The Note-Books of Samuel Butler Part 7

Wherefrom it should follow that there is nothing so absolutely moral as stagnation, except for this that, if perfect, it would destroy all mores whatever. So there must always be an immorality in morality and, in like manner, a morality in immorality. For there will be an element of habitual and legitimate custom even in the most unhabitual and detestable things that can be done at all.

Cannibalism

Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country.

Abnormal Developments

If a man can get no other food it is more natural for him to kill another man and eat him than to starve. Our horror is rather at the circ.u.mstances that make it natural for the man to do this than at the man himself. So with other things the desire for which is inherited through countless ancestors, it is more natural for men to obtain the nearest thing they can to these, even by the most abnormal means if the ordinary channels are closed, than to forego them altogether.

The abnormal growth should be regarded as disease but, nevertheless, as showing more health and vigour than no growth at all would do. I said this in Life and Habit (ch. iii. p. 52) when I wrote "it is more righteous in a man that he should eat strange food and that his cheek so much as lank not, than that he should starve if the strange food be at his command." {30}

Young People

With regard to s.e.xual matters, the best opinion of our best medical men, the practice of those nations which have proved most vigorous and comely, the evils that have followed this or that, the good that has attended upon the other should be ascertained by men who, being neither moral nor immoral and not caring two straws what the conclusion arrived at might be, should desire only to get hold of the best available information. The result should be written down with some fulness and put before the young of both s.e.xes as soon as they are old enough to understand such matters at all. There should be no mystery or reserve. None but the corrupt will wish to corrupt facts; honest people will accept them eagerly, whatever they may prove to be, and will convey them to others as accurately as they can. On what pretext therefore can it be well that knowledge should be withheld from the universal gaze upon a matter of such universal interest? It cannot be pretended that there is nothing to be known on these matters beyond what unaided boys and girls can be left without risk to find out for themselves. Not one in a hundred who remembers his own boyhood will say this. How, then, are they excusable who have the care of young people and yet leave a matter of such vital importance so almost absolutely to take care of itself, although they well know how common error is, how easy to fall into and how disastrous in its effects both upon the individual and the race?

Next to s.e.xual matters there are none upon which there is such complete reserve between parents and children as on those connected with money. The father keeps his affairs as closely as he can to himself and is most jealous of letting his children into a knowledge of how he manages his money. His children are like monks in a monastery as regards money and he calls this training them up with the strictest regard to principle. Nevertheless he thinks himself ill-used if his son, on entering life, falls a victim to designing persons whose knowledge of how money is made and lost is greater than his own.

The Family

i

I believe that more unhappiness comes from this source than from any other--I mean from the attempt to prolong family connection unduly and to make people hang together artificially who would never naturally do so. The mischief among the lower cla.s.ses is not so great, but among the middle and upper cla.s.ses it is killing a large number daily. And the old people do not really like it much better than the young.

ii

On my way down to Shrewsbury some time since I read the Bishop of Carlisle's Walks in the Regions of Science and Faith, {31} then just published, and found the following on p. 129 in the essay which is ent.i.tled "Man's Place in Nature." After saying that young sparrows or robins soon lose sight of their fellow-nestlings and leave off caring for them, the bishop continues:-

"Whereas 'children of one family' are constantly found joined together by a love which only grows with years, and they part for their posts of duty in the world with the hope of having joyful meetings from time to time, and of meeting in a higher world when their life on earth is finished."

I am sure my great-grandfather did not look forward to meeting his father in heaven--his father had cut him out of his will; nor can I credit my grandfather with any great longing to rejoin my great- grandfather--a worthy man enough, but one with whom nothing ever prospered. I am certain my father, after he was 40, did not wish to see my grandfather any more--indeed, long before reaching that age he had decided that Dr. Butler's life should not be written, though R.

W. Evans would have been only too glad to write it. Speaking for myself, I have no wish to see my father again, and I think it likely that the Bishop of Carlisle would not be more eager to see his than I mine.

Unconscious Humour

"Writing to the Hon. Mrs. Watson in 1856, Charles d.i.c.kens says: 'I have always observed within my experience that THE MEN WHO HAVE LEFT HOME VERY YOUNG have, MANY LONG YEARS AFTERWARDS, had the tenderest regard for it. That's a pleasant thing to think of as one of the wise adjustments of this life of ours.'" {32a}

Homer's Odyssey

From the description of the meeting between Ulysses and Telemachus it is plain that Homer considered it quite as dreadful for relations who had long been separated to come together again as for them to separate in the first instance. And this is about true. {32b}

Melchisedec

He was a really happy man. He was without father, without mother and without descent. He was an incarnate bachelor. He was a born orphan.

Bacon for Breakfast

Now [1893] when I am abroad, being older and taking less exercise, I do not want any breakfast beyond coffee and bread and b.u.t.ter, but when this note was written [1880] I liked a modest rasher of bacon in addition, and used to notice the jealous indignation with which heads of families who enjoyed the privilege of Cephas and the brethren of our Lord regarded it. There were they with three or four elderly unmarried daughters as well as old mamma--how could they afford bacon? And there was I, a selfish bachelor--. The appetising, savoury smell of my rasher seemed to drive them mad. I used to feel very uncomfortable, very small and quite aware how low it was of me to have bacon for breakfast and no daughters instead of daughters and no bacon. But when I consulted the oracles of heaven about it, I was always told to stick to my bacon and not to make a fool of myself. I despised myself but have not withered under my own contempt so completely as I ought to have done.

G.o.d and Man

To love G.o.d is to have good health, good looks, good sense, experience, a kindly nature and a fair balance of cash in hand. "We know that all things work together for good to them that love G.o.d."

To be loved by G.o.d is the same as to love Him. We love Him because He first loved us.

The Homeric Deity and the Pall Mall Gazette

A writer in the Pall Mall Gazette (I think in 1874 or 1875, and in the autumn months, but I cannot now remember) summed up Homer's conception of a G.o.d as that of a "superlatively strong, amorous, beautiful, brave and cunning man." This is pretty much what a good working G.o.d ought to be, but he should also be kind and have a strong sense of humour, together with a contempt for the vices of meanness and for the meannesses of virtue. After saying what I have quoted above the writer in the Pall Mall Gazette goes on, "An impartial critic can judge for himself how far, if at all, this is elevated above the level of mere fetish worship." Perhaps it is that I am not an impartial critic, but, if I am allowed to be so, I should say that the elevation above mere fetish worship was very considerable.

Good Breeding the Summum Bonum

When people ask what faith we would subst.i.tute for that which we would destroy, we answer that we destroy no faith and need subst.i.tute none. We hold the glory of G.o.d to be the summum bonum, and so do Christians generally. It is on the question of what is the glory of G.o.d that we join issue. We say it varies with the varying phases of G.o.d as made manifest in his works, but that, so far as we are ourselves concerned, the glory of G.o.d is best advanced by advancing that of man. If asked what is the glory of man we answer "Good breeding"--using the words in their double sense and meaning both the continuance of the race and that grace of manner which the words are more commonly taken to signify. The double sense of the words is all the more significant for the unconsciousness with which it is pa.s.sed over.

Advice to the Young

You will sometimes find your elders laying their heads together and saying what a bad thing it is for young men to come into a little money--that those always do best who have no expectancy, and the like. They will then quote some drivel from one of the Kingsleys about the deadening effect an income of 300 pounds a year will have upon a man. Avoid any one whom you may hear talk in this way. The fault lies not with the legacy (which would certainly be better if there were more of it) but with those who have so mismanaged our education that we go in even greater danger of losing the money than other people are.

Religion

Is there any religion whose followers can be pointed to as distinctly more amiable and trustworthy than those of any other? If so, this should be enough. I find the nicest and best people generally profess no religion at all, but are ready to like the best men of all religions.

Heaven and h.e.l.l

Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. h.e.l.l is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of both.