The Note-Books of Samuel Butler Part 3

Life

i

We have got into life by stealth and pet.i.tio principii, by the free use of that contradiction in terms which we declare to be the most outrageous violation of our reason. We have wriggled into it by holding that everything is both one and many, both infinite in time and s.p.a.ce and yet finite, both like and unlike to the same thing, both itself and not itself, both free and yet inexorably fettered, both every adjective in the dictionary and at the same time the flat contradiction of every one of them.

ii

The beginning of life is the beginning of an illusion to the effect that there is such a thing as free will and that there is such another thing as necessity--the recognition of the fact that there is an "I can" and an "I cannot," an "I may" and an "I must."

iii

Life is not so much a riddle to be read as a Gordian knot that will get cut sooner or later.

iv

Life is the distribution of an error--or errors.

v

Murray (the publisher) said that my Life of Dr. Butler was an omnium gatherum. Yes, but life is an omnium gatherum.

vi

Life is a superst.i.tion. But superst.i.tions are not without their value. The snail's sh.e.l.l is a superst.i.tion, slugs have no sh.e.l.ls and thrive just as well. But a snail without a sh.e.l.l would not be a slug unless it had also the slug's indifference to a sh.e.l.l.

vii

Life is one long process of getting tired.

viii

My days run through me as water through a sieve.

ix

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

x

Life is eight parts cards and two parts play, the unseen world is made manifest to us in the play.

xi

Lizards generally seem to have lost their tails by the time they reach middle life. So have most men.

xii

A sense of humour keen enough to show a man his own absurdities, as well as those of other people, will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing.

xiii

Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases--though not often.

xiv

There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that every one can, in the end, get what he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is, more or less, an exception to the general rule.

xv

Nature is essentially mean, mediocre. You can have schemes for raising the level of this mean, but not for making every one two inches taller than his neighbour, and this is what people really care about.

xvi

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

The World

i

The world is a gambling-table so arranged that all who enter the casino must play and all must lose more or less heavily in the long run, though they win occasionally by the way.

ii

We play out our days as we play out cards, taking them as they come, not knowing what they will be, hoping for a lucky card and sometimes getting one, often getting just the wrong one.

iii

The world may not be particularly wise--still, we know of nothing wiser.

iv

The world will always be governed by self-interest. We should not try to stop this, we should try to make the self-interest of cads a little more coincident with that of decent people.

The Individual and the World

There is an eternal antagonism of interest between the individual and the world at large. The individual will not so much care how much he may suffer in this world provided he can live in men's good thoughts long after he has left it. The world at large does not so much care how much suffering the individual may either endure or cause in this life, provided he will take himself clean away out of men's thoughts, whether for good or ill, when he has left it.

My Life

i