The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
Transcribed from the 1912 A. C. Fifield edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
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
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)
Samuel Butler
---
Contents
Man
Life
The World
The Individual and the World
My Life
The Life we Live in Others
The World Made to Enjoy
Living in Others
Karma
Birth and Death
Reproduction
Thinking almost Identically
Is Life Worth Living?
Evacuations
Man and His Organism
Tools
Organs and Makeshifts
Joining and DisjoiningThese are the essence of change.
Cotton Factories
Our Trivial Bodies
The Foundations of Morality
Counsels of Imperfection
Lucifer
God’s Laws
Physical Excellence
Intellectual Self-Indulgence
Dodging Fatigue
Vice and Virtue
My Virtuous Life
Sin
Morality
Change and Immorality
Cannibalism
Abnormal Developments
Young People
The Family
Unconscious Humour
Melchisedec
Bacon for Breakfast
God and Man
Good Breeding the Summum Bonum
Advice to the Young
Religion
Heaven and Hell
Priggishness
Lohengrin
Swells
Science and Religion
Gentleman
The Finest Men
On being a Swell all Round
Money
A Luxurious Death
Money, Health and Reputation
Solicitors
Doctors
Priests
Prefatory Note
Darwin among the Machines
Lucubratio Ebria
Letter to Thomas William Gale Butler
Clergymen and Chickens
Memory
Antitheses
Unconscious Memory
Reproduction and Memory
Personal Identity
Sensations
Cobwebs in the Dark
Shocks and Memory
Shocks
Design
Accident, Design and Memory
Memory and Mistakes
Remembering
A Torn Finger-Nail
Unconscious Association
Association
Language
Contributions to Evolution
The Universal Substance
Mental and Physical
Vibrations, Memory and Chemical Properties
Protoplasm and Reproduction
Germs within Germs
Atoms and Fixed Laws
Thinking
Equilibrium
Motion
Matter and Mind
Organic and Inorganic
The Power to make Mistakes
The Omnipresence of Intelligence
The Super-Organic Kingdom
Feeling
Opinion and Matter
Moral Influence
Mental and Physical Pabulum
Eating and Proselytising
Sea-Sickness
Indigestion
Assimilation and Persecution
Matter Infinitely Subdivisible
Differences
Union and Separation
Unity and Multitude
The Atom
Our Cells
Nerves and Postmen
Night-Shirts and Babies
Our Organism
Beer and My Cat
The Union Bank
The Unity of Nature
Croesus and His Kitchen-Maid
Thought and Word
The Law
Ideas
Expression
Development
Acquired Characteristics
Physical and Spiritual
Trail and Writing
Conveyancing and the Arts
The Rules for Making Literature, Music and Pictures
Relative Importances
Eating Grapes Downwards
Terseness
Making Notes
Shortening
Omission
Brevity
Diffuseness
Difficulties in Art, Literature and Music
Knowledge is Power
Academicism
Agonising
The Choice of Subjects
Imaginary Countries
My Books
Great Works
New Ideas
Books and Children
The Life of Books
Criticism
Le Style c’est l’Homme
Portraits
A Man’s Style
The Gauntlet of Youth
Greatness in Art
Literary Power
Subject and Treatment
Public Opinion
A Literary Man’s Test
What Audience to Write for
Writing for a Hundred Years Hence
Handel and Beethoven
Handel and Domenico Scarlatti
Handel and Homer
Handel and Bach
Handel and the British Public
Handel and Madame Patey
Handel and Shakespeare
A Yankee Handelian
Waste
Handel a Conservative
Handel and Ernest Pontifex
Handel’s Commonplaces
Handel and Dr. Morell
Wordsworth
Sleeping Beauties
“And the Glory of the Lord”
Handel and the Speaking Voice
Handel and the Wetterhorn
“Tyrants now no more shall Dread”
Handel and Marriage
Handel and a Letter to a Solicitor
Handel’s Shower of Rain
Theodora and Susanna
John Sebastian Bach
Honesty
Musical Criticism
On Borrowing in Music
Music
Discords
Anachronism
Chapters in Music
At the Opera
At a Philharmonic Concert
At the Wind Concerts
At a Handel Festival
Handel and Dickens
The Old Masters and Their Pupils
The Academic System and Repentance
The Jubilee Sixpence
Studying from Nature
The Model and the Lay-Figure
Sketching from Nature
Great Art and Sham Art
Inarticulate Touches
Detail
Painting and Association
The Credulous Eye
Truths from Nature
Accuracy
Herbert Spencer
Shade Colour and Reputation
Money and Technique
Action and Study
Sacred and Profane Statues
Seeing
Improvement in Art
Light and Shade
Colour
Words and Colour
Amateurs and Professionals
The Ansidei Raffaelle
Buying a Rembrandt
Trying to Buy a Bellini
Watts
Lombard Portals
Holbein at Basle
Van Eyck
Giotto
Early Art
Sincerity
Trübner and Myself
Capping a Success
A Lady Critic
Compensation
Hudibras and Erewhon
Life and Habit and Myself
A Disappointing Person
Entertaining Angels
Myself and My Books
Dragons
Trying to Know
Squaring Accounts
Charles Darwin on what Sells a Book
Hoodwinking the Public
The Public Ear
Secular Thinking
The Art of Propagating Opinion
Gladstone as a Financier
Argument
Humour
Myself and “Unconscious Humour”
My Humour
Myself and My Publishers
The Unseen World
The Kingdom of Heaven
The Philosopher
The Artist and the Shopkeeper
Art and Trade
Money
Modern Simony
My Grandfather and Myself
Art and Usefulness
Genius
Great Things
Genius and Providence
The Art of Covery
Wanted
Ephemeral and Permanent Success
My Birthright
Myself
Blake, Dante, Virgil and Tennyson
My Father and Shakespeare
Tennyson
Walter Pater and Matthew Arnold
My Random Passages
Moral Try-Your-Strengths
Populus Vult
Men and Monkeys
“One Touch of Nature”
Genuine Feeling
George Meredith
Froude and Freeman
Style
Diderot on Criticism
Bunyan and Others
Poetry
Verse
Verse, Poetry and Prose
Ancient Work
Nausicaa and Myself
Telemachus and Nicholas Nickleby
Gadshill and Trapani
Waiting to be Hired
Ilium and Padua
Eumaeus and Lord Burleigh
My Reviewers’ Sense of Need
The Authoress of the Odyssey
Homer and his Commentators
The Iliad
Glacial Periods of Folly
Translations from Verse into Prose
Getting it Wrong
Righteousness
Wisdom
Loving and Hating
The Roman Empire
Italians and Englishmen
On Knowing what Gives us Pleasure
De Minimis non Curat Lex
Saints
Prayer
Preface to Vol. II
Waste-Paper Baskets
Flies in the Milk-Jug
My Thoughts
Our Ideas
Cat-Ideas and Mouse-Ideas
Incoherency of New Ideas
An Apology for the Devil
Hallelujah
Hating
Reputation
Science and Business
Scientists
Scientific Terminology
Scientists and Drapers
Men of Science
Sparks
Dumb-Bells
Purgatory
Greatness
The Vanity of Human Wishes
Jones’s Conscience
Nihilism
On Breaking Habits
Dogs
Future and Past
Nature
Lucky and Unlucky
Definitions
Money
Wit
Oxford and Cambridge
Cooking
Perseus and St. George
Specialism and Generalism
Silence and Tact
Truth-tellers
Street Preachers
Providence and Othello
Providence and Improvidence
Epiphany
Fortune
Gold-Mines
Things and Purses
Solomon in all his Glory
David’s Teachers
S. Michael
One Form of Failure
Andromeda
Self-Confidence
Wandering
Poverty
Pedals or Drones
Evasive Nature
Fashion
Doctors and Clergymen
God is Love
Common Chords
God and the Devil
Sex
Women
Offers of Marriage
Marriage
Life and Love
The Basis of Life
Woman Suffrage
Manners Makyth Man
Women and Religion
Happiness
Sorrow within Sorrow
Going Away
Titles
“The Ancient Mariner”
For Unwritten Articles, Essays, Stories
Imaginary Worlds
An Idyll
A Divorce Novelette
The Moral Painter—A Tale of Double Personality
Two Writers
The Archbishop of Heligoland
Literary Sketch-Books
London
A Clifford’s Inn Euphemism
London Trees
What I Said to the Milkman
The Return of the Jews to Palestine
The Great Bear’s Barley-Water
The Cock Tavern
Myself in Dowie’s Shop
My Dentist
Furber the Violin-Maker
Window Cleaning in the British Museum Reading-Room
The Electric Light in its Infancy
Fire
Adam and Eve
Does Mamma Know?
Mr. Darwin in the Zoological Gardens
Terbourg
At Doctors’ Commons
The Sack of Khartoum
Missolonghi
Memnon
Manzi the Model
A Sailor Boy and Some Chickens
Gogin, the Japanese Gentleman and the Dead Dog
St. Pancras’ Bells
At Eynsford
Mrs. Hicks
New-Laid Eggs
“The Egg that Hen Belonged to”
At Englefield Green
At Abbey Wood
At Ightham Mote
Dr. Mandell Creighton and Mr. W. S. Rockstro
Pigs
Mozart
Divorce
Ravens
Calais to Dover
Snapshotting a Bishop
Homer and the Basins
The Channel Passage
The Two Barristers at Ypres
At Montreuil-sur-Mer
Mrs. Dowe on Alps and Sanctuaries
Not to be Omitted
The Sacro Monte at Varese
The Albergo Grotta Crimea
Public Opinion
These Notes
The Wife of Bath
Horace at the Post-Office in Rome
Beethoven at Faido and at Boulogne
Silvio
Sunday Morning at Soglio
Fascination
Supreme Occasions
The Aurora Borealis
A Tragic Expression
The Wrath to Come
The Beauties of Nature
The Late King Vittorio Emanuele
The Bishop of Chichester at Faido
At Piora
At Ferentino
The Imperfect Lady
Siena and S. Gimignano
The Etruscan Urns at Volterra
The Quick and the Dead
The Grape-Filter
Bertoli and his Bees
“The Lost Chord”
Introduction of Foreign Plants
Saint Cosimo and Saint Damiano at Siena
At Pienza
Homer’s Hot and Cold Springs
Opposites
Two Points of View
Truth
Falsehood
Nature’s Double Falsehood
Convenience
Classification
Attempts at Classification
A Clergyman’s Doubts
The Baselessness of Our Ideas
Imagination
Inexperience
Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit
Contradiction in Terms
Extremes
Free-Will and Necessity
Free-Will otherwise Cunning
Necessity otherwise Luck
Choice
Ego and Non-Ego
Two Incomprehensibles
God and the Unknown
Scylla and Charybdis
Philosophy
Philosophy and Equal Temperament
Hedging the Cuckoo
God and Philosophies
Common Sense, Reason and Faith
The Credit System
Argument
Logic and Philosophy
Science
Religion
Logic
Logic and Faith
Common Sense and Philosophy
First Principles
God and Life
God and Flesh
Gods and Prophets
Faith and Reason
God and the Devil
Christianity
Miracles
Wants and Creeds
Faith
The Cuckoo and the Moon
Buddhism
Theist and Atheist
The Peculiar People
Renan
The Spiritual Treadmill
The Dim Religious Light
The Peace that Passeth Understanding
The New Testament
The Jumping Cat
Personified Science
Science and Theology
The Church and the Supernatural
Gratitude and Revenge
Cant and Hypocrisy
Real Blasphemy
The English Church Abroad
Drunkenness
Hell-Fire
Religion
God and Convenience
The World
Blasphemy
Gaining One’s Point
The Voice of Common Sense
Amendes Honorables
Forgiveness and Retribution
Inaccuracy
Jutland and “Waitee”
The Parables
The Irreligion of Orthodoxy
Society and Christianity
Sanctified by Faith
Ourselves and the Clergy
The Rules of Life
Fore-knowledge of Death
Continued Identity
Complete Death
Life and Death
The Defeat of Death
The Torture of Death
Ignorance of Death
Dissolution
The Dislike of Death
Posthumous Life
The Test of Faith
Starting again ad Infinitum
Preparation for Death
The Vates Sacer
The Dictionary of National Biography
The World
Accumulated Dinners
Judging the Dead
Myself and My Books
My Son
Obscurity
Posthumous Honours
Posthumous Recognition
Analysis of the Sales of My Books
Worth Doing
Doubt and Hope
Unburying Cities
Apologia
My Work
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
v—A Psalm of Montreal
vi—The Righteous Man
vii—To Critics and Others
ix—A Translation
x—In Memoriam
xi—An Academic Exercise
xii—A Prayer
xiii—Karma
xiv—The Life After Death
Footnotes