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    God the Known and God the Unknown: "Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself"
    God the Known and God the Unknown: "Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself"
    God the Known and God the Unknown: "Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself"
    Ebook60 pages1 hour

    God the Known and God the Unknown: "Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself"

    By Samuel Butler

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    About this ebook

    Samuel Butler was born on 4th December 1835 at the village rectory in Langar, Nottinghamshire.

    His relationship with his parents, especially his father, was largely antagonistic. His education began at home and included frequent beatings, as was all too common at the time.

    Under his parents' influence, he was set to follow his father into the priesthood. He was schooled at Shrewsbury and then St John's College, Cambridge, where he obtained a first in Classics in 1858.

    After Cambridge he went to live in a low-income parish in London 1858–59 as preparation for his ordination into the Anglican clergy; there he discovered that baptism made no apparent difference to the morals and behaviour of his new peers. He began to question his faith. Correspondence with his father about the issue failed to set his mind at peace, inciting instead his father's wrath.

    As a result, the young Butler emigrated in September 1859 to New Zealand. He was determined to change his life.

    He wrote of his arrival and life as a sheep farmer on Mesopotamia Station in ‘A First Year in Canterbury Settlement’ (1863). After a few years he sold his farm and made a handsome profit. But the chief achievement of these years were the drafts and source material for much of his masterpiece ‘Erewhon’.

    Butler returned to England in 1864, settling in rooms in Clifford's Inn, near Fleet Street, where he would live for the rest of his life.

    In 1872, he published his Utopian novel ‘Erewhon’ which made him a well-known figure.

    He wrote a number of other books, including a moderately successful sequel, ‘Erewhon Revisited’ before his masterpiece and semi-autobiographical novel ‘The Way of All Flesh’ appeared after his death. Butler thought its tone of satirical attack on Victorian morality too contentious to publish during his life time and thereby shied away from further potential problems.

    Samuel Butler died aged 66 on 18th June 1902 at a nursing home in St John's Wood Road, London. He was cremated at Woking Crematorium, and accounts say his ashes were either dispersed or buried in an unmarked grave.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherA Word To The Wise
    Release dateOct 1, 2018
    ISBN9781787809734
    God the Known and God the Unknown: "Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself"
    Author

    Samuel Butler

    Samuel Butler (1835-1901) was an English novelist, essayist, and critic whose satire Erewhon (1872) foreshadowed the collapse of the Victorian illusion of eternal progress and influenced every significant writer of utopian/dystopian fiction that followed. His autobiographical novel, The Way of All Flesh (1903), is generally considered a masterpiece.

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      Book preview

      God the Known and God the Unknown - Samuel Butler

      God the Known and God the Unknown by Samuel Butler

      Samuel Butler was born on 4th December 1835 at the village rectory in Langar, Nottinghamshire.

      His relationship with his parents, especially his father, was largely antagonistic. His education began at home and included frequent beatings, as was all too common at the time.

      Under his parents' influence, he was set to follow his father into the priesthood. He was schooled at Shrewsbury and then St John's College, Cambridge, where he obtained a first in Classics in 1858. 

      After Cambridge he went to live in a low-income parish in London 1858–59 as preparation for his ordination into the Anglican clergy; there he discovered that baptism made no apparent difference to the morals and behaviour of his new peers.  He began to question his faith. Correspondence with his father about the issue failed to set his mind at peace, inciting instead his father's wrath.

      As a result, the young Butler emigrated in September 1859 to New Zealand. He was determined to change his life.

      He wrote of his arrival and life as a sheep farmer on Mesopotamia Station in ‘A First Year in Canterbury Settlement’ (1863). After a few years he sold his farm and made a handsome profit. But the chief achievement of these years were the drafts and source material for much of his masterpiece ‘Erewhon’.

      Butler returned to England in 1864, settling in rooms in Clifford's Inn, near Fleet Street, where he would live for the rest of his life.

      In 1872, he published his Utopian novel ‘Erewhon’ which made him a well-known figure.

      He wrote a number of other books, including a moderately successful sequel, ‘Erewhon Revisited’ before his masterpiece and semi-autobiographical novel ‘The Way of All Flesh’ appeared after his death.  Butler thought its tone of satirical attack on Victorian morality too contentious to publish during his life time and thereby shied away from further potential problems.

      Samuel Butler died aged 66 on 18th June 1902 at a nursing home in St John's Wood Road, London. He was cremated at Woking Crematorium, and accounts say his ashes were either dispersed or buried in an unmarked grave.

      Index of Contents

      Prefatory Note

      CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION

      CHAPTER II - COMMON GROUND

      CHAPTER III - PANTHEISM

      CHAPTER IV - PANTHEISM

      CHAPTER V - ORTHODOX THEISM

      CHAPTER VI - THE TREE OF LIFE

      CHAPTER VII - THE LIKENESS OF GOD

      CHAPTER VIII - THE LIFE EVERLASTING

      CHAPTER IX - GOD THE UNKNOWN

      SAMUEL BUTLER – A SHORT BIOGRAPHY

      SAMUEL BUTLER – A CONCISE BIBLIOGRAPHY

      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

      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 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 this management with some closeness before they venture to satirise 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

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