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In his “Way of All Flesh,” Butler describes English home life and he enables us to see that affection and sympathy do not form part of it. Butler, the product of that life, sets little importance on either affection or sympathy; and yet there never was a kinder man. Good nature was fundamental in his character and was, I think, the source of most of his writings and opinions. The English going about life in an intensely selfish way and doing this on principle are obliged to have strict laws strictly enforced; yet outside these laws they claim and allow the utmost license of action and thought. It is their distinction among nations that they love personal liberty so much,—that is for themselves, for they are quite ready to enslave other people. With this love for personal freedom has grown up, side by side with it and as part and parcel of it, an immense appreciation of human nature itself. Against this appreciation Puritanism has vainly and indeed dolorously struggled. Butler’s good nature was due to his liking for human nature itself; hence his zeal against all the conventions and illusions and veiling “respectabilities” that would snatch from human nature its proper food.