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Title: The Note-Books of Samuel Butler

Author: Samuel Butler

Release Date: July, 2004  [EBook #6173]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on November 21, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE NOTE-BOOKS OF SAMUEL BUTLER ***




Transcribed from the 1912 A. C. Fifield edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk




THE NOTE-BOOKS OF SAMUEL BUTLER




PREFACE



Early 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, 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 that he wanted a catalogue.  In 1874 he started an index, and
this led to his reconsidering 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 little use
and there seemed to be no finality about it ("Making Notes," pp. 100-
1 post).  In 1891 he attached 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 made 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 lifetime, 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 variety of thoughts, reflections, conversations,
incidents.  There are entries about his early life at Langar, Handel,
school days at Shrewsbury, Cambridge, Christianity, literature, New
Zealand, sheep-farming, philosophy, painting, money, evolution,
morality, Italy, speculation, photography, music, natural history,
archaeology, 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 published.  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 distracting for
continuous reading.  Moreover they were not intended to be published
as they stand ("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 post)

In one of the notes he says:

"A man may make, as it were, cash entries of himself 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 interest 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
upon 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 these 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 tentatively 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 cases in which the language had to be varied and others in which
a few words had to be added to 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 could have been consulted, yet, subject to
these limitations, he should be free to 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 to
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 surroundings.  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 restorations
at last forced me to the conclusion, which I accepted only with very
great regret, that my labours were at an end.

I do not expect every one to approve of the result.  If I had been
trying to please every one, I should have made only a very short and
unrepresentative selection which Mr. Fifield would have refused to
publish.  I have tried to make suck a book as I believe would have
pleased Butler.  That 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 knew how to
correct them.  Had it been possible for him to 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 l'ennemi 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 in 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 could not verify.  I
intend to give to the British Museum 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 that 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 the
Weekly Press of 19th 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 searching for and identifying
Butler's early contributions to the newspaper.

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 the grave is our truest life.  The
Biographical Statement has accordingly 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, 1912.



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.

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

1864.  Sold out his sheep run and returned to England in company with
Charles Paine Pauli, whose acquaintance 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 pictures 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.

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 and 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
Buffon, 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.

1881.  A property at Shrewsbury, in which under his grandfather'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 embarrassment 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 accounts.

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.

1883.  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."

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 Modification?  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.

1888.  Ex Voto:  an account of the Sacro Monte or New Jerusalem at
Varallo-Sesia, with some notice of Tabachetti'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 Letteratura Siciliana.

"On the Trapanese Origin of the Odyssey" (Translation).

1894.  Ex Voto translated into Italian by Cavaliere Angelo Rizzetti.

"Ancora sull' origine dell' 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 grandfather) 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.

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 rearranged,
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).

"Samuel Butler," an obituary notice by Henry Festing 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
Festing 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).

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 Restaurant,
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.

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 correspondence, 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 must 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 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 principii, 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. Butler was an omnium
gatherum.  Yes, but life is an omnium gatherum.

vi

Life is a superstition.  But superstitions are not without their
value.  The snail's shell is a superstition, slugs have no shells and
thrive just as well.  But a snail without a shell 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 insufficient
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.

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 he 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.


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 miscarry 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.

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 affectionate 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 correlated 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.


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 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 see either birth or death.  We see
people, as consciousness, between 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. {16} [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 subject.  That "almost" is
the little rift within the lute which by and by will give such
different character to the music.  [1889.]


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 government, being, I
suppose, departmentally made; we--as distinguished from the
subordinate personalities of which we are composed--know nothing
about it, though the subordinates 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 comparative 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.


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 convenience 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 themselves 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
illustrations of the manner in which organisms have been developed.
The ligaments which bind the tendons of our feet or the valves of our
blood vessels are the ingenious enterprises 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
incorporate with man, if it is to remain in working order.


Tools


A tool is anything whatsoever which is used by an intelligent being
for realising its object.  The idea of a desired 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 instruments 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 inorganic.  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 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 off 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.


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 immediate ends.  The ulterior ends, both of train
and hedge, so far as we 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 togetheriness
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 without
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 work 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 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 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 unconscious
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 it 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 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?


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":  {26}

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.


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 "Tolerably 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 extreme to mark what is done amiss:  O Lord who may
abide it?" and by this he admits that the highest conceivable form of
virtue still leaves room for some compromise with 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 knowledge 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.


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, nevertheless,
as showing more health and vigour than no growth at all would do.  I
said this in Life and Habit (ch. iii. 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 command." {30}


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 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, {31} 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 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, and 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 him 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.'" {32a}


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. {32b}


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) summed up Homer's
conception of a god as that of a "superlatively 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
ourselves concerned, the glory of God is best advanced by advancing
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 pounds 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 mismanaged 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 been groaning and
travailing together until now.  He is an ideal.  He shows what may be
done in the way of good breeding, 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, overbearing 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 mistakes.


On being a Swell all Round


I have never in my life succeeded in being this.  Sometimes I get a
new suit and am tidy for a while in part, meanwhile 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.


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 without 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 his 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 constitution 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 physician.  He is our money-
doctor.


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 consider whether
man is capable of doing for himself in respect of his moral and
spiritual welfare (than which nothing can 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 unimportant.



III--THE GERMS OF EREWHON AND OF LIFE AND HABIT



Prefatory Note


The Origin of Species was published in the autumn of 1859, and Butler
arrived in New Zealand about the same time and read the book soon
afterwards.  In 1880 he wrote in Unconscious Memory (close of Chapter
1):  "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 one of Mr.
Darwin's many enthusiastic admirers, and wrote 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.  Butler 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 number
which contained particulars of its early life, of its editors, and of
Butler; 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 of the
jubilee number, a further search was made, but the Dialogue was not
found and I gave it up for lost.

In March, 1912, Mr. R. A. Streatfeild pointed out to me that Mr.
Tregaskis, in Holborn, was advertising for sale an autograph 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 to the Press, I bought the autograph
letter and sent it to New Zealand, where it now is in the Canterbury
Museum, Christchurch.  With it I sent a letter to the editor of the
Press, giving all further information in my possession about the
Dialogue.  This letter, which appeared 1 June, 1912, together with
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 8th
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 from (I
believe) the Bishop of Wellington."  This rejoinder was an article
headed "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, which 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 of
Erewhon and Life and Habit.  They rather show the preparation of the
soil in which those germs sprouted and grew; and, remembering his
last remark on the subject that "it was all very young and silly," 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 'Cellarius.'  It was written in the Upper Rangitata
district of Canterbury Province (as it then was) of New Zealand, and
appeared at Christchurch 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. {41}  I 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 book."

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:


"I 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 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. . . .
I 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 . . .

"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."


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'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," 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 afterwards 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 appliances.  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
our pride and to make us think seriously of the future prospects of
the human race.  If we revert to the earliest primordial 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 comparison 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 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 undertake 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.

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 indicating 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 appears to us that
we are ourselves creating our own successors; we 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 contentment of a spirit that knows
no wants, 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 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 in 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
experience 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 the other for
innumerable benefits, and, until the reproductive 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,

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 protuberance 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 slower 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 unbend 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
prophetic 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 intellectual Siamese twins, of which one
is substance and the other shadow, but we cannot set either free
without killing both.  We are unable to rudely tear away the veil of
phantasy 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 understand 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 hereditary.  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 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
examining is comparable to the human hand.  The tail of an opossum 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 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; he 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 appliances 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 of 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.

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 Englishman.  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.  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. & O. 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
impressed 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 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
February 18th, 1876.


MY DEAR NAMESAKE . . .

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 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
without 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 often-
-much more often--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 performance 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 continuing 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.

Then comes Descent with Modification.  Similarity tempered 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 reproducing 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 experiences of A' and A'';
and so on to A(n) but you can never eliminate the A.

8.  Let A(n) 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 unconsciously from the inveteracy of the habit,
till he comes to doing his man, and this lesson he has not yet learnt
so thoroughly.  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 consciousness 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 disliked 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 Phenomena 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.

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 maintained 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 born 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 any one 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 only, inasmuch as memory and heredity have been shown to be one
and the same thing.


Memory

i

Memory is a kind of way (or weight--whichever it should be) that the
mind has got upon it, in virtue of which the sensation excited
endures a little longer than the cause which excited it.  There is
thus induced a state of things in which mental images, and even
physical sensations (if there can be such a thing as a physical
sensation) exist by virtue of association, though the conditions
which originally called them into existence no longer continue.

This is as the echo continuing to reverberate after the sound has
ceased.

ii

To be is to think and to be thinkable.  To live is to continue
thinking and to remember having done so.  Memory is to mind as
viscosity is to protoplasm, it gives a tenacity to thought--a kind of
pied a terre from which it can, and without which it could not,
advance.

Thought, in fact, and memory seem inseparable; no thought, no memory;
and no memory, no thought.  And, as conscious thought and conscious
memory are functions one of another, so also are unconscious thought
and unconscious memory.  Memory is, as it were, the body of thought,
and it is through memory that body and mind are linked together in
rhythm or vibration; for body is such as it is by reason of the
characteristics of the vibrations that are going on in it, and memory
is only due to the fact that the vibrations are of such
characteristics as to catch on to and be caught on to by other
vibrations that flow into them from without--no catch, no memory.


Antitheses


Memory and forgetfulness are as life and death to one another.  To
live is to remember and to remember is to live.  To die is to forget
and to forget is to die.  Everything is so much involved in and is so
much a process of its opposite that, as it is almost fair to call
death a process of life and life a process of death, so it is to call
memory a process of forgetting and forgetting a process of
remembering.  There is never either absolute memory or absolute
forgetfulness, absolute life or absolute death.  So with light and
darkness, heat and cold, you never can get either all the light, or
all the heat, out of anything.  So with God and the devil; so with
everything.  Everything is like a door swinging backwards and
forwards.  Everything has a little of that from which it is most
remote and to which it is most opposed and these antitheses serve to
explain one another.


Unconscious Memory


A man at the Century Club was falling foul of me the other night for
my use of the word "memory."  There was no such thing, he said, as
"unconscious memory"--memory was always conscious, and so forth.  My
business is--and I think it can be easily done--to show that they
cannot beat me off my unconscious memory without my being able to
beat them off their conscious memory; that they cannot deny the
legitimacy of my maintaining the phenomena of heredity to be
phenomena of memory without my being able to deny the legitimacy of
their maintaining the recollection of what they had for dinner
yesterday to be a phenomenon of memory.  My theory of the unconscious
does not lead to universal unconsciousness, but only to pigeon-holing
and putting by.  We shall always get new things to worry about.  If I
thought that by learning more and more I should ever arrive at the
knowledge of absolute truth, I would leave off studying.  But I
believe I am pretty safe.


Reproduction and Memory


There is the reproduction of an idea which has been produced once
already, and there is the reproduction of a living form which has
been produced once already.  The first reproduction is certainly an
effort of memory.  It should not therefore surprise us if the second
reproduction should turn out to be an effort of memory also.  Indeed
all forms of reproduction that we can follow are based directly or
indirectly upon memory.  It is only the one great act of reproduction
that we cannot follow which we disconnect from memory.


Personal Identity


We are so far identical with our ancestors and our contemporaries
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 committed 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 afterwards, 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 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 connection
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 year.

ii

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


Accident, Design and Memory


It is right to say either 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 gratification,
or utilises some waif or stray of accident on the 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 performance of acts either imperfectly remembered or not
remembered 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 difference.  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.

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 reproduced 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 perfection, 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 "thing" which thing
must either be a thing by courtesy, as an air of 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 facts.
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 fingernail--I mean he separated
the fleshy part of the finger from 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 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 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 use 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 Hertfordshire, where his aunt was still
living, and asked, to the surprise 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 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
'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 evolution 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 and 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
Unconscious 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 Newland's law (sometimes called
Mendelejeff's 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
touched upon in the concluding chapter of Luck or Cunning?  1887.]

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 vibrations--are as much our manner of perceiving that the
vibrations 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 particular 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, sometimes 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.

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 unconscious.  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
imperceptible 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 imperceptible 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 undisturbed 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 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 pounds 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 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 understood 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 already pre-existing in the
parental bodies, and that the communication of the characteristics of
these rhythms determines 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 therefore 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' 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 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 of such accession set the game of development
going and maintain 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 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,
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 kind 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 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 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 surreptitiously
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 helpmeets 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 understand anything whatever.

What we call inorganic is not so really, but the organisation 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 oxygen 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.  Even Darwin leans
towards the view that they have intelligence.  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
instinct 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 kingdom 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 himself in his
own past, or forecasts his future to any considerable 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.
Nevertheless, 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 distinguish.  He is a
substance feeling equilibrium or want of equilibrium; that is to say,
he is a substance in a statical 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, artificial 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 personality cannot deal with them, the position
is reported through the nervous system to the central government
which is frequently at a loss to know what feeling to apply.
Sometimes it happens to discern the right feeling and apply it,
sometimes 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 becoming 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 most horrible apparent suffering is not
felt beyond a certain point, but is passed through unconsciously
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 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 recognise what it
could scarcely cognise.  One might as well 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 expressing 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 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 convictions 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 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 expression 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 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.


Differences


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 remember 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 separateness.  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.

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 individuality 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:  everything 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
multitude 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.  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, homogeneous 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 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 we could not resist the pleasure of watching
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 something 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 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'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 very 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 microscope, 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--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 ourselves; 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 something; 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 corporation 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 cells as they work their way
nearer and nearer to our skins and then get rubbed 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 themselves
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
enscullery-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 vicariously, 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 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, 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 replaced 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
consequences 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 attacked 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 establishment 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 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 differentiate 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 differentiated
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. {92}



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 consciousness.  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 disintegration.  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 somewhat analogous transformation and
contradiction in terms.

There was a time when language was as rare an accomplishment 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
misleading, 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 indispensable, for the
building up of imperfect thought and helping to perfect it.

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, outward 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 comprises 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 expression 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.


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
civilisation 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 unwieldly, you introduce an episode or episodes
which must arise out of your 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 simplification depends
upon a perception of relative importances.  All perception of
relative importances depends upon a just appreciation of which
letters in association's bond association will most readily dispense
with.  This depends upon the sympathy of the painter both with his
subject and with him 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 subordination of
importances his first aim, it is surprising how much shortcoming we
will condone as regards actual execution.  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 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 intention 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 troublesome 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!


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 exceedingly 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 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 suggests more than
anything else does.  Things pruned off in this way are like the heads
of the hydra, two grow for every two 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 sometimes helps, as, for instance, when the subject is hard;
words that may be, strictly speaking, unnecessary 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
compunction 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 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 has 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 beforehand 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 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 be on a small scale in
the first instance till you feel your feet safe under you.  Act more
and rehearse less."

A friend once asked me whether I liked writing books, composing music
or painting pictures best.  I said I did not 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 you 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 adventure for getting to
undiscovered countries.  We have not 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.
{106}


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.


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 1'Homme


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 comparatively 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 l'homme"--that style of which, if I may
quote from memory, Buffon, again, says that it is like happiness, and
"vient de la douceur de l'ame" {107}--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.


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 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 misunderstood
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, I 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:  "I am 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 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 mentioned 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, moreover 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 foresaw 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--Handel dying musically as well as physically childless, while
Bach was as prolific in respect of musical disciples as he 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 cheapening 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 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 bankruptcy, 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 was
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) 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 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
understand 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.


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 Balus, 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:

[Music score which cannot be reproduced]
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 precedes 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, 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


[Music score which cannot be reproduced]
While now with-out mea-sure we re---vel in plea-sure.

[Music score which cannot be reproduced]
With--their vain mys--te--rios art;

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 Maccabaeus.  I know no better examples of the
way Handel sometimes derives his melody from the natural intonation
of the speaking 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 understand 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 involuntarily
humming:-

[Music score which cannot be reproduced]
And the go-vernment 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.

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
rigueur 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,
perception 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 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:

[Music score which cannot be reproduced]


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, Jephtha (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 Maccabaeus which, in
spite of the many fine things it contains, I like perhaps the least
of all his oratorios.  I have played Theodora and Susanna all
through, and most parts (except the recitatives) 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 accompaniment 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 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 something 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:

[Music score by Beethoven which cannot be reproduced]
[Music score by Purcell which cannot be reproduced]

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, 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 unintelligent, 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 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 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 surprising 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 antecedents 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
associated 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 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 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 successfully write like a German or a Hungarian, nor is it
desirable that he should try.  If, by way of variety, we want German
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 {128} 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 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 essentials 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 AEolian,
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 AEolian 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 become first a kind of supplementary
moon-like mode (as the AEolian 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 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 prepared.

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 we 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 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 {131} 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 tiresome.  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.


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 faro" 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 movement 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 would 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 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 Konig," 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 unsatisfactory
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 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 offering 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 remember it.


The Jubilee Sixpence


We have spent hundreds of thousands, or more probably of millions, on
national art collections, schools of art, preliminary 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.
{136}  The other coins are all very well in their way, and so are the
stamps--the letters get carried, and the money passes; but both
stamps and coins would 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 working 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 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 affection.  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 inarticulately, there is great art.  Art is at
best a dress, important, 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.  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 or 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 sticking 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 inaccurate.


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 important;
when far and in shadow, they are unimportant.  Form and colour are
like reputations which when they become shady are much of a muchness.


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 looking 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 improving 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 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 trying 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 academicians, 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 suppressio 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 exception, the painter had better say
nothing about it, for it is 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.  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.

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 uninteresting 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 interesting, 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 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 reasonable
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 reconsideration 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.


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 singleness 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 wantonness 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 determination to
adhere to the conventions of the time.  These 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 foreignness, 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 expression 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 Correggio
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 allowance 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 wherever
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 Gheeraert David, No. 1045, Room XI; or indeed
the general run of the gold embroidery of the period as shown in our
gallery. {147}

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 thickness all the way and
only broken in one place; so with the folds in the draperies; all is
monotonous, unobservant, unimaginative--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.  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
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 Loredano 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 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 reputations?  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?  Populus vult
decipi is the only answer, and nine men out of ten will follow on
with et decipiatur.  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 standpoint.  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--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 particular 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, {151} 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 ruined 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, distrusted 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 pounds and
then let it go.  It went for 28 pounds, and I should say would have
been well bought at 40 pounds.  [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 donc ceci, s'il vous plait," as though
their appearance in such a place at all were something 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. {153}


Holbein at Basle


How well he has done Night in his "Crucifixion"!  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 subordination 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.


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 knowledge 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



Trubner and Myself


When I went back to Trubner, 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.  Trubner 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; when 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 pounds 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."

Trubner shrugged his shoulders.  He plainly does not 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 the 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.


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 immediately after we 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."

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, whom he was disappointed to
find so very commonplace a person.  Exactly the same thing happened
to me with Erewhon.  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
experience has taught me that it always ends in turning some one who
was 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 anything 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 introduction they generally turn
out more like devils than angels.


Myself and My Books


The balance against them is now over 350 pounds.  How completely they
must have been squashed unless I had had a little money of my own.
Is it not likely that many a better 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
insufficient 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 contemporaries.  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 fearless and thorough-going, and if
he is this he is sure to have to 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 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 everything that makes
life worth living--London, with its infinite sources of pleasure and
amusement, good theatres, concerts, picture galleries, the British
Museum Reading-Room, newspapers, 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 inquired 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 perception of the value of a review, whether friendly
or hostile, is as old as St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians. {162}


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 instinctive 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 private ownerships-
-barring, of course, highways and commons.  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 engross us, followed by others in which the unwritten
and unwritable 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 processes 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-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. Gladstone 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
should be "entune the sky" and it sounds as though he were right.


Myself and "Unconscious Humour"


The phrase "unconscious humour" is the one contribution 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 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 becoming 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, nevertheless, 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
singleness of heart by those who put all else on one side and,
shrinking from no sacrifice, are ready to face shame, poverty and
torture here rather than abandon the hope of the prize of 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, painting, 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 shopkeeper?  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.


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 traditions of a noble calling.  If a
man lives in fear and trembling lest he should fail in these
respects, if he finds these considerations alone weigh with him, if
he never writes without thinking 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.

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 towards 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 excipiendis, 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 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 be 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 uselessness 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 unwilling 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 whereto
the word "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 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 literature 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 every 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 defined 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 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, 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." {176}  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 understand 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 familiarity with a state of
things which has no counterpart here, 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 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 unlike
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 the other as death is
for that of organic life.  We fight against it as long as we can, and
often stave it off successfully 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 everlasting 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 no thing 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 Christendom fails if there be not a will of him that
willeth to back it up.  God and the man are powerless without one
another.


Genius and Providence


Among all the evidences for the existence of an overruling Providence
that I can discover, I see none more convincing 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 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 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.]


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 kindly 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
asinometer 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 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 possibility 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, "involves 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 translation of the Iliad
in 1898.  I do not believe George Meredith has said anything to the
same effect, but I have read so very 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 translation 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 Froude'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 take a great deal of pains to write clearly,
tersely and euphemistically:  he will write many a sentence three or
four times over--to do much more than this is worse than not
rewriting 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 superfluous 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 characteristics) 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


"Il 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 a good many
people say that the work is mediocre, but, unless 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
acquainted 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 such 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 meme sentir du tout."

How many years, I wonder, was it before I learned to dislike
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 presumptions 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 infamous libels
upon life and things; it is a blasphemy against 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 advantage 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 pounds 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 unquestionable 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 uninteresting.  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, 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 Lilliput 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 surrounded.  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 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 themselves 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.


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 overheard some waterside-
looking dwellers in the neighbourhood talking among themselves.  I
wrote down the following:-

Bill:  Oh, yes.  I've got a mate that works in my shop; 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 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 possibility 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 Platt (Journal of Philology, Vol. 24, No.
47) wishes to draw from Eumaeus being told to bring Ulysses' bow
[Greek text] (Od. XXI. 234) suggests to met 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.


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 would
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 water 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.


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 formation 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 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 "Athene"
and not "Minerva."  Besides many readers would pronounce the word as
a dissyllable or an anapaest.


The Odyssey and a Tomb at Carcassonne


There is a tomb at some place in France, I think at Carcassonne, 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 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.]  "Il toro macigna un 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 righteousness 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 he 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
respectively, 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 contribution 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, sanctimoniousness 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
situm, 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 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
acquainted 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 immediately 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 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 well 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 openings of the
gates:  in the city she uttereth her words" (Prov. 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. {203}

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 repentance.  He who finds
himself inconvenienced by knowing 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 retrorsum; the earth itself
does not pursue its course more steadily than mind does when it has
once committed itself, and if we could see 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 cataclysm,
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. {204}  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, and we often do not depart from evil
simply because 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 contact 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 enfolding 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
inarticulate and deals but with the one universal language of
agglutination.  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 we see 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 I 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 was 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 amphitheatre
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 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
difficulty 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 developed 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.

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 reasonably 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 born 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 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
provisionally 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 important first principle in this matter is the not lightly
thinking 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 advertisements 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 does there begin 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 homogeneous throughout.  So with wine
and water which assimilate, 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 contradiction 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 permanence 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 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 de minimis non curat lex, that makes it possible that
there should be majora 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 does not know the things belonging 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 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 praying 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, O 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 seriously.  I
dropped saying mine suddenly once for all without malice prepense, on
the night of the 29th of September, 1859, 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 Archdeacon 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"?

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 coattails; 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 before us.  For if the old ones had not in
course of time gone there would have 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 works 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 thinking 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.

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 we 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 embrace 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 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! 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 unbusiness-like
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 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-ist give himself 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.


Men of Science


If they are worthy of 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.


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
impatient 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 undomesticated 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, 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.


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 religious world.


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 comforter 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.


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.  [1897.]


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.


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 Heatherley's]
and that other thing which I said about Andromeda in Life and Habit,
{225} 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 contagious; 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 conventionality.  This drone
is, as it were, the flour and suet of a plum pudding.


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 experiments 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 difference, you can show that men and women
have hardly anything 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.


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 of the World to Come.

The Limits of 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
elders.

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 in the dark--these are among the main sources
of our progress.

The Elements of Immorality for the Use of Earnest Schoolmasters.

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 off
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 chimney-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.

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 pounds
.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 Ishmael on the night that Isaac came
down from the mountain with his father.  The rebellious Ishmael 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 illegitimate 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 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
disturbing 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 eclipses and transits of
Venus, and all their most accomplished historians investigate it; but
if the conditions for observation have been unfavourable, or if they
postpone consideration 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 Ald. b. x. 231c/d"--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," 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 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 firewood; 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.

"O Gaetano," she exclaimed, "I 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.


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 one 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 makes 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 greater and greater, and he determines to see the Devil
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. {235}



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 time 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
connection with it often strikes me.  But long before I knew Jones,
Fetter Lane was always a street which I was more in than perhaps 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.


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 complainingly, 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 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.]


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 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 me.  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 amusement.  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 understand, 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."

"The tooth-pick freely" and "the spirit twice a day" 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."

My cousin says that Furber hardly knows any one by their real name.
He identifies them by some nickname in connection 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 infancy.  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, composed
herself to slumber.


Fire


I 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.


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 who 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:

"O, 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.


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 upright 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.


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 Basingstoke, 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 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 perfectly.  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
sympathise 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. Pancras' 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.  However, 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.


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.

Omne 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 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 who 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 circumstances 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.


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 disappointed.

"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 anything or done
with anything by those who want to do it (as I 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 greyhound
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 fortnight ago, and
Jones and I wanted to go inside over the house.

My cousin said, "You'd much better not, it will only unsettle 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 enchanting 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 consulted my good
clerk, Alfred, who said:

"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.
{251}

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."

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:

[Music score which cannot be produced]
Deh . . . vi--e--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 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."

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 continued 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 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, comfortable 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 of the table and we opposite them.  There was an air about
them both which 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 in 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 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
something of the air of a half, if not wholly, broken-down blackguard
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 impartially to each.  He said
he was an Italian who had the profoundest admiration for England.  I
said at once -

"Lei non puo amare l'Inghilterra piu che io amo ed ammiro l'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 "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
Raffaelle as believing him to be the Three per Cents of artistic
securities.  Did I not like the "Madonna di S. Sisto"?  I said, "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 work 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.  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 discussion, 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 bookish 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 donc dejeune a peu pres selon vos idees, 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, adumbrated 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 "tres 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."

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 diligences 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 procession 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 would as soon take an English bishop to the
Surrey pantomime as to the Sacro Monte on a festa.

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 walls 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.
{261}  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.


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 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, {263} 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
insignificant-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 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 Promontogno 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 buzzy 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.

"Then you shall like much the works of Washington Irving?"

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 poetry?--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 again 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 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 'Inglese 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 formicomorphise 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."

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 overnight.

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 demanded
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 counterpoint; 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 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 birthright.

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
Shakespearean.  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 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 instinctively.


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 expression 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 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 Clytemnestra, 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 excused him by saying that I
supposed some one had warned him to fly from the wrath to come,
meaning that he had conceptions 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 speaking
enthusiastically about the beauty of the scenery to a Frenchman who
said to him:

"Aimez-vous donc les beautes de la nature?  Pour moi je les abborre."


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, the 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.


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 newspaper 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.

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 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 impression.
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 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-ornamentation.

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.

We then went into the Libreria to see the frescoes by Pinturicchio--
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 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 of 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 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" by Gerino da Pistoja (I think, but one
forgets 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 interesting 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 ancestors 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 universal, equally
useful.  They are the principles of conservation and accumulation on
the one hand, and of adventure, speculation and progress on the
other, each equally indispensable.  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 forgotten 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 amoebas
on a larger scale.  Cui non dictus Hylas puer et 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
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 all 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
treatment 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 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 persistence 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
aversion 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 cemeteries 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.  {279}


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 immediately 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
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 about and
hunting after her chord!  Fancy being in heaven with 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, resolved 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.]


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 AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pius II) and stolen a few years
since, but recovered.  Signora Carletti was copying parts of it in
needlework, 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 establishment, 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. {282}  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 which she is superintendent, and which is in
connection with the main meteorological 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 Thymbra, 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 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 gentleman, 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.

"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."

"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! 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 Englishman 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 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 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 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
automata 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 proposing.  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 Languages who had
invented a kind of Ollendorffian 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 competency (about
1000 pounds 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 practice, 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 enjoyment 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," 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 cautioning
the readers against believing the criticisms they see, inasmuch as
personal motives will underlie the greater number.

They defend the universities and academic bodies on the ground that,
but for them, good work would be so universal that the world would
become clogged with masterpieces to an extent that would reduce it to
an absurdity.  Good sense would rule over all, and merely smart or
clever people would be unable to earn a living.

They assume that truth is best got at by the falling out of thieves.
"Well then, there must be thieves, or how can they fall out?  Our
business is to produce the raw material from which truth may be
elicited."

"And you succeed, sir," I replied, "in a way that is beyond all
praise, and it seems as though there would be no limit to the supply
of truth that ought to be available.  But, considering the number of
your thieves, they show less alacrity in flying at each other's
throats than might have been expected."

They live their lives backwards, beginning, as old men and women,
with little more knowledge of the past than we have of the future,
and foreseeing the future about as clearly as we see the past,
winding up by entering into the womb as though being buried.  But
delicacy forbids me to pursue this subject further:  the upshot is
that it comes to much the same thing, provided one is used to it.


Paying debts is a luxury which we cannot all of us afford.

"It is not every one, my dear, who can reach such a counsel of
perfection as murder."


There was no more space for the chronicles and, what was worse, there
was no more space in which anything could happen at all, the whole
land had become one vast cancerous growth of chronicles, chronicles,
chronicles, nothing but chronicles.

The catalogue of the Browne medals alone will in time come to occupy
several hundreds of pages in the University Calendar.

There was a professor who was looked upon as such a valuable man
because he had done more than any other living person to suppress any
kind of originality.

"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 to make them think
as we do, or at any rate as we consider 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 Gumption, nor are there
priests or professors of Gumption--Gumption 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 dangerously 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 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
guardians 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 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
approved, 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 inconceivable, 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 circumstances.  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
improvement, let us be content to forego improvement, and let those
who suffer their lawless thoughts to stray in this direction 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 intolerable 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 would be at any trouble to restrain the present almost
unbounded 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 comfortably 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 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 unchangeable truth;
what we should pursue is the most convenient 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 compromise 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 continual 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.

ix

Truth should never be allowed to become extreme; otherwise 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 contradiction 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 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.

iii

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.

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!


Convenience


i

We wonder at its being as hard often to discover convenience 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 required to know what truth is, but to
speak the truth, and so with justice.

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's 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, therefore, 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 unimportance, and in the utmost unimportance
there is importance.  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-reasonings
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 we express ourselves
in one way we find our ideas in confusion and our action impotent:
if in another our ideas cohere harmoniously, 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 knowledge, 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 convenience 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 ourselves as
an inclined plane that we may walk up ourselves more easily; and yet
it answers very sufficiently.


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 pounds 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 deceiving 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 precious
gift of falsehood too cheap; he has come by it too easily; cheaply
come, cheaply go will be his maxim.  The good liar should be the
converse of the poet; he should be 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 sometimes 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
circumstance, 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 anything 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.  Watching 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."

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 rejected; 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, O 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
unexpected 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
slovenliness 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 mechanism, 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 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 conscientious 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 which I thought a very poor one, whereby others, whose
circumstances 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
naturally, 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 profession,
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 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 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 convenience 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 disagreement, 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 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 expected 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
hall 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 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 produces 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 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 laundress 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
disturbing 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 apparentibus 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 conceivably doing so in relation to other entities.  But
this Protean nothing, capable of appearing as something, is not the
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 beginning 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 comprehension, 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 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
nevertheless to forget the underlying omnipresence in the superficial
omniabsence.  They forget that its opposite lurks in everything--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 acquiescence 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
harmonics, 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, freewill 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!"  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 lurking 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 contradiction 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 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 combination 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.  Nevertheless, 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 freewill.  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 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 infinitely 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 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 instance, 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, individuality--so
omnipresent, so essential, yet so unreasonable, and so inconsistent
with the other element not less omnipresent and not less essential, I
mean necessity, luck, fate--this element of free-will, which comes
from the unseen kingdom 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 parentage, 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 obviously driven
to determine our course, in those cases where the future is most
obscure, that is, when the balance of advantage appears most
doubtful.

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, 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 improvidence) or to whatever kindred term he has
most fancy for.  In other words, he is so much impressed with the
connection 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 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 difference 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
freewill 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 incompatible, you must write a scientific Athanasian
Creed to comprehend these two incomprehensibles.

If, then, it is only an escape from one incomprehensible position to
another, cui 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 reading 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 in 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 insufficiently 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 understand how the
air and earth and water near a piece of grass 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 understand 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 difficulty, 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
apparently 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 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 particular 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.  Provided we live according to familiar
laws of health, the less we think about circulation and digestion the
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 apprentice just as much Charybdis?
Is he so greatly preferable?  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
towards 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-sure that the criminal on whom he was
looking was not saying 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, circumvent or otherwise
escape from the consequences of the interlacing 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 philosophy 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.


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 proceeds 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 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 philosophy 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 cannot 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 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 sometimes 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 foundation 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 ourselves.  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 requires 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 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 difficult to find this
out.  The difficulty is, however, often reducible into that of
knowing what gives one pleasure, and this, though difficult, is a
safer guide and more easily distinguished.  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 connection 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 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 commandment, and my second should be
like unto it. {333}


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 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.

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 mislead 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 antecedent
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?"


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 effort.  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 superhuman 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.


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.)


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 belongs 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 hoodwink 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 covetable 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 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.


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 understand 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 supernatural and
anxious to explain it away where possible, we would keep our
disbelief in the supernatural in the background, as far as we could,
and would explain away our rejection 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 anything 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 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 correlative 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 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 10/--reward to any one who
should give such information 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.


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 we
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 Christianity 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 we 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 we 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 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. {343}  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 something else was rapid and they soon forgot that they
were undergoing any punishment.

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, ponderous old gentleman, very irritable and always thinking
that the other shades were laughing at him or trying to take
advantage of him.  There were two, however, whom he hated with a fury
that tormented him far more seriously than anything 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 hygrometric 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 anything 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 AEgisthus.

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 something 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 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 he 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.


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 unforgiveable, 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.  Expressions of regret help genuine
regret and induce amendment of life, much as digging a channel helps
water to flow, 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
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.


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. III], speaking of
the peasants in the Val Leventina knowing English, when I said "One
English word has become universally 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 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 sanctified 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 principles 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 intends 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 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
unmentionable.

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 disappointment
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 us; 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 the earlier existence, to bar personal identity and
prevent us from seeing 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 octogenarian, 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 throughout 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 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 brutum 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 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 habitual.  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 conscious life, but
we have no consciousness of the deaths we daily die.  Besides, we
cannot eat our cake and have it.  We cannot have tabulae rasae and
tabulae scriptae 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 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 disliking 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 his terrors is like trying to find the philosopher'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 whole fabric of 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 love 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 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 remembrance 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 immortality of the other.  Here is the test of
faith--will you do your duty with all your might at any cost of goods
or reputation either in this world or beyond the grave?  If you will-
-well, the chances are 100 to 1 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 forgetting 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 practically 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 all--I mean the life that is lived after death in the
thoughts and actions of posterity.  Moreover of those who are born
into and fill great places in this invisible world not one is
immortal.

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.

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 afterlife 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 young 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.

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 vates 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 vates 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 correspondence 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
{364}--just as we throw 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, impartially, 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
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 tall, 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 misrepresented.  I growl at this sometimes but,
if the question were seriously put to me whether I would go on as I
am or become 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 anything 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 reasonable 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 confidence and confirmation.  [1893.]


Analysis of the Sales of My Books


         Copies  Cash      Cash      Total     Total     Value of
           Sold  Profit    Loss      Profit    loss      stock
Erewhon    3843 62 10 10     --    69  3 10    --       6 13 0
The Fair    442    --    41  2  2     --    27 18  2   13  4 0
  Haven
Life and    640    --     4 17  1.5 7 19  1.5   --     12 16 3
  Habit
Evolution   541    --   103 11 10     --    89 13 10   13 18 0
  Old & New
Unconscious 272    --    38 13  5     --    38 13  5       -
  Memory
Alps and    332    --   113  6  4     --   110 18  4   22  8 0
  Sanctuaries
Selections  120    --    51  4 10.5   --    48 10 10.5  2 14 0
  from
  Previous
  Works
Luck or     284    --    41  6  4     --    13 18 10   27  7 6
  Cunning?
Ex Voto     217    --   147 18  0     --   111  8  0   36 10 0
Life and    201    --   216 18  0     --   193 18  0   23  0 0
  Letters of
  Dr. Butler
The         165    --    81  1  3     --    59 10  3   21 11 0
  Authoress
  of the
  Odyssey
The Iliad   157    --    89  4  8     --    77  6  8   11 18 0
  in English
  Prose
A Holbein     6    --     8  1  9     --     8  1  9       -
  Card
A Book of     0    --     3 11  9     --       --      3 11 9
  Essays

Totals:
   Cash profit:      62 10 10
   Cash loss:       960 17  6
   Total profit:     77  2 11.5
   Total loss:      779 18  1.5
   Value of stock:  195 11  6

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. {369}


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 unscrupulous, 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 such support as gives me
hope again.  Still, I know nothing.  [1890.]


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 by anything which 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 fortune, 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.  Retirement is to me a
condition of being able to work at all.  I would rather write more
books and music than spend much time over what I have already
written; nor do I see 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 literature and
science; or perhaps even more I enjoy taking snapshots 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 explanation 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, because, although I have been in financial
difficulties, I did not seriously need success from a money point of
view, and because I hated the kind of people I should have had to
court 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 instinctively
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 matter, the answer is
that those who do not either push the themselves into noise, or give
some one else a substantial interest 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 publishing 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
somebody 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 consequence 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.

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 I 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.

I am not one 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 found 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 picking 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 development 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, Unconscious Memory, Luck or
Cunning? and "The Deadlock in Darwinism" in the Universal Review
republished in Essays on Life, Art and Science.] {376}

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 Athenaeum, &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 Voto.]

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 become 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 approached.  [The Authoress of the Odyssey.]

15.  The attempt to do justice to my grandfather by writing The Life
and Letters 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 off.

17.  The elucidation of Shakespeare's Sonnets.  [Shakespeare'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 Platt 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
research; 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 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 straightforwardness, 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, but 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.

"On 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.  Knowing that Mr. Edward Clodd had had
something to do with its appearance in the Spectator I wrote asking
him to tell me what he remembered about it.  He very kindly replied,
29th October, 1905:

The '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. 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 18th 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 it formed part of the correspondence "A Clergyman's
Doubts" of which the letter signed "Ethics" has already been given in
this volume (see p. 304 ante).  "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 generally, 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.

I asked Butler who had challenged him to attempt the translation and
he replied that he had thought of that and had settled that, if any
one else 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 Holborn 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 remains 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 January, 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 happened 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 1902," within six months of his death, at a time when he was
depressed physically because his health was failing and mentally
because he had been "editing his remains," reading and destroying old
letters and brooding over the past.  One of the subjects given in the
section "Titles and Subjects" (ante) is "The diseases and ordinary
causes of mortality among friendships."  I suppose that he found
among his letters something which awakened memories of a friendship
of his earlier life--a friendship that had suffered from a disease,
whether it recovered or died would not affect the sincerity of the
emotions experienced by Butler at the time he believed the friendship
to be virtually dead.  I suppose 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 Reconsidered
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," 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:  "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:

"'Cleanse thou 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."

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 Shakespeare, 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 "and clear" 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 following 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."

The "poor innocent thing" was the sonnet beginning "Not on sad
Stygian shore," the first of those I have grouped under the heading
"The Life after Death."  It appears in his notebooks with this
introductory sentence:

"Having now learned Shakespeare's Sonnets by heart--and 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 wished this volume to close with these three
sonnets, especially because the last two of them were inspired by
Handel, who was never absent 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.  I believe I am not exaggerating when I
say that I have never been a day since I was 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."

For they do 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
possessions 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, wherefore do men now
speak of the choice of 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 addressing 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
themselves the electroplated-Birmingham-manufactured magnificence of
a pewter to stand on their ball 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 unequally 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."


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, bearing 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.


iv--On the Italian Priesthood


(Con arte e con inganno, si vive mezzo l'anno;
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
Discobolus--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:
      O God!  O Montreal!

Beautiful by night 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:
      O God!  O Montreal!

When I saw him I was wroth and I said, "O Discobolus!
Beautiful Discobolus, a Prince both among gods and men!
What doest thou here, how camest thou hither, Discobolus,
Preaching gospel in vain to the skins of owls?"
      O God!  O Montreal!

And I turned to the man of skins and said unto him, "O 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!  O 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."
      O God!  O Montreal!

Then I said, "O 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!"
      O God!  O Montreal!

"Preferrest thou the gospel of Montreal to the gospel of Hellas,
The gospel of thy connection with Mr. Spurgeon's haberdashery to the
gospel of the Discobolus?"
Yet none the less blasphemed he beauty saying, "The Discobolus hath
no gospel,
But my brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon."
      O God!  O Montreal!


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 hereafter,
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,
And not in those of him who cannot call me to account.
Therefore yield me up thy pretty wings, O humming-bird!
Sing for me in a prison, O lark!
Pay me thy rent, O 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!
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 perfectly 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.


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.


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--"'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).

[Translation in Greek]


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;
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, O 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.
Hand in hand we watch the train as it glides
Out, out, out into the night.
   So take him into thy holy keeping, O Lord,
   And guide him and guard him ever, and fare him well!


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.


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.

(C)

"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?
Body is a chest 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)

[Greek text]

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
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.

(C)

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.



Footnotes



{16}  "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, by A. D. Darbishire.  Cassell & Co., 1911, 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.

{26}  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.

{30}  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.

{31}  Walks in the Regions of Science and Faith, by Harvey Goodwin,
D.D., Lord Bishop of Carlisle.  John Murray, 1883.

{32a}  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.

{32b}  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 his mind, he would have edited it so as to avoid
speaking of Homer as the author of the poem.

{41}  Life and Habit is dated 1878, but it actually appeared on
Butler's birthday, 4th December, 1877.

{92}  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.

{106}  Cf. the note "Reproduction," p. 16 ante.

{107}  Evolution Old & New, p. 77.

{128}  Twelve 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 instrument in
one of the mean tone temperaments.

{131}  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. 133 post.

{136}  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.

{147}  Raffaelle's picture "The Virgin and child attended by S. John
the Baptist and S. Nicholas of Bari" (commonly known as the "Madonna
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
themselves.

{151}  Cf. the passage in Alps and Sanctuaries, chapter XIII,
beginning "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."

{153}  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.

{162}  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.

{176}  Narcissus, "Should Riches mate with Love."

{235}  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.

{203}  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}  Cf.  "Imaginary Worlds," p. 233 post.

{225}  "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 & Habit, Chapter
viii, p. 138/9.

{251}  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?'"

{261}  "Ramblings in Cheapside" in Essays on Life, Art and Science.

{263}  Edmund Gurney, author of The Power of Sound, and Secretary of
the Society for Psychical Research.

{279}  Cf. Wamba's explanation of the Saxon swine being converted
into Norman pork on their death.  Ivanhoe, Chap. I.

{282}  See "A Medieval Girl School" in Essays on Life, Art & Science.

{333}  "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).

{343}  "No one can hate drunkenness more than I do, but I am
confident 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).

{364}  There are letters from these people in The Life and Letters of
Dr. Samuel Butler.

{369}  Butler made this note in 1899 before the publication of
Shakespeare's Sonnets Reconsidered, which was published in the same
year.  The Odyssey Rendered info 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
pounds 11s. 9d. in connection with a projected republication of his
articles in the Universal Review or of some of his Italian articles
about the Odyssey.

{376}  Butler had two separate grounds of complaint against Charles
Darwin, one scientific, the other personal.  With regard to the
personal 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, 1911).




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