His life during these years is interesting in so much as it shows how a man of education and breeding lived in the bush while developing intellectually. The devil often tempted him there, but not always with success, though he became terribly fussed over the death and resurrection of Christ. He thought and wrote about it, but he was not successfully delivered from his dilemma until the idea of "Erewhon" took possession of him. This idea was that machines were about to supplant the human race and be developed into a higher kind of life. When the conception first seized him he wrote to Charles Darwin, whom he started by admiring and ended by despising, that he developed it "for mere fun and because it amused him and without a particle of serious meaning." He had Butler's "Analogy" in his head as the book at which it should be aimed, but when "Erewhon" appeared most readers thought he had "The Origin of Species" in mind. From this time one begins to see how extraordinarily laborious were all of Butler's writings. "Erewhon" was not published until eight years later, during which time he had written and rewritten, corrected and re-corrected, pruned, elaborated, and incorporated sentences from letters, records of experiences which he had while prospecting for and developing his sheeprun, and innumerable notes from a commonplace book which he early acquired the art of keeping. Ten years after its publication he wrote to an indiscriminating, ardent admirer: "I don't like 'Erewhon'; still it is good for me." The next book he wrote, "The Fair Haven," he liked very much, but few others did. When he was a very young man he had written a pamphlet on the Resurrection. He was disappointed that it made little or no impression. Finally he decided it had been written too seriously. It then occurred to him to treat the subject as he had treated the analogy of crime and disease in "Erewhon." The book purports to be written by the son of a clergyman, the antithesis of Butler's father, insane before the manuscript was completed, and of a mother, the replica of his own mother. A brother gives the book to the world, prefixing a memoir of the author modelled after Butler. The book fell flat. The few who resented it were the sensitive orthodox whose feelings were outraged. Butler could not understand why he was unable to induce people to reconsider the gospel accounts of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The second distinctive characteristic of Butler's make-up was his spirit of God-I-thank-thee-that-I-am-not-as-other-men.