The Fair Haven | Page 2

in March, 1873 (shortly before the publication of the book), he

said: "I should hope that attacks on The Fair Haven will give me an
opportunity of excusing myself, and if so I shall endeavour that the
excuse may be worse than the fault it is intended to excuse." A few
days later he referred to the difficulties that he had encountered in
getting the book accepted by a publisher: " --- were frightened and even
considered the scheme of the book unjustifiable. --- urged me, as
politely as he could, not to do it, and evidently thinks I shall get myself
into disgrace even among freethinkers. It's all nonsense. I dare say I
shall get into a row- -at least I hope I shall." Evidently there is here no
anticipation of The Fair Haven being misunderstood. Misunderstood,
however, it was, not only by reviewers, some of whom greeted it
solemnly as a defence of orthodoxy, but by divines of high standing,
such as the late Canon Ainger, who sent it to a friend whom he wished
to convert. This was more than Butler could resist, and he hastened to
issue a second edition bearing his name and accompanied by a preface
in which the deceived elect were held up to ridicule.
Butler used to maintain that The Fair Haven did his reputation no harm.
Writing in 1901, he said:
"The Fair Haven got me into no social disgrace that I have ever been
able to discover. I might attack Christianity as much as I chose and
nobody cared one straw; but when I attacked Darwin it was a different
matter. For many years Evolution, Old and New, and Unconscious
Memory made a shipwreck of my literary prospects. I am only now
beginning to emerge from the literary and social injury which those two
perfectly righteous books inflicted on me. I dare say they abound with
small faults of taste, but I rejoice in having written both of them."
Very likely Butler was right as to the social side of the question, but I
am convinced that The Fair Haven did him grave harm in the literary
world. Reviewers fought shy of him for the rest of his life. They had
been taken in once, and they took very good care that they should not
be taken in again. The word went forth that Butler was not to be taken
seriously, whatever he wrote, and the results of the decree were
apparent in the conspiracy of silence that greeted not only his books on
evolution, but his Homeric works, his writings on art, and his edition of

Shakespeare's sonnets. Now that he has passed beyond controversies
and mystifications, and now that his other works are appreciated at
their true value, it is not too much to hope that tardy justice will be
accorded also to The Fair Haven. It is true that the subject is no longer
the burning question that it was forty years ago. In the early seventies
theological polemics were fashionable. Books like Seeley's Ecce Homo
and Matthew Arnold's Literature and Dogma were eagerly devoured by
readers of all classes. Nowadays we take but a languid interest in the
problems that disturbed our grandfathers, and most of us have settled
down into what Disraeli described as the religion of all sensible men,
which no sensible man ever talks about. There is, however, in The Fair
Haven a good deal more than theological controversy, and our
Laodicean age will appreciate Butler's humour and irony if it cares little
for his polemics. The Fair Haven scandalised a good many people
when it first appeared, but I am not afraid of its scandalising anybody
now. I should be sorry, nevertheless, if it gave any reader a false
impression of Butler's Christianity, and I think I cannot do better than
conclude with a passage from one of his essays which represents his
attitude to religion perhaps more faithfully than anything in The Fair
Haven: "What, after all, is the essence of Christianity? What is the
kernel of the nut? Surely common sense and cheerfulness, with
unflinching opposition to the charlatanisms and Pharisaisms of a man's
own times. The essence of Christianity lies neither in dogma, nor yet in
abnormally holy life, but in faith in an unseen world, in doing one's
duty, in speaking the truth, in finding the true life rather in others than
in oneself, and in the certain hope that he who loses his life on these
behalfs finds more than he has lost. What can Agnosticism do against
such Christianity as this? I should be shocked if anything I had ever
written or shall ever write should seem to make light of these things."
R. A. STREATFEILD. August, 1913.

BUTLER'S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The occasion