The Note-Books of Samuel Butler Part 71

xiii--Karma

(A)

Who paints a picture, writes a play or book Which others read while he's asleep in bed O' the other side of the world--when they o'erlook His page the sleeper might as well be dead; What knows he of his distant unfelt life?

What knows he of the thoughts his thoughts are raising, The life his life is giving, or the strife Concerning him--some cavilling, some praising?

Yet which is most alive, he who's asleep Or his quick spirit in some other place, Or score of other places, that doth keep Attention fixed and sleep from others chase?

Which is the "he"--the "he" that sleeps, or "he"

That his own "he" can neither feel nor see?

(B)

What is't to live, if not to pull the strings Of thought that pull those grosser strings whereby We pull our limbs to pull material things Into such shape as in our thoughts doth lie?

Who pulls the strings that pull an agent's hand, The action's counted his, so, we being gone, The deeds that others do by our command, Albeit we know them not, are still our own.

He lives who does and he who does still lives, Whether he wots of his own deeds or no.

Who knows the beating of his heart, that drives Blood to each part, or how his limbs did grow?

If life be naught but knowing, then each breath We draw unheeded must be reckon'd death.

(C)

"Men's work we have," quoth one, "but we want them - Them, palpable to touch and clear to view."

Is it so nothing, then, to have the gem But we must weep to have the setting too?

Body is a chest wherein the tools abide With which the craftsman works as best he can And, as the chest the tools within doth hide, So doth the body crib and hide the man.

Nay, though great Shakespeare stood in flesh before us, Should heaven on importunity release him, Is it so certain that he might not bore us, So sure but we ourselves might fail to please him?

Who prays to have the moon full soon would pray, Once it were his, to have it taken away.

xiv--The Life After Death

(A)

[Greek text]

Not on sad Stygian sh.o.r.e, nor in clear sheen Of far Elysian plain, shall we meet those Among the dead whose pupils we have been, Nor those great shades whom we have held as foes; No meadow of asphodel our feet shall tread, Nor shall we look each other in the face To love or hate each other being dead, Hoping some praise, or fearing some disgrace.

We shall not argue saying "'Twas thus" or "Thus,"

Our argument's whole drift we shall forget; Who's right, who's wrong, 'twill be all one to us; We shall not even know that we have met.

Yet meet we shall, and part, and meet again, Where dead men meet, on lips of living men.

(B)

HANDEL

There doth great Handel live, imperious still, Invisible and impalpable as air, But forcing flesh and blood to work his will Effectually as though his flesh were there; He who gave eyes to ears and showed in sound All thoughts and things in earth or heaven above.

From fire and hailstones running along the ground To Galatea grieving for her love; He who could show to all unseeing eyes Glad shepherds watching o'er their flocks by night, Or Iphis angel-wafted to the skies, Or Jordan standing as an heap upright - He'll meet both Jones and me and clap or hiss us Vicariously for having writ Narcissus.

(C)

HANDEL

Father of my poor music--if such small Offspring as mine, so born out of due time, So scorn'd, can be called fatherful at all, Or dare to thy high sonship's rank to climb - Best lov'd of all the dead whom I love best, Though I love many another dearly too, You in my heart take rank above the rest; King of those kings that most control me, you, You were about my path, about my bed In boyhood always and, where'er I be, Whate'er I think or do, you, in my head, Ground-ba.s.s to all my thoughts, are still with me; Methinks the very worms will find some strain Of yours still lingering in my wasted brain.

Footnotes

{16} "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. Ca.s.sell & 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, Trubner & Co., 1878, chapter viii, p. 134.

And compare the idea underlying "The World of the Unborn" in Erewhon.

{26} The two chapters ent.i.tled "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.

{30} 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.

{31} Walks in the Regions of Science and Faith, by Harvey Goodwin, D.D., Lord Bishop of Carlisle. John Murray, 1883.

{32a} This quotation occurs on the t.i.tle page of Charles d.i.c.kens 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.

{32b} 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.

{41} Life and Habit is dated 1878, but it actually appeared on Butler's birthday, 4th December, 1877.

{92} 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 ill.u.s.trations.

{106} Cf. the note "Reproduction," p. 16 ante.

{107} Evolution Old & New, p. 77.

{128} 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.

{131} 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.

{136} 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 pa.s.sed as one.

{147} 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.

{151} Cf. the pa.s.sage 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."

{153} 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: