Essays on Life, Art, and Science (Paperback)

General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1908 Original Publisher: A. C. Fifield Subjects: Art criticism Science Evolution English literature Art and science Science / Life Sciences / Evolution Art / Criticism Science / General Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Art / Criticism Literary Collections / Essays Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Science / General Science / Life Sciences / Evolution Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: THE AUNT, THE NIECES, AND THE DOG1 When a thing is old, broken, and useless we throw it on the dust-heap, but when it is sufficiently old, sufficiently broken, and sufficiently useless we give money for it, put it into a museum, and read papers over it which people come long distances to hear. By-and-by, when the whirligig of time has brought on another revenge, the museum itself becomes a dust- heap, and remains so till after long ages it is re-discovered, and valued as belonging to a neo-rubbish age -- containing, perhaps, traces of a still older paleo-rubbish civilisation. So when people are old, indigent, and in all respects incapable, we hold them in greater and greater contempt as their poverty and impotence increase, till they reach the pitch whenthey are actually at the point to die, whereon they become sublime. Then we place every resource our hospitals can command at their disposal, and show no stint in our consideration for them. 1 Published in the Universal Review, May 1889. As I have several times been asked if the letters here reprinted were not fabricated by Butler himself, I take this opportunity of stating that they are authentic in every particular, and that the origin...