The Note-Books of Samuel Butler

n of a Homo

r and

they had lost all faith in my literary prospects. Trübner told me I was a homo unius libri, meaning Er

e no acquaintances but those I value. My friends stick by me. If I was to get in with these literary and scientific people I should hate them and they me. I should fritter away my time and my freedom without getting a quid pro quo: as it is, I am free and I give the swells every now and then such a facer as they get from no one else. Of course I don't expect to get on in a commercial sense at pres

shall succeed in getting a hearing; he thinks the combination of

m dead there will be other reviewers and I have already done enough to secure that they shall from

ng a

id escape. Nothing is so cruel as to try and force a man beyond his natural pace. If he has got more stuff in him it will come out in its own time and its own way: if he has not-let the poor wretch alone; to

dy C

he British Museum reading-room and

ou write ano

replied, "Life and Habi

ld do one good book but never any more. She is the sort of person who if she

write us another Titus Andronicus? N

he would have told him that her favourite p

ensa

rate I shall be saved from

as and

to sign my name. The vendor, merely seeing the name and knowing none of

ten any books

nly; Erewhon is quite as

said again as before, and he shut up. I sent him a copy of Erewhon immediately after we had comple

Habit a

sked me why I did not publish the substance of wha

ow, there's L

at all, so I asked him

think every one has seen Life and Hab

ne to spare for anything else. Again he did not seem to see

tler wrote Li

ife and Habit and had idealised its author, whom he was disappointed to find so very commonplace a person. Exactly the same thin

pointin

s he has a grievance against me for not being a very different kind of person from what I am. These people however (and this happens on an average once or twice a year) do not come solely to see me, they generally tell me all about themselves and the impression is left upon me that they have really come in order to be praised. I am as civil to them as I know how to be but enthusiastic I never am, fo

aining

ver I do entertain one it will have to be unawares. When people entertain othe

and M

courage the effort of those who could and would do good things if they did not know that it would ruin themselves and their families; moreover, they set people on to pamper a dozen fools for each neglected man of merit, out of compunction. Genius, they say, always wears an invisible cloak; these men wear invisi

xcept a very few of my own contemporaries. Those few I have always kept well in mind. I think of them continually when in doubt about any passage, but beyond those few I will not go. Posterity will give a man a fair hearing; his own times will not do so if he is attacking vested interests, and I have attacked two powerful sets of vested interests at once. [The Church and Science.] What is the good of addressing people who will not listen? I have addressed the next generation and have therefore said many things which want time before they become palatable. Any man who wishes his work to stand will sacrifice a good deal of his immediate audience for the sake of being attractive to a much larger number of pe

ag

cued nowadays. I do not know, but I think I have dropped across one or two, nor do I fe

ng t

ut as the vain tossing of insomnia. God will not have any human being know what will sell, nor when any one is going to die, nor anything about the ultimate, or even the deeper, springs of growth and action, nor yet such a little thin

ing A

rofit to those to whom they were revealed-but also for our organism itself which is an inheritance gathered and garnered

h importance that his contemporaries should be at much pains to get at the truth concerning him. As for my own position, if I say the things I want to say without troubling myself about the public, why should I grumble at the public for not troubling about me? Besides, not being paid myself, I can in better conscience use the works of others, as I daily do, without paying for them and without being at the trouble of praising or tha

win on what

sells a book. Mr. Darwin said he did not believe it was reviews o

rceptible increase or decrease of sale, and the same with advertisements. I think, however, that the review of Erewhon in the Spectator did sell a few copies of Erewhon, but then it was such a v

king th

ceive or be deceived that exists in the germ-cells of any individual, with the instinctive aptitude for lying that is to be observed in the full-grown man. The full-grown man is compacted of lies and shams which are to

inking the public. So it is with music, literature, science or anything else. The only thing the public can do against this is to try hard to develop a hereditary power of not being hoodwinked. From the small succ

Publ

nd which looks infinite but is all parcelled out into fields and private ownerships-barring, of course, highways and

t much to be got off it, but that little is for

be told that they are not foolish and not wicked. Now it is only a fool or a liar or both who can tell them this; the masses therefore cannot be expected

ar Th

ritable common sense of grace defies and over-rides the law. That is to say, we have our inductive fits and our deductive fits, our arrangements according to the letter and according to the spirit, our conclusions drawn from logic secundum artem and from absurdity and the character of the arguer. This heterogeneous mass of considerations forms the mental pabulum with which we feed our minds. How that pab

large measure, the processes appear to resemble one another much as rain drops resemble one another. There is essential agreement in spite of essential dif

ve period and have gone such lengths in this direction that a reaction, dur

Propagati

ground and holding it firmly. There is as little use in trying to b

e in the long run weightiest. Ideas and opinions, like living organisms, have a normal rate of growth which cannot be either checked or forced beyond a certain

d be somewhat punctilious in his observance of conventionalities generally, and

rtion, leaving the hearer to point the inference, is, as a rule, to be preferred. The one great argument with most people is that another should thi

the part of the parents, but sometimes from over-fondness. Once

of the points of difference as compared with t

e as a F

cier because he bought a lot of china at high prices an

h prices?" said

ces," said I

ss what he gave for it, if he did; he may have had it all left him for aught I knew. But I was going t

gu

t one's opinion and leave it to stick or no as it may happen. If sound,

mo

is more common than those are who can see it. It would block the way of everything. Perhaps this is what

having the sky untuned; still, if it has got to be untuned at all, I am sure music is the only thing that can untune it. Rapson, however

"Unconsci

am continually seeing unconscious humour (without quotation marks) alluded to in Times articles and other li

Hum

nection with my article "Quis Desiderio . . .?" [Universal Review, 1888] and is now, [1889] I

thout knowing it. As for my humour, I am like my father and grandfather, both of whom liked a good thing heartily enough if it was told them, but I do not often say a good thing my

nd My Pu

ite and this shows that they do not think my name would help their magazine. This, I imagine, means that Andrew Lang h

ht tip from a business point of view. Heaven forbid that I should blame them for doing exactly what I should do myself in their place, but, things being as t

a chance of becoming a hack-writer, for I sh