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.