The Attic series will include books on which the great scientist and writer Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) grew up; the authors who were his discoveries are his involuntary teachers, about each of whom he left written evidence. Samuel Butler (1835 –1902) is known in Russia exclusively as a writer of shocking aphorisms. Meanwhile, today in the list of the 20 best novels of the 20th century, his novel “The Way of All Flesh” is in eighth place. This literary monument is a biography of an author who has excited and excites the minds of all who live with intellectual passions. “A modernist of the Victorian era,” Butler depicts to us his fate as an iconoclast, an eccentric and a recluse, who allows himself to trample on any authorities and come up with the most daring hypotheses. The book includes two essays - two complementary opinions about Butler - Mircea Eliade and Bernard Shaw.