The Note-Books of Samuel Butler

by Samuel Butler

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.