The Note-Books of Samuel Butler

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Title: The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
Author: Butler, Samuel
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Note-Books of Samuel Butler" ***

Transcribed from the 1912 A. C. Fifield edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

[Picture: Photograph of Samuel Butler]

The Note-Books of
Samuel Butler

Author of “Erewhon”

* * * * *

Selections arranged and edited by
Henry Festing Jones

* * * * *

With photogravure portrait by Emery Walker from a
photograph taken by Alfred Cathie in 1898

* * * * *

London
A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford’s Inn, E.C.
1912

* * * * *

WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH

_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, archæology, 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.

Contents

PAGE
Biographical Statement 1
I. Lord, What is Man? 9
II. Elementary Morality 24
III. The Germs of Erewhon and of Life and Habit 39
IV. Memory and Design 56
V. Vibrations 66
VI. Mind and Matter 74
VII. On the Making of Music, Pictures and Books 93
VIII. Handel and Music 110
IX. A Painter’s Views on Painting 135
X. The Position of a Homo Unius Libri 155
XI. Cash and Credit 168
XII. The Enfant Terrible of Literature 183
XIII. Unprofessional Sermons 200
XIV. Higgledy-Piggledy 215
XV. Titles and Subjects 229
XVI. Written Sketches 237
XVII. Material for a Projected Sequel to Alps and 259
Sanctuaries
XVIII. Material for Erewhon Revisited 288
XIX. Truth and Convenience 297
XX. First Principles 309
XXI. Rebelliousness 332
XXII. Reconciliation 346
XXIII. Death 353
XXIV. The Life of the World to Come 360
XXV. Poems 379

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
Homœopathy 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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Life is the distribution of an error—or errors.

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

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.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient
premises.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.”

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

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.

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

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

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

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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_ 18_th_, 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 An but you can never eliminate the A.

8. Let An 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_, 2_nd_ _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

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.

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 à 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

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.

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

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.

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 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

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.

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.

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 anæsthetic—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
employés. 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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 l’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’âme”
{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

Molière’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 Molière 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

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.

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:

[Picture: Music score: And the glory, the glory 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

[Picture: Music scores: While now without measure we revel in pleasure.
With their vain mysterios 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 Maccabæus_. 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:—

[Picture: Music score: And the government shall be upon his shoulder]

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_:

[Picture: Music score]

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 Maccabæus_ 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:

[Picture: Music score by Beethoven then Purcell]

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 Æolian, 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 Æolian 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 Æolian 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, Dvořák 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 farò” in it. I do not mind this, and if it had been
“Che farò” 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 König,” 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

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.

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 and then let it go. It
went for £28, and I should say would have been well bought at £40.
[1887.]

Watts

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

“Mon cher ami, racontez-moi 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

Trübner and Myself

WHEN I went back to Trübner, 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. Trübner 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 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.”

Trübner 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. 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 Athenæum, 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

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.

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.

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.

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 même médiocre; il est si
facile de sentir la médiocrité.”

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 médiocrité” and, it might be
added, “ou même 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 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 ἀνὰ
δώματα (_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 naïve 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
anapæst.

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 Phœacians
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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Definitions are a kind of scratching and generally leave a sore place
more sore than it was before.

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

We should no longer say: Put your trust in Providence, but in
Improvidence, for this is what we mean.

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

The question of marriage or non-marriage is only the question of whether
it is better to be spoiled one way or another.

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 amœba
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, £1.15.11. 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
rôle.

“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:

[Picture: Music score:Dehvieni alla fenestra]

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 Hôtel Tête 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 può amare l’Inghilterra più 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 séance 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 Hôtel 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 déjeuné à peu près selon vos idées, 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 “très 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 Cæsar, 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
Mecænas, 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 Müller 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 Müller and I happened to meet his box—an enormous cube of a
trunk—coming down the stairs.

“That’s Beethoven’s box,” said Müller 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 Hôtel 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, “è 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’hôte 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 beautés 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’hôte 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 naïf 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 amœbas 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 Æneas 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
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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

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.

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.

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.

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

We wonder at its being as hard often to discover convenience as it is to
discover truth. But surely convenience is truth.

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.

“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.

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.

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, 15_th_
_February to_ 14_th_ _June_, 1879. _Butler wrote all the letters under
various signatures except one or perhaps two_. _His first letter
purported to come from_ “_An Earnest Clergyman_” _aged forty-five_, _with
a wife_, _five children_, _a country living worth_ £400 _a year_, _and a
house_, _but no private means_. _He had ceased to believe in the
doctrines he was called upon to teach_. _Ought he to continue to lead a
life that was a lie or ought he to throw up his orders and plunge
himself_, _his wife and children into poverty_? _The dilemma interested
Butler deeply_: _he might so easily have found himself in it if he had
not begun to doubt the efficacy of infant baptism when he did_. _Fifteen
letters followed_, _signed_ “_Cantab_,” “_Oxoniensis_,” _and so forth_,
_some recommending one course_, _some another_. _One_, _signed_
“_X.Y.Z._,” _included_ “_The Righteous Man_” _which will be found in the
last group of this volume_, _headed_ “_Poems_.” _From the following
letter signed_ “_Ethics_” _Butler afterwards took two passages_ (_which I
have enclosed_, _one between single asterisks the other between double
asterisks_), _and used them for the_ “_Dissertation on Lying_” _which is
in Chapter V of_ Alps and Sanctuaries.

To the Editor of the _Examiner_.

Sir: I am sorry for your correspondent “An Earnest Clergyman” for, though
he may say he has “come to smile at his troubles,” his smile seems to be
a grim one. We must all of us eat a peck of moral dirt before we die,
but some must know more precisely than others when they are eating it;
some, again, can bolt it without wry faces in one shape, while they
cannot endure even the smell of it in another. “An Earnest Clergyman”
admits that he is in the habit of telling people certain things which he
does not believe, but says he has no great fancy for deceiving himself.
“Cantab” must, I fear, deceive himself before he can tolerate the notion
of 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 formulæ 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 sérieux_. 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

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.

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.

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.

At Ivy Hatch, while we were getting our beer in the inner parlour, there
was a confused mêlée 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

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.

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.

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 amœba 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 amœba 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

As an instrument of warfare against vice, or as a tool for making virtue,
Christianity is a mere flint implement.

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.

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.

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.

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

The reason why the early Christians held faith in such account was
because they felt it to be a feat of such superhuman difficulty.

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.

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.

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.

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’être_ 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
Ægisthus.

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

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.

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.

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 _tabulæ rasæ_ and _tabulæ scriptæ_ 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.

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.

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

To try to live in posterity is to be like an actor who leaps over the
footlights and talks to the orchestra.

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 Sold Cash Profit Cash Loss Total Profit Total loss Value of stock
Erewhon 3843 62 10 10 — 69 3 10 — 6 13 0
The Fair Haven 442 — 41 2 2 — 27 18 2 13 4 0
Life and Habit 640 — 4 17 1½ 7 19 1½ — 12 16 3
Evolution Old & New 541 — 103 11 10 — 89 13 10 13 18 0
Unconscious Memory 272 — 38 13 5 — 38 13 5 —
Alps and Sanctuaries 332 — 113 6 4 — 110 18 4 22 8 0
Selections from Previous Works 120 — 51 4 10½ — 48 10 10½ 2 14 0
Luck or Cunning? 284 — 41 6 4 — 13 18 10 27 7 6
Ex Voto 217 — 147 18 0 — 111 8 0 36 10 0
Life and Letters of Dr. Butler 201 — 216 18 0 — 193 18 0 23 0 0
The Authoress of the Odyssey 165 — 81 1 3 — 59 10 3 21 11 0
The Iliad in English Prose 157 — 89 4 8 — 77 6 8 11 18 0
A Holbein Card 6 — 8 1 9 — 8 1 9 —
A Book of Essays 0 — 3 11 9 — — 3 11 9
62 10 10 960 17 6 77 2 11½ 779 18 1½ 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 _éclat_ 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

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.]

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 _Athenæum_, &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_,
29_th_ _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_ 18_th_ _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_ 14_th_ _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_ 2_nd_ _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).

“ως εφατ αυταρ εyώ μιν αμειβομένη προσέειπον,
‘δαιμονίη, Άρρισσιαδέω αλοχ' αντιθέοιο,
μη θην δη περι μίσθον ανείρεο, μήδ’ ονόμαζε
τοίη yάρ τοι εyων αyανη και ηπίη ειμί,
η κεν λαον απαντ’ ει μοι δύναμίς yε παρείη,
σίτου επηετανου βιότου θ’ αλις ενδον εόντος,
ασπασίως και αμισθος εουσα περιστείλαιμι
[εν λέκτρω λέξασα τανηλεyέος θανάτοιο
αυτή, ος κε θάνησι βροτων και πότμον επίσπη]
αλλ’ εκ τοι ερέω συ δ’ ενι φρεσι βάλλεο σησιν’”—
οσσε δέ οι Πεξνειφον εσέδρακον ασκελες αιεί—
“‘κείνοισιν yαρ πασι πιφαυσκομένη αyορεύω
ειτ’ ανδο’ ειτε yυναίχ’ οτέω τάδε ερyα μέμηλεν,
ω φίλε, τίπτε συ ταυτα μ’ ανείρεαι; ουδέ τί σε χρη
ιδμέναι η εθέλω πίνειν μέθυ, ηε και ουχί
ει δ’ αy’ επ’ εσχάροφιν κάταθες δέπας ηδέος οινου,
οφρ’ εν χερσιν ελω πίνουσά τε τερπομένη τε,
χείλεά τε προσθεισ’ οπόταν φίλον ητορ ανώyη.’”

x—In Memoriam

Feb. 14th, 1895

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)

Μελλοντα ταυτα

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_, Trübner & 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 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).

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Note-Books of Samuel Butler" ***

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