Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler, page 545
Wit
There is no Professor of Wit at either University. Surely they might as reasonably have a professor of wit as of poetry.
Oxford and Cambridge
The dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
Cooking
There is a higher average of good cooking at Oxford and Cambridge than elsewhere. The cooking is better than the curriculum. But there is no Chair of Cookery, it is taught by apprenticeship in the kitchens.
Perseus and St. George
These dragon-slayers did not take lessons in dragon-slaying, nor do leaders of forlorn hopes generally rehearse their parts beforehand. Small things may be rehearsed, but the greatest are always do-or-die, neck-or-nothing matters.
Specialism and Generalism
Woe to the specialist who is not a pretty fair generalist, and woe to the generalist who is not also a bit of a specialist.
Silence and Tact
Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence.
Truth-tellers
Professional truth-tellers may be trusted to profess that they are telling the truth.
Street Preachers
These are the costermongers and barrow men of the religious world.
Providence and Othello
Providence, in making the rain fall also upon the sea, was like the man who, when he was to play Othello, must needs black himself all over.
Providence and Improvidence
i
We should no longer say: Put your trust in Providence, but in Improvidence, for this is what we mean.
ii
To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.
iii
There is nothing so imprudent or so improvident as over-prudence or over-providence.
Epiphany
If Providence could be seen at all, he would probably turn out to be a very disappointing person — a little wizened old gentleman with a cold in his head, a red nose and a comforter round his neck, whistling o’er the furrow’d land or crooning to himself as he goes aimlessly along the streets, poking his way about and loitering continually at shop-windows and second-hand book-stalls.
Fortune
Like Wisdom, Fortune crieth in the streets, and no man regardeth. There is not an advertisement supplement to the Times — nay, hardly a half sheet of newspaper that comes into a house wrapping up this or that, but it gives information which would make a man’s fortune, if he could only spot it and detect the one paragraph that would do this among the 99 which would wreck him if he had anything to do with them.
Gold-Mines
Gold is not found in quartz alone; its richest lodes are in the eyes and ears of the public, but these are harder to work and to prospect than any quartz vein.
Things and Purses
Everything is like a purse — there may be money in it, and we can generally say by the feel of it whether there is or is not. Sometimes, however, we must turn it inside out before we can be quite sure whether there is anything in it or no. When I have turned a proposition inside out, put it to stand on its head, and shaken it, I have often been surprised to find how much came out of it.
Solomon in all his Glory
But, in the first place, the lilies do toil and spin after their own fashion, and, in the next, it was not desirable that Solomon should be dressed like a lily of the valley.
David’s Teachers
David said he had more understanding than his teachers. If his teachers were anything like mine this need not imply much understanding on David’s part. And if his teachers did not know more than the Psalms — it is absurd. It is merely swagger, like the German Emperor. [1897.]
S. Michael
He contended with the devil about the body of Moses. Now, I do not believe that any reasonable person would contend about the body of Moses with the devil or with any one else.
One Form of Failure
From a worldly point of view there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
Andromeda
The dragon was never in better health and spirits than on the morning when Perseus came down upon him. It is said that Andromeda told Perseus she had been thinking how remarkably well he was looking. He had got up quite in his usual health — and so on.
When I said this to Ballard [a fellow art-student at Heatherley’s] and that other thing which I said about Andromeda in Life and Habit, he remarked that he wished it had been so in the poets.
I looked at him. “Ballard,” I said, “I also am ‘the poets.’”
Self-Confidence
Nothing is ever any good unless it is thwarted with self-distrust though in the main self-confident.
Wandering
When the inclination is not obvious, the mind meanders, or maunders, as a stream in a flat meadow.
Poverty
I shun it because I have found it so apt to become contagious; but I fancy my constitution is more seasoned against it now than formerly. I hope that what I have gone through may have made me immune.
Pedals or Drones
The discords of every age are rendered possible by being taken on a drone or pedal of cant, common form and conventionality. This drone is, as it were, the flour and suet of a plum pudding.
Evasive Nature
She is one long This-way-and-it-isness and, at the same time, That-way-and-it-isn’tness. She flies so like a snipe that she is hard to hit.
Fashion
Fashion is like God, man cannot see it in its holy of holies and live. And it is, like God, increate, springing out of nothing, yet the maker of all things — ever changing yet the same yesterday, to-day and for ever.
Doctors and Clergymen
A physician’s physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric’s divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.
God is Love
I dare say. But what a mischievous devil Love is!
Common Chords
If Man is the tonic and God the dominant, the Devil is certainly the sub-dominant and Woman is the relative minor.
God and the Devil
God and the Devil are an effort after specialisation and division of labour.
Sex
The sexes are the first — or are among the first great experiments in the social subdivision of labour.
Women
If you choose to insist on the analogies and points of resemblance between men and women, they are so great that the differences seem indeed small. If, on the other hand, you are in a mood for emphasising the points of difference, you can show that men and women have hardly anything in common. And so with anything: if a man wants to make a case he can generally find a way of doing so.
Offers of Marriage
Women sometimes say that they have had no offers, and only wish that some one had ever proposed to them. This is not the right way to put it. What they should say is that though, like all women, they have been proposing to men all their lives, yet they grieve to remember that they have been invariably refused.
Marriage
i
The question of marriage or non-marriage is only the question of whether it is better to be spoiled one way or another.
ii
In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.
iii
Inoculation, or a hair of the dog that is going to bite you — this principle should be introduced in respect of marriage and speculation.
Life and Love
To live is like to love — all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
The Basis of Life
We may say what we will, but Life is, au fond, sensual.
Woman Suffrage
I will vote for it when women have left off making a noise in the reading-room of the British Museum, when they leave off wearing high head-dresses in the pit of a theatre and when I have seen as many as twelve women in all catch hold of the strap or bar on getting into an omnibus.
Manners Makyth Man
Yes, but they make woman still more.
Women and Religion
It has been said that all sensible men are of the same religion and that no sensible man ever says what that religion is. So all sensible men are of the same opinion about women and no sensible man ever says what that opinion is.
Happiness
Behold and see if there be any happiness like unto the happiness of the devils when they found themselves cast out of Mary Magdalene.
Sorrow within Sorrow
He was in reality damned glad; he told people he was sorry he was not more sorry, and here began the first genuine sorrow, for he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.
Going Away
I can generally bear the separation, but I don’t like the leave-taking.
CHAPTER 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?”
