Why should I write about this as though any one will wish to read what I
write?
People sometimes give me to understand that it is a piece of ridiculous
conceit on my part to jot down so many notes about myself, since it
implies a confidence that I shall one day be regarded as an interesting
person. I answer that neither I nor they can form any idea as to whether
I shall be wanted when I am gone or no. The chances are that I shall
not. I am quite aware of it. So the chances are that I shall not live
to be 85; but I have no right to settle it so. If I do as Captain Don
did [_Life of Dr. Butler_, I, opening of Chapter VIII], and invest every
penny I have in an annuity that shall terminate when I am 89, who knows
but that I may live on to 96, as he did, and have seven years without any
income at all? I prefer the modest insurance of keeping up my notes
which others may burn or no as they please.
I am not one of those who have travelled along a set road towards an end
that I have foreseen and desired to reach. I have made a succession of
jaunts or pleasure trips from meadow to meadow, but no long journey
unless life itself be reckoned so. Nevertheless, I have strayed into no
field in which I have not found a flower that was worth the finding, I
have gone into no public place in which I have not found sovereigns lying
about on the ground which people would not notice and be at the trouble
of picking up. They have been things which any one else has had—or at
any rate a very large number of people have had—as good a chance of
picking up as I had. My finds have none of them come as the result of
research or severe study, though they have generally given me plenty to
do in the way of research and study as soon as I had got hold of them. I
take it that these are the most interesting—or whatever the least
offensive word may be:
1. The emphasising the analogies between crime and disease.
[_Erewhon_.]
2. The emphasising also the analogies between the development of the
organs of our bodies and of those which are not incorporate with our
bodies and which we call tools or machines. [_Erewhon_ and _Luck or
Cunning_?]
3. The clearing up the history of the events in connection with the
death, or rather crucifixion, of Jesus Christ; and a reasonable
explanation, first, of the belief on the part of the founders of
Christianity that their master had risen from the dead and, secondly, of
what might follow from belief in a single supposed miracle. [_The
Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ_, _The Fair Haven_ and
_Erewhon Revisited_.]
4. The perception that personal identity cannot be denied between
parents and offspring without at the same time denying it as between the
different ages (and hence moments) in the life of the individual and, as
a corollary on this, the ascription of the phenomena of heredity to the
same source as those of memory. [_Life and Habit_.]
5. The tidying up the earlier history of the theory of evolution.
[_Evolution Old and New_.]
6. The exposure and discomfiture of Charles Darwin and Wallace and their
followers. [_Evolution Old and New_, _Unconscious Memory_, _Luck or
Cunning_? and “The Deadlock in Darwinism” in the _Universal Review_
republished in _Essays on Life_, _Art and Science_.] {376}
7. The perception of the principle that led organic life to split up
into two main divisions, animal and vegetable. [_Alps and Sanctuaries_,
close of Chapter XIII: _Luck or Cunning_?]
8. The perception that, if the kinetic theory is held good, our thought
of a thing, whatever that thing may be, is in reality an exceedingly weak
dilution of the actual thing itself. [Stated, but not fully developed,
in _Luck or Cunning_? Chapter XIX, also in some of the foregoing notes.]
9. The restitution to Giovanni and Gentile Bellini of their portraits in
the Louvre and the finding of five other portraits of these two painters
of whom Crowe and Cavalcaselle and Layard maintain that we have no
portrait. [Letters to the _Athenæum_, &c.]
10. The restoration to Holbein of the drawing in the Basel Museum called
_La Danse_. [_Universal Review_, Nov., 1889.]
11. The calling attention to Gaudenzio Ferrari and putting him before
the public with something like the emphasis that he deserves. [_Ex
Voto_.]
12. The discovery of a life-sized statue of Leonardo da Vinci by
Gaudenzio Ferrari. [_Ex Voto_.]
13. The unearthing of the Flemish sculptor Jean de Wespin (called
Tabachetti in Italy) and of Giovanni Antonio Paracca. [_Ex Voto_.]
14. The finding out that the _Odyssey_ was written at Trapani, the
clearing up of the whole topography of the poem, and the demonstration,
as it seems to me, that the poem was written by a woman and not by a man.
Indeed, I may almost claim to have discovered the _Odyssey_, so altered
does it become when my views of it are adopted. And robbing Homer of the
_Odyssey_ has rendered the _Iliad_ far more intelligible; besides, I have
set the example of how he should be approached. [_The Authoress of the
Odyssey_.]
15. The attempt to do justice to my grandfather by writing _The Life and
Letters of Dr. Butler_ for which, however, I had special facilities.
16. In _Narcissus_ and _Ulysses_ I made an attempt, the failure of which
has yet to be shown, to return to the principles of Handel and take them
up where he left off.
17. The elucidation of Shakespeare’s _Sonnets_. [_Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Reconsidered_.]
I say nothing here about my novel [_The Way of All Flesh_] because it
cannot be published till after my death; nor about my translations of the
_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. Nevertheless these three books also were a
kind of picking up of sovereigns, for the novel contains records of
things I saw happening rather than imaginary incidents, and the
principles on which the translations are made were obvious to any one
willing to take and use them.
The foregoing is the list of my “mares’-nests,” and it is, I presume,
this list which made Mr. Arthur Platt call me the Galileo of Mares’-Nests
in his diatribe on my _Odyssey_ theory in the _Classical Review_. I am
not going to argue here that they are all, as I do not doubt, sound; what
I want to say is that they are every one of them things that lay on the
surface and open to any one else just as much as to me. Not one of them
required any profundity of thought or extensive research; they only
required that he who approached the various subjects with which they have
to do should keep his eyes open and try to put himself in the position of
the various people whom they involve. Above all, it was necessary to
approach them without any preconceived theory and to be ready to throw
over any conclusion the moment the evidence pointed against it. The
reason why I have discarded so few theories that I have put forward—and
at this moment I cannot recollect one from which there has been any
serious attempt to dislodge me—is because I never allowed myself to form
a theory at all till I found myself driven on to it whether I would or
no. As long as it was possible to resist I resisted, and only yielded
when I could not think that an intelligent jury under capable guidance
would go with me if I resisted longer. I never went in search of any one
of my theories; I never knew what it was going to be till I had found it;
they came and found me, not I them. Such being my own experience, I
begin to be pretty certain that other people have had much the same and
that the soundest theories have come unsought and without much effort.
The conclusion, then, of the whole matter is that scientific and literary
fortunes are, like money fortunes, made more by saving than in any other
way—more through the exercise of the common vulgar essentials, such as
sobriety and straightforwardness, than by the more showy enterprises that
when they happen to succeed are called genius and when they fail, folly.
The streets are full of sovereigns crying aloud for some one to come and
pick them up, only the thick veil of our own insincerity and conceit
hides them from us. He who can most tear this veil from in front of his
eyes will be able to see most and to walk off with them.
I should say that the sooner I stop the better. If on my descent to the
nether world I were to be met and welcomed by the shades of those to whom
I have done a good turn while I was here, I should be received by a
fairly illustrious crowd. There would be Giovanni and Gentile Bellini,
Leonardo da Vinci, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Holbein, Tabachetti, Paracca and
D’Enrico; the Authoress of the _Odyssey_ would come and Homer with her;
Dr. Butler would bring with him the many forgotten men and women to whom
in my memoir I have given fresh life; there would be Buffon, Erasmus
Darwin and Lamarck; Shakespeare also would be there and Handel. I could
not wish to find myself in more congenial company and I shall not take it
too much to heart if the shade of Charles Darwin glides gloomily away
when it sees me coming.
XXV
Poems