Page:The optimism of Butler's 'Analogy'.djvu/14

10 obedient. All things are double one against another: and He hath made nothing imperfect. One thing establisheth the good of another: and who shall be filled with beholding His glory?' (Ecclus. xlii).

Surely Bishop Halifax has read Butler aright. The echoes of these announcements reverberate throughout the Analogy.

And the special phrase, that he has selected as typical, has a peculiar bearing upon Butler's own speculative mood. 'All things are double one against another.' It suggests that not only does the world offer the spectacle of unbroken and changeless Law; but, always, there is a sense of repetition in the sequence. The same rhythms reappear, as the mind passes sweetly from end to end of the long order. Again and again, Creation follows a Leit-motif; repeats a phrase; recurs to some normal programme. There are methodical formalities which lie at the base of all the measureless variety of effects; and these are recaptured, by the imagination, at each stage, on every level, in each department, of life. It is as if Nature had that delight that was so characteristic of Beethoven, of developing all the fertility of variation that can be wrung out of a single simple theme. Wherever you pass, throughout these infinite gradations of natural development, you seem to be reiterating the one formula which expresses the innermost secret of all growth: 'First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.' Materials change; possibilities vary indefinitely according to the level of the domain with which you may be concerned; but something in the method is ever identical. In each new experience, you find yourself on familiar ground. A resemblance holds; a memory haunts; a harmony links; a note is struck of association and similarity.

'All things are double one against another.' So the Son of Sirach said. And so, most certainly, Butler deeply felt. His main strength comes out in his exhibition of the intense and intimate familiarities which recur in