“_Lucubratio Ebria_,” _like_ “_Darwin Among the Machines_,” _has already
appeared in_ THE NOTE-BOOKS OF SAMUEL BUTLER _with a prefatory note by
Mr. Festing Jones_, _explaining its connection with_ EREWHON _and_ LIFE
AND HABIT. _I need therefore only repeat that it was written by Butler
after his return to England and sent to New Zealand_, _where it was
published in the_ PRESS _on July_ 29, 1865.
[From the _Press_, 29 July, 1865.]
THERE is a period in the evening, or more generally towards the still
small hours of the morning, in which we so far unbend as to take a single
glass of hot whisky and water. We will neither defend the practice nor
excuse it. We state it as a fact which must be borne in mind by the
readers of this article; for we know not how, whether it be the
inspiration of the drink or the relief from the harassing work with which
the day has been occupied or from whatever other cause, yet we are
certainly liable about this time to such a prophetic influence as we
seldom else experience. We are rapt in a dream such as we ourselves know
to be a dream, and which, like other dreams, we can hardly embody in a
distinct utterance. We know that what we see is but a sort of
intellectual Siamese twins, of which one is substance and the other
shadow, but we cannot set either free without killing both. We are
unable to rudely tear away the veil of phantasy in which the truth is
shrouded, so we present the reader with a draped figure, and his own
judgment must discriminate between the clothes and the body. A truth’s
prosperity is like a jest’s, it lies in the ear of him that hears it.
Some may see our lucubration as we saw it, and others may see nothing but
a drunken dream or the nightmare of a distempered imagination. To
ourselves it is the speaking with unknown tongues to the early
Corinthians; we cannot fully understand our own speech, and we fear lest
there be not a sufficient number of interpreters present to make our
utterance edify. But there! (Go on straight to the body of the
article.)
The limbs of the lower animals have never been modified by any act of
deliberation and forethought on their own part. Recent researches have
thrown absolutely no light upon the origin of life—upon the initial force
which introduced a sense of identity and a deliberate faculty into the
world; but they do certainly appear to show very clearly that each
species of the animal and vegetable kingdom has been moulded into its
present shape by chances and changes of many millions of years, by
chances and changes over which the creature modified had no control
whatever, and concerning whose aim it was alike unconscious and
indifferent, by forces which seem insensate to the pain which they
inflict, but by whose inexorably beneficent cruelty the brave and strong
keep coming to the fore, while the weak and bad drop behind and perish.
There was a moral government of this world before man came near it—a
moral government suited to the capacities of the governed, and which
unperceived by them has laid fast the foundations of courage, endurance,
and cunning. It laid them so fast that they became more and more
hereditary. Horace says well _fortes creantur fortibus et bonis_, good
men beget good children; the rule held even in the geological period;
good ichthyosauri begot good ichthyosauri, and would to our discomfort
have gone on doing so to the present time had not better creatures been
begetting better things than ichthyosauri, or famine or fire or
convulsion put an end to them. Good apes begot good apes, and at last
when human intelligence stole like a late spring upon the mimicry of our
semi-simious ancestry, the creature learnt how he could of his own
forethought add extra-corporaneous limbs to the members of his own body,
and become not only a vertebrate mammal, but a vertebrate machinate
mammal into the bargain.
It was a wise monkey that first learned to carry a stick, and a useful
monkey that mimicked him. For the race of man has learned to walk
uprightly much as a child learns the same thing. At first he crawls on
all fours, then he clambers, laying hold of whatever he can; and lastly
he stands upright alone and walks, but for a long time with an unsteady
step. So when the human race was in its gorilla-hood it generally
carried a stick; from carrying a stick for many million years it became
accustomed and modified to an upright position. The stick wherewith it
had learned to walk would now serve to beat its younger brothers, and
then it found out its service as a lever. Man would thus learn that the
limbs of his body were not the only limbs that he could command. His
body was already the most versatile in existence, but he could render it
more versatile still. With the improvement in his body his mind improved
also. He learnt to perceive the moral government under which he held the
feudal tenure of his life—perceiving it he symbolised it, and to this day
our poets and prophets still strive to symbolise it more and more
completely.
The mind grew because the body grew; more things were perceived, more
things were handled, and being handled became familiar. But this came
about chiefly because there was a hand to handle with; without the hand
there would be no handling, and no method of holding and examining is
comparable to the human hand. The tail of an opossum is a prehensile
thing, but it is too far from his eyes; the elephant’s trunk is better,
and it is probably to their trunks that the elephants owe their sagacity.
It is here that the bee, in spite of her wings, has failed. She has a
high civilisation, but it is one whose equilibrium appears to have been
already attained; the appearance is a false one, for the bee changes,
though more slowly than man can watch her; but the reason of the very
gradual nature of the change is chiefly because the physical organisation
of the insect changes, but slowly also. She is poorly off for hands, and
has never fairly grasped the notion of tacking on other limbs to the
limbs of her own body, and so being short lived to boot she remains from
century to century to human eyes _in statu quo_. Her body never becomes
machinate, whereas this new phase of organism which has been introduced
with man into the mundane economy, has made him a very quicksand for the
foundation of an unchanging civilisation; certain fundamental principles
will always remain, but every century the change in man’s physical
status, as compared with the elements around him, is greater and greater.
He is a shifting basis on which no equilibrium of habit and civilisation
can be established. Were it not for this constant change in our physical
powers, which our mechanical limbs have brought about, man would have
long since apparently attained his limit of possibility; he would be a
creature of as much fixity as the ants and bees; he would still have
advanced, but no faster than other animals advance.
If there were a race of men without any mechanical appliances we should
see this clearly. There are none, nor have there been, so far as we can
tell, for millions and millions of years. The lowest Australian savage
carries weapons for the fight or the chase, and has his cooking and
drinking utensils at home; a race without these things would be
completely _feræ naturæ_ and not men at all. We are unable to point to
any example of a race absolutely devoid of extra-corporaneous limbs, but
we can see among the Chinese that with the failure to invent new limbs a
civilisation becomes as much fixed as that of the ants; and among savage
tribes we observe that few implements involve a state of things scarcely
human at all. Such tribes only advance _pari passu_ with the creatures
upon which they feed.
It is a mistake, then, to take the view adopted by a previous
correspondent of this paper, to consider the machines as identities, to
animalise them and to anticipate their final triumph over mankind. They
are to be regarded as the mode of development by which human organism is
most especially advancing, and every fresh invention is to be considered
as an additional member of the resources of the human body. Herein lies
the fundamental difference between man and his inferiors. As regard his
flesh and blood, his senses, appetites, and affections, the difference is
one of degree rather than of kind, but in the deliberate invention of
such unity of limbs as is exemplified by the railway train—that
seven-leagued foot which five hundred may own at once—he stands quite
alone.
In confirmation of the views concerning mechanism which we have been
advocating above, it must be remembered that men are not merely the
children of their parents, but they are begotten of the institutions of
the state of the mechanical sciences under which they are born and bred.
These things have made us what we are. We are children of the plough,
the spade, and the ship; we are children of the extended liberty and
knowledge which the printing press has diffused. Our ancestors added
these things to their previously existing members; the new limbs were
preserved by natural selection and incorporated into human society; they
descended with modifications, and hence proceeds the difference between
our ancestors and ourselves. By the institutions and state of science
under which a man is born it is determined whether he shall have the
limbs of an Australian savage or those of a nineteenth-century
Englishman. The former is supplemented with little save a rug and a
javelin; the latter varies his physique with the changes of the season,
with age and with advancing or decreasing wealth. If it is wet he is
furnished with an organ which is called an umbrella and which seems
designed for the purpose of protecting either his clothes or his lungs
from the injurious effects of rain. His watch is of more importance to
him than a good deal of his hair, at any rate than of his whiskers;
besides this he carries a knife and generally a pencil case. His memory
goes in a pocket-book. He grows more complex as he becomes older and he
will then be seen with a pair of spectacles, perhaps also with false
teeth and a wig; but, if he be a really well-developed specimen of the
race, he will be furnished with a large box upon wheels, two horses, and
a coachman.
Let the reader ponder over these last remarks and he will see that the
principal varieties and sub-varieties of the human race are not now to be
looked for among the negroes, the Circassians, the Malays, or the
American aborigines, but among the rich and the poor. The difference in
physical organisation between these two species of man is far greater
than that between the so-called types of humanity. The rich man can go
from here to England whenever he feels inclined, the legs of the other
are by an invisible fatality prevented from carrying him beyond certain
narrow limits. Neither rich nor poor as yet see the philosophy of the
thing, or admit that he who can tack a portion of one of the P. and O.
boats on to his identity is a much more highly organised being than one
who cannot. Yet the fact is patent enough, if we once think it over,
from the mere consideration of the respect with which we so often treat
those who are richer than ourselves. We observe men for the most part
(admitting, however, some few abnormal exceptions) to be deeply impressed
by the superior organisation of those who have money. It is wrong to
attribute this respect to any unworthy motive, for the feeling is
strictly legitimate and springs from some of the very highest impulses of
our nature. It is the same sort of affectionate reverence which a dog
feels for man, and is not infrequently manifested in a similar manner.
We admit that these last sentences are open to question, and we should
hardly like to commit ourselves irrecoverably to the sentiments they
express; but we will say this much for certain, namely, that the rich man
is the true hundred-handed Gyges of the poets. He alone possesses the
full complement of limbs who stands at the summit of opulence, and we may
assert with strictly scientific accuracy that the Rothschilds are the
most astonishing organisms that the world has ever yet seen. For to the
nerves or tissues, or whatever it be that answers to the helm of a rich
man’s desires, there is a whole army of limbs seen and unseen attachable;
he may be reckoned by his horse-power, by the number of foot-pounds which
he has money enough to set in motion. Who, then, will deny that a man
whose will represents the motive power of a thousand horses is a being
very different from the one who is equivalent but to the power of a
single one?
Henceforward, then, instead of saying that a man is hard up, let us say
that his organisation is at a low ebb, or, if we wish him well, let us
hope that he will grow plenty of limbs. It must be remembered that we
are dealing with physical organisations only. We do not say that the
thousand-horse man is better than a one-horse man, we only say that he is
more highly organised and should be recognised as being so by the
scientific leaders of the period. A man’s will, truth, endurance, are
part of him also, and may, as in the case of the late Mr. Cobden, have in
themselves a power equivalent to all the horse-power which they can
influence; but were we to go into this part of the question we should
never have done, and we are compelled reluctantly to leave our dream in
its present fragmentary condition.
A Note on “The Tempest”
Act III, Scene I
_The following brief essay was contributed by Butler to a small
miscellany entitled_ LITERARY FOUNDLINGS: VERSE AND PROSE, COLLECTED IN
CANTERBURY, N.Z., _which was published at Christ Church on the occasion
of a bazaar held there in March_, 1864, _in aid of the funds of the
Christ Church Orphan Asylum_, _and offered for sale during the progress
of the bazaar_. _The miscellany consisted entirely of the productions of
Canterbury writers_, _and among the contributors were Dean Jacobs_,
_Canon Cottrell_, _and James Edward FitzGerald_, _the founder of the_
PRESS.
WHEN Prince Ferdinand was wrecked on the island Miranda was fifteen years
old. We can hardly suppose that she had ever seen Ariel, and Caliban was
a detestable object whom her father took good care to keep as much out of
her way as possible. Caliban was like the man cook on a back-country
run. “’Tis a villain, sir,” says Miranda. “I do not love to look on.”
“But as ’tis,” returns Prospero, “we cannot miss him; he does make our
fire, fetch in our wood, and serve in offices that profit us.” Hands
were scarce, and Prospero was obliged to put up with Caliban in spite of
the many drawbacks with which his services were attended; in fact, no one
on the island could have liked him, for Ariel owed him a grudge on the
score of the cruelty with which he had been treated by Sycorax, and we
have already heard what Miranda and Prospero had to say about him. He
may therefore pass for nobody. Prospero was an old man, or at any rate
in all probability some forty years of age; therefore it is no wonder
that when Miranda saw Prince Ferdinand she should have fallen violently
in love with him. “Nothing ill,” according to her view, “could dwell in
such a temple—if the ill Spirit have so fair an house, good things will
strive to dwell with ’t.” A very natural sentiment for a girl in
Miranda’s circumstances, but nevertheless one which betrayed a charming
inexperience of the ways of the world and of the real value of good
looks. What surprises us, however, is this, namely the remarkable
celerity with which Miranda in a few hours became so thoroughly wide
awake to the exigencies of the occasion in consequence of her love for
the Prince. Prospero has set Ferdinand to hump firewood out of the bush,
and to pile it up for the use of the cave. Ferdinand is for the present
a sort of cadet, a youth of good family, without cash and unaccustomed to
manual labour; his unlucky stars have landed him on the island, and now
it seems that he “must remove some thousands of these logs and pile them
up, upon a sore injunction.” Poor fellow! Miranda’s heart bleeds for
him. Her “affections were most humble”; she had been content to take
Ferdinand on speculation. On first seeing him she had exclaimed, “I have
no ambition to see a goodlier man”; and it makes her blood boil to see
this divine creature compelled to such an ignominious and painful labour.
What is the family consumption of firewood to her? Let Caliban do it;
let Prospero do it; or make Ariel do it; let her do it herself; or let
the lightning come down and “burn up those logs you are enjoined to
pile”;—the logs themselves, while burning, would weep for having wearied
him. Come what would, it was a shame to make Ferdinand work so hard, so
she winds up thus: “My father is hard at study; pray now rest
yourself—_he’s safe for these three hours_.” Safe—if she had only said
that “papa was safe,” the sentence would have been purely modern, and
have suited Thackeray as well as Shakspeare. See how quickly she has
learnt to regard her father as one to be watched and probably kept in a
good humour for the sake of Ferdinand. We suppose that the secret of the
modern character of this particular passage lies simply in the fact that
young people make love pretty much in the same way now that they did
three hundred years ago; and possibly, with the exception that “the
governor” may be substituted for the words “my father” by the young
ladies of three hundred years hence, the passage will sound as fresh and
modern then as it does now. Let the Prosperos of that age take a lesson,
and either not allow the Ferdinands to pile up firewood, or so to arrange
their studies as not to be “safe” for any three consecutive hours. It is
true that Prospero’s objection to the match was only feigned, but Miranda
thought otherwise, and for all purposes of argument we are justified in
supposing that he was in earnest.