The Note-Books of Samuel Butler

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hat time residing eighteen miles from the nearest human habitation, and three days' journey on horseback from a bookseller's shop, I became one of Mr. Darwin's many enthusiastic admirers, and wrote a philosophic dialogue (the most offensive form, ex

celebrated its jubilee with a number which contained particulars of its early life, of its editors, and of Butler; it also contained reprints of two of Butler's contributions, viz. Darwin among the Machines, which originally appeared in its columns 13 June, 1863, and Lucubratio Ebria, which origi

ew of Mr. D.'s theory." Having no doubt that this referred to Butler's lost contribution to the Press, I bought the autograph letter and sent it to New Zealand, where it now is in the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch. With it I sent a letter to the editor of the Press, giving all further information in my possession about the Dialogue

here was nothing new in Darwin's book, it was only a grinding out of old tunes with which we were all familiar. Butler alludes to this controversy in a note made on a letter from Darwin which he gave to the British Museum. "I remember answering an attack (in the Press, New Zealand) on me by Bishop Abr

hink for himself, before he wrote Darwin among the Machines from which so much followed; but they can hardly be properly considered as germs of Erewhon and Life and Habit. They rather show the preparation of the soil in which those germs sprouted and grew;

face to the new and revised edition of Erewhon: "The first part of Erewhon written was an article headed Darwin among the Machines and signed 'Cellarius.' It was written in the Upper Rangitata district o

under his name in the British Museum, being defective, the reprint which appeared in

o copy. It treated machines from a different point of view and was the basis of pp. 270–274 of the present edition of Erewhon. This view ultimately led me to the theory I put forward in Life an

nt by Butler from England to the editor of the Press

would put it into the paper. . . . I know the undue lenience which he lends to my performances, and believe you to be the sterner critic of the two. That there are some good things in it you will, I think, feel; but I am almost sure that considering usque ad nauseam etc., you will

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culars of the genesis of that work, and there are still further partic

rley's, and Butler used to speak of him as the most brilliant man he had ever known. He died many years ago. He was the writer of the "letter from a friend now in New Zealand," from which a quotation is given in Life

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ly of the future prospects of the human race. If we revert to the earliest primordial types of mechanical life, to the lever, the wedge, the inclined plane, the screw and the pulley, or (for analogy would lead us one step further) to that one primordial type from which all the mechanical kingdom has been developed, we mean to the lever itself, and if we then examine the machinery of the Great Eastern, we find ourselves almost awestruck a

egetable kingdom was slowly developed from the mineral, and as, in like manner, the animal supervened upon the vegetable, so now, in these last few

nt characters, of pointing out how subservience to the use of man has played that part among machines which natural selection has performed in the animal and vegetable kingdom, of pointing out rudimentary organs [see note] which exist in some few machines, feebly developed and perfectly useless, yet serving

elopment and progress. Take the watch for instance. Examine the beautiful structure of the little animal, watch the intelligent play of the minute members which compose it; yet this little creature is but a development of the cumbrous clocks of the thirteenth century-it is no deterioration from them. The day may come when clocks, which c

ourselves the inferior race. Inferior in power, inferior in that moral quality of self-control, we shall look up to them as the acme of all that the best and wisest man can ever dare to aim at. No evil passions, no jealousy, no avarice, no impure desires will disturb the serene might of those glorious creatures. Sin, shame and sorrow will have no place among them. Their minds will be in a state of perpetual calm, the contentment of a spirit that knows no wants, is disturbed by no regrets. Ambition will never torture them. Ingratitude will never cause them the uneasiness of a moment. The guilty conscience, the hope deferred, the pains of exile, the insolence of office and the sp

animals. They cannot kill us and eat us as we do sheep, they will not only require our services in the parturition of their young (which branch of their economy will remain always in our hands) but also in feeding them, in setting them right if they are sick, and burying their dead or working up their corpses into new machines. It is obvious that if all the animals in Great Britain save man alone were to die, and if at the same time all intercourse with foreign countries were by some sudden catastrophe to be rendered perfectly impossible, it is obvious that under such circumstances the loss of human life would be something fearful to contemplate-in like manner, were mankind to cease, the machines would be as badly off or even worse. The fact is that our interests are inseparable from theirs, and th

hem, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time

shown; let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race. If it be urged that this is impossible under the present condition of human affairs, this at once proves that the mischief is already done

losophical Society. Should they consent to avail themselves of the vast field which we have p

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e function. Its purpose was to keep the heat of the pipe from marking the table on which it rested. Originally, as we have seen in very early tobacco pipes, this protuberance was of a very different shape to what it is now. It was broad at the bottom and flat, so that while the pipe was being smoked, the bowl might rest upon the table. Use and disuse have here come into play and served to reduce the function

ratio

Press, 29

prophetic influence as we seldom else experience. We are rapt in a dream such as we ourselves know to be a dream, and which, like other dreams, we can hardly embody in a distinct utterance. We know that what we see is but a sort of intellectual Siamese twins, of which one is substance and the other shadow, but we cannot set either free without killing both. We are unable to rudely tear away the veil of phantasy in which the truth is shrouded, so we present the reader with a draped figure, and his own judgment must discriminat

nscious and indifferent, by forces which seem insensate to the pain which they inflict, but by whose inexorably beneficent cruelty the brave and strong keep coming to the fore, while the weak and bad drop behind and perish. There was a moral government of this world before man came near it-a moral government suited to the capacities of the governed, and which, unperceived by them, has laid fast the foundations of courage, endurance and cunning. It laid them so fast that they became more and more hereditary. Horace says well, fortes creantur fortibus et bonis good men beget good children; the rule held ev

as in its gorilla-hood it generally carried a stick; from carrying a stick for many million years it became accustomed and modified to an upright position. The stick wherewith it had learned to walk would now serve it to beat its younger brothers and then it found out its service as a lever. Man would thus learn that the limbs of his body were not the only limbs that he could co

off for hands, and has never fairly grasped the notion of tacking on other limbs to the limbs of her own body and so, being short-lived to boot, she remains from century to century to human eyes in statu quo. Her body never becomes machinate, whereas this new phase of organism, which has been introduced with man into the mundane economy, has made him a very quicksand for the foundation of an unchanging civilisation; certain fundamental principles will always remain, but every century the change in man's physical status, as compared with the elements around him, is greater and greater; he is a shifting basis on which no equilibrium of habit and civilisation can be established; were it not for this constant change in our physical powers, which our mechanical limbs have brought about, man would have long since apparently attained his limit of possibility; he would be a creature of as much

h human organism is most especially advancing, and every fresh invention is to be considered as an additional member of the resources of the human body. Herein lies the fundamental difference between man and his inferiors. As regards his flesh and blood, his s

on, and incorporated into human society; they descended with modifications, and hence proceeds the difference between our ancestors and ourselves. By the institutions and state of science under which a man is born it is determined whether he shall have the limbs of an Australian savage or those of a nineteenth century Englishman. The former is supplemented with little save a rug and a javelin; the latter varies his physique with the changes of the season, with age, and with advancing or decreasing wealth. If it is wet he is furnished with an organ which is called an umbrella and wh

ined. The legs of the other are by an invisible fatality prevented from carrying him beyond certain narrow limits. Neither rich nor poor as yet see the philosophy of the thing, or admit that he who can tack a portion of one of the P. & O. boats on to his identity is a much more highly organised being than one who cannot. Yet the fact is patent enough, if we once think it over, from the mere consideration of the respect with which we so often treat those who are riche

stands at the summit of opulence, and we may assert with strictly scientific accuracy that the Rothschilds are the most astonishing organisms that the world has ever yet seen. For to the nerves or tissues, or whatever it be that answers to the helm of a rich man's desires, there is a whole army of limbs seen and

ay that the thousand-horse man is better than a one-horse man, we only say that he is more highly organised, and should be recognised as being so by the scientific leaders of the period. A man's will, truth, endurance are part of him also, and may, as in the case of the

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pp. long, which is still all in the rough and I don't know

g a difficult piece of music, reading, talking, walking and the multitude of actions which escape o

nconscious or semi-conscious manner unless we know ho

being of attention and attention of uncertainty-and hence the paradox comes clear, that as long as we know that we know a thing (or do an action kn

g, very unconsciously-talking, still more unconsciously (it is almost impossible for us to notice the action of our tongue in every letter)-walking, much the same-breathing, still to a

rm so difficult an operation as the growth of a pair of eyes out of pure protoplasm without knowing how to do it, and without ever having done it before, is to contradict all human experience. Ipso facto that it does it, it knows how to do it, and ipso facto that it knows how to do it, it has done it before. Its unconsciousness (or speedy loss of memory) is simply the result of over-knowledge, not

t was an impregnate ovum or some still lower for

ngle repetition makes little or no difference; but go back 20,000 repetitions and you

te ovum and my father and mother as impregnate ova. Drop out my father's and mother's lives between the dates of their being impregnate ova and the moment when I became an impregnate ovum. See the ova only and consider the second ovum as

eproducing itself for ever, for it would not reproduce itself, unless it rep

n each case of what we call descent, it is still the first reproducing creature identically the same-doing what it has done before-only with such modifications as the struggle for existence and natural selection have induced. No m

sh. A′ begets A″ which is A with the additional experiences o

om long practice; then he does his fish trick; then he grows arms and legs, all unconsciously from the inveteracy of the habit, till he comes to doing his man, and this lesson he has not yet learnt so thoroughly. Some part of it, as the breathing and oxidisation business, he is well up to, inasmuch as they form part of previous roles,

that we are all one animal and that death (which was at first voluntary, and has only come to be disliked because those who did not disl

ery trul

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