God the Known and
God the Unknown
BY SAMUEL BUTLER
Prefatory Note
"GOD the Known and God the Unknown" first appeared in the form of
a series of articles which were published in "The Examiner" in
May, June, and July, 1879. Samuel Butler subsequently revised
the text of his work, presumably with the intention of
republishing it, though he never carried the intention into
effect. In the present edition I have followed his revised
version almost without deviation. I have, however, retained a
few passages which Butler proposed to omit, partly because they
appear to me to render the course of his argument clearer, and
partly because they contain characteristic thoughts and
expressions of which none of his admirers would wish to be
deprived. In the list of Butler's works "God the Known and God
the Unknown" follows "Life and Habit," which appeared in 1877,
and "Evolution, Old and New," which was published in May, 1879.
It is scarcely necessary to point out that the three works are
closely akin in subject and treatment, and that "God the Known
and God the Unknown" will gain in interest by being considered in
relation to its predecessors.
R. A. STREATFEILD
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God the Known and
God the Unknown
BY SAMUEL BUTLER
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
MANKIND has ever been ready to discuss matters in the inverse
ratio of their importance, so that the more closely a question is
felt to touch the hearts of all of us, the more incumbent it is
considered upon prudent people to profess that it does not exist,
to frown it down, to tell it to hold its tongue, to maintain that
it has long been finally settled, so that there is now no
question concerning it.
So far, indeed, has this been carried through all time past that
the actions which are most important to us, such as our passage
through the embryonic stages, the circulation of our blood, our
respiration, etc. etc., have long been formulated beyond all
power of reopening question concerning them - the mere fact or
manner of their being done at all being ranked among the great
discoveries of recent ages. Yet the analogy of past settlements
would lead us to suppose that so much unanimity was not arrived
at all at once, but rather that it must have been preceded by
much smouldering [sic] discontent, which again was followed by
open warfare; and that even after a settlement had been
ostensibly arrived at, there was still much secret want of
conviction on the part of many for several generations.
occasion for sarcasm; those, on the other hand, who hold that the
world is by this time old enough to be the best judge concerning
the management of its own affairs will scrutinise [sic] this
management with some closeness before they venture to satirise
[sic] it; nor will they do so for long without finding
justification for its apparent recklessness; for we must all fear
responsibility upon matters about which we feel we know but
little; on the other hand we must all continually act, and for
the most part promptly. We do so, therefore, with greater
security when we can persuade both ourselves and others that a
matter is already pigeon-holed than if we feel that we must use
our own judgment for the collection, interpretation, and
arrangement of the papers which deal with it. Moreover, our
action is thus made to appear as if it received collective
sanction; and by so appearing it receives it. Almost any
settlement, again, is felt to be better than none, and the more
nearly a matter comes home to everyone, the more important is it
that it should be treated as a sleeping dog, and be let to lie,
for if one person begins to open his mouth, fatal developments
may arise in the Babel that will follow.
It is not difficult, indeed, to show that, instead of having
reason to complain of the desire for the postponement of
important questions, as though the world were composed mainly of
knaves or fools, such fixity as animal and vegetable forms
possess is due to this very instinct. For if there had been no
reluctance, if there were no friction and vis inertae to
be encountered even after a theoretical equilibrium had been
upset, we should have had no fixed organs nor settled
proclivities, but should have been daily and hourly undergoing
Protean transformations, and have still been throwing out
pseudopodia like the amoeba. True, we might have come to like
this fashion of living as well as our more steady-going system if
we had taken to it many millions of ages ago when we were yet
young; but we have contracted other habits which have become so
confirmed that we cannot break with them. We therefore now hate
that which we should perhaps have loved if we had practised [sic]
it. This, however, does not affect the argument, for our concern
is with our likes and dislikes, not with the manner in which
those likes and dislikes have come about. The discovery that
organism is capable of modification at all has occasioned so much
astonishment that it has taken the most enlightened part of the
world more than a hundred years to leave off expressing its
contempt for such a crude, shallow, and preposterous conception.
Perhaps in another hundred years we shall learn to admire the
good sense, endurance, and thorough Englishness of organism in
having been so averse to change, even more than its versatility
in having been willing to change so much.
Nevertheless, however conservative we may be, and however much
alive to the folly and wickedness of tampering with settled
convictions-no matter what they are-without sufficient cause,
there is yet such a constant though gradual change in our
surroundings as necessitates corresponding modification in our
ideas, desires, and actions. We may think that we should like to
find ourselves always in the same surroundings as our ancestors,
so that we might be guided at every touch and turn by the
experience of our race, and be saved from all self-communing or
interpretation of oracular responses uttered by the facts around
us. Yet the facts will change their utterances in spite of us;
and we, too, change with age and ages in spite of ourselves, so
as to see the facts around us as perhaps even more changed than
they actually are. It has been said, "Tempora mutantur nos et
mutamur in illis." The passage would have been no less true
if it had stood, "Nos mutamur et tempora mutantur in
nobis." Whether the organism or the surroundings began
changing first is a matter of such small moment that the two may
be left to fight it out between themselves; but, whichever view
is taken, the fact will remain that whenever the relations
between the organism and its surroundings have been changed, the
organism must either succeed in putting the surroundings into
harmony with itself, or itself into harmony with the
surroundings; or must be made so uncomfortable as to be unable to
remember itself as subjected to any such difficulties, and there
fore to die through inability to recognise [sic] its own identity
further.
Under these circumstances, organism must act in one or other of
these two ways: it must either change slowly and continuously
with the surroundings, paying cash for everything, meeting the
smallest change with a corresponding modification so far as is
found convenient; or it must put off change as long as possible,
and then make larger and more sweeping changes.
Both these courses are the same in principle, the difference
being only one of scale, and the one being a miniature of the
other, as a ripple is an Atlantic wave in little; both have their
advantages and disadvantages, so that most organisms will take
the one course for one set of things and the other for another.
They will deal promptly with things which they can get at easily,
and which lie more upon the surface; those, however, which are
more troublesome to reach, and lie deeper, will be handled upon
more cataclysmic principles, being allowed longer periods of
repose followed by short periods of greater activity.
Animals breathe and circulate their blood by a little action many
times a minute; but they feed, some of them, only two or three
times a day, and breed for the most part not more than once a
year, their breeding season being much their busiest time. It is
on the first principle that the modification of animal forms has
proceeded mainly; but it may be questioned whether what is called
a sport is not the organic expression of discontent which has
been long felt, but which has not been attended to, nor been met
step by step by as much small remedial modification as was found
practicable: so that when a change does come it comes by way of
revolution. Or, again (only that it comes to much the same
thing), a sport may be compared to one of those happy thoughts
which sometimes come to us unbidden after we have been thinking
for a long time what to do, or how to arrange our ideas, and have
yet been unable to arrive at any conclusion.
So with politics, the smaller the matter the prompter, as a
general rule, the settlement; on the other hand, the more
sweeping the change that is felt to be necessary, the longer it
will be deferred.
The advantages of dealing with the larger questions by more
cataclysmic methods are obvious. For, in the first place, all
composite things must have a system, or arrangement of parts, so
that some parts shall depend upon and be grouped round others, as
in the articulation of a skeleton and the arrangement of muscles,
nerves, tendons, etc., which are attached to it. To meddle with
the skeleton is like taking up the street, or the flooring of
one's house; it so upsets our arrangements that we put it off
till whatever else is found wanted, or whatever else seems likely
to be wanted for a long time hence, can be done at the same time.
Another advantage is in the rest which is given to the attention
during the long hollows, so to speak, of the waves between the
periods of resettlement. Passion and prejudice have time to calm
down, and when attention is next directed to the same question,
it is a refreshed and invigorated attention-an attention,
moreover, which may be given with the help of new lights derived
from other quarters that were not luminous when the question was
last considered. Thirdly, it is more easy and safer to make such
alterations as experience has proved to be necessary than to
forecast what is going to be wanted. Reformers are like
paymasters, of whom there are only two bad kinds, those who pay
too soon, and those who do not pay at all.