The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
★3.9/5
Listen FreeFree AI audiobook with natural voice. No signup required.
About This Book
The Note Books of Samuel Butler is a collection of thoughts, observations, and musings written by the English author Samuel Butler. The book is divided into several sections, each containing a different topic or theme. Some of the topics covered in the book include science, literature, philosophy, and art. The Note Books of Samuel Butler is a fascinating insight into the mind of a brilliant thinker and writer. Butler's writing style is engaging and thought-provoking, and his observations on a wide range of subjects are both insightful and entertaining. Throughout the book, Butler's wit and hum...
Chapters (839)
- The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
- Preface
- Biographical Statement
- I Lord, What is Man?
- Man
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- v
- vi
- vii
- Life
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- v
- vi
- vii
- viii
- ix
- x
- xi
- xii
- xiii
- xiv
- xv
- xvi
- The World
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- The Individual and the World
- My Life
- i
- ii
- The Life we Live in Others
- The World Made to Enjoy
- Living in Others
- Karma
- Birth and Death
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- Reproduction
- Thinking almost Identically
- Is Life Worth Living?
- Evacuations
- Man and His Organism
- i
- ii
- iii
- Tools
- Organs and Makeshifts
- Joining and DisjoiningThese are the essence of change.
- Cotton Factories
- Our Trivial Bodies
- i
- ii
- II Elementary Morality
- The Foundations of Morality
- i
- ii
- iii
- Counsels of Imperfection
- Lucifer
- The Oracle in Erewhon
- God’s Laws
- Physical Excellence
- Intellectual Self-Indulgence
- Dodging Fatigue
- Vice and Virtue
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- v
- vi
- My Virtuous Life
- Sin
- Morality
- Change and Immorality
- Cannibalism
- Abnormal Developments
- Young People
- The Family
- i
- ii
- Unconscious Humour
- Homer’s Odyssey
- Melchisedec
- Bacon for Breakfast
- God and Man
- The Homeric Deity and the Pall Mall Gazette
- Good Breeding the Summum Bonum
- Advice to the Young
- Religion
- Heaven and Hell
- Priggishness
- Lohengrin
- Swells
- Science and Religion
- Gentleman
- The Finest Men
- On being a Swell all Round
- Money
- A Luxurious Death
- Money, Health and Reputation
- Solicitors
- Doctors
- Priests
- III The Germs of Erewhon and of Life and Habit
- Prefatory Note
- Darwin among the Machines
- Lucubratio Ebria
- Letter to Thomas William Gale Butler
- IV Memory and Design
- Clergymen and Chickens
- Memory
- i
- ii
- Antitheses
- Unconscious Memory
- Reproduction and Memory
- Personal Identity
- Sensations
- Cobwebs in the Dark
- Shocks and Memory
- Shocks
- Design
- i
- ii
- Accident, Design and Memory
- Memory and Mistakes
- Remembering
- A Torn Finger-Nail
- Unconscious Association
- Association
- Language
- V Vibrations
- Contributions to Evolution
- The Universal Substance
- i
- ii
- Mental and Physical
- Vibrations, Memory and Chemical Properties
- Protoplasm and Reproduction
- Germs within Germs
- Atoms and Fixed Laws
- Thinking
- Equilibrium
- VI Mind and Matter
- Motion
- Matter and Mind
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- Organic and Inorganic
- The Power to make Mistakes
- The Omnipresence of Intelligence
- The Super-Organic Kingdom
- Feeling
- Opinion and Matter
- Moral Influence
- Mental and Physical Pabulum
- Eating and Proselytising
- Sea-Sickness
- Indigestion
- Assimilation and Persecution
- Matter Infinitely Subdivisible
- Differences
- Union and Separation
- Unity and Multitude
- The Atom
- Our Cells
- Nerves and Postmen
- Night-Shirts and Babies
- Our Organism
- Beer and My Cat
- The Union Bank
- The Unity of Nature
- Croesus and His Kitchen-Maid
- VII On the Making of Music, Pictures and Books
- Thought and Word
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- v
- vi
- vii
- viii
- ix
- The Law
- Ideas
- Expression
- Development
- Acquired Characteristics
- Physical and Spiritual
- Trail and Writing
- Conveyancing and the Arts
- The Rules for Making Literature, Music and Pictures
- Relative Importances
- Eating Grapes Downwards
- Terseness
- Making Notes
- Shortening
- Omission
- Brevity
- Diffuseness
- Difficulties in Art, Literature and Music
- Knowledge is Power
- Academicism
- Agonising
- The Choice of Subjects
- Imaginary Countries
- My Books
- Great Works
- New Ideas
- Books and Children
- The Life of Books
- Criticism
- Le Style c’est l’Homme
- Portraits
- A Man’s Style
- The Gauntlet of Youth
- Greatness in Art
- Literary Power
- Subject and Treatment
- Public Opinion
- A Literary Man’s Test
- What Audience to Write for
- Writing for a Hundred Years Hence
- VIII Handel and Music
- Handel and Beethoven
- Handel and Domenico Scarlatti
- Handel and Homer
- Handel and Bach
- i
- ii
- Handel and the British Public
- Handel and Madame Patey
- Handel and Shakespeare
- A Yankee Handelian
- Waste
- Handel a Conservative
- Handel and Ernest Pontifex
- Handel’s Commonplaces
- Handel and Dr. Morell
- Wordsworth
- Sleeping Beauties
- “And the Glory of the Lord”
- Handel and the Speaking Voice
- Handel and the Wetterhorn
- “Tyrants now no more shall Dread”
- Handel and Marriage
- Handel and a Letter to a Solicitor
- Handel’s Shower of Rain
- Theodora and Susanna
- John Sebastian Bach
- Honesty
- Musical Criticism
- On Borrowing in Music
- Music
- Discords
- Anachronism
- Chapters in Music
- At the Opera
- At a Philharmonic Concert
- At the Wind Concerts
- At a Handel Festival
- i
- ii
- Handel and Dickens
- IX A Painter’s Views on Painting
- The Old Masters and Their Pupils
- The Academic System and Repentance
- The Jubilee Sixpence
- Studying from Nature
- The Model and the Lay-Figure
- Sketching from Nature
- Great Art and Sham Art
- Inarticulate Touches
- Detail
- Painting and Association
- The Credulous Eye
- Truths from Nature
- Accuracy
- Herbert Spencer
- Shade Colour and Reputation
- Money and Technique
- Action and Study
- Sacred and Profane Statues
- Seeing
- Improvement in Art
- Light and Shade
- Colour
- Words and Colour
- Amateurs and Professionals
- The Ansidei Raffaelle
- Buying a Rembrandt
- Trying to Buy a Bellini
- Watts
- Lombard Portals
- Holbein at Basle
- Van Eyck
- Giotto
- Early Art
- Sincerity
- X The Position of a Homo Unius Libri
- Trübner and Myself
- Capping a Success
- A Lady Critic
- Compensation
- Hudibras and Erewhon
- Life and Habit and Myself
- A Disappointing Person
- Entertaining Angels
- Myself and My Books
- Dragons
- Trying to Know
- Squaring Accounts
- Charles Darwin on what Sells a Book
- Hoodwinking the Public
- The Public Ear
- Secular Thinking
- The Art of Propagating Opinion
- Gladstone as a Financier
- Argument
- Humour
- Myself and “Unconscious Humour”
- My Humour
- Myself and My Publishers
- XI Cash and Credit
- The Unseen World
- The Kingdom of Heaven
- The Philosopher
- The Artist and the Shopkeeper
- Art and Trade
- Money
- Modern Simony
- My Grandfather and Myself
- Art and Usefulness
- Genius
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- v
- Great Things
- Genius and Providence
- The Art of Covery
- Wanted
- Ephemeral and Permanent Success
- My Birthright
- XII The Enfant Terrible of Literature
- Myself
- Blake, Dante, Virgil and Tennyson
- My Father and Shakespeare
- Tennyson
- Walter Pater and Matthew Arnold
- My Random Passages
- Moral Try-Your-Strengths
- Populus Vult
- Men and Monkeys
- “One Touch of Nature”
- Genuine Feeling
- George Meredith
- Froude and Freeman
- Style
- Diderot on Criticism
- Bunyan and Others
- Bunyan and the Odyssey
- Poetry
- Verse
- Verse, Poetry and Prose
- Ancient Work
- Nausicaa and Myself
- Telemachus and Nicholas Nickleby
- Gadshill and Trapani
- Waiting to be Hired
- Ilium and Padua
- Eumaeus and Lord Burleigh
- My Reviewers’ Sense of Need
- The Authoress of the Odyssey
- Homer and his Commentators
- The Iliad
- Glacial Periods of Folly
- Translations from Verse into Prose
- Translating the Odyssey
- The Odyssey and a Tomb at Carcassonne
- Getting it Wrong
- XIII Unprofessional Sermons
- Righteousness
- Wisdom
- Loving and Hating
- The Roman Empire
- Italians and Englishmen
- On Knowing what Gives us Pleasure
- i
- ii
- iii
- De Minimis non Curat Lex
- i
- ii
- iii
- Saints
- Prayer
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- XIV Higgledy-Piggledy
- Preface to Vol. II
- Waste-Paper Baskets
- Flies in the Milk-Jug
- My Thoughts
- Our Ideas
- Cat-Ideas and Mouse-Ideas
- Incoherency of New Ideas
- An Apology for the Devil
- Hallelujah
- Hating
- Reputation
- Science and Business
- Scientists
- Scientific Terminology
- Scientists and Drapers
- Men of Science
- Sparks
- Dumb-Bells
- Purgatory
- Greatness
- The Vanity of Human Wishes
- Jones’s Conscience
- Nihilism
- On Breaking Habits
- Dogs
- Future and Past
- Nature
- Lucky and Unlucky
- Definitions
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- v
- Money
- Wit
- Oxford and Cambridge
- Cooking
- Perseus and St. George
- Specialism and Generalism
- Silence and Tact
- Truth-tellers
- Street Preachers
- Providence and Othello
- Providence and Improvidence
- i
- ii
- iii
- Epiphany
- Fortune
- Gold-Mines
- Things and Purses
- Solomon in all his Glory
- David’s Teachers
- S. Michael
- One Form of Failure
- Andromeda
- Self-Confidence
- Wandering
- Poverty
- Pedals or Drones
- Evasive Nature
- Fashion
- Doctors and Clergymen
- God is Love
- Common Chords
- God and the Devil
- Sex
- Women
- Offers of Marriage
- Marriage
- i
- ii
- iii
- Life and Love
- The Basis of Life
- Woman Suffrage
- Manners Makyth Man
- Women and Religion
- Happiness
- Sorrow within Sorrow
- Going Away
- XV Titles and Subjects
- Titles
- “The Ancient Mariner”
- For Unwritten Articles, Essays, Stories
- Imaginary Worlds
- An Idyll
- A Divorce Novelette
- The Moral Painter—A Tale of Double Personality
- Two Writers
- The Archbishop of Heligoland
- XVI Written Sketches
- Literary Sketch-Books
- London
- A Clifford’s Inn Euphemism
- London Trees
- What I Said to the Milkman
- The Return of the Jews to Palestine
- The Great Bear’s Barley-Water
- The Cock Tavern
- Myself in Dowie’s Shop
- My Dentist
- Furber the Violin-Maker
- Window Cleaning in the British Museum Reading-Room
- The Electric Light in its Infancy
- Fire
- Adam and Eve
- Does Mamma Know?
- Mr. Darwin in the Zoological Gardens
- Terbourg
- At Doctors’ Commons
- The Sack of Khartoum
- Missolonghi
- Memnon
- Manzi the Model
- A Sailor Boy and Some Chickens
- Gogin, the Japanese Gentleman and the Dead Dog
- St. Pancras’ Bells
- At Eynsford
- Mrs. Hicks
- New-Laid Eggs
- “The Egg that Hen Belonged to”
- At Englefield Green
- At Abbey Wood
- At Ightham Mote
- Dr. Mandell Creighton and Mr. W. S. Rockstro
- Pigs
- Mozart
- Divorce
- Ravens
- Calais to Dover
- Snapshotting a Bishop
- Homer and the Basins
- The Channel Passage
- The Two Barristers at Ypres
- At Montreuil-sur-Mer
- XVII Material for a Projected Sequel to Alps and Sanctuaries
- Mrs. Dowe on Alps and Sanctuaries
- Not to be Omitted
- The Sacro Monte at Varese
- The Albergo Grotta Crimea
- Public Opinion
- These Notes
- The Wife of Bath
- Horace at the Post-Office in Rome
- Beethoven at Faido and at Boulogne
- Silvio
- Sunday Morning at Soglio
- Fascination
- Supreme Occasions
- The Aurora Borealis
- A Tragic Expression
- The Wrath to Come
- The Beauties of Nature
- The Late King Vittorio Emanuele
- The Bishop of Chichester at Faido
- At Piora
- At Ferentino
- The Imperfect Lady
- Siena and S. Gimignano
- The Etruscan Urns at Volterra
- The Quick and the Dead
- The Grape-Filter
- Bertoli and his Bees
- “The Lost Chord”
- Introduction of Foreign Plants
- Saint Cosimo and Saint Damiano at Siena
- At Pienza
- Homer’s Hot and Cold Springs
- XVIII Material for Erewhon Revisited
- XIX Truth and Convenience
- Opposites
- Two Points of View
- Truth
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- v
- vi
- vii
- viii
- ix
- x
- xi
- xii
- xiii
- xiv
- Falsehood
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- v
- vi
- vii
- viii
- ix
- x
- Nature’s Double Falsehood
- Convenience
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- v
- vi
- vii
- Classification
- Attempts at Classification
- A Clergyman’s Doubts
- XX First Principles
- The Baselessness of Our Ideas
- Imagination
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- v
- Inexperience
- Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit
- Contradiction in Terms
- Extremes
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- Free-Will and Necessity
- Free-Will otherwise Cunning
- Necessity otherwise Luck
- Choice
- Ego and Non-Ego
- Two Incomprehensibles
- God and the Unknown
- Scylla and Charybdis
- Philosophy
- Philosophy and Equal Temperament
- Hedging the Cuckoo
- God and Philosophies
- Common Sense, Reason and Faith
- The Credit System
- Argument
- Logic and Philosophy
- Science
- Religion
- Logic
- Logic and Faith
- Common Sense and Philosophy
- First Principles
- XXI Rebelliousness
- God and Life
- God and Flesh
- Gods and Prophets
- Faith and Reason
- God and the Devil
- Christianity
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- v
- vi
- vii
- viii
- Miracles
- Wants and Creeds
- Faith
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- v
- vi
- The Cuckoo and the Moon
- Buddhism
- Theist and Atheist
- The Peculiar People
- Renan
- The Spiritual Treadmill
- The Dim Religious Light
- The Peace that Passeth Understanding
- The New Testament
- Christ and the L. & N.W. Railway
- The Jumping Cat
- Personified Science
- Science and Theology
- The Church and the Supernatural
- Gratitude and Revenge
- Cant and Hypocrisy
- Real Blasphemy
- The English Church Abroad
- Drunkenness
- Hell-Fire
- XXII Reconciliation
- Religion
- God and Convenience
- The World
- Blasphemy
- Gaining One’s Point
- The Voice of Common Sense
- Amendes Honorables
- Forgiveness and Retribution
- Inaccuracy
- Jutland and “Waitee”
- The Parables
- The Irreligion of Orthodoxy
- Society and Christianity
- Sanctified by Faith
- Ourselves and the Clergy
- The Rules of Life
- XXIII Death
- Fore-knowledge of Death
- Continued Identity
- Complete Death
- Life and Death
- The Defeat of Death
- The Torture of Death
- Ignorance of Death
- i
- ii
- iii
- iv
- v
- vi
- vii
- Dissolution
- The Dislike of Death
- XXIV The Life of the World to Come
- Posthumous Life
- i
- ii
- The Test of Faith
- Starting again ad Infinitum
- Preparation for Death
- The Vates Sacer
- The Dictionary of National Biography
- The World
- Accumulated Dinners
- Judging the Dead
- Myself and My Books
- My Son
- Obscurity
- Posthumous Honours
- Posthumous Recognition
- Analysis of the Sales of My Books
- Worth Doing
- Doubt and Hope
- Unburying Cities
- Apologia
- i
- ii
- My Work
- XXV Poems
- Prefatory Note
- i—Translation from an Unpublished Work of Herodotus
- ii—The Shield of Achilles—With Variations
- iii—The Two Deans
- iv—On the Italian Priesthood
- v—A Psalm of Montreal
- vi—The Righteous Man
- vii—To Critics and Others
- viii—For Narcissus
- ix—A Translation
- x—In Memoriam
- xi—An Academic Exercise
- xii—A Prayer
- xiii—Karma
- xiv—The Life After Death
- Footnotes
- 1
- 9
- 24
- 39
- 56
- 66
- 74
- 93
- 110
- 135
- 155
- 168
- 183
- 200
- 215
- 229
- 237
- 259
- 288
- 297
- 309
- 332
- 346
- 353
- 360
- 379
- p. 1
- p. 9
- p. 24
- p. 39
- p. 56
- p. 66
- p. 74
- p. 93
- p. 110
- p. 135
- p. 155
- p. 168
- p. 183
- p. 200
- p. 215
- p. 229
- p. 237
- p. 259
- p. 288
- p. 297
- p. 309
- p. 332
- p. 346
- p. 353
- p. 360
- p. 379
How to Listen
- 1. Click "Listen Free" above
- 2. The book opens in CastReader's browser reader
- 3. Click the play button — AI narration starts with word highlighting
- 4. Use "Send to Phone" to continue listening on your phone
More by Samuel Butler
You Might Also Like
FAQ
Is this audiobook really free?
Yes. "The Note-Books of Samuel Butler" is a public domain work from Project Gutenberg. CastReader converts it to audio using AI text-to-speech for free. No account or payment needed.
What does the AI voice sound like?
CastReader uses Kokoro TTS, a natural-sounding AI voice. It handles punctuation, names, and dialogue naturally. Most listeners forget it's AI after a few minutes.
Can I listen on my phone?
Yes. Open the book, then use "Send to Phone" to stream audio to your phone via Telegram. No app download needed.