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God the Known and God the Unknown

Samuel Butler

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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




GOD THE KNOWN AND GOD THE UNKNOWN



CHAPTER I. 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.

There are many who see nothing in this tendency of our nature but
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
therefore 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.
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