Born, at Wantage, 18 May 1692. Educated at Wantage Latin School, and at Dissenting School at Gloucester and Tewkesbury. To Oriel Coll., Oxford, March 1715; B.A., 11 Oct. 1718; B.C.L., 10 June 1721. Ordained Deacon at Salisbury, Oct. 1718; Priest, Dec. 1718. Preacher at Rolls Chapel, July 1719 to autumn of 1726. Prebendary of Salisbury, 1721. Rector of Houghton-le-Skerne, near Darlington, 1722. Rector of Stanhope in Weardale, 1725. Lived secluded life, mainly occupied in writing “Analogy,” published 1736. Chaplain to Lord Talbot, 1733. D.C.L., Oxford, 8 Dec. 1733. Prebendary of Rochester, and Clerk of Closet to Queen Caroline, July 1736. Bishop of Bristol, Aug. 1738. Continued to hold Rochester prebend and Stanhope rectorship till appointed Dean of St. Paul’s, 24 May 1740. Clerk of Closet to King, 1746. Bishop of Durham, July 1750. To Bristol and Bath for health. Died, at Bath, 16 June 1752. Buried in Bristol Cathedral. Works: “Several Letters to the Rev. Dr. Clarke, from a Gentleman in Gloucestershire” (anon.), 1716; “Letters of Thanks from a Young Clergyman to the Rev. Dr. Hare” (anon.), 1719; “Fifteen Sermons,” 1726; “The Analogy of Religion,” 1736; “Sermons preached before the Society for Propagating the Gospel,” 1739; “Sermon preached before the Lord Mayor,” 1740; “Sermon preached before the House of Lords,” 1741; “Sermon preached at the annual meeting of the Charity Children,” 1745; “Sermon preached before the House of Lords,” 1747; “Sermon preached before the Governors of the London Infirmary,” 1748; Visitation Charge at Durham, 1751. Posthumous: “Some Remains, hitherto unpublished,” ed. by E. Steere, 1853. Collected Works: ed. by Dr. Kippis, 1804; ed. by Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone (2 vols.), 1896. Life: by T. Bartlett, 1839; by Samuel Butler, 1896.

Personal

  He was my father’s friend. I could almost say my remembrance of him goes back some years before I was born, from the lively imagery which the conversations I used to hear in my earliest years have imprinted on my mind. But from the first of my real remembrance, I have ever known in him the kind affectionate friend, the faithful adviser, which he would condescend to when I was quite a child; and the most delightful companion, from a delicacy of thinking, an extreme politeness, a vast knowledge of the world, and a something peculiar to be met with in nobody else. And all this in a man whose sanctity of manners, and sublimity of genius, gave him one of the first ranks among men, long before he was raised to that rank in the world, which must still, if what I painfully fear should happen, aggravate such a loss, as one cannot but infinitely regret the good which such a mind in such a station must have done.

  He was of a most reverend aspect; his face thin and pale; but there was a divine placidness in his countenance which inspired veneration, and expressed the most benevolent mind. His white hair, hung gracefully on his shoulders, and his whole figure was patriarchal.

  During the short time that Butler held the see of Durham he conciliated all hearts. In advanced years he retained the same genuine modesty and natural sweetness of disposition which had distinguished him in youth and in retirement. During the performance of the sacred office a divine animation seemed to pervade his whole manner, and lighted up his pale, wan countenance, already marked with the progress of disease, like a torch glimmering in its socket, yet bright and useful to the last.

  One of these [nephews], John, a wealthy and eccentric bachelor, who had more taste for practical mechanics than for metaphysical research, appeared to attach but little value to his uncle’s production. Having occasion to borrow an iron vice of his neighbour Mr. Thompson, a shrewd and sensible Scotch solicitor, who spoke in high terms of the “Analogy,” and expressed great respect for the author, John Butler proposed that as Mr. Thompson liked the “Analogy,” and he himself liked the iron vice, they should make an exchange. To this Mr. Thompson cheerfully assented, and John Butler left him highly pleased, and thinking that he had turned his uncle’s present to an excellent account.

  Of Butler’s personal habits nothing in the way of detail has descended to us. He was never married, and there is no evidence of his ever having spoken to any lady save Queen Caroline. We hear, however, for certain that he was commonly present at her Majesty’s philosophical parties, at which all questions, religious and moral, speculative and practical, were discussed with a freedom that would astonish the present generation.

  The presence of one of the crowned kings of the realm of Thought haunts one among the hills, along the river bank, all over the pleasant Parish. Joseph Butler is the Rector of men’s memory, when Stanhope is visited or named. The glory of his fifteen years’ occupancy there never can pale from it.

  Underneath the meagre facts of his life, eked out by the few letters left by him or anecdotes told about him, there can be traced the outlines of a great but somewhat severe spirit. He was an earnest and deep thinking Christian, melancholy by temperament, and grieved by what seemed to him the hopelessly irreligious condition of his age. His intellect was profound and comprehensive, thoroughly qualified to grapple with the deepest problems of metaphysics, but by natural preference occupying itself mainly with the practical and moral. Man’s conduct in life, not his theory of the universe, was what interested him.

  His liberality to public and private charitable objects was of almost too impulsive a character (reminding us of the tradition of his being unable to refuse a beggar), if a well-known story which was current on the subject be not rather apocryphal. A gentleman is said to have called upon him to ask his aid in some benevolent scheme which he was setting on foot. The bishop approved, and having summoned his steward, asked him how much money he had in the house? “Five hundred pounds, my lord.” “Five hundred pounds!” said Butler; “what a shame for a bishop to have so much! Give it away at once—give it to this gentleman, who has a good use for it.” In the exercise of the large patronage attached to his new diocese he was strictly conscientious, and took all pains to acquaint himself with the characters and deserts of his clergy…. Bishop Butler was a man who lived much to himself, with few intimacies, and apparently by no means a large circle of acquaintance. But there must have been much in his character that was very lovable, for the two or three who had become his friends in early life seem to have been devoted to him. To Edward Talbot’s warm interest he owed, instrumentally, his success in life; and Secker watched over him, from the old schooldays to his death at Bath, with more than the tenderness of a brother. His chaplain, Dr. Forster, was much attached to him.

Sermons, 1729

  It must be acknowledged that some of the following Discourses are very abstruse and difficult; or, if you please, obscure; but I must take leave to add, that those alone are judges, whether or no and how far this is a fault, who are judges, whether or no and how far it might have been avoided; those only, who will be at the trouble to understand what is here said, and to see how far the things here insisted upon, and not other things, might have been put in a plainer manner; which yet I am very far from asserting that they could not.

  His great work on the “Analogy of Religion to the Course of Nature,” though only a commentary on the singularly original and pregnant passage of Origen, which is so honestly prefixed to it as a motto, is notwithstanding, the most original and profound work extant in any language, on the Philosophy of Religion. It is entirely beyond our present scope. His ethical discussions are contained in those deep and sometimes dark dissertations which he preached at the Chapel of the Rolls, and afterwards published under the name of “Sermons,” while he was yet fresh from the schools, and full of that courage with which youth often delights to exercise its strength in abstract reasoning, and to push its faculties into the recesses of abstruse speculation…. In these sermons, he has taught truths more capable of being exactly distinguished from the doctrines of his predecessors, more satisfactorily established by him, more comprehensively applied to particulars, more rationally connected with each other, and therefore more worthy of the name of discovery, than any with which we are acquainted; if we ought not, with some hesitation, to except the first steps of the Grecian philosophers towards a theory of morals…. There are few circumstances more remarkable than the small number of Butler’s followers in Ethics; and it is perhaps still more observable, that his opinions were not so much rejected, as overlooked. It is an instance of the importance of style. No thinker so great was ever so bad a writer. Indeed, the ingenious apologies which have been lately attempted for this defect, amount to no more than that his power of thought was too much for his skill in language. How general must the reception have been of truths so certain and momentous as those contained in Butler’s discourses—with how much more clearness must they have appeared to his own great understanding, if he had possessed the strength and distinctness with which Hobbes enforces odious falsehood, or the unspeakable charm of that transparent diction which clothed the unfruitful paradoxes of Berkeley.

  In the Sermons which he published, the true foundation of morals is affirmed in the principle of the supremacy of conscience; and though overlaid for a season by the principle of expediency of Paley, which had the disastrous advantage of being recommended to the world by the most popular of writers, truth is once more beginning to show how mighty it is, and Butler’s assertion of it to prevail.

  In this travailing to give birth to great thoughts conceived by the spirit, by far the most useful writer to him [Channing] was Butler, whose “Sermons on Human Nature” he regarded as unsurpassed in English for clear, full, and condensed thought, and to which may be traced, perhaps, the germs of some of his most important views.

  They are philosophical rather than theological, and ought to be viewed as such. In this respect they have received the unanimous praise of great men; and one of our great seminaries of education, the University of Oxford, sets such a high value upon them, that they are used at this day as the manual of moral philosophy, and are made the subject on which students are examined. Butler is one of the four philosophers with which an exact acquaintance is required there, in all candidates for classical honours; the other three being Plato, Aristotle, and Bacon.

  His “Sermons on Human Nature” are also of the highest value; they proceed in the same path of reflection, and form a text-book on morals, which, putting aside schemes framed on the fitness of things and the expediency of virtue, builds a sound ethical system on a study of human nature, according to its original constitution, as discoverable through consciousness and observation. Probably, after all that has been written and said on the subject since, these sermons go as far as is possible for human thought under the guidance of enlightened reason. But with the great admiration which Butler’s works inspire in most minds, not a few are constrained to confess that his arguments are “wrought out in frost, not in fire.” An impassioned style would certainly not befit the kind of reasoning in which Butler was engaged, but more warmth might have been thrown into the colour of the work, imparting to it a glow, which would heighten the impressiveness of the author’s logic.

  Impressive, then, as the Sermons at the Rolls are, and much as they contain that is precious, I do not think that these sermons, setting forth Butler’s theory of the foundation of morals, will satisfy any one who in disquietude, and seeking earnestly for a sure stay, comes to them.

  The “Analogy” is perhaps the most original, if not the most powerful, book ever written in defense of the Christian creed; but it has probably been the parent of much modern Agnosticism, for its method is to parallel every difficulty in revealed religion by a corresponding difficulty in natural religion, and to argue that the two must stand or fall together. Butler’s unrivaled sermons on human nature, on the other hand, have been essentially conservative and constructive, and their influence has been at least as strong on character as on belief.

  Him I believe the march of reform has swept away, hardly to the clearing of men’s minds. I do not so much mean the “Analogy” as the wonderful “Sermons.” From the “Sermons on Human Nature” one learns, and one does not straightway forget, what manner of man one is.

  The lectures on the “Evidences of Christianity,” delivered in January, 1844, the first important book of Dr. Hopkins, bear clear marks of the great influence that Bishop Butler has exercised upon his mind…. The lectures from the third to the eighth inclusive are simply the carrying out with fine and yet powerful strokes suggestions that might well arise from the study of the “Analogy.” Of this there is an abundance of evidence.

  His sense of beauty if he possessed it, was absorbed in a supreme allegiance to truth, and his life was that of a Christian philosopher intent upon one object. His sermons, preached, at the Rolls Chapel, which contain the germ of his philosophy, are too closely packed with argument and too recondite in thought to fit them for pulpit discourses.

Analogy, 1736

  If the reader should meet here with any thing which he had not before attended to, it will not be in the observations upon the constitution and course of nature, these being all obvious; but in the application of them: in which, though there is nothing but what appears to me of some real weight, and therefore of great importance; yet he will observe several things, which will appear to him of very little, if he can think things to be of little importance, which are of any real weight at all, upon such a subject as religion. However, the proper force of the following Treatise lies in the whole general analogy considered together.

  The Bishop of Durham (Chandler), another great writer of controversy, is dead too, immensely rich; he is succeeded by Butler of Bristol, a metaphysic author, much patronized by the late Queen: she never could make my father read his book, and which she certainly did not understand herself.

  I know no author who has made a more just and a more happy use of this mode of reasoning than Bishop Butler, in his “Analogy of Religion.”… In that excellent work the author does not ground any of the truths of religion upon analogy, as their proper evidence; he only makes use of analogy to answer objections against them. When objections are made against the truths of religion, which may be made with equal strength against what we know to be true in the course of nature, such objections can have no weight.

  To a mind disposed to view with calmness, humility and reverence, the whole system of Providence, as far as it is permitted to man to view “the work which God worketh from the beginning to the end,” Dr. Butler has unfolded the “Analogy, or relation of the Course of Nature to Religion,” by which all things are found to proceed in harmony from Him who hath made nothing imperfect. I think this great performance of Butler has peculiar force when it is considered in the conclusion of our religious researches, and not as part of the original proof; or as Lord Bacon expresses himself, “tanquam portum et sabbathum humanarum contemplationum omnium.”… Reader, whoever thou art, if thou shouldst approve these introductory ideas to this great subject, inexhausted as it is and inexhaustible, prepare thyself, thy understanding, and thy affections. “Te quoque dignum finge Deo!”

  Without exception the most unanswerable demonstration of the folly of infidelity that the world ever saw.

  In the course of my reading I do not think that any of the books that treat of the evidences of natural and revealed religion were omitted. Of all such works, however, I consider myself to have profited most by Butler’s “Analogy,” for strengthening my understanding, satisfying my doubts, and suggesting the soundest rules and most becoming temper for the investigation of truth.

  The most argumentative and philosophical defence of Christianity ever submitted to the world.

  I should think you would gain great benefit, on the whole subject of religion and ethics, from Bishop Butler’s “Analogy.” It is a very deep work, and, while it requires, will amply repay your study.

  Having furnished, with a design directly contrary, one of the most terrible of the persuasives to atheism that has ever been produced.

  In truth, the greatest beauty of any author’s style consists in its appropriateness to express his meaning. There is a rough likeness between the style of the “Analogy” and that of a legal document; and it goes deeper than might have been expected. For what makes a deed obscure to the uninitiated? Chiefly the attempt on the part of the framer to exclude all ambiguity. It looks like irony, but it is true, that no written thing, when examined, is clearer than a legal document; and the object, the attained object, of all those obscure phrases is to avoid the possibility of being misunderstood. Therefore it is that, the more one examines into possible meanings of what seemed clearer expressions, the more we shall realise and admire the sound judgment which has preferred what we, at first sight, thought ill-chosen and obscure. Thus it is that careful students of Butler’s works generally come, in the end, to have a sort of relish for his peculiar style.

  By the main body of Christian believers he is still considered unanswered and unanswerable, strong as a giant against all the puny attacks of infidelity.

  It is no paradox to say that the merit of the “Analogy” lies in its want of originality…. Its admirable arrangement only is all its own…. Its substance are the thoughts of a whole age, not barely compiled, but each reconsidered and digested.

  The one writer whose reputation stands out pre-eminently above the other apologists is Bishop Butler. His praise is in all the churches. Though the force of a few illustrations in his great work may perhaps have been slightly weakened by the modern progress of physical science, and though objections have been taken on the ground that the solutions are not ultimate, mere media axiomata; yet the work, if regarded as adapted to those who start from a monotheistic position, possesses a permanent power of attractiveness which can only be explained by its grandeur as a work of philosophy, as well as its mere potency as an argument. The width and fulness of knowledge displayed in the former respect, together with the singular candour and dignified forbearance of its tone, go far to explain the secret of its mighty influence. When viewed in reference to the deist writings against which it was designed, or the works of contemporary apologists, Butler’s carefulness in study is manifest.

  The argument is handled with great skill and fairness, and the work has had a more extensive circulation, and exerted a greater influence than any other apologetic treatise of the Modern Church. It supposes however that the objector concedes the truths of ethics and natural religion, and therefore is less effective as a reply to universal skepticism, or to such materialistic systems as those of Hobbes and Bolingbroke, than the work of Conybeare. The purely defensive attitude, moreover, which it assumes, in being content with merely showing that the same difficulty besets the religion of nature that lies against the religion of the Bible, imparts something of a cautious and timid tone to the work, though rendering it an exceedingly difficult one to be replied to.

  His “Analogy” is so compact and exhaustive, that it has superseded and destroyed the reputation of all the replies to the Deists then current.

  The objection will naturally be made that to prove so little was surely not worth such profound and elaborate reasoning. But though Butler was ostensibly addressing men who made formal objections to Christianity, he had also in his mind the frivolous freethinkers of his time. Indifference where there was a probability, however small, was unworthy of a reasonable man. And if that indifference was the growth of an immoral life, its danger was serious. It was, therefore, a matter of the greatest importance to convince men that Christianity really had clear demands to be earnestly and impartially examined. Butler also knew the importance in an argument of getting one bit of sure ground, however small.

  The “Analogy” has been built up like a coral reef by slow accretions of carefully digested matter. The style corresponds to the method. We may say, if we choose to be paradoxical, that the “Analogy” is an almost unique example of a book which has survived, not merely in spite of, but almost by reason of, its faults of style. The paradox, indeed, holds only in so far as the faulty language is indicative of the effort to pack thought more closely than it will easily go. The defect results from a good motive. But it is also characteristic of the lonely thinker who forgets the necessity of expounding with sufficient clearness the arguments which have long been familiar to himself. And, in this sense, it is indicative of a more serious weakness. Butler’s mind, like the mind of every recluse, was apt to run in grooves. He endeavoured, as he tells us, to answer by anticipation every difficulty that could be suggested. But, unfortunately, he has always considered them from the same point of view. He has not verified his arguments by varying the centre of thought or contemplating his system from the outside. And thus his reasoning often reminds us of those knots which bind the faster the more they are pulled in a given direction, but fall asunder at the first strain from another quarter.

  I have drawn your attention to the terms of unbounded praise in which the “Analogy” is extolled. It is called unanswerable. It is said to be the most original and profound work extant in any language on the philosophy of religion. It is asserted that, by his “Analogy,” Butler placed metaphysics, which till then had nothing to support them but mere abstraction or shadowy speculation, on the firm basis of observation and experiment. I have also told you what is to my mind the one sole point of interest for us now, in a work like the “Analogy.” To those who search earnestly, amid that break-up of traditional and conventional notions respecting our life, its conduct, and its sanctions, which is undeniably befalling our age, for some clear light and some sure stay, does the “Analogy” afford them? A religious work cannot touch us very deeply as a mere intellectual feat. Whether the “Analogy” was or was not calculated to make the loose Deists of fashionable circles, in the year of grace 1736, feel uncomfortable, we do not,… care two straws, unless we hold the argumentative positions of those Deists; and we do not. What has the “Analogy” got to enlighten and help us?… How unlike, above all, is this motive to the motive always supposed in the book itself of our religion, in the Bible! After reading the “Analogy” one goes instinctively to bathe one’s spirit in the Bible again, to be refreshed by its boundless certitude and exhilaration.

  The “Analogy,” it would appear, has and can have but little influence on the present state of theology; it was not a book for all time, but was limited to the controversies and questions of the period at which it appeared. Throughout the whole of the “Analogy,” it is manifest that the interest which lay closest to Butler’s heart was the ethical. His whole cast of thinking was practical.

  The book was written with the single purpose of assisting others in what had been the business of his own life, the search after truth. Its reasonings are those with which he had in his own mind overcome doubt. There is no thought about style; no care to give graceful form to sentences intellectually armed with suggestive, defensive, restrictive and otherwise subordinated clauses, so that it has been said that everyone of Butler’s sentences is like a well-considered move in chess.

  Bishop Wilson has well said of the “Analogy” that probably no work in the compass of theology is so full of—to use Bacon’s expression—“the seeds of things.” For few works have ever been written so suggestive of thought as this. Its author has condensed in it the reading and reflection of more than twenty years, during which time there was scarcely an objection or a difficulty which he had not noted and most carefully considered.

  The “Analogy” is an isolated work. Even in its own age, when polemical pamphleteering was in fashion, though it was read, it was neither attacked nor defended. It does not refer to any theological movement that preceded it, and it is not the precursor of any subsequent literature. It stands alone, original, inexorably honest and veracious, but unsympathetic, like its silent and unexpansive author.

  The involutions of the sentence in the “Analogy” are often impassable, as Emerson would say, and utterly opposed to paragraph structure. Butler is mentioned here merely for the fact that he has a larger percentage of strictly inductive paragraphs than almost any other writer in the language. It may be added that when his sentences are short they usually need the light of the whole section to make their bearing plain.

  To do any justice to this great work—the greatest, certainly, which appeared in the eighteenth century—it must be read in the light of the Deism which was then prevalent, for Butler’s mind was positively steeled in Deistical literature. If this had been borne in mind, we should never have heard the objection that Butler raised more doubts than he solved; for the doubts were already raised, and Butler did more than any man to solve them.

General

  He is a most judicious writer, has searched deeply into human nature, and is by some thought obscure; but he thinks with great clearness, and there needs only a deep attention to understand him perfectly.

  The literary reputation of Bishop Butler in truth is the least of his excellences…. He was more than a good writer, he was a good man; and what is an addition even to his eulogy, he was a sincere Christian. His whole study was directed to the knowledge and practice of sound morality and true religion: these he adorned by his life, and had recommended to future ages in his writings; in which, if my judgment be of any avail, he has done essential service to both, as much, perhaps, as any single person since the extraordinary gifts of “the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge” have been withdrawn.

  I am an entire disciple of Butler.

  It is true, a man cannot expect constant success in his endeavour, but he is not likely to succeed in any thing that is now even the object of his endeavors. This speaking as if one had something to say, is probably what Bishop Butler means by the expression of a man’s writing “with simplicity and in earnest.” His manner has this advantage, though it is not only inelegant, but often obscure.

  I have derived greater aid from the views and reasonings of Bishop Butler than I have been able to find besides in the whole range of our extant authorship.

  Now, of the poetic religion there is nothing in Butler; no one could tell from his writings that the universe was beautiful. If the world were a Durham mine or an exact square, if no part of it were more expressive than a gravel pit or a chalk quarry, the teaching of Butler would be as true as it is now…. There was a certain naturalness in Butler’s mind which took him straight to the questions on which men differed around him. Generally, it is safer to prove what no one denies, and easier to explain difficulties which no one has ever felt; a quiet reputation is best obtained in the literary quæstiunculæ of important subjects. But a simple and straightforward man studies great topics because he feels a want of the knowledge which they contain; and if he has ascertained an apparent solution of any difficulty, he is anxious to impart it to others. He goes straight to the real doubts and fundamental discrepancies,—to those on which it is easy to excite odium and difficult to give satisfaction; he leaves to others the amusing skirmishing and superficial literature accessory to such studies. Thus there is nothing light in Butler; all is grave, serious, and essential,—nothing else would be characteristic of him.

  The genius of Butler was almost equally distinguished by subtilty and comprehensiveness, though the latter quality was perhaps the most characteristic…. He could not only recombine, and present in symmetrical harmony, the elements of a complex unity when capable of being subjected to an exact previous analysis,—as in his remarkable sketch of the Moral Constitution of Man,—but he had a wonderfully keen eye for detecting remote analogies and subtle relations where the elements are presented intermingled or in isolation, and insusceptible of being presented as a single object of contemplation previous to the attempt to combine them…. All Butler’s productions—even his briefest—display much of this “architectonic” quality of mind; in all he not only evinces a keen analytic power in discerning the “differences” (one phase of the philosophical genius, according to Bacon, and hardly the brightest), but a still higher power of detecting the “analogies” and “resemblances of things,” and thus of showing their relation and subordination. These peculiarities make his writings difficult; but it makes them profound, and it gives them singular completeness…. Butler’s composition is almost as destitute of the vivacity of wit as of the graces of imagination. Yet he is by no means without that dry sort of humor, which often accompanies very vigorous logic, and, indeed, is in some sense inseparable from it; for the neat detection of a sophism, or the sudden and unexpected explosion of a fallacy, produces much the same effect as wit on those who are capable of enjoying close and cogent reasoning. There is also a kind of simple, grave, satirical pleasantry, with which he sometimes states and refutes an objection, by no means without its piquancy.

  The reason or matter he is producing is palpable and plain enough. But he is so solicitous to find its due place in the then stage of the argument, so scrupulous to give it its exact weight and no more, so careful in arranging its situation relatively to the other members of the proof, that a reader who does not bear in mind that “the effect of the whole” is what the architect is preparing, is apt to become embarrassed, and to think that obscurity which is really logical precision. The generality of men are better qualified for understanding particulars one by one, than for taking a comprehensive view of the whole. The philosophical breadth which we miss in Butler’s mode of conceiving is compensated for by this judicial breadth in his mode of arguing, which gives its place to each consideration, but regards rather the cumulative force of the whole…. Butler’s eminence over his contemporary apologists is seen in nothing more than in that superior sagacity which rejects the use of any plea that it is entitled to consideration singly. In the other evidential books of the time we find a miscellaneous crowd of suggestions of very various value; never fanciful, but often trivial; undeniable, but weak as proof of the point they are brought to prove. Butler seems as if he had sifted these books, and retained all that was solid in them. If he built with brick, and not with marble, it was because he was not thinking of reputation, but of utility, and an immediate purpose. Mackintosh wished Butler had had the elegance and ornament of Berkeley. They would have been sadly out of place.

  All his arguments are deduced from the actual experiences of human beings. He will hear of no theories which explain away facts—which start from any other ground than that of facts. He wishes to know what the things mean with which he has to meddle. He wishes to know what he is bound to be and to do, that he may not be in contradiction with himself—that he may not be a practical liar.

  Soon after Bishop Butler’s translation to Durham, he assembled his clergy in visitation, and delivered to them that Charge which, from the extraordinary and malicious attacks that were made upon it and the groundless imputations that arose out of it, has obtained more attention than it otherwise would have commanded. Sir James Mackintosh’s remark upon Butler has often been quoted, that “no man who thought so well ever wrote so badly;” and this, which is true of the sermons and in a less degree of the “Analogy,” is eminently true of the Durham Charge. The style of this document is heavy and inelegant, there is nothing to attract the attention or please the ear. But the matter of the Charge is replete with sound sense and wisdom, exhibiting a perception of the fitness of things far beyond what was common at that day, and likely to provoke the comments of the shallow writers who then boasted themselves as liberal and enlightened.

  There is an old controversy as to whether Butler’s style is not unnecessary dark and obscure. He himself defended it on the ground that the questions of which he treated are abstruse and difficult; but the fact that Secker endeavoured to enliven the “Analogy” a little shows that his friends thought his style defective. Sir J. Mackintosh, on the other hand, surely went too far when he said that no thinker so great was ever so bad a writer. There is a simple earnestness and quaint, homely vigour about the “Sermons” which relieve them to a great extent from this reproach. They are certainly not light reading, and some of the phraseology strikes one as artificial and affected; but after the first plunge these defects become less perceptible, while the reader’s admiration for the calm, sober wisdom, the chastened temper, and elevated and fervent piety of the writer continually increases.

  The influence of Butler upon Ethical and Religious philosophy has been powerful wherever the English language is spoken and read, and probably surpasses that of any other single writer. This is not owing to the originality of his doctrines so much as to the compact form in which he has presented the reflections which had been suggested to many minds, and to the cautious and reverent spirit in which he mediates between the claims of independent thought and a revealed communication of Truth. His “Analogy” has been extensively studied and read as a text-book in all the seminaries of higher learning, and has largely served to shape and strengthen the religious convictions of the English people. The “Sermons,” though less generally read or studied, have exerted a pervading influence upon ethical philosophy. The “Analogy” and “Sermons” have also been efficient in introducing into Christian theology the ethical element, which sometimes it has greatly needed.

  The most patient, original, and candid of philosophical theologians…. Butler—and it is the great secret of his power—is always depressed by the heavy burden of human misery and corruption. The horror of sin and death weighs upon his spirits. Our wisest course in life is to “endeavour chiefly to escape misery.” Mitigation of sorrow, rather than actual happiness, is all that can be hoped by his sorely tried soul…. His special method consists in inferring from nature a Creator distinguished, so to speak, by personal idiosyncrasies. He has to show that the God who made alike the good and the bad instincts, takes part with the good and not with the bad; and, moreover, he has to show this from the inspection of the instincts themselves. Nature is to testify to a special design, not to an impartial and abstract reflection of itself. This is the problem ever present to Butler’s mind, and his answer to it is the essence of his writings.

  It is very much to the credit also of Butler’s honesty and moderation, that in spite of the tone of something like contempt for the arguments, or want of arguments, of the objectors to whom he addresses himself, he never imputes to them any moral obliquity…. If he was wanting in some of the qualifications of the professional advocate,—the suasiveness which carries the jury or the audience with him, as we say—the allowance for their prejudices and weaknesses, the appeals to their better sense, or the professions of respect for their judgment, which go far to make them think that the verdict for which so sensible a speaker asks must be the right one,—he is strong in a point which all authorities, from Aristotle downwards, have laid down as an essential requisite in one who would persuade men—the creating in the minds of those whom he addresses an impression of his own high moral integrity, and earnestness of purpose. In this Butler stands far above the reach of cavil. Objections against both his matter and his manner have been many and various: some have charged him with coldness, and others with enthusiasm.

  Though there is much resemblance between the moral systems of Butler and Shaftesbury, there is hardly room for a charge of plagiarism. Had Butler’s system been unfolded in a formal treatise, it would certainly have been strange if Shaftesbury’s name had been passed over in silence; but he was hardly bound to mention it either in the text or the scanty notes of a short collection of Sermons, whose primary object was probably religious edification, and the future reputation of which he can scarcely himself have foreseen.

  Lord Melbourne is truly said to have been “a far greater and abler man than many who have filled a larger space in history.” Bishop Butler’s case is more noteworthy still. Lord Melbourne, who filled a space in history, was greater than many others who filled a larger space; but Butler was greater than many others who filled a large space in history, although, strange to say, to judge from the records of historians, he filled no space in history at all! White, in his “Eighteen Christian Centuries,” does not even so much as mention the name of Sir Isaac Newton, so that it is no wonder that he does not mention the name of so comparatively insignificant an individual as Bishop Butler. Certainly, those whose names are mentioned most frequently in history are by no means always those who have done most for the making of history. And, on the other hand, those whose names appear least prominently in history, or perhaps not at all, are by no means always those who have done least to influence its course. Nevertheless, that Bishop Butler had a weighty influence on the thought of his time, and therefore on subsequent history, there can be no doubt. He arrested the progress of Deism, and by so doing materially affected the future of religion in England.

  He occupies, more nearly perhaps than any other writer, the position of a discoverer in moral theory; nor can its problems ever be accurately discussed without some reference to his thought. But sermons cannot be the depository of a philosophy. He left only the first sketch and the unhewn materials of a systematic structure, and receives his best tribute of honour from those who try to fill in the design, and here and there add a sound stone at a weak place.

  His two books, the “Analogy” and the “Sermons,” are not bulky, and exhibit a strange incapacity for clothing thought in fit language. But the thought is always noble, and sometimes it forces the rebellious style into harmony.

  Butler was the first philosopher to distinguish between natural and moral benevolence and to maintain that a disposition to make others happy without regard to their character is not merely characterless, but proof of moral perversity. Even God cannot make the wicked happy as he does the righteous. Every form of evolution of the moral from the non-moral encounters Butler.

  The first of these works, the “Analogy,” has a world-wide reputation, which every day is constantly increasing. In the second, viz., the “Sermons,” the foundation was first laid for a correct theory of morals—to such a degree that Sir James Mackintosh speaks of the doctrines therein laid down as being worthy of the name of discoveries.
  The authorship of these works has placed Bishop Butler upon the highest pinnacle of fame, and his name is justly enrolled among the greatest philosophers the world has ever seen, and he is always to be classed with Shakespeare, Lord Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, Cuvier, and other distinguished men of extraordinary genius, who are generally recognized as standing intellectually at the head of the human race.

  In Butler there is a strain of something infinitely higher; a powerful individuality that cannot be stifled, a lucidity that gives to his writings the permanence of classics, and a sincerity and earnestness that illumine his logical acumen with the warm light of genius.

  His appeals at all times to the reason, and only incidentally to the feelings. There is probably no writer from whose works so little could be pruned away as a mere superfluity of oratory…. There is no one who is more successful in infecting his readers with his own ardour and impressing them with a feeling of his entire sincerity.

  It would be difficult to name a writer who in the prosecution of his work has aimed at, and effected a more absolute self-suppression. His use of the first person singular is rare, and whenever it occurs, we at once perceive that it is a grammatical vehicle, and not the entrance of a caparisoned figure on the stage for presentation to an audience. We attain indeed a solid and rather comprehensive knowledge of the man through his works; but this is owing, if I may so speak, to their moral transparency, which is conspicuous amidst all the difficulties of gaining and keeping a continuous grasp of his meaning…. He does not write like a person addicted to any profession or pursuit; his mind is essentially free. He is the votary of truth, and is bound to no other allegiance…. The student of Butler will, unless it be his own fault, learn candour in all its breadth, and not to tamper with the truth; will neither grudge admissions nor fret under even cumbrous reserves. But to know what kinds and degrees of evidence to expect or to ask in matters of belief and conduct, and to be in possession of an habitual presence of mind built upon that knowledge, is, in my view, the master gift which the works of Butler are calculated to impart. It can, however, only be imparted to those who approach the study of them as in itself an undertaking; who know that it requires them to pursue it with a whole heart and mind, if they would pursue it profitably; that it demands of them collectedness, concentration, and the cheerful resolve not to be abashed or deterred by difficulty…. Undoubtedly, if my counsel were asked, I should advise the intending politician, if of masculine and serious mind, to give to Butler’s works, and especially to the “Analogy,” a high place among the apparatus of his mental training…. Although no one would charge Butler with egotism, yet he is evidently, like Dante, a self-revealing writer. As a man governed by one dominant influence, he wears his heart upon his sleeve. The master passion with him is the love of truth: and it is never leavened, never traversed by any other feeling…. Butler assuredly was not made for butterflies to flutter about. He demands the surrender, not to him but to his subject, of the entire man. It has been well said of him that he is as much in earnest, as if he were a gamester…. To read them with levity is impossible. The eye may indeed run down the pages, the images of the letters may be formed upon the retina; but the living being that dwells within the brain is unapproached, and either dormant or elsewhere employed. The works of Butler are in this respect like the works of Dante; we must make some kind of preliminary preparation, we must gird up the loins of the mind for the study.

  Apart from his necessary limitations of knowledge, Butler is for us a master of method only, not a leader of thought. He is incapacitated for the delivery of the message we want to-day by limitations of feeling no less than by limitations of knowledge. He wrote at a period of human thought when “enthusiasm” was a term of reproach, and when it was believed that not only right thinking, but right conduct also, could be arrived at by pure calculation. His whole argument is, and professes to be, a balance of probabilities. There is a balance of probability in favor of Christianity being worth inquiring into; after that, a balance of probability in favor of its truth; further, a balance of probability in favor of its being prudent to obey its behests. This is the whole of his appeal. But, however it may have been in his generation, in ours men are not moved by such cold and prudential calculation.

  He is to be classed, as regards method, with moralists like Shaftesbury and Hutcheson rather than with moralists like Cudworth and Clarke. In his view of human nature he was distinctly influenced by Shaftesbury. He finds in man affections and passions, self-love and disinterested benevolence, and, above the rest and rightly entitled to rule, though not always furnished with power as it is with right, a principle of reflection, or conscience. Taking from the Stoics the position that virtue consists in “following nature,” he finds that to follow nature is to obey neither the passions nor “cool self-love,” but conscience. In the history of ethics Butler was chiefly influential by his insistence that among the impulses of human nature some are disinterested, aiming either directly at objects or at the good of others, and do not consist of self-love in a more or less disguised form. To some extent Hobbes, against whom all the moralists who argued for primitive benevolent impulses had been contending, is still the opponent in view.