“The doctrine preached by Weismann was that to start with the body and inquire how its characters got into the germ was to view the sequence from the wrong end; the proper starting point was the germ, and the real question was not ‘How do the characters of the organism get into the germ-cell which it produces?’ but ‘How are the characters of an organism represented in the germ which produces it?’ Or, as Samuel Butler has it, the proper statement of the relation between successive generations is not to say that a hen produces another hen through the medium of an egg, but to say that a hen is merely an egg’s way of producing another egg.” Breeding and the Mendelian Discovery, by A. D. Darbishire. Cassell & Co., 1911, p. 187–8.
“It has, I believe, been often remarked that a hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.” Life and Habit, TrÜbner & Co., 1878, chapter viii, p. 134.
And compare the idea underlying “The World of the Unborn” in Erewhon. The two chapters entitled “The Rights of Animals” and “The Rights of Vegetables” appeared first in the new and revised edition of Erewhon 1901 and form part of the additions referred to in the preface to that book. On the Alps
It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,
Which some did die to look on: and all this—
It wounds thine honour that I speak it now—
Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek
So much as lank’d not.—Ant. & Cleop., I. iv. 66–71. Walks in the Regions of Science and Faith, by Harvey Goodwin, D.D., Lord Bishop of Carlisle. John Murray, 1883. This quotation occurs on the title page of Charles Dickens and Rochester by Robert Langton. Chapman & Hall, 1880. Reprinted with additions from the Papers of the Manchester Literary Club, Vol. VI, 1880. But the italics are Butler’s. This is Butler’s note as he left it. He made it just about the time he hit upon the theory that the Odyssey was written by a woman. If it had caught his eye after that theory had become established in his mind, he would have edited it so as to avoid speaking of Homer as the author of the poem. Life and Habit is dated 1878, but it actually appeared on Butler’s birthday, 4th December, 1877. The five notes here amalgamated together into “Croesus and his Kitchen-Maid” were to have been part of an article for the Universal Review, but, before Butler wrote it, the review died. I suppose, but I do not now remember, that the article would have been about Mind and Matter or Organs and Tools, and, possibly, all the concluding notes of this group, beginning with “Our Cells,” would have been introduced as illustrations. Cf. the note “Reproduction,” p. 16 ante. Evolution Old & New, p. 77. Twelve Voluntaries and Fugues for the Organ or Harpsichord with Rules for Tuning. By the celebrated Mr. Handel. Butler had a copy of this book and gave it to the British Museum (Press Mark, e. 1089). We showed the rules to Rockstro, who said they were very interesting and probably authentic; they would tune the instrument in one of the mean tone temperaments. Mr. Kemp lived in Barnard’s Inn on my staircase. He was in the box-office at Drury Lane Theatre. See a further note about him on p. 133 post. If I remember right, the original Jubilee sixpence had to be altered because it was so like a half-sovereign that, on being gilded, it passed as one. Raffaelle’s picture “The Virgin and child attended by S. John the Baptist and S. Nicholas of Bari” (commonly known as the “Madonna degli Ansidei”), No. 1171, Room VI in the National Gallery, London, was purchased in 1885. Butler made this note in the same year; he revised the note in 1897 but, owing to changes in the gallery and in the attributions, I have found it necessary to modernise his descriptions of the other pictures with gold thread work so as to make them agree with the descriptions now (1912) on the pictures themselves. Cf. the passage in Alps and Sanctuaries, chapter XIII, beginning “The question whether it is better to abide quiet and take advantages of opportunities that come or to go further afield in search of them is one of the oldest which living beings have had to deal with. . . . The schism still lasts and has resulted in two great sects—animals and plants.” Prince was my cat when I lived in Barnard’s Inn. He used to stray into Mr. Kemp’s rooms on my landing (see p. 131 ante). Mrs. Kemp’s sister brought her child to see them, and the child, playing with Prince one day, made a discovery and exclaimed:
“Oh! it’s got pins in its toes.”
Butler put this into The Way of all Flesh. Philippians i. 15–18:—
Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will:
The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds:
But the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the gospel.
What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.
Narcissus, “Should Riches mate with Love.” Butler gave this as a subject to Mr. E. P. Larken who made it into a short story entitled “The Priest’s Bargain,” which appeared in the Pall Mall Magazine, May, 1897. All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.
Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself?
Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldest thou die before thy time? (Eccles. vii. 15, 16, 17). Cf. “Imaginary Worlds,” p. 233 post. “So, again, it is said that when Andromeda and Perseus had travelled but a little way from the rock where Andromeda had so long been chained, she began upbraiding him with the loss of her dragon who, on the whole, she said, had been very good to her. The only things we really hate are unfamiliar things.” Life & Habit, Chapter viii, p. 138/9. This note is one of those that appeared in the New Quarterly Review. The Hon. Mrs. Richard Grosvenor did not see it there, but a few years later I lent her my copy. She wrote to me 31 December, 1911.
“The notes are delightful. By the way I can add to one. When Mr. Butler came to tell me he was going to stay with Dr. Creighton, he told me that Alfred had decided he might go on finding the little flake of tobacco in the letter. Then he asked me if I would lend him a prayer-book as he thought the bishop’s man ought to find one in his portmanteau when he unpacked, the visit being from a Saturday to Monday. I fetched one and he said:
“‘Is it cut?’”
“Ramblings in Cheapside” in Essays on Life, Art and Science. Edmund Gurney, author of The Power of Sound, and Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research. Cf. Wamba’s explanation of the Saxon swine being converted into Norman pork on their death. Ivanhoe, Chap. I. See “A Medieval Girl School” in Essays on Life, Art & Science. “Above all things, let no unwary reader do me the injustice of believing in me. In that I write at all I am among the damned. If he must believe in anything, let him believe in the music of Handel, the painting of Giovanni Bellini, and in the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians” (Life and Habit, close of chapter II). “No one can hate drunkenness more than I do, but I am confident the human intellect owes its superiority over that of the lower animals in great measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given to imagination—imagination being little else than another name for illusion” (Alps and Sanctuaries, chapter III). There are letters from these people in The Life and Letters of Dr. Samuel Butler. Butler made this note in 1899 before the publication of Shakespeare’s Sonnets Reconsidered, which was published in the same year. The Odyssey Rendered info English Prose appeared in 1900 and Erewhon Revisited, the last book published in his lifetime, in 1901. He made no analysis of the sales of these three books, nor of the sales of A First Year in Canterbury Settlement published in 1863, nor of his pamphlet The Evidence for the Resurrection, published in 1865. The Way of all Flesh and Essays on Life, Art, and Science were not published till after his death. I do not know what he means by A Book of Essays, unless it may be that he incurred an outlay of £3 11s. 9d. in connection with a projected republication of his articles in the Universal Review or of some of his Italian articles about the Odyssey. Butler had two separate grounds of complaint against Charles Darwin, one scientific, the other personal. With regard to the personal quarrel some facts came to light after Butler’s death and the subject is dealt with in a pamphlet entitled Charles Darwin and Samuel Butler: A Step towards Reconciliation, by Henry Festing Jones (A. C. Fifield, 1911).
