Samuel Butler

Vida y hábito es el despliegue de un conjunto de hipótesis que van destejiendo la trama fundante del pensamiento occidental: el abismo entre lo humano y la naturaleza. ¿Existe evidencia para negarle a los seres inferiores la amalgama de atributos que constituye el monopolio de lo humano: juicio, intencion, sentido de la necesidad, y principalmente memoria? ¿Es el "instinto" una explicacion, o es mas bien la confesion de que ignoramos como ciertos seres llegan a saber ciertas cosas? Y si la diferencia entre el hombre y una ameba es de grado y no de naturaleza, ¿no es el desarrollo actual de las civilizaciones, los hombres con sus habitos y sus maquinas a vapor, el modelo mas cercano de evolucion natural?Butler contrasta los datos y los debates de la ciencia con la experiencia de "un hombre corriente", a menudo con humor e ironia, y sin abandonar sus artes de novelista. ¿Como reaccionaria Londres si fuera viviseccionada como una rana? ¿Que le pasa a un grano de trigo que se descubre de repente en la molleja de una gallina? Y si un ser superior al hombre posara su microscopio sobre nuestras minusculas y caoticas ferias de frutas y verduras, ¿no elucubraria todo tipo de teorias absurdas acerca del "instinto" que le permite a cada verdulero reconocer su puesto ambulante? Vida y habito es en un sentido una obra literaria, la imaginacion de una utopia, de un lugar inexistente e imposible para la cultura occidental: pensar mas aca de la frontera entre lo humano y lo natural.

Samuel Butler nació en 1835. Hijo de un párroco anglicano y nieto de un obispo, se había decidido que se conviertiera en sacerdote al finalizar sus estudios pero tras un período de autoanalisis todos

A young traveller sets out to make his fortune and discovers the idyllic distant land of Erewhon. Its people welcome him with open arms, but this apparent utopia soon reveals its darker side. In Erewhon, money has no value and disease is a crime, yet poverty is punishable and criminals are cared for as though sick. How can he survive in a land where morality makes no sense?Erewhon is Samuel Butlers classic utopian satire about the hypocrisy of religion and Victorian society. Influenced by Darwins recently published On the Origin of Species, it is most famous for its ground-breaking idea of mechanical consciousness. In 1901, Butler published a sequel entitled Erewhon Revisited. Both books are perfect for fans of Gullivers Travels.

"A great book because it gives an honest picture of the relationship between father and son, and it could do that because Butler was a truly independent observer, and above all because he was courageous. He would say things that other people knew but didnt dare to say. And finally there was his clear, simple, straightforward way of writing, never using a long word where a short one will do." George Orwell"If the house caught on fire, the Victorian novel I would rescue from the flames would be The Way of All Flesh". William MaxwellThe Way of All Flesh is one of the time-bombs of literature. One thinks of it lying in Samuel Butlers desk for thirty years, waiting to blow up the Victorian family and with it the whole great pillared and balustraded edifice of the Victorian novel." V. S. Pritchett"One of the summits of human achievement." George Bernard Shaw"The Way of All Flesh" (1903) exploded like a bomb in Edwardian drawing rooms. Based on Samuel Butlers own life and published posthumously, it offers a scathing indictment of Victorian bourgeois values as personified in five generations of the Pontifex family.Butlers satire centers on Ernest Pontifex, an orthodox young man who suddenly sees the falseness of the rules and expectations forced on him by parents and teachers, an epiphany which leads him to renounce the moral, religious, and social values he once held.

Written between 1873 and 1884 and published posthumously in 1903, "The Way of All Flesh" is regarded by some as the first twentieth-century novel. Samuel Butlers autobiographical account of a harsh upbringing and troubled adulthood shines an iconoclastic light on the hypocrisy of a Victorian clerical familys domestic life. It also foreshadows the crumbling of nineteenth-century bourgeois ideals in the aftermath of the First World War, as well as the ways in which succeeding generations have questioned conventional values.Beginning with the life of John Pontifex, a carpenter, the novel traces four generations of the Pontifex family, each of which perpetuates the frustration and unhappiness of its predecessor largely as a result of parental repression. Only Ernest Pontifex, the great-grandson of John, is able to break the cycle. After being ordained a minister, serving a prison term because of a naive misunderstanding, and unwittingly entering into a bigamous marriage with the familys sluttish servant girl, Ernest providentially inherits enough money from a favourite aunt to change his life and become a writer.

(Author note: Samuel Butler, 1612-1680, not Samuel Butler, 1835-1902)

Editor: Ernest Rhys

For many years a link in the chain of Samuel Butlers biological works has been missing. "Unconscious Memory" was originally published thirty years ago, but for fully half that period it has been out of print, owing to the destruction of a large number of the unbound sheets in a fire at the premises of the printers some years ago. The present reprint comes, I think, at a peculiarly fortunate moment, since the attention of the general public has of late been drawn to Butlers biological theories in a marked manner by several distinguished men of science, notably by Dr. Francis Darwin, who, in his presidential address to the British Association in 1908, quoted from the translation of Herings address on "Memory as a Universal Function of Original Matter," which Butler incorporated into "Unconscious Memory," and spoke in the highest terms of Butler himself. It is not necessary for me to do more than refer to the changed attitude of scientific authorities with regard to Butler and his theories, since Professor Marcus Hartog has most kindly consented to contribute an introduction to the present edition of "Unconscious Memory," summarising Butlers views upon biology, and defining his position in the world of science.

The epics of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, in Samuel Butler’s famous prose translation. An immortal poetry poem from greece that from ancient past teach us about philosophy, loves and war.

The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler is a semi-autobiographical novel by Samuel Butler that attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. Written between 1873 and 1884, it traces four generations of the Pontifex family.Butler dared not publish it during his lifetime, but when it was published (in 1903) it was accepted as part of the general reaction against Victorianism. In its posthumous publication in 1903, Butlers first literary executor, R A Streatfeild, made substantial changes to Butlers manuscript. The original manuscript was first published in 1964 by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, edited by Daniel F. Howard.The title is a quotation from the DouayRheims Bibles translation of the Biblical Hebrew expression, to "go the way of all the earth", meaning "to die", in the Books of Kings: "I am going the way of all flesh: take thou courage and shew thyself a man." (1 Kings 2:2).In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Way of All Flesh twelfth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

Editor: R. A. Streatfeild