“Lucubratio Ebria,”like“Darwin Among the Machines,”has already appeared inThe Note-Books of Samuel Butlerwith a prefatory note by Mr. Festing Jones,explaining its connection withErewhonandLife 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 thePresson July29, 1865.
[From thePress, 29 July, 1865.]
Thereis 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 wellfortes 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 eyesin 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 completelyferæ naturæand 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 advancepari passuwith 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.
The following brief essay was contributed by Butler to a small miscellany entitledLiterary 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 thePress.
WhenPrince 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.
The following lines were written by Butler in February, 1864,and appeared in thePress.They refer to a visit paid to New Zealand by a team of English cricketers,and have kindly been copied and sent to me by Miss Colborne-Veel,whose father was editor of thePressat the time that Butler was writing for it.Miss Colborne-Veel has further permitted to me to make use of the following explanatory note: “The coming of the All England team was naturally a glorious event in a province only fourteen years old.The Mayor and Councillors had‘a car of state’—otherwise a brake—‘with postilions in the English style.’Cobb and Co. supplied a six-horse coach for the English eleven,the yellow paint upon which suggested the‘glittering chariot of pure gold.’So they drove in triumph from the station and through the town.Tinley for England and Tennant for Canterbury were the heroes of the match.At the Wednesday dinner referred to they exchanged compliments and cricket balls across the table.This early esteem for cricket may be explained by a remark made by the All England captain,that‘on no cricket ground in any colony had he met so many public school men,especially men from old Rugby,as at Canterbury.’”
[To the Editor, thePress, February 15th, 1864.]
Sir—The following lines, which profess to have been written by a friend of mine at three o’clock in the morning after the dinner of Wednesday last, have been presented to myself with a request that I should forward them to you. I would suggest to the writer of them the following quotation from “Love’s Labour’s Lost.”
I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant,S.B.
“You find not the apostrophes, and so miss the accent; let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified; but for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy,caret. . .Imitariis nothing. So doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse his rider.”
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act IV, S. 2.
Horatio. . .. . . The whole town roseEyes out to meet them; in a car of stateThe Mayor and all the Councillors rode downTo give them greeting, while the blue-eyed teamDrawn in Cobb’s glittering chariot of pure goldCareered it from the station.—But the Mayor—Thou shouldst have seen the blandness of the man,And watched the effulgent and unspeakable smilesWith which he beamed upon them.His beard, by nature tawny, was suffusedWith just so much of a most reverend grizzleThat youth and age should kiss in’t. I assure youHe was a Southern Palmerston, so oldIn understanding, yet jocund and jauntyAs though his twentieth summer were as yetBut in the very June o’ the year, and winterWas never to be dreamt of. Those who heardHis words stood ravished. It was all as oneAs though Minerva, hid in Mercury’s jaws,Had counselled some divinest utteranceOf honeyed wisdom. So profound, so true,So meet for the occasion, and so—short.The king sat studying rhetoric as he spoke,While the lord Abbot heaved half-envious sighsAnd hung suspended on his accents.
Claud. But will it pay, Horatio?
Hor. Let Shylock see to that, but yet I trustHe’s no great loser.
Claud. Which side went in first?
Hor. We did,And scored a paltry thirty runs in all.The lissom Lockyer gambolled round the stumpsWith many a crafty curvet: you had thoughtAn Indian rubber monkey were enduedWith wicket-keeping instincts; teazing TinleyIssued his treacherous notices to quit,Ruthlessly truthful to his fame, and whoShall speak of Jackson? Oh! ’twas sad indeedTo watch the downcast faces of our menReturning from the wickets; one by one,Like patients at the gratis consultationOf some skilled leech, they took their turn at physic.And each came sadly homeward with a faceAwry through inward anguish; they were paleAs ghosts of some dead but deep mourned love,Grim with a great despair, but forced to smile.
Claud. Poor souls! Th’ unkindest heart had bled for them.But what came after?
Hor. Fortune turned her wheel,And Grace, disgracéd for the nonce, was bowledFirst ball, and all the welkin roared applause!As for the rest, they scored a goodly scoreAnd showed some splendid cricket, but their deedsWere not colossal, and our own brave TennantProved himself all as good a man as they.
* * * * *
Through them we greet our Mother. In their coming,We shake our dear old England by the handAnd watch space dwindling, while the shrinking worldCollapses into nothing. Mark me well,Matter as swift as swiftest thought shall fly,And space itself be nowhere. Future TinleysShall bowl from London to our Christ Church Tennants,And all the runs for all the stumps be madeIn flying baskets which shall come and goAnd do the circuit round about the globeWithin ten seconds. Do not check me withThe roundness of the intervening world,The winds, the mountain ranges, and the seas—These hinder nothing; for the leathern sphere,Like to a planetary satellite,Shall wheel its faithful orb and strike the bailsClean from the centre of the middle stump.
* * * * *
Mirrors shall hang suspended in the air,Fixed by a chain between two chosen stars,And every eye shall be a telescopeTo read the passing shadows from the world.Such games shall be hereafter, but as yetWe lay foundations only.
Claud. Thou must be drunk, Horatio.
Hor. So I am.
[180]We were asked by a learned brother philosopher who saw this article in MS. what we meant by alluding to rudimentary organs in machines. Could we, he asked, give any example of such organs? We pointed to the little protuberance at the bottom of the bowl of our tobacco pipe. This organ was originally designed for the same purpose as the rim at the bottom of a tea-cup, which is but another form of the same function. Its purpose was to keep the heat of the pipe from marking the table on which it rested. Originally, as we have seen in very early tobacco pipes, this protuberance was of a very different shape to what it is now. It was broad at the bottom and flat, so that while the pipe was being smoked the bowl might rest upon the table. Use and disuse have here come into play and served to reduce the function to its present rudimentary condition. That these rudimentary organs are rarer in machinery than in animal life is owing to the more prompt action of the human selection as compared with the slower but even surer operation of natural selection. Man may make mistakes; in the long run nature never does so. We have only given an imperfect example, but the intelligent reader will supply himself with illustrations.