are 100 to i that you will become a faddist,
a vegetarian and a teetotaller.

And suppose you escape this pit-fall too. Why should
you try to be so much better than your neighbours ? Who are
you to think you may be worthy of so much good fortune ? If
you do, you may be sure that you do not deserve it. . . .

And so on ad infinitum. Let us eat and drink neither for-
getting nor remembering death unduly. The Lord hath mercy
on whom he will have mercy and the less we think about it
the better.

Starting again ad Infinitum

A man from the cradle to the grave is but the embryo of
a being that may be born into the world of the dead who still
live, or that may die so soon after entering it as to be prac-
tically still-born. The greater number of the seeds shed,
whether by plants or animals, never germinate and of those
that grow few reach maturity, so the greater number of those
that reach death are still-born as regards the truest life of

^562 The Life of the World to Come

t

all — I mean the life that is lived after death m the thoughts
and actions of posterity. Moreover of those who are born
into and fill great places in this invisible world not one is im-
mortal.

We should look on the body as the manifesto of the mind
and on posterity as the manifesto of the dead that live after
life. Each is the mechanism whereby the other exists.

Life, then, is not the having been born — it is rather an
effort to be born. But why should some succeed in attaining
to this future life and others fail ? Why should some be born
more than others ? Why should not some one in a future state
taunt Lazarus with having a good time now and tell him it
will be the turn of Dives in some other and more remote
hereafter ? I must have it that neither are the good rewarded
nor the bad punished in a future state, but every one must
start anew quite irrespective of anything they have done
here and must try his luck again and go on trying it again
and again ad infinitum. Some of our lives, then, will be lucky
and some unlucky and it will resolve itself into one long
eternal life during which we shall change so much that we
shall not remember our antecedents very far back (any more
than we remember having been embryos) nor foresee our
future very much, and during which we shall have our ups
and downs ad infinitum — effecting a transformation scene at
once as soon as circumstances become unbearable.

Nevertheless, some men's work does live longer than others.
Some achieve what is very like immortality. Why should
they have this piece of good fortune more than others ? The
answer is that it would be very unjust if they knew anything
about it, or could enjoy it in any way, but they know nothing
whatever about it, and you, the complainer, do profit by
their labour, so that it is really you, the complainer, who get
the fun, not they, and this should stop your mouth. The
only thing they got was a little hope, which buoyed them up
often when there was but little else that could do so.

Preparation for Death

That there is a life after death is as palpable as that there is
a life before death — see the influence that the dead have over
us— but this life is no more eternal than our present life.

The Life of the World to Come 363

Shakespeare and Homer may live long, but they will die some
day, that is to say, they will become unknown as direct and
efficient causes. Even so God himself dies, for to die is to
change and to change is to die to what has gone before. If the
units change the total must do so also.

As no one can say which egg or seed shall come to visible
life and in its turn leave issue, so no one can say which of
the millions of now visible lives shall enter into the after-
life on death, and which have but so little life as practically
not to count. For most seeds end as seeds or as food for some
alien being, and so with lives, by far the greater number are
sterile, except in so far as they can be devoured as the food
of some stronger life. The Handels and Shakespeares are the
few seeds that grow — and even these die.

And the same uncertainty attaches to posthumous life as
to pre-lethal. As no one can say how long another shall live,
so no one can say how long or how short a time a reputation
shall live. The most unpromising weakly-looking creatures
sometimes live to ninety while strong robust men are carried
off in their prime. And no one can say what a man shall enter
into life for having done. Roughly, there is a sort of moral
government whereby those who have done the best work live
most enduringly, but it is subject to such exceptions that no
one can say whether or no there shall not be an exception in
his own case either in his favour or against him.

In this uncertainty a ypung writer had better act as though
he had a reasonable chance of living, not perhaps very long,
but still some little while after his death. Let him leave
his notes fairly full and fairly tidy in all respects, without
spending too much time about them. If they are wanted,
there they are ; if not wanted, there is no harm done. He
might as well leave them as anything else. But let him write
them, in copying ink and have the copies kept in different
places.

The Vates Sacer

Just as the kingdom of heaven cometh not by observation,
so neither do one's own ideas, nor the good things one hears
other people say ; they fasten on us when we least want or
expect them. It is enough if the kingdom of heaven be
observed when it does come.

364 The Life of the World to Come

I do not read much ; I look, listen, think and write. My
most intimate friends are men of more insight, quicker wit,
more playful fancy and, in all ways, abler men than I am,
but you will find ten of them for one of me. I note what
they say, think it over, adapt it and give it permanent form.
They throw good things off as sparks ; I collect them and
turn them into warmth. But I could not do this if I did not
sometimes throw out a spark or two myself.

Not only would Agamemnon be nothing without the votes
sacer but there are always at least ten good heroes to one
good chronicler, just as there are ten good authors to one good
publisher. Bravery, wit and poetry abound in every village.
Look at Mrs. Boss [the original of Mrs. Jupp in The Way of
All Flesh] and at Joanna Mills [Life and Letters of Dr. Butler, I,
93]. There is not a village of 500 inhabitants in England
but has its Mrs. Quickly and its Tom Jones. These good
people never understand themselves, they go over their own
heads, they speak in unknown tongues to those around them
and the interpreter is the rarer and more important person.
The vales sacer is the middleman of mind.

So rare is he and such spendthrifts are we of good things
that people not only will not note what might well be noted
but they will not even keep what others have noted, if they
are to be at the pains of pigeon-holing it. It is less trouble
to throw a brilliant letter into the fire than to put it into
such form that it can be safely kept, quickly found and easily
read. To this end a letter should be gummed, with the help of
the edgings of stamps if necessary, to a strip, say an inch and
a quarter wide, of stout hand-made paper. Two or three
paper fasteners passed through these strips will bind fifty or
sixty letters together, which, arranged in chronological order,
can be quickly found and comfortably read. But how few will
be at the small weekly trouble of clearing up their corre-
spondence and leaving it in manageable shape ! If we keep our
letters at all we throw them higgledy-piggledy into a box and
have done with them ; let some one else arrange them when
the owner is dead. The some one else comes and finds the
fire an easy method of escaping the onus thrown upon him.
So on go letters from Tilbrook, Merian, Marmaduke Lawson*

* There are letters from these people in The Life and Letters of
Dr. Samuel Butler.

The Life of the World to Come 365

— just as we trirow our money away if the holding on to it
involves even very moderate exertion.

On the other hand, if this instinct towards prodigality
were not so great, beauty and wit would be smothered under
their own selves. It is through the waste of wit that wit
endures, like money, its main preciousness lies in its rarity —
the more plentiful it is the cheaper does it become.

The Dictionary of National Biography

When I look at the articles on Handel, on Dr. Arnold, or
indeed on almost any one whom I know anything about, I feel
that such a work as the Dictionary of National Biography adds
more terror to death than death of itself could inspire. " That
is one reason why I let myself go so unreservedly in these
notes. If the colours in which I paint myself fail to please,
at any rate I shall have had the laying them on myself.

The World

The world will, in the end, follow only those who have
despised as well as served it.

Accumulated Dinners

The world and all that has ever been in it will one day
be as much forgotten as what we ate for dinner forty years
ago. Very likely, but the fact that we shall not remember
much about a dinner forty years hence does not make it less
agreeable now, and after all it is only the accumulation of
these forgotten dinners that makes the dinner of forty years
hence possible.

Judging the Dead

The dead should be judged as we judge criminals, impar-
tially, but they should be allowed the benefit of a doubt.
When no doubt exists they should be hanged out of hand for
about a hundred years. After that time they may come down
and move about under a cloud. After about 2000 years they
may do what they like. If Nero murdered his mother — well,
he murdered his mother and there's an end. The moral

366 The Life of the World to Come

guilt of an action varies inversely as the squares of its distances
in time and space, social, psychological, physiological or
topographical, from ourselves. Not so its moral merit :
this loses -no lustre through time and distance.

Good is like gold, it will not rust or tarnish and it is rare,
but there is some of it everywhere. Evil is like water, it
abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

Myself and My Books

Bodily offspring I do not leave, but mental offspring I
do. Well, my books do not have to be sent to school and
college and then insist on going into the Church or take to
drinking or marry their mother's maid.

My Son

I have often told my son that he must begin by finding
me a wife to become his mother who shall satisfy both himself
and me. But this is only one of the many rocks on which we
have hitherto split. We should never have got on together ;
I should have had to cut him off with a shilling either for
laughing at Homer, or for refusing to laugh at him, or both,
or neither, but still cut him off. So I settled the matter long
ago by turning a deaf ear to his importunities and sticking
to it that I would not get him at all. Yet his thin ghost
visits me at times and, though he knows that it is no use
pestering me further, he looks at me so wistfully and
reproachfully that I am half-inclined to turn tail, take my
chance about his mother and ask him to let me get him after
all. But I should show a clean pair of heels if he said " Yes."

Besides, he would probably be a girl.

Obscurity

When I am dead, do not let people say of me that I suffered
from misrepresentation and neglect. I was neglected and
misrepresented ; very likely not half as much as I supposed
but, nevertheless, to some extent neglected and misrepre-
sented. I growl at this sometimes but, if the question were
seriously put to me whether I would go on as I am or become

The Life of the World to Come 367

famous in my own lifetime, I have, no hesitation about which
I should prefer. I will willingly pay the few hundreds of pounds
which the neglect of my works costs me in order to be let
alone and not plagued by the people who would come round
me if I were known. The probability is that I shall remain
after my death as obscure as I am now ; if this be so, the
obscurity will, no doubt, be merited, and if not, my books will
work not only as well without my having been known in my
lifetime but a great deal better ; my follies and blunders will
the better escape notice to the enhancing of the value of any-
thing that may be found in my books. The only two things
I should greatly care about if I had more money are a few
more country outings and a little more varied and better
cooked food. [1882.]

P.S. — I have long since obtained everything that a reason-
able man can wish for. [1895.]

Posthumous Honours

I see Cecil Rhodes has just been saying that he was a
lucky man, inasmuch as such honours as are now being paid
him generally come to a man after his death and not before it.
This is all very well for a politician whose profession immerses
him in public life, but the older I grow the more satisfied
I am that there can be no greater misfortune for a man of
letters or of contemplation than to be recognised in his own
lifetime. Fortunately the greater man he is, and hence the
greater the misfortune he would incur, the less likelihood
there is that he will incur it. [1897.]

Posthumous Recognition

Shall I be remembered after death ? I sometimes think
and hope so. But I trust I may not be found out (if I ever
am found out, and if I ought to be found out at all) before my
death. It would bother me very much and I should be much
happier and better as I am. [1880.]

P.S. — This note I leave unaltered. I am glad to see that
I had so much sense thirteen years ago. What I thought then,
I think now, only with greater con,fidence and confirmation,

[1893-]

o

o

fO

0

0

0

o

0

0

o

o

A

= %

CO

o

co

CO

o

o

CO

O

H

1

H

H

M

M

1

t-H

CO

N

co

N

N

IN

o

CO

M

M

CO

W0

CO

C/J

HI

<N

C

in

o

0

o

0

CO

CO

a\

M

M

M

M

13 «;

1

co

1

ro

CO

co

o

CO

co

CO

0

1

CO

h°

I

1

1

OS

CO

o

CO

CO

H

ro

CO

o\

CO

CO

V-i

in

H

M

H

i>«

Hn

0

M

M

M

o o

CO

I
1

ON

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

I
I

1

1

1

1

I

1

1

1

H o.

ON

o.

y-K

o

IT)

o

o

o

co

00

Q\

Q\

vO

H

M

IS s

1

<N

H

CO

vO

00

CO

M

M

H

H

H

H

H

H

co

CO

CO

H

H

o

M

ON

CO

co

o

0

co

CO

in

CO

CO

M

ON

<3"

I I I I I I !

in o

: i

•S 3

"5 Si

^ t5 ^

o
o

The Life of the World to Come 369

To this must*be added my book on the Sonnets in respect of
which I have had no account as yet but am over a hundred
pounds out of pocket by it so far — little of which, I fear, is
ever likely to come back.

It will be noted that my public appears to be a declining
one ; I attribute this to the long course of practical boycott
to which I have been subjected for so many years, or, if not
boycott, of sneer, snarl and misrepresentation. I cannot help
it, nor if the truth were known, am I at any pains to try to
do so.*

Worth Doing

If I deserve to be remembered, it will be not so much for
anything I have written, or for any new way of looking at old
facts which I may have suggested, as for having shown that a
man of no special ability, with no literary connections, not
particularly laborious, fairly, but not supremely, accurate as
far as he goes, and not travelling far either for his facts or
from them, may yet, by being perfectly square, sticking to
his point, not letting his temper run away with him, and
biding his time, be a match for the most powerful literary
and scientific coterie that England has ever known.

I hope it may be said of me that I discomfited an unscru-
pulous, self-seeking clique, and set a more wholesome example
myself. To have done this is the best of all discoveries.

Doubt and Hope

I will not say that the more than coldness with which my
books are received does not frighten me and make me distrust
myself. It must do so. But every now and then I meet with

* Butler made this note in 1S99 before the publication of Shake-
pear e's Sonnets Reconsidered, which was published in the same year.
The Odyssey Rendered into English Prose appeared in 1900 and Erewhon
Revisited, the last book published in his lifetime, in 1901. He made
no analysis of the sales of these three books, nor of the sales of A First
Year in Canterbury Settlement published in 1863, nor of his pamphlet
The Evidence for the Resurrection, published in 1865. The Way of all
Flesh and Essays on Life, Art, and Science were not published till
after his death. I do not know what he means by A Book of Essays,
unless it may be that he incurred an outlay of £3 us. 9d. in connection
with a projected republication of his articles in the Universal Review
or of some of his Italian articles about the Odyssey.
2 £

370 The Life of the World to Come

such support as gives me hope again. Still, I "know nothing.
[J890.]

Unburying Cities

Of course I am jealous of the eclat that Flinders Petrie,
Layard and Schliemann get for having unburied cities, but
I do not see why I need be ; the great thing is to unbury the
city, and I believe I have unburied Scheria as effectually as
Schliemann unburied Troy. [The Authoress of the Odyssey.]
True, Scheria was above ground all the time and only wanted
a little common sense to find it ; nevertheless people have had
all the facts before them for over 2500 years and have been
looking more or less all the time without finding. I do not
see why it is more meritorious to uncover physically with a
spade than spiritually with a little of the very commonest
common sense.

Apologia
i

When I am dead I would rather people thought me better
than I was instead of worse ; but if they think me worse, I
cannot help it and, if it matters at all, it will matter more to
them than to me. The one reputation I deprecate is that of
having been ill-used. I deprecate this because it would tend
to depress and discourage others from playing the game that I
have played, I will therefore forestall misconception on this
head.

As regards general good-fortune, I am nearly fifty-five
years old and for the last thirty years have never been laid
up with illness nor had any physical pain that I can remember,
not even toothache. Except sometimes, when a little over-
driven, I have had uninterrupted good health ever since I
was about five-and-twenty.

Of mental suffering I have had my share—as who has not ?
—but most of what I have suffered has been, though I did not
think so at the time, either imaginary, or unnecessary and, so
far, it has been soon forgotten. It has been much less than it
very easily might have been if the luck had not now and again
gone with me, and probably I have suffered less than most
people, take it all round. Like every one else, however, I have
the scars of old wounds ; very few of these wounds were caused

The Life of the World to Come 371

by any thing ^vhich was essential in the nature of things;
most, if not all of them, have been due to faults of heart and
head on my own part and on that of others which, one would
have thought, might have been easily avoided if in practice it
had not turned out otherwise.

For many years I was in a good deal of money difficulty,
but since my father's death I have had no trouble on this
score — greatly otherwise. Even when things were at their
worst, I never missed my two months' summer Italian trip
since 1876, except one year and then I went to Mont St.
Michel and enjoyed it very much. It was those Italian
trips that enabled me to weather the storm. At other times
I am engrossed with work that fascinates me. I am surrounded
by people to whom I am attached and who like me in return
so far as I can judge. In Alfred [his clerk and attendant] I
have the best body-guard and the most engaging of any man
in London. I live quietly but happily. And if this is being
ill-used I should like to know what being well-used is.

I do not deny, however, that I have been ill-used. I have
been used abominably. The positive amount of good or ill for-
tune, however, is not the test of either the one or the other ;
the true measure lies in the relative proportion of each and
the way in which they have been distributed, and by this I
claim, after deducting all bad luck, to be left with a large
balance of good.

Some people think I must be depressed and discouraged
because my books do not make more noise ; but, after all,
whether people read my books or no is their affair, not mine.
I know by my sales that few read my books. If I write at all,
it follows that I want to be read and miss my mark if I am
not. So also with Narcissus. Whatever I do falls dead, and
I would rather people let me see that they liked it. To this
extent I certainly am disappointed. I am sorry not to have
wooed the public more successfully. But I have been told that
winning and wearing generally take something of the gilt off
the wooing, and I am disposed to acquiesce cheerfully in not
finding myself so received as that I need woo no longer. If I
were to succeed I should be bored to death by my success in
a fortnight and so, I am convinced, would my friends. Retire-
ment is to me a condition of being able to work at all. I would
rather write more books and music than spend much time

372 The Life of the World to Come

over what I have already written ; nor do I se^ how I could
get retirement if I were not to a certain extent unpopular.

It is this feeling on my own part — omnipresent with me
when I am doing my best to please, that is to say, whenever
I write — which is the cause why I do not, as people say, " get
on." If I had greatly cared about getting on I think I could
have done so. I think I could even now write an anonymous
book that would take the public as much as Erewhon did.
Perhaps I could not, but I think I could. The reason why I do
not try is because I like doing other things better. What I
most enjoy is running the view of evolution set forth in Life
and Habit and making things less easy for the hacks of litera-
ture and science ; or perhaps even more I enjoy taking snap-
shots and writing music, though aware that I had better not
enquire whether this last is any good or not. In fact there is
nothing I do that I do not enjoy so keenly that I cannot tear
myself away from it, and people who thus indulge themselves
cannot have things both ways. I am so intent upon pleasing
myself that I have no time to cater for the public. Some of
them like things in the same way as I do ; that class of
people I try to please as well as ever I can. With others I have
no concern, and they know it so they have no concern with
me. I do not believe there is any other explanation of my
failure to get on than this, nor do I see that any further ex-
planation is needed. [1890.]

ii

Two or three people have asked me to return to the subject
of my supposed failure and explain it more fully from my
own point of view. I have had the subject on my notes for
some time and it has bored me so much that it has had a good
deal to do with my not having kept my Note-Books posted
recently.

Briefly, in order to scotch that snake, my failure has not
been so great as people say it has. I believe my reputation
stands well with the best people. Granted that it makes no
noise, but I have not been willing to take the pains necessary
to achieve what may be called guinea-pig review success, be-
cause, although I have been in financial difficulties, I did not
seriously need success from a money point of view, and be-
cause I hated the kind of people I should have had to court

The Life of the World to Come 373

and kow-tow to if I went in for that sort of thing. I could
never have carried it through, even if I had tried, and in-
stinctively declined to try. A man cannot be said to have
failed, because he did not get what he did not try for. What
I did try for I believe I have got as fully as any reasonable
man can expect, and I have every hope that I shall get it
still more both so long as I live and after I am dead.

If, however, people mean that I am to explain how it is I
have not made more noise in spite of my own indolence in
the matter, the answer is that those who do not either push
themselves into noise, or give some one else a substantial in-
terest in pushing them, never do get made a noise about.
How can they ? I was too lazy to go about from publisher
to publisher and to decline to publish a book myself if I
could not find some one to speculate in it. I could take any
amount of trouble about writing a book but, so long as I
could lay my hand on the money to bring it out with, I found
publishers' antechambers so little to my taste that I soon
tired and fell back on the short and easy method of publish-
ing my book myself. Of course, therefore, it failed to sell.
I know more about these things now, and will never publish
a book at my own risk again, or at any rate I will send some-
body else round the antechambers with it for a good while
before I pay for publishing it.

I should have liked notoriety and financial success well
enough if they could have been had for the asking, but I was
not going to take any trouble about them and, as a natural
consequence, I did not get them. If I had wanted them with
the same passionate longing that has led me to pursue every
enquiry that I ever have pursued, I should have got them
fast enough. It is very rarely that I have failed to get what
I have really tried for and, as a matter of fact, I believe I
have been a great deal happier for not trying than I should
have been if I had had notoriety thrust upon me.

I confess I should like my books to pay their expenses and
put me a little in pocket besides — because I want to do more
for Alfred than I see my way to doing. As a natural con-
sequence of beginning to care I have begun to take pains,
and am advising with the Society of Authors as to what will
be my best course. Very likely they can do nothing for me,
but at any rate I shall have tried.

374 The Life of the World to Come

One reason, and that the chief, why I have made no noise,
is now explained. It remains to add that from first to last
I have been unorthodox and militant in every book that I
have written. I made enemies of the parsons once for all
with my first two books. [Erewhon and The Fair Haven.]
The evolution books made the Darwinians, and through them
the scientific world in general, even more angry than The
Fair Haven had made the clergy so that I had no friends,
for the clerical and scientific people rule the roast between
them.

I have chosen the fighting road rather than the hang-on-to-
a-great-man road, and what can a man who does this look for
except that people should try to silence him in whatever way
they think will be most effectual ? In my case they have
thought it best to pretend that I am non-existent. It is no
part of my business to complain of my opponents for choosing
their own line ; my business is to defeat them as best 1 can
upon their own line, and I imagine I shall do most towards
this by not allowing myself to be made unhappy merely
because I am not fussed about, and by going on writing more
books and adding to my pile.

My Work

Why should I write about this as though any one will wish
to read what I write ?

People sometimes give me to understand that it is a piece
of ridiculous conceit on my part to jot down so many notes
about myself, since it implies a confidence that I shall one
day be regarded as an interesting person. I answer that
neither I nor they can form any idea as to whether I shall be
wanted when I am gone or no. The chances are that I shall
not. I am quite aware of it. So the chances are that I shall
not live to be 85 ; but I have no right to settle it so. If I do
as Captain Don did [Life of Dr. Butler, I, opening of Chapter
VIII], and invest every penny I have in an annuity that
shall terminate when I am 89, who knows but that I
may live on to 96, as he did, and have seven years without
any income at all ? I prefer the modest insurance of
keeping up my notes which others may burn or no as they
please.

The Life of the World to Come 375

I am not ote of those who have travelled along a set road
towards an end that I have foreseen and desired to reach. I
have made a succession of jaunts or pleasure trips from,
meadow to meadow, but no long journey unless life itself be
reckoned so. Nevertheless, I have strayed into no field in
which I have not iound a flower that was worth the finding,
I have gone into no public place in which I have not found
sovereigns lying about on the ground which people would not
notice and be at the trouble of picking up. They have been
things which any one else has had — or at any rate a very
large number of people have had — as good a chance of pick-
ing up as I had. My finds have none of them come as the
result of research or severe study, though they have generally
given me plenty to do in the way of research and study as
soon as I had got hold of them. I take it that these are the
most interesting — or whatever the least offensive word may
be :

1. The emphasising the analogies between crime and
disease. [Erewhon.]

2. The emphasising also the analogies between the develop-
ment of the organs of our bodies and of those which are not
incorporate with our bodies and which we call tools or
machines. [Erewhon and Luck or Cunning ?]

3. The clearing up the history of the events in connection
with the death, or rather crucifixion, of Jesus Christ ; and a
reasonable explanation, first, of the belief on the part of the
founders of Christianity that their master had risen from the
dead and, secondly, of what might follow from belief in a
single supposed miracle. [The Evidence for the Resurrection
of Jesus Christ, The Fair Haven and Erewhon Revisited!]

4. The perception that personal identity cannot be denied
between parents and offspring without at the same time
denying it as between the different ages (and hence moments)
in the life of the individual and, as a corollary on this, the
ascription of the phenomena of heredity to the same source
as those of memory. [Life and Habit.']

5. The tidying up the earlier history of the theory of
evolution. [Evolution Old and New.]

6. The exposure and discomfiture of Charles Darwin and
Wallace and their followers. [Evolution Old and New, Un-
conscious Memory, Luck or Cunning? and "The Deadlock

376 The Life of the World to Come

in Darwinism " in the Universal Review ^published in
Essays on Life, Art and Science^*

7. The perception of the principle that led organic life to
split up into two main divisions, animal and vegetable.
[Alps and Sanctuaries, close of Chapter XIII : Luck or
Cunning ?]

8. The perception that, if the kinetic theory is held good,
our thought of a thing, whatever that thing may be, is in
reality an exceedingly weak dilution of the actual thing
itself. [Stated, but not fully developed, in Luck or Cunning ?
Chapter XIX, also in some of the foregoing notes.]

9. The restitution to Giovanni and Gentile Bellini of their
portraits in the Louvre and the finding of five other portraits
of these two painters of whom Crowe and Cavalcaselle and
Layard maintain that we have no portrait. [Letters to the
Alhenceum , &c]

10. The restoration to Holbein of the drawing in the Basel
Museum called La Danse. [Universal Review, Nov., 1889.]

11. The calling attention to Gaudenzio Ferrari and putting
him before the public with something like the emphasis that
he deserves. [Ex Vote]

12. The discovery of a life-sized statue of Leonardo da
Vinci by Gaudenzio Ferrari. [Ex Voto.]

13. The unearthing of the Flemish sculptor Jean de Wespin
(called Tabachetti in Italy) and of Giovanni Antonio Paracca.
[Ex Voto.]

14. The finding out that the Odyssey was written at
Trapani, the clearing up of the whole topography of the poem,
and the demonstration, as it seems to me, that the poem was
written by a woman and not by a man. Indeed, I may almost
claim to have discovered the Odyssey, so altered does it be-
come when my views of it are adopted. And robbing Homer
of the Odyssey has rendered the Iliad far more intelligible ;
besides, I have set the example of how he should be ap-
proached. [The Authoress of the Odyssey.]

15. The attempt to do justice to my grandfather by writing
* Butler had two separate grounds of complaint against Charles

Darwin, one scientific, the other personal. With regard to the per-
sonal quarrel some facts came to light after Butler's death and the
subject is dealt with in a pamphlet entitled Charles Darwin and Samuel
Butler : A Step towards Reconciliation, by Henry Festing Jones (A. C.
Fifield, 191 1).

The Life of the World to Come 377

The Life and Metiers of Dr. Butler for which, however, I had
special facilities.

16. In Narcissus and Ulysses I made an attempt, the
failure of which has yet to be shown, to return to the principles
of Handel and take them up where he left of.

17. The elucidation of Shakespeare's Sonnets. [Shake-
speare's Sonnets Reconsidered.]

I say nothing here about my novel [The Way of All Flesh]
because it cannot be published till after my death ; nor about
my translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Nevertheless
these three books also were a kind of picking up of sovereigns,
for the novel contains records of things I saw happening
rather than imaginary incidents, and the principles on which
the translations are made were obvious to any one willing to
take and use them.

The foregoing is the list of my "mares'-nests," and it is, I
presume, this list which made Mr. Arthur Piatt call me the
Galileo of Mares'-Nests in his diatribe on my Odyssey theory
in the Classical Review. I am not going to argue here that
they are all, as I do not doubt, sound ; what I want to say is
that they are every one of them things that lay on the surface
and open to any one else just as much as to me. Not one of
them required any profundity of thought or extensive re-
search ; they only required that he who approached the
various subjects with which they have to do should keep his
eyes open and try to put himself in the position of the various
people whom they involve. Above all, it was necessary to
approach them without any preconceived theory and to be
ready to throw over any conclusion the moment the evidence
pointed against it. The reason why I have discarded so few
theories that I have put forward — and at this moment I
cannot recollect one from which there has been any serious
attempt to dislodge me — is because I never allowed myself to
form a theory at all till I found myself driven on to it whether
I would or no. As long as it was possible to resist I resisted,
and only yielded when I could not think that an intelligent
jury under capable guidance would go with me if I resisted
longer. I never went in search of any one of my theories ;
I never knew what it was going to be till I had found it ;
they came and found me, not I them. Such being my own
experience, I begin to be pretty certain that other people

378 The Life of the World to Come

have had much the same and that the soundest theories
have come unsought and without much effort.

The conclusion, then, of the whole matter is that scientific
and literary fortunes are, like money fortunes, made more by
saving than in any other way — more through the exercise of
the common vulgar essentials, such as sobriety and straight-
forwardness, than by the more showy enterprises that when
they happen to succeed are called genius and when they fail,
folly. The streets are full of sovereigns crying aloud for
some one to come and pick them up, only the thick veil of our
own insincerity and conceit hides them from us. He who
can most tear this veil from in front of his eyes will be able to
see most and to walk off with them.

I should say that the sooner I stop the better. If on my
descent to the nether world I were to be met and welcomed by
the shades of those to whom I have done a good turn while I
was here, I should be received by a fairly illustrious crowd.
There would be Giovanni and Gentile Bellini, Leonardo da
Vinci, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Holbein, Tabachetti, Paracca and
D 'Enrico ; the Authoress of the Odyssey would come and
Homer with her ; Dr. Butler would bring with him the
many forgotten men and women to whom in my memoir I
have given fresh life ; there would be Buffon, Erasmus
Darwin and Lamarck ; Shakespeare also would be there and
Handel. I could not wish to find myself in more congenial
company and I shall not take it too much to heart if the
shade of Charles Darwin glides gloomily away when it sees
me coming.

XXV

Poems

Prefatory Note

i. Translation from an Unpublished Work

of Herodotus

ii. The Shield of Achilles, with Variations

iii. The Two Deans

iv. On the Italian Priesthood

Butler wrote these four pieces while he was an undergraduate
at St. John's College, Cambridge. He kept no copy of any of
them, bid his friend the Rev. Canon Joseph McCormick, D.D.,
Rector of St. James's, Piccadilly, kept copies in a note-book
which he lent me. The only one that has appeared in print is
" The Shield of Achilles," which Canon McCormick sent to The
Eagle the magazine of St. John's College, Cambridge, and it was
printed in the number for December 1902, about six months after
Butler's death.

" O11 the Italian Priesthood" is a rendering of the Italian
epigram accompanying it which, with others under the heading
" Astuzia, Inganno," is given in Raccolta di Proverbi Toscani
di Giuseppe Giusti (Firenze, 1853).

v. A Psalm of Montreal

This was written in Canada in 1875. Butler often recited it
and gave copies of it to his friends. Knotting that Mr. Edward
Clodd had had something to do with its appearance in the
Spectator / wrote asking him to tell me what he remembered
about it. He very kindly replied, 29th October, 1905 :

" The c Psalm' was recited to me at the Century Club by
Butler. He gave me a copy of it which I read to the late Chas.

379

3 8o Poems

Anderson, Vicar of S. John's, Limehouse, who* lent it to Matt.
Arnold (when inspecting Anderson's Schools) who lent it to
Richd. Holt Hutton who, with Butler's consent, printed it in the
Spectator of iSth May, 1878."

The "Psalm of Montreal" was included in Selections from
Previous Works (1884) and in Seven Sonnets, etc.

vi. The Righteous Man

Butler wrote this in 1876 ; it has appeared before only in
1879 in the Examiner, where ii formed part of the correspond^
ence " A Clergyman's Doubts " of which the letter signed " Ethics "
has already been given in this volume (see p. 304 ante). 11 The
Righteous Man " was signed " X.Y.Z." and, in order to connect
it with the discussion, Butler prefaced it with a note comparing
it to the last six inches of a line of railway ; there is no part
of the road so ugly, so little travelled over, or so useless gener-
ally, but it is the end, at any rate, of a very long thing.

vii. To Critics and Others
This was written in 1883 and has not hitherto been published.

viii. For Narcissus

These are printed for the first time. The pianoforte score of
Narcissus was published in 1888. The poem (A) was written
because there was some discussion then going on in musical
circles about additional accompaniments to the Messiah and
we did not want any to be written for Narcissus.

The poem (B) shows how Butler originally intended to open
Part II with a kind of descriptive programme, but he changed
his mind and did it differently.

ix. A Translation Attempted in Consequence
of a Challenge

This translation into Homeric verse of a famous passage from
Martin Chuzzlewit was a by-product of Butler's work on the
Odyssey and the Iliad. It was published in The Eagle in
March, 1894, and was included in Seven Sonnets.

/ asked Butler who had challenged him to attempt the trans-
lation and he replied that he had thought of that and had settled

Poems

that, if any one Use were to ask the question, he should reply that
the challenge came from me.

x. In Memoriam H. R. F.

This appears in print now for the first time. Hans Rudolf
Faesch, a young Swiss from Basel, came to London in the
autumn of 1893. He spent much of his time with us until 14th
February, 1895, when he left for Singapore. We saw him off
from Holbom Viaduct Station ; he was not well and it was a
stormy night. The next day Butler wrote this poem and, being
persuaded that we should never see Hans Faesch again, called it
an In Memoriam. Hans did not die on the journey, he arrived
safely in Singapore and settled in the East where he carried
on business. We exchanged letters with him frequently ; he
paid two visits to Europe and we saw him on both occasions.
But he did not live long. He died in the autumn of 1903 at
Vien Tiane in the Shan States, aged 32, having survived Butler
by about a year and a half.

xi. An Academic Exercise

This has never been printed before. It is a Farewell, and
that is why I have placed it next after the In Memoriam. The
contrast between the two poems illustrates the contrast pointed
out at the close of the note on " The Dislike of Death " (ante,
p. 359) :

" The memory of a love that has been cut short by death re-
mains still fragrant though enfeebled, but no recollection of its
past can keep sweet a love that has dried up and withered through
accidents of time and life."

In the ordinary course Butler would have talked this Sonnet
over with me at the time he wrote it, that is in fanuary, 1902 ;
he may even have done so, but I think not. From 2nd January,
1902, until late in March, when he left London alone for Sicily,
I was ill with pneumonia and remember very little of what hap-
pened then. Between his return in May and his death in June
I am sure he did not mention the subject. Knowing the facts
that underlie the preceding poem I can tell why Butler called it
an In Memoriam ; not knowing the facts that underlie this poem
I cannot tell why Butler should have called it an Academic
Exercise. It is his last Sonnet and is dated " Sund. Jan. 12th

Poems

1902," within six months of his death, at a ti%ie when he was
depressed physically because his health was failing and mentally
because he had been 11 editing his remains reading and destroy-
ing old letters and brooding over the past. One of the subjects
given in the section 11 Titles and Subjects " (ante) is " The dis-
eases and ordinary causes of mortality among friendships'" I
suppose that he found among his letters something ivhich awakened
memories of a friendship of his earlier life — a friendship that
had suffered from a disease, whether it recovered or died woidd
not affect the sincerity of the emotions experienced by Butler at
the time he believed the friendship to be virtually dead. I sup-
pose the Sonnet to be an In Memoriam upon the apprehended
death of a friendship as the preceding poem is an In Memoriam
upon the apprehended death of a friend.

This may be wrong, but something of the kind seems necessary
to explain why Butler should have called the Sonnet an Academic
Exercise. No one who has read Shakespeare's Sonnets Re-
considered will require to be told that he disagreed contemptuously
with those critics who believe that Shakespeare composed his
Sonnets as academic exercises. It is certain that he wrote this,
as he wrote his other Sonnets, in imitation of Shakespeare, not
merely imitating the form but approaching the subject in the
spirit in which he believed Shakespeare to have approached his
subject. It follows therefore that he did not write this sonnet as
an academic exercise, had he done so he would not have been
imitating Shakespeare. If we assume that he was presenting his
story as he presented the dialogue in " A Psalm of Montreal "
in a form " perhaps true, perhaps imaginary, perhaps a little
of the one and a little of the other f it would be quite in the manner
of the author of The Fair Haven to burlesque the methods of the
critics by ignoring the sincerity of the emotions and fixing on the
little bit of inaccuracy in the facts. We may suppose him to be
saying out loud to the critics : " You think Shakespeare's
Sonnets were composed as academic exercises, do you? Very
well then, now what do you make of this ? " And adding aside
to himself : 11 That will be good enough for them ; they'll swallow
anything."

xii. A Prayer

Extract from Butler's Note-Books under the date of February
or March 1883 :

Poems 383

" ' Cleanse Mlou me from my secret sins* I heard a man
moralising on this and shocked him by saying demurely that I
did not mind these so much, if I could get rid of those that were
obvious to other 'people. 31

He wrote the sonnet in 1900 or 1901. In the first quatrain
" spoken " does not rhyme with " open " ; Butler knew this and
would not alter it because there are similar assonances in Shake-
speare, e.g. " open " and " broken " in Sonnet LXI.

xiii. Karma

I am responsible for grouping these three sonnets under this
heading. The second one beginning " What is't to live "
appears in Butler's Note-Book with the remark, " This wants
much tinkering, but I cannot tinker it" — meaning that he was
too much occupied with other things. He left the second line
of the third of these sonnets thus :

" Them palpable to touch and view"

I have "tinkered" it by adding the two syllables "clear to' 1
to make the line complete.

In writing this sonnet Butler was no doubt thinking of a note
he made in 1891 :

" It is often said that there is no bore like a clever bore. Clever
people are always bores and always must be. That is, perhaps,
why Shakespeare had to leave London — people could not stand
him any longer."

xiv. The Life after Death

Butler began to write sonnets in 1898 when he was studying
those of Shakespeare on which he published a book in the follow-
ing year. (Shakespeare's Sonnets Reconsidered, &c.) He had
gone to Flushing by himself and on his return wrote to me :

24 Aug. 1898. "Also at Flushing I wrote one myself, a poor
innocent thing, but I was surprised to find how easily it came ;
if you like it I may write a few more."

Hie " poor innocent thing " was the sonnet beginning 11 Not
on sad Stygian shore," the -first of those I have grouped under
the heading " The Life after Death." It appears in his note-
books with this introductory sentence :

11 Having now learned Shakespeare's Sonnets by heart — and

384 Poems

there are very few which I do not find I understand the better
for having done this — on Saturday night last at the Hotel Zeeland
at Flushing, finding myself in a meditative mood, I wrote the
following with a good deal less trouble than I anticipated when I
took pen and paper in hand. I hope I may improve it."

Of course I liked the sonnet very much and he did write " a
few more " — among them the two on Handel which I have put-
after " Not on sad Stygian shore " because he intended that they
should follow it. I am sure he would have xvisked this volume
to close with these three sonnets, especially because the last two
of them were inspired by Handel, who was never abseyit from his
thoughts for long. Let me conclude these introductory remarks
by reproducing a note made in 1883 :

" Of all dead men Handel has had the largest place in my
thoughts. In fact I should say that he and his music have been
the central fact in my life ever since I was old enough to know
of the existence of either life or music. All day long — whether
I am writing or painting or walking, but always — I have his
music in my head ; and if I lose sight of it and of him for an
hour or two, as of course I sometimes do, this is as much as I do.
1 believe I am not exaggerating when I say thai I have never
been a day since I zvas 13 without having Handel in my mind
many times over"

i

Translation from an Unpublished Work
of Herodotus

And the Johnians practise their tub in the following
manner : — They select 8 of the most serviceable freshmen and
put these into a boat and to each one of them they give an
oar ; and, having told them to look at the backs of the men
before them, they make them bend forward as far as they
can and at the same moment, and, having put the end of the
oar into the water, pull it back again in to them about the
bottom of the ribs ; and, if any of them does not do this or
looks about him away from the back of the man before him,
they curse him in the most terrible manner, but if he does
what he is bidden they immediately cry out :

" Well pulled, number so-and-so/ '

Poems 385

•

For they dc^not call them by their names but by certain
numbers, each man of them having a number allotted to him
in accordance with his place in the boat, and the first man
they call stroke, but the last man bow ; and when they have
done this for about 50 miles they come home again, and the
rate they travel at is about 25 miles an hour ; and let no one
think that this is too great a rate for I could say many other
wonderful things in addition concerning the rowing of the
Johnians, but if a man wishes to know these things he must
go and examine them himself. But when they have done
they contrive some such a device as this, for they make them
run many miles along the side of the river in order that they
may accustom them to great fatigue, and many of them,
being distressed in this way, fall down and die, but those who
survive become very strong and receive gifts of cups from
the others ; and after the revolution of a year they have
great races with their boats against those of the surrounding
islanders, but the Johnians, both owing to the carefulness of
the training and a natural disposition for rowing, are always
victorious. In this way, then, the Johnians, I say, practise
their tub.

ii

The Shield of Achilles
With Variations

And in it he placed the Fitzwilliam and King's College
Chapel and the lofty towered church of the Great Saint Mary,
which looketh towards the Senate House, and King's Parade
and Trumpington Road and the Pitt Press and the divine
opening of the Market Square and the beautiful flowing
fountain which formerly Hobson laboured to make with
skilful art ; him did his father beget in the many-public-
housed Trumpington from a slavey mother and taught him
blameless works ; and he, on the other hand, sprang up like
a young shoot and many beautifully matched horses did he
nourish in his stable, which used to convey his rich posses-
sions to London and the various cities of the world; but
oftentimes did he let them out to others and whensoever
any one was desirous of hiring one of the long-tailed horses
he took them in order, so that the labour was equal to all,
2 c

386 Poems

wherefore do men now speak of the choice o4 the renowned
Hobson. And in it he placed the close of the divine Parker,
and many beautiful undergraduates were delighting their
tender minds upon it playing cricket with one another ; and
a match was being played and two umpires were quarrelling
with one another ; the one saying that the batsman who was
playing was out and the other declaring with all his might
that he was not ; and while they two were contending,
reviling one another with abusive language, a ball came and
hit one of them on the nose and the blood flowed out in a
stream and darkness was covering his eyes, but the rest were
crying out on all sides :
" Shy it up."

And he could not ; him, then, was his companion address-
ing with scornful words :

" Arnold, why dost thou strive with me since I am
much wiser ? Did not I see his leg before the wicket and
rightly declare him to be out ? Thee, then, has Zeus now
punished according to thy deserts and I will seek some other
umpire of the game equally-participated-in-by-both-sides."

And in it he placed the Cam and many boats equally
rowed on both sides were going up and down on the bosom
of the deep rolling river and the coxswains were cheering on
the men, for they were going to enter the contest of the
scratchean fours ; and three men were rowing together in a
boat, strong and stout and determined in their hearts that
they would either first break a blood vessel or earn for them-
selves the electroplated-Birmingham-manufactured magnifi-
cence of a pewter to stand on their hall tables in memorial
of their strength, and from time to time drink from it the
exhilarating streams of beer whensoever their dear heart
should compel them; but the fourth was weak and un-
equally matched with the others and the coxswain was
encouraging him and called him by name and spake cheering
words :

" Smith, when thou hast begun the contest, be not flurried
nor strive too hard against thy fate, look at the back of the
man before thee and row with as much strength as the Fates
spun out for thee on the day when thou fellest between the
knees of thy mother, neither lose thine oar, but hold it tight
with thy hands."

Poems

387

iii

The Two Deans

Scene : The Court of St. John's College, Cambridge. Enter
the two deans on their way to morning chapel.

Junior Dean : Brother, I am much pleased with Samuel
Butler,

I have observed him mightily of late ;
Methinks that in his melancholy walk
And air subdued when'er he meeteth me
Lurks something more than in most other men.

Senior Dean : It is a good young man. I do bethink me
That once I walked behind him in the cloister,
He saw me not, but whispered to his fellow :
" Of all men who do dwell beneath the moon
I love and reverence most the senior Dean."

Junior Dean : One thing is passing strange, and yet I
know not

How to condemn it ; but in one plain brief word
He never comes to Sunday morning chapel.
Methinks he teacheth in some Sunday school,
Feeding the poor and starveling intellect
With wholesome knowledge, or on the Sabbath morn
He loves the country and the neighbouring spire
Of Madingley or Coton, or perchance
Amid some humble poor he spends the day
Conversing with them, learning all their cares,
Comforting them and easing them in sickness.
Oh 'tis a rare young man !

Senior Dean : I will advance him to some public post,
He shall be chapel clerk, some day a fellow,
Some day perhaps a Dean, but as thou sayst
He is indeed an excellent young man —
Enter Butler suddenly without a coat, or anything on his

head, rushing through the cloisters, hearing a cup, a bottle of

cider, four lemons, two nutmegs, half a pound of sugar and a

nutmeg grater.

Curtain falls on the confusion of Butler and the horror-
stricken dismay of the two deans.

388

Poems

iv

On the Italian Priesthood

(Con arte e con inganno, si vivc mezzo Tanno ;
Con inganno e con arte, si vive l'altra parte.)

In knavish art and gathering gear
They spend the one half of the year ;
In gathering gear and knavish art
They somehow spend the other part.

v

A Psalm of Montreal

The City of Montreal is one of the most rising and, in
many respects, most agreeable on the American continent,
but its inhabitants are as yet too busy with commerce to
care greatly about the masterpieces of old Greek Art. In the
Montreal Museum of Natural History I came upon two
plaster casts, one of the Antinous and the other of the Dis-
cobolus — not the good one, but in my poem, of course, I
intend the good one — banished from public view to a room
where were all manner of skins, plants, snakes, insects, etc.,
and, in the middle of these, an old man stuffing an owl.

" Ah/' said I, " so you have some antiques here ; why
don't you put them where people can see them ? "

" Well, sir," answered the custodian, " you see they are
rather vulgar."

He then talked a great deal and said his brother did all
Mr. Spurgeon's printing.

The dialogue — perhaps true, perhaps imaginary, perhaps a
little of the one and a little of the other — between the writer
and this old man gave rise to the lines that follow :

Stowed away in a Montreal lumber room
The Discobolus standeth and turneth his face to the wall ;
Dusty, cobweb-covered, maimed and set at naught,
Beauty crieth in an attic and no man regardeth :

OGod! 0 Montreal!

Poems 389

Beautiful by n%ht and day, beautiful in summer and winter,

Whole or maimed, always and alike beautiful —

He preacheth gospel of grace to the skin of owls

And to one who seasoneth the skins of Canadian owls :

0 God 1 0 Montreal !

When I saw him I was wroth and I said, " 0 Discobolus !
Beautiful Discobolus, a Prince both among gods and men !
What doest thou here, how earnest thou hither, Discobolus,
Preaching gospel in vain to the skins of owls ? "

0 God ! O Montreal !

And I turned to the man of skins and said unto him, " 0 thou
man of skins,

Wherefore hast thou done thus to shame the beauty of the
Discobolus ? "

But the Lord had hardened the heart of the man of skins
And he answered, " My brother-in-law is haberdasher to
Mr. Spurgeon." " O God ! 0 Montreal!

" The Discobolus is put here because he is vulgar —
He has neither vest nor pants with which to cover his limbs ;
I, Sir, am a person of most respectable connections —
My brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon."

0 God ! 0 Montreal !

Then I said, " 0 brother-in-law to Mr. Spurgeon's haberdasher,
Who seasonest also the skins of Canadian owls,
Thou callest trousers 'pants/ whereas I call them ' trousers/
Therefore thou art in hell-fire and may the Lord pity thee ! "

0 God ! 0 Montreal !

" Preferrest thou the gospel of Montreal to the gospel of
Hellas,

The gospel of thy connection with Mr. Spurgeon's haber-
dashery to the gospel of the Discobolus ? "

Yet none the less blasphemed he beauty saying, " The Dis-
cobolus hath no gospel, ^

But my brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon."

0 God ! 0 Montreal !

39°

Poems

vi

The Righteous Man

The righteous man will rob none but the defenceless,
Whatsoever can reckon with him he will neither plunder nor
kill ;

He will steal an egg from a hen or a lamb from an ewe,

For his sheep and his hens cannot reckon with him hereafter—

They live not in any odour of defencefulness :

Therefore right is with the righteous man, and he taketh

advantage righteously,
Praising God and plundering.

The righteous man will enslave his horse and his dog,
Making them serve him for their bare keep and for nothing
further,

Shooting them, selling them for vivisection when they can no

longer profit him,
Backbiting them and beating them if they fail to please him ;
For his horse and his dog can bring no action for damages,
Wherefore, then, should he not enslave them, shoot them,

sell them for vivisection ?

But the righteous man will not plunder the defenceful —
Not if he be alone and unarmed — for his conscience will
smite him ;

He will not rob a she-bear of her cubs, nor an eagle of her
eaglets —

Unless he have a rifle to purge him from the fear of sin :
Then may he shoot rejoicing in innocency— from ambush or

a safe distance ;
Or he will beguile them, lay poison for them, keep no faith

with them ;

For what faith is there with that which cannot reckon here-
after,

Neither by itself, nor by another, nor by any residuum of ill

consequences ?
Surely, where weakness is utter, honour ceaseth.

Nay, I will do what is right in the eye of him who can harm
me,

Poems 391

And not in tb$>se of him who cannot call me to account.

Therefore yield me up thy pretty wings, O humming-bird 1

Sing for me in a prison, O lark 1

Pay me thy rent, 0 widow ! for it is mine.

Where there is reckoning there is sin,

And where there is no reckoning sin is not.

vii

To Critics and Others

O Critics, cultured Critics I
Who will praise me after I am dead,
Who will see in me both more and less than I intended,
But who will swear that whatever it was it was all per-
fectly right :

You will think you are better than the people who, when
I was alive, swore that whatever I did was wrong

And damned my books for me as fast as I could write them ;

But you will not be better, you will be just the same,
neither better nor worse,

And you will go for some future Butler as your fathers
have gone for me.

Oh ! How I should have hated you !

But you, Nice People !

Who will be sick of me because the critics thrust me down
your throats,

But who would take me willingly enough if you were not
bored about me,

Or if you could have the cream of me — and surely this
should suffice :

Please remember that, if I were living, I should be upon
your side

And should hate those who imposed me either on myself
or others ;

Therefore, I pray you, neglect me, burlesque me, boil me
down, do whatever you like with me,

But do not think that, if I were living, I should not aid
and abet you.

There is nothing that even Shakespeare would enjoy more
than a good burlesque of Hamlet

392

Poems

viii

For Narcissus
(A)

(To be written in front of the orchestral score.)

May he be damned for evermore

Who tampers with Narcissus' score ;

May he by poisonous snakes be bitten

Who writes more parts than what we've written.

We tried to make our music clear

For those who sing and those who hear,

Not lost and muddled up and drowned

In over-done orchestral sound ;

So kindly leave the work alone

Or do it as we want it done.

(B)
Part II
Symphony

(During which the audience is requested to think as follows :)

An aged lady taken ill

Desires to reconstruct her will ;

I see the servants hurrying for

The family solicitor ;

Post-haste he comes and with him brings

The usual necessary things.

With common form and driving quill

He draws the first part of the will,

The more sonorous solemn sounds

Denote a hundred thousand pounds,

This trifle is the main bequest,

Old friends and servants take the rest.

Tis done ! I see her sign her name,

I see the attestors do the same.

Who is the happy legatee ?

In the next number you will see.

Poems

393

ix

A Translation

(Attempted in consequence of a challenge.)

" ' Mrs. Harris/ I says to her, ' dont name the charge, for
if I could afford to lay all my feller creeturs out for nothink
I would gladly do it ; sich is the love I bear 'em. But what
I always says to them as has the management of matters,
Mrs. Harris/ " — here she kept her eye on Mr. Pecksniff —
" 1 be they gents or be they ladies — is, Dont ask me whether I
wont take none, or whether I will, but leave the bottle on the
chimley piece, and let me put my lips to it when I am so
dispoged/ " (Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. XIX).

" ec/xrr'* avrap eyu fjuv dpeL/3op.evr) TrpocreenroVy
* Saipovtrj, 'Appicro-taSto) dXo)^ dvriOeoio,
prj 0y)v drj irepl plaOov aVetpeo, pjfi ovopa^e
rotrj yap tol cyu)V dyavrj /cat rjpuq etp,t 9
7) Kev Xahv aVavr' et /xot Svvapis ye irapcCr l9
ccrov eTrrjeravov /Storov 6* a\is evSov eovros,
dcnracTiUis /cat dfxicrOos eov<ra TrepurreLXaLju
[Jy XeKTpq Ae£acra ravrjXeyeos Oavdroio
avrrj, os K€ Oavrjcri ftpOTwv Kat rrorpov «ricnrfl]
dXX 1 €K tol epe<a crv S' evl <j>pecrl fidXXeo crrjcLV 9
oarcre 8e ot Jle^vetfyov ecreBpaKov do-KeXh aiet —
" * KavoLcrt,v yap Trace TricfravcKopevr) ayopevo)
eir' av8p y eire yvval^ brko rdSe epya peprjXev,
co <j>lXe, TLTrre cv ravra p? dvelpeai ; ovde rl ere ^p-q
ISpevai rj eOeXw Tviveiv peOv, rje /cat ov\i'
el 8' ay' eir ecyapotfciv KaraOes Senas rjScos otVov,
oc/jp' ev \epclv eX(o irivovcd re repTrofxevq re,
XetXed re TrpocOelc' 6~6rav (f>iXov r\rop dvtayrfj 99

X

In Memoriam
Feb. 14th, 1895

TO

H. R. F.
Out, out, out into the night,

With the wind bitter North East and the sea rough ;

394 Poems

You have a racking cough and your lungs are •weak,
But out, out into the night you go,

So guide you and guard you Heaven and fare you well !

We have been three lights to one another and now we are two,
For you go far and alone into the darkness ;
But the light in you was stronger and clearer than ours,
For you came straighter from God and, whereas we had
learned,

You had never forgotten. Three minutes more and then
Out, out into the night you go,

So guide you and guard you Heaven and fare you well !

Never a cross look, never a thought,

Never a word that had better been left unspoken ;

We gave you the best we had, such as it was,

It pleased you well, for you smiled and nodded your head ;

And now, out, out into the night you go,

So guide you and guard you Heaven and fare you well !

You said we were a little weak that the three of us wept,
Are we then weak if we laugh when we are glad ?
When men are under the knife let them roar as they will,
So that they flinch not.

Therefore let tears flow on, for so long as we live
No such second sorrow shall ever draw nigh us,
Till one of us two leaves the other alone
And goes out, out, out into the night,

So guard the one that is left, 0 God, and fare him well !

Yet for the great bitterness of this grief
We three, you and he and I,

May pass into the hearts of like true comrades hereafter,
In whom we may weep anew and yet comfort them,
As they too pass out, out, out into the night,

So guide them and guard them Heaven and fare them
well !

The minutes have flown and he whom we loved is gone,
The like of whom we never again shall see ;
The wind is heavy with snow and the sea rough,
He has a racking cough and his lungs are weak.

Poems 395

Hand in han<i we watch the train as it glides

Out, out, out into the night.

So take him into thy holy keeping, 0 Lord,

And guide him and guard him ever, and fare him well 1

xi

An Academic Exercise

We were two lovers standing sadly by

While our two loves lay dead upon the ground ;

Each love had striven not to be first to die,

But each was gashed with many a cruel wound.

Said I : " Your love was false while mine was true."

Aflood with tears he cried : "It was not so,

'Twas your false love my true love falsely slew —

For 'twas your love that was the first to go."

Thus did we stand and said no more for shame

Till I, seeing his cheek so wan and wet,

Sobbed thus : " So be it ; my love shall bear the blame ;

Let us inter them honourably." And yet

I swear by all truth human and divine

Twas his that in its death throes murdered mine.

xii

A Prayer

Searcher of souls, you who in heaven abide,
To whom the secrets of all hearts are open,
Though I do lie to all the world beside,
From me to these no falsehood shall be spoken.
Cleanse me not, Lord, I say, from secret sin
But from those faults which he who runs can see,
'Tis these that torture me, O Lord, begin
With these and let the hidden vices be ;
If you must cleanse these too, at any rate
Deal with the seen sins first, 'tis only reason,
They being so gross, to let the others wait
The leisure of some more convenient season ;

And cleanse not all even then, leave me a few,
I would not be — not quite — so pure as you.

396

Poems

xiii
Karma

(A)

Who paints a picture, writes a play or book

Which others read while he's asleep in bed

O' the other side of the world— when they o'erlook

His page the sleeper might as well be dead ;

What knows he of his distant unfelt life ?

What knows he of the thoughts his thoughts are raising,

The life his life is giving, or the strife

Concerning, him— some cavilling, some praising ?

Yet which is most alive, he who's asleep

Or his quick spirit in some other place,

Or score of other places, that doth keep

Attention fixed and sleep from others chase ?

Which is the " he "—the " he " that sleeps, or " he "
That his own " he " can neither feel nor see ?

(B)

What is't to live, if not to pull the strings

Of thought that pull those grosser strings whereby

We pull our limbs to pull material things

Into such shape as in our thoughts doth lie ?

Who pulls the strings that pull an agent's hand,

The action's counted his, so, we being gone,

The deeds that others do by our command,

Albeit we know them not, are still our own.

He lives who does and he who does still lives,

Whether he wots of his own deeds or no.

Who knows the beating of his heart, that drives

Blood to each part, or how his limbs did grow ?

If life be naught but knowing, then each breath
We draw unheeded must be reckon'd death.

(Q

" Men's work we have," quoth one, " but we want them— ■
Them, palpable to touch and clear to view."
Is it so nothing, then, to have the gem
But we must weep to have the setting too ?

Poems QQ7

<•»

Body is a cheist wherein the tools abide

With which the craftsman works as best he can

And, as the chest the tools within doth hide,

So doth the body crib and hide the man.

Nay, though great Shakespeare stood in flesh before us,

Should heaven on importunity release him,

Is it so certain that he might not bore us,

So sure but we ourselves might fail to please him ?

Who prays to have the moon full soon would pray,
Once it were his, to have it taken away.

xiv

The Life After Death
(A)

MeXXovra ravra

Not on sad Stygian shore, nor in clear sheen

Of far Elysian plain, shall we meet those

Among the dead whose pupils we have been,

Nor those great shades whom we have held as foes ;

No meadow of asphodel our feet shall tread,

Nor shall we look each other in the face

To love or hate each other being dead,

Hoping some praise, or fearing some disgrace.

We shall not argue saying " Twas thus " or " Thus/'

Our argument's whole drift we shall forget ;

Who's right, who's wrong, 'twill be all one to us ;

We shall not even know that we have met.

Yet meet we shall, and part, and meet again,
Where dead men meet, on lips of living men.

(B)
Handel

There doth great Handel live, imperious still,

Invisible and impalpable as air,

But forcing flesh and blood to work his will

Effectually as though his flesh were there ;

He who gave eyes to ears and showed in sound

All thoughts and things in earth or heaven above.

From fire and hailstones running along the ground

398

Poems

To Galatea grieving for her love ;

He who could show to all unseeing eyes

Glad shepherds watching o'er their flocks by night,

Or Iphis angel-wafted to the skies,

Or Jordan standing as an heap upright —

He'll meet both Jones and me and clap or hiss us
Vicariously for having writ Narcissus.

(Q
Handel

Father of my poor music — if such small
Offspring as mine, so born out of due time,
So scorn'd, can be called fatherful at all,
Or dare to thy high sonship's rank to climb —
Best lov'd of all the dead whom I love best,
Though I love many another dearly too,
You in my heart take rank above the rest ;
King of those kings that most control me, you,
You were about my path, about my bed
In boyhood always and, where'er I be,
Whate'er I think or do, you, in my head,
Ground-bass to all my thoughts, are still with me ;

Methinks the very worms will find some strain
Of yours still lingering in my wasted brain.

Index

Abbey Foregate, 342

Abbey Wood, 250

Abnormal Developments, 30

Abraham, Dr., Bishop of Well-
ington, N.Z., 40

Absurd, Which is, 331

"Academic Exercise," An, 381,
382, 395

Academic System and Re-
pentance, 135

Academies, 180, 292

Academicism, 103

Academy, 121

Accident, Design and Memory,
61, 62

Accounts, Squaring, 160 at seq.
Accumulated Dinners, 365
Accuracy, 138

Achilles, The Shield of, 379, 385
Acireale, 6, 7
Action, 67, 68
Action and Study, 139
Actor, 360
Adam and Eve, 243
Adams and Leverrier, 313
Advice to the Young, 34
^Egisthus, 345
uEneas Silvius, 282
iEolian Mode, 129
A First Year in Canterbury

Settlement, 1, 288, 369
Agamemnon, 344, 364
Agape, 123
Agonising, 105
Agrippa and Agrippina, 253
Airolo, 272

Alagna, 280
Albert Hall, 22
Alcohol, 343
Alexander Balus, 116
Alfred Emery Cathie, Mr., 4,
193, 250, 251, 286, 371,

373
Alive, 318
Allah, 284, 285
Allesley School, 1
" All fear of punishment is

o'er/' 118, 119
Ally Sloped s Half -holiday, 262
Alpine passes, 133, 134
Alps and Sanctuaries, 4, 238,
2 5°> 2 59 se( l>> 2 73> 2 75>
299, 304> 343> 350* 368,
376

Material for a Projected

Sequel to, 259 et seq,
Alps pierced, 69
— The, by Holbein, 153
Alternifolium, 271
" A.M." Pseudonym, 40
Amateurs and Professionals,
145

Ambiguity, Studied, 290
Amen, 280

Amendes Honourables, 348
America, not a good place in

which to be a genius, 179
Amoeba, 277, 321
Amputation, 349
Anachronism, 130
" An aged lady taken ill,"
392

399

400

Index

Analogies between Crime and

.Disease, 375
Analogies between Organs and

Tools, 375
Analogy, 311

Analysis of the Sales of my

Books, 368, 369
Anatomy of Melancholy, 311
" Ancient Mariner/' The, 229
Ancients and Moderns, 193
Ancient Work, 193
" Ancora sulT Origine Siciliana

dell' Odissea," 5
Andersen, Hans, 231
Anderson, Revd. Charles, 379,

380

"And in it he placed," 385

Andromeda, 225

" And the government shall

be," 118
" And the Johnians practise

their tub," 384
Angelico, Fra, 230
Angels, Entertaining, 158
" Angelus," Millet's, 259
Anglican Catholic, 342
Animals understanding, 77
Annuity, Outliving, 374
Ansidei Raffaelle, The, 145 et

sea.

Antechambers, Publishers', dis-
tasteful, 373

Anthony, S., 56

Anthropomorphise, 266

Anthropomorphising the Deity,
309

Antinous, 388

Antitheses, 58

Antony and Cleopatra, 156

Ants, 266

Aosta, 206

Apollos, 325

Apologia, 370-4

Apology for the Devil, 217

Apple-woman, 243

Appoggiatura, .^12
Apprentices, Virtuous and Idle,
326

Appropriating, 122, 299
Apricot tree, 81
Aquila, 265

Archbishop of Canterbury, 285

— of Heligoland, 235
Archimedes, 344
Arctic volcano, 179
Argument, 165, 328
Argument and Assertion, 164
Arnold, 386

Arnold, Dr., 365

Arnold, Matthew, 184, 200,

202, 203, 380
Arnolfini, John, 256
Art and Trade, 170, 171

— and Usefulness, 173, 174

— Difficulties in, 102, 104
—-Early, 154

— Great and Sham, 137

— Greatness in, 108

— Improvement in, 139

— Life and, 351

— Money and Religion, 229

— of Covery, 180

— of Propagating Opinion,
164

— Schools, 2, 136
Arts, The, 107

— Conveyancing and the, 96

— Money and the, 171, 172
Article-dealing, Literature and,

170

Articles, Essays, Stories, Un-
written, 229

Artist, The, and the Shop-
keeper, 169

Artists a dumb folk, 128, 129

Asceticism, 291

" As cheers the sun," 120

Asinometer, 184

Asplenium Trichomanes, 272

Assertion and Argument, 164

Assimilation 82, 205

— of rhythm, 71, 210
Association, 65, 97

— Painting and, 138

— Unconscious, 65
Assonances, 383
Assyrian bas-reliefs, 242
Astrology, 61

Astronomical Speculation, An,
232

Athanasian Creed, 323, 324
Atheism, 230
Atheist, 315, 316

— Theist and, 337
Atheists, 275
Athenaeum (Club), 173
Athenceum, 376
Atoms, 73, 83, 84

— and Fixed Laws, 72
Atrophy, 231

Attempts at Classification, 303
Audience, What, to write for,
109

Auld Robin Gray, 267
Aurora Borealis, 269
Author, An, the worst person

to write his own notes,

215

" Author of Erewhon," The,
an article by Desmond Mac-
Carthy in the Independent
Review, 6

Authoress of the Odyssey, The,
378

Authoress of the Odyssey, The,
5, 187, 196, 199, 35°, 368,
376

Authors, 364

Authors, Society of, 373

Automata, 289

Babes and Sucklings, The Book
of, 229

Babies, Night-Shirts and, 85,
86

Index 401

Baby and Great Northern A

Shares, 53 0
Baby-getting, Justifiable, 289
Bach Choir concert, 123
Bach, Emmanuel, 126
Bach, John Sebastian, 110-
113, 120, 121, 123

— Appropriating from, 121

— Handel and, 112
Bachelor incarnate, 33
Backing one's own opinion, 335
Backwards, living, 292
Bacon, Lord, 25, 150
Bacon for Breakfast, 33
Baker, Mr. John H., 288
Baker Street, 251
Balance, The Flying, 231
Ballad, Refrain for, 231
Ballard, William, 2, 225, 244
Balloon, miraculous, 296
Balmoral, Countess of, 316
Bankruptcy Acts, Tentative, 18
Bank's action, Failure of, 91
Baptism, Infant, Doubts as to

efficacy of, 1
Barley-water, 239
Barnard's Inn, 131, 153, 237
Barocco, 260
" Barrel-Organs, " 41
Barrister principle, 340
Barristers, The two at Ypres,

255-8
Basaiti, Marco, 150
Basel, 4, 153, 376, 381
Baselessness, The, of our ideas,

309, 310
Basis of Life, The, 227
Bateson, Professor, f.r.s., 7
Bath, Wife of, 262
" Batti, batti," 122
Baxter, Richard, 326
Beale, Sir Wm. Phipson, Bart.,

k.c, m.p., 8, 253
Beard, 311

Bears, The Three, 277, 278

402

Beauties of Nature, 270
Beauties Sleeping, 116
Beauty, 335> 3^9
Bed-key, 65
Bee, 49, 62, 266, 355
Beer, 312

Beer and my cat, 86, 87
Bees, 280

Beethoven, no, 111, 115, I22 >

126, 132, 258, 263, 264
Beginning, 312
Belgian Town Fairs, 345
Bellini, 13, 135. r 49, 15°* I 5 2 >

173, 179, 188, 235, 257, 258,

357> 376, 378
Bellini, Trying to buy a, 152
Bellinzona, 260, 272
Bells, 85, 246, 263, 266, 267
Berg (Swedish painter), 243
Berlioz, 133
Bernard, St., 267
Bertoli and his Bees, 280
Biella, 342
Billiard ball, 311
Billiard balls, 9
Biographical Statement, 1-8
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine,

k.c, m.p., 7
Birth, 289

Birth and Death, Functions of
one another, 15

— Fear of, 289

— The hour of, Praying for,
289

— Unconscious, 16
Birthright, My, 182
Bishop, an English one at

Siena and S. Gimignano,
274-6
Bishop Ken, 214

— of Carlisle, 31, 32, 254
Chichester at Faido, 271,

272

Lichfield, 1

Peterborough, 250, 251

Index

Bishops, 327 t
Blake, Dante, Virgil and Tenny-
son, 183
Blasphemy, 348

— Real, 341

" Blessing, Honour, Adora-
tion/' 121
Blundering in business and in

science, 218
Bodies, Our, an art, 278

— Our trivial, 22
Body, the manifesto of the

mind, 362

— pincers, bellows, and stew-
pan, 18

— The, and its work, 21-23
Bohemian existence, 345
Book, 396

Book of Babes and Sucklings,

The, 229
Book of Essays, A, 368, 369
Book, What sells a, 161
Book-keeping, 4
Books, 107, 357

— and Children, 106

— like Souls, 95

— My, 106, 158 et seq., 366
et seq.

Analysis of the sales of,

368-9

— On the making of Music,
Pictures and, 93 et seq.

— Rules for the making of, 96,
97

. — should be tried by judge and

jury, 107
• — • The life of, 106
Boots, 240
Bore, a clever, 383
Born, What happens to you

when you are, 15, 16
Borrowing, 299

— in music, 123-9
Boss, Mrs., 364
Botticini, 146

Index

403

Bottom-hea^, 329
Boulogne, 252, 254, 263
Boycott, 369
Brahms, 130
Brain, 85

— My wasted, 398
Brandy and water, 211
Brave, The, deserve to lose the

fair, 234
Bread, Our daily, 352
Breakfast, Bacon for, 33
Breeding and the Mendelian

Discovery, 16
Breeding from weak opinion, 1 64

— Good, 34, 340
Bregaglia, Val, 264
Breton fishermen, 36
Brevity, 101
Brighton, 336

British Museum, 2, 5, 6, 8, 41,
81, 156, 161, 165, 204, 218,
237, 242

British Public, Handel and the,
113

" Brother, I am much pleased
with Samuel Butler,' ' 387

Brougham, Lord, his trousers,
261

Brown, Mrs., and spoiled tarts, 9
Browne medals, 292
Browning, Mrs., 186
Buddha, 255
Buddhism, 337
Buff on, 3, 107, 378
Bug, The smell of a, 246
Bunyan, 326, 327

— and Others, 188 et seq.

— and the Odyssey, 191
Burglars, 23

Buried alive before marriage,

29,-, 294
Burleigh, Lord, and Eumaeus,

195

Burlesque, 391
Burton (Anatomy), 311

'Bus conductor, 244

— driver, 244 #
Business, Science and, 217
Butcher-boy, 88

Butler, A. J., 186

Butler (Analogy), 311

Butler, Revd. Samuel, d.d., i,

4> 3 2 > 378 (see Life and

Letters of Dr. Butler)
Butler, Samuel, and the Press,

N.Z., 1, 2, 8, 39-42
Particulars of his life and

works, 1-8

Portraits of, 3, 5

quoted by A. D. Darbi-

shire

see under Samuel Butler

Butler, Rev. Thomas, 1-4
Butler, Some future, 391
Butler, Thomas William Gale, 2

— Letter to, 53 et seq.
Butler's Stones, 288
Butterflies, 250, 306

Buzzv bee, How doth the

little, 266
Byron, 244

Calais, 213

— to Dover, 253, 254
Cam, 386

Cambridge, 1, 4, 6, 7, no, 253,
379

— Professorship of Fine Arts, 4
Canada, 3, 379

Canadians, French, 136
Cannibalism, 29, 30
Canon of Chichester, 271
Cant, 230

— and Hypocrisy, 341

" Cantab " (pseudonym), 304
Canterbury Museum, N.Z., 41
Canterbury Pilgrims, 262
Canterbury Province, 2
Canterbury Settlement, A First
Year in, i, 288, 369

404 Index

Canto Fermo, 267
Capping a success, 156
Caracal, The, 81
Carcassone, The Odyssey and a

tomb at, 198
Cards, leaving them at church,

Careful Investigation as En-
couraging Casuistry, 296

" Carefully," 290

Carestia, Zemrino, 198

Carle tti, Signora Cesira, 282

Carlisle, Bishop of, 31, 32, 254

Carrodus, 242

Cary's Art-School, 2

Casale-Monferrato, 270, 350

Cash and Credit, 168 et seq.

Cassell and Co., 201

Castelvetrano, Labourers at,
194

Casuistry, 296
Cat, Beer and my, 86, 87
Ideas and Mouse-Ideas, 216

— Saying " Hallelujah" to a, 65

— The Jumping, 339
Catherine, S., by Raffaelle, 146,

148, 149
Cathie. See Alfred Emery

Cathie
Catholic, A, 342
Catholicism, 333
Catholics, 336
Cato, Miss, 207
Cats, 238

Cattle drinking, 81
Cell, The primordial, 55
" Cellarius " (pseudonym), 2,

41, 46
Cells, Our, 84, 86, 89
Century Club, 157, 184, 379
Cephas, 33
Chance, 297, 322
Chancellor's Medal, 291
Chancery Lane, 87
Change, 313

Change of circumstances and

memory, 63
Change and Immorality, 29
Changes of substance cognised,

Channel for water, 348

— Passage, The, 255
Chapel, Primitive Methodist, 34 1
Chapman and Hall, 186
Chapters in Music, 130, 131
Character, A man's, and his

work, 188

— My, 187

Characteristics, Acquired, 96
Charing Cross, 70, 237
Charles Darwin and Samuel
Butler : A Step towards Re-
conciliation, 8, 376
Charles I, 233

Charybdis, Scylla and, 230,

326, 327
Chatto and Windus, 201
" Che faro," 132
Chemical Properties, 69
Cherubini, 100
Chiavenna, 261
Chichester, Bishop of and

Canon of, 271, 272
Chicken, 66, 69
Chickens, Clergymen and, 56

— Sailor Boy and, 245
Child-Birth, 106
Childish to deny or to attempt

to define God, 326
Children, Books and, 106

— Tracts for, 229
China, Mr. Gladstone selling

his, 165
Choice, 319, 320, 321

— of Subjects, 105
Chords, Common, 226
Chord, the Lost, 280
Christ, 236, 260, 324, 348

— and the L. and N. W. Rail-
way, 339

Index

405

Christ is Equilibrium, 73
Christs, Infant, 257
Christchurch, N.Z., 1, 2, 3, 40
Christian, The, 337, 352

— minister and bad £10 note,
190

— miracles, Improbability of,
335

Christianity, 230, 276, 311,
334> 335, 337, 34°, 342, 347,
35i, 35 2 > 375

— Society and, 350, 351
Christians, 350
Christmas at Boulogne, 254

— Eve, ivy and holly, 61
Christie's, 152, 165
Chronicles, 292

Church, The, 1 59, 307, 340, 366

and the Rectory, 334

and the Supernatural, 340

feasts of the, too much

neglected, 61

— of England, The, 338

— The English, abroad, 342
of Rome, 338

of the future, 229

Churches, The, in an equivocal

position, 190
Churchyard, living nearer to

the, 89
Cider, 387

Cima da Conegliano, 150
Cities, Unburying, 370
Civilisation in the Iliad, 196
Clacton Belle, 262
Claro, 272

Classical Review, The, 377
Classification, 218, 303
Clergy, The, 374

Ourselves and, 351

Clergyman, An English, 342, 343
Clergyman's Doubts, A, 3,

304-8, 380
Clergymen and Chickens, 56

— born not hatched, 56, 57

Clergymen and Doctors 226
Clifford's Inn, 2, 237

Euphemism, 238

Climbing, 103

Clodd, Mr. Edward, 379

Clothes, 36

Cobbe, Miss Frances Power, 207

Cobham, 231

Cobwebs in the dark, 60

Cock Tavern, The, 239, 240

Coffee, 273

Coins and words, 95

— of all nations, 277

— potential money, 95
Colborne-Veel, Miss, 40
Cold, 315

Colour, 141 et seq.

— shade and reputation, 138

— Words and, 144
Colourist, A great, 144
" Come, O Time," 116
Commentators, Homer and his,

196

Commerce, 341
Common Chords, 226

— form, 125

Commonplaces, Handel's, 115
Common Sense, 370

and Philosophy, 330

Reason and Faith, 328

The Voice of, 348

Compensation, 157
Competency, Vows of modest,
290

Complete Death, 355
Composition (painting), 140
Compression (literature), 100
Conceit left in the box as well

as Hope, 170
Conflict of duties, 84
Conscience, Jones's, 219
Consciousness, 73

— Vanishing, 53
Conservatism and Liberalism,

340

406

Index

Conservative, The healthy

stomach, 82
Contemplation, Man of, 367
Continued Identity, 353~5
Continuity of existence, 54
Contradiction in Terms, 164,

210, 299, 301, 314, 315, 316

et seq.

Contributions to evolution, 66
Con-venience, 310
Convenience, 301-3

— God and, 347

— Truth and, 297 et seq.

" Convey me to some peaceful

shore," 116
Conveyancing and the arts, 96
Conviction, 328, 329
Convictions, Our profoundest

are unspeakable, 93
Cooking, 81, 222
Cooper, Fenimore, 265
Copernicus, 302
Copies of notes, 363
Corelli, 188
Corn, 325, 326
Corn-laws, 342
Coroners' Inquests, 325
Corpse, 353
Corpse-hood, 354
Correggio, 146
Cosimo, S., 281
Costa, Sir Michael, 113
Costermongers of religion, 222
Coterie, Literary and Scientific,

369
Coton, 387
Cotton Factories, 21
Counsels of Imperfection, 24
Counterpoint, 5, 113, 267, 315
Countess of Balmoral, 316
Countries, Imaginary, 105
Cousin, my, 241, 242, 250
Covery, the art of, 180
Cow, 261, 285
Cow, eyes like a, 233

Cow-bells, 85, 267 #
Cows, 255, 308 •
Crea, 5

Creating, The less a man

creates the better, 143
Credit, Cash and, 168 et seq.

— System, The, 328
Credulous Eye, The, 138
Creeds, Wants and, 336
Creighton, Dr. Mandell, 250, 25 1
Cricket, 386

Crimea, The Grotta, 261
Crime and disease, Analogies

between, 375
Critic, A Lady, 156
Criticism, 107

— Diderot on, 187

— Musical, 123, 130

Critics and Others, To, 380, 391

— fitness and unfitness, 107
Cri velli Carlo, 146

Croesus and his kitchen-maid,

89-92
Crossing oneself, 274
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 376
Crows, 230, 266
Crucifixion, 324, 375
" Crucifixion " by Holbein, 153
Crumby Woman, 267
Costal Palace, 260
Cuckoo, 327, 337
Cunning, 315, 319, 320, 322, 323

Damiano, S., 281

Danaids, 344, 345

Dando, 242

Danse, La, 4, 376

Dante, 150, 183

Darbishire, Mr. A. D., 16

Dardanelles, 283-5

"Darwin among the Machines, "

2 > 8, 39-42 et seq.
Darwin, Charles, 3, 4, 8, 39, 40,

70, 161, 243, 265, 322, 339,

375, 376, 378

Index

Darwm, Erasmus, 3, 378
Darwin, Mr*Francis, f.r.s., 8,
243

" Darwin on the Origin of
Species. A Dialogue/' 1, 8,

Darwinians, 374
David, 214, 224, 230
David, Gheeraert, 147
Da Vinci, Leonardo, 257, 376,
37 8

Daughter, My, 249
Day, 195, 315
Day, Mr. Lewis, 253
Days, Our, 12

De Minimis non curat Lex, 209

Veritas, 299

Dead, 318, 357, 365, 370
" Deadlock in Darwinism/' 375,
376

Death, 22, 23, 79, 314, 315,
318, 353 et seq.

— A luxurious, 37

— and life, 93

— Apprehended, 382
beds, Christian, 229

— Bid him take, 359

— Birth and, 1 5

• — Complete, 355

— Foreknowledge of, 353

— Ignorance of, 356, 357

— Indifference to, undesirable,
214

— in life, 76

— is equilibrium, 73

— Life and, 355

— Making ready for, 229

— Preparation for, 362

— The Defeat of, 355

— The Dislike of, 55, 358, 359

— The Torture of, 355, 356

— unconscious, 16
Debts, 292

Decimal, Recurring, 6S
Defeat of Death, The, 355

Defencefulness, Odour of, 390
Definitions, 220, 221
" Deh Vieni," 252 *
Deity, The Homeric and the

Pall Mall Gazette, 33
Deliver us from evil, 213
Delphi, 351
Demand, 315
D'Enrico, 378
Dentist, My, 240
De profundis, 106
Descent with modification, 55
Design, 60, 61

— Memory and, 56 et seq.
Despising the world, 365
Destroy and fulfil, 335
Destruction and Death, 169

— of works of art, 179
Detail, 137, 138
Development, 95
Developments, Abnormal, 30 ,
Devil, 224, 226, 235, 236, 267

315

— A mischievous, 226

— An Apology for the, 217

— and God, 25

— God and the, 333, 334
Devils, 228

" Diary of a Journey " to take
MSS. of three of Butler's
books to Italy and Sicily, 7
Diavolo, Santo, 274
Dickens, Handel and, 134
Dickens and unconscious hu-
mour, 32
Dickens and Rochester, 32
Dictionary of National Bio-
graphy, The, 365
Diderot on criticism, 187, 188
Die, What happens to you

when you, 15, 16
Differences, 62, 83
Difficulties in Art, 102, 104
Diffuseness, 101
Digestion, 82

408

Index

Dim religious light, The, 338
Dinners, Accumulated, 365
Disappointing person, Myself

a, 158
Disappointment, 311
Discobolus, 388, 389
Discords, 129, 130, 225
Disease and crime, Analogies

between, 375

— The fear - of - giving - them -
sclves-away, 293

Diseased physically, 296
Diseases of friendship, 230, 382
Disgrace, 397
Disjoining, 21

Dislike of Death, The, 358, 359,
381

Dissimilarity, 55
Dissolution, 357, 358
Dives, 362
Divorce, 234, 252
Doctors, 38

— and clergymen, 226
Doctors' Commons, 244
Dodging fatigue, 27

Bog, 137, 220, 245, 246, 390
" Doge," Bellini's, 173
Doing, Worth, 369
Doll, 346

Dolls, Prayers are as, 212
Domenichino, 150
Dominant, 129, 130, 226, 260
Don, Captain, 274
Donatello, 195
Doncaster, Mrs., 238
Don Giovanni, 131
Dorian mode, 129
Doubt and hope, 369, 370
Doubts, A Clergyman's, 304
Dover, 253, 254
Dow, Gerard, 99, 100
Dowe, Mrs., 259
Dowie's shop, 240
Dragon, Andromeda's, 225
Dragons, 160

Drapers, Scientists and, 218
Draper's store, 30^$
Drapery, 147
Dress, 107, 108

Drinking, My books do not

take to, 366
Drivel from one of the Kings-
leys, 34
Drones, Pedals or, 225
Dropping off of leaves and

guests, 230
Druggist's store, 303
Drunkard, 231, 349
Drunkenness, 342, 343
Drury Lane theatre, 131
Duckling, The Ugly, 231
Ducldings, A string of, 84
Ducks on the Serpentine, 63
Dullness, 179, 193
Dullnesses of virtue, 28
Dull people, 294
Dumb-bells academic, 219
Dunstable, John, 11 1
Dunstan's, St., bells, 246
Dupes, 296

Duties, Conflict of, 84
Duty, 231
Dvorak, 130
Dynamical, 67, 68, 73

Eagle, 1, 5, 6, 379, 380
Eagle, 390

" Eagles were not so swift," 65
"Earnest Clergyman," An, 304,
308

Eat and drink, Let us, 361
Eating and proselytising, 81
Eating grapes downwards, 98,
99

' f Ecce Homo ' ' by Correggio, 1 46
Ecclesiastes, 201, 203
Eclat, 370
Editing notes, 215
Effort of retaining evacua-
tions, 17

Index

409

Effort to live, -158
Egg, 16, 67, 69, 70, 85, 100,
249, 272, 291, 363, 390

— and hen, 16, 390
powders, 245

Eggs do not become clergymen,
56

— New-laid, 249

Ego and non-ego, 321-3
Electric light, 242
Elementary Morality, 24 et seq.
Eliot, George, 160
Elmsley writing to Dr. Butler,
215

Elysian plain, 397
Embankment, Thames, 237,
238

Emb^o, 16, 354, 361
Emendators of corrupt text, 2 86
Empire, The Roman, 206-7
End, Let me not know mine,
212

— Longing for, 355, 356
Endings, 312

Endowing science and religion,
340

Energy, An, 76

Enfant Terrible, The, of litera-
ture, 183
England musically-minded, 128
Englefield Green, 249, 250
English Church abroad, The,
342

— composers, Old, 115

— fisherman, 36
Englishman, A stupid old, 285
Englishmen, Italians and, 207
Enquiry, Every, pursued with

passionate longing, 373
Entertaining angels, 158

— Myself not very, 158
Entrails, 330
Entuning the sky, 165
Ephemeral and Permanent

Success, 180 et seq.

Epiphany, 223

Equal temperament, Philo-
sophy and, 327
Equilibrium, 73, 78, 79
Equivocal generation, 72
Erewhon, 2, 3, 16, 26, 39 et seq.,
106, 155-8, 161, 186, 187,
252, 288, 289, 296, 317, 368,

37 2 > 374> 375

— The geography of, 288

— The Germs of, 39 et seq.

— the oracle, 26

— Dinners, The, 7, 8
Erewhon Revisited, 6, 369, 375

Material for, 288 et seq.

Erewhon to be visited by the

son of the original writer, 296
" Erl Konig," 133
Ernest Pontifex, 115
Erudite Research, Society for

the Repression of, 180
Eryx, Mount, 5
Esau, 268

Essays, A Booh of, 368, 369

Essays, Articles, Stories, Un-
written, 229

Essays on Life, Art and Science,
5> 6, 369, 376

Esther, Book of, 201

Eternal matter and mind, 314

Ether, Waking up, 68

" Ethics," Letter signed, 304-8,
380

Etruscan Urns at Volterra,

276-9
Euclid, 330, 331
Eumaeus and Lord Burleigh,

195

Europe in a blaze, 219
Evacuations, 17
Evans, R. W., 32
Evasive nature, 226
Evening Hymn, The, immoral,
214

Evidence, 217, 315, 335

4 io Index

Evidence for the Resurrection,

369, 375
Evil, 204, 205, 352
Evil One among the birds, An,

3°5

Evolution, 66, 332, 375
Evolution Old and New, 3, 4, 3,

66, 120, 368, 375
Ewe, 390

Ex nihilo nihil fit, 312, 314
Ex Voto, 5, 275, 368, 375
Examiner, 3, 7, 304, 380
Examiner's dinner, 291
Excellence, Physical, 26
Excess, 291
Excursion train, 229
Exercise, An Academic, 395
Exploding, Death wants, 358
Expression and existence, 95
Extracts from the Note-Books

of Samuel Bailer in the New

Quarterly, 7
Extremes, 315, 316

— meet, 25

Eyck, Van, 98, 99, H9> *53> 256
Eye, 138
Eyes, 139

— like a cow, 233
Eynsford, 247

Faddist, 361

Fads, Fancies and Theories, 232
Faesch, Hans Rudolf, 381
Faido, 263, 271
Failure of bank's action, 91
Failure, My, 370-4

— One form of, 224

Fair Haven, The, 2, 368, 374,

375, 382
Faith, 315, 330, 331, 336

— and Reason, 171, 333

— Common Sense and Reason,
328

— Logic and, 330

— Sanctified by, 351

Faith, the artist's, 171

— The test of, 360, 361
Faiths and formulae, 307
Falsehood, 299-301, 305
False love, 395
Fame, Posthumous, 360, 361
Family, The, 31
Family Prayers, 2, 230
" Fare you well," 394
Farrar, Archdeacon, crossing

the Channel, 213
Farringdon Street, 251
Fascination, 268
Fashion, 226, 278
Fate, 314, 319, 322
Father, My, and Shakespeare,

no wish to see him

again, 32
" Father of my poor music —
if such small," 398

— It is a wise tune that knows
its own, 122

Fatigue, Dodging, 27
Faust, 258
Fear of death, 356
Fear - of - giving - themselves-

away disease, 293
Fear of the Lord, 172, 204, 352
Feeling, 78-90

— Genuine, 1 85

Feline Languages, Professor of,

289, 290
Ferentino, 273
Ferrari, 198, 256, 376, 378
Fetter Lane, 237
Fetish- worship, 325
Fiction, The great characters

of, 217
Fielding, 191

Fille de Madame Angot, La, 260
Filosofia, La, 264
Filter, 280

Financial difficulties, 3, 4
Financier, Gladstone as a, 165

Index

411

Fine Ar?s, Professorship of, at

Cambridge, $
Finger-nail, A torn, 63
Fingers cut by hard and fast

lines, 170
Fire, 242
Firewood, 281

First Principles, 309 et seq.,

330, 33i

First Year in Canterbury Settle-
ment, A, 1, 288, 369

FitzGerald, James Edward, 39,
41, 42

Fitzwilliam Museum, 3, 385

Five-pound note, 64

Five shillings, 347

Fixed laws, Atoms and, 72

Flatter, Tuning death, 358

Fleet Street, 237-9

Flesh, 96, 332

Flies in the Milk- Jug, 216

Flint implement, 334

Flocks, 23, 398

Floods, 235

Flowers, Finding, 375

Flushing, 383, 384

Fly, The, 305

Folly, Glacial periods of, 197
Fore-knowledge of death, 353
Foraminifera, 230, 266
Formicomorphise, 266
Fooling around, 230
Foolishness and wisdom, 168
" Forgetting and forgot," 116
Forgive, We like to, 349
Forgiveness and Retribution,
349

Forsyth, Mr., 240
Fortune, good or ill, 223, 322, 371
Fortunes, 378
Foundation, 330
— Superstitious, 309
Francis, St., 230
Freeman, Froude and, 186
Freethinker, 315, 352

Freethinking Father, 231
Free-will, 72, 314, 315, 321, 32^2

— and Necessity, 316 et seq.
French town fairs, 345
Frenchmen, 207

Friends, 359, 364, 371
Friendship, 141, 230, 382
Froude and Freeman, 186
Fugue, 96, 100, 116, 125, 260
Fundamental Principles, 351
Funerals, 342, 343
Furber, 241, 242
Fuseli and nature, 138
Future, Knowledge of, fatal, 23 2

— and Past, 220

— state, Ameliorating the, 293

Gadshill and Trapani, 193, 194

Gaetano, 234

Gaining one's point, 348

Galatea, 398

Gallows, 318

Gamp, Mrs., her speech trans-
lated into Greek verse, 393
Garlic, 270, 310
Garner, Professor, 185
Garvagh Madonna, 148
Gauntlet of Youth, 108
Gaudenzio Ferrari, 198, 256,

37 6 > 378
Gavottes, Minuets and Fugues, 4
Gear, Gathering, 388
General Confession, I cannot

repeat it unreservedly, 184
Generalism, Specialism and, 222
Generation, Equivocal, 72

— addressing the next, 159
Genius, 159, 174 et seq., 259

— and love, 176

— and providence, 180

— and the unkind fairy, 176

— and the world, 176

— a nuisance, 180
Gentleman, 36

— The Japanese, 245, 246

412

Genuine feeling, 185
George, St., Perseus and,
George I and II, 113

— IV, 242

Gerino da Pistoja, 276
German music, 127, 128
Germans, 207
Germs, 272

— of Erewhon and of Life and
Habit, 39 et seq.

— within germs, 70
Getting on, 372
Giacalone, Signor Ignazio, 194
Gig, 281

Gimignano, S., Siena and, 274-6

Giorgionc, 135, 152

Giotto, 149, 154

Girl, My son would probably
be a, 366

Giusti, Giuseppe, 379

Glacial periods of folly, 197

Glaciers, 77

Gladstone, 165, 212

Gladstonian, 301

Glory of God, The, 34

' ' Glory of the Lord ,' 'And the , 1 1 6

Glory as a test of respecta-
bility, 281

Gnosis, 123

Goats, 267

God, 93, 225, 226, 293, 301, 308,
309, 3i4- l6 > 324-6, 330, 332,
334» 337* 339, 34*> 34^, 347*
350, 351, 363, 388-90, 394

— and Convenience, 347

Flesh, 332

Life, 332

Mammon, 24

Man, 33, 94

Philosophies, 328

the Devil, 25, 333, 334

the Unknown, 324, 326

— is Love, 226

God the Known and God the
Unknown, 3, 7

Index

Gods, 309 *

— and Prophet, 333
God's Laws, 26
Goethe, 258

Gogin, Mr. Charles, 2, 4, 5, 100,

152, 243, 245, 246, 255
Gogin, the Japanese Gentleman
and the Dead Dog, 245, 246
Going away, 228
Gold, 172
mines, 224

— thread, 146, 147
Good-breeding, 34, 36
Good Faith, The limits of, 229
Good may come, That, 230
Goodwin, Harvey, Bp. of Car-
lisle, 31

Gopsall, 22

Gospel of Hellas, The, 389

Montreal, The, 389

Gosse, Mr. Edmund, c.b., ll.d., 8
Gothic woman, 247
Gounod-Barnby, 251
Gower Street, 266, 251
Gozzoli, Benozzo, 275
Grail, Holy, 290
Grain, The Isle of, 231
Grandfather, My, and myself,

i7 2 > *73
Grape-filter, 280
Grapes, Eating them down-
wards, 98, 99

— Sour, 60
Grass, 324, 325
Gratitude, 339

— and Revenge, 340, 341
Gravel, a tool, 19, 20
Gravity, 77

Great art and sham art, 137
Great Bear, The, 239
Great Eastern, The, 43
Great Northern A Shares, 53
Great Russell St., 326
Great things, 179
Great Unknown Source, 352

Great works, io5
Greatest men, The world and

its, 177
Greatness, 219

— in art, 108

— England's, 343
Greece, 5, 283
Greek Art, 388
Greeks, The, 200-4, 20 7> 338
Griffin, The, 238
Grosvenor, Hon. Mrs. Richard,

251

Grotta Crimea, 261

— del toro, 199
Ground-bass, 398
Growth, 297

Grumbling, Saints, 211, 212
Guercino, 150
Guido, 150

Guinea-pig review success, 372
Gulliver's Travels, 190, 202
Gumption, 293
Gurney, Edmund, 263
Gyges, The true, 52

Haberdasher, Mr. Spurgeon's,
389

Habits, Bad, 231
Habits, On breaking, 220
Hack-writer, No chance of be-
coming a, 167
Hades, 343-5
" Hailstone Chorus," 175
Hailstones, 397
Hair, 356
Hallelujah, 65

" Hallelujah Chorus," The, 115,

173
Halter, 327
Hamlet, 173, 175, 391
Hamlet, Don Quixote and Mr.

Pickwick, 217
Hammer and lever, 20
Hampstead 'bus, 244
Hand, The, 49

Index 413

Hands, 49

Handel, 1, 13, 14, 22, 63, io\
110-14, 120, 121, 123, 126-8,
131-3, 161, 174, 178, 179,
188, 192, 252, 259, 263, 299,
357> 363> 3^5> 377. 378, 384.
397> 398

— a conservative, 115

— and a letter to a solicitor, 119

Bach, 112

Dickens, 134

Dr. Morell, 115

Ernest Pontifex, 115

Homer, 112

humanitarian nonsense,

119

Madame Patey, 1 13, 263

Marriage, 119

Music, no et seq>

Shakespeare, 114

Tennyson, 115

the British Public, 113

the Speaking Voice, 117

the Wetterhorn, 118

— Festival, At a, 133, 134
Handelian, A Yankee, 114
Handel's Commonplaces, 115

— Rules for tuning, 128

— Shower of rain, 120
Handicapped people, 103
Hanging, 317, 341
Hanging the dead, 365
Happiness, 228, 345, 356

— The greatest, of the greatest
number, 294

" Hark how the Songsters," 122
Harmonics, 303, 315, 358
Harmony, 315
Harris, Mrs., 393
Harrow Weald, 248
Harwich, 253
Hartman, Von, 3
Hartog, Professor Marcus, 7
Hate and Love, 83
Hating, 216

414

Hating, Loving and, 205, 206

IJaweis, Revd. H. R., 241

Haydn, 111, 126

" He saw the lovely youth/' 121

Heads, Veiled, 235

Health, Good, 370

— Money and Reputation, 37
Heat, 315

— and cold relative, 76
Heatherley's, 2, 139, 225
Heatherley's Holiday, Mr., 3
Heaven, 394

— and Hell, 35

— for wicked people, 290

— The Kingdom of, 106, 168,
169, 363

Hebe, 345

Heckmann Quartet, The, 263
Hedge and train, 21
Hedging the Cuckoo, 327
Heir to a fortune, 344
Heligoland, The Archbishop of,

Hell-Fire, 343-5
Hell, Heaven and, 35
Hellas, The gospel of, 389
Hen, 16, 249, 390
Henry IV, 156
Henry VI, 156
Herculaneum, 230
Hercules, 345
Hercules, 118
Heredity, 61, 62, 332, 375

— and Memory, 57, 66
Heroes, 364

Hering, Dr. Ewald, of Prague,

3, 57> 66
Hertfordshire, 64
Herodotus, 379, 384
Hesiod, 316

" Hey diddle diddle," 266
Hicks, Mrs., 247, 24S
Higgledy-Piggledy, 215 et seq.,
230

Hindhead, 85

Index

Hired, Waitingnto be, 194

Historical Society of St. John's

College, Cambridge, 7
History, Unsettling, 250
Hoare, Henry, 63 et seq.
Hobson, 385
Hogarth, 188, 326
Hokitika Pass, 288
Holbein, 107, 235, 378
Holbein at Basel, 153

— A note on his drawing La
Danse at Basel, 4

Holbein Card, A, 368
Holborn, 237

— Viaduct Station, 381
Holly on Christmas Eve, 61
Holy Ghost,The, 1 6o } 1 72, 1 75 , 3 4 8
Home, 32

Homer, 32, 33, 178, 179, 192,
260, 278, 363, 366, 378

— and the Basins, 254

— and his Commentators, 196

— Handel and, 112
Homer's Hot and Cold Springs,

283-7

Homeric Verse, 380, 393
l'Homme, le Style e'est, 107
Homoeopathy, British Associa-
tion of, 7
Homo Unius Libri, The Posi-
tion of a, 155 et seq.
Honesty, 122

— a low virtue, 162
Honour after death, 174

— "ceaseth," 316, 390
Honour, Codes of, 93
Honours, Posthumous, 367
Hoo, the Hundred of, 231
Hoodwinking the Public, 162
Hooghe, Be, 153, 179, 188,

235- 256
Hoopoes, 283

Hope, Doubt and, 369, 370

— Conceit left in the box as
well as, 170

Index

Horace, 48, 201 207

— at the Post office in Rome,
262

Horse, 390

Hot and Cold Springs, 283-7
Housemaid, Moliere's, 109
Hudibras, 157, 159
Human wishes, The vanity of,
219

Humanitarian nonsense, 119
Humanity, Types of rich and

poor, 51, 52
Humming-bird, 391
Humour, 11, 165, 291, 309

— My, 166

" Humour of Homer," The, 5,
255

Humour, Unconscious, and
Dickens, 32

— Unconscious, Myself and, 166
Hundred, a, years hence,

Writing for, 109
Hungarian music, 127, 128
Hutton, Richard Holt, 380
Huxley, 232, 339
Hyam, Mr., 241
Hybrids, their sterility, 66
Hyde Park, 243
Hydra, 101
Hydrogen, 77

Hymn, The Evening, immoral,

214
Hymns, 251

Hypocrisy, Cant and, 341

415

Ice, 179, 329

Ichthyosauri, 48

Ida, Mount, 283

Ideas, Cat and Mouse-, 216

— Incoherency of New, 216

— New, 106, 216

— Our, 216

— our, Baselessness of, 309, 310

— shadows, 95

— Words and, 65

Identity, 54, 60, 210

— Continued, 353-5 n

— Personal, 375
Idle Apprentice and Virtuous,

326

Idle classes, 335
Idyll, An, 233
Ightham Mote, 250
Ignorance, 339

— of Death, 356

— the basis of Knowledge, 57
Ignotius complex, 327
Ignotum simplex, 327
Iliad, The, 5, 6, 173-5, 185,

186, 196, 254, 255, 277, 376,
377> 380
Iliad in English Prose, The, 6,
368

Ilium and Padua, 195
Ill-used, 371
Illusion, 229, 323, 357
Image, God in man's own, 309
Imaginary Countries, 105

— Worlds, 232
Imagination, 310, 312
Imaum, 285
Immorality, 230

— Change and, 29
Immortal to oneself, 357
Immortality, 14, 362.

— A good average three-score
years and ten of, 14

Immune to poverty, 225
Immutable law, 322
Imperfect Lady, The, 273
Imperfection, Counsels of, 24
Importances, Relative, 97, 100
Impression, A residuary, 273
Impressionism, 153
Improvement in Art, 139, 140
Improvidence, 322
Improvidence, Providence and,
223

" In sweetest harmony," 65
Inaccuracy, 300, 349

416

Index

Inarticulate Touches, 137
license across the dining-room

table, 274
Increateness of Matter, 314
Increment of knowledge, 312
Incoherency of New Ideas, 216
Incomprehensions, Two, 323,

324

Indifference to death unde-
sirable, 214
Indigestion, 82
Individual, 358

— The, and the race, 15

— The, and the world, an-
tagonism between, 12

Individuality, 319

Infamy after death, Unde-
served, 361

Influence, Moral, 81

Influenza, Severe, 75

Ingenuity, 305

In Memoriam, 263

" In Memoriam to H. K. F.,"
393-5

Innocents, Massacre of, 270
Inoculation, 227
Inorganic, Organic and, 19, 77-8
Inscription on chapel, 341
Inspiration, 179
Instinct, 266
Insults, Fancied, 61
Intellectual Rattlesnake, 268

— Self-indulgence, 27
Intelligence, 77, 78

— The, Omnipresence of, 77
Intentions of parties to a deed,

96-

Intoxication, 343
Introduction of Foreign Plants,
281

Intuition, 315
Ionian mode, 129
Iphis, 398

Irreligion of Orthodoxy, The, 350
Irving, Washington, 265

" Is/' 315 ^ •

" Is not/' 315 •

Isaac, 231

Ishmael, 231

Ismail Gusbashi, 2S3-7

Italian peasant, 36

— Priesthood, On the, 379
Italians and Englishmen, 207

— The, 207

— The early composers, 115,127
Italian trips, 371

Italy, i, 2, in, 342

Ithaca, 5

Ivanhoe, 279

Ivy Hatch, 311

Ivy on Christmas Eve, 61

Japanese Gentleman, The, 245,

246
Jephtha, 120

Jesus Christ, 341, 352, 375
Jewels in pictures, 147
Jews, The, 200-4

— The return of the, 239
Jig in G. Minor, Handel's, 101
Job, 202-4

Johnians, 384, 385

John's, St., College, Cambridge,

i> 3, 6, 7, 379
Joining, 21

Jones, Henry Festing, 3, 4, 5,
7, 8, 65, 114, 121, 132, 133,
153, 219, 237, 239, 246, 250,
253, 376

Jones, Tom, 364

Jones, Tom, 202

Jordan, 398

Joseph Andrews, 190

Joshua, 120

Journal of Philology , 195
Jove, 345

Jubilee Sixpence, 136
Judas Maccabaus, 117, 118,120
Judging the Dead, 365
Juggles, Words are, 95

Index

417

Juices, Gastric, lose their co-
gent fluency, 82
Jumping Cat, The, 339
Jupiter, 338
Jupp, Mrs., 364 .
Justice, 301, 340
Justifiable baby-getting, 289
Jutes, 350

Jutland and " Waitee," 350

Karma, Squaring the account,

" Karma," Three Sonnets, 396

Kemp, Mr., 131, 153

Ken, Bishop, 214

Kensington Gore, 243

1 ^nsington (South) Art

•chools, 2
K*-r, Miss Grainger, 7
KVrtoum, Sack of, 244
Kindliness, 352
Kindly disposition, A, 331
Kindness, 299
Kinetic theory, 376
Kingdom of Heaven, The, 106,

468, 169, 363
Kingdom, The Super-Organic,

78

Kingdom, The Unseen, 320

Kingdoms, The mineral, vege-
table, animal, mechanical, 43

King's College Chapel, 385

King's Cross, 251

King's Parade, 385

Kingsleys, Drivel from one of
the, 34

Kitchen-maid, Croesus and his,
89-92

Kitten, Naming, 108

Knife, 285

— and string, 21

Knives and forks, 99

Know, Trying to, 160

Knowing what gives us Plea-
sure, 207-9

Knowledge, 312

— based on ignorance, 57 9

— is Power, 102

Known from the Unknown,

The, 346
Kosmos, 309
Krause, Dr., 3

L. & N.W. Railway, Christ and

the, 339
Lady, An aged, 392
Lady Critic, A, 156
Lady getting photographed and

why, 163
Lady, The Imperfect, 273
Lady well, 260
Lamarck, 3, 378
Lamb, 390

Lang, Andrew, 166, 197
Langar, 1, 260
Langton, Robert, 32
Language, 65
Lark, 391

Larken, Mr. E. P., 236
Last Supper, 257
Latham, Revd. Henry, 253
Laundress, My, 313
Law Courts, 341
Law, The written and the un-
written, 95
Lawrence, Gulf of St., 269
Laws of God, 26
Lawson, Marmaduke, 364
Lawyers, 339

Lay-figure, The model and the,

136, 137
Layard, Sir Henry, 370-
Lazarus, 362-
Learning, 102-5
Leather Lane, 237
Leave-taking, 228
Legs, Manzi's too hairy, 245
Leonardo da Vinci, 257, 376,

378
Lethe, 358

4i8

Index

nervous

Letter, A, and

System, 85
— to a solicitor, Handel and a

H9> 120 '
Letters, 364

Leventina, Val, 271, o* 0
Lever, 20, 43 J
Leverrier, 313

Lex, JDe minimis non curat, 200
-Liar, The good, made, not born
305

Liberalism and conservatism
34° ;
Lie, An absolute, 299
Lies, 301

Life, 10, 11, i 5> 3I5 8
332, 354-6, 362, 384 6 3 '

— A means of prolonging, 229

— A short, and a merry one
aimed at, 14 y

-after death, 13, 23,383, 397,

~ ^ art. 351, 352

— and Death, 93, 355
Ltfe and Habit, 3 , 8, 30, 35) 3g

ei *q.. 41, 66, 7 i 3 84 ; 1 .6
157, 166, 185, 186,225 249
_ 2 5o, 337, 368, 372 49 '

and of, 39 seq.
Ltfe and Letters of Dr. Butler
t v ' I ° i J 2 T 15 ' 364, 368, 374j o 7 ~
Life and Love, 227 d77

— beyond the grave, iq

— easier got than kept, i 4I

— God and, 332 *

— in death, 76

— in others, 13

— is it worth Hving ? I7

— My squandered, iq

— My, the extremes of plea-
sure and pain, 13 P

— My virtuous/ 28

— now an equation of only 93
unknown quantities, 57 7 99

106

Come, The,

352

I Life of books, The

— of the World to
229, 360 et seq.

— Posthumous, 358

— The Rules of, n, 35I

— The truest, 361, 362
Light and Shade, 140, 328
~ The Dim Religious, 338
Limbs, Extracorporaneous, so

5 1

Lincoln's Inn Fields, 237
Lines, Hard-and-fast, cut, 170
Lips of living men/' 397 7

Literary Man's Test, A; 109

— -rower, 108

— Sketch-Book, 237
Literature and Article-dealing,

— Difficulties in, 102, 104

— potion not words, 96

— Many mansions in the king-
dom of, 181 to

— The Enfant Terrible of, 187

— useful and useless, 17a J
Living and non-living 71

-m others is the true life, 1,
Litigation, 338, 33 9 ' ^

Lizards, 11

" Loathsome Urns " 116
Logic 329-31, 333, 346

— and Faith, 330

— and Philosophy, 329
Lohengrin, 35 y 6 9
Lohengrin, 263
Lombard portals, 152

-Tr^Vs 61 * 237 ' 342
London wall, A, i 42
Longden, Mrs, no
Longevity, 66
Longfellow, 226
Lord of the Isles, 262
Lord's Prayer, The, 349

Lord, And the Glo^of the

Index

419

Lord, The, banging two of his
children, 134

— The Fear of the, 172, 204,
352

— The Voice of the, 348

— What is Man ? 9 et seq.
Loredano Loredani, 258
Losing cats, 238

" Lost Chord/' The, 280
Louis XVI, 260
Love, 226, 332

— and Hate, 83

— and Life, 227

— cut short by death, 359, 381

— dried up and withered, 359,
381

— Genius and, 176

— God is, 226

— not blighted by death, 359,
381

shop, The, 206

Lovers, Two, 395

Loving and Hating, 205, 206

Loving God, 33

Lucifer, 25

Luck, 315, 319, 320, 322, 323,

— and Success, 181

Luck or Cunning ? 4, 66, 173,

368, 375, 376
Lucky and Unlucky, 220
" Lucubratio Ebria," 2, 8, 39,

41, 47 et seq.
Lugano, 131
Luino, Bernardino, 131
Lute, The little rift within the,

16

Lydian mode, 129
Lying, 300, 304, 308

— Dissertation on, 304

Macbeth witch, 248
MacCarthy, Mr. Desmond, 6, 7
McCormick, Revd. Canon
Joseph, d.d., 379

McCulloch, 119, 229
Machines, 45-7, 50 9
Madingley, 387
Madonna, 230, 334

— Ansidei, 145-51

— di S. Sisto, 257

— Garvagh, 148
Magazines, The West-End, 181
Magdalene, Mary, 228
Mahomedan, The, 337

Maid, My books' mother's, 366
Maigre, Dining, 255, 256
Mairengo, 271

Maitland, Mr. J. A. Fuller, 7
Makeshifts, 20
Making notes, 100, 101
Making of Music, Pictures and
Books, On the, 93 et seq.

— Literature, Music and Pic-
tures, Rules for, 96, 97

Mamma, Does she know ? 243
Man, 9, 10, 50, 361

— and his Organism, 18

— a tool-box, 18, 86

— domesticated by machines,
45

— God and, 33

" Man in Vain," 122

Man, Lord, what is ? 9 et seq.

— shot out of a cannon, 78

— The, behind the words, 94
Manners Makyth Man, 228
Manning, Cardinal, 255
Man's Place in Nature, 31
Manzi, the model, 245
Marbot, 186
Mares'-Nests, My, 377
Market Square, 385
Marriage, 227, 341

— and the Turk, 285

— Handel and, 119

— of Inconvenience, 230

— Offers of, 227
Marrying and regretting, 284
Martin Chuzzlewit, 380, 393

420

Mary, The Great Saint, 385

— Jlagdalene, 228

— Where's my ? 311
Masterpieces, 292

Masters, the old, and their
pupils, 135

Match-box, 286

Material for Erewhon Re-
visited, 288 et seq.

— for a proj ected Sequel to Alps
and Sanctuaries, 259 et seq.

Matter, 67, 68, 73

Matter, Mind and, 74 et seq.

— Opinion and, 80

— Subdivisible, 82
Maximum, 209, 299

" May he be damned for ever-
more," 392

Meanness, Vices of, 34

Meannesses of Virtue, 34

Meat-eating, 197

" Mecsenas," 262

Mechanical life, kingdom,
world, 43

Mediocrity, 187, 188

Me-e-at, 65

Megalanthrope, 309

Melchisedec, 33

M&Aopra ravra, 397

Member of Parliament, 314

Memnon, 244

Memoriam, In, 263

Memoriam, In, To H. R. F., 393

Memory, 61, 62, 69, 71, 312,
332, 375

— a way, an echo, 58

— and Design, 56 et seq.

— and heredity, 57, 66

— and Mistakes, 62, 63

— and Rhythm, 58

— and Viscosity, 58

" Memory as a Key to the
Phenomena of Heredity," 56

" Memory as a Universal Func-
tion of organised matter," 66

Index

Memory of a lov^cut short by
death, 359, 381

— Reproduction and, 59

— Shocks and, 60

— Slipshod, 306

— The physics of, 66

— Unconscious, 59
Men and Monkeys, 185

— and Women, 226
Men of Science, 219
Mendelejeff's Law, 66
Mendelssohn, no, 115, 149,

150, 258, 261
" f Men's work we have/ quoth
one, ' but we want them,' "
396

Mental and Physical, 69

— and Physical pabulum, 81
Mental Evolution in Animals, 4
Mental stomachs, Our, 310

— Suffering, 370
Men, The finest, 36
Meo, Gaetano, 114
Mercy, 307, 361
Meredith, George, 185, 186
Merian, Baron, 364
Mesopotamia, 288

Messiah, 22, 114, 116, 173, 259,
380

Metaphysics, 266
Meteorological Observatory,

282, 283
Metsu, 99, 100
Michael Angelo, 324
Michael, S., 224
Microbe of knowledge, 204
Microcosm, 309
Middleman of mind, 364
Middle way, The, 331
Mieris, van, 99
Mikado, The, 131
Militant, 374
Milk, 261, 285
Milk- Jug, Flies in the, 216
Milkman, 238

Millet, 259 -
Mills, Joanna, 364
Mind, 67, 68, 73

— and Matter, 74 et seq,

— An Open, 300
Minerva, 338

Miniature, Painting with mop,
94

Minimis, De, non curat lex,
209-1 1

non curat Veritas, 299

Minimum, 209, 299
Minority and Majority, 290
Minus nothing, 316
Miracle of forming opinion, 163

— of nothings forming some-
thing, 210

Miracles, 335~7> 34°
"Miraculous Draught of

Fishes," 276
Mischief, Professor of, 291
Mischievous devil, 226
Misery, 345

Misrepresentation, 366, 367,
369

Missionaries, 335
Missolonghi, 244
Mistakes, Memory and, 62, 63

— The Power to Make, 77
Mistress, The Happy, 231
Misunderstanding, Human, 229
Mixo-Lydian mode, >29
Mnemosyne, 358
Model, The, and the Lay-
Figure, 136, 137

Moderns and Ancients, 193
Modern Simony, 172
Modes, The ecclesiastical, 129
Modest competency, Vows of,
290

Modification, Descent with, 55
Moliere and his housemaid, 109
Money, 31, 36, 142, 221, 365

— an Art, 277

— and technique, 139

Index 421

Money and the arts, 171, 172

— and words, 95

— Art and Religion, 229 f

— Coins potential, 95

— difficulty, 371
doctor, 37

— easier made than kept, 141

— Health and Reputation, 37

— Tying up, 360
Monkey and stick, 49
Monkeys, Men and, 185
Mont S. Michel, 371
Monte-Carlo, 334
Monte Generoso, 270
Monteverde, 129
Month of heaven and month

of hell before birth, 289
Montreal, 269, 388

— A Psalm of, 3, 4, 6, 379, 388

— The gospel of, 389
Montreuil-sur-Mer, 258
Moon, The Cuckoo and the, 337
Moor Park, 252
Moorhouse, William Sefton,

311, 312
Moral Government before man,
48

— guilt, 366

— influence, 81
Moral Merit, 366

— Responsibility, 317

— Try-Your-Strengths, 184
Morality, 358

— Absolute, is stagnation, 176

— and pleasure, 29

— Elementary, 24 et seq.

— its foundation and super-
structure, 24

— The Christian, 25
Morell, Dr., Handel and, 115
Mores, 29
Moritz, St., 260
Moses, 224
Moszkowski, 132
Mother, My son's, 366

422

Index

Mother's maid, My books', 366
Motion, 74, 76
Mountain, 336
Mount, God's, 341
Mouse-Ideas, Cat-Ideas and,
216

Mouse in the Milk- Jug, 216
Mozart, in, 123, 126, 132, 252
MS., My, 184, 187
Mudie, Mr., 202
Miiller, 263
Multitude, 84, 310
Murder, 268, 269, 292, 317
Murray, Mr. John, 10
Museum. See British Museum

— of Natural History, Mont-
real, 388

Music, 4, 11, 107, no et seq.,

129, 357, 39^ 393

— Borrowing or appropriating,
299

— Chapters in, 130, 131

— Difficulties in, 102

— Emotion, not notes, 96

— Handel and, no et seq.

— How to know whether you
are enjoying, 209

— On Borrowing in, 123 et
seq.

— Pictures and Books, On the
making of, 93 et seq.

— Rules for, 96, 97

— Untuning or entuning the
sky, 165

— useless, 173

— Writing, 372

Musical Criticism, 123, 130
Musician, Only a professional,

unable to understand Handel,

"5

Mustard-seed, 336
Mutton and sheep, 279
My work, 374-8
Myself, 183

— a disappointing person, 158

Myself and my jpooks, 1 58 et
seq., 366

— and my publishers, 166

— and " Unconscious Hu-
mour," 166

— in Dowie's Shop, 240

— in love with beautiful young
lady, 284

— My grandfather and, 172,
173

— Nausicaa and, 193

— no special ability, no con-
nections, 369

— Trubner and, 155 et seq.

— unpopular, 372
Mythology, The Christian, 348

Narcissus, 5, 112, 131, 176, 371,

377> 3 8 °> 392, 39S
National Gallery, 243, 256

— Portrait Gallery, 5
Natural Selection, 289
Nature, 235

— Beauties of, 270

— does not run smooth, 143

— evasive, 226

— like Herbert Spencer, 138

— mediocre, 12

— Putting salt on her tail, 137

— Sketching from, 137

— Studying from, 136

— Truths from, 138

— Touch of, 185

— The Unity of, 88, 89

— The Works of, 220
Nature's Double Falsehood, 301
Nausicaa, 194

— and Myself, 193
Nay, 295

Necessity, 72, 315, 321, 322

— Free-will and, 316 et seq.
Neglect, 366, 367

Negri, Cavaliere Avvocato, 270,

35o
Nelson, 199

Index

Neptune (the god), 254; (the

planet), 3%
Nero, 365
Nerves, 79

— and Postmen, 85
New Ideas, 106
New Quarterly, 7, 251
New Testament, 338, 339
New Zealand, 1, 8, 21 , 39, 63,

99, 213, 250, 268, 270, 271,
283

Newland's Law, 66
Newman, Cardinal, 186, 187
Newspapers, 291, 292
Newton, Sir Isaac, 344, 345
Nice people, 391
Nicholas Nickleby, Telema-

chus and, 193
Night, 315

Shirts and Babies, 85, 86

Nihilism, 219

Nihilo, Ex, nihil fit, 312, 314
Nile, The Battle of the, 278
Niobean folds, 269
Noise, Making, 373
Non-Ego, Ego and, 321
Non-U ving and living, 71
Non Omnis Moriar, 355
Nonsense, 72, 75, 328

— Humanitarian, 119
Norman fisherman, 36

" Not on sad Stygian shore,"
397

Note-Books of Samuel Butler,
The, Extracts from, in the
New Quarterly Review, 7

Notes, 363

— An author the worst person
to edit or even to write his
own, 215

— Making, roo, 101

— These, 261

Nothing, 310, 312, 314, 316
Notoriety, 373
Nuremberg, 258

423

Obliteration of the Past, 293
Obscurity, 366, 367

— after death, 291 9
Observation, 363

" O Critics, cultured Critics ! "
39i

Occasions Supreme, 268, 269
Octogenarian, 354
Ode for S. Cecilia's Day, 165
" Odour of defencefulness," 390
Odyssey, The, 5, 173, 192-9,

254, 277, 302, 369, 376-8,

380

— Homer's, 32

— Rendered into English Prose,
The, 6, 369

— The, and a Tomb at Car-
cassonne, 198

— The, Bunyan and, 191

— The, a corpse to all who
need Lang's translation, 197

— The, written by a woman,
198

Offers of Marriage, 227
Oil and Water, 210
Old age, 66

Old Masters, The, and their

pupils, 135
Olympus, Mount, 345
Omission in art, 97, 100, 101
Omnibus, Studying faces in,

137

Omnipresence of Intelligence,
77

Omnium gatherum, 10
On the Making of Music,
Pictures and Books, 93 et seq.
Oneself, 357
Opera, At the, 131

— Grand, 131

— Italian, 131
Opinion, 335

— and matter, 80

— heredity or post-natal, 321

— Public, 108, 261

424

Opinion, The Art of propagat-
ing, 164

Opigiions kept in the back-
ground, 294, 295

Oppenheims, 239

Opposite, Its, lurks in every-
thing, 58, 59

Opposites, 76, 297

Oracle in Erewhon, 26

Orchestra, The world an, 134

Orchid, 305

Organic and inorganic, 19, 77-
80

Organism, Our, 86
Organs and Makeshifts, 20

— and tools, Analogies be-
tween, 375

— Our, 321, 336
Origin of Life, 48

Origin of Species, The, 1, 8,

39-41
Originality, 292
" Origine Siciliana dell' Odis-

sea," 5
Oropa, 282
Orphan, A born, 33
Orthodoxy, The Irreligion of,

350

Othello, Providence and, 223
Ourselves and the Clergy, 351
" Out, out into the night,"
393

Ova, spermatozoa and embryos
think almost identically, 16

Over- work, 26

Ovum, Impregnate, 54

" Owen John Pickard " (pseu-
donym), 2

" Owen William Bickersteth,"
his supposed brother, 2

Owl, Stuffed, 388

Oxford and Cambridge, 222

Oxygen, 77

Oyster, Who would want to
kiss an ? 205

Index

Pabulum, Mental and physical,

81 i
Padua, Ilium and, 195
Pagani's Restaurant, 7, 8
Pain, 345, 366

— felt by another, 295
Painter, The, an artist, not

merely a mirror, 143
Painter, The Moral, 235
Painter, The young, puzzling

him, 140
Painter's, A, Views on Paint-
ing, 135 et seq.
Painting, 107

— A Painter's Views on, 135
et seq.

— an epitomising of nature,
141

— and Association, 138

— emotion, not forms or
colours, 96

Painting, useless, 173
Palestine, The Return of the

Jews to, 239
Palestrina, 113
Pall Mall Magazine, 236
Pall Mall Gazette, The Homeric

Deity and the, 33
Pancras, St., bells, 246
Pandora, 170
Pangenesis, 70
Pantomime, 260
Pants, 389
Parables, The, 350
Paracca, Giovanni Antonio,

376, 378
Paralysis (Handel), 113,

(Madame Patey), 114
Parrots, 259
Parry, John, 255
Parsee, A patient, 255
Parsifal, 123
Past, Future and, 220

— Society for Burial of the, 180
Pater, Walter, 184

Index

4 2 5

263

Patey, \ladan\e, 113, 114,
" Patiently," 290
Paul, S., 190, 316, 325
Pauli, Charles Paine, 2, 3, 6
Paul's, St., 70, 199, 267
Pea in boot, 349
Peace at the last, 361

— The, that passeth under-
standing, 338

Pear's Soap, 209

Peas, Shelling, 343

Pecksniff, 393

Peculiar People, The, 337

Pedals or drones, 225

People, Nice, 391

— The Peculiar, 337
Permanent Success, Ephemeral

and, 180 et seq.
Persecution, 82
Perseus and Andromeda, 225

— and St. George, 222
Persistence, 315

Person, Myself a Disappoint-
ing, 158
Personal Identity, 60, 375
Personality, Double, 235

— The, of the Author, 107
Personified Science, 339
Peterborough, 250, 251
Petrie, Mr. Flinders, 370
Pharisaism, 201
Philharmonic Concert, At

132

Philippians, 162
Phillips, Mr., 343
" Philosophic Dialogue

the Origin of Species/'

39-41

Philosophic mind, A truly, 46
Philosopher, The, 169
Philosopher's Stone, 358
Philosophies, God and, 328
Philosophy, 327

— Common Sense and, 330

— Logic and, 329

a,

on

" Philosophy of the Uncon-
scious," 3 »

Photographed, Why a lady
gets, 163

Photographer in every bush,
214

Photographer's nature, 214
Photographs at Herculaneum,
230

— of people in shop-windows,
206

Photography, 4
Phrygian mode, 129
Physical and Spiritual, 96

— Excellence, 26

— Mental and, 69

— pabulum, Mental and, 81
Piano-playing unconsciously, 5 3

— Well-tuned, 300
Piccolomini, 282

Pickwick, Mr., Hamlet, Don

Quixote and, 217
Picture, 396
Pictures, 357

Pictures, On the making of
Music, Books and, 93 et seq,

— Rules for, 96, 97
Pienza, 282, 283
Pigs, 252

Pilate, 307

Pilgrim's Progress, The, 188 et

seq., 193, 202
Pinturicchio, 275
Piora, 272, 273
Pipe, Tobacco, 47
Pitt Press, 3-85
Planets, 313

Plants, Introduction of Foreign,
281

Plants, understanding, 77

Plato, 150, 186

Piatt, Mr. Arthur, 195, 377

Play, 396

Pleasure, 345

— Morality and, 29

426

Index

Pleasure, On Knowing What
iGives, 154, 207-9, 331

— With, 118
Plot, 131
Plover, 305, 306
Plus nothing, 316
Podging, 264

Poem, A rhymed, should not
exceed a sonnet in length,
192

Poems, 379 et seq.
Poetry, 192, 193, 266

— better kept short, 197
Poets, The, 225
Poggibonsi, 275, 276
Pogni, Ulisse, 275
Poins, 178

Point, Gaining one's, 348
Points of View, Two, 297
Pollaiuolo, School of, 146
Pomposities of virtue, 28
Pontifex, Alethea and Miss
Savage, 2

— Ernest, 115
Poor, 306, 316
Pope, The, 260
Populus Vult, 184
Porpoise, The Contented, 231
Portland Road, 251
Portraits, 107

Portraits of S. Butler, 3, 5
Position, The, of a Homo

Urdus Libri, 155 et seq.
Possessing one's soul in peace,

361

Post Office, 286 .

— in Rome, 262
Postmen, nerves and, 85
Posterity, 362
Posthumous Honours, 367

— Life, 360, 363

— Recognition, 367
Pot-boiler, The Complete, 230
Potato-shoot, 54

Poverty, 225, 315

Power, Knowledge is, 102

— Literary, 10S

— to make mistakes, 77
Praise, 397

Prayer, 212-14

— The Lord's, 349
" Prayer," A, 395
Prayer-book, 251
Prayers, Family, 2, 230

— How I shed mine, 213
Praying for rain, 326
Preachers, Street, 222
Preface to Vol. II (of Note-
Books), 215

Pre-lethal life, 363
Preparation for death, 362
Prescription, Eating doctor's,

Press, The, N.Z., 1, 2, 8, 39-41
Pretending to know things one

does not, stupid, 209
Priest and his breviary, 136
Priests, 38, 334
" Priests' Bargain," The, 236
Priests of art, 124
Priggishness, 35
Prigs, 35

Prigs and Blackguards, 230
Primitive Methodist Chapel,
34i

Prince, Jones's cat, 153
Principles, First, 309 et seq.,

330, 33i
Probate, 339
Procreation, Wilful, 289
Profane Statues, Sacred and,

139

Professionals, Amateurs and,
145

Programme, Descriptive, 380
Progress, a desire to live beyond

one's income, 12
Projected sequel to Alps and

Sanctuaries, Material for a,

259 et seq.

Index

427

Promontognol 264
Prophets, Goers and, 333
Prophets, stoning them 157,
201

Property, 309

Proposing, The art of, 289

Prose, 193, 264

— Poetical, 197

— Translations from verse into,
197

Proselyte, 82

Proselytising, eating and, 81
Protoplasm, 58

— and Reproduction, 69

— Viscid, 69, 70
Providence, 322

— and Improvidence, 223

— and Othello, 223

— Genius and, 180

— Tempting, 99
Proverbi Toscani, 379
Proverbs, The, 201, 203
Psalmist, The, 27, 212

" Psalm of Montreal/' A, 3, 4,

6, 379, 388
Psalm, A penitential, 230
Psalms, The, 202
Public, Catering for the, 372

— ear, The, 162

— Handel and the British, 113

— Hoodwinking the, 162

— life, 367

— My, a declining one, 369

— opinion, 108, 261

— Wooing the, 371
Publisher, 364

Publishers' antechambers dis-
tasteful, 373
Publishers, Myself and my, 166
Publishing at my own risk, 373
Pulling strings, 396
Punch, 208
Punishment, 343
Punishments, Rewards and, 362
Pupils, 173

Pupils, The old masters and

their, 135 *
Purcell, 122, 127, 128, 188
Purgatory, 219
Purse, Atrophy of the, 231
Purses, Things and, 224
Puzzled atoms, 84
Puzzled to death, 206

Quails, 307

Quarrelling, The art of, 229
Queen, The, 316

— of Heaven, The, 334
Quick people, 294

Quick, The, and the dead, 279
Quickly, Mrs., 264
Quickness in seeing, 139

" Quis Desiderio ? " 166

Quixote, Don, Hamlet, Mr.
Pickwick and, 217

Raccolia di Proverbi Toscani,
379

Race, The, and the individual,
15

Rachel, Madame, 184
Raffaelle, 256, 257, 324

— the Ansidei, 145 et seq.
Railway, Line of, The last

six inches of a, 380
Rain, 326

Rain-drops of new experience,
62

Rain, Handel's shower of, 120
Rakaia, 288

" Ramblings in Cheapside," 261
Rangitata, 268, 288
Rape of Lucrece, The, 192
Rapson, Mr. E. J., 165
Rarity, 365

Rassegna della Letteratitra Sici-
liana, 5

Rattlesnake, An intellectual,

268
Ravens, 253

428

Index

Reading aloud what I write,
<og

Reading and Writing, 328
Real Blasphemy, 341
Reason, 315

— Common Sense, and Faith,
328

— and Faith, 171

— Faith and, 333
Rebelliousness, 332 et seq.
Recognition, Posthumous, 367
Reconciliation, 346 et seq.

" Reconciliation, A step to-
wards," 8, 376

Record Office, 237

Records and Memorials col-
lected by R. A. Streatfeild, 6

Rectory, 334

Reflection, 344

Reflex Action, go, 344

Refreshment, Sense of, 17

Regret, 348

Relative Importances, 97, 100
Relative minor, 226, 260
Relaxation of effort, 17
Religion, 35, 329, 346, 347

— Science and, 36

— Women and, 228
Religious light, The dim, 338
Rembrandt, 107, 149, 15 1-3,

173, i79> 235, 357

— Buying a, 151
Remembering, 63
Remembrance after death, 360,

361, 367* 369
Renan, 337

Rent, Pay me my, 391
Repentance, The Academic

System and, 135
Reproduction ad infinitum, 54

— and Memory, 59

— the discontent of the germs
inside the parents, 16

Reproduction, Protoplasm and,
69

Reproductive sy|fcem, 68
Reputation, 217, 370, 372

— A lasting, 155

— Cheap, 247

— Money and Health, 37

— Shade, Colour and, 138
Requiem, Mozart's, 123
Reserve between parents and

children, 31
Responsibility, Moral, 317
Rest, 17, 315
Resurrection, 324
Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Tht

Evidence for the, 2, 6
Retirement, 371, 372
Retribution, Forgiveness and,

349

Return of the Jews to Pales-
tine, 239
Revenge, Gratitude and, 340-1
Reversion, My, 4, 61

— Selling a, 229
Reversion to ancestors, 66
Reviewers, 156, 196
Reward, Ten shillings, 341
Rewards and punishments, 362
Rhodes, Cecil, 367

Rhythm and memory, 58
Rhythms, 68, 71, 73
Riches, 315
Rickmansworth, 252
Rift, The little, within the lute,
16

" Righteous Man," The, 304,

316,380,390
Righteousness, 200 et seq.
River of Death, 358

Memory, 358

Robbery, 309
Roberts, Mr. Arthur, 132
Robinson Crusoe, 202
Rockstro, W. S., 5, 128, 250-2
Roman Catholic, 342
Roman Emperor, The, 213
Roman Emperors, 325

Roman Empiie, The, 206, 207
Romanes, G. j., 4
Romans, The, 200-4, 33^
Rome, 262

— Church of, 338
Rosherville Gardens, 260
Rothschilds, 52, 239
Royal Academy Exhibition, 3,

276
Rubens, 230

Rudimentary organs in ma-
chines, 47

Rules for making Literature,
Music and Pictures, 96, 97

— for tuning the harpsichord,
Handel's, 128

— of Life, The, 11, 351, 352
Run smooth, Nature does not,

193

Sacer, The Vates, 363-5
Sack of Khartoum, 244
Sacred and Profane Statues,
139

Sacro Monte, Varallo-Sesia, 5

Varese, 198, 260

Sailor, 311

— Archdeacon Farrar not an
excellent, 213

— Boy and Chickens, 245
Saints, 211, 212
Sales of my books, Analysis of,

368, 369
Salt, Putting, on Nature's tail,

137
Samson, 180

" Samuel Butler," an article
by R. A. Streatfeild in the
Monthly Review, 6

— an Obituary Notice by H. F.
Jones in the Eagle, 6

Samuel Butler : Author of
Erewhon, A Paper read be-
fore the British Association
of Homoeopathy, 7

Index 429

Samuel Butler : Author of
Erewhon, A Paper read be-
fore the Historical Society
of St. John's College, Cam-
bridge, 7
Samuel Butler, " Brother, I am

much pleased with/' 387
Samuel Butler: Records and
Memorials collected by R. A.
Streatfeild, 6
Sanctified by Faith, 351
Sano di Pietro, 281
Sans souci of indifference, 357
Santa Famiglia, A, with clothes

drying, 86
" Santo Diavolo," 274
Satan, 251
Saul, 65, 133
Saul in the cave, 214
Sausages, 120, 269
Savage, Miss Eliza Mary Ann,
4

Savoyard, A melancholy, 88
Saxony, 128

Scaffolding, Words a, 94
Scarlatti Domenico, 111, 112,
126

Scarlet fever, 64
Scartazzini, Signor, 266
Scheria, 5, 350, 370
Schliemann, 370
Schoolmasters, Earnest, 230
Schubert, 133
Schumann, 209
Science, 159, 324, 329, 333

— and Business, 217

— and Religion, 36

— and Theology, 340

— Men of, 219

— Personified, 339

— The Enfant Terrible of
Literature and, 183

Scientific Terminology, 218
Scientists and Drapers, 218
Scotchman at Boulogne, 252

43° Index

Scott, Mr. R. F., Master of St.
^John's College, Cambridge, 7

Scylla and Charybdis, 326, 327

Scylla/s cave of scientific ter-
minology, 218

Sea-sick, 254, 255

Sea-sickness, 82

" Searcher of Souls, you who
in heaven abide/' 395

Secular thinking, 163

Seed, 363

Seeds, 361

Seeing, 139

— colour, 141 et seq.

— Painting depends on, 139

— Quickness in, 139
Segni, 273

Seigel's Syrup, Mother, 296
Self, 85

Self-confidence, 225
Self-indulgence, Intellectual, 27
Selfishness, 348, 349
Selections from Previous Works,

etc., 4, 368, 380
Selinunte, 194
Sells, What, a book, 161
Senate House, 385
Sensations, 60
Sense, 331

— of need, My reviewers', 196

— of Touch, The, 230

— The Voice of Common, 348
Senses, The link between mat-
ter and mind, 86

Sensible Men, 228
Sensitiveness to newspapers,
291

Sentiment, 329
Separation, 228

— Judicious, 230

— of relations, 32

— Union and, 83
Sequel to Alps and Sanctuaries,

Material for a Projected, 259
et seq.

Seriously, Taking life and death
too, 357

Sermon preached by two people,
296

Sermons, Unprofessional, 200

et seq.
Serpent, A single, 84
Serpentine, Ducks on the, 63
Servants, 89
Sesia, Val, 280

Settlement in the steps of the

Union Bank, 87
Seven Sonnets and a Psalm of

Montreal, 6, 380
Sex, 226

Sexual Matters, 30
Shade, Colour and Reputation
138

— Light and, 140
Shadows, Our ideas, 94, 95
Shakespeare, 13, 14, 28, 30, 107,

114, 156, 161, 174, 178, 179,
192,342,343,357,363,378,397
Shakespeare, Handel and, 114

— My Father and, 183
Shakespeare's Sonnets Recon-
sidered, 6, 369, 377, 382, 383

Shakespearean Words, 268, 269
Sham Art and Great Art, 137
Shan States, 381
Sharp, Virtue tunes herself, 27
Shaw, Mr. George Bernard, 7
She-bear, 390

Shepherdess, China with lamb,
230

Shepherds, 23, 398
Shield of Achilles, The, 379, 385
Shocks, 60

Shopkeeper, The Artist and the,
169

Shoolbred's, 218
Shortening, 101

" Should Riches mate with

Love ? " 176
Shrewsbury, 1, 3, 5, 342, 343

Sicilian Origin^of the Odyssey, 5
Sicily, 5, 7, 273, 274
Sickness, 82
Siddons, Mrs., 270
Siena, 281

— and S. Gimignano, 274-6
Silenus, 230
Silvio, 264-7
Similarity, 55
Simony, Modern, 172
Simplification, 97
Simpson, 198
Sin, 395

— A Mountain, 29
Sinai, 307
Sincerity, 154, 340

— a low virtue, 162
Singapore, 381
Sins, My secret, 395

— that are worth committing,
11

Sisto, Madonna di S., 257
Sisyphus, 344, 355
Sitting quiet after eating, 82
Sixpence, The Jubilee, 136
Skeleton in Cupboard, 315
Sketch-Books, Literary, 237
Sketches, Written, 237 et seq.
Sketching from nature, 137
Skin, dropping off, 88, 89

— of one's teeth, 169
Slade, Mr., 288
Sleep and death, 25
Sleeper, 396
Sleeping Beauties, 116
Slipshod thinkers, 350
Small things, 308
Smalley, Mr., Rector of Bays-
water, 110

Smith, 386

— and the Rangitata, 268

— Mrs., 316

Snails, slugs and superstitions,
11

Snakes, Poisonous, 392

Index 431

Snap-shots, 372
Snap-shotting a bishop, 254,-
Snap-shotting Archdeacon

Farrar, 213
Snipe, 226
So-and-so, Mrs., 347
Societies, The Learned, moult-
ing yearly medals, 206
Society and Christianity, 350,

— for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals, 206

— for the Suppression of Use-
less Knowledge, 293

— of Authors, 373
Soglio, 264, 265
Solario, Andrea, 149
Solicitor, Handel and a letter

to a, 119

— The Family, 392

— Wound in the, serious, 91
Solicitors, 37

Solomon in all his glory, 224

— The Song of, 201
" Something, " 63
Something out of nothing, 57,

310, 312, 314, 346
Son of Man, 348

— My, 366

Songs without Words, 110, 149
Sonnet, Rhymed poem should

not exceed in length, 192
Sonnets, 383

— Shakespeare's,Reconsidered,
6, 369, 382, 383

Sorrow within sorrow, 228
Soul, 76

Souls and Books, 95

— Transmigration of, 357, 358
Sound and silence, 328
Soup, 269

Source, The Great Unknown,
352

South Sea Islanders, 207
Sovereigns in the street, 375-8

432

Index

Sparks, 219

Speaking voice, Handel and

the, 117
Specialism and Generalism,

222

Spectator, 3, 161, 380
Speculation, 229

— An Astronomical, 232
Spencer, Herbert, 138, 230
Spenlow and J or kins, 334
Spermatozoa, 16, 17
Spider, 305, 306
Spiritual, Physical and, 96

— Treadmill, 338
Spoiled Tarts, 9
Spontaneity, 319, 323
Spontaneous Generation, 323
Sports, 16

Spurgeon, Mr., 388, 389

Squandering, 13

Squaring accounts, 160, 161

— the account and Karma, 15
Stagnation, 29

Stars ahead of and behind us,

232, 233
Starting again ad infinitum,

361, 362
Statical, 67, 68

Statues, Sacred and profane,
139

Stead, Mr., 190

Stealing (Music), 122

Steamboat, 229

Steam Engine, 325

Steam Engines, A fertile union

between two, 46
Steps in ice, 312
Sterility of hybrids, 66
Stevens, Alfred, 199
Stevenson, R. L., 187
Still-born on reaching birth,

361

Stomach, 82, 310

— Our mental, 310
Stone, vivo, 279

Stop, I had bettfr, 378

— Where to, 135
Stories, Unwritten articles,

essays, 229
" Stowed away in a Montreal

lumber-room," 388
Strad, 241

Straightforwardness, 352
Strand, The, 237
Strange flesh, 30
Street preachers, 222

— The Man in the, 121
Streatfeild, Mr.R.A., 6, 7, 8, 40
String and Knife, 21
Struldbrugs, Literary, 229
Studied Ambiguity, 290
Study, Action and, 139

— and Research, 375
Studying from nature, 136
Stuff, 68

Stygian shore, 397
Style, 107, 186, 187
Subdivisible matter, 82
Subject and Treatment, 108

— Choice of, 105
Subjects, Familiar, 277

— Titles and, 229 et seq.
Sub-vicious, 25
Substance, 67-9

— An eternal, unchangeable,
underlying, 75

— The Universal, 67, 68
Success, Bored by, 371

— Capping a, 156

— Ephemeral and Permanent,
180 et seq.

— Financial, 373

— My own, 157

Successors, Who will be man's,
44

Suffering, Mental, 370

Sugar, 178

Suicide, 232

Suite de Pieces, 101

Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 128, 130

Index

433

Summer, 315^

Sun, 309 J

Sunday morning chapel, 387

Sunday Times, The, 186

Sunday Walks, 341

Supernatural, The Church and

the, 340
Super-Organic Kingdom, The,

78

Superstition, 346
Superstitions, Life, Snails and

slugs, 11
Superstitious Foundations, 309
Supply, 315
Suppressio Veri, 140
Supreme Occasions, 268, 269
Susanna, 120
Swede, An impulsive, 243
Swell, A, all round, 36
Swells, 35
Swift, Dean, 191
Swindling, 341
Switzerland, 342
Symbols, 346

Symphony for Part II of

Narcissus, 380, 392
Sykes, at Cambridge, no

Tabachetti, 5, 376
Tabard, The, 262
Tabulae rasae, 357

— scriptae, 357
Tadpoles, 55

Talk, perhaps originally con-
fined to scholars, 94
Tantalus, 343, 344, 355
Technical Knowledge, College
of, 221

Technique, Money and, 139
Tedder, Mr., Librarian of the

Athenaeum Club, 173
Teeth, 356
Teetotaller, 361
Telemachus, 32

— and Nicholas Nickleby, 193

Teleology, 66

Temperament, Equal, 112
and Philosophy, 327

— Mean tone, 128
Tempting Providence, 99
Tennyson, 183, 188, 195, 240,

343

— would have spoiled Handel's
music, 115

Terbourg, 243

Terminology, Scientific, 218
Terseness, 100
Tersifying, 101
Test, A Literary man's, 109

— of Faith, 360, 361
Testament, The New, 338, 339

— The Old, 201
Testimony, 324
Thackeray, 178, 188
That-way-and-it-isn'tness, 226
The Enfant Terrible of Litera-
ture, 183

The Germs of Erewhon and of

Life and Habit, 39-55
The Life after Death, Three

Sonnets, 383, 384, 397, 398
The Life of the World to Come,

360 et seq.
The Position of a Homo Unius

Libri, 1 55 et seq.
The Righteous Man, 304, 380,

390

" The righteous man will rob
none but the defenceless,"
39o

Thebes, 230

Theist, 316

— and Atheist, 337
Theodora, 117, 118
Theodora and Susanna, 120
Theology, Science and, 340
Theories, Forming and dis-
carding, 377

" There doth great Handel live,
imperious still," 397

z f

434

Index

Thieves falling out, 292
Things and purses, 224
— ••Great, 179
Thinking, 73

— Secular, 163
This-way-and-it-isness, 226
Thomas, Miss Bertha, 274
Thought, 67, 68

— and Word, 93

— without words, 93
Thoughts, My, 216

Three hundred a year " deaden-
ing," 34

Three-score years and ten of
immortality, 14

Ticinesi, 350

Tilbrook, Revd. S., 364

Time, 219

— and Life, Accidents of, 358

— heals wounds, 359

— past, present and future, 67
Times, The, 123, 166, 185, 186,

223, 237
Timon of Athens (Purcell's), 122
Tinkering a sonnet, 383
Tintoretto, 256
Titian, 135, 152
Title, Requisitions on, 309, 310
Titles and Subjects, 229 et seq.
Titus Andronicus, 156
Tobacco, Crumb of, 251

— pipe, 47

— plant, 267
Tobacconist, My, 165
Tom Jones, 202
Tom Jones, 364
Tonic, 226, 260

Too much, What is ? 103
Tool, 321

Tool-box, 18, 19, 23, 86, 321
Tools, 18-20, 22, 232

— and Organs, Analogies be-
tween, 375

Tooth-ache, 370

Torture of Death, The, 355, 356

Touch of NaturefOne, 185

— The Sense of ,^30
Touches, Inarticulate, 137
Trade, Art and, 170, 171
Tragic Expression, 269, 270
Trail and Writing, 96
Train and Hedge, 21

— not moving, 311
Translating the Odyssey, 197
Translation, a dislocation, 198

— A (Martin Chuzzlewit), 393

— from an Unpublished Work
of Herodotus, 379, 384

Translations, 94

— from verse into prose, 197
Transmigration of souls, 357,

358

Trapanese Origin of the Odys-
sey, On the, 5
Trapani, 5, 199, 376

— and Gadshill, 193, 194
Treadmill, The Spiritual, 338
Treatment, Subject and, 108
Treaty, Secret, with oneself,

209

Tregaskis, Mr., 40
Trespasses, 340
Trinity Hall, 253
Triumph of Time and Truth,
116

Triibner and Myself, 155 et seq.
Truisms, 331
Trumpington Road, 385
Trunk, Packing our, 100
Truth, 292, 297-303, 307, 352

— Absolute, 310

Pretty safe from, 59

— and Convenience, 297 et seq.

— Guesses at, 347

Tellers, Professional, 222

Truths from nature, 138
Troad, The, 5, 283-7
Trojan War, 260
Trouble-saving, 302
Troy, 370

Index

435

Trying to KA)w, 160

make rfyself like things,

209

Try-your-strengths, Moral, 184
Tub, 384

Tuke, Mr. H. S., a.r.a., 243
Tune, It is a wise tune that

knows its own father, 122
Tuning Death flatter, 358

— Handel's Rules for, 128

— Virtue sharp, 27

Turk, The, and marriage, 285
Turnpikes, 342

Twelve Voluntaries and Fugues
by the celebrated A£r. Han-
del, 128
Two Deans, The, 379, 387
Two Incomprehensions, 323,
324

Two Writers, 235
Tylor, Mr. Alfred, 158
Tyndall, 232

Types of humanity, rich and

poor, 51, 52
" Tyrants now no more shall

dread/' 118

Ulysses, 6, 122, 377

Ulysses, 32, 194, 195, 199, 335

— and Penelope, 198
Umbrella, 51
Unburying Cities, 370
Uncle Tom's Cabin, 265
Unconscious, The Philosophy

of the, 3

— Theory of the, 59

— action, 53 et seq.

— association, 65

— humour and Dickens, 32
Myself and, 166

— memory, 59

Unconscious Memory, 3, 7, 8,

39, 42, 66, 368, 375
Understanding, 73

— The peace that passeth, 338

Undertakings, Abandoned, 96
Unimaginative, The, are as

children, 307 •
Union and Separation, 83

— Bank, The, 87, 88
Unity, 310

— and multitude, 84

— of nature, The, 88, 89
Universe, The, 314

the only true atom, 84

Universal Review, 5, 6, 166, 181,

261, 369, 376
Universal substance, The, 67,

68

Universities, 292, 293, 335
University Calendar, 292
Unknown, God and the, 324-6
Unlucky, Lucky and, 220
Unorthodox, 374
Unpopular, Myself, 372
Unprofessional Sermons, 200

et seq.
Unrest, 315
Unseen Kingdom, 320

— World, 11, 168, 320, 347
Untuning the sky, 165
Unwritten law, The, 95
Usefulness, Art and, 173, 174
Useless knowledge, 293

Val Bregaglia, 264

— Leventina, 350

— Sesia, 280
Valentine, 85
Values, 290

Vanity of human wishes, 219
" Vanquished slaves," 119
Varallo-Sesia, 4, 5, 7, 198, 274,

280
Varese, 260

Vates Sacer, The, 363-5
Veal and calf, 279
Vegetarian, 361
Velasquez, 153, 179
Venice, 274

436

Index

Venus and Adonis, 192

" Venus laughing from the

s^kies," 117, 118
Venus, Transits of, 232
" Verdi prati," 267
Veritas, De minimis non curat,

299

Verrocchio, 146
Verse, 192, 193

— into prose, Translations
from, 197

— poetry and prose, 193
Vesuvius, 343

Viale at Pienza, The, 282
Vibrations, 58, 66 et seq.
Vice, 352

— and Virtue, 27, 28
Vices of meanness, 34
Victims, man remains on

friendly terms with his, 82
Vien Tiane, 381
View, Two points of, 297
Views on Painting, A Painter's,

135 et seq.
Vinci, Leonardo da, 257, 376,

378
Violin, 325

maker, Furber the, 241, 242

practising, 270

Virgil, 150, 183, 361
Virtue, 25, 352

— The meannesses of, 34

— The wages of, 289

— Vice and, 27, 28
Virtuous and Idle Appren-
tices, 326

— Life, My, 28, 29
Viscidity of protoplasm, 69, 70
Viscosity, 58

Vittorio Emanuele II, 270
Vivisection, 390
" Voi che sapete," 252
Voice of Common Sense, 348

the Lord, 348

Volcano, The arctic, 179

Volition, 73 «
Volterra, 276-9 (
Vows of modest competency,
290

" Vuaitee," 350
Vult, Populus, 184

Wages, The, of birth, 289

virtue, 289

" Wait till the clouds roll by "
260

" Waitee," Jutland and, 350
Waiting to be hired, 194
Walks in the Regions of Science

and Faith, 31
Walks, Sunday, 341
Wallace, Mr. A. R., 375
Wandering, 225
Wanted, a Society, 180
Wants and Creeds, 336
War against machines, 46
Wardour Street, 229
Waste, 114

paper baskets, Mental, 216

Washing-up, 99
Wasps, 81

Watch, an intelligent creature,
44

chain, 286

— mending with pickaxe, 94
Water, Channel for, 348
colour drawings, 8

dipper, 20

Watson, Hon. Mrs., 32
Watts, 152

Way of all Flesh, The, 6, 7, 115,

I53» 364, 369, 377
" Weakness is utter/' 316, 390
Weather, The, 294
Weismann and the germ being

the proper starting-point, 16
" Welcome, welcome, mighty

King/' 120
Wellington (Duke), 199

— N.Z., Bishop of, 40

Index

437

Wespin, JeaAde, 376
WestminsterfiVbbey, 199, 290
Wetterhorn, Handel and the,

' We were two lovers standing

sadly by," 395
" What is't to live if not to

pull the strings/' 396
" While now without measure,"

117

Whistling Handel, 65

Whitman, Walt, 179

" Who paints a picture, writes

a play or book," 396
" Why," 57
" Why ? " 327
Widow, 391
Wife of Bath, The, 262
Wife, My, 249
Wilful procreation, 289
Will, Reconstructing, 392
Wind Concerts, At the, 133
Window-cleaning, 242
Winter, 315

Wisdom, 169, 172, 176, 203, 223

— and Foolishness, 168

— from the West, 284

— Worldly, 290, 291

' ' Wise men flattering, " 117,
118

Wishes, The vanity of human,

219
Wit, 365

— No professor of, 221
With darkness deep," 121

" With their vain mysterious

art," 117, 118
Woman, 226
Womanish men, 334
Woman's suffrage, 227
--religion, 334
Womb, 292
Women, 226, 227

— and religion, 228
Wood, Mr. H. J. T., 7

Woodsia, 271, 272
Wooing the public, 371
Word, Thought and, 93
Wordist, A great, 144
Words, 301, 330

— a scaffolding, 94

— and Colour, 144

feelings, 79

ideas, 65

— juggles, 95

— like money, 95

— organised thought, 93
Wordsworth, 186

— only a poet, not a musician,
116

Work, Ancient, 193

— and the body, 21-3

— Men's, 396

— My, 374-8

— Our, looking to see where
it is wrong, 140

— Poetical, the less a man
creates, the better, 143

— to last must be good, 14
Working classes, 335

— Men's College, 5, 56, 204
World, The, 35, 328, 348, 365

a gambling table, 12

and genius, 12

and the individual, 12

governed by self-interest,

12

not wise, 12

of the unborn, 16

pervaded by come-and-
go, 14

spiritual and the physi-
cal, 174
Unseen, 168, 320, 347

— This masks a greater, 176

— to come, The life of the,
360 et seq.

Worldly wisdom, 290, 291
Worlds, Imaginary, 232

— Two, 24, 25

438

Worms, 398

Worsley, Mr. Reginald

541, 242, 250
Worth Doing, 369
Wound in the solicitor, 91
Wounds, Scars of old, 370,
Wrangling, 331
Wrath to come, 270
Writer, 247

— A young, 363
Writing for a hundred y

hence, 109

— slowly, 27

— and trail, 96

— unconsciously, 53

Index

f Writs of our thoughts, 320
E., j Written sketchesf237 et seq.

J " X.Y.Z." (pseudonym), 304,

Yankee Handelian, A, 114
Yea, 295

Young, Advice to the, 34
Young people, 30
Youth, The gauntlet of, 108
Ypres, The Two Barristers at,
255-8

Zeus, 386

Zoological Gardens, 243, 254

3/i

'ears