Life and habit / by Samuel Butler.

  • Samuel Butler
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Life and habit / by Samuel Butler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    them; then let him go to the masterpieces of Greek and Italian art, the truest preachers of the truest gospel of grace; let him look at the Venus of Milo, the Discobo- lus, the St. George of Donatello. If it had pleased these people to wish to study, there was no lack of brains to do it with; but imagine “ what a deal of scorn” would “look beautiful” upon the Venus of Milo’s face if it were suggested to her that she should learn to read. Which, think you, knows most, the Theseus, or any modern professor taken at random ? True, the advancement of learning must have had a great share in the advancement of beauty, inasmuch as beauty is but knowledge perfected and incarnate— but with the pioneers it is sic vos non vobis ; the grace is not for them, but for those who come after. Science is like offences. It must needs come, but woe unto that man through whom it comes; for there cannot be much beauty where there is consciousness of know- ledge, and while knowledge is still new it must in the nature of things involve much consciousness. It is not knowledge, then, that is incompatible with beauty; there cannot be too much knowledge, but it must have passed through many people who it is to be feared must be more or less disagreeable, before beauty or grace will have anything to say to it; it must be so incarnate in a man’s whole being that he shall not be aware of it, or it will fit him constrainedly as one under the law, and not as one under grace. And grace is best, for where grace is, love is not dis- tant. Grace! the old Pagan ideal whose charm even unlovely Paul could not withstand, but, as the legend
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