] It is significant that Butler begins his work with a quotation from
Origen.

And now as to Dr. Whately. I owe him a great deal. He was a man of
generous and warm heart. He was particularly loyal to his friends, and
to use the common phrase, "all his geese were swans." While I was still
awkward and timid in 1822, he took me by the hand, and acted towards me
the part of a gentle and encouraging instructor. He, emphatically,
opened my mind, and taught me to think and to use my reason. After being
first noticed by him in 1822, I became very intimate with him in 1825,
when I was his Vice-Principal at Alban Hall. I gave up that office in
1826, when I became Tutor of my College, and his hold upon me gradually
relaxed. He had done his work towards me or nearly so, when he had
taught me to see with my own eyes and to walk with my own feet. Not that
I had not a good deal to learn from others still, but I influenced them
as well as they me, and co-operated rather than merely concurred with
them. As to Dr. Whately, his mind was too different from mine for us to
remain long on one line. I recollect how dissatisfied he was with an
Article of mine in the London Review, which Blanco White,
good-humouredly, only called Platonic. When I was diverging from him in
opinion (which he did not like), I thought of dedicating my first book
to him, in words to the effect that he had not only taught me to think,
but to think for myself. He left Oxford in 1831; after that, as far as I
can recollect, I never saw him but twice,--when he visited the
University; once in the street in 1834, once in a room in 1838. From the
time that he left, I have always felt a real affection for what I must
call his memory; for, at least from the year 1834, he made himself dead
to me. He had practically indeed given me up from the time that he
became Archbishop in 1831; but in 1834 a correspondence took place
between us, which, though conducted especially on his side in a friendly
spirit, was the expression of differences of opinion which acted as a
final close to our intercourse. My reason told me that it was impossible
we could have got on together longer, had he stayed in Oxford; yet I
loved him too much to bid him farewell without pain. After a few years
had passed, I began to believe that his influence on me in a higher
respect than intellectual advance, (I will not say through his fault,)
had not been satisfactory. I believe that he has inserted sharp things
i