Butler, Samuel, 1835-1902 -- Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
There is the reproduction of an idea which has been produced once
already, and there is the reproduction of a living form which has been
produced once already. The first reproduction is certainly an effort of
memory. It should not therefore surprise us if the second reproduction
should turn out to be an effort of memory also. Indeed all forms of
reproduction that we can follow are based directly or indirectly upon
memory. It is only the one great act of reproduction that we cannot
follow which we disconnect from memory.
Personal Identity
We are so far identical with our ancestors and our contemporaries that it
is very rarely we can see anything that they do not see. It is not
unjust that the sins of the fathers should be visited upon the children,
for the children committed the sins when in the persons of their fathers;
they ate the sour grapes before they were born: true, they have forgotten
the pleasure now, but so has a man with a sick headache forgotten the
pleasure of getting drunk the night before.
Sensations
Our sensations are only distinguishable because we feel them in different
places and at different times. If we feel them at very nearly the same
time and place we cannot distinguish them.
Cobwebs in the Dark
If you walk at night and your face comes up against a spider’s web woven
across the road, what a shock that thin line gives you! You fristle
through every nerve of your body.
Shocks and Memory
Memory is our sense that we are being shocked now as we were shocked
then.
Shocks
Given matter conscious in one part of itself of a shock in another part
(i.e. knowing in what part of itself it is shocked) retaining a memory of
each shock for a little while afterwards, able to feel whether two shocks
are simultaneous or in succession, and able to know whether it has been
shocked much or little—given also that association does not stick to the
letter of its bond—and the rest will follow.
Design
i
There is often connection but no design, as when I stamp my foot with
design and shake something down without design, or as when a man runs up
against another in the street and knocks him down without intending it.
This is undesign within design.
Fancied insults are felt by people who see design in a connection where
they should see little connection, and no design.
Connection with design is sometimes hard to distinguish from connection
without design; as when a man treads on another’s corns, it is not always
easy to say whether he has done so accidentally or on purpose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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