Then a gentleman's
night-shirt from one garden and a lady's night-gown from the other
should be shown hanging in a third garden by themselves. By and by there
should be added a little night-shirt.
A philosopher might be tempted, on seeing the little night-shirt, to
suppose that the big night-shirts had made it. What we do is much the
same, for the body of a baby is not much more made by the two old
babies, after whose pattern it has cut itself out, than the little
night-shirt is made by the big ones. The thing that makes either the
little night-shirt or the little baby is something about which we know
nothing whatever at all.
DOES MAMMA KNOW?
[Sidenote: _Samuel Butler_]
A father was telling his eldest daughter, aged about six, that she had a
little sister, and was explaining to her how nice it all was. The child
said it was delightful, and added:
"Does mamma know? Let's go and tell her."
CROESUS AND HIS KITCHEN-MAID
[Sidenote: _Samuel Butler_]
I want people to see either their cells as less parts of themselves than
they do, or their servants as more.
Croesus's kitchen-maid is part of him, bone of his bone and flesh of his
flesh, for she eats what comes from his table, and, being fed of one
flesh, are they not brother and sister to one another in virtue of
community of nutriment, which is but a thinly veiled travesty of
descent? When she eats peas with her knife, he does so too; there is not
a bit of bread and butter she puts into her mouth, nor a lump of sugar
she drops into her tea, but he knoweth it altogether, though he knows
nothing whatever about it.
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