The Note-Books of Samuel Butler

About this eBook

Author

Butler, Samuel, 1835-1902

Credits

Transcribed from the 1912 A. C. Fifield edition by David Price

Language

English

LoC Class

PR: Language and Literatures: English literature

Subject

Butler, Samuel, 1835-1902 -- Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.

Category

Text

eBook-No.

6173

Project Gutenberg

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6173

Release Date

July 1, 2004

Copyright

Public domain in the USA.

Contents

1. 1.The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
2. 2.Preface
3. 3.Contents
4. 4.Biographical Statement
5. 5.I Lord, What is Man? — Man — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — vii — Life — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — vii — viii — ix — x — xi — xii — xiii — xiv — xv — xvi — The World — i — ii — iii — iv — The Individual and the World — My Life — i — ii — The Life we Live in Others — The World Made to Enjoy — Living in Others — Karma — Birth and Death — i — ii — iii — iv — Reproduction — Thinking almost Identically — Is Life Worth Living? — Evacuations — Man and His Organism — i — ii — iii — Tools — Organs and Makeshifts — Joining and DisjoiningThese are the essence of change. — Cotton Factories — Our Trivial Bodies — i — ii
6. 6.II Elementary Morality — The Foundations of Morality — i — ii — iii — Counsels of Imperfection — Lucifer — The Oracle in Erewhon — God’s Laws — Physical Excellence — Intellectual Self-Indulgence — Dodging Fatigue — Vice and Virtue — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — My Virtuous Life — Sin — Morality — Change and Immorality — Cannibalism — Abnormal Developments — Young People — The Family — i — ii — Unconscious Humour — Homer’s Odyssey — Melchisedec — Bacon for Breakfast — God and Man — The Homeric Deity and the Pall Mall Gazette — 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
7. 7.III The Germs of Erewhon and of Life and Habit — Prefatory Note — Darwin among the Machines — Lucubratio Ebria — Letter to Thomas William Gale Butler
8. 8.IV Memory and Design — Clergymen and Chickens — Memory — i — ii — Antitheses — Unconscious Memory — Reproduction and Memory — Personal Identity — Sensations — Cobwebs in the Dark — Shocks and Memory — Shocks — Design — i — ii — Accident, Design and Memory — Memory and Mistakes — Remembering — A Torn Finger-Nail — Unconscious Association — Association — Language
9. 9.V Vibrations — Contributions to Evolution — The Universal Substance — i — ii — Mental and Physical — Vibrations, Memory and Chemical Properties — Protoplasm and Reproduction — Germs within Germs — Atoms and Fixed Laws — Thinking — Equilibrium
10. 10.VI Mind and Matter — Motion — Matter and Mind — i — ii — iii — iv — 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
11. 11.VII On the Making of Music, Pictures and Books — Thought and Word — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — vii — viii — ix — 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
12. 12.VIII Handel and Music — Handel and Beethoven — Handel and Domenico Scarlatti — Handel and Homer — Handel and Bach — i — ii — 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 — i — ii — Handel and Dickens
13. 13.IX A Painter’s Views on Painting — 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
14. 14.X The Position of a Homo Unius Libri — 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
15. 15.XI Cash and Credit — 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 — i — ii — iii — iv — v — Great Things — Genius and Providence — The Art of Covery — Wanted — Ephemeral and Permanent Success — My Birthright
16. 16.XII The Enfant Terrible of Literature — 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 — Bunyan and the Odyssey — 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 — Translating the Odyssey — The Odyssey and a Tomb at Carcassonne — Getting it Wrong
17. 17.XIII Unprofessional Sermons — Righteousness — Wisdom — Loving and Hating — The Roman Empire — Italians and Englishmen — On Knowing what Gives us Pleasure — i — ii — iii — De Minimis non Curat Lex — i — ii — iii — Saints — Prayer — i — ii — iii — iv
18. 18.XIV Higgledy-Piggledy — 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 — i — ii — iii — iv — v — 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 — i — ii — iii — 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 — i — ii — iii — Life and Love — The Basis of Life — Woman Suffrage — Manners Makyth Man — Women and Religion — Happiness — Sorrow within Sorrow — Going Away
19. 19.XV Titles and Subjects — 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
20. 20.XVI Written Sketches — 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
21. 21.XVII Material for a Projected Sequel to Alps and Sanctuaries — 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
22. 22.XVIII Material for Erewhon Revisited
23. 23.XIX Truth and Convenience — Opposites — Two Points of View — Truth — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — vii — viii — ix — x — xi — xii — xiii — xiv — Falsehood — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — vii — viii — ix — x — Nature’s Double Falsehood — Convenience — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — vii — Classification — Attempts at Classification — A Clergyman’s Doubts
24. 24.XX First Principles — The Baselessness of Our Ideas — Imagination — i — ii — iii — iv — v — Inexperience — Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit — Contradiction in Terms — Extremes — i — ii — iii — iv — 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
25. 25.XXI Rebelliousness — God and Life — God and Flesh — Gods and Prophets — Faith and Reason — God and the Devil — Christianity — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — vii — viii — Miracles — Wants and Creeds — Faith — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — 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 — Christ and the L. & N.W. Railway — 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
26. 26.XXII Reconciliation — 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
27. 27.XXIII Death — Fore-knowledge of Death — Continued Identity — Complete Death — Life and Death — The Defeat of Death — The Torture of Death — Ignorance of Death — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — vii — Dissolution — The Dislike of Death
28. 28.XXIV The Life of the World to Come — Posthumous Life — i — ii — 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 — i — ii — My Work
29. 29.XXV Poems — 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 — viii—For Narcissus — ix—A Translation — x—In Memoriam — xi—An Academic Exercise — xii—A Prayer — xiii—Karma — xiv—The Life After Death
30. 30.Footnotes

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