Samuel Butler

The Way of All Flesh illustrated Samuel Butler

The Way of All Flesh (sometimes called Ernest Pontifex, or the Way of All Flesh) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Samuel Butler that attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. Written between 1873 and 1884, it traces four generations of the Pontifex family. Die, as in Our dog's gone the way of all flesh and I'm not sure we'll get another. This expression is actually a misquotation from the Bible, which has it to go the way of all the earth (I Kings 2:2; Joshua 22:14), also meaning "to die."