Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler, page 523
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” (p–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” (p–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 (p–5 post), “A Psalm of Montreal” (p–9 post) and “The Righteous Man” (p–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 ( post), “Death is not more the end of some than it is the beginning of others”; and, again ( 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.
CHAPTER I. Lord, What is Man?
Man
i
We are like billiard balls in a game played by unskilful players, continually being nearly sent into a pocket, but hardly ever getting right into one, except by a fluke.
ii
We are like thistle-down blown about by the wind — up and down, here and there — but not one in a thousand ever getting beyond seed-hood.
iii
A man is a passing mood coming and going in the mind of his country; he is the twitching of a nerve, a smile, a frown, a thought of shame or honour, as it may happen.
iv
How loosely our thoughts must hang together when the whiff of a smell, a band playing in the street, a face seen in the fire, or on the gnarled stem of a tree, will lead them into such vagaries at a moment’s warning.
v
When I was a boy at school at Shrewsbury, old Mrs. Brown used to keep a tray of spoiled tarts which she sold cheaper. They most of them looked pretty right till you handled them. We are all spoiled tarts.
vi
He is a poor creature who does not believe himself to be better than the whole world else. No matter how ill we may be, or how low we may have fallen, we would not change identity with any other person. Hence our self-conceit sustains and always must sustain us till death takes us and our conceit together so that we need no more sustaining.
vii
Man must always be a consuming fire or be consumed. As for hell, we are in a burning fiery furnace all our lives — for what is life but a process of combustion?
Life
i
We have got into life by stealth and petitio principii, by the free use of that contradiction in terms which we declare to be the most outrageous violation of our reason. We have wriggled into it by holding that everything is both one and many, both infinite in time and space and yet finite, both like and unlike to the same thing, both itself and not itself, both free and yet inexorably fettered, both every adjective in the dictionary and at the same time the flat contradiction of every one of them.
ii
The beginning of life is the beginning of an illusion to the effect that there is such a thing as free will and that there is such another thing as necessity — the recognition of the fact that there is an “I can” and an “I cannot,” an “I may” and an “I must.”
iii
Life is not so much a riddle to be read as a Gordian knot that will get cut sooner or later.
iv
Life is the distribution of an error — or errors.
v
Murray (the publisher) said that my Life of Dr. Butler was an omnium gatherum. Yes, but life is an omnium gatherum.
vi
Life is a superstition. But superstitions are not without their value. The snail’s shell is a superstition, slugs have no shells and thrive just as well. But a snail without a shell would not be a slug unless it had also the slug’s indifference to a shell.
vii
Life is one long process of getting tired.
viii
My days run through me as water through a sieve.
ix
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
x
Life is eight parts cards and two parts play, the unseen world is made manifest to us in the play.
xi
Lizards generally seem to have lost their tails by the time they reach middle life. So have most men.
xii
A sense of humour keen enough to show a man his own absurdities, as well as those of other people, will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing.
xiii
Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases — though not often.
xiv
There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that every one can, in the end, get what he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is, more or less, an exception to the general rule.
xv
Nature is essentially mean, mediocre. You can have schemes for raising the level of this mean, but not for making every one two inches taller than his neighbour, and this is what people really care about.
xvi
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
The World
i
The world is a gambling-table so arranged that all who enter the casino must play and all must lose more or less heavily in the long run, though they win occasionally by the way.
ii
We play out our days as we play out cards, taking them as they come, not knowing what they will be, hoping for a lucky card and sometimes getting one, often getting just the wrong one.
iii
The world may not be particularly wise — still, we know of nothing wiser.
iv
The world will always be governed by self-interest. We should not try to stop this, we should try to make the self-interest of cads a little more coincident with that of decent people.
The Individual and the World
There is an eternal antagonism of interest between the individual and the world at large. The individual will not so much care how much he may suffer in this world provided he can live in men’s good thoughts long after he has left it. The world at large does not so much care how much suffering the individual may either endure or cause in this life, provided he will take himself clean away out of men’s thoughts, whether for good or ill, when he has left it.
My Life
i
I imagine that life can give nothing much better or much worse than what I have myself experienced. I should say I had proved pretty well the extremes of mental pleasure and pain; and so I believe each in his own way does, almost every man.
ii
I have squandered my life as a schoolboy squanders a tip. But then half, or more than half the fun a schoolboy gets out of a tip consists in the mere fact of having something to squander. Squandering is in itself delightful, and so I found it with my life in my younger days. I do not squander it now, but I am not sorry that I have squandered a good deal of it. What a heap of rubbish there would have been if I had not! Had I not better set about squandering what is left of it?
The Life we Live in Others
A man should spend his life or, rather, does spend his life in being born. His life is his birth throes. But most men miscarry and never come to the true birth at all and some live but a very short time in a very little world and none are eternal. Still, the life we live beyond the grave is our truest life, and our happiest, for we pass it in the profoundest sleep as though we were children in our cradles. If we are wronged it hurts us not; if we wrong others, we do not suffer for it; and when we die, as even the Handels and Bellinis and Shakespeares sooner or later do, we die easily, know neither fear nor pain and live anew in the lives of those who have been begotten of our work and who have for the time come up in our room.
An immortal like Shakespeare knows nothing of his own immortality about which we are so keenly conscious. As he knows nothing of it when it is in its highest vitality, centuries, it may be, after his apparent death, so it is best and happiest if during his bodily life he should think little or nothing about it and perhaps hardly suspect that he will live after his death at all.
