This collection is drawn from the notebooks Butler carried around with him from early adulthood. In the notebooks he noted down anything of interest, including his own thoughts that he experienced; they are more of a commonplace book than a diary or formal note taking. By 1874 he had so many notes, often on loose sheets of paper, he started to index them, and at the same time amended and rewrote some of them. By the time he died he had re-ordered his notes into five bound volumes and a relatively large number of loose sheets.
The notebooks are a fascinating kaleidoscope of his life and interests; he writes about his childhood, his time in New Zealand, and a huge array of topics from photography to botany. They are presented as topics, such as Memory and Design, Mind and Matter, Cash and Credit (Butler had strong opinions about accounting and book keeping) and Unprofessional Sermons. Some notes are paragraphs, others short quips and others more like bon mot. Some are downright quirky: “The body is but a pair of pincers set over a bellows and a stewpan and the whole fixed upon stilts.”
The notebooks were prepared for publication in 1912 by Henry Festing Jones and make an entertaining source for any biographer of Butler, or general reader interested in his life.