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Erewhon · Erewhon

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  Introductory prefaces preface to the first edition, the author wishes it to be understood
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  that Irewan is pronounced as a word of three syllables, all short. Thus
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  e rewuan Preface to the second edition. Having been enabled by the kindness of
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  the public to get through an unusually large edition of Irewan in a very short
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  time, I have taken the opportunity of a second edition to make some necessary
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  corrections, and to add a few passages where it struck me that they would
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  be appropriately introduced. The passages are few, and it is my fixed intention
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  never to touch the work again. I may perhaps be allowed to say a
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  word or two here in reference to the Coming Race, to the success of
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  which book Irewan has been very generally set down as due. This is a
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  mistake, though a perfectly natural one. The fact is that Irewan was finished,
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  with the exception of the last twenty pages, and a second or two
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  inserted from time to time here and there throughout the book before the first advertisement
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  of the Coming Race appeared. A friend, having called my attention to one
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  of the first of these advertisements, and suggesting that it probably referred to a
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  work of similar character to my own, I took Irewan to a well known
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  firm of publishers on the first of May eighteen seventy one, and left it
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  in their hands for consideration. I then went abroad, and, on learning
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  that the publishers alluded to decline the manuscript, I let it alone for six
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  or seven months, and, being in and out of the way part of
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  Italy, never saw a single review of The Coming Race, nor a copy
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  of the work. On my return. I purposely avoided looking into it until
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  I had sent back my last revises to the printer. Then I had much
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  pleasure in reading it, but was indeed surprised at the many little points of
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  similarity between the two books, in spite of their entire independence to one another.
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  I regret that reviewers have, in some some cases been inclined to treat
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  the chapters on Machines as an attempt to reduce mister Darwin's theory to an absurdity.
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  Nothing could be further from my intention, and few things would be more
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  distasteful to me than any attempt to laugh at mister Darwin. But I must
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  own that I had myself to thank for the misconception, for I felt sure
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  that my intention would be missed. But preferred not to weaken the chapters by
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  explanation, and knew very well that mister Darwin's theory would take no harm.
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  The only question in my mind was how far I could afford to be misrepresented
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  as laughing at that for which I have the most profound admiration. I am
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  surprised, however, that the book at which such an example of the specious
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  misuse of analogy would seem most naturally leveled, should have occurred to no reviewer.
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  Neither shall I mention the name of the book here, though I should
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  fancy that the hint given will suffice. I have been held by some whose
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  opinion I respect to have denied men's responsibility for their actions. He who does
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  this is an enemy who deserves no quarter. I should have imagined that I
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  had been sufficiently a explicit, but have made a few additions to the chapter
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  on Malcontents, which will I think serve to render further mistake impossible. An
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  anonymous correspondent, by the handwriting presumably a clergyman, tells me that in quoting
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  from the Latin grammar, I should have, at any rate done so correctly,
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  and that I should have written agricolas instead of agricolais he added something about
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  any boy in the fourth form, et cetera, et cetera, which I
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  shall not quote, but which made me very uncomfortable. It may be said
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  that I must have misquoted from design, from ignorance, or by a slip
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  of the pen. But surely in these days it will be recognized as harsh
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  to assign limits to the all embracing boundlessness of truth, and it will be
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  more reasonably assumed that each of the three possible causes of misquotation have had its
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  share in the apparent blunder. The art of writing things that shall sound right
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  and yet be wrong has made so many reputations and affords comfort to such a
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  large number of readers, that I could not venture to neglect it. The
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  Latin grammar, however, is a subject on which some of the younger members
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  of the community feel strongly. So I have now written agricuolas. I have
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  also parted with the word in Fortunium, though not without regret, but have
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  not dared to meddle with other similar inaccuracies. For the inconsistencies in the book,
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  and I am aware that there are not a few, I must ask
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  the indulgence of the reader. The blame, however, lies chiefly with the
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  Ireuhinians themselves, for they were really a difficult people to understand. The most
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  glaring anomaies seemed to afford them no intellectual inconvenience. Neither provided that they did
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  not actually see the money dropping out of their pockets, nor suffer immediate physical
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  pain, would they listen to any arguments as to the waste of money and
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  happiness which their folly caused them. But this had an effect of which I
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  have little reason to complain, for I was allowed almost to call them life
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  long self deceivers to their faces, and they said it was quite true,
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  but that it did not matter. I must not conclude without expressing my most
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  sincere thanks to my critics and to the public for the leniency and consideration with
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  which they have treated my adventures. June ninth, eighteen seventy two preface to
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  the revised edition. My publisher wishes me to say a few words about the
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  genesis of the work, a revised and enlarged edition of which he is herewith
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  laying before the public. I therefore place on record as much as I can
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  remember on this head. After a lapse of more than thirty years. The
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  first part of Irewan written was an article headed Darwin among the Machines and signed
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  Solarius. It was written in the Upper Rangatata district of the Canterbury Province,
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  as it then was, of New Zealand, and appeared at christ Church in
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  the Press newspaper June thirteenth, eighteen sixty three. A copy of this article
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  is indexed under my books in the British Museum catalog. In passing, I
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  may say that the opening chapters of Irewan were also drawn from the Upper Rangetata
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  district, with such modifications as I found convenient. A second article on the
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  same subject as the one just referred to, appeared in the press shortly after
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  the first, but I have no copy. It treated machines from a different
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  point of view, and was the basis of pages two hundred seventy through two
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  seventy four of the present edition of Irewan. This view ultimately led me to
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  the theory I put forward in Life and Habit, published in November eighteen seventy
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  seven. I have put a bare outline of this theory, which I believed
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  to be quite sound, into the mouth of an Irwanian philosopher in chapter twenty
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  seven of this book. In eighteen sixty five, I rewrote and enlarged Darwin
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  among the Machines for The Reasoner, a paper published in London by mister G.
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  J. Holyoake. It appeared July first, eighteen sixty five under the
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  heading The Mechanical Creation, and can be seen in the British Museum. I
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  again rewrote and enlarged it till it assumed the form in which it appeared in
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  the first edition of Irewan. The next part of Irewan that I wrote was
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  The World of the Unborn, a preliminary form of which was sent to mister
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  Holyoake's paper. But as I cannot find it among those copies of The Reasoner
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  that are in the British Museum, I conclude that it was not accepted.
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  I have, however, rather a strong fancy that it appeared in some London
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  paper of the same character as The Reasoner, not very long after July first,
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  eighteen sixty five, but I have no copy. I also wrote about
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  this time the Substance of what ultimately became the Musical Banks, and the trial
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  of a man for being in a consumption. These four detached papers were I
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  believe all that was written of Irewan before eighteen seventy. Between eighteen sixty five
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  and eighteen seventy, I wrote hardly anything, being hopeful of attaining that success
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  as a painter, which it has not been vouchediff to me to attain.
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  But in the autumn of eighteen seventy, just as I was beginning to get
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  occasionally hung at the Royal Academy exhibitions, my friend, the late Sir and
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  then mister Broom, suggested to me that I should add somewhat to the articles
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  I had already written and string them together into a book. I was rather
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  fired by the idea, but as I only worked at the manuscript on Sundays,
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  it was some months before I had completed it. I see for my
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  second preface that I took the book to Messieurs Chapman and Hall May first,
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  eighteen seventy one, and on their rejection of it, under the advice of
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  one who has attained the highest rank among living writers, I let it sleep
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  till I took it to mister Trubner early in eighteen seventy two. As regards
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  its rejection by Messrs Chapman and Hall, I believe their reader advised them quite
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  wisely. They told me that he reported that it was a philosophical work,
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  little likely to be popular with a large circle of readers. I hope that
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  if I had been their reader, and the book had been submitted to myself,
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  I should have advised them to the same effect. Irewuan appeared with the
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  last day or two of March eighteen seventy two. I attribute its unlooked for
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  success mainly to two early favorable reviews, the first in the palm Mall Gazette
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  of April twelfth, and the second in the Spectator of April twentieth. There
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  was also another cause. I was complaining once to a friend that though Irewan
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  had met with such a warm reception, my subsequent books had been, all
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  of them practically stillborn. He said, you forget one charm that Irwan had,
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  but which none of your other books can have. I asked what,
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  and was answered the sound of a new voice, and of an unknown voice.
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  The first edition of Irewan sold in about three weeks. I had not
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  taken molds, and as the demand was strong, it was set up again
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  immediately. I made a few unimportant alterations and editions, and added a preface
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  of which I cannot say that I am particularly proud, But an inexperienced writer
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  with a head somewhat turned by unexpected success is not to be trusted with a
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  preface. I made a few further, very trifling alterations before molds were taken.
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  But since the summer of eighteen seventy two, as knew, editions were,
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  from time to time wanted, they have been printed from stereos, then
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  made. Having, now I fear at too great length done what I was
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  asked to do, I should like to add a few words. On my
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  own account. I am still fairly well satisfied with those parts of Irewan that
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  were repeatedly rewritten, but from those that had only a single writing, I
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  would gladly cut out some forty or fifty pages if I could. This,
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  however, may not be, for the copyright will probably expire in a little
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  over twelve years. It was necessary therefore to revise the book throughout for literary
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  inelegancies, of which I found many more than I had expected, and also
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  to make such substantial editions as should secure a new lease of life at any
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  rate for the copyright. If then, instead of cutting out save fifty pages,
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  I have been compelled to add about sixty in Vita Minerva. The blame
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  rests neither with my publisher nor with me, but with the copyright laws.
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  Nevertheless, I can assure the reader that though I have found it an irksome
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  task to take up the work which I thought I got rid of thirty years
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  ago, and much of which I am ashamed of, I have done my
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  best to make the new matter savor so much of the better portions of the
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  old that none but the best critics shall perceive at what places the gaps of
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  between thirty and forty years occur. Lastly, if my readers note a considerable
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  difference between the literary technique of Irewan and that of Irewan Revisited, I would
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  remind them that, as I have just shown, Irwan took something like ten
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  years in writing, and even so was written with great difficulty, while Irwan
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  Revisited was written easily between November nineteen hundred and the end of April nineteen o
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  one. There is no central idea underlying Irwan, whereas the attempt to realize
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  the effect of a single supposed great miracle dominates the whole of its successor.
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  In Irwan, there was hardly any story and little attempt to give life an
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  individuality to the characters. I hope that in Irwan Revisited, both these defects
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  have been in great measure avoided. Irewan was not an organic hole. Irwan
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  Revisited may fairly claimed to be one. Nevertheless, though in literary workmanship,
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  I do not doubt that this last named book is an improvement on the first.
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  I shall be agreeably surprised if I am not told that Irewan, with
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  all its faults, is the better reading of the two. Samuel Butler,
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  August seventh, nineteen o one, end of the introductory Prefaces, Chapter one,
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  Waste Lands. If the reader will excuse me, I will say nothing
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  of my antecedents, nor of the circumstances which led me to leave my native
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  country. The narrative would be tedious to him and painful to myself. Suffice
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  it that when I left home it was with the intention of going to some
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  new colony and either finding or even perhaps purchasing waste crown land suitable for cattle
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  or sheep farming, by which means I thought that I could better my fortunes
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  more rapidly than in England. It will be seen that I did not succeed
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  in my design, and that, however much I may have met with that
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  was new and strange, I have been unable to reap any pecuniary advantage.
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  It is true I imagine myself to have made a discovery which, if I
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  can be the first a prophet by it, will bring me a recompense beyond
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  all money, computation, and secure me a position such has not been attained
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  by more than some fifteen or sixteen persons since the creation of the universe.
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  But to this end I must possess myself of a considerable sum of money.
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  Neither do I know how to get it, except by interesting the public in
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  my story and inducing the charitable to come forward and assist me. With this
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  hope. I now publish my adventures, but I do so with great reluctance,
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  for I fear that my story will be doubted unless I tell the whole
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  of it. And yet I dare not do so lest others with more means
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  than mine should get the start of me. I prefer the risk of being
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  doubted to that of being anticipated, and have therefore concealed my destination on leaving
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  England, as also the point from which I began my more serious and difficult
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  journey. My chief consolation lies in the fact that truth bears its own impress
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  and that my story will carry conviction by reason of the internal evidences for its
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  accuracy. No one who is himself honest will doubt my being. So I
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  reached my destination in one of the last months of eighteen sixty eight. But
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  I dare not mention the season, lest the reader should gather in which hemisphere
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  I was. The colony was one which had not been opened up even to
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  the most adventurous settlers for more than eight or nine years, having been previously
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  uninhabited save by a few tribes of savages who frequented the sea board. The
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  part known to Europeans consisted of a coast line about eight hundred miles in length,
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  affording three or four good harbors, an attractive country extending inland for a
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  space varying from two to three hundred miles until it reached the offshoots of an
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  exceedingly lofty range of mountains, which could be seen from far out upon the
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  plains and were covered with perpetual snow. The The coast was perfectly well known
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  both north and south of the tract to which I have alluded. But in
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  neither direction was there a single harbor for five hundred miles, and the mountains
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  which descended almost into the sea were covered in thick timber, so that none
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  would think of settling with this bay of land. However, the case was
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  different. The harbors were sufficient, The country was timbered, but not too
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  heavily. It was admirably suited for agriculture. It also contained millions on millions
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  of acres of the most beautifully grass country in the world, and of the
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  best suited for all manners of sheep and cattle. The climate was temperate and
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  very healthy. There were no wild animals, nor were the natives dangerous,
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  being few in number and of an intelligent, tractable disposition. It may be
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  readily understood that once Europeans set foot upon this territory, they were not slow
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  to take advantage of its capabilities. Sheep and cattle were introduced and bred with
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  extreme rapidity. Men took up their fifty thousand or one hundred thousand acres of
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  country, going inland behind the other till in a few years there was not
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  an acre between the sea and the front ranges which was not taken up and
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  stations either for sheep or cattle, were spotted about at intervals of some twenty
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  or thirty miles over the whole country. The front ranges stopped the tide of
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  squatters for some little time. It was thought that there was too much snow
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  upon them for too many months in the year, and that the sheep would
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  get lost, the ground being too difficult for shepherding, that the expense of
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  getting wool down to the ship's side would eat up the farmer's profits, and
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  that the grass was too rough and sour for sheep to thrive upon. But
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  one after another determined to try the experiment, and it was wonderful how successfully
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  it turned out. Men pushed farther and farther into the mountains and found a
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  very considerable tract inside the front range, between it and another which was loftier
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  still, though even this was not the highest the great snowy one which could
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  be seen from out upon the plains. This second range, however, seemed
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  to mark the extreme limits of pastoral country, and it was here, at
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  a small and newly fun station, that I was received as a cadet and
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  soon regularly employed. I was then just twenty two years old. I was
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  delighted with the country and the manner of life. It was my daily business
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  to go up to the top of a certain high mountain and down one of
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  its spurs on to the flat, in order to make sure that no sheep
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  had crossed their boundaries. I was to see the sheep, not necessarily close
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  at hand, or to get them in a single mob, but to see
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  enough of them here and there to feel easy that nothing had gone wrong.
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  This was no difficult matter, for there were not above eight hundred of them,
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  and being all breeding ewes, they were pretty quiet. There were a
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  good many sheep which I knew as two or three black ewes, and a
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  black lamb or two, and several others which had some distinguishing mark whereby I
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  could tell them. I would try to see all of these, and if
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  they were all there, and the mob looked large enough, I might rest
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  assured that all was well. It is surprising how soon the eye becomes accustomed
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  to missing twenty sheep out of two or three hundred. I had a telescope
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  and a dog, and would take bread and meat and tobacco with me,
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  starting with early dawn. It would be night before I could complete my round,
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  for the mountain over which I had to go was very high. In
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  winter, it was covered with snow, and the sheep needed no watching from
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  above. If I were to see sheep dung or tracks going down onto the
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  other side of the mountain, where there was a valley with a stream,
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  a mere cul de sac, I was to follow them and look out for
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  sheep. But I never saw any. The sheep always descending on their own
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  side, partly from habit and partly because there was an abundance of good sweet
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  feed, which had been burnt in the early spring just before I came,
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  and was now deliciously green and rich, while that on the other side had
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  never been burnt, it was rank and coarse. It was a monotonous life,
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  but it was very healthy, and one does not much mind anything when
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  one is well. The country was the grandest that can be imagined. How
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  often have I sat on the mountain side and watched the waving downs, with
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  the two white specks of huts in the distance, and the little square of
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  garden behind them, the paddock with a patch of bright green oats above the
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  huts, and the yards and wool sheds down on the flat below, all
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  seen as through the wrong end of a telescope, so clear and brilliant was
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  the air, or as upon a colossal model or map spread out beneath me.
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  Beyond the downs was a plain going down to a river of great size,
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  on the farther side of which there were other high mountains. With the
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  winter snow still not quite melted up the river, which ran winding in many
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  streams over a bed some two miles broad. I looked upon the second grade
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  chain and could see a narrow gorge where the river retired and was lost.
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  I knew that there was a range still farther back, but except from one
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  place near the very top of my own mountain, no part of it was
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  visible. From this point, however, I saw, whenever there were no
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  clouds, a single snow clad peak many miles away, and I should think,
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  about as high as any mountain in the world. Never shall I forget
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  the utter loneliness of the prospect, only the little far away homestead giving sign
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  of human handiwork, the vastness of mountain, plain, of river and sky,
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  the marvelous atmospheric effects, sometimes black mountains against a white sky, and
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  then again after cold weather, white mountains against a black sky, sometimes seen
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  through breaks and swirls of cloud, and sometimes which was best of all,
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  I went up my mountain in a fog, and then got above the mist.
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  Going higher and higher, I would look down upon a sea of whiteness
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  through which would be thrust innumerable mountain tops that looked like islands. I am
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  there now, as I write, I fancy I can see the downs,
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  the huts, the plain, and the river bed, that torrent pathway of
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  desolation, and its distant roar of waters. Oh wonderful, wonderful, so
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  lonely and so solemn, with the sad gray clouds above, and no sound
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  save a lost lamb bleeding upon the mountain side, as though its little heart
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  were breaking. Then there comes some lean and withered old ye with deep gruff
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  voice and unlovely aspect, trotting back from the seductive pass gesture. Now she
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  examines this s gully, and now that, and now she stands listening with
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  uplifted head, that she may hear the distant wailing and obey it. Aha.
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  They see and rush toward each other, alas they are both mistaken.
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  The you is not the lamb's you. They are neither kin nor kind to
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  one another and part in coldness. Each must cry louder and wander farther.
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  Yet may luck be with them both, that they may find their own at
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  nightfall. But this is mere dreaming, and I must proceed. I could
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  not help speculating upon what might lie further up the river and behind the second
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  range. I had no money, but if I could only find workable country,
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  I might stock it with borrowed capital and consider myself a made man.
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  True, the range looks so vast that there seemed little chance of getting a
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  sufficient road through or over it. But no one had yet explored it.
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  And it is wonderful how one finds that one can make a path into all
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  sorts of places, and even get a road for pack horses, which from
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  a distance of here inaccessible. The river was so great that it must drain
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  and inner tract, at least I thought so. And though every one said
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  it would be madness to attempt taking sheep further inland, I knew that only
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  three years ago the same cry had been raised against the country which my master's
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  flock was now overrunning. I could not keep these thoughts out of my head,
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  as I would rest myself upon the mountain side. They haunted me as
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  I went my daily rounds, and grew upon me from hour to hour,
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  till I resolved that after shearing, I would remain in doubt no longer,
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  but settle my horse, take as much provision with me as I could,
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  and go see for myself. But over and above these thoughts came that of
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  the great range itself? What was beyond it? Ah who could say there
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  was no one in the whole world who had the smallest idea save those who
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  were themselves on the other side of it. If indeed there was any one
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  at all, could I hope to cross it? This would be the highest
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  triumph that I could wish for. But it was too much to think of.
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  Yet I would try the nearer range and see how far I could go.
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  Even if I did not find country, Might I not find gold or
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  diamonds, or copper or silver. I would sometimes lie flat down to drink
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  out of a stream and could see little yellow specks among the sand. Were
• 23:15
  these gold? People said no? But then people always said there was no
• 23:18
  gold until it was found to be abundant. There was plenty of Slatin granite,
• 23:22
  which I had always understood to accompany gold, and even though it was
• 23:26
  not found in paying quantities here, it might be abundant in the main ranges.
• 23:32
  These thoughts filled my head, and I could not banish them. End
• 23:37
  of Chapter one, Chapter two. In the wool shed, at last shearing
• 23:45
  came, and with the shearers there was an old native whom they had nicknamed
• 23:49
  Chawbach, though I believe his real name was Cahabuca. He was a sort
• 23:55
  of chief of the natives, could speak a little English, and was a
• 23:57
  great favorite with the missionaries. He did not do any regular work with the
• 24:02
  shearers, but pretended to help in the yards, his real aim being to
• 24:06
  get the grog, which is always more freely circulated at shearing time. He
• 24:10
  did not get much, for he was apt to be dangerous when drunk,
• 24:14
  and very little would make him so. Still, he did get it occasionally,
• 24:17
  and if one wanted to get anything out of him, it was the
• 24:19
  best bribe to offer him. I resolved to question him and get as much
• 24:25
  information from him as I could. I did so as long as I kept
• 24:29
  to questions about the nearer ranges. He was easy to get on with.
• 24:33
  He had never been there, but there were traditions among his tribe to the
• 24:36
  effect that there was no sheep country, nothing in fact, but stunted timber
• 24:40
  and a few river bed flats. It was very difficult to reach. Still,
• 24:45
  there were passes, one of them up our own river, though not
• 24:48
  directly along the river bed, the gorge of which was not practicable. He
• 24:52
  had never seen any one who had been there. Was there to not enough
• 24:56
  on this side. But when I came to the main range, his manner
• 24:59
  changed at once. He became uneasy and began to prevaricate and shuffle. In
• 25:04
  a very few moments I could see that of this too, their existed traditions
• 25:07
  in his tribe, but no efforts or coaxing could get a word from him
• 25:11
  about them. At last, I hinted about grog, and presently he feigned
• 25:17
  to consent. I gave it to him, but as soon as he had
• 25:21
  drunk it, he began shamming intoxication, and then went to sleep, or
• 25:23
  pretended to do so, letting me kick him pretty hard and never budging.
• 25:27
  I was angry, for I had to go without my own grog and had
• 25:30
  got nothing out of him. So the next day I determined that he should
• 25:33
  tell me before I gave him any or get none. At all accordingly.
• 25:38
  When night came and the shearers had knocked off work and had their supper,
• 25:41
  I got my share of rum in a tin pannikin and made a sign to
• 25:45
  Chawbach to follow me to the woolshed, which he willingly did, slipping out
• 25:49
  after me and no one taking notice of either of us. When we got
• 25:53
  down to the woolshed, we lit a tallow candle, and having stuck it
• 25:56
  into an old bottle, we sat down upon the wool bales and began to
• 26:00
  smoke. A wolfshed is a roomy place built somewhat on the same plant as
• 26:04
  a cathedral, with aisles on either side, full of pens for the sheep,
• 26:08
  a great knave at the upper end of which the shearers work, and
• 26:12
  a further space for wool sorders and packers. It always refreshed me with a
• 26:18
  semblance of antiquity precious in a new country. Though I very well knew that
• 26:22
  the oldest woolshed in the settlement was not more than seven years old, while
• 26:26
  this was only two. Chaubach pretended to expect his grog at once, though
• 26:30
  both of us knew very well what the other was after, and that we
• 26:33
  were each playing against the other, the one for grog and the other for
• 26:37
  information. We had a hard fight for more than two hours. He had
• 26:41
  tried to put me off with lies, but had carried no conviction. During
• 26:45
  the whole time we had been morally wrestling with one another, and had neither
• 26:48
  of us apparently gained the least advantage. At length, however, I had
• 26:52
  become sure that he would given ultimately, and that with a little further patience
• 26:56
  I should get his story out of him. As upon on a cold day
• 27:00
  in winter, when one has churned, as I had often to do,
• 27:03
  and churned in vain, and the butter makes no sign of coming. At
• 27:07
  last one tells by the sound that the cream has gone to sleep, and
• 27:10
  then upon a sudden the butter comes. So I had churned at Chaubach until
• 27:14
  I perceived that he had arrived, as it were, at the sleepy stage,
• 27:18
  and that with a continuance of steady, quiet pressure, the day was
• 27:21
  mine. On a sudden, without a word of warning, he rolled two
• 27:23
  bales of wool his strength was very great, into the middle of the floor,
• 27:27
  and on the top of these he placed another Crosswise, he snatched up
• 27:32
  an empty wool pack, threw it like a mantle over his shoulders, jumped
• 27:36
  upon the uppermost bale and sat upon it. In a moment, his whole
• 27:40
  form was changed. His high shoulders dropped. He set his feet close together,
• 27:44
  heel to heel and toe to toe. He laid his arms and hands
• 27:48
  close alongside of his body, the palms following the thighs. He held his
• 27:52
  head high but quite straight, and his eyes stared right in front of him.
• 27:56
  But he frowned horribly and assumed an expression of face that was positively fiendish.
• 28:02
  At the best times, Chowboch was very ugly, but he now exceeded
• 28:04
  all conceivable limits of the hideous. His mouth extended almost from ear to ear,
• 28:10
  grinning horribly and showing all his teeth. His eyes glared, though they
• 28:14
  remained quite fixed, and his forehead was contracted with a most malevolent scowl.
• 28:19
  I am afraid my description will have conveyed only the ridiculous side of his appearance.
• 28:23
  But the ridiculous and the sublime are near, and the grotesque, fiendishness
• 28:27
  of Chowboch's face approached this last. If it did not reach it, I
• 28:33
  tried to be amused, but I felt a sort of creeping at the roots
• 28:34
  of my hair and over my whole body, as I looked and wondered what
• 28:37
  he could possibly be intending to signify. He continued thus for about a minute,
• 28:44
  sitting bolt upright, as stiff as a stone, and making this fearful
• 28:47
  face. Then there came from his lips a low moaning, like the wind,
• 28:51
  rising and falling by infinitely small gradiations, till it became almost a shriek,
• 28:56
  from which it descended and died away. After that, he jumped down
• 29:00
  from the bail and held up the extended fingers of both his hands as one
• 29:03
  who should say ten. Though I did not then understand him for myself,
• 29:07
  I was open mouthed with astonishment. Chaubach rolled the bales rapidly into their place,
• 29:12
  and stood before me, shuddering as in great fear. Horror was written
• 29:17
  upon his face, this time quite involuntarily, as though the natural panic of
• 29:22
  one who had committed an awful crime against unknown and superhuman agencies. He nodded
• 29:27
  his head and gibbered, and pointed repeatedly to the mountains. He would not
• 29:32
  touch the grog, but after a few seconds he made a run through the
• 29:34
  wool shed door into the moonlight. Nor did he reappear till next day at
• 29:38
  dinner time, when he turned up, looking very sheepish and abject in his
• 29:42
  civility towards myself. Of his meaning, I had no conception, how could
• 29:48
  I. All I could feel sure of was that he had a meeting which
• 29:52
  was true and awful to himself. It was enough for me that I believed
• 29:56
  him to have given me the best he had and all he had. This
• 29:59
  kindled me my imagination more than if he had told me intelligible stories. By
• 30:03
  the hour together. I knew not what the great snowy Ranges might conceal,
• 30:07
  but I could no longer doubt that it would be something well worth discovering.
• 30:11
  I kept aloof from Chawbach for the next few days, and showed no desire
• 30:15
  to question him further. When I spoke to him, I called him Kahabuka,
• 30:18
  which gratified him greatly. He seemed to have become afraid of me and
• 30:22
  acted as one who was in my power. Having therefore made up my mind
• 30:27
  that I would begin exploring as soon as shearing was over, I thought it
• 30:30
  would be a good thing to take Chawbach with me, so I told him
• 30:33
  that I meant going to the nearer ranges for a few days prospecting, and
• 30:37
  that he was to come too. I made him promises of knightly grog and
• 30:41
  held out the chances of finding gold. I said nothing about the main range,
• 30:44
  for I knew it would frighten him. I would get him as far
• 30:47
  up our own river as I could, and trace it, if possible,
• 30:49
  to its source. I would then either go on by myself, if I
• 30:53
  felt my courage equal to the attempt, or return with Chaubach. So as
• 31:00
  soon as ever shearing was over and the wool sent off, I asked leave
• 31:03
  of absence and obtained it. Also. I bought an old pack horse and
• 31:07
  pack saddle, so that I might take plenty of provisions and blankets and a
• 31:11
  small tunt. I was to ride and find fords over the river. Chaubach
• 31:15
  was to follow and lead the pack horse, which would also carry him over
• 31:18
  the fords. My master let me have tea and sugar, ships, biscuits,
• 31:22
  tobacco and salt mutton, with two or three good bottles of brandy.
• 31:26
  Four. As the wool was now sent down, abundance of provisions would come
• 31:30
  up with the empty drays. Everything being now ready, all the hands on
• 31:36
  the station turned out to see us off, and we started our journey not
• 31:38
  very long after the summer solstice of eighteen seventy end of Chapter two, Chapter
• 31:47
  three. Up the river the first day. We had an easy time following
• 31:52
  up the great flats by the river side, which had already been twice burned,
• 31:56
  so that there was no dense undergrowth to check us, though the ground
• 32:00
  was often rough and we had to go a good deal upon the river bed.
• 32:05
  Towards nightfall, we had made a matter of some five and twenty miles
• 32:07
  encamped at the point where the river entered upon the gorge. The weather was
• 32:13
  delightfully warm, considering that the valley in which we were encamped must have been
• 32:16
  at least two thousand feet above the level of the sea. The river bed
• 32:21
  was here about a mile and a half broad, and entirely covered with shingle,
• 32:23
  over which the river ran in many winding channels, looking when seen from
• 32:29
  above, like a tangled skein of ribbon and glistening in the sun. We
• 32:32
  knew that it was liable to very sudden and heavy fresh sets. But even
• 32:37
  had we not known it, we could have seen it by the snags of
• 32:39
  trees, which must have been carried long distances, and by the massive vegetable
• 32:44
  a mineral debris which was banked against their lower side, showing that at times
• 32:47
  the whole river bed must be covered with a roaring torrent, many feet in
• 32:51
  depth and of ungovernable fury. At present the river was low, there being
• 32:57
  but five or six streams, too deep and rapid for even a strong man
• 33:00
  to ford on foot, but to be crossed safely on horseback. On either
• 33:05
  side of it, there were still a few acres of flat which grew wider
• 33:07
  and wider down the river, till they became the large plains on which we
• 33:10
  looked from my master's hut. Behind us rose the lowest spurs of the second
• 33:15
  Range, leading abruptly to the range itself, and at a distance of half
• 33:19
  a mile began the gorge, where the river narrowed and became boisterous and terrible.
• 33:24
  The beauty of the scene cannot be conveyed in language. The one side
• 33:28
  of the valley was blue with evening shadow, through which loomed forest and precipice,
• 33:32
  hillside and mountain top, and the other was still brilliant with the sunset
• 33:37
  gold. The wide and wasteful river with its ceaseless rushing. The beautiful water
• 33:42
  birds, too, which abounded upon the islets, and were so tame that
• 33:45
  we could come close up to them. The ineffable purity of the air,
• 33:51
  the solemn peacefulness of the untrodden region. Could there be a more delightful and
• 33:54
  exhilarating combination. We set about making our camp close to some large bush which
• 34:01
  came down from the mountains onto the flat, and tethered out our horses upon
• 34:05
  ground as free as we could find it, from anything round which they might
• 34:08
  wind the rope and get themselves tied up. We dared not let them run
• 34:13
  loose, lest they might stray down the river home again. We then gathered
• 34:16
  wood and lit the fire. We filled a tin pannikin with water and set
• 34:21
  it against the hot ashes to boil. When the water boiled, we threw
• 34:24
  in two or three large pinches of tea and let them brew. We had
• 34:29
  caught half a dozen young ducks in the course of the day, an easy
• 34:32
  matter, for the old birds made such a fuss in attempting to decoy us
• 34:37
  away from them, pretending to be badly hurt, as they say the plover
• 34:39
  does. Though we could always find them by going about in the opposite direction
• 34:45
  to the old bird till we heard the young ones crying. Then we ran
• 34:47
  them down, for they could not fly, though they were nearly full grown.
• 34:52
  Chaubach plucked them a little and singed them a good deal. Then we
• 34:55
  cut them up and boiled them on another pannikin, and this completed our preparations.
• 35:01
  When we had done supper, it was quite dark. The silence and
• 35:04
  freshness of the night, the occasional sharp cry of the wood hen, the
• 35:07
  ruddy glow of the fire, the subdued rushing of the river, the somber
• 35:12
  forest, and the immediate foreground of our saddles, packs and blankets made a
• 35:16
  picture worthy of a savotor Rosa or Nicholas Poussin. I call it to mind
• 35:22
  and delight in it now, but I did not notice it at the time.
• 35:25
  We next to never know when we are well off. But this cuts
• 35:29
  two ways, for if it did, we should perhaps know better when we
• 35:31
  are ill off also, And I have sometimes thought that there are as many
• 35:36
  ignorant of the one as the other. He who wrote O fortunatos nimium sua
• 35:43
  sibona norrant Agricolas might have written quite as truly oh, in fortunatos nimium sua
• 35:50
  si mala noorrant. And there are few of us who are not protected from
• 35:53
  the keenest pain by our inability to see what it is that we have done,
• 35:58
  what we are suffering, what we truly are. Let us be grateful
• 36:01
  to the mirror for revealing us to our appearance. Only we found as soft
• 36:07
  a piece of ground as we could, though it was all stony, and
• 36:09
  having collected grass, and so disposed of ourselves that we had a little hollow
• 36:15
  for our hip bones, we strapped our blankets around us and went to sleep.
• 36:19
  Waking in the night, I saw the stars overhead, and the moonlight
• 36:22
  bright upon the mountains. The river was ever rushing. I heard one of
• 36:25
  our horses neigh to its companion, and was assured that they were still at
• 36:30
  hand. I had no care of mind or body, save that I had
• 36:32
  doubtless many difficulties to overcome. There came upon me a delicious sense of peace,
• 36:38
  a fullness of contentment, which I do not believe can be felt by
• 36:42
  any but those who have spent days consecutively on horseback, or at any rate
• 36:46
  in the open air. Next morning we found our last night's tea leaves frozen
• 36:52
  at the bottom of the pannikins. Though it was not nearly the beginning of
• 36:55
  autumn, we breakfasted as we had supped, and were on our by six
• 37:00
  o'clock. In half an hour we had entered the gorge, and turning round
• 37:04
  a corner, we bade farewell to the last sight of my master's country.
• 37:08
  The gorge was narrow and precipitous. The river was now only a few yards
• 37:13
  wide, and roared and thundered against rocks of many tons in weight. The
• 37:16
  sound was deafening, for there was a great volume of water. We were
• 37:21
  two hours in making less than a mile, and that with danger. Sometimes
• 37:24
  in the river and sometimes on the rock. There was that damp, black
• 37:28
  smell of rocks covered with slimy vegetation, as near some huge waterfall where spray
• 37:34
  is ever rising. The air was clammy and cold. I cannot conceive how
• 37:37
  our horses managed to keep their footing, especially the one with the pack,
• 37:42
  and I dreaded the having to return almost as much as going forward. I
• 37:46
  supposed this lasted three miles, but it was well midday when the gorge got
• 37:51
  a little wider and a small stream came into it from a tributary valley farther.
• 37:54
  Progress up the main river was impossible, for the cliffs descended like walls.
• 37:59
  So we went up the side stream Chalboch, seeming to think that here
• 38:02
  must be the pass of which reports existed among his people. We now incurred
• 38:07
  less of actual danger, but more fatigue, and it was only after infinite
• 38:10
  trouble, owing to the rocks and tangled vegetation, that we got ourselves and
• 38:15
  our horses upon the saddle from which this small stream descended. By that time
• 38:20
  the clouds had descended upon us, and it was raining heavily. Moreover,
• 38:23
  it was six o'clock and we were tired out, having made perhaps six miles
• 38:27
  and twelve hours on the saddle. There was some coarse grass which was in
• 38:31
  full seed and therefore very nourishing for the horses, also abundance of anis and
• 38:37
  south whistle, of which they are extravagantly fond, So we turned them loose
• 38:40
  and prepared to camp. Everything was soaking wet, and we were half perished
• 38:45
  with cold. Indeed, we were very uncomfortable. There was brushwood about,
• 38:49
  but we could get no fire till we had shaved up the wet outside of
• 38:52
  some dead branches and filled our pockets with the dry inside chips. Having done
• 38:58
  this we managed to start a fire. Did we allow it to go out
• 39:00
  when we had once started it. We pitched the tent, and by nine
• 39:05
  o'clock were comparatively warm and dry. Next morning it was fine. We broke
• 39:09
  camp, and after advancing a short distance, we found that by descending over
• 39:14
  groundless difficult than yesterday's we should come again upon the river bed which had opened
• 39:19
  out above the gorge. But it was plain at a glance that there was
• 39:21
  no available sheep country, nothing but a few flats covered with scrub on either
• 39:24
  side of the river, and mountains which were perfectly worthless. But we could
• 39:30
  see the main range. There was no mistake about this. The glaciers were
• 39:35
  tumbling down the mountain side like cataracts, and seemed actually to descend upon the
• 39:38
  river bed. There could be no serious difficulty in reaching them by following up
• 39:43
  the river, which was wide and open, but it seemed rather an objectless
• 39:47
  thing to do, for the main range looked hopeless, and my curiosity about
• 39:52
  the nature of the country above the gorge was now quite satisfied. There was
• 39:55
  no money in it whatever, unless there should be minerals, of which I
• 39:59
  saw no more then lower down. However, I resolved that I would follow
• 40:04
  the river up and not return until I was compelled to do so. I
• 40:07
  would go up every branch as far as I could, and wash well for
• 40:10
  gold. Chawbach liked seeing me do this, but it never came to anything,
• 40:15
  for we did not even find the color. His dislike of the main
• 40:19
  range appeared to have worn off, and he made no objections to approaching it.
• 40:22
  I think that he thought there was no danger of my trying to cross
• 40:25
  it, and he was not afraid of anything on this side. Besides,
• 40:29
  we might find gold. But the fact was that he had made up of
• 40:32
  his mind what to do if he saw me getting too near it. We
• 40:37
  passed three weeks in exploring, and never did I find time go more quickly.
• 40:42
  The weather was fine, though the nights got very cold. We followed
• 40:45
  every stream but one, and always found it led us to a glacier,
• 40:47
  which was plainly impassable at any rate without a larger party. In Ropes.
• 40:52
  One stream remained, which I should have followed up already had nat Chawbach said
• 40:58
  that he had risen early one morning, when I was yet asleep, and
• 41:00
  after going up it for three or four miles, had seen that it was
• 41:04
  impossible to go farther. I had long ago discovered that he was a great
• 41:07
  liar, so I was bent on going up myself. In brief I did
• 41:12
  so, so far from being impossible, it was quite easy traveling, and
• 41:15
  after five or six miles I saw a saddle at the end of it,
• 41:17
  which, though covered deep in snow, was not glacier, and which did
• 41:22
  verily appear to be the part of the main range itself. No words can
• 41:27
  express the intensity of my delight. My blood was all on fire with hope
• 41:30
  and elation. But on looking round for Chawbach, who was behind me,
• 41:35
  I saw, to my surprise and anger, that he had turned back and
• 41:37
  was going down the valley as hard as he could. He had left me
• 41:43
  end of Chapter three, Chapter four the saddle. I could to him,
• 41:51
  but he would not hear. I ran after him, but he had got
• 41:53
  too good a start. Then I sat down on a stone and thought the
• 41:58
  matter carefully over. It was plain that Chowboch had designedly attempted to keep me
• 42:02
  from going at this valley, yet he had shown no unwillingness to follow me.
• 42:07
  Anywhere else. What could this mean, unless that I was now upon
• 42:13
  the route by which alone the mysteries of the Great Ranges could be revealed?
• 42:16
  What then should I do go back at the very moment when it had become
• 42:21
  plain that I was on the right scent hardly, yet to proceed alone would
• 42:25
  be both difficult and dangerous. It would be bad enough to return to my
• 42:30
  master's run and pass through the rocky gorges with no chance of help from another
• 42:35
  should I get into difficulty, but to advance for any considerable distance without a
• 42:40
  companion would be next door to madness. Accidents which are slight when there is
• 42:45
  another at hand, as the spraining of an ankle or the falling into some
• 42:50
  place, whence escape would be easy by means of an outstretched hand and a
• 42:53
  bit of rope, may be fatal to one who is alone. The more
• 42:59
  I pondered, the less I liked it, and yet the less I could
• 43:02
  make up my mind to return. When I looked at the saddle at the
• 43:06
  head of the valley and noted the comparative ease with which its smooth sweep of
• 43:10
  snow might be surmounted, I seemed to see my way almost from my present
• 43:15
  position to the very top. After much thought, I resolved to go forward
• 43:21
  until I should come to some place which was really dangerous, but then to
• 43:23
  return I should, thus, I hoped, at any rate, reach the
• 43:28
  top of the saddle and satisfy myself as to what might be on the other
• 43:31
  side. I had no time to lose, for it was now between ten
• 43:36
  and eleven in the morning. Fortunately, I was well equipped for on leaving
• 43:39
  the camp and the horses at the lower end of the valley. I had
• 43:43
  provided myself, according to my custom, with everything that I was likely to
• 43:46
  want for four or five days. Chaubacha carried half, but had dropped his
• 43:52
  whole swag, I supposed at the moment of his taking flight, for I
• 43:57
  came upon it when I ran after him. I had, therefore his provisions
• 44:00
  as well as my own. Accordingly, I took as many biscuits as I
• 44:06
  thought I could carry, and also some tobacco, tea, and a few
• 44:08
  matches. I rolled all these things together with a flask nearly full of brandy,
• 44:15
  which I kept in my pocket for fear less Chowbock should get a hold
• 44:19
  of it. Inside my blankets, and strapped them very tightly, making the
• 44:22
  hole into a long roll of some seven feet in length and six inches in
• 44:27
  diameter. Then I tied the two ends together and put the hole round my
• 44:31
  neck and over one shoulder. This is the easiest way of carrying a heavy
• 44:37
  swag, for one can rest one's self by shifting the burden from one's shoulder
• 44:40
  to the other. I strapped my pannikin and a small axe about my waist,
• 44:46
  and thus equipped began to ascend the valley, angry at having been misled
• 44:51
  by Chowbach, but determined not to return till I was compelled to do so.
• 44:57
  I crossed and recrossed the stream Zete several times without difficulty, for there
• 45:00
  were many good fords. At one o'clock I was at the foot of the
• 45:06
  saddle. For four hours, I mounted the last two on snow, where
• 45:09
  the going was easier. By five I was within ten minutes of the top,
• 45:15
  in a state of greater excitement, I think than I had ever known
• 45:17
  before. Ten minutes more and the cold air from the other side came rushing
• 45:22
  upon me. A glance I was not on the main range. Another glance
• 45:30
  there was an awful river, muddy and horribly angry, roaring over an immense
• 45:35
  river bed thousands of feet below me. It went round to the westward,
• 45:39
  and I could see no farther up the valley, save that there were enormous
• 45:44
  glaciers which must extend round the source of the river, and from which it
• 45:47
  must spring. Another glance, and then I remained motionless. There was an
• 45:52
  easy pass in the mountains directly opposite to me, through which I caught a
• 45:57
  glimpse of an immeasurable extent of blue and distant plains. Easy, yes,
• 46:01
  perfectly easy, grasped nearly to the summit, which was, as it were,
• 46:07
  an open path between two glaciers, from which an inconsiderable stream came tumbling
• 46:12
  down over rough but very possible hillsides till it got down to the level of
• 46:16
  the great river and formed a flat where there was grass and a small bush
• 46:20
  of stunted timber. Almost before I could believe my eyes, a cloud had
• 46:24
  come up from the valley on the other side, and the plains were hidden.
• 46:29
  What wonderful luck was mine. Had I arrived five minutes later, the
• 46:32
  cloud would have been over the pass, and I should not have known of
• 46:36
  its existence. Now that the cloud was there, I began to doubt my
• 46:39
  memory, and to be uncertain whether it had been more than a blue line
• 46:43
  of distant vapor that had filled up the opening. I could only be certain
• 46:47
  of this much, namely, that the river in the valley below must be
• 46:51
  the one next to the northward of that which flowed past by Master's station.
• 46:55
  Of this there could be no doubt. Could I, however, imagine that
• 47:00
  my luck should have led me up a wrong river in search of a pass,
• 47:04
  and yet brought me to the spot where I could detect the one weak
• 47:07
  place in the fortifications of a more northern basin. This was too improbable.
• 47:13
  But even as I doubted, there came a rent in the cloud opposite,
• 47:15
  and a second time I saw the blue lines of heaving downs, growing gradually
• 47:20
  fainter and retiring into a far space of plane. It was substantial. There
• 47:25
  had been no mistake whatsoever. I had hardly made myself perfectly sure of this.
• 47:30
  Ere the rent in the clouds joined up again, and I could see
• 47:34
  nothing more. What then should I do? The night would be upon me
• 47:38
  shortly, and I was already chilled with standing still after the exertion of climbing.
• 47:44
  To stay where I was would be impossible. I must either go backwards
• 47:49
  or forwards. I found a rock which gave me shelter from the evening wind,
• 47:53
  and took a good pull at the brandy flask, which immediately warmed and
• 47:57
  encouraged me. I asked myself, could I descend upon the river bed beneath
• 48:02
  me? It was impossible to say what precipices might prevent my doing so.
• 48:07
  If I were on the river bed, dare I cross the river? I
• 48:12
  am an excellent swimmer, Yet once in the frightful rush of waters, I
• 48:15
  should be hurled whithersoever it willed, absolutely powerless. Moreover, there was my
• 48:22
  swag. I should perish of cold and hunger if I left it, but
• 48:25
  I should certainly be drowned if I attempted to carry it across the river.
• 48:30
  These were serious considerations, but the hope of finding an immense tract of available
• 48:34
  sheep country, which I was determined that I would monopolize as far as I
• 48:37
  possibly could suffice to outweigh them. And in a few minutes I felt resolved
• 48:44
  that having made so important a discovery as a pass into a country which was
• 48:47
  probably as valuable as that on our own side of the Ranges, I would
• 48:52
  follow it up and ascertain its value, even though I should pay the penalty
• 48:55
  of failure with life itself. The more I thought, the more determined I
• 49:00
  became, either to win fame and perhaps fortune by entering upon this unknown world,
• 49:06
  or give up life in the attempt. In fact, I felt the
• 49:09
  life would be no longer valuable if I were to have seen so great a
• 49:13
  prize and refused to grasp at the possible profits therefrom I had still an hour
• 49:19
  of good daylight, during which I might begin my descent onto some suitable camping
• 49:22
  ground. But there was not a moment to be lost. At first,
• 49:27
  I got along rapidly, for I was on the snow and sank into it
• 49:30
  enough to save me from falling. Though I went forward straight down the mountain
• 49:34
  side as fast as I could. But there was less snow on this side
• 49:37
  than on the other, and I had soon done with it, getting on
• 49:40
  to a comb of dangerous and very stony ground, where a slit might have
• 49:45
  given me a disastrous fall. But I was careful with my speed and got
• 49:49
  safely to the bottom, where there were patches of coarse grass, and an
• 49:52
  attempt here and there at brushwood. What was below this I could not see.
• 49:58
  I advanced a few hundred yards for a and found that I was on
• 50:00
  the brink of a frightful precipice, which no one in his senses would attempt
• 50:05
  descending. I bethought me, however, to try the creek which drained the
• 50:08
  comb, and see whether it might not have made itself a smoother way.
• 50:13
  In a few minutes, I found myself at the upper end of a chasm
• 50:16
  in the rocks something like twill Dow, only on a greatly larger scale.
• 50:22
  The creek had found its way into it, and had worn a deep channel
• 50:24
  through a material which appeared softer than that upon the other side of the mountain.
• 50:29
  I believe it must have been a different geological formation, though I regret
• 50:31
  to say that I cannot tell what it was. I looked at this rift
• 50:36
  in great doubt. Then I went a little way on either side of it,
• 50:38
  and found myself looking over the edge of horrible precipices on to the river,
• 50:44
  which roared some four or five thousand feet below me. I dared not
• 50:47
  think of getting down at all unless I committed myself to the rift, of
• 50:52
  which I was hopeful when I reflected that the rock was soft, and that
• 50:54
  the water might have worn its channel tolerably even through the whole extent. The
• 51:00
  darkness was increasing with every minute, but I should have twilight for another half
• 51:02
  hour. So I went in the chasm, though by no means, without
• 51:07
  fear, and resolved to return and camp, and then try some other path
• 51:10
  next day should I come to any serious difficulty. In about five minutes,
• 51:15
  I completely lost my head. The side of the rift became hundreds of feet
• 51:20
  in height and overhung so that I could not see the sky. It was
• 51:24
  full of rocks, and I had many falls and bruises. I was wet
• 51:29
  through from falling into the water, of which there was no great volume,
• 51:31
  but it had such a force that I could do nothing against it. Once
• 51:36
  I had to leap down and not inconsiderable waterfall into a deep pool below,
• 51:40
  and my swag was so heavy that I very nearly drowned. I had indeed
• 51:45
  a hair's breadth escape, but as luck would have it, providence was on
• 51:49
  my side. Shortly afterwards, I began to fancy that the rift was getting
• 51:52
  wider, and that there was more brushwood. Presently I found myself on an
• 51:57
  open, grassy slope, and feeling my way a little Further along the stream,
• 52:01
  I came upon a flat place with wood where I could camp comfortably,
• 52:05
  which was well, for it was now quite dark. My first care was
• 52:08
  for my matches, were they dry. The outside of my swag had got
• 52:13
  completely wet. But on undoing the blankets, I found things warm and dry
• 52:17
  within. How thankful I was. I lit a fire and was grateful for
• 52:22
  its warmth and company. I made myself some tea and ate two of my
• 52:25
  biscuits. My brandy I did not touch, for I had little left and
• 52:30
  might want it when my courage failed me. All that I did I did
• 52:34
  almost mechanically, for I could not realize my situation to myself beyond knowing that
• 52:38
  I was alone, and that returned through the chasm which I had just descended
• 52:43
  would be impossible. It is a dreadful feeling, that of being cut off
• 52:46
  from all one's kind. I was still full of hope and built golden castles
• 52:52
  for myself as soon as I was warmed with food and fire. But I
• 52:55
  do not believe that any man could long retain his reason in such unless he
• 53:00
  had the companionship of animals. One begins doubting one's own identity. I remembered
• 53:07
  deriving comfort even from the sight of my blankets and the sound of my watch
• 53:12
  ticking things, which seemed to link me to other people. But the screaming
• 53:15
  of the wood hens frightened me, as also a chattering bird, which I
• 53:19
  had never heard before, and which seemed to laugh at me, though I
• 53:22
  soon got used to it, and before long could fancied that it was many
• 53:24
  years since I had first heard it. I took off my clothes and wrapped
• 53:29
  my inside blanket about me till my things were dry. The night was very
• 53:34
  still, and I made a roaring fire, so I soon got warm,
• 53:37
  and at last I could put my clothes on again. Then I strapped my
• 53:42
  blanket round me and went to sleep as near the fire as I could.
• 53:45
  I dreamed that there was an organ placed in my master's woolshed. The woolshed
• 53:51
  faded away, and the organs seemed to grow and grow amid a blaze of
• 53:53
  brilliant light, till it became like a golden city upon the side of a
• 53:57
  mountain, with rose upon rows of pipes, set in cliffs and precipices one
• 54:02
  above the other, and in mysterious caverns like that of Fingal within whose depths
• 54:07
  I could see the burnished pillars gleaming. In the front. There was a
• 54:12
  flight of lofty terraces, at the top of which I could see a man
• 54:15
  with his head buried forward toward a keyboard, and his body swaying from side
• 54:19
  to side amid the storm of huge arpeggioed harmonies that came crashing overhead and round.
• 54:25
  Then there was one who touched me on the shoulder and said, do
• 54:29
  you not see it is handle? But I had hardly apprehended and was trying
• 54:32
  to scale the terraces and get near him. When I awoke, dazzled with
• 54:36
  the vividness and distinctness of the dream. A piece of wood had burned through,
• 54:40
  and the ends had fallen into the ashes with a blaze. This,
• 54:45
  I supposed had both given me my dream and robbed me of it. I
• 54:49
  was bitterly disappointed, and, sitting up on my elbow, came back to
• 54:52
  reality and my strange surroundings as best I could. I was thoroughly aroused.
• 54:58
  Moreover, I felt a fores shadowing, as though my attention were arrested by
• 55:01
  something more than the dream, although no sense in particular was as yet appealed
• 55:06
  to I held my breath and waited, and then I heard Was it fancy?
• 55:12
  Nay? I listened again and again, and I did hear a faint
• 55:15
  and extremely distant sound of music, like that of an Eolian harp, borne
• 55:20
  upon the wind, which was blowing fresh and chill from the opposite mountains.
• 55:24
  The roots of my hair thrilled. I listened, but the wind had died,
• 55:28
  and, fancying that it must have been the wind itself, no,
• 55:30
  on a sudden I remembered the noise which Chaalbach had made in the wool shed.
• 55:35
  Yes, it was that, Thank Heaven, whatever it was, it
• 55:38
  was over now. I reasoned with myself and recovered my firmness. I became
• 55:44
  convinced that I had only been dreaming more vividly than usual. Soon I began
• 55:47
  even to laugh, and think what a fool I was to be frightened at
• 55:51
  nothing. Reminding myself that even if I were to come to a bad end,
• 55:54
  it would be no such dreadful matter at all. I said my prayer,
• 56:00
  a duty which I had too often neglected, and in a little time
• 56:04
  fell into a really refreshing sleep, which lasted till broad daylight and restored me.
• 56:09
  I rose and searching among the embers of my fire, I found a
• 56:13
  few live coals, and soon had a blaze again. I got breakfast and
• 56:17
  was delighted to have the company of several small birds, which hopped about me
• 56:22
  and perched on my boots and hands. I felt comparatively happy, but I
• 56:25
  can assure the reader that I had had a far worse time of it than
• 56:29
  I have told him, and I strongly recommend him to remain in Europe if
• 56:32
  he can, or at any rate in some country which has been explored and
• 56:36
  settled, rather than go into places where others have not been before him.
• 56:40
  Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not
• 56:44
  comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not
• 56:49
  to deserve the name. End of Chapter four, Chapter five, The River
• 56:54
  and the Range. My next business was to disend upon the river. I
• 57:00
  had lost sight of the pass, which I had seen from the saddle,
• 57:04
  but had made such notes of it that I could not fail to find it.
• 57:07
  I was bruised and stiff, and my boots had begun to give,
• 57:12
  for I had been going on rough ground for more than three weeks. But
• 57:15
  as the day wore on, and I found myself descending without serious difficulty.
• 57:20
  I became easier in a couple of hours. I got among pine forests where
• 57:24
  there was little undergrowth, and descended quickly till I reached the edge of another
• 57:29
  precipice, which gave me a great deal of trouble, though I eventually managed
• 57:32
  to avoid it. By about three or four o'clock, I found myself on
• 57:36
  the river bed. From calculations which I made as to the height of the
• 57:39
  valley on the other side the saddle over which I had come, I concluded
• 57:44
  that the saddle itself could not be less than nine thousand feet high, and
• 57:47
  I should think the river bed on to which I now descended was three thousand
• 57:52
  feet above the sea level. The water had a terrific current, with a
• 57:55
  fall of not less than forty to fifty feet per mile. It was certainly
• 58:00
  the river next to the northward of that which flowed past my master's run,
• 58:04
  and would have to go through an impassable gorge, as is commonly the case
• 58:07
  with the rivers of that country. Before it came upon known parts, it
• 58:13
  was reckoned to be nearly two thousand feet above the sea level where it came
• 58:15
  out of the gorge onto the plains. As soon as I got to the
• 58:20
  river side, I liked it even less than I thought I should. It
• 58:22
  was muddy, being near its parent glaciers. The stream was wide, rapid
• 58:27
  and rough, and I could hear the smaller stones knocking against each other under
• 58:30
  the rage of the waters as upon a sea shore. Fording was out of
• 58:34
  the question. I could not swim and carry my swag, and I dared
• 58:37
  not leave my swag behind me. My only chance was to make a small
• 58:42
  raft, and that would be difficult to make, and not at all safe
• 58:45
  when it was made, not for one man in such a current. As
• 58:47
  it was too late to do much that afternoon, I spent the rest of
• 58:51
  it in going up and down the river side and seeing where I should find
• 58:53
  the most favorable crossing. Then I camped early and had a quiet, comfortable
• 58:58
  night with no more music, for which which I was thankful, as it
• 59:00
  had haunted me all day, although I perfectly well knew that it had been
• 59:04
  nothing but my own fancy, brought on by the reminiscence of what I had
• 59:07
  heard from Chaubach and by the over excitement of the preceding evening. Next day,
• 59:12
  I began gathering the dry bloom stalks of a kind of flag or iris
• 59:15
  looking plant which was abundant in whose leaves, when torn into strips, were
• 59:20
  as strong as the strongest string. I brought them to the water side and
• 59:23
  fell to making myself a kind of rough platform, which should suffice for myself
• 59:28
  and my swag if I could only stick to it. The stalks were ten
• 59:30
  or twelve feet long and very strong, but light and hollow. I made
• 59:35
  my raft entirely of them, binding bundles of them at right angles to each
• 59:38
  other neatly and strongly with strips from leaves of the same plant, and tying
• 59:43
  other rods across. It took me all day till nearly four o'clock to finish
• 59:47
  the raft, but I still had enough daylight for crossing, and resolved on
• 59:51
  doing so. At once. I had selected a place where the river was
• 59:54
  broad and comparatively still, some at seventy or eighty yards above a furious rapid.
• 1:00:00
  At this spot I had built my raft. I now launched it,
• 1:00:02
  made my swag fast to the middle, and got on to it myself,
• 1:00:07
  keeping in my hand one of the longest blossom stalks, so that I might
• 1:00:10
  punt myself across as long as the water was shallow enough to let me do
• 1:00:14
  so. I got on pretty well for twenty or thirty yards from the shore,
• 1:00:19
  but even in this short space I nearly upset my raft by shifting too
• 1:00:22
  rapidly from one side to the other. The water then became much deeper,
• 1:00:25
  and I leaned over so far in order to get the bloom rod to the
• 1:00:29
  bottom that I had to stay still leaning on the rod for a few seconds.
• 1:00:32
  Then when I lifted up the rod from the ground, the current was
• 1:00:36
  too much for me, and I found myself being carried down the rapid Everything
• 1:00:39
  in a second flew past me, and I had no more control over the
• 1:00:43
  raft. Neither can I remember anything except hurry and noise and waters, which
• 1:00:47
  in the end upset me. But it all came right, and I found
• 1:00:51
  myself near the shore, not more than up to my knees in water,
• 1:00:53
  and pulling my raft to land, fortunately upon the left bank of the river,
• 1:00:58
  which was the what I wanted. When I had landed, I found
• 1:01:00
  that I was about a mile or perhaps a little less below the point from
• 1:01:04
  which I started. My swag was wet upon the outside, and I was
• 1:01:08
  myself dripping, but I had gained my point and knew that my difficulties were
• 1:01:13
  for a time over. I then lit my fire and dried myself. Having
• 1:01:17
  done so, I caught some of the young ducks and seagulls which were abundant
• 1:01:21
  on and near the river bed, so that I had not only a good
• 1:01:23
  meal, of which I was in great want, having had an insufficient diet
• 1:01:28
  from the time that Chawbach left me, but was also well provided for.
• 1:01:30
  On the morrow, I thought of Chawbach and felt how useful he had been
• 1:01:35
  to me, and in how many ways I was the loser by his absence,
• 1:01:38
  having now to do all sorts of things for myself which he had hitherto
• 1:01:42
  done for me, and could do infinitely better than I could. Moreover,
• 1:01:45
  I had set my heart upon making him a real convert to the Christian religion,
• 1:01:50
  which he had already embraced outwardly, though I cannot think that it had
• 1:01:52
  taken deep root in his impenetrably stupid nature. I used to catechise him by
• 1:01:58
  our camp fire and explain him the mysteries of the Trinity and of original sin,
• 1:02:01
  with which I was myself familiar, having been the grandson of an archdeacon
• 1:02:06
  by my mother's side, to say nothing of the fact that my father was
• 1:02:08
  a clergyman of the English Church. I was therefore sufficiently qualified for the task,
• 1:02:14
  and was the more inclined to it over and above my real desire to
• 1:02:17
  save the unhappy creature from an eternity of torture. By recollecting the promise of
• 1:02:22
  Saint James that if any one converted a sinner, which Chowboch surely was,
• 1:02:27
  he should hide a multitude of sins. I reflected therefore that the conversion of
• 1:02:31
  Chaalbach might in some degree compensate for irregularities and shortcomings in my own previous life,
• 1:02:37
  the remembrance of which had been more than once unpleasant to me during my
• 1:02:40
  recent experiences. Indeed, on one occasion I had even gone so far as
• 1:02:45
  to baptize him as well as I could, having ascertained that he had certainly
• 1:02:50
  not been both christened and baptized. In gathering from his telling me that he
• 1:02:53
  had received the name William from the missionary that it was probably the first mentioned
• 1:02:59
  right to which he had been subjected. I thought it great carelessness on the
• 1:03:02
  part of the missionary to have omitted the second and certainly more important ceremony,
• 1:03:07
  which I have always understood precedes christening, both in the case of infants and
• 1:03:10
  of adult converts. And when I thought of the risks we were both incurring,
• 1:03:15
  I determined that there should be no further delay. Fortunately it was not
• 1:03:19
  yet twelve o'clock, so I baptized him at once from one of the pannikins,
• 1:03:22
  the only vessels I had, reverently and I trust efficiently. I then
• 1:03:27
  set myself to work to instruct him in the deeper mysteries of our belief,
• 1:03:30
  and to make him not only in name, but in heart a Christian.
• 1:03:35
  It is true that I might not have succeeded, for Chaalbach was very hard
• 1:03:37
  to teach. Indeed, on the evening of the same day that I baptized
• 1:03:40
  him, he tried for the twentieth time to steal the brandy, which made
• 1:03:45
  me rather unhappy as to whether I could have baptized him rightly. He had
• 1:03:47
  a prayer book more than twenty years old, which had been given him by
• 1:03:52
  the missionaries, but the only thing in it which had taken any living hold
• 1:03:55
  upon him was the title of Adelaide, the queen dowager which he would repeat
• 1:04:00
  whenever strongly moved or touched, and which did really seem to have some deep
• 1:04:03
  spiritual significance to him, though he could never completely separate her individuality from that
• 1:04:09
  of Mary Magdalen, whose name had also fascinated him, though in a less
• 1:04:12
  degree he was indeed stony ground. But by digging about him I might have,
• 1:04:16
  at any rate deprived him of all faith in the religion of his tribe,
• 1:04:20
  which would have been half way towards making him a sincere Christian. And
• 1:04:24
  now all this was cut off from me, and I could neither be of
• 1:04:27
  further spiritual assistance to him, nor he of bodily profit to myself. Besides,
• 1:04:31
  any company was better than being quite alone. I got very melancholy as
• 1:04:36
  these reflections crossed me, But when I had boiled the docks and eaten them,
• 1:04:40
  I was much better. I had a little tea left, and about
• 1:04:43
  a pound of tobacco, which should last me for another fortnight with moderate smoking.
• 1:04:47
  I had also eight ship biscuits, and most precious of all, about
• 1:04:50
  six ounces of brandy, which I presently reduced to four for the night was
• 1:04:55
  cold. I rose with early dawn, and in an hour I was on
• 1:04:59
  my way, feeling straight range, not to say weak from the burden of
• 1:05:01
  solitude, but full of hope when I considered how many dangers I had overcome,
• 1:05:05
  and that this day should see me at the summit of the dividing range.
• 1:05:10
  After a slow but steady climb of between three and four hours, during
• 1:05:13
  which I met with no serious hindrance, I found myself upon a tableland and
• 1:05:17
  close to a glacier, which I recognized as marking the summit of the pass.
• 1:05:21
  Above it towered a succession of rugged precipices and snowy mountain sides. The
• 1:05:26
  solitude is greater than I could bear. The mountain upon my master's sheep run
• 1:05:30
  was a crowded thoroughfare in comparison with this somber, sullen place. The air
• 1:05:34
  moreover was dark and heavy, which made the lowliness even more oppressive. There
• 1:05:40
  was an inky gloom over all that was not covered with snow and ice grass,
• 1:05:44
  there was none. Each moment I felt increasing upon me that dreadful doubt
• 1:05:47
  as to my own identity, as to the continuity of my past and present
• 1:05:51
  existence, which is the first sign of that distraction which comes on those who
• 1:05:56
  have lost themselves in the bush. I had fought against this feeling had too
• 1:06:00
  and had conquered it. But the intense silence and gloom of this rocky wilderness
• 1:06:03
  were too much for me, and I felt that my power of collecting myself
• 1:06:06
  was beginning to be impaired. I rested for a little while, and then
• 1:06:11
  advanced over very rough ground until I reached the lower end of the glacier.
• 1:06:15
  Then I saw another glacier descending from the eastern side into a small lake.
• 1:06:18
  I passed along the western side of the lake, where the ground was easier,
• 1:06:23
  and when I had got about half way, I expected that I should
• 1:06:25
  see the plains which I had already seen from the opposite mountains. But it
• 1:06:29
  was not to be so, for the clouds rolled up to the very summit
• 1:06:31
  of the pass, though they did not overlip it on to the side from
• 1:06:34
  which I had come. I therefore soon found myself enshrouded by a cold,
• 1:06:39
  thin vapor, which prevented my seeing more than a very few yards in front
• 1:06:43
  of me. Then I came upon a large patch of old snow in which
• 1:06:46
  I could distinctly trace the half melted tracks of goats, and in one place,
• 1:06:50
  as it seemed to me there had been a dog following them. Had
• 1:06:54
  I lighted upon a land of shepherds. The ground, where not covered with
• 1:06:58
  snow, was so pourn stony, and there was so little herbage that I
• 1:07:01
  could see no sign of path or regular sheep track. But I could not
• 1:07:05
  help feeling rather uneasy, as I wondered what sort of a reception I might
• 1:07:09
  meet with if I were to suddenly come upon inhabitants. I was thinking of
• 1:07:14
  this, and proceeding cautiously through the mist, when I began to fancy that
• 1:07:16
  I saw some objects darker than the cloud looming in front of me. A
• 1:07:20
  few steps brought me nearer, and a shudder of unutterable horror ran through me
• 1:07:25
  when I saw a circle of gigantic forms, many times higher than myself,
• 1:07:28
  up standing grim and gray through the veil of cloud before me. I suppose
• 1:07:32
  I must have fainted, for I found myself some time afterwards, sitting upon
• 1:07:35
  the ground, sick and deadly cold. There were the figures, quite still
• 1:07:40
  in silence, seen vaguely through the thick gloom, but in human shape.
• 1:07:43
  Indisputably, a sudden thought occurred to me which would have doubtless struck me at
• 1:07:47
  once. Had I not been prepossessed with forebodings of the time that I first
• 1:07:50
  saw the figures, and had not the cloud concealed them from me? I
• 1:07:55
  mean that they were not living beings but statues. I determined that I would
• 1:07:59
  count fifty sol and was sure that the objects were not alive if during that
• 1:08:01
  time I could detect no sign of motion. How thankful was I when I
• 1:08:06
  came to the end of my fifty and there had been no movement. I
• 1:08:10
  counted a second time, but again all was still. I then advanced timidly
• 1:08:15
  forward, and in another moment I saw that my surmise was correct. I
• 1:08:18
  had come upon a sort of stonehenge of rude and barbaric figures, seated as
• 1:08:24
  Chowbach had sat when I questioned him in the wool shed, and with the
• 1:08:27
  same superhumanly malevolent expression on their faces. They had been all seated, but
• 1:08:31
  two had fallen. They were barbarous, neither Egyptian, nor Assyrian nor Japanese,
• 1:08:36
  different from any of these, and yet akin to all. They were
• 1:08:41
  six or seven times larger than life of great antiquity, worn and likeen grown,
• 1:08:45
  they were ten in number. There were snow upon their heads, and
• 1:08:48
  wherever snow could lodge. Each statue had been built of four or five enormous
• 1:08:54
  blocks, but how these had been raised and put together is known to those
• 1:08:57
  alone who raised them. Each was terrible after a different kind. One was
• 1:09:01
  raging furiously as in pain and great despair. Another was lean and candaverous with
• 1:09:06
  famine. Another cruel and idiotic, but with the silliest simper that can be
• 1:09:11
  conceived. This one had fallen and looked exquisitely ludicrous in his fall. The
• 1:09:15
  mouths of all were more or less open, and as I looked at them
• 1:09:17
  from behind, I saw that their heads had been hollowed. I was sick
• 1:09:21
  and shivering with cold solitude. Head unmanned me already, and I was utterly
• 1:09:26
  unfit to have come upon such an assembly of fiends in such a dreadful wilderness,
• 1:09:30
  and without preparation. I would have given everything I had in the world
• 1:09:33
  to have been back at my master's station, but that was not to be
• 1:09:38
  thought of. My head was failing, and I felt sure that I could
• 1:09:41
  never get back alive. Then came a gust of howling wind, accompanied with
• 1:09:45
  a moan from one of the statues above me. I clasped my hands in
• 1:09:48
  fear. I felt like a rat caught in a trap, as though I
• 1:09:51
  would have turned and bitten at whatever thing was nearest me. The wildness of
• 1:09:56
  the wind increased, the moans grew shriller, coming from several stacks, and
• 1:10:00
  swelling into a chorus. I almost immediately knew what it was, but the
• 1:10:03
  sound was so unearthly that this was but little consolation. The inhuman beings into
• 1:10:10
  whose hearts the evil One had put it to conceive these statues, had made
• 1:10:14
  their heads into a sort of organ pipe, so that their mouths should catch
• 1:10:16
  the wind and sound with its blowing. It was horrible. However brave a
• 1:10:20
  man might be, he could never stand such a concert from such lips,
• 1:10:24
  and in such a place. I heaped every invective upon them that my tongue
• 1:10:28
  could utter. As I rushed away from them into the mist, And even
• 1:10:30
  after I had lost sight of them, and turning my head round, could
• 1:10:33
  see nothing but the storm wraiths driving behind me. I heard their ghostly chanting,
• 1:10:38
  and felt as though one of them would rush after me and grip me
• 1:10:41
  in his hand and throttle me. I may say here, since my return
• 1:10:45
  to England, I heard a friend playing some chords upon the organ, which
• 1:10:48
  put me very forcibly into mind of the Irewhanian statues. For Irewan is the
• 1:10:54
  name of the country upon which I was now entering. They rose most vividly
• 1:10:58
  to my recollection the moment my friend began. They are as follows, and
• 1:11:01
  are by the greatest of all musicians. And here the author has included a
• 1:11:06
  musical score end of chapter five, Chapter six in two Irewan. And now
• 1:11:15
  I found myself on a narrow path which followed a small water course. I
• 1:11:20
  was too glad to have an easy trek for my flight to lay hold of
• 1:11:24
  the full significance of its existence. The thought, however, soon presented itself
• 1:11:30
  to me that I must be in an inhabited country, but one which was
• 1:11:33
  yet unknown. What then was to be my fate at the hands of its
• 1:11:38
  inhabitants. Should I be taken up and offered as a burnt offering to those
• 1:11:42
  hideous guardians of the past, it might be so, I shuddered at the
• 1:11:46
  thought. Yet the horrors of solitude had now fairly possessed me, And so
• 1:11:50
  dazed was I, and chilled, and woe begone, that I could lay
• 1:11:54
  hold of no idea firmly amid the crowd of fancies that kept wandering in upon
• 1:11:58
  my brain. I hurried onward, down, down, and down. More
• 1:12:03
  streams came in. Then there was a bridge, A few pine logs thrown
• 1:12:08
  over the water, but they gave me comfort, for savages do not make
• 1:12:12
  bridges. Then I had a treat such as I could never convey on paper,
• 1:12:16
  A moment perhaps the most striking and unexpected of my whole life, the
• 1:12:20
  one I think that, with some three or four exceptions, I would most
• 1:12:25
  gladly have again, were I able to recall it. I got below the
• 1:12:29
  level of the clouds into a burst of brilliant evening sunshine. I was facing
• 1:12:33
  the northwest, and the sun was full upon me. Oh how its light
• 1:12:36
  cheered me. But what I saw it was such an expanse as was revealed
• 1:12:42
  to Moses when he stood upon the summit of Mount Sinai and beheld that promised
• 1:12:45
  land which it was not to be his to enter. The beautiful sunset sky
• 1:12:49
  was crimson in gold, blue, silver and purple, exquisite and tranquilizing.
• 1:12:55
  Fading away therein were plains on which I could see many a town in city
• 1:12:59
  with buildings that had lofty steeples and rounded domes. Nearer beneath me lay ridge,
• 1:13:03
  behind ridge, outlined, behind outline, sunlight behind shadow, and shadow
• 1:13:09
  behind sunlight, gully and serrated ravine. I saw large pine forests and the
• 1:13:15
  glitter of a noble river winding its way upon the plains. Also many villages
• 1:13:19
  and hamlets, some of them quite near at hand, and it was on
• 1:13:23
  these that I pondered most. I sank upon the ground at the foot of
• 1:13:27
  a large tree and thought what I had best do. But I could not
• 1:13:30
  collect myself. I was tired out, and presently, feeling warmed by the
• 1:13:34
  sun and quieted, I fell off into a profound sleep. I was awoke
• 1:13:40
  by the sound of tinkling bells, and looking up, I saw four or
• 1:13:44
  five goats feeding near me. As soon as I moved, the creatures turned
• 1:13:47
  their heads towards me with an expression of infinite wonder. They did not run
• 1:13:51
  away, but stood stock still and looked at me from every side as I
• 1:13:56
  at them. Then came the sound of chattering and laughter, and there approached
• 1:14:00
  two lovely girls of about seventeen or eighteen years old, dressed each in a
• 1:14:03
  sort of linen gabardine, with a girdle round the waist. They saw me,
• 1:14:09
  I sat quite still and looked at them, dazzled with their extreme beauty.
• 1:14:13
  For a moment they looked at me and at each other in great amazement.
• 1:14:16
  Then they gave a little frightened cry and ran off as hard as they
• 1:14:19
  could. So that's that, I said to myself. As I watched them
• 1:14:24
  scampering, I knew that I'd better stay where I was and meet my fate,
• 1:14:28
  whatever it was to be. And even if there was a better course,
• 1:14:30
  I had no strength left to take it. I must come into contact
• 1:14:34
  with the inhabitants sooner or later, and it might as well be sooner.
• 1:14:39
  Better not to seem afraid of them, as I should do by running away
• 1:14:43
  and being caught with a hue and a cry tomorrow or next day. So
• 1:14:46
  I remained quite still and waited. In about an hour I heard distant voices
• 1:14:50
  talking excitedly, and in a few minutes I saw the two girls bringing up
• 1:14:55
  a party of six or seven men, well armed with bows and arrows and
• 1:14:59
  pikes. There was nothing for it, So I remained sitting quite still even
• 1:15:03
  after they had seen me, until they came close up. Then we all
• 1:15:08
  had a good look at one another. Both the girls and men were very
• 1:15:12
  dark in color, but not more so than the South Italians or Spaniards.
• 1:15:15
  The men wore no trousers, but were dressed nearly the same as the Arabs
• 1:15:19
  whom I have seen in Algeria. They were of the most magnificent presents,
• 1:15:25
  being no less strong and handsome than the women were beautiful. And not only
• 1:15:29
  this, but their expression was courteous and benign. I think they would have
• 1:15:32
  killed me at once if I had made the slightest show of violence, but
• 1:15:35
  they gave me no impression of their being likely to hurt me so long as
• 1:15:39
  I was quiet. I am not much given to liking anybody at first sight,
• 1:15:43
  but these people impressed me much more favorably than I should have thought possible,
• 1:15:47
  so that I could not fear them as I scanned their faces one after
• 1:15:50
  another. They were all powerful men. I might have been a match for
• 1:15:56
  any one of them singly, for I have been told that I have more
• 1:15:59
  to glory in the flesh than in any other respect, being over six feet
• 1:16:02
  and proportionately strong. But any two could have soon mastered me, even were
• 1:16:06
  I not so bereft of energy by my recent adventures. My color seemed to
• 1:16:12
  surprise them most, for I have light hair, blue eyes, and a
• 1:16:15
  fresh complexion. They could not understand how these things could be. My clothes
• 1:16:19
  also seemed quite beyond them. Their eyes kept wandering all over me, and
• 1:16:25
  the more they looked, the less they seemed able to make me out.
• 1:16:29
  At last, I raised myself upon my feet, and leaning upon my stick,
• 1:16:31
  I spoke whatever came into my head to the man who seemed foremost among
• 1:16:35
  them. I spoke in English, though I was very sure that he would
• 1:16:40
  not understand. I said that I had no idea what country I was in,
• 1:16:44
  that I had stumbled upon it almost by accident, after a series of
• 1:16:47
  hair breadth escapes, and that I trusted they would not allow any evil to
• 1:16:51
  overtake me now that I was completely at their mercy. All this I said
• 1:16:57
  quietly and firmly, with hardly any change of expression. They could not understand
• 1:17:01
  me, but they looked approvingly to one another and seemed pleased. So I
• 1:17:04
  thought that I showed no fear nor acknowledgment of inferiority, the fact being that
• 1:17:11
  I was exhausted beyond the sense of fear. Then one of them pointed to
• 1:17:15
  the mountain in the direction of the statues, and made a grimace in imitation
• 1:17:17
  of one of them. I laughed and shuddered expressively, whereon they all burst
• 1:17:23
  out laughing too, and chattered hard to one another. I could make out
• 1:17:27
  nothing of what they said, but I think they thought it a rather good
• 1:17:29
  joke that I had come past the statues. Then one among them came forward
• 1:17:33
  and motioned me to follow, which I did without hesitation, for I dared
• 1:17:38
  not thwart them. Moreover, I liked them well enough, and felt tolerably
• 1:17:42
  sure that they had no intention of hurting me. In about a quarter of
• 1:17:45
  an hour we got to a small hamlet built on the side of a hill,
• 1:17:49
  with a narrow street and houses huddled up together. The roofs were large
• 1:17:54
  and overhanging. Some few windows were glazed, but not many. Altogether,
• 1:17:58
  the village was exceedingly like, like one of those that one comes upon in
• 1:18:00
  descending the less known passes over the Alps on to Lombardy. I will pass
• 1:18:05
  over the excitement which my arrival caused, suffice it that though there was an
• 1:18:11
  abundance of curiosity, there was no rudeness. I was taken to the principal
• 1:18:15
  house, which seemed to belong to the people who had captured me. There
• 1:18:18
  I was hospitably entertained, and a supper of milk and goat's flush with a
• 1:18:23
  kind of oak cake was set before me, of which I ate heartily.
• 1:18:28
  But all the time I was eating, I could not help turning my eyes
• 1:18:30
  upon the two beautiful girls whom I had first seen, and who seemed to
• 1:18:33
  consider me as their lawful prize, which indeed I was for I would have
• 1:18:36
  gone through fire and water for either of them. Then came the inevitable surprise
• 1:18:42
  at seeing me smoke, which I will spare the reader. But I noticed
• 1:18:44
  that when they saw me strike a match, there was a hubbub of excitement,
• 1:18:47
  which, it struck me, was not altogether unmixed with disapproval. Why,
• 1:18:51
  I could not guess. Then the women retired, and I was left
• 1:18:56
  alone with the men, who tried to talk to me in every conceivable way,
• 1:19:00
  but we could come to no understanding except that I was quite alone and
• 1:19:02
  had come from a long way over the mountains. In the course of time,
• 1:19:05
  they grew tired and I very sleepy. I made signs as though I
• 1:19:10
  would sleep on the floor of my blankets, but they gave me one of
• 1:19:12
  their bunks with plenty of dried fern and grass, onto which I had no
• 1:19:15
  sooner laid myself than I fell fast asleep, Nor did I awake till well
• 1:19:19
  into the following day, when I found myself in the hut with two men
• 1:19:24
  keeping guard over me, and an old woman cooking. When I woke,
• 1:19:28
  the men seemed pleased and spoke to me as though bidding me good morning in
• 1:19:30
  a pleasant tone. I went out of doors to wash in a creek which
• 1:19:34
  ran a few yards from the house. My hosts were as engrossed with me
• 1:19:39
  as ever. They never took their eyes off me, following every action that
• 1:19:42
  I did, no matter how trifling, and each looking toward the other for
• 1:19:45
  his opinion. At every touch and turn. They took great interest in my
• 1:19:49
  ablutions, for they seemed to have doubted whether I was in all respects human
• 1:19:54
  like themselves. They even laid hold of my arms and overhauled them, and
• 1:19:58
  expressed approval when they saw that they were strong and muscular. They now examined
• 1:20:01
  my legs and especially my feet. When they desisted, they nodded approvingly to
• 1:20:06
  each other, and when I had combed and brushed my hair, and generally
• 1:20:11
  made myself as neat and well arranged as circumstances would allow. I could see
• 1:20:15
  that their respect for me increased greatly, and that they were, by no
• 1:20:17
  means sure that they had treated me with sufficient deference, a manner on which
• 1:20:21
  I am not competent to decide. All I know is that they were very
• 1:20:26
  good to me, for which I thanked them heartily, as it might well
• 1:20:29
  have been otherwise. For my own part, I liked them and admired them,
• 1:20:33
  for their quiet self possession and dignified ease impressed me pleasurably at once.
• 1:20:39
  Neither did their manner make me feel as though I were personally distasteful to them,
• 1:20:43
  only that I was a thing utterly new and unlooked for which they could
• 1:20:45
  not comprehend. Their type was more that of the most robust Italians than any
• 1:20:51
  other. Their manners were also eminently Italian In their entire unconsciousness of self having
• 1:20:58
  traveled a good deal in Italy was struck with little gestures of the hand and
• 1:21:00
  shoulders, which constantly reminded me of that country. My feeling was that my
• 1:21:05
  wisest plan would be to go on as I had begun and be simply myself
• 1:21:10
  for better or worse, such as I was in taking my chance. Accordingly,
• 1:21:14
  I thought of these things while they were waiting for me to have done
• 1:21:16
  washing, and on my way back then they gave me breakfast, hot bread
• 1:21:20
  and milk, and fried flush of something between mutton and vedicon. Their ways
• 1:21:26
  of cooking and eating were European, though they had only a skewer for a
• 1:21:29
  fork, and assorted butcher's knife to cut with. The more I looked at
• 1:21:32
  everything in the house, the more I was struck with its quasi European character.
• 1:21:38
  And had the walls only been pasted over with extracts from the illustrated London
• 1:21:42
  News and Punch, I could have almost fancied myself in a shepherd's hut upon
• 1:21:45
  my master's sheep run. And yet everything was slightly different. It was much
• 1:21:51
  the same with the birds and flowers on the other side, as compared with
• 1:21:54
  the English ones. On my arrival, I had been pleased at noticing that
• 1:21:58
  nearly all the plants and birds were very like common English ones. Thus there
• 1:22:02
  was a robin and a lark, and a wren, and daisies and dandelions,
• 1:22:06
  not quite the same as the English, but still very like them,
• 1:22:10
  quite like enough to be called by the same name. So now here,
• 1:22:14
  the ways of these two men and the things that they had in the house
• 1:22:16
  were all very nearly the same as in Europe. It was not at all
• 1:22:20
  like going to China or Japan, where everything that one sees is strange.
• 1:22:25
  I was indeed at once struck with the primitive character of their appliances, for
• 1:22:29
  they seemed to be some five or six hundred years behind Europe in their inventions.
• 1:22:32
  But this is the case in many an Italian village. All the time
• 1:22:36
  that I was eating my breakfast, I kept speculating as to what family of
• 1:22:40
  mankind they could belong to, And shortly there came an idea into my head
• 1:22:45
  which brought the blood into my cheeks with excitement as I thought of it.
• 1:22:48
  Was it possible that they might be the lost ten tribes of Israel, of
• 1:22:53
  whom I had heard both my grandfather and father make mention as existing in an
• 1:22:56
  unknown country and awaiting a final return to Palestine. Was it possible that I
• 1:23:00
  might have been designed by Providence as the instrument of their conversion? Oh what
• 1:23:05
  a thought was this? I laid down my skewer and gave them a hasty
• 1:23:09
  survey. There was nothing of a Jewish type about them. Their noses were
• 1:23:13
  distinctly Grecian, and their lips, though full, were not Jewish. How
• 1:23:16
  could I settle this question? I knew neither Greek nor Hebrew, and even
• 1:23:20
  if I should get to understanding the language here spoken, I should be unable
• 1:23:25
  to detect the roots of either of those tongues. I had not been long
• 1:23:29
  enough among them to ascertain their habits. But they did not give me the
• 1:23:31
  impression of being a religious people. This too was natural. The Ten tribes
• 1:23:35
  had always been lamentably irreligious. But could I not make them change? To
• 1:23:41
  restore the lost ten Tribes of Israel to a knowledge of the only truth here
• 1:23:45
  would be indeed an immortal crown of glory. My heart beat fast and furious
• 1:23:49
  as I entertained the thought, What a position would it not ensure me in
• 1:23:54
  the next world, or perhaps even in this? What folly would it be
• 1:23:58
  to throw such a chance away? I should rank next the Apostles, if
• 1:24:01
  not as high as they, certainly above the minor prophets, impossibly above any
• 1:24:05
  old Testament writer except Moses and Isaiah. For such a future as this,
• 1:24:11
  I would sacrifice all that I have without a moment's hesitation. Could I be
• 1:24:14
  reasonably assured of it. I had always cordially approved of missionary efforts, and
• 1:24:18
  had at times contributed my might toward their support and extension. But I had
• 1:24:24
  never hitherto felt drawn toward becoming a missionary myself, and indeed had always admired
• 1:24:29
  and envied and respected them more than I had exactly liked them. But if
• 1:24:33
  these people were the lost ten tribes of Israel, the case would be widely
• 1:24:36
  different. The opening was too excellent to be lost, and I resolved that
• 1:24:41
  should I see indications which appeared to confirm my impression that I had indeed come
• 1:24:45
  upon the missing tribes, I would certainly convert them. I may here mention
• 1:24:49
  that this discovery is the one to which I alluded in the opening pages of
• 1:24:54
  my story. Time strengthened the impression made upon me at first, and though
• 1:24:58
  I remained in doubt for such several months, I feel now no longer uncertain.
• 1:25:02
  When I had done eating, my hosts approached and pointed down the valley
• 1:25:05
  leading to their own country, as though wanting to show that I must go
• 1:25:09
  with them. At the same time they laid hold of my arms and made
• 1:25:13
  as though they would take me, but use no violence. I laughed and
• 1:25:16
  motioned my hand across my throat, pointing down the valley, as though I
• 1:25:19
  was afraid lest I should be killed when I got there. But they divined
• 1:25:24
  me at once and shook their heads with much decision to show that I was
• 1:25:27
  in no danger. Their manner quite reassured me, and in half an hour
• 1:25:30
  or so I had packed up my swag and was eager for the forward journey,
• 1:25:34
  feeling wonderfully strengthened and refreshed by good food and sleep, while my hope
• 1:25:39
  and curiosity were aroused to their very utmost by the extraordinary position in which I
• 1:25:43
  found myself. But already my excitement had begun to cool, and I reflected
• 1:25:47
  that these people might not be the ten tribes after all, in which case
• 1:25:51
  I could not but regret that my hopes of making money, which had led
• 1:25:55
  me into so much trouble and danger, were almost annihilated by the fact that
• 1:25:59
  the country was full to overflowing with the people who had probably already developed its
• 1:26:03
  more available resources. Moreover, how was I to get back, For there
• 1:26:09
  was something about my hosts, which told me that they had got me and
• 1:26:12
  meant to keep me in spite of all their goodness. End of Chapter six,
• 1:26:18
  Chapter seven, First Impressions. We followed an alpine path for some four
• 1:26:26
  miles, now hundreds of feet above a brawling stream which descended from the glaciers,
• 1:26:30
  and now nearly alongside it. The morning was cold and somewhat foggy,
• 1:26:34
  for the autumn had made great strides latterly. Sometimes we went through forests of
• 1:26:40
  pine, or rather yew trees, though they looked like pine, and I
• 1:26:44
  remember that now and again we passed a little wayside shrine, wherein there would
• 1:26:47
  be a statue of great beauty, representing some figure male or female in the
• 1:26:53
  very heyday, of youth's strength and beauty, or of the most dignified maturity
• 1:26:57
  and old age. My host always bowed their heads as they passed one of
• 1:27:00
  these shrines, and it shocked me to see statues that had no apparent object
• 1:27:05
  beyond the chronicling of some unusual individual excellence or beauty received so serious an homage.
• 1:27:12
  However, I showed no sign of wonder or disapproval, for I remembered
• 1:27:15
  that to be all things to all men was one of the injunctions of the
• 1:27:18
  Gentile Apostle, which for the present I should do well to heed. Shortly
• 1:27:23
  after passing one of these chapels, we came suddenly upon a village which started
• 1:27:27
  up out of the mist, and I was alarmed lest I should be made
• 1:27:30
  an object of curiosity or dislike. But it was not so. My guides
• 1:27:34
  spoke to many in passing, and those spoken too, showed much amazement.
• 1:27:40
  My guides, however, were well known, and the natural politeness of the
• 1:27:43
  people prevented them from putting me to any inconvenience. But they could not help
• 1:27:46
  eyeing me, nor I them. I may as well say at once what
• 1:27:50
  my after experience taught me, namely that, with all their faults and extraordinary
• 1:27:56
  obliquity of mental vision upon many subjects, they are the very best bred people
• 1:28:00
  that I ever fell in with. The village was just like the ones we
• 1:28:03
  had left, only rather larger. The streets were narrow and unpaved, but
• 1:28:09
  very fairly clean. The vine grew outside many of the houses, and there
• 1:28:13
  were some with sign boards on which was painted a bottle and a glass that
• 1:28:16
  made me feel much at home, even on this ledge of human society.
• 1:28:20
  There was a stunted growth of shoplets which had taken and vegetated somehow, though
• 1:28:26
  as in an air mercantile of the bleakest, it was here as hitherto,
• 1:28:30
  All things were generically the same as in Europe, the differences being of species
• 1:28:35
  only. And I was amused at seeing in a window some bottles with barley
• 1:28:39
  sugar and sweetmeats for children, as at home. But the barley sugar was
• 1:28:45
  in plates, not in twisted sticks, and was colored blue. Glass was
• 1:28:48
  plentiful in the better houses. Lastly, I should say that the people were
• 1:28:53
  of a physical beauty which was simply amazing. I never saw anything in the
• 1:28:57
  least comparable to them. The women were vigorous and had a most majestic gait,
• 1:29:01
  their heads being set upon their shoulders with a grace beyond all power of
• 1:29:05
  expression. Each feature was finished, eyelids, eyelashes, and ears, being
• 1:29:11
  almost invariably perfect. Their color was equal to that of the finest Italian paintings,
• 1:29:16
  being of the clearest olive, and yet ruddy with a glow of perfect
• 1:29:19
  health. Their expression was divine, and as they glanced at me timidly,
• 1:29:25
  but with parted lips and great bewilderment. I forgot all thoughts of their conversion
• 1:29:29
  and feelings that were far more earthly. I was dazzled as I saw one
• 1:29:32
  after the other, of whom I could only feel that each was the loveliest
• 1:29:35
  I had ever seen. Even in middle age, they were still comely,
• 1:29:40
  and the old, great haired women at their cottage doors had a dignity,
• 1:29:44
  not to say majesty of their own. The men were as handsome as the
• 1:29:47
  women beautiful. I have always delighted in and reverenced beauty, but I felt
• 1:29:53
  simply abashed in the presence of such a splendid type, a compound of all
• 1:29:57
  that is best in Egyptian, Greek and Italian. The children were infinite in
• 1:30:00
  number and exceedingly merry. I need hardly say that they came in for their
• 1:30:05
  full share of the prevailing beauty. I expressed by signs of my admiration and
• 1:30:10
  pleasure to my guides, and they were greatly pleased. I should add that
• 1:30:15
  all seemed to take a pride in their personal appearance, and that even the
• 1:30:18
  poorest and none seemed rich, were welcompt and tidy. I could fill many
• 1:30:24
  pages with a description of their dress and the ornaments which they wore, and
• 1:30:27
  a hundred details which struck me with all the force of novelty. But I
• 1:30:30
  must not stay to do so. When we had got past the village,
• 1:30:34
  the fog rose and revealed magnificent views of the snowy mountains and their nearer abutments.
• 1:30:40
  While in front I could now and again catch glimpses of the great plains
• 1:30:44
  which I had surveyed on the preceding evening. The country was highly cultivated,
• 1:30:47
  every ledge being planted with chestnuts, walnuts, and apple trees, from which
• 1:30:51
  the apples were now gathering. Goats were abundant, also, a kind of
• 1:30:57
  small black cattle in the marshes near the river, which was now fast widening
• 1:31:01
  and running between larger flats from which the hills receded. More and more I
• 1:31:06
  saw a few sheep with rounded noses and enormous tails. Dogs were there in
• 1:31:11
  plenty, and very english, but I saw no cats, nor indeed are
• 1:31:15
  these creatures known, their place being supplied by a sort of small terrier.
• 1:31:19
  In about four hours of walking from the time we started, and after passing
• 1:31:23
  two or three more villages, we came upon a considerable town, and my
• 1:31:27
  guides made many attempts to make me understand something, but I gathered no inkling
• 1:31:31
  of their meaning, except that I need be under no apprehension of danger.
• 1:31:36
  I will spare the reader any description of the town, and would only bid
• 1:31:41
  him think of Damado, Sola or Fido. Suffice it that I found myself
• 1:31:45
  taken before the chief Magistrate, and by his orders, was placed in an
• 1:31:49
  apartment with two other people, who were the first I had seen looking anything
• 1:31:54
  but well and handsome. In fact, one of them was plainly very much
• 1:31:58
  out of health, and coughed violently from time to time in spite of manifest
• 1:32:01
  efforts to suppress it. The other looked pale and ill, but he was
• 1:32:05
  marvelously self contained, and it was impossible to say what was the matter with
• 1:32:10
  him. Both of them appeared astonished at seeing one who was evidently a stranger,
• 1:32:15
  but they were too ill to come up to me and form conclusions concerning
• 1:32:18
  me. These two were first called out, and in about a quarter of
• 1:32:21
  an hour I was made to follow them, which I did in some fear
• 1:32:26
  and with much curiosity. The chief Magistrate was a venerable looking man, with
• 1:32:30
  white hair and a beard, and a face of great sagacity. He looked
• 1:32:34
  me all over for about five minutes, letting his eyes wander from the crown
• 1:32:38
  of my head to the soles of my feet, up and down, and
• 1:32:42
  down and up. Neither did his mind seem in the least clearer when he
• 1:32:45
  had done looking than when he began. He at length asked me a single
• 1:32:49
  short question, which I supposed meant, who are you? I answered in
• 1:32:55
  English, quite composedly, as though he would understand me, and endeavored to
• 1:32:59
  be my very most natural self as well as I could. He appeared more
• 1:33:02
  and more puzzled, and then retired, returning with two others much like himself.
• 1:33:09
  They took me to an inner room, and the two fresh arrivals stripped
• 1:33:12
  me while the Chief looked on. They felt my pulse, They looked at
• 1:33:15
  my tongue, they listened at my chest, they felt all my muscles,
• 1:33:18
  and at the end of each operation they looked at the Chief and nodded and
• 1:33:23
  said something in a tone quite pleasant, as though I were all right.
• 1:33:27
  They even pulled down my eyelids and looked, I suppose to see if they
• 1:33:30
  were bloodshot, but it was not so. At length they gave up,
• 1:33:33
  and I think they were all satisfied of my being in the most perfect health
• 1:33:36
  and very robust to boot. At last, the old Magistrate made a speech
• 1:33:41
  of about five minutes long, which the other two appeared to think greatly to
• 1:33:44
  the point, but from which I gathered nothing. As soon as it was
• 1:33:48
  ended, they proceeded to overhaul my swag and the contents of my pockets.
• 1:33:53
  This gave me little uneasiness, for I had no money with me, nor
• 1:33:56
  anything which they were at all likely to want, or which I cared about
• 1:34:00
  losing. At least I fancied so, but I soon found my mistake.
• 1:34:05
  They got uncomfortably. At first, though, they were much puzzled with my
• 1:34:09
  tobacco pipe, and insisted on seeing me use it. When I had shown
• 1:34:13
  them what I did with it, they were astonished, but not displeased,
• 1:34:15
  and seemed to like the smell. But by and by they came to my
• 1:34:19
  watch, which I had hidden away in the inmost pocket that I had and
• 1:34:23
  had forgotten. When they began their search, they seemed concerned and uneasy.
• 1:34:28
  As soon as they got hold of it. They then made me open it
• 1:34:30
  and show the works, and when I had done so, they gave signs
• 1:34:33
  of very grave displeasure, which disturbed me all the more because I could not
• 1:34:38
  conceive wherein it could have offended them. I remember that when they first found
• 1:34:43
  it, I had thought of Paley and how he tells us that a savage,
• 1:34:45
  on seeing a watch would at once conclude that it was designed. True,
• 1:34:49
  these people were not savages, but I nonetheless felt sure that this was
• 1:34:54
  the conclusion they would arrive at. And I was thinking what a wonderfully wise
• 1:34:57
  man Archbishop Paley must have been, when I was aroused by a look of
• 1:35:00
  horror and dismay upon the face of the magistrate, a look which conveyed to
• 1:35:04
  me the impression that he regarded my watch not as having been designed, but
• 1:35:09
  rather as the designer of himself and of the universe, or as at any
• 1:35:13
  rate, one of the great first causes of all things. Then it struck
• 1:35:17
  me that this view was quite as likely to be taken as the other by
• 1:35:20
  a people who had no experience of European civilization, and I was a little
• 1:35:25
  piqued with Paley for having led me so much astray. But I soon discovered
• 1:35:29
  that I had misinterpreted the expression on the magistrate's face, and that it was
• 1:35:33
  not one of fear but hatred. He spoke to me solemnly and sternly for
• 1:35:38
  two or three minutes, Then, reflecting that this was of no use,
• 1:35:42
  he caused me to be conducted through several passages into a large room, which
• 1:35:45
  I afterwards found was the museum of the town, and wherein I beheld a
• 1:35:49
  sight which astonished me more than anything that I had yet seen. It was
• 1:35:54
  filled with cases containing all manner of curiosities, such as skeletons, stuffed birds
• 1:35:59
  and animals, carvings of stone, whereof I saw several that were like those
• 1:36:02
  on the saddle, only smaller. But the greater part of the room was
• 1:36:06
  occupied by broken machinery of all descriptions. The larger specimens had a case to
• 1:36:12
  themselves, and tickets with writing on them in a character which I could not
• 1:36:15
  understand. There were fragments of steam engines, all broken and rusted. Among
• 1:36:21
  them, I saw a cylinder and a piston, a broken flywheel, and
• 1:36:25
  part of a crank, which was laid on the ground by their side.
• 1:36:28
  Again, there was a very old carriage, whose wheels, in spite of
• 1:36:30
  rust and decay, I could see, had been designed originally for iron rails.
• 1:36:35
  Indeed, there were fragments of a great many of our own most advanced
• 1:36:39
  inventions. But they seemed all to be several hundred years old, and to
• 1:36:43
  be placed where they were not for instruction but curiosity. As I said before,
• 1:36:46
  all were marred and broken. We passed many cases, and at last
• 1:36:51
  came to one in which there were several clocks and two or three old watches.
• 1:36:56
  Here the magistrate stopped, and, opening the case, began comparing my
• 1:36:59
  watch with the others. The design was different, but the thing was clearly
• 1:37:02
  the same. On this he turned to me and made a speech in a
• 1:37:06
  severe and injured tone of voice, pointing repeatedly to the watches in the case
• 1:37:11
  and to my own. Neither did he seem in the least appeased, until
• 1:37:15
  I made signs to him that he had better take my watch and put it
• 1:37:16
  with the others. This had some effect in calming him. I said,
• 1:37:21
  in English, trusting to tone and manner to convey my meaning, that I
• 1:37:26
  was exceedingly sorry if I had been found to have anything contraband in my possession,
• 1:37:30
  that I had had no intention of evading the ordinary tolls, and that
• 1:37:34
  I would gladly forfeit the watch if my doing so would atone for the unintentional
• 1:37:39
  violation of the law. He began presently to relent, and spoke to me
• 1:37:44
  in a kinder manner. I think he saw that I had offended without knowledge,
• 1:37:47
  But I believe the chief thing that brought him round was my not seeming
• 1:37:50
  to be afraid of him, although I was quite respectful, this in my
• 1:37:56
  having light hair and complexion, on which he remarked previously by signs, as
• 1:37:59
  every one else had done. I afterwards found that it was reckoned to very
• 1:38:03
  great merit to have fair hair, this being a thing of the rarest possible
• 1:38:08
  occurrence, and greatly admired and envied in all who were possessed of it,
• 1:38:13
  however that might be. My watch was taken from me, but our peace
• 1:38:15
  was made, and I was conducted back to the room where I had been
• 1:38:18
  examined. The magistrate then made me another speech, whereon I was taken to
• 1:38:23
  a building hard by which I soon discovered to be the common prison of the
• 1:38:27
  town, but in which an apartment was assigned me separate from the other prisoners.
• 1:38:31
  The room contained a bed, table and chairs, also a fireplace and
• 1:38:35
  a washing stand. There was another door which opened on to a balcony with
• 1:38:40
  a flight of steps descending into a walled garden of some size. The man
• 1:38:45
  who conducted me into this room made signs to me that I might go down
• 1:38:48
  and walk in the garden whenever I pleased, and intimated that I should shortly
• 1:38:53
  have something brought me to eat. I was allowed to retain my blankets and
• 1:38:57
  the few things which I had wrapped inside them. But it was plain that
• 1:39:00
  I was to consider myself a prisoner for how long a period I could not
• 1:39:03
  by any means determined. He then left me alone end of chapter seven,
• 1:39:11
  Chapter eight in prison, and now, for the first time, my courage
• 1:39:16
  completely failed me. It is enough to say that I was penniless and a
• 1:39:21
  prisoner in a foreign country, where I had no friend nor any knowledge of
• 1:39:26
  the customs or language of the people. I was at the mercy of men
• 1:39:30
  with whom I had little in common, And yet engrossed as I was with
• 1:39:34
  my extremely difficult and doubtful position, I could not help feeling deeply interested in
• 1:39:39
  the people among whom I had fallen. What was the meaning of that room
• 1:39:44
  of old machinery which I had just seen, and of the displeasure with which
• 1:39:47
  the magistrate had regarded my watch. The people had very little machinery. Now
• 1:39:54
  I had been struck with this over and over again, though I had not
• 1:39:57
  been more than four and twenty hours in the country. They were about as
• 1:40:01
  far advanced as Europeans of the twelfth or thirteenth century, certainly not more so.
• 1:40:08
  And yet they must have had at one time the fullest knowledge of our
• 1:40:12
  own most recent inventions. How could it have happened that, having been once
• 1:40:16
  so far in advance, they were now as much behind us. It was
• 1:40:20
  evident that it was not from ignorance. They knew my watch as a watch
• 1:40:26
  when they saw it, and the care with which the broken machines were preserved
• 1:40:29
  and ticketed proved that they had not lost the recollection of their former civilization.
• 1:40:34
  The more I thought, the less I could understand it. But at last
• 1:40:38
  I concluded that they must have worked out their mines of coal and iron till
• 1:40:42
  either none were left, or so few that the use of these metals was
• 1:40:45
  restricted to the very highest nobility. This was the only solution I could think
• 1:40:50
  of, And though I afterwards found how entirely mistaken I was, I felt
• 1:40:56
  quite sure then that it must be the right one. I had hardly arrived
• 1:41:00
  at this opinion for above four or five minutes when the door opened and a
• 1:41:05
  young woman made her appearance with a tray and a very appetizing smell of dinner.
• 1:41:11
  I gazed upon her with admiration as she laid a cloth and set a
• 1:41:15
  savory looking dish upon the table. As I beheld her, I felt as
• 1:41:18
  though my position was already much ameliorated, for the very sight of her carried
• 1:41:24
  great comfort. She was not more than twenty rather above the middle height,
• 1:41:29
  active and strong, but yet most delicately featured. Her lips were full and
• 1:41:34
  sweet. Her eyes were of a deep hazel, unfringed with long and springing
• 1:41:39
  eyelashes. Her hair was neatly braided from off her forehead. Her complexion was
• 1:41:45
  simply exquisite, her figure as robust as was consistent with the most perfect female
• 1:41:50
  beauty, yet not more so. Her hands and feet might have served as
• 1:41:56
  models to a sculptor. Having set the stew upon the table, she retired
• 1:42:00
  with a glance of pity, whereon, remembering pity's kinsman, I decided that
• 1:42:05
  she should pity me a little more. She returned with a bottle and a
• 1:42:10
  glass and found me sitting on the bed with my hands over my face,
• 1:42:14
  looking the very picture of abject misery, and, like all pictures, rather
• 1:42:19
  untruthful. As I watched her threw my fingers out of the room again,
• 1:42:25
  I felt sure that she was exceedingly sorry for me, her back being turned,
• 1:42:30
  I set to work and ate my dinner, which was excellent. She
• 1:42:34
  returned in about an hour to take away, and there came with her a
• 1:42:38
  man who had a great bunch of keys at his waist, and whose manner
• 1:42:42
  convinced me that he was the jailer. I afterwards found that he was father
• 1:42:46
  to the beautiful creature who had brought me my dinner. I am not a
• 1:42:50
  much greater hypocrite than other people, and do what I would, I could
• 1:42:54
  not look so very miserable. I had already recovered from my dejection and felt
• 1:43:00
  in a most genial humor both with my jailer and his daughter. I thanked
• 1:43:04
  them for all their attention towards me, And though they could not understand,
• 1:43:10
  they looked at one another and laughed and chattered till the old man said something
• 1:43:13
  or other, which I suppose was a joke, for the girl laughed merrily
• 1:43:16
  and ran away, leaving her father to take away the dinner things. Then
• 1:43:21
  I had another visitor, who was not so prepossessing, and who seemed to
• 1:43:26
  have a great idea of himself and a small one of me. He brought
• 1:43:29
  a book with him, and pens and paper, all very English, and
• 1:43:32
  yet neither paper nor printing, nor binding, nor pen nor ink were quite
• 1:43:38
  the same as ours. He gave me to understand that he was to teach
• 1:43:43
  me the language, and that we were to begin at once. This delighted
• 1:43:46
  me, both because I should be more comfortable when I could understand and make
• 1:43:50
  myself understood, and because I supposed that the authorities would hardly teach me the
• 1:43:56
  language if they intended any cruel usage toward me. Afterwards, we began at
• 1:44:00
  once, and I learned the names of everything in the room, and also
• 1:44:03
  the numerals and personal pronouns. I found, to my sorrow the resemblance to
• 1:44:09
  European things which I had so frequently observed hitherto, did not hold good in
• 1:44:14
  the matter of language, for I could detect no analogy whatever between this and
• 1:44:17
  any tongue of which I have the slightest knowledge, A thing which made me
• 1:44:21
  think it possible that I might be learning Hebrew. I must detail no longer.
• 1:44:27
  From this time my days were spent with a monotony which would have been
• 1:44:30
  tedious but for the society of Iram, the jailer's daughter, who had taken
• 1:44:34
  a great fancy for me and treated me with the utmost kindness. The man
• 1:44:40
  came every day to teach me the language, but my real dictionary and grammar
• 1:44:44
  were Iram, and I consulted them to such purpose that I made the most
• 1:44:46
  extraordinary progress, being able at the end of a month to understand a great
• 1:44:51
  deal of the conversation which I overheard between Erm and her father. My teacher
• 1:44:58
  professed himself well satisfied, and said he should make a favorable report of me
• 1:45:01
  to the authorities. I then questioned him as to what would probably be done
• 1:45:05
  with me. He told me that my arrival had caused great excitement throughout the
• 1:45:11
  country, and that I was to be detained a close prisoner until the receipt
• 1:45:15
  of advices from the government. My having had a watch, he said,
• 1:45:17
  was the only damaging feature in the case. And then, in answer to
• 1:45:21
  my asking why this should be so, he gave me a long story of
• 1:45:26
  which with my imperfect knowledge of the language. I could make nothing whatever,
• 1:45:30
  except that it was a very heinous offense, almost as bad. At least
• 1:45:34
  so I thought. I understood him as having typhus fever, but he said
• 1:45:39
  he thought my light hair would save me. I was allowed to walk in
• 1:45:43
  the garden. There was a high wall, so that I managed to play
• 1:45:45
  a sort of hand fives, which prevented my feeling the bad effects of my
• 1:45:48
  confinement, though it was stupid work playing alone. In the course of time,
• 1:45:55
  people from the town and neighborhood began to pester the jailer to be allowed
• 1:45:58
  to see me, and, receiving handsome fees, he let them do so.
• 1:46:02
  The people were good to me, almost too good, for they were
• 1:46:05
  inclined to make a lion of me, which I hated. At least the
• 1:46:10
  women were only they had to beware of Iram, who was a young lady
• 1:46:14
  of a jealous temperament, and kept a sharp eye both on me and on
• 1:46:17
  my lady visitors. However, I felt so kindly towards her, and was
• 1:46:21
  so entirely dependent upon her for almost all that made my life a blessing and
• 1:46:26
  a comfort to me, that I took good care not to vex her,
• 1:46:29
  and we remained excellent friends. The men were far less inquisitive, and would
• 1:46:34
  not, I believe, have come near me of their own accord, but
• 1:46:38
  the women made them come as escorts. I was delighted with their handsome mien
• 1:46:43
  and pleasant, genial manners. My food was plain, but always varied and
• 1:46:47
  wholesome, and the good red wine was admirable. I had found a sort
• 1:46:51
  of wart in the garden, which I sweated in heaps and then dried,
• 1:46:56
  obtaining thus a substitute for tobacco. So that, what with iram the language
• 1:47:00
  visitors fives in the garden, smoking and bed, my time slipped by more
• 1:47:06
  rapidly and pleasantly than might have been expected. I also made myself a small
• 1:47:12
  flute, and, being a tolerable player, amused myself at times of playing
• 1:47:16
  snatches from operas and airs such as Aware and Aware and Home Sweet Home.
• 1:47:21
  This was of great advantage to me, for the people of the country were
• 1:47:25
  ignorant of the diatonic scale and could hardly believe their ears on hearing some of
• 1:47:29
  our most common melodies. Often, too, they would make me sing,
• 1:47:33
  and I could at any time make IRM's eyes swim with tears by singing.
• 1:47:36
  Wilkins and his dinah Billy Taylor, the Ratcatcher's daughter, or as much of
• 1:47:42
  them as I could remember. I had one or two discussions with them,
• 1:47:46
  because I never would sing on Sunday, of which I kept count in my
• 1:47:49
  pocket book, except Chance and Hem tunes. Of these I regret to say
• 1:47:54
  that I had forgotten the words, so that I could only sing the tune.
• 1:47:59
  They appeared to have low or no religious feeling, and to have never
• 1:48:01
  so much as heard of the divine institution of the Sabbath. So they ascribed
• 1:48:05
  my observance of it to a fit of sulkiness, which they remarked as coming
• 1:48:10
  over me upon every seventh day. But they were very tolerant, and one
• 1:48:15
  of them said to me quite kindly, that she knew how impossible it was
• 1:48:17
  to help being sulky at times. Only she thought I ought to see someone
• 1:48:21
  if it became more serious, a piece of advice which I then failed to
• 1:48:26
  understand, though I pretended to take it quite as a matter of course.
• 1:48:30
  Only once did Ram treat me in a way that was unkind and unreasonable,
• 1:48:34
  at least so I thought at the time it happened. Thus, I had
• 1:48:40
  been playing fives in the garden and got much heated. Although the day was
• 1:48:44
  cold, for autumn was now advancing and cold Harbor, as the name of
• 1:48:47
  the town in which my prison was should be translated, stood fully three thousand
• 1:48:51
  feet above the sea. I had played without my coat and waistcoat, and
• 1:48:56
  took a sharp chill on resting myself too long in the open air without protect
• 1:49:00
  The next day I had a severe cold and felt really poorly, being little
• 1:49:06
  used even to the lightest ailments, and thinking that it would be rather nice
• 1:49:10
  to be petted and causeted by Iram. I certainly did not make myself out
• 1:49:14
  to be any better than I was. In fact, I remember that I
• 1:49:17
  made the worst of things, and took it into my head to consider myself
• 1:49:20
  upon the sick list. When rab brought me at my breakfast, I complained
• 1:49:26
  somewhat dolefully of my indisposition, expecting the sympathy and humoring which I should have
• 1:49:30
  received from my mother and sisters at home, not a bit of it.
• 1:49:34
  She fired up in an instant and asked me what I meant by it,
• 1:49:39
  and how I dared to presume to mention such a thing, especially when I
• 1:49:42
  considered in what place I was. She had the best mind to tell her
• 1:49:45
  father, only that she was afraid the consequences would be so very serious for
• 1:49:49
  me. Her manner was so injured and decided, and her anger so evidently
• 1:49:55
  unfeigned, that I forgot my cold upon the spot, begging her by all
• 1:49:59
  means to tell her fe she wished to do so, and telling her that
• 1:50:01
  I had no idea of being shielded by her from anything whatever. Presently mollifying,
• 1:50:08
  after having said as many biting things as I could, I asked her
• 1:50:11
  what it was that I had done amiss, and promised amendment as soon as
• 1:50:15
  ever I became aware of it. She saw that I was really ignorant and
• 1:50:18
  had had no intention of being rude to her. Whereon it came out that
• 1:50:23
  illness of any sort was considered an Irewan to be highly criminal and immoral,
• 1:50:28
  and that I was liable even for catching cold, to be had up before
• 1:50:31
  the magistrates and imprisoned for considerable period, an announcement which struck me dumb with
• 1:50:36
  astonishment. I followed up the conversation as well as my imperfect knowledge of the
• 1:50:43
  language would allow, and caught a glimmering of her position with regard to ill
• 1:50:46
  health. But I did not even then fully comprehend it, nor had I
• 1:50:51
  as yet any idea of the other extraordinary perversions of thought which existed among the
• 1:50:57
  Irewhanians, but with which I was soon to be come familiar. I proposed,
• 1:51:01
  therefore, to make no mention of what passed between us on this occasion,
• 1:51:05
  save that we were reconciled, and that she brought me surreptitiously a hot
• 1:51:10
  glass of spirits and water before I went to bed, as also a pile
• 1:51:15
  of extra blankets, and that next morning I was quite well. I never
• 1:51:19
  remembered to have lost a cold so rapidly. This little affair explained much of
• 1:51:25
  what had hitherto puzzled me. It seemed that the two men who were examined
• 1:51:29
  before the magistrates on the day of my arrival in the country had been given
• 1:51:32
  in charge on account of ill health, and were both condemned to a long
• 1:51:35
  term of imprisonment with hard labor. They were now expiating their offense in this
• 1:51:41
  very prison, and their exercise ground was a yard separated by my five's wall
• 1:51:45
  from the garden in which I walked. This accounted for the sounds of coughing
• 1:51:48
  and groaning, which I had often noticed as coming from the other side of
• 1:51:51
  the wall. It was high, and I had not dared to climate for
• 1:51:56
  fear the jailer should see me and think that I was trying to escape.
• 1:52:00
  But I had often wondered what sort of people could be on the other side,
• 1:52:02
  and had resolved on asking the jailer. But I seldom saw him,
• 1:52:06
  and Iram and I generally found other things to talk about. Another month flew
• 1:52:12
  by, during which I made such progress in the language that I could understand
• 1:52:15
  all that was said to me and expressed myself with tolerable fluency. My instructor
• 1:52:20
  professed to be astonished with the progress I had made. I was careful to
• 1:52:25
  attribute it to the pains he had taken with me, and to his admirable
• 1:52:29
  method of explaining my difficulties. So we became excellent friends. My visitors became
• 1:52:34
  more and more frequent. Among them, there were some, both men and
• 1:52:38
  women, who delighted me entirely by their simplicity on consciousness of self, kindly
• 1:52:44
  genial manners, and last but not least, by their exquisite beauty. There
• 1:52:48
  came others, less well bred, but still comely, and agreeable people,
• 1:52:53
  while some were snobs, pure and simple. At the end of the third
• 1:52:57
  month, the jailer and my instructor came together to me and told me that
• 1:53:00
  communications had been received from the government to the effect that if I had behaved
• 1:53:04
  well and seemed generally reasonable, and if there could be no suspicion at all
• 1:53:09
  but my bodily health and vigor, and if my hair was really light and
• 1:53:13
  my eyes blue and complexion fresh, I was to be sent up at once
• 1:53:16
  to the metropolis in order that the King and Queen might see me and converse
• 1:53:19
  with me, but that when I arrived there, I should be set at
• 1:53:23
  liberty, and a suitable allowance would be made me. My teacher also told
• 1:53:28
  me that one of the leading merchants had sent me an invitation to repair to
• 1:53:31
  his house, and to consider myself his guest for as long a time as
• 1:53:34
  I chose. He is a delightful man, continued the interpreter, but has
• 1:53:39
  suffered terribly. From here came a long word which I could not quite catch.
• 1:53:44
  Only it was much longer than kleptomania, and had but lately recovered from
• 1:53:48
  embezzling a large sum of money under singularly distressing circumstances. But he has quite
• 1:53:54
  got over it, and the straighteners say that he has made a really wonderful
• 1:53:57
  recovery. You are sure to like him. End of Chapter eight, Chapter
• 1:54:03
  nine to the Metropolis, with the above words, The good man left the
• 1:54:11
  room before I had time to express my astonishment in hearing such extraordinary language from
• 1:54:15
  the lips of one who seemed to be a reputable member of society. In
• 1:54:19
  bezel a large sum of money under singularly distressing circumstances, I exclaimed to myself,
• 1:54:26
  and asked me to go and stay with him. I shall do nothing
• 1:54:29
  of this sort, compromise myself with the very outset in the eyes of all
• 1:54:32
  decent people, and give the death blow to my chances of either converting them
• 1:54:36
  if they are the lost tribes of Israel, or making money out of them
• 1:54:41
  if they're not. No, I will do anything rather than that. And
• 1:54:45
  when I next saw my teacher, I told him that I did not at
• 1:54:47
  all like the sound of what had been proposed for me, and that I
• 1:54:50
  would have nothing to do with it, for by my education and the example
• 1:54:57
  of my own parents, and I trust also in some degree from inborn instinct.
• 1:55:00
  I have a very genuine dislike for all unhandsome dealings in money matters,
• 1:55:05
  though none can have a greater regard for money than I have, if it
• 1:55:09
  be got fairly. The interpreter was much surprised by my answer, and said
• 1:55:15
  that I should be very foolish if I persisted in my refusal. Mister Nosnibor,
• 1:55:20
  he continued, is a man of at least five hundred thousand horse power.
• 1:55:26
  For their way of recogonying and classifying men is by the number of foot
• 1:55:29
  pounds which they have money enough to raise, or more roughly, by their
• 1:55:33
  horse power, and keeps a capital table. Besides, his two daughters are
• 1:55:39
  among the most beautiful women in Irawan. When I heard all this, I
• 1:55:43
  confess that I was much shaken and inquired whether he was favorably considered in the
• 1:55:46
  best society. Certainly was the answer. No man in the country stands higher.
• 1:55:54
  He then went on to say that one would have thought, for my
• 1:55:56
  manner that my proposed host had had jaundice or plural been generally unfortunate, and
• 1:56:01
  that I was in fear of infection. I am not much afraid of infection,
• 1:56:05
  said I impatiently, But I have some regard for my character. And
• 1:56:10
  if I know a man to be an embezzler of other people's money, be
• 1:56:13
  sure of it, I will give him as wide a birth as I can
• 1:56:16
  if he were ill or poor. Ill or poor, interrupted the interpreter with
• 1:56:20
  a face of great alarm. So that's your notion of propriety. You would
• 1:56:25
  concern with the basest criminals, and yet deemed simple embezzlement a bar to friendly
• 1:56:30
  intercourse. I cannot understand you, but I am poor myself, cried I.
• 1:56:34
  You were, said he and you were liable to be severely punished for
• 1:56:39
  it. Indeed, at the council which was held concerning you, this fact
• 1:56:44
  was very nearly consigning you to what I should myself consider a well deserved chastisement,
• 1:56:48
  for he was getting angry, and so was I. But the Queen
• 1:56:53
  was so inquisitive and wanted so much to see you, that she petitioned the
• 1:56:56
  King and made him give you his pardon and assign you a pen and consideration
• 1:57:00
  of your meritorious complexion. It is lucky for you that he has not heard
• 1:57:04
  what you've been saying now, or he would be sure to cancel it.
• 1:57:09
  As I heard these words, my heart sank within me. I felt the
• 1:57:12
  extreme difficulty of my position, and how wicked I should be in running counter
• 1:57:15
  to the established usage. I remained silent for several minutes, and then said
• 1:57:21
  that I should be happy to accept the embezzler's invitation, on which my instructor
• 1:57:27
  brightened and said I was a sensible fellow. But I felt very uncomfortable.
• 1:57:32
  When he had left the room, I mused over the conversation which had just
• 1:57:35
  taken place between us, but I could make nothing out of it except that
• 1:57:40
  it argued an even greater perversity of mental vision than I had yet been prepared
• 1:57:44
  for. And this made me wretched, for I cannot bear having much to
• 1:57:47
  do with people who think differently from myself. All sorts of wandering thoughts kept
• 1:57:53
  coming into my head. I thought of my master's hut and my seat upon
• 1:57:58
  the mountain side, where I had first conceived the insane idea of exploring what
• 1:58:01
  years and years seemed to have passed since I had begun my journey. I
• 1:58:06
  thought of my adventures in the gorge and on the journey hither, and of
• 1:58:10
  Chawbach. I wondered what Chawbach told him about me. When he got back.
• 1:58:14
  He had done well in going back Chawbach had he was not handsome,
• 1:58:17
  Nay, he was hideous, and it would have gone hardly with him.
• 1:58:21
  Twilight drew on and rain pattered against the windows. Never yet had I felt
• 1:58:27
  so unhappy, except during three days of seasickness. At the beginning of my
• 1:58:30
  voyage from England. I sat musing and in a great melancholy until Ram made
• 1:58:35
  her appearance with light and supper. She, too, poor girl, was
• 1:58:40
  miserable, for she had heard that I was to leave them. She had
• 1:58:43
  made up her mind that I was to remain always in the town even after
• 1:58:45
  my imprisonment was over, and I fancy had resolved to marry me, though
• 1:58:49
  I had never so much as hinted at her doing so. So, what
• 1:58:53
  with the distressingly strange conversation with my teacher, my own friendless condition, and
• 1:58:59
  Iram's meling, I felt more unhappy than I can describe, and remained so
• 1:59:03
  till I got to bed and sleep sealed my eyelids. On awaking next morning,
• 1:59:09
  I was much better. It was settled that I was to make my
• 1:59:12
  start in a conveyance, which was to be waiting for me at eleven o'clock,
• 1:59:15
  and the anticipation of change put me in good spirits which even the tearful
• 1:59:19
  face of erm could hardly altogether derange. I kissed her again, and again
• 1:59:25
  assured her that we should meet hereafter, and that in the meanwhile I should
• 1:59:29
  be ever mindful of her kindness. I gave her two of the buttons off
• 1:59:32
  my coat and a lock of my hair as a keepsake, taking a goodly
• 1:59:35
  curl from her own beautiful head in return, And so having said good bye
• 1:59:40
  a hundred times till I was fairly overcome with her great sweetness and her sorrow,
• 1:59:45
  I tore myself away from her and got downstairs to the calesh which was
• 1:59:48
  in waiting. How thankful I was when it was all over, and I
• 1:59:51
  was driven away and out of sight. Would that I could have felt that
• 1:59:56
  it was out of mind. Also, pray Heaven that it is so now,
• 2:00:00
  and that she is married happily among her own people, and has forgotten
• 2:00:02
  me, And now began a long and tedious journey with which I should hardly
• 2:00:08
  trouble the reader if I could. He is safe, however, for the
• 2:00:11
  simple reason that I was blindfolded during the Greater part of the time. A
• 2:00:15
  bandage was put upon my eyes every morning, and was only removed at night
• 2:00:18
  when I reached the inn at which we were to pass the night. We
• 2:00:23
  traveled slowly, although the roads were good. We drove but one horse,
• 2:00:26
  which took us our day's journey from morning till evening about six hours, exclusive
• 2:00:30
  of two hours rest in the middle of the day. I do not suppose
• 2:00:33
  we made above thirty or thirty five miles on average each day we had a
• 2:00:38
  fresh horse. As I have said already, I could see nothing of the
• 2:00:42
  country. I only knew that it was level, and that several times we
• 2:00:45
  had to cross large rivers and ferry boats. The inns were clean and comfortable.
• 2:00:49
  In one or two of the larger towns, they were quite sumptuous,
• 2:00:51
  and the food was good and well cooked. The same wonderful health and grace
• 2:00:56
  and beauty prevailed everywhere. I found myself an object of great interest, so
• 2:01:00
  much so that the driver told me he had to keep our route secret,
• 2:01:04
  and at times to go places that were not directly on our road, in
• 2:01:09
  order to avoid the press that would otherwise have awaited us. Every evening I
• 2:01:14
  had a reception and grew heartily tired of having to say the same things over
• 2:01:16
  and over again in answer to the same questions. But it was impossible to
• 2:01:20
  be angry with people whose manners were so delightful. They never once asked after
• 2:01:26
  my health or even whether I was fatigued with my journey. But their first
• 2:01:30
  question was almost invariably an inquiry after my temper, the naivete of which astonished
• 2:01:34
  me till I became used to it. One day, being tired and cold
• 2:01:39
  and weary of saying the same thing over and over again, I turned a
• 2:01:42
  little brusquely on my question her and said that I was exceedingly cross, and
• 2:01:46
  that I could hardly feel in a worse humor with myself and everyone else than
• 2:01:50
  at that moment. To my surprise, I was met with the kindest expressions
• 2:01:55
  of condolence, and heard it buzzed about the room that I was in an
• 2:01:58
  ill temper, whereon people began to give me nice things to smell and eat,
• 2:02:01
  which really did seem to have some temper mending quality about them, for
• 2:02:04
  I soon felt pleased and was at once congratulated upon being better. The next
• 2:02:10
  morning, two or three people sent their servants to the hotel of sweetmeats,
• 2:02:13
  and inquiries whether I had quite recovered from my ill humor. On receiving the
• 2:02:17
  good things, I felt in half a mind to be ill tempered every evening.
• 2:02:21
  But I disliked the condolences and the inquiries, and found it most comfortable
• 2:02:26
  to keep my natural temper, which is smooth enough. Generally, among those
• 2:02:30
  who came to visit me were some who had received a liberal education at the
• 2:02:32
  colleges of Unreason, and taken the highest degrees in hypothetics, which are their
• 2:02:39
  principal study. These gentlemen had now settled down to various employments in the country
• 2:02:45
  as straighteners, managers and cashiers of the musical banks, priests of religion or
• 2:02:49
  what not, and carrying their education with them. They diffused eleven of culture
• 2:02:54
  throughout the country. I naturally questioned them about many of the things which had
• 2:02:58
  puzzled me since my I inquired what was the object and meaning of the statues
• 2:03:02
  which I had seen upon the plateau of the past. I was told that
• 2:03:06
  they dated from a very remote period, and that there were several other such
• 2:03:11
  groups in the country, but none so remarkable as the one which I had
• 2:03:14
  seen. They had a religious origin, having been designed to propitiate the gods
• 2:03:18
  of deformity and disease. In former times, it had been the custom to
• 2:03:24
  make expeditions over the ranges and capture the ugliest of Chowboch's ancestors whom they could
• 2:03:29
  find, in order to sacrifice them in the presence of these deities, and
• 2:03:31
  thus avert ugliness and disease from the Irewhanians themselves. It had been whispered,
• 2:03:38
  but my informant assured me untruly that centuries ago they had even offered up some
• 2:03:42
  of their own people who were ugly or out of health, in order to
• 2:03:45
  make examples of them. These detestable customs, however, had been long discontinued.
• 2:03:50
  Neither was there any present observance of the statues. I had the curiosity
• 2:03:56
  to inquire what would be done to any of Chowboch's tribe if they crossed over
• 2:04:00
  into Irewan. I was told that nobody knew, inasmuch as such a thing
• 2:04:03
  had not happened for ages. They would be too ugly to be allowed to
• 2:04:08
  go at large, but not so much as to be criminally liable. Their
• 2:04:12
  offense in having come would be a moral one, but they would be beyond
• 2:04:15
  the Straightener's art. Possibly they would be consigned to the Hospital of incurable boers
• 2:04:20
  and made to work at being bored for so many hours a day by the
• 2:04:24
  Irewanian inhabitants of the hospital, who are extremely impatient of one another's boredom,
• 2:04:30
  but would soon die if they had no one whom they might bore. In
• 2:04:33
  fact, that they would be kept as professional borees. When I heard this,
• 2:04:38
  it occurred to me that some rumors of its substance might perhaps have become
• 2:04:42
  current among Chauboch's people, for the agony of his fear had been too great
• 2:04:45
  to have been inspired by the mere dread of being burnt alive. Before the
• 2:04:48
  statues. I also questioned them about the museum of old machines and the cause
• 2:04:54
  of the apparent retrogression in all arts, sciences, and inventions. Learned that
• 2:05:00
  about four hundred years previously, the state of mechanical knowledge was far beyond our
• 2:05:03
  own, and was advancing with prodigious rapidity, until one of the most learned
• 2:05:08
  professors of hypothetics wrote an extraordinary book from which I proposed to give extracts later
• 2:05:13
  on, proving that the machines were ultimately destined to supplant the race of man,
• 2:05:17
  and to become instinct with a vitality as different from and superior to that
• 2:05:23
  of animals, as animal to vegetable life. So convincing was his reasoning or
• 2:05:28
  unreasoning to this effect, that he carried the country with him, and they
• 2:05:31
  made a clean sweep of all machinery that had not been in use for more
• 2:05:35
  than two hundred seventy one years, which period was arrived at after a series
• 2:05:41
  of compromises, and strictly forbade all further improvements and inventions under pain of being
• 2:05:45
  considered, in the eye of the law, to be laboring under typhus fever,
• 2:05:49
  which they regard as one of the worst of all crimes. This is
• 2:05:54
  the only case in which they have confounded mental and physical diseases, and they
• 2:05:58
  do it even here as an avowed legal fiction. I became uneasy when I
• 2:06:01
  remembered about my watch, but they comforted me with the assurance that transgression in
• 2:06:05
  this matter was now so unheard of that the law could afford to be lenient
• 2:06:11
  towards an utter stranger, especially towards one who had such a good character.
• 2:06:15
  They meant physique and such beautiful light hair Moreover, the watch was a real
• 2:06:19
  curiosity and would be a welcome addition to the metropolitan collection. So they did
• 2:06:24
  not think I need let it trouble me seriously. I will write, however,
• 2:06:29
  more fully upon this subject when I deal with the Colleges of Unreason and
• 2:06:32
  the Book of the Machines. In about a month from the time of our
• 2:06:36
  starting, I was told that our journey was nearly over. The bandage was
• 2:06:41
  now dispensed with, for it seemed impossible that I should ever be able to
• 2:06:45
  find my way back without being captured. Then we rolled merrily along the streets
• 2:06:49
  of a handsome town and got onto a long, broad and level road with
• 2:06:55
  poplar trees on either side. The road was raised slightly above the round in
• 2:07:00
  country, and had formerly been a railway. The fields on either side were
• 2:07:03
  in the highest conceivable cultivation, but the harvest and also the vintage had already
• 2:07:08
  been gathered. The weather had got cooler, more rapidly than could be quite
• 2:07:13
  accounted for by the progress of the season, so I rather thought we must
• 2:07:15
  have been making away from the sun, and were some degrees farther from the
• 2:07:19
  equator than when we started. Even here the vegetation showed that the climate was
• 2:07:25
  a hot one, yet there was no lack of vigor among the people.
• 2:07:29
  On the contrary, they were a very hearty race and capable of great endurance.
• 2:07:32
  For the hundredth time, I thought that take them all round. I
• 2:07:36
  had never seen their equals in respective physique, and they looked as good natured
• 2:07:40
  as they were robust. The flowers were, for the most part over,
• 2:07:45
  but their absence was in some measure compensated for by a profusion of delicious fruit,
• 2:07:49
  closely resembling the figs, peaches, and pears of Italy and France.
• 2:07:54
  I saw no wild animals, but birds were plentiful, as much as in
• 2:07:57
  Europe, but not tame as they had been on the other side of the
• 2:08:00
  ranges. They were shot at with the crossbow and with arrows, gunpowder being
• 2:08:03
  unknown, or at any rate, not in use. We were now nearing
• 2:08:09
  the metropolis, and I could see great towers and fortifications, and lofty buildings
• 2:08:13
  that looked like palaces. I began to be nervous as to my reception,
• 2:08:18
  but I had got on very well so far, and resolved to continue upon
• 2:08:22
  the same plan as hitherto, namely, to behave just as though I were
• 2:08:26
  in England, until I saw that I was making a blunder, and then
• 2:08:30
  to say nothing till I could gather how the land lay. We drew nearer
• 2:08:33
  and nearer. The news of my approach had got abroad, and there was
• 2:08:37
  a great crowd collected on either side of the road, who greeted me with
• 2:08:41
  marks of most respectful curiosity, keeping me bowing constantly in acknowledgment from side to
• 2:08:48
  side. When we were about a mile off, we were met by the
• 2:08:50
  mayor and several councilors, among whom was a venerable old man who was introduced
• 2:08:56
  to me by the mayor. For so I suppose I should call him as
• 2:09:00
  the gentleman who had invited me to his house. I bowed deeply and told
• 2:09:03
  him how grateful I felt to him, and how gladly I would accept his
• 2:09:07
  hospitality. He forbade me to say morn, pointing to his carriage, which
• 2:09:11
  was close at hand. He motioned me to a seat therein Igain. Bowed
• 2:09:16
  profoundly to the mayor and councilors, and drove off with my entertainer, whose
• 2:09:20
  name was Senoj Nosnibor. After about half a mile, the carriage turned off
• 2:09:24
  the main road, and we drove under the walls of the town till we
• 2:09:28
  reached a palazzo on a slight eminence and just on the outskirts of the city.
• 2:09:33
  This was sinoj Nosnibor's house, and nothing can be imagined finer. It
• 2:09:37
  was situated near the magnificent and venerable ruins of the old railway station, which
• 2:09:43
  formed an imposing feature from the gardens of the house. The grounds, some
• 2:09:46
  ten or a dozen acres in extent, were laid out in terraced gardens,
• 2:09:52
  one above the other, with flights of broad steps ascending and descending the declivity
• 2:09:56
  of the garden. On these steps there were statues of most exquisite workmanship.
• 2:10:01
  Besides the statues were vases filled with various shrubs that were new to me.
• 2:10:05
  And on either side the flights of steps there were rows of old cypresses and
• 2:10:09
  cedars, with grassy alleys between them. Then came choice vineyards and orchards of
• 2:10:13
  fruit trees in full bearing. The house itself was approached by a courtyard,
• 2:10:20
  and round it was a corridor onto which rooms opened, as in Pompeii.
• 2:10:24
  In the middle of the court there was a bath and a fountain having passed
• 2:10:28
  the court, we came to the main body of the house, which was
• 2:10:31
  two stories in height. The rooms were large and lofty. Perhaps at first
• 2:10:35
  they looked rather bare of furniture, but in hot climates people generally keep their
• 2:10:39
  rooms more bare than they do in colder ones. I missed also the sight
• 2:10:43
  of a grand piano or some similar instrument, there being no means of producing
• 2:10:48
  music in any of the rooms, save the larger drawing room, where there
• 2:10:52
  were half a dozen large bronze gongs, which the ladies used occasionally to beat
• 2:10:56
  about at random. It was not pleasant to hear them, but I have
• 2:11:01
  heard quite as unpleasant music, both before and since. Mister Nosnibor took me
• 2:11:05
  through several spacious rooms till we reached a boudoir where it were his wife and
• 2:11:11
  daughters, of whom I had heard from the interpreter. Missus Nostibor was about
• 2:11:15
  forty years old and still handsome, but she had grown very stout. Her
• 2:11:18
  daughters were in the prime of youth and exquisitely beautiful. I gave the preference
• 2:11:22
  almost at once to the younger, whose name was Arowhena, for the elder
• 2:11:26
  sister was haughty, while the younger had a very winning manner. Missus Nostibor
• 2:11:31
  received me with the perfection of courtesies, so that I must have indeed been
• 2:11:35
  shy and nervous if I had not at once felt welcome. Scarcely was the
• 2:11:39
  ceremony of my introduction well completed before a servant announced that dinner was ready in
• 2:11:45
  the next room. I was exceedingly hungry, and the dinner was beyond all
• 2:11:48
  praise. Can the reader wonder that I began to consider myself in excellent quarters
• 2:11:54
  that man in bezel money, I thought to myself impossible. But I know
• 2:12:00
  that my host was uneasy during the whole meal, and that he ate nothing
• 2:12:03
  but a little bread and milk. Towards the end of the dinner there came
• 2:12:05
  a tall, lean man with a black beard, to whom mister Nostibor and
• 2:12:09
  the whole family paid great attention. He was the family straightener. With this
• 2:12:15
  gentleman, mister Nosnibor retired into another room, from which there presently proceeded a
• 2:12:20
  sound of weeping and wailing. I could hardly believe my ears, but in
• 2:12:22
  a few minutes I got to know for a certainty that they came from mister
• 2:12:26
  nostibor himself, poor Papa, said Arowhena, as she helped herself composedly to
• 2:12:31
  the salt. How terribly he has suffered, yes, answered her mother.
• 2:12:37
  But I think he is quite out of danger now. Then they went on
• 2:12:41
  to explain to me the circumstances of the case, and the treatment which the
• 2:12:43
  straightener had prescribed, and how successful he had been, all which I will
• 2:12:48
  reserve for another chapter, and put rather in the form of a general summary
• 2:12:52
  of the opinions current upon these subjects, than in the exact words in which
• 2:12:56
  the facts were delivered to me. The reader, however, is earnestly requested
• 2:13:01
  to believe that both in this next chapter and in those that follow it,
• 2:13:05
  I have endeavored to adhere most conscientiously to the strictest accuracy, and that I
• 2:13:09
  am never willingly misrepresented, though I may have sometimes failed to understand all the
• 2:13:15
  bearings of an opinion or custom. End of Chapter nine, Chapter ten,
• 2:13:22
  current opinions. This is what I gathered that in that country, if a
• 2:13:28
  man falls into ill health, or catches any disorder, or fails bodily in
• 2:13:31
  any way before he is seventy years old, he has tried before a jury
• 2:13:35
  of his countrymen, and if convicted, is held up before public scorn and
• 2:13:41
  sentenced more or less severely, as the case may be. There are subdivisions
• 2:13:45
  of illness into crimes and misdemeanors, as were the fences amongst ourselves. A
• 2:13:48
  man being punished very heavily for serious illness, while failure of eyes are hearing
• 2:13:54
  in one over sixty five who has a good health hitherto is dealt with by
• 2:13:58
  fine only, or imprisonment in default of payment. But if a man forges
• 2:14:03
  a check, or sets his house on fire, or ribs with violence from
• 2:14:05
  the person, or does any other such things as are criminal in our own
• 2:14:09
  country, he is either taken to a hospital and most carefully tended at the
• 2:14:13
  public expense, or if he is in good circumstances, he lets it be
• 2:14:18
  known to all his friends that he is suffering from a severe fit of immorality,
• 2:14:22
  just as we do when we are ill, And they come and visit
• 2:14:24
  him with great solicitude, and inquire with interest how it all came about,
• 2:14:28
  what symptoms first showed themselves, and so forth, questions which he will answer
• 2:14:33
  with perfect unreserve for a bad conduct, though considered no less deplorable than illness
• 2:14:37
  with ourselves, and is unquestionably indicating something seriously wrong with The individual who misbehaves
• 2:14:43
  is nevertheless held to be the result of either prenatal or postnatal misfortune. The
• 2:14:48
  strange part of the story, however, is that though they ascribe moral defects
• 2:14:52
  to the effect of misfortunes, either in character or surroundings, they will not
• 2:14:56
  listen to the plea of misfortune in cases that an Inksland meet with sympathy and
• 2:15:01
  commiseration. Only ill luck of any kind, or even ill treatment at the
• 2:15:05
  hands of others, is considered an offense against society inasmuch as it makes people
• 2:15:09
  uncomfortable to hear of it. Loss of fortune, therefore, or loss of
• 2:15:13
  some dear friend on whom another was much dependent, is punished hardly, less
• 2:15:16
  severely than physical delinquency foreign indeed, as such ideas are to our own,
• 2:15:22
  traces of somewhat similar opinions can be found even in nineteenth century England. If
• 2:15:26
  a person has an abscess, the medical man will say it contains piquant matter,
• 2:15:31
  and people will say that they have a bad arm or finger, or
• 2:15:33
  they are very bad all over, when they only mean diseased among foreign nations.
• 2:15:39
  Erwarannian opinions may be still more clearly noted. The Mahommedans, for example,
• 2:15:43
  to this day send their female prisoners to hospitals, and the New England
• 2:15:48
  mayories visit any misfortune with forcible entry into the house of the offender and the
• 2:15:52
  breaking up and burning of all his goods. The Italians again use the same
• 2:15:56
  word for disgrace and misfortune. Once heard an Italian lady speak of a young
• 2:16:01
  friend whom she described as endowed with every virtue under heaven Ma, She exclaimed,
• 2:16:07
  pavero des grado ha hamazzo suzio, poor, unfortunate fellow, he has
• 2:16:13
  murdered his uncle. On mentioning this, which I heard when taken to Italy
• 2:16:16
  as a boy by my father, the person to whom I told it showed
• 2:16:20
  no surprise. He said that he had been driven for two or three years
• 2:16:24
  in a certain city by a young Sicilian cab driver of prepossessing manners in appearance,
• 2:16:28
  but then lost sight of him. On asking what had become of him,
• 2:16:31
  he was told that he was in prison for having shot at his father
• 2:16:35
  with intent to kill him, happily without serious result. Some years later,
• 2:16:39
  my informant again found himself warmly accosted by the prepossessing young cab driver ah caro
• 2:16:43
  signor. He exclaimed, son no sik ani h lvino triani the military e
• 2:16:50
  deui anni disgresia et cetera. My dear sir, it is five years since
• 2:16:56
  I saw you, three years of military service and two of missfort during which
• 2:17:01
  last the poor fellow had been in prison of moral sense. He showed not
• 2:17:05
  so much as a trace. He and his father were now on excellent terms,
• 2:17:09
  and were likely to remain so unless either of them should again have the
• 2:17:11
  misfortune mortally to offend the other. In the following chapter, I will give
• 2:17:16
  a few examples of the way in which what we should call misfortune, hardship
• 2:17:18
  or disease are dealt with by the Erwhonians, but for the moment will return
• 2:17:22
  to their treatment of cases that with us are criminal. As I have already
• 2:17:26
  said, these, though not judicially punishable, are recognized as regarding correction.
• 2:17:31
  Accordingly, there exists a class of men trained in soul craft whom they call
• 2:17:35
  straiteners. As nearly as I can translate a word which literally means one who
• 2:17:39
  bends back the crooked these men practice much as medical men in England, and
• 2:17:45
  receive a quasi surreptitious feel in every visit. They are treated with the same
• 2:17:48
  unreserve and obeyed as readily as our own doctors. That is to say,
• 2:17:54
  on the whole sufficiently because people know that it is in their interest to get
• 2:17:56
  well as soon as they can, and that they will not be scouted as
• 2:18:00
  they would be if their bodies were out of order, even though they may
• 2:18:03
  have to undergo a very painful course of treatment. When I say that they
• 2:18:07
  will not be scouted, I do not mean that an Ronian will suffer no
• 2:18:09
  social inconvenience. In consequence, we will say of having committed fraud, friends
• 2:18:16
  will fall away from him because of his being less pleasant company. Just as
• 2:18:18
  we ourselves are disinclined to make companions of those who are either poor or poorly.
• 2:18:24
  No one with any sense of self respect will place himself on an equality
• 2:18:28
  in the manner of affection with those who are less lucky than himself in birth,
• 2:18:31
  health, money, good looks, capacity, or anything else. Indeed
• 2:18:37
  that dislike and even discussed should be felt by the fortunate, for the unfortunate,
• 2:18:41
  or at any rate for those who have been discovered to have met with
• 2:18:43
  any of the more serious and less familiar misfortunes. It is not only natural
• 2:18:48
  but desirable for any society, whether of man or brute. The fact,
• 2:18:52
  therefore, that the Ronians attach none of that guilt to crime which they do
• 2:18:56
  to physical ailments does not prevent the more selfish among them from neglecting a friend
• 2:19:01
  who has robbed a bank, for instance, till he is fully recovered.
• 2:19:05
  But it does prevent them from even thinking of treating criminals with that contemptuous tone
• 2:19:09
  which would seem to say, I, if I were you should be a
• 2:19:13
  better man than you are, a tone which is held quite reasonable in regard
• 2:19:16
  to physical ailment. Hence, though they conceal ill health by every cunning and
• 2:19:22
  hypocrisy and artifice which they can devise, they are quite open about the most
• 2:19:26
  flagrant mental diseases should they happen to exist, which to do the people justice
• 2:19:31
  is not often. Indeed, there are some who are, so to speak,
• 2:19:35
  spiritual valet udenarians, who make themselves exceedingly ridiculous by their nervous supposition that
• 2:19:39
  they are wicked, while they are very tolerable people all the time. This,
• 2:19:43
  however, is exceptional and on the whole they use much the same reserve
• 2:19:48
  or unreserve, about the state of their moral welfare as we do about our
• 2:19:52
  health. Hence, all the ordinary greetings among ourselves, such as how do
• 2:19:56
  you do and the like, are considered signs of gross ill breeding. Nor
• 2:20:01
  do the politer classes tolerate even such a common complimentary remark as telling a man
• 2:20:05
  that he is looking well. They salute each other with I hope you are
• 2:20:09
  good this morning, or I hope you have recovered from the snappishness from which
• 2:20:13
  you were suffering when I last saw you. And if a person saluted has
• 2:20:18
  not been good or is still snappish, he says so at once and is
• 2:20:22
  condoled with accordingly. Indeed, the straitenears have gone so far as to give
• 2:20:26
  names from the hypothetical language as taught at the College of Unreason, to all
• 2:20:31
  known forms of mental indisposition, and to classify them according to a system of
• 2:20:35
  their own, which, though I could not understand, it seem to work
• 2:20:39
  well in practice. For they are always able to tell a man what is
• 2:20:43
  the matter with him as soon as they have heard his story, and their
• 2:20:46
  familiarity with the long names assures him that they have thoroughly understood his case.
• 2:20:50
  The reader will have no difficulty in believing that the laws regarding ill health were
• 2:20:54
  frequently evaded by the help of recognized fictions, which every one understood, but
• 2:21:00
  which it would be considered gross ill breeding to even seem to understand. Thus,
• 2:21:03
  a day or two after my arrival at the Nosnibors, one of the
• 2:21:07
  many ladies who called on me made excuses for her husband's only sending his card,
• 2:21:11
  on the ground that when going through the public market place that morning,
• 2:21:15
  he had stolen a pair of socks. I had already been warned that I
• 2:21:18
  should never show a surprise, so I merely expressed my sympathy and said that
• 2:21:22
  though I had only been in the capitol so short a time, I had
• 2:21:26
  already had a very narrow escape from stealing a clothes brush, and that though
• 2:21:30
  I had resisted temptation so far, I was sadly afraid that if I saw
• 2:21:33
  any object of special interest that was neither too hot nor too heavy, I
• 2:21:37
  should have to put myself in the straitener's hands. Missus Nosnibor, who had
• 2:21:41
  been keeping an ear on all that I had been saying, praised me when
• 2:21:45
  the lady was gone. Nothing she said could have been more polite according to
• 2:21:48
  Erewhania and etiquette. She then explained that to have stolen a pair of socks,
• 2:21:52
  or to have the socks in more colloquial language, was a recognized way
• 2:21:56
  of saying that the person in question was slightly indisposed. In spite of all
• 2:22:01
  this, they have a keen sense of the enjoyment consequent upon what they call
• 2:22:03
  being well. They admire mental health and love it in other people, and
• 2:22:07
  take all the pains they can, consistently with their other duties to secure it
• 2:22:13
  for themselves. They have an extreme dislike to marrying into what they consider unhealthy
• 2:22:16
  families. They send for the straightener at once whenever they have been guilty of
• 2:22:22
  anything seriously flagicious, often even if they think that they are in the point
• 2:22:26
  of committing it. And though his remedies are sometimes exceedingly painful, involving close
• 2:22:31
  confinement for weeks and in some cases the most cruel physical tortures, I never
• 2:22:35
  heard of a reasonable Errowhonian refusing to do what a straightener told him, any
• 2:22:41
  more than of a reasonable Englishman refusing to undergo even the most frightful operation if
• 2:22:45
  his doctors told him it was necessary. We in England never shrink from telling
• 2:22:50
  our doctor what is the matter with us, merely through the fear that he
• 2:22:52
  will hurt us. We let him do his worst upon us and stand it
• 2:22:56
  without a murmur, because we are not scouted for being ill, and because
• 2:23:01
  we know that the doctor is doing his best to cure us, and that
• 2:23:03
  he can judge of our case better than we can. But we should conceal
• 2:23:07
  all illnesses if we were treated as the Erronians are when they have anything the
• 2:23:09
  matter with them, we should do the same as with moral and intellectual diseases.
• 2:23:15
  We should feign health with the most consummate art till we are found out,
• 2:23:18
  and should hate a single flogging given in the way of mere punishment more
• 2:23:22
  than an amputation of a limb. If it were given kindly and courteously,
• 2:23:26
  performed from a wish to help us out of our difficulty, and with a
• 2:23:28
  full consciousness on the part of the doctor. There was only by an accident
• 2:23:31
  of constitution, that he was not in the like plight himself. So the
• 2:23:37
  Erwhonians take a flogging once a week and a diet of bread and water for
• 2:23:39
  two or three months, together whenever their straitener recommends it. I do not
• 2:23:45
  suppose that even my host, on having swindled a confiding widow out of the
• 2:23:48
  whole of her property, was put to more actual suffering than a man will
• 2:23:52
  readily undergo at the hands of an English doctor. And yet he must have
• 2:23:56
  had a very bad time of it. The sounds I heard were sufficient to
• 2:23:58
  show that pain was exquisite, but he never shrank from undergoing it. He
• 2:24:03
  was quite sure that it did him good, and I think he was right.
• 2:24:07
  I cannot believe that that man will ever embezzle money again. He may,
• 2:24:11
  but it will be a long time before he does so. During my
• 2:24:15
  confinement in prison and on my journey, I had already discovered a great deal
• 2:24:18
  of the above, but it still seemed surpassingly strange, and I was in
• 2:24:22
  constant fear of committing some piece of rudeness through my inability to look at things
• 2:24:26
  from the same standpoint as my neighbors. But after a few weeks stay with
• 2:24:31
  the Nasibors, I got to understand things better, especially on having heard all
• 2:24:35
  about my host illness, of which he told me fully and repeatedly. It
• 2:24:39
  seemed that he had been on the stock exchange of the city for many years,
• 2:24:43
  and had amassed enormous wealth without exceeding the limits of what was generally considered
• 2:24:48
  justifiable or at any rate permissible dealing. But at length on several occasions he
• 2:24:52
  had become aware of a desire to make money by fraudulent representations, and it
• 2:24:56
  actually dealt with two or three sums in a way which had made him rather
• 2:25:00
  uncomfortable. He had unfortunately made light of it and pooh poohed the ailment until
• 2:25:05
  circumstances eventually presented themselves which enabled him to cheat upon a very considerable scale.
• 2:25:11
  He told me what they were, and they were about as bad as anything
• 2:25:13
  could be, but I need not detail them. He seized the opportunity and
• 2:25:18
  became aware when it was too late, that he must be seriously out of
• 2:25:22
  order. He had neglected himself too long. He drove home at once,
• 2:25:26
  broke the news to his wife and daughters as gently as he could, and
• 2:25:30
  set off for one of the most celebrated straighteners of the kingdom to a consultation
• 2:25:33
  with the family practitioner, for the case was plainly serious. On arrival of
• 2:25:39
  the straightener, he told his story and expressed his fear that his morals must
• 2:25:43
  be permanently impaired. The eminent man reassured him with a few cheering words,
• 2:25:48
  and then proceeded to make a more careful diagnosis of the case. He inquired
• 2:25:50
  concerning mister Nostibor's parents, had their moral health been good? He was answered
• 2:25:56
  that there not been anything seriously amiss with them, but that his maternal grind
• 2:26:00
  father, whom he was supposed to resemble somewhat in person, had been a
• 2:26:03
  consummate scoundrel and had ended his days in a hospital, while a brother of
• 2:26:07
  his father's, after having led a most flagitious life for many years, had
• 2:26:11
  at last been cured by a philosopher of a new school, which, as
• 2:26:16
  far as I could understand it, bore much the same relation to the old
• 2:26:18
  as homeopathy to allopathy. The straitener shook his head at this and laughingly replied
• 2:26:24
  that the cure must have been due to nature. After a few more questions,
• 2:26:28
  he wrote a prescription and departed. I saw the prescription. It ordered
• 2:26:33
  a fine to the state of double the money embezzled, no food but bread
• 2:26:35
  and milk for six months, and a severe flogging once a month for twelve
• 2:26:41
  I was surprised to see that no part of the fine was to be paid
• 2:26:43
  to the poor woman whose money had been embezzled. But on inquiry I learned
• 2:26:46
  that she would have been prosecuted by the misplaced confidence court if she had not
• 2:26:50
  escaped its clutches by dying shortly after she had discovered her loss. As for
• 2:26:56
  mister Nosnibor, he had received his eleventh flogging on the day of my arrival.
• 2:27:01
  I saw him later on the same afternoon, and he was still twinged,
• 2:27:05
  But there had been no escape from following out the straightener's prescription. For
• 2:27:09
  the so called sanitary laws of Erwon are very rigorous, and unless the straightener
• 2:27:13
  was satisfied that his orders had been obeyed, the patient would have been taken
• 2:27:16
  to a hospital, as the poor are, and would have been much worse
• 2:27:20
  off. Such at least is the law, but it is never necessary to
• 2:27:24
  enforce it. On a subsequent occasion, I was present at an interview between
• 2:27:28
  mister Nosniborn and the family straightener, who was considered competent to watch the completion
• 2:27:33
  of the cure. I was struck with the delicacy with which he avoided even
• 2:27:37
  the remotest semblance of inquiry after the physical well being of his patient. Though
• 2:27:41
  there was a certain yellowness about my host eyes which argued a bilious habit of
• 2:27:45
  body. To have taken notice of this would have been a gross breach of
• 2:27:48
  professional etiquette. I was told, however, that a straightener sometimes thinks it
• 2:27:52
  right to glance at the possibility of some slight physical disorder, if he finds
• 2:27:56
  it important in order to assist him in his diagnosis. But the answers which
• 2:28:00
  he gets are generally untrue or evasive, and he forms his own conclusions upon
• 2:28:03
  the matter as well as he can. Sensible men have been known to say
• 2:28:09
  that the straightener should, in strict confidence be told of every physical ailment that
• 2:28:11
  is likely to bear upon the case. But people are naturally shy of doing
• 2:28:16
  this, for they do not like lowering themselves in the opinion of the straightener,
• 2:28:20
  and his ignorance of medical science is supreme. I heard of one lady,
• 2:28:24
  indeed, who had had the hardihood to confess that a furious outbreak of
• 2:28:28
  ill humor and extravagant fancies for which she was seeking advice was possibly the result
• 2:28:33
  of indisposition. You should resist that, said the straightener in a kind but
• 2:28:37
  grave voice. We can do nothing for the bodies of our patients. Such
• 2:28:41
  matters are beyond our province, and I desire that I may hear no further
• 2:28:46
  particulars. The lady burst into tears and promised faithfully that she would never be
• 2:28:50
  unwell again, but to return to mister Nosnibor. As the afternoon wore on,
• 2:28:56
  many carriages drove up with callers to inquire how he had stood his flot.
• 2:29:01
  It had been very severe, but the kind inquiries upon every side gave
• 2:29:03
  him great pleasure, and he assured me that he almost felt tempted to do
• 2:29:07
  wrong again by the solicitude with which his friends had treated him during his recovery.
• 2:29:11
  In this I need hardly say that he was not serious. During the
• 2:29:16
  remainder of my stay in the country, mister Nostibor was constantly attentive to his
• 2:29:20
  business, and largely increased his already great possessions. But I never heard a
• 2:29:24
  whisper to the effective his having been indisposed a second time, or made money
• 2:29:28
  by other than the most strictly honorable means. I did here afterwards in confidence
• 2:29:33
  that there may have been reason to believe that his health had not been a
• 2:29:37
  little affected by the straightener's treatment, but his friends did not choose to be
• 2:29:39
  over curious upon the subject, and on his return to his affairs, it
• 2:29:45
  was by common consent passed over as hardly criminal in one who was otherwise so
• 2:29:48
  much afflicted. For they regard bodily ailments as the more venial in proportion,
• 2:29:52
  as they have been produced by causes independent of the constitution. Thus, if
• 2:29:58
  a person ruined his health by excessive indus indulgent at the table or by drinking,
• 2:30:01
  they count it to be almost a part of the mental disease which brought
• 2:30:03
  it about, and so it goes for little. But they have no mercy
• 2:30:07
  on such illnesses as fevers, are cataris, or lung diseases, which to
• 2:30:11
  us appear to be beyond the control of the individual. They are only more
• 2:30:15
  lenient towards the diseases of the young, such as measles, which they think
• 2:30:18
  to be like sowing one's wild oats, and look over them as pardonable indiscretions
• 2:30:24
  if they have not been too serious, and if they are atoned for by
• 2:30:26
  complete subsequent recovery. It is hardly necessary to say that the office of straightener
• 2:30:31
  is one which requires long and special training. It stands to reason that he
• 2:30:37
  who would cure a moral ailment must be practically acquainted with it in all its
• 2:30:41
  bearings. The student for the profession of straightener is required to set apart certain
• 2:30:46
  seasons for the practice of each vice in turn as a religious duty. These
• 2:30:50
  seasons are called fast and are continued by the student until he finds that he
• 2:30:54
  really can't subdue all the more usual vices in his own person, and hits
• 2:30:58
  can advise his patience from the result of its own experience. Those who intend
• 2:31:03
  to be specialist rather than general practitioners, devote themselves more particularly to the branch
• 2:31:07
  in which their practice will mainly lie. Some students have been obliged to continue
• 2:31:13
  their exercises during their whole lives, and some devoted men have actually died as
• 2:31:16
  martyrs to the drink or gluttony, or whatever branch of vice they may have
• 2:31:20
  chosen for their especial study. The greater number, however, take no harm
• 2:31:24
  by the excursions into the various departments of vice which it is incumbent upon them
• 2:31:28
  to study. For the Erewhonians hold that honelloid virtue is not a thing to
• 2:31:31
  be immoderately indulged in. I was shown more than one case in which the
• 2:31:35
  real or supposed virtues of parents were visited upon the children to that third and
• 2:31:39
  fourth generation. The straighteners say that the most it could be truly said for
• 2:31:45
  virtue is that there is a considerable balance in its favor, and that it
• 2:31:48
  is, on the whole a good deal better to be on its side than
• 2:31:50
  against it. But they urge that there is much pseudo virtue going about which
• 2:31:54
  is apt to let people in very badly before they find it out. Those
• 2:31:58
  men, they say, are best who are not remarkable either for vice or
• 2:32:03
  virtue. I told him about Hogarth's idol and industrious apprentices, But they did
• 2:32:07
  not seem to think that the industrious apprentice was a very nice person. End
• 2:32:13
  of Chapter ten, Chapter eleven. Some Erewhonian trials. In Erewhon, as
• 2:32:22
  in other countries, there are some courts of justice that deal with special subjects.
• 2:32:26
  Misfortune generally, as I have above explained, is considered more or less
• 2:32:31
  criminal, but it admits of classification, and the court is assigned to each
• 2:32:35
  of the main heads under which it can be supposed to fall. Not very
• 2:32:39
  long after I had reached the capital. I strolled into the personal bereavement court
• 2:32:43
  and was much both interested and pained by listening to the trial of a man
• 2:32:48
  who was accused of having just lost a wife to whom he had been tenderly
• 2:32:52
  attached, and who had left him with three little children, of whom the
• 2:32:56
  eldest was only three years old. The defense, which the prisoners cut uncil
• 2:33:00
  endeavored to establish was that the prisoner had never really loved his wife, but
• 2:33:05
  it broke down completely for the public prosecutor called witness after witness, who deposed
• 2:33:09
  to the fact that the couple had been devoted to one another, and the
• 2:33:13
  prisoner repeatedly wept as incidents were put in evidence that reminded him of the irreparable
• 2:33:18
  nature of the loss he had sustained. The jury returned a verdict of guilty
• 2:33:24
  after very little deliberation, but recommended the prisoner to mercy on the ground that
• 2:33:28
  he had but recently insured his wife's life for a considerable sum, and might
• 2:33:33
  be deemed lucky inasmuch as he had received the money without demur from the insurance
• 2:33:37
  company, though he had only paid two premiums. I have just said that
• 2:33:41
  the jury found the prisoner guilty. When the judge passed sentence, I was
• 2:33:46
  struck with a way which the prisoner's council was rebuked for having referred it to
• 2:33:50
  a work in which the guilt of such misfortune as the prisoner's was extenuated to
• 2:33:56
  a degree that roused the indignation of the court. We shall have, said,
• 2:34:01
  the judge, these crude and subversionary books from time to time until it
• 2:34:05
  is recognized as an axiom of morality that luck is the only fit object of
• 2:34:11
  human veneration. How far a man has any right to be more lucky,
• 2:34:15
  and hence more venerable than his neighbors is a point that always has been,
• 2:34:18
  and always will be settled, approximately by a kind of higgling and haggling of
• 2:34:24
  the market, and ultimately by a brute force. But however this may be,
• 2:34:28
  it stands to reason that no man should be allowed to be unlucky to
• 2:34:31
  more than a very moderate extent. Then, turning to the prisoner, the
• 2:34:37
  judge continued, you have suffered a great lass. Nature attaches a severe penalty
• 2:34:43
  to such offenses, and human law must emphasize the decrees of nature. But
• 2:34:48
  for the recommendation of the jury, I should have given you six months hard
• 2:34:52
  labor. I will, however, commute your sentence to one of three months,
• 2:34:56
  with the option of a fine of twenty five percent and of the money
• 2:35:00
  you have received from the insurance company. The prisoner thanked the judge and said
• 2:35:05
  that as he had no one to look after his children, if he was
• 2:35:07
  sent to prison, he would embrace the option mercifully permitted him by his lordship
• 2:35:13
  and pay the sum he had named. He was then removed from the dock.
• 2:35:18
  The next case was that of a youth barely arrived at Man's estate,
• 2:35:22
  who was charged with having been swindled out of a large property during his minority
• 2:35:26
  by his guardian, who was also one of his nearest relations. His father
• 2:35:30
  had been long and dead, and it was for this reason that his offense
• 2:35:33
  came on for trial in the personal bereavement court. The lad who was undefended,
• 2:35:39
  pleaded that he was young, inexperienced, greatly in awe of his guardian
• 2:35:43
  and without independent professional advice. Young man said the judge sternly, do not
• 2:35:50
  talk nonsense. People have no right to be young, inexperienced, greatly in
• 2:35:56
  awe of their guardians and without independent professional advice. If by such indiscretions they
• 2:36:01
  outraged the moral sense of their friends, they must expect to suffer. Accordingly,
• 2:36:07
  He then ordered the prisoner to apologize to his guardian and to receive twelve
• 2:36:11
  strokes with a cat of nine tales. But I shall perhaps best convey to
• 2:36:16
  the reader an idea of the entire perversion of thought which exists among this extraordinary
• 2:36:20
  people, by describing the public trial of a man who was accused of pulmonary
• 2:36:24
  consumption, an offense which was punished with death until quite recently. It did
• 2:36:31
  not occur till I had been some months in the country, And I am
• 2:36:35
  deviating from chronological order in giving it here. But I had perhaps better to
• 2:36:39
  do so in order that I may exhaust this subject before proceeding to others.
• 2:36:43
  And moreover, I should never come to an end were I to keep to
• 2:36:46
  a strictly narrative form and detail the infinite absurdities with which I daily came in
• 2:36:52
  contact. The prisoner was placed in the dock and the jury were sworn.
• 2:36:56
  Much as in Europe, Almost all our own modes of procedure were reproduced,
• 2:37:01
  even to the requiring the prisoner to plead guilty or not guilty. He pleaded
• 2:37:05
  not guilty, and the case proceeded. The evidence for the prosecution was very
• 2:37:11
  strong, but I must do the court the justice to observe that the trial
• 2:37:15
  was absolutely impartial. Counsel for the prisoner was allowed to urge everything that could
• 2:37:20
  be said in his defense. The line taken was that the prisoner was simulating
• 2:37:24
  consumption in order to defraud an insurance company from which he was about to buy
• 2:37:28
  an annuity, and that he hoped thus to obtain it on more advantageous terms.
• 2:37:33
  If this could have been shown to be the case, he would have
• 2:37:37
  accepted a criminal prosecution and been sent to a hospital as for a moral ailment.
• 2:37:41
  The view, however, was one which could not be reasonably sustained.
• 2:37:46
  In spite of all the ingenuity and eloquence of one of the most celebrated advocates
• 2:37:50
  of the country. The case was only too clear, for the prisoner was
• 2:37:54
  almost at the point of death, and it was astonishing that he had not
• 2:37:56
  been tried and convicted long previously. His coughing was incessant during the whole trial,
• 2:38:03
  and it was all that the two jailers in charge of him could do
• 2:38:05
  to keep him on his legs until it was over. The summing up of
• 2:38:09
  the judge was admirable. He dwelt upon every point that could be construed in
• 2:38:15
  favor of the prisoner. But as he proceeded it became clear that the evidence
• 2:38:18
  was too convincing to admit of doubt, and there was but one opinion in
• 2:38:22
  the court as to the impending verdict. When the jury retired from the box,
• 2:38:28
  they were absent for about ten minutes, and on their return the foreman
• 2:38:31
  pronounced the prisoner guilty. There was a faint murmur of applause, but it
• 2:38:35
  was instantly repressed. The judge then proceeded to pronounce sentence in words which I
• 2:38:41
  can never forget, and which I copied out into a note book next day
• 2:38:46
  from the report that was published in the leading newspaper. I must condense it
• 2:38:50
  somewhat, and nothing which I could say would give more than a faint idea
• 2:38:54
  of the solemn, not to say majestic severity with which it was delivered.
• 2:38:58
  The sentence was as follows. Prisoner at the bar, you have been accused
• 2:39:05
  of the great crime of laboring under pulmonary consumption, and after an impartial trial
• 2:39:09
  before a jury of your countrymen, you have been found guilty against the justice
• 2:39:16
  of the verdict. I can say nothing. The evidence against you was conclusive,
• 2:39:20
  and it only remains for me to pass such a sentence upon you as
• 2:39:24
  shall satisfy the ends of the law. That sentence must be a very severe
• 2:39:28
  one. It pains me much to see one who is yet so young,
• 2:39:33
  and whose prospects in life were otherwise so excellent, brought to this distressing condition
• 2:39:39
  by a constitution which I can only regard as radically vicious. But yours is
• 2:39:43
  no case for compassion. This is not your first offense. You have led
• 2:39:48
  a career of crime, and have only profited by the leniency shown you upon
• 2:39:52
  past occasions, to offend yet more seriously against the laws and institutions of your
• 2:39:56
  country. You were convicted of aggravation bronchitis last year, and I find that,
• 2:40:01
  though you are now only twenty three years old, you have been imprisoned
• 2:40:05
  on no less than fourteen occasions for illnesses of a more or less hateful character.
• 2:40:11
  In fact, it is not too much to say that you have spent
• 2:40:13
  the greater part of your life in a jail. It is all very well
• 2:40:16
  for you to say that you came of unhealthy parents and had a severe accident
• 2:40:20
  in your childhood which permanently undermined your constitution. Excuses such as these are the
• 2:40:26
  ordinary refuge of the criminal, but they cannot for one moment be listened to
• 2:40:31
  by the ear of justice. I am not here to enter upon curious metaphysical
• 2:40:35
  questions as to the origin of this or that, questions to which there would
• 2:40:39
  be no end were there introduction once tolerated, and which would result in throwing
• 2:40:45
  the only guilt on the tissues of the primordial cell or on the elementary gases.
• 2:40:50
  There is no question of how you came to be wicked, but only
• 2:40:52
  this, namely, are you wicked or not? This has been decided in
• 2:40:58
  the affirmative. Neither can I hesitate for a single moment to say that it
• 2:41:01
  has been decided justly. You are a bad and dangerous person and stand branded
• 2:41:07
  in the eyes of your fellow countrymen with one of the most heinous known offenses.
• 2:41:13
  It is not my business to justify the law. The law may in
• 2:41:16
  some cases have its inevitable hardships, and I may feel regret at times that
• 2:41:20
  I have not the option of passing a less severe sentence than I am compelled
• 2:41:24
  to do, But yours is no such case. On the contrary, had
• 2:41:30
  not the capital punishment for consumption been abolished, I should certainly inflict it.
• 2:41:35
  Now. It is intolerable that an example of such terrible enormity should be allowed
• 2:41:39
  to go at large unpunished. Your presence in the society of respectable people would
• 2:41:45
  lead the less able body to think more lightly of all forms of illness.
• 2:41:48
  Neither can it be permitted that you should have the chance of corrupting unborn beings
• 2:41:54
  who might hereafter pester you. The unborn must not be allowed to come near
• 2:41:58
  you, and this not so much for their protection, for they are our
• 2:42:03
  natural enemies as for our own. For since they will not be utterly gainsaid,
• 2:42:07
  it must be seen to that they shall be quartered upon those who are
• 2:42:11
  least likely to corrupt them. But independently of this consideration, and independently of
• 2:42:18
  the physical guilt which attaches itself to a crime so great as yours, there
• 2:42:22
  is yet another reason why we should be unable to show you mercy, even
• 2:42:26
  if we were inclined to do so. I refer to the existence of a
• 2:42:31
  class of men who lie hidden among us, and who are called physicians,
• 2:42:35
  were the severity of the law or the current feeling of the country to be
• 2:42:39
  relaxed, never so slightly. These abandoned persons, who are now compelled to
• 2:42:45
  practice secretly and can be consulted only at the greatest risk, would become frequent
• 2:42:50
  visitors in every household. Their organization and their intimate acquaintance with the all family
• 2:42:54
  secrets would give them a power, both social and political, which nothing could
• 2:42:58
  resist. The household would become subordinate to the family doctor, who would interfere
• 2:43:03
  between man and wife, between master and servant, until the doctors should be
• 2:43:07
  the only depositories of power in the nation, and have all that we hold
• 2:43:11
  precious at their mercy. A time of universal dephysicianalization would ensue. Medicine vendors
• 2:43:18
  of all kinds would abound in our streets and advertise in all our newspapers.
• 2:43:22
  There is one remedy for this, and one only. It is that which
• 2:43:26
  the laws of this country have long received and acted upon, and consists in
• 2:43:31
  the sternest repression of all diseases. Whatsoever, as soon as their existence is
• 2:43:37
  made manifest to the eye of the law, would that that I were far
• 2:43:41
  more piercing than it is. But I will enlarge no further upon things that
• 2:43:46
  are themselves so obvious. You may say that it is not your fault.
• 2:43:50
  The answer is ready enough at hand, and it amounts to this that if
• 2:43:54
  you had been born of healthy and well to do parents, and been well
• 2:43:58
  taken care of when you were a child, you would never have offended against
• 2:44:01
  the laws of your country, nor found yourself on your present disgraceful position.
• 2:44:05
  If you tell me that you had no hand in your parentage and education,
• 2:44:09
  and that it is therefore unjust to lay these things to your charge, I
• 2:44:15
  answer that, whether your being in a consumption is your fault or no,
• 2:44:18
  it is a fault in you, and it is my duty to see that
• 2:44:22
  against such faults as this, the commonwealth shall be protected. You may say
• 2:44:26
  that it is your misfortune to be a criminal. I answer that it is
• 2:44:30
  your crime to be unfortunate. Lastly, I should point out that even though
• 2:44:35
  the jury had acquitted you a supposition that I cannot seriously entertain, I should
• 2:44:39
  have felt it my duty to inflict a sentence hardly less severe than that which
• 2:44:43
  I must pass at present. For the more you had been found guiltless of
• 2:44:48
  the crime imputed to you, the more you would have been found guilty of
• 2:44:50
  one hardly less heinous I mean, the crime of having been maligned unjustly.
• 2:44:56
  I do not hesitate, therefore, to sendency to prisonment with hard labor for
• 2:45:01
  the rest of your miserable existence. During that period, I would earnestly entreat
• 2:45:05
  you to repent of the wrongs you have done already, and to entirely reform
• 2:45:09
  the constitution of your whole body. I entertain but little hope that you will
• 2:45:13
  pay attention to my advice. You are already far too abandoned. Did it
• 2:45:18
  rest with myself? I should add nothing in mitigation of the sentence which I
• 2:45:22
  have passed. But it is the merciful provision of the law that even the
• 2:45:26
  most hardened criminal shall be allowed some one of the three official remedies, which
• 2:45:31
  is to be prescribed at the time of his conviction. I shall therefore order
• 2:45:37
  that you receive two tablespoons of castor oil daily until the pleasure of the court
• 2:45:41
  be further known. When this sentence was concluded, the prisoner acknowledged in a
• 2:45:46
  few scarcely audible words that he was justly punished and that he had had a
• 2:45:52
  fair trial. He was then removed to the prison, from which he was
• 2:45:56
  never to return. There was a second attempt at applause when a judge had
• 2:46:00
  finished speaking, but as before, it was at once repressed, And though
• 2:46:03
  the feeling of the court was strongly against the prisoner, there was no show
• 2:46:07
  of any violence against him, if one may accept a little hooting from the
• 2:46:11
  bystanders when he was being removed in the prisoner's van. Indeed, nothing struck
• 2:46:16
  me more during my whole sojourn in the country than the general respect for law
• 2:46:20
  and order. End of Chapter eleven, Chapter twelve, malcontents. I confess
• 2:46:30
  that I felt rather unhappy when I got home and thought more closely over the
• 2:46:35
  trial that I had just witnessed. For the time I was carried away by
• 2:46:39
  the opinion of those among whom I was. They had no misgivings about what
• 2:46:45
  they were doing. There did not seem to be a person in the whole
• 2:46:48
  court who had the smallest doubt, but that all was exactly as it should
• 2:46:52
  be. This universal unsuspecting confidence was imparted by sympathy to myself, in spite
• 2:47:00
  of all my training in opinions so widely different. So it is with most
• 2:47:05
  of us, that which we observed to be taken as a matter of course
• 2:47:09
  by those around us, we take as a matter of course ourselves, And
• 2:47:16
  after all it is our duty to do this, save upon grave occasion.
• 2:47:20
  But when I was alone and began to think the trial over, it certainly
• 2:47:24
  did strike me as betraying a strange and untenable position. Had the judge said
• 2:47:31
  that he acknowledged the probable truth, namely that the prisoner was born of unhealthy
• 2:47:37
  parents, or had been starved in infancy, or had met with some accidents
• 2:47:41
  which had developed consumption, and had he then gone on to say that though
• 2:47:46
  he knew all this, and bitterly regretted that the protection of society obliged him
• 2:47:52
  to inflict additional pain on one who had suffered so much already, yet that
• 2:47:56
  there was no help for it. I could have understood the position, however
• 2:48:01
  mistaken I might have thought it. The judge was fully persuaded that the infliction
• 2:48:07
  of pain upon the weak and sickly was the only means of preventing weakness and
• 2:48:11
  sickliness from spreading, and that ten times the suffering now inflicted upon the accused
• 2:48:18
  was eventually warded off from others by the present apparent severity. I could therefore
• 2:48:24
  perfectly understand his inflicting whatever pain he might consider necessary in order to prevent so
• 2:48:31
  bad an example from spreading further and lowering the Erewhonian standard. But it seemed
• 2:48:37
  almost childish to tell the prisoner that he could have been in good health if
• 2:48:41
  he had been more fortunate in his constitution and been exposed to less hardships when
• 2:48:46
  he was a boy. I write with great diffidence, But it seems to
• 2:48:52
  me that there is no unfairness in punishing people for their misfortunes or rewarding them
• 2:48:58
  for their sheer good life luck. It is the normal condition of human life
• 2:49:03
  that this should be done, and no right minded person will complain of being
• 2:49:07
  subjected to the common treatment. There is no alternative open to us. It
• 2:49:13
  is idle to say that men are not responsible for their misfortunes. What is
• 2:49:18
  responsibility? Surely, to be responsible means to be liable to have to give
• 2:49:24
  an answer should it be demanded, And all things which live are responsible for
• 2:49:30
  their lives and actions should society see fit to question them through the mouth of
• 2:49:35
  its authorized agent. What is the offense of a lamb that we should rear
• 2:49:41
  it and tend it, and lull it into security for the express purpose of
• 2:49:46
  killing it. Its offense is the misfortune of being something which society wants to
• 2:49:50
  eat, and which cannot defend itself. This is ample. Who shall limit
• 2:49:58
  the right of society accept the si society itself? And what consideration for the
• 2:50:03
  individual is tolerable unless society be the gainer thereby? Wherefore should a man be
• 2:50:11
  so virgely rewarded for having been sun to a millionaire, were it not clearly
• 2:50:16
  provable that the common welfare is thus better furthered. We cannot seriously detract from
• 2:50:22
  a man's merit in having been the son of a rich father without imperiling our
• 2:50:28
  own tenure of things which we do not wish to jeopardize. If this were
• 2:50:33
  otherwise, we should not let him keep his money for a single hour.
• 2:50:37
  We would have it ourselves at once, For property is robbery. But then
• 2:50:43
  we are all robbers, or would be robbers together, and have found it
• 2:50:48
  essential to organize our thieving, as we have found it necessary to organize our
• 2:50:52
  lust and our revenge. Property marriage the law as the bed to the river,
• 2:51:01
  so rule and convention to the instinct, and woe to him who tampers
• 2:51:05
  with the banks while the flood is flowing, but to return. Even in
• 2:51:11
  England, a man on board a ship with yellow fever is held responsible for
• 2:51:16
  his mischance, no matter what his being kept in quarantine may cost him.
• 2:51:22
  He may catch the fever and die. We cannot help it. He must
• 2:51:26
  take his chance, as other people do. But surely it would be desperate
• 2:51:31
  unkindness to add contumely to our self protection, unless indeed we believe that contumely
• 2:51:37
  is one of our best means of self protection. Again, take the case
• 2:51:43
  of maniacs. We say that they are irresponsible for their actions, but we
• 2:51:48
  take good care, or ought to take good care, that they shall answer
• 2:51:52
  to us for their insanity, and we imprison them in what we call an
• 2:51:56
  asylum, that modern sand sanctuary. If we do not like their answers.
• 2:52:03
  This is a strange kind of irresponsibility. What we ought to say is that
• 2:52:09
  we can afford to be satisfied with a less satisfactory answer from a lunatic than
• 2:52:13
  from one who is not mad, because lunacy is less infectious than crime.
• 2:52:20
  We kill a serpent if we go in danger by it, simply for being
• 2:52:24
  such and such a serpent in such and such a place. But we never
• 2:52:28
  say that the serpent has only itself to blame for not having been a harmless
• 2:52:33
  creature. Its crime is that of being the thing which it is. But
• 2:52:39
  this is a capital offense, and we are right in killing it out of
• 2:52:43
  the way, unless we think it more danger to do so than to let
• 2:52:48
  it escape. Nevertheless, we pity the creature even though we kill it.
• 2:52:54
  But in the case of him whose trial I have described above, it was
• 2:52:58
  impossible that anyone in the court should not have known that it was but by
• 2:53:03
  an accident of birth and circumstances, that he was not himself also in a
• 2:53:07
  consumption. And yet none thought that it disgraced them to hear the judge give
• 2:53:13
  vent to the most cruel truisms about him. The judge himself was a kind
• 2:53:18
  and thoughtful person. He was a man of magnificence and benign presence. He
• 2:53:26
  was evidently of an iron constitution, and his face wore an expression of the
• 2:53:31
  maturest wisdom and experience. Yet for all this, old and learned as he
• 2:53:37
  was, he could not see things which one would have thought would have been
• 2:53:41
  apparent even to a child. He could not emancipate himself from Nay, it
• 2:53:46
  did not even occur to him to feel the bondage of the ideas in which
• 2:53:50
  he had been born and bred. So was it also with the jury and
• 2:53:56
  bystanders, And most wonderful of all, so was it even with the prisoner.
• 2:54:03
  Throughout he seemed fully impressed with the notion that he was being dealt with
• 2:54:09
  justly. He saw nothing wanton in his being told by the judge that he
• 2:54:13
  was to be punished, not so much as a necessary protection to society,
• 2:54:18
  although this was not entirely lost sight of as because he had not been better
• 2:54:24
  born and bred than he was. But this led me to hope that he
• 2:54:28
  suffered less than he would have done if he had seen the matter in the
• 2:54:31
  same light that I did. And after all, justice is relative. I
• 2:54:39
  may here mention that only a few years before my arrival in the country,
• 2:54:43
  the treatment of all convicted Invalids had been much more barbarous than now, for
• 2:54:48
  no physical remedy was provided, and prisoners were put to the severest labor in
• 2:54:54
  all sorts of weather, so that most of them soon succumbed to the extreme
• 2:54:58
  hardship which they suffered This was supposed to be beneficial in some ways, inasmuch
• 2:55:05
  as it put the country to less expense for the maintenance of its criminal class.
• 2:55:09
  But the growth of luxury had induced a relaxation of the old severity,
• 2:55:15
  and a sensitive age would no longer tolerate what appeared to be an excess of
• 2:55:20
  rigor, even towards the most guilty. Moreover, it was found that juries
• 2:55:26
  were less willing to convict, and justice was often cheated because there was no
• 2:55:31
  alternatives between virtually condemning a man to death and letting him go free. It
• 2:55:37
  was also held that the country paid in recommittals for its over severity for those
• 2:55:43
  who had been imprisoned, even for trifling ailments were often permanently disabled by their
• 2:55:48
  imprisonment, and when a man had been once convicted, it was probable that
• 2:55:54
  he would seldom afterwards be off the hands of the country. These evils had
• 2:56:00
  long been apparent and recognized, yet people were too indolent and too indifferent to
• 2:56:05
  suffering not their own, to bestir themselves about putting an end to them,
• 2:56:11
  until at last a benevolent reformer devoted his whole life to affecting the necessary changes.
• 2:56:18
  He divided all illnesses into three classes, those affecting the head, the
• 2:56:24
  trunk, and the lower limbs, and obtained an enactment that all diseases of
• 2:56:30
  the head, whether internal or external, should be treated with laudanum, those
• 2:56:35
  of the body with castor oil, and those of the lower limbs with an
• 2:56:41
  umbrocation of strong sulphuric acid and water. It may be said that the classification
• 2:56:48
  was not sufficiently careful, and that their remedies were ill chosen. But it
• 2:56:54
  is a hard thing to initiate any reform, and it was necessary to familiarize
• 2:56:58
  the public mind with the principle by inserting the thin end of the wedge first.
• 2:57:05
  It is not therefore to be wondered at that among so practical a people
• 2:57:09
  there should still be some room for improvement. The mass of the nation are
• 2:57:13
  well pleased with existing arrangements, and believe that their treatment of criminals leaves little
• 2:57:20
  or nothing to be desired. But there is an energetic minority who hold what
• 2:57:26
  are considered to be extreme opinions, and who are not at all disposed to
• 2:57:31
  rest contented until the principle lately admitted has been carried further. I was at
• 2:57:39
  some pains to discover the opinions of these men and their reasons for entertaining them.
• 2:57:45
  They are held in great odium by the generality of the public, and
• 2:57:48
  are considered as subverters of all morality whatever. The malcontents, on the other
• 2:57:54
  hand, assert that illness is the inevitable result of sir antecedent causes, which,
• 2:58:01
  in the great majority of cases were beyond the control of the individual,
• 2:58:07
  and that therefore a man is only guilty for being in a consumption in the
• 2:58:11
  same way as rotten fruit is guilty for having gone rotten. True, the
• 2:58:16
  fruit must be thrown on one side as unfit for man's use, and the
• 2:58:22
  man in a consumption must be put in prison for the protection of his fellow
• 2:58:26
  citizens. But these radicals would not punish them further than by loss of liberty
• 2:58:31
  and a strict surveillance. So long as he was prevented from injuring society,
• 2:58:39
  they would allow him to make himself useful by supplying whatever of society's wants he
• 2:58:43
  could supply. If he succeeded in thus earning money, they would have him
• 2:58:50
  made as comfortable in prison as possible, and would in no way interfere with
• 2:58:54
  his liberty. More than was necessary to prevent him from escaping or from becoming
• 2:58:58
  more severely indisposed within the prison walls. But they would deduct from his earnings
• 2:59:05
  the expenses of his board, lodging, surveillance, and half those of his
• 2:59:11
  conviction. If he was too ill to do anything for his support and prison,
• 2:59:16
  they would allow him nothing but bread and water, and very little of
• 2:59:20
  that. They say that society is foolish in refusing to allow itself to be
• 2:59:26
  benefited by a man merely because he has done at harm hitherto, and that
• 2:59:31
  objection to the labor of the diseased classes is only protection. In another form,
• 2:59:37
  it is an attempt to raise the natural price of a commodity by saying
• 2:59:41
  that such and such persons who are able and willing to produce it, shall
• 2:59:46
  not do so, whereby everyone has to pay more for it. Besides,
• 2:59:52
  so long as a man has not been actually killed, he is our fellow
• 2:59:56
  creature, though perhaps a very un pleasant one. It is in a great
• 3:00:01
  degree the doing of others that he is what he is. Or, in
• 3:00:07
  other words, the society which now condemns him is partly answerable concerning him.
• 3:00:13
  They say that there is no fear of any increase of disease under these circumstances,
• 3:00:18
  for the loss of liberty, the surveillance, the considerable and compulsory deduction
• 3:00:24
  from the prisoner's earnings, the very sparing use of stimulants, of which they
• 3:00:28
  would allow but little to any and none to those who do not earn them.
• 3:00:33
  The enforced celibacy, and above all, the loss of reputation among friends,
• 3:00:39
  are in their opinion, as ample safeguards to society against a general neglect
• 3:00:45
  of health, as those now resorted to. A man, therefore, so,
• 3:00:50
  they say, should carry his profession or trade into prison with him,
• 3:00:54
  if possible. If not, he must earn his living by day the nearest
• 3:01:00
  thing to it that he can. But if he be a gentleman, born
• 3:01:03
  and bred to no profession, he must pick oakum or write art criticisms for
• 3:01:09
  a newspaper. These people say further that the greater part of the illness which
• 3:01:16
  exists in their country is brought about by the insane manner in which it is
• 3:01:20
  treated. They believe that illness is in many cases just as curable as the
• 3:01:26
  moral diseases which they see daily cured around them, but that a great reform
• 3:01:31
  is impossible till men learn to take a juster view of what physical obliquity proceeds
• 3:01:39
  from. Men will hide their illnesses as long as they are scouted. On
• 3:01:45
  its becoming known that they are ill. It is the scouting, not the
• 3:01:48
  physic which produces the concealment. And if a man felt that the news of
• 3:01:56
  his being in ill health would be received by his neighbors as a nad deplorable
• 3:02:00
  fact, but one as much the result of necessary antecedent causes, as though
• 3:02:05
  he had broken into a jeweler's shop and stolen a valuable diamond necklace, as
• 3:02:11
  a fact which might just as easily have happened to themselves, only that they
• 3:02:15
  had the luck to be better born or reared. And if they also felt
• 3:02:20
  that they would not be made more uncomfortable in the prison than the protection of
• 3:02:24
  society against infection and the proper treatment of their own disease actually demanded, men
• 3:02:31
  would give themselves up to the police as readily on perceiving that they had taken
• 3:02:35
  small pox as they go now to the straitener when they feel that they are
• 3:02:39
  on the point of forging a will or running away with somebody else's wife.
• 3:02:46
  But the main argument on which they rely is that of economy, For they
• 3:02:52
  know that they will sooner gain their end by appealing to men's pockets, in
• 3:02:56
  which they have generally something of their own, than to their heads, which
• 3:03:01
  contain for the most part little but borrowed or stolen property. And also they
• 3:03:07
  believe it to be the readiest test, and the one which has most to
• 3:03:11
  show for itself, if a course of conduct can be shown to cost a
• 3:03:16
  country less, and this by no dishonorable saving, and with no indirectly increased
• 3:03:22
  expenditure. In other ways, they hold that it requires a good deal to
• 3:03:28
  upset the arguments in favor of its being adopted. And whether rightly or wrongly,
• 3:03:33
  I cannot pretend to say they think that the more medicinal and humane treatment
• 3:03:37
  of the diseased, of which they are the advocates, would in the long
• 3:03:41
  run be much cheaper to the country. But I did not gather that these
• 3:03:46
  reformers were opposed to meeting some of the more violent forms of illness with the
• 3:03:52
  Cata nine tales or with death, for they saw no so effectual way of
• 3:03:56
  checking them. They would therefore both flog and hang, but they would do
• 3:04:01
  so pitifully. I have perhaps dwelt too long upon opinions which can have no
• 3:04:09
  possible bearing upon our own. But I have not said the tenth part of
• 3:04:13
  what these would be reformers urged upon me. I feel, however, that
• 3:04:18
  I have sufficiently trespassed upon the attention of the reader. End of Chapter twelve,
• 3:04:26
  Chapter thirteen. The views of the Iryhonians concerning death. The Iryhonians regard
• 3:04:35
  death with less abhorrence than decease. If it is an offense at all,
• 3:04:41
  it is one beyond the reach of the law, which is therefore silent on
• 3:04:45
  the subject. But they insist that a greater number of those who are commonly
• 3:04:50
  said to die have never yet been born, not at least into that unseen
• 3:04:56
  world, which is alone worthy of consideration. As regards this unseen world,
• 3:05:01
  I understand them to say that some miscarry in respect to it before they have
• 3:05:07
  even reached the scene, and some after, while few are ever truly born
• 3:05:13
  into it at all, the great part of all the men and women over
• 3:05:16
  the whole country miscarrying before they reach it. And they say that this does
• 3:05:22
  not matter so much as we think it does. As for what we call
• 3:05:28
  death, they argue that too much has been made of it to me.
• 3:05:33
  Knowledge that we shall one day die does not make us very unhappy. No
• 3:05:39
  one thinks that he or she will escape, so that none are disappointed.
• 3:05:45
  We do not care greatly even though we know that we have not long to
• 3:05:48
  live. The only thing that would seriously affect us would be the knowing,
• 3:05:54
  or rather thinking, that we know the precise moment at which to blow will
• 3:06:00
  fall. Happily, no one can ever certainly know this, though many try
• 3:06:05
  to make themselves miserable by endeavoring to find it out. It seems as though
• 3:06:11
  there were some power somewhere which mercifully stays us from putting that sting into detail
• 3:06:16
  of death, which we would put there if we could, and which ensures
• 3:06:22
  that though death must always be a buck bear, it shall never, under
• 3:06:26
  any conceivable circumstances be more than a buck bear. For even though a man
• 3:06:33
  is condemned to die in a week's time, and is shut up in a
• 3:06:37
  prison from which it is certain that he cannot escape, he will always hope
• 3:06:41
  that a reprieve may come before the week is over. Besides, the prison
• 3:06:48
  may catch fire, and he may be suffocated not with a rope, but
• 3:06:52
  with common ordinary smoke or he may be struck dead by lightning while exercise in
• 3:07:00
  the prison yards. When the morning is come on which the poor wretch is
• 3:07:03
  to be hanged, he may choke at his breakfast or die from failure of
• 3:07:09
  the heart's action before the drop has fallen. And even though it has fallen,
• 3:07:15
  he cannot be quite certain that he is going to die, for he
• 3:07:18
  cannot know this till his death has actually taken place, and it will be
• 3:07:22
  too late then for him to discover that he was going to die the appointed
• 3:07:26
  hour after all. The Ryhonians therefore hold that death, like life, is
• 3:07:33
  an affair of being more frightened than hurt. They burn their dead, and
• 3:07:39
  the ashes are presently scattered over any piece of ground which the deceased may himself
• 3:07:46
  have chosen. No one is permitted to refuse this hospitality to the dead.
• 3:07:52
  People therefore generally choose some garden or orchard which they may have known and been
• 3:07:58
  font of when they were young. The superstitious hold that those whose ashes are
• 3:08:03
  scattered over any land become its jealous guardians from that time forward, and the
• 3:08:09
  living like to think that they shall become identified with this or that locality where
• 3:08:16
  they have once been happy. They do not put up monuments nor write epithaphs
• 3:08:22
  for their dead, though in former ages their practice was as much as ours.
• 3:08:28
  But they have a custom which comes to much the same thing, for
• 3:08:31
  the instinct of preserving the name alive after the death of the body seems to
• 3:08:37
  be common to all mankind. They have statues of themselves made while they are
• 3:08:43
  still alive those it is who can afford it, and write inscriptions under them,
• 3:08:50
  which are often quite as untruthful as are our own epithaphs, only in
• 3:08:56
  another way. For they do not hesitate to discrete rib themselves as victims to
• 3:09:01
  ill temper, jealousy, covetousness, and the like, but almost always lay
• 3:09:07
  claim to personal beauty, whether they have it or not, and often to
• 3:09:13
  the possession of a large sum in the funded debt of the country. If
• 3:09:18
  a person is ugly, he does not sit as a model for his own
• 3:09:22
  statue, although it bears his name. He gets the handsomest of his friends
• 3:09:26
  to sit for him, and one of the ways of paying a compliment to
• 3:09:31
  another is to ask him to sit for such a statue. Women generally sit
• 3:09:37
  for their own statues from a natural disinclination to admit the superior beauty of a
• 3:09:43
  friend, but they expect to be idealized. I understood that the multitude of
• 3:09:50
  these statues was beginning to be felt disn encumbrance in almost every family, and
• 3:09:56
  that a custom would probably before long fall into their suetude. Indeed, this
• 3:10:03
  has already come about to dissatisfaction of everyone, as regards the statues of public
• 3:10:09
  men, not more than three of which can be found in the whole capital.
• 3:10:13
  I expressed my surprise at this, and was told that some five hundred
• 3:10:20
  years before my visit, the city had been so overrun with these pests that
• 3:10:24
  there was no getting about, and people were worried beyond endurance by having their
• 3:10:30
  attention called every touch and turned to something which, when they had attended to
• 3:10:35
  it, they found not to concern them. Most of these statues were mere
• 3:10:39
  attempts to do for some man or woman what an animal staffer does more successfully
• 3:10:46
  for a dog, or bird or pike. They were generally foisted on the
• 3:10:50
  public by some cotry that was trying to exalt itself in exalting someone else,
• 3:10:56
  and not unfrequently they had no others than desire on the part of some member
• 3:11:01
  of the country to find a job for a young sculptor to whom his daughter
• 3:11:07
  was engaged. Statues so begotten could never be anything but deformities. And this
• 3:11:13
  is the way in which they are sure to be begotten, as soon as
• 3:11:16
  the art of making them at all has become widely practiced. I know not
• 3:11:22
  why, but all the noblest arts hold imperfection, but for a very little
• 3:11:28
  moment. They soon reach a height from which they begin to decline. And
• 3:11:33
  when they have begun to decline, it is a pity that they cannot be
• 3:11:37
  knocked on the head. For an art is like a living organism, better
• 3:11:41
  dead than dying. There is no way of making an aged art young again.
• 3:11:46
  It must be born in you, and grow up from infancy as a
• 3:11:50
  new thing, walking out its own salvation, from effort to effort. In
• 3:11:56
  all fear and trembling, the Illihornian five hundred years ago understood nothing of all
• 3:12:03
  this. I doubt whether they even do so now. They wanted to get
• 3:12:07
  the nearest thing they could to a stuffed man whose stuffing should not grow moldy.
• 3:12:13
  They should have had some such an establishment as our Madame Tussaurs, where
• 3:12:20
  the figures were real close and are painted up to nature. Such an institution
• 3:12:26
  might have been made self supporting, for people might have been made to pay
• 3:12:31
  before going in. As it was, they had let the poor, cold,
• 3:12:35
  grimy, colorless heroes and heroines loaf about in squares and in corners of
• 3:12:39
  streets, in all weathers, without any attempt at artistic sanitation. For there
• 3:12:46
  was no provision for burying their dead works of art out of their sight,
• 3:12:50
  no drainage, so to speak, whereby statues that had been sufficiently assimilated so
• 3:12:56
  as to form part of the residury depression of the country might be carried away
• 3:13:03
  out of the system. Hence they put them up with a light heart on
• 3:13:07
  the cackling of the CoA trees, and they and their children had to live,
• 3:13:11
  often enough, with some worthy win back whose cowardice had cost the country
• 3:13:18
  untold loss in blood and money. At last, the evil reached such a
• 3:13:24
  pitch that the people rose, and with indiscriminate fury, destroyed good and bad
• 3:13:31
  alike. Most of what was destroyed was bad, but some few works were
• 3:13:35
  good, And the sculptors of to day wring their hands over some of the
• 3:13:39
  fragments that have been preserved in museums up and down the country. For a
• 3:13:46
  couple of hundred years or so, not a statue was made from one end
• 3:13:50
  of the kingdom to the other. But the instinct for having stuffed men and
• 3:13:54
  women was so strong that people at length again began to try to make them.
• 3:14:00
  Not knowing how to make them, and having no academics to mislead them,
• 3:14:03
  the earlous sculptors of this period thought things out for themselves, and again
• 3:14:09
  produced works that were full of interest, so that in three or four generations
• 3:14:15
  they reached a perfection hardly, if at all, inferior to that of several
• 3:14:20
  hundred years earlier. On this the same evils recurred. Sculptors obtained high prices,
• 3:14:28
  the art became a trade schools arose, which professed to sell the Holy
• 3:14:33
  Spirit of art for money. Pupils flocked from far and near to buy it
• 3:14:39
  in the hopes of selling it later on, and was struck purblind as a
• 3:14:43
  punishment for the sin of those who sent them Before long. A second iconoclastic
• 3:14:50
  fury would infallibly have followed, but for the pressions of a statesman who succeeded
• 3:14:56
  in passing an act to the effect that no statue of any public man or
• 3:15:01
  woman should be allowed to remain unbroken for more than fifty years, unless at
• 3:15:07
  the end of that time, a jury of twenty four men taken at random
• 3:15:11
  from the street, pronounced in favor of its being allowed a second fifty years
• 3:15:16
  of life. Every fifty years this reconsideration was to be repeated, and unless
• 3:15:24
  there was a majority of eighteen in favor of the retention of the statue,
• 3:15:28
  it was to be destroyed. Perhaps a simple plan would have been to forbid
• 3:15:35
  the erection of a statue to any public man or woman till he or she
• 3:15:39
  had been dead at least one hundred years, and even then to insist on
• 3:15:43
  reconsideration of the claims of the deceased and the merit of the statue every fifty
• 3:15:50
  years. But the working of the Act brought about results that, on the
• 3:15:54
  whole were satisfactory. For in the first place, many public statues use that
• 3:16:00
  would have been voted on the the odd system were not ordered when it was
• 3:16:03
  known that they would be almost certainly broken up after fifty years. And in
• 3:16:09
  the second, public sculptors, knowing the work to be so ephemeral, scamted
• 3:16:15
  to an extent that made it offensive even to the most uncultured eye. Hence,
• 3:16:20
  before long subscribers took to paying the sculptor for the statue of the dead
• 3:16:26
  statesman on condition that he did not make it. The tribute of respect was
• 3:16:31
  thus paid to the deceased. The public sculptors were not marked, and the
• 3:16:35
  rest of the public suffered no inconvenience. I was told, however, that
• 3:16:43
  an abuse of this custom is growing up, inasmuch as the competition for the
• 3:16:48
  commission not to make a statue is so keen that sculptors have been known to
• 3:16:52
  return a considerable part of the purchase money to the subscribers by an arrangement made
• 3:16:58
  with them beforehand. Such transactions, however, are always clandestine. A small
• 3:17:05
  inscription is led into the pavement where the public statue would have stood, which
• 3:17:09
  informs the reader that such a statue has been ordered for the person, whoever
• 3:17:15
  he or she may be, but that as yet the sculptor has not been
• 3:17:18
  able to complete it. There has been no act to repress statues that are
• 3:17:24
  intended for private consumption. But as I have said, the custom is following
• 3:17:28
  into disuetude. Returning to Irehonian customs in connection with death, there is one
• 3:17:37
  which I can hardly pass over. When anyone dies, the friends of the
• 3:17:41
  family write no letters of condolence. Neither do they attend the scattering nor wear
• 3:17:48
  mourning. But they send little boxes filled with artificial tears, and with the
• 3:17:54
  name of the center painted neatly upon the outside of the lid. The tears
• 3:17:58
  vary number from two to fifteen or sixteen, according to a degree of intimacy
• 3:18:05
  or relationship, and people sometimes find it a nice point of etiquette to know
• 3:18:11
  the exact number which they ought to send. Strange as it may appear,
• 3:18:16
  this attention is highly valued, and its omission by those from whom it might
• 3:18:22
  be expected is keenly felt. These tears were formerly stuck with adhesive plaster to
• 3:18:28
  the cheeks of the bereaved, and were worn in public for a few months
• 3:18:33
  after the death of a relative. They were then banished to the hut a
• 3:18:37
  bonnet, and are now no longer worn. The birth of a child is
• 3:18:43
  looked upon as a painful subject on which it is kinder not to touch.
• 3:18:48
  The illness of the mother is carefully concealed until the necessity for signing the birth
• 3:18:54
  formula, of which hereafter renders further secrecy impossible, and for some months before
• 3:19:01
  the event, the family live in retirement, seeing very little company. When
• 3:19:07
  the offense is over and done with, it is condoned by the common want
• 3:19:09
  of logic, for this merciful provision of nature, this buffer against collisions,
• 3:19:16
  this friction which upsets our calculations, but without which existence would be intolerable,
• 3:19:24
  This crowning glory of human invention, whereby we can be blind and see at
• 3:19:30
  one and the same moment. This blessed inconsistency exists here as elsewhere. And
• 3:19:37
  though the strictest striters on morality have maintained that it is wicked for a woman
• 3:19:43
  to have children at all, inasmuch as it is wrong to be out of
• 3:19:46
  health, that good may come, yet the necessity of the case has caused
• 3:19:52
  a general feeling in favor of passing over such events in silence, and of
• 3:19:56
  assuming their non existence, except in such flagrant cases as forced themselves on the
• 3:20:03
  public notice. Against these, the condemnation of society is inexorable, and if
• 3:20:11
  it is believed that the illness has been dangerous and protracted, it is almost
• 3:20:16
  impossible for a woman to recover her former position in society. The above conventions
• 3:20:24
  struck me as arbitrary and cruel, but they put a stop to many fancied
• 3:20:30
  tailments. For the situation, so far from being considered interesting, is looked
• 3:20:35
  upon as savoring more or less distinctly of a very reprehensible condition of things,
• 3:20:41
  and the ladies take care to conceal it as long as they can, even
• 3:20:46
  from their own husbands, in anticipation of a severe as cooling as soon as
• 3:20:50
  the misdemeanor is discovered. Also, the baby is kept out of sight except
• 3:20:56
  from the day of signing the birth formula, until it can walk and talk.
• 3:21:01
  Should a child unhappily die, a coroner's inquest is inevitable, but in
• 3:21:07
  order to avoid disgracing a family which may have been hitherto respected, it is
• 3:21:13
  almost invariably found that a child was over seventy five years old and died from
• 3:21:18
  the decay of nature. End of Chapter thirteen. Chapter fourteen, Mahina I
• 3:21:30
  continued my sojourn with the Nosnibors. In a few days, mister Nosnibor had
• 3:21:33
  recovered from his flogging and was looking forward with glee to the fact that the
• 3:21:37
  next would be the last. I did not think that there seemed any occasion
• 3:21:41
  even for this, but he said it was better to be on the safe
• 3:21:45
  side, and he would make up the dozen. He now went to his
• 3:21:48
  business as usual, and I understood that he was never more prosperous. In
• 3:21:52
  spite of his heavy fine. He was unable to give me much of his
• 3:21:56
  time during the day, for he was one of those valuable men who are
• 3:22:00
  paid not by the year, month, week, or day, but by
• 3:22:03
  the minute. His wife and daughters, however, made much of me and
• 3:22:07
  introduced me to their friends who came in shoals to call upon me. One
• 3:22:11
  of these persons was a lady called Mahina Zulora. The elder of my host's
• 3:22:18
  daughters ran up to her and embraced her as soon as she entered the room.
• 3:22:22
  At the same time, inquiring tenderly after her poor dipsomania, Mahina answered
• 3:22:28
  that was just as bad as ever. She was a perfect martyr to it,
• 3:22:31
  and her excellent health was the only thing which consoled her under her affliction.
• 3:22:37
  Then the other ladies joined in with condolences and the never failing suggestions which
• 3:22:41
  they had ready for every mental malady. They recommended their own straighten her and
• 3:22:46
  disparaged Mahina's missus Noosnobor had a favorite nostrum, but I could catch little of
• 3:22:54
  its nature. I heard the words full confidence that the desire to drink will
• 3:22:58
  cease when the formula has been repeated. This confidence is everything far from undervaluing
• 3:23:07
  a thorough determination never to touch spirits again failed too often. Formula a certain
• 3:23:13
  cure with great emphasis prescribed form full conviction. The conversation then became more audible,
• 3:23:24
  and was carried on at considerable length. I should perplexed myself and the
• 3:23:28
  reader by endeavoring to follow the ingenious perversity of all they said enough that in
• 3:23:33
  the course of time, the visit came to an end, and Mahina took
• 3:23:37
  her leave, receiving affectionis embraces from all the ladies. I had remained in
• 3:23:43
  the background after the first ceremony of introduction, for I did not like the
• 3:23:48
  looks of Mahina, and the conversation displeased me. When she left the room,
• 3:23:52
  I had some consolation in the remarks called forth by her departure. At
• 3:23:58
  first they fell to praising her very demurely. She was all this, that
• 3:24:01
  and the other, until I disliked her more and more at every word and
• 3:24:07
  inquired how it was that the straighteners had not been able to cure her as
• 3:24:11
  he had cured mister Nosnibor. There was a shade of significance on Missus Nosnibor's
• 3:24:16
  face as I said this, which seemed to imply that she did not consider
• 3:24:20
  Mahina's case to be quite one for a straightener. It flashed across me that
• 3:24:26
  perhaps the poor woman did not drink at all. I knew that I ought
• 3:24:30
  not to have inquired, but I could not help it, and asked point
• 3:24:33
  blank whether she did or not. We can none of us judge of the
• 3:24:39
  condition of other people, said Missus Nosnibor, in a gravely charitable tone,
• 3:24:43
  and with a look towards Zulora. Oh Mamma, answered Zulora, pretending to
• 3:24:48
  be half angry, but rejoiced at being able to say out what she was
• 3:24:52
  already longing to continuate. I don't believe a word of it. It's all
• 3:24:58
  indigestion. I remember staying in the house with her for a whole month last
• 3:25:01
  summer, and I am sure she never once touched a drop of wine or
• 3:25:05
  spirits. The fact is, Mahinah is a very weakly girl, and she
• 3:25:11
  pretends to get tipsy in order to win a forbearns from her friends, to
• 3:25:15
  which she is not entitled. She is not strong enough for her calisthenic exercises,
• 3:25:20
  and she knows she would be made to do them unless her inability was
• 3:25:24
  referred to moral causes. Here, the younger sister, who was ever sweet
• 3:25:30
  and kind, remarked that she thought Mahinah did tipple occasionally. I also think,
• 3:25:35
  she added that she sometimes takes poppy juice. Well, then perhaps she
• 3:25:41
  does drink sometimes, said Zulora, But she would make us all think that
• 3:25:45
  she does it much oftener in order to hide her weakness. And so they
• 3:25:50
  went on for half an hour and more, bandying about the question as to
• 3:25:54
  how far their late visitors and temperance was real or no. Every now and
• 3:25:56
  then they would join in some charitable common place and would pretend to be all
• 3:26:01
  of one mind that Mahina was a person whose bodily health would be excellent if
• 3:26:05
  it were not for her unfortunate inability to refrain from excessive drinking. But as
• 3:26:11
  soon as this appeared to be fairly settled, they began to be uncomfortable,
• 3:26:15
  until they had undone their work, and left some serious imputation upon her constitution.
• 3:26:20
  At last, seeing that the debate had assumed the character of a cyclone
• 3:26:24
  or a circular storm, going round and round and round and round, till
• 3:26:28
  one could never say where it began nor where it ended, I made some
• 3:26:33
  apology for an abrupt departure, and retired to my own room. Here at
• 3:26:37
  least I was alone, But I was very unhappy. I had fallen upon
• 3:26:41
  a set of people who, in spite of their high civilization and many excellences,
• 3:26:46
  had been so warped by the mistaken views presented to them during childhood,
• 3:26:52
  from generation to generation, that it was impossible to see how they could ever
• 3:26:56
  clear themselves. Was there nothing which I could say to make them feel that
• 3:27:01
  the constitution of a person's body was a thing over which he or she had,
• 3:27:05
  at any rate no initial control whatever. While the mind was a perfectly
• 3:27:09
  different thing, and capable of being created anew and directed according to the pleasure
• 3:27:15
  of its possessor. Could I never bring them to see that while habits of
• 3:27:18
  mind and character were entirely independent of initial mental force and early education, the
• 3:27:24
  body was so much a creature of parentage and circumstances, that no punishment for
• 3:27:30
  ill health should be ever tolerated, save as a protection from contagion, and
• 3:27:33
  that even where punishment was inevitable, it should be attended with compassion. And
• 3:27:39
  surely, if the unfortunates Mehana were to feel that she could avow her bodily
• 3:27:45
  weakness without fear of being despised for her infirmities, and if there were medical
• 3:27:50
  men to whom she could fairly state her case, she would not hesitate about
• 3:27:54
  doing so through the fear of taking nasty medicine. It was possible that her
• 3:27:58
  malady was incurable, for I had heard enough to convince me that her dipsomonia
• 3:28:03
  was only a pretense, and that she was temperate in all her habits.
• 3:28:07
  In that case, she might perhaps be justly subject to annoyances, or even
• 3:28:11
  to restraint. But who could say whether she was curable or not until she
• 3:28:16
  was able to make a clean breast of her symptoms. Instead of concealing them
• 3:28:20
  in their eagerness to stamp out disease, these people overshot their mark. For
• 3:28:26
  people had become so clever at dissembling. They painted their faces with such consummate
• 3:28:31
  skill they repaired the decay of time and the effects of mischance with such profound
• 3:28:37
  dissimulation that it was really impossible to say whether any one was well or ill
• 3:28:41
  till after an intimate acquaintance of months or years. Even then, the shrewdest
• 3:28:46
  were constantly mistaken in their judgments, and marriages were often contracted with most deplorable
• 3:28:52
  results. Owing to the art with which infirmity had been concealed, it appeared
• 3:28:56
  to me that the first step towards the cure of disease should be the announcement
• 3:29:01
  of the fact to a person's near relations and friends. If anyone had a
• 3:29:07
  headache, he ought to be permitted, within reasonable limits, to say so
• 3:29:09
  at once, and to retire to his own bedroom and take a pill,
• 3:29:13
  without everyone's looking grave, and tears being shed, and all the rest of
• 3:29:18
  it. As it was. Even upon hearing it whispered that somebody else was
• 3:29:22
  subject to headaches, a whole company must look as though they had never had
• 3:29:26
  a headache in their lives. It is true they were not very prevalent for
• 3:29:31
  the people who were the healthiest and most commonly imaginable, owing to the severity
• 3:29:35
  with which ill health was treated. Still, even the best were liable to
• 3:29:39
  be out of sorts sometimes, and there were few families that had not a
• 3:29:45
  medicine chest and a cupboard somewhere. End of Chapter fourteen, Chapter fifteen,
• 3:29:52
  The Musical Banks. On my return to the drawing room, I found that
• 3:29:58
  the Mahina Karan had expended itself. The ladies were just putting away their work
• 3:30:03
  and preparing to go out. I asked them where they were going. They
• 3:30:07
  answered, with a certain air of reserve, that they were going to the
• 3:30:11
  bank to get some money. Now, I had already collected that the mercantile
• 3:30:16
  affairs of the Erewhonians were conducted on a totally different system from our own.
• 3:30:22
  I had, however, gathered little hitherto, except that they had two distinct
• 3:30:26
  commercial systems, of which one appealed more strongly to the imagination than anything to
• 3:30:31
  which we are accustomed in Europe. Inasmuch as the banks that were conducted upon
• 3:30:37
  this system were decorated in the most profuse fashion, and all mercantile transactions were
• 3:30:43
  accompanied with music, so that they were called musical banks, though the music
• 3:30:50
  was hideous to a European air. As for the system itself, I never
• 3:30:56
  understood it. Neither can I do so. Now they have a code in
• 3:31:00
  connection with it, which I have not the slightest doubt that they understand.
• 3:31:05
  But no foreigner can hope to do so. One rule runs into and against
• 3:31:09
  another in as most complicated grammar, or as in Chinese pronunciation, wherein I
• 3:31:16
  am told that the slightest change in accentation or tone of voice alters the meaning
• 3:31:22
  of a whole sentence. Whatever is incoherent in my description must be referred to
• 3:31:28
  the fact of my never having attained a full comprehension of the subject. So
• 3:31:33
  far, however, as I could collect anything certain, I gathered that they
• 3:31:37
  have two distinct currencies, each under the control of its own banks and mercantile
• 3:31:43
  codes. One of these, the one with the musical banks, was supposed
• 3:31:48
  to be the system, and to give out the currency in which all monetary
• 3:31:54
  transactions should be carried on. And as far as I could see, all
• 3:31:58
  who wished to be considered respective kept the larger or smaller balance at these banks.
• 3:32:03
  On the other hand, if there is one thing of which I am
• 3:32:07
  more than sure than the other, it is that the amount so kept had
• 3:32:11
  no direct commercial value in the outside world. I am sure that the managers
• 3:32:18
  and cashiers of the musical banks were not paid in their own currency. Mister
• 3:32:22
  Nosnibor used to go to these banks, or rather to the great mother bank
• 3:32:26
  of the city sometimes, but not very often. He was a pillar of
• 3:32:31
  one of the other kind of banks, though he appeared to hold some minor
• 3:32:35
  office also in the musical ones. The ladies generally went alone, as indeed
• 3:32:41
  was the case in most families, except on state occasions. I had long
• 3:32:48
  wanted to know more of this strange system, and had the greatest desire to
• 3:32:52
  accompany my hostess and her daughters. I had seen them go out almost every
• 3:32:56
  morning since my arrival, and had noticed that they carried their purses in their
• 3:33:01
  hands, not exactly ostentatiously, yet just so as those who met them should
• 3:33:07
  see whither they were going. I had, never, however, yet been
• 3:33:11
  asked to go with them myself. It is not easy to convey a person's
• 3:33:18
  manner by words, and I can hardly give any idea of the peculiar feeling
• 3:33:22
  that came upon me when I saw the ladies on the point of starting for
• 3:33:26
  the bank. There was a something of regret, a something as though they
• 3:33:31
  would wish to take me with them, but did not like to ask me.
• 3:33:35
  And yet, as though I were hardly to ask to be taken,
• 3:33:39
  I was determined, however, to bring matters to an issue with my hostesses
• 3:33:43
  about my going with them. And after a little parleying and many inquiries as
• 3:33:48
  to whether I was perfectly sure that I myself wished to go, it was
• 3:33:54
  decided that I might do so. We passed through several streets of more or
• 3:34:00
  less considerable houses, and at last, turning around a corner, we came
• 3:34:03
  upon a large piazza, at the end of which was a magnificent building of
• 3:34:09
  a strange but noble architecture and of great antiquity. It did not open directly
• 3:34:16
  onto the piazza, there being a screen through which was an archway, and
• 3:34:20
  between the piazza and the actual precincts of the bank. On passing under the
• 3:34:26
  archway, we entered upon a green sward, and around which there ran an
• 3:34:30
  arcade or cloister, while in front of us uprose the majestic towers of the
• 3:34:35
  bank and its venerable front, which was divided into three steep recesses and adorned
• 3:34:41
  with all sorts of marbles and many sculptures. On either side there were beautiful
• 3:34:46
  old trees, wherein the birds were busy by the hundred and a number of
• 3:34:50
  quaint but substantial houses of singularly comfortable appearance. They were situated in the midst
• 3:34:56
  of orchards and gardens, and gave me impression of great peace and plenty.
• 3:35:05
  Indeed, it had been no error to say that this building was one that
• 3:35:09
  appealed to the imagination. It did more. It carried both imagination and judgment
• 3:35:15
  by storm. It was an epic in stone and marble, and so powerful
• 3:35:20
  was the effect it produced on me that as I beheld it, I was
• 3:35:24
  charmed and melted. I felt more conscious of the existence of a remote past.
• 3:35:31
  One knows of this always, but the knowledge is never so living as
• 3:35:35
  in the actual presence of some witness to the life of bygone ages. I
• 3:35:41
  felt how short a space of human life was the period of our own existence.
• 3:35:46
  I was more impressed by my own littleness, and much more inclinable to
• 3:35:50
  believe that the people whose sense of the fitness of things was equal to the
• 3:35:56
  upraising of so serene a handiwork, were hard likely to be wrong in the
• 3:36:01
  conclusions they might come to upon any subject. My feeling, certainly was that
• 3:36:07
  the currency of this bank must be the right one. We crossed the sward
• 3:36:15
  and entered the building. If the outside had been impressive, the inside was
• 3:36:20
  even more so. It was very lofty and divided into several parts by walls
• 3:36:26
  which rested upon massive pillars. The windows were filled with stained glass descriptive of
• 3:36:31
  the principal commercial incidents of the bank. For many ages. In a remote
• 3:36:37
  part of the building there were men and boys singing. This was the only
• 3:36:41
  disturbing feature, for as the gamut was still unknown, there was no music
• 3:36:46
  in the country which could be agreeable to a European ear. The singers seemed
• 3:36:52
  to have derived their inspirations from the songs of birds and the wailing of the
• 3:36:56
  wind, which last they tried to imitate in melancholy cadences that at times degenerated
• 3:37:03
  into a howl. To my thinking, the noise was hideous, but it
• 3:37:09
  produced a great effect upon my companions, who professed themselves much moved. As
• 3:37:15
  soon as the singing was over, the ladies requested me to stay where I
• 3:37:18
  was while they went inside the place from which it had seemed to come.
• 3:37:22
  During their absence, certain reflections forced themselves upon me. In the first place,
• 3:37:28
  it struck me as strange that the building should be so nearly empty.
• 3:37:33
  I was almost alone, and the few besides myself had been led by curiosity
• 3:37:39
  and had no intention of doing business with the bank. But there might be
• 3:37:43
  more inside. I stole up to the curtain and ventured to draw the extreme
• 3:37:48
  edge of it on one side. No, there was hardly anyone there.
• 3:37:52
  I saw a large number of cashiers, all at their desks, ready to
• 3:37:56
  pay checks, and I saw one or two he seemed to be the managing
• 3:38:00
  partners. I also saw my hostess and her daughters, and two or three
• 3:38:05
  other ladies. Also three or four old women and boys from one of the
• 3:38:09
  neighboring colleges, of unreason, but there was no one else. This did
• 3:38:15
  not look as though the bank was doing a very large business, And yet
• 3:38:18
  I had always been told that everyone in the city dealt with this establishment.
• 3:38:24
  I cannot describe all that took place in these inner precincts, for a sinister
• 3:38:28
  looking person in a black gown came and made unpleasant gestures at me for peeping.
• 3:38:35
  I happened to have in my pocket one of the musical bank pieces,
• 3:38:37
  which had been given me by Missus Nosnibor, so I tried to tip him
• 3:38:41
  with it, but having seen what it was, he became so angry that
• 3:38:45
  I had to give him a piece of the other kind of money to pacify
• 3:38:48
  him. When I had done this, he became civil directly. As soon
• 3:38:52
  as he was gone, I ventured to take a second look and saw Zulora
• 3:38:56
  in the very act of giving a piece of paper which looked like a check
• 3:39:00
  to one of the cashiers. He did not examine it, but putting his
• 3:39:03
  hand into an antique coffer hard by, he pulled out a quantity of metal
• 3:39:09
  pieces, apparently at random, and handed them over without counting them. Neither
• 3:39:13
  did Zulora count them, but put them into her purse and went back to
• 3:39:18
  her seat after dropping a few pieces of the other coinage into an alms box
• 3:39:22
  that stood by the cashier's side. Missus Nosnibor and Orohena then did likewise.
• 3:39:28
  But a little later they gave all so far as I could see that they
• 3:39:33
  had received from their cashier back to a verger, who, I have no
• 3:39:37
  doubt put it back into the coffer from which it had been taken. They
• 3:39:43
  then began making towards the curtain, whereon I let it drop and retreated to
• 3:39:48
  a reasonable distance. They soon joined me. For some minutes we all kept
• 3:39:54
  silence, but at last I ventured to remark that the bank was not so
• 3:39:58
  busy today as it probably often was. On this Missus Nosnibor said that it
• 3:40:03
  was indeed melancholy to see what little heed people paid to the most precious of
• 3:40:09
  all institutions. I could say nothing in reply, but I have ever been
• 3:40:15
  of opinion that the greater part of mankind do approximately know where they get that
• 3:40:20
  which does them good. Missus Nosnibor went on to say that I must not
• 3:40:26
  think that there was any want of confidence in the bank, because I had
• 3:40:31
  seen so few people there. The heart of the country was thoroughly devoted to
• 3:40:35
  these establishments, and any sign of their being in danger would bring in support
• 3:40:41
  from the most unexpected quarters. It was only because people knew them to be
• 3:40:46
  so very safe that in some cases, as she lamented to say in mister
• 3:40:50
  Nosnibor's that they felt that their support was unnecessary. Moreover, these institutions never
• 3:40:58
  departed from the safest and most approved banking principles. Thus they never allowed interest
• 3:41:03
  on a deposit, a thing now frequently done by certain bubble companies, which
• 3:41:09
  by doing an illegitimate trade, had drawn many customers away, and even the
• 3:41:13
  shareholders were fewer than formerly owing to the innovations of these unscrupulous persons. For
• 3:41:20
  the musical banks paid little or no dividend, but divided their profits by way
• 3:41:26
  of a bonus on the original shares once in every thirty thousand years. And
• 3:41:31
  as it was now only two thousand years since there had been one of these
• 3:41:35
  distributions, people felt that they could not hope for another in their own time,
• 3:41:41
  and preferred investments whereby they got some more tangible return, all which she
• 3:41:46
  said was very melancholy to think of. Having made these last admissions, she
• 3:41:50
  returned to her original statement, namely that everyone in the country rarely supported these
• 3:41:56
  banks as to the fewness of the people and the absence of the able bodied.
• 3:42:03
  She pointed out to me with some justice, that this was exactly what
• 3:42:07
  we ought to expect. The men who were most conversant about the stability of
• 3:42:11
  human institutions, such as lawyers, men of science, doctors, statesmen,
• 3:42:16
  painters, and the like, were just those who were most likely to be
• 3:42:22
  misled by their own fancied accomplishments, and to be made unduly suspicious by their
• 3:42:26
  licentious desire for greater present return, which was at the root of nine tenths
• 3:42:31
  of the opposition, by their vanity, which would prompt them to affect superiority
• 3:42:37
  to the prejudices of the vulgar, and by the stings of their own conscience,
• 3:42:41
  which was constantly upbraiding them in the most cruel manner on account of their
• 3:42:45
  bodies, which were generally diseased. Let a person's intellect, she continued,
• 3:42:52
  be never so sound unless his body is in absolute health. He can form
• 3:42:56
  no judgment worth having on matters of this kind. The body is everything.
• 3:43:01
  It need not perhaps be such a strong body. She said this, because
• 3:43:05
  she saw that I was thinking of the old and infirm looking folks whom I
• 3:43:07
  had seen in the bank. But it must be in perfect health. In
• 3:43:13
  this case, the less active strength it had, the more free it would
• 3:43:16
  be the working of the intellect, and therefore the sounder the conclusion. The
• 3:43:22
  people, then, whom I had seen at the bank were in reality the
• 3:43:26
  very ones whose opinions were most worth having. They declared its advantages to be
• 3:43:31
  incalculable, and even professed to consider the immediate return to be far larger than
• 3:43:37
  they were entitled to. And so she ran on, nor did she leave
• 3:43:41
  off until we had got back to the house. She might say what she
• 3:43:46
  pleased, but her manner carried no conviction. And later on I saw signs
• 3:43:52
  of general indifference to these banks that were not to be mistaken. Their supporters
• 3:43:56
  often denied it, but the denial was generally so couched as to add another
• 3:44:01
  proof of its existence. In commercial panics and in times of general distress,
• 3:44:07
  the people as a mass did not so much even think of turning to these
• 3:44:11
  banks. A few might do so, some from habit and early training,
• 3:44:16
  some from the instinct that prompts us to catch at any straw when we think
• 3:44:20
  ourselves drowning, but few from a genuine belief that the musical banks could save
• 3:44:26
  them from financial ruin if they were unable to meet their engagements in the other
• 3:44:31
  kind of currency. In conversation with one of the musical bank managers, I
• 3:44:37
  mentioned to Hint that this as plainly as politeness would allow. He said that
• 3:44:43
  it had been more or less true until lately, but now that they had
• 3:44:46
  put fresh stained glass windows into all banks in the country, and repaired the
• 3:44:50
  buildings and enlarged the organs. The presidents, moreover had taken to riding and
• 3:44:56
  omnibuses, and talking nicely to people in the streets, and to remembering the
• 3:45:01
  ages of their children, and giving them things when they were naughty, so
• 3:45:05
  that all would henceforth go smoothly. But haven't you done anything to the money
• 3:45:11
  itself, I said timidly. It is not necessary, he rejoined, Not
• 3:45:16
  in the least necessary, I assure you. And yet anyone could see that
• 3:45:22
  the money given out at these banks was not that with which people bought their
• 3:45:26
  bread, meat and clothing. It was like it at first glance, and
• 3:45:31
  was stamped with designs that were often of great beauty. It was not,
• 3:45:37
  again, a spurious coinage made with the intention that it should be mistaken for
• 3:45:41
  the money in actual use. It was more like a toy money, or
• 3:45:45
  the counters used for certain games at cards. For notwithstanding the beauty of the
• 3:45:50
  designs, the material on which they were stamped was as nearly valueless as possible.
• 3:45:56
  Some were covered with tinfoil, but the greater part were frankly of a
• 3:46:01
  cheap base metal, the exact nature of which I was not able to determine.
• 3:46:05
  Indeed, they were made of a great variety of metals, or perhaps
• 3:46:09
  more accurately, alloys, some of which were hard, while others could bend
• 3:46:15
  easily and assume almost any form which their possessor might desire. At the moment,
• 3:46:20
  of course, everyone knew that their commercial value was nil, But all
• 3:46:24
  those who wished to be considered respectful thought it incumbent upon them so retain a
• 3:46:31
  few coins in their possession, and to let them be seen from time to
• 3:46:35
  time in their hands and purses. Not only this, but they would stick
• 3:46:39
  to it that the current coin of the realm was dross in comparison with a
• 3:46:43
  musical bank coinage. Perhaps, however, the strangest thing of all was that
• 3:46:50
  these very people would at times make fun in small ways of the whole system.
• 3:46:56
  Indeed, there was hardly any insinuation against it which they would not tolerate
• 3:47:01
  and even applaud in their daily newspapers, if written anonymously. Well, if
• 3:47:05
  the same thing were said without ambiguity to their faces, nominative case, verb
• 3:47:11
  and acquissus of all being in their right places, and doubt impossible, they
• 3:47:16
  would consider themselves very seriously and justly outraged and accuse the speaker of being unwell.
• 3:47:26
  I never could understand, neither can I quite do so now, though
• 3:47:30
  I began to see better what they mean, why a single currency should not
• 3:47:33
  suffice them. It would seem to me as though all their dealings would have
• 3:47:39
  been thus greatly simplified. But I was met with a look of horror if
• 3:47:43
  I ever dared to hint at it. Even those who, to my certain
• 3:47:46
  knowledge, kept only just enough money at the musical banks to swear by,
• 3:47:52
  would call the other banks where their securities really lay cold, deadening, paralyzing,
• 3:47:58
  and the like. I noticed another thing moreover, which struck me greatly.
• 3:48:03
  I was taken to the opening of one of these banks in a neighboring
• 3:48:07
  town and saw a large assemblage of cassiers and managers. I sat opposite them
• 3:48:13
  and scanned their faces attentively. They did not please me. They lacked,
• 3:48:16
  with few exceptions, the true Erewhonian frankness, and an equal number from any
• 3:48:22
  other class would have looked happier and better men when I met them in the
• 3:48:26
  streets. They did not seem like other people, but had, as a
• 3:48:31
  general rule, a cramped expression upon their faces, which pained and oppressed me.
• 3:48:37
  Those who came from the country were better. They seemed to have lived
• 3:48:39
  less as a separate class, and to be freer and healthier. But in
• 3:48:43
  spite of my seeing not a few whose looks were benign and noble, I
• 3:48:48
  could not help asking myself concerning the greater number of those whom I met,
• 3:48:52
  whether erewhon would be a better country if their expression were to be transferred to
• 3:48:56
  the people in general. Answered myself emphatically no. The expression on the faces
• 3:49:03
  of the high yadronites was that which one would wish to diffuse, and not
• 3:49:09
  that of the cashiers. A man's expression is his sacrament. It is the
• 3:49:13
  outward and visible sign of his inward and spiritual grace or want of grace.
• 3:49:20
  And as I looked at the majority of these men, I could not help
• 3:49:24
  feeling that there must be a something in their lives which had stunted their natural
• 3:49:28
  development, and that they would have been more healthier minded than any other profession.
• 3:49:35
  I was always sorry for them, for in nine cases out of ten
• 3:49:39
  they were well meaning persons. They were in the main very poorly paid,
• 3:49:45
  Their constitutions were as a rule above suspicion, and there were recorded numberless instances
• 3:49:50
  of their self sacrifice and generosity. But they had the misfortune to have been
• 3:49:56
  betrayed into a false position at an age for the most part, when their
• 3:50:01
  judgment was not matured, and after having been kept in studied ignorance of the
• 3:50:07
  real difficulties of the system. But this did not make their position the less
• 3:50:11
  a false one, and its bad effects upon them were unmistakable. Few people
• 3:50:18
  would speak quite openly and freely before them, which struck me as a very
• 3:50:22
  bad sign. When they were in the room, everyone would talk as though
• 3:50:28
  all currency save that of the musical banks should be abolished, And yet they
• 3:50:33
  knew perfectly well that even the cashiers themselves hardly used a musical bank money more
• 3:50:39
  than the other people. It was expected of them that they should appear to
• 3:50:43
  do so, But this was all the less thoughtful of them did not seem
• 3:50:48
  particularly unhappy. But many were plainly sick at heart, though perhaps they hardly
• 3:50:54
  knew it and would not have owned up to being so. Our opponents of
• 3:51:00
  the whole system, But these were liable to be dismissed from their employment at
• 3:51:05
  any moment, and this rendered them very careful. For a man who had
• 3:51:09
  once been cashier at a musical bank, was out of the field for other
• 3:51:13
  employment, and was genuinely unfitted for it by reason of the course of treatment
• 3:51:18
  which was commonly called his education. In fact, it was a career from
• 3:51:24
  which retreat was virtually impossible, and into which young men were generally induced to
• 3:51:30
  enter before they could be reasonably expected, considering their training, to have formed
• 3:51:35
  any opinions of their own. Not unfrequently, indeed, they were induced by
• 3:51:41
  what we in England should call undue influence, concealment and fraud. Few,
• 3:51:46
  indeed, were those who had the courage to insist on seeing both sides of
• 3:51:50
  the question before they committed themselves to what was practically a leap in the dark.
• 3:51:56
  One would have thought that the caution in this Rett inspect was an elementary
• 3:52:01
  principle, one of the first things that an honorable man would teach his boy
• 3:52:05
  to understand. But in practice it was not so. I even saw cases
• 3:52:13
  in which the parents brought the right of presenting to the office of cashier at
• 3:52:18
  one of these banks, with a fixed determination that some one of their sons,
• 3:52:22
  perhaps a mere child, should fill it. There was a lad himself
• 3:52:26
  growing up with every promise of becoming a good and honorable man, but utterly
• 3:52:31
  without warning concerning the iron shoe which his natural protector was providing for him,
• 3:52:37
  who could say that the whole thing would not end in a lifelong lie and
• 3:52:41
  vain chafing to escape. I confess that there were few things in erewhon which
• 3:52:46
  shocked me more than this. Yet we do something not so very different from
• 3:52:52
  this. Even in England, and as regards the dual commercial system, all
• 3:52:56
  countries have and have had a law of the land, and also another law,
• 3:53:01
  which, though professedly more sacred, has far less effect on their daily
• 3:53:07
  lives and actions. It seems as though the need for some law over and
• 3:53:11
  above, and sometimes even conflicting with the law of the land, must spring
• 3:53:16
  from something that lies deep down in man's nature. Indeed, it is hard
• 3:53:22
  to think that man could ever have become man at all but for the gradual
• 3:53:26
  evolution of a perception that, though this world looms so large when we are
• 3:53:31
  in it, it may seem a little thing when we have got away from
• 3:53:35
  it. When man had grown to the perception that in the everlasting is and
• 3:53:43
  is not of nature, The world in all that it contains, including man,
• 3:53:48
  is at the same time both seen and unseen. He felt the need
• 3:53:52
  of two rules of life, one for the seen and the other for the
• 3:53:58
  unseen side of things. For the laws affecting the seen world, he claimed
• 3:54:03
  the sanction of seen powers. For the unseen, of which he knows nothing
• 3:54:09
  save that it exists and it is powerful. He appealed to the unseen power,
• 3:54:15
  of which again he knows nothing save that it exists and is powerful,
• 3:54:20
  to which he gives the name God. Some Erewhonian opinions, considering the intelligence
• 3:54:28
  of the unborn embryo that I regret my space will not permit me to lay
• 3:54:31
  before the reader, have led me to conclude that the Erewhonian musical banks,
• 3:54:37
  and perhaps the religious systems of all countries, are now more or less of
• 3:54:41
  an attempt to uphold the unfathomable and unconscious instinctive wisdom of millions of past generations
• 3:54:50
  against the comparatively shallow, consciously reasoning, and ephemeral conclusions drawn from that of
• 3:54:58
  the last thirty or forty. The saving feature of the Erewhonian musical bank system,
• 3:55:05
  as distinct from the quasi idolatrous views which coexist with it, and on
• 3:55:11
  which I will touch later was that, while it bore witness to the existence
• 3:55:16
  of a kingdom that is not of this world, it made no attempt to
• 3:55:20
  pierce the veil that hides it from human eyes. It is here that almost
• 3:55:26
  all religions go wrong. Their priests try to make us believe that they know
• 3:55:31
  more about the unseen world than those whose eyes are still blinded by the scene
• 3:55:35
  can ever know, forgetting that while to deny the existence of an unseen kingdom
• 3:55:41
  is bad, to pretend that we know more about it than its bare existence
• 3:55:46
  is no better. This chapter is already longer than I had intended, and
• 3:55:54
  I would like to say that, in spite of the saving feature of which
• 3:55:58
  I have just spoken, I cannot help thinking that the Erewhonians are on the
• 3:56:03
  eve of some great change in their religious opinions, or at any rate,
• 3:56:07
  in that part of them which funds the expression through their musical banks. So
• 3:56:13
  far as I could see fully, ninety percent of the population of the metropolis
• 3:56:18
  looked upon these banks with something not far removed from contempt. If this is
• 3:56:24
  so, any such startling event as is sure to arise sooner or later,
• 3:56:28
  may serve as a nucleus to a new order of things that will be more
• 3:56:33
  in harmony with both the heads and hearts of the people. End of Chapter
• 3:56:43
  fifteen, Chapter sixteen, Arowhena, the reader will perhaps have learned by this
• 3:56:50
  time a thing which I had myself suspected before I had been twenty four hours
• 3:56:54
  in mister Nisnibor's house. I mean that though the Nisnabor showed me every attention,
• 3:57:01
  I could not cordially like them. With the exception of Arowhena, who
• 3:57:07
  was quite different from the rest, they were not fair samples of Erewhonians.
• 3:57:11
  I saw many families with whom they were on visiting terms, whose manners charmed
• 3:57:16
  me more than I know how to say. But I never could get over
• 3:57:18
  my original prejudice against mister Nosnibor for having embezzled the money. Missus Nasniborg,
• 3:57:26
  too was a very worldly woman, yet to hear her talk, one would
• 3:57:30
  have thought that she was singularly the reverse. Neither could I endure Zulora.
• 3:57:35
  Arowhena, however, was perfection. She it was who ran all the little
• 3:57:41
  errands for her mother and mister Nasnibor and Zulora, and gave those thousand proofs
• 3:57:48
  of sweetness and unselfishness which some one member of a family is generally required to
• 3:57:54
  give all day long. It was Arowhena this and Arowhena that, but she
• 3:58:00
  never seemed to know that she was being put upon, and was always bright
• 3:58:03
  and willing from morning till evening. Zulora certainly was very handsome, but Arowhena
• 3:58:11
  was infinitely the more graceful of the two, and was the very ina plu
• 3:58:15
  ultra of youth and beauty. I will not attempt to describe her, for
• 3:58:20
  anything that I could say would fall so far short of the reality as only
• 3:58:24
  to mislead the reader. Let him think of the very loveliest that he can
• 3:58:30
  imagine, and he will still be below the truth. Having said this much,
• 3:58:35
  I need hardly say that I had fallen in love with her. She
• 3:58:39
  must have seen what I felt for her, but I tried my hardest not
• 3:58:43
  to let it appear, even by the slightest sign. I had many reasons
• 3:58:48
  for this. I had no idea what mister and missus Nosnibor would say to
• 3:58:52
  it, and I knew that Arowhena would not look at me at any rate,
• 3:58:56
  not yet. If her father and mother disapproved, which they probably would,
• 3:59:01
  considering that I had nothing except the pension of about a pound a day
• 3:59:05
  of our money, which the King had granted me. I did not yet
• 3:59:09
  know of a more serious obstacle. In the meantime, I may say that
• 3:59:13
  I had been presented at court and was told that my reception had been considered
• 3:59:18
  as singularly gracious. Indeed, I had several interviews, both with the King
• 3:59:24
  and Queen, at which, from time to time the Queen got everything from
• 3:59:28
  me I had in the world, clothes and all except the two buttons I
• 3:59:31
  had given to Iram, the loss of which seemed to annoy her a good
• 3:59:35
  deal. I was presented with a court suit, and her Majesty had my
• 3:59:41
  old clothes put upon a wooden dummy, on which they probably remain unless they
• 3:59:46
  had been removed in consequence of my subsequent downfall. His Majesty's manners were those
• 3:59:52
  of a cultivated English gentleman. He was much pleased at hearing that our government
• 3:59:58
  was monarchical, and that the the mass of the people were resolute that it
• 4:00:01
  should not be changed. Indeed, I was so much encouraged by the evident
• 4:00:05
  pleasure with which he heard me that I ventured to quote to him those beautiful
• 4:00:09
  lines of Shakespeare's There's a Divinity? Doth hedge a king rough hew him how
• 4:00:16
  we may? But I was sorry I had done so afterwards, for I
• 4:00:20
  do not think his Madesty admired lines as much as I could have wished.
• 4:00:26
  There is no occasion for me to dwell further upon my experience of the court.
• 4:00:30
  But I ought perhaps to allude to one of my conversations with a king,
• 4:00:33
  inasmuch as it was pregnant with the most important consequences. He had been
• 4:00:39
  asking about my watch and inquiring whether such dangerous inventions were tolerated in the country
• 4:00:45
  from which I came. I owned, with some confusion, that watches were
• 4:00:48
  not uncommon, but observing the gravity which came over His Majesty's face, I
• 4:00:54
  presumed to say that they were fast dying out, and that we had few,
• 4:00:58
  if any other mechanical conty ravages of which he was likely to disapprove.
• 4:01:01
  Upon his asking me to name some of our most advanced machines, I did
• 4:01:07
  not dare to tell him of our steam engines and railroads and electric telegraphs,
• 4:01:11
  and was puzzling my brains to think what I could say when, of all
• 4:01:16
  things in the world. Balloons suggested themselves, and I gave him an account
• 4:01:20
  of a very remarkable essense, which was made some years ago. The King
• 4:01:26
  was too polite to contradict, but I felt sure that he did not believe
• 4:01:30
  me, And from that day forward, though he always showed me the attention
• 4:01:33
  which was due to my genius, for in this light was my complexion regarded.
• 4:01:39
  He never questioned me about the manners and customs of my country. To
• 4:01:43
  return, however, to Arowhena, I soon gathered that neither mister nor missus
• 4:01:50
  Nosnibor would have any objection to my marrying into the family. Physical excellence is
• 4:01:54
  considered an erewhon as a set off against almost any other disqualification, and my
• 4:02:00
  light hair was sufficient to make me an eligible match. But along with this
• 4:02:05
  welcome fact I gather another which filled me with dismay. I was expected to
• 4:02:11
  marry Zulora, for whom I had already conceived a great aversion. At first,
• 4:02:16
  I hardly noticed the little hints and the artifices which were resorted to in
• 4:02:20
  order to bring us together. But after a time they became too plain.
• 4:02:26
  Zulora, whether she was in love with me or not, was bent on
• 4:02:30
  marrying me, and I gathered in talking with a young gentleman of my acquaintance,
• 4:02:33
  who frequently visited the house, and whom I greatly disliked. That it
• 4:02:37
  was considered a sacred and inviolable rule that whoever married into a family must marry
• 4:02:43
  the eldest daughter, at that time unmarried. The young gentleman urged this upon
• 4:02:48
  me so frequently that I at last saw he was in love with Arowhena himself,
• 4:02:54
  and wanted me to get Zulora out of the way. But others told
• 4:02:56
  me the same story as to the custom of the country, and I saw
• 4:03:01
  there was a serious difficulty. My only comfort was that Arowhena snubbed my rival
• 4:03:07
  and would not look at him, neither would you look at me. Nevertheless,
• 4:03:11
  there was a difference in the manner of her disregard. This was all
• 4:03:16
  I could get from her, not that she avoided me. On the contrary,
• 4:03:20
  I had many tta tate with her, for her mother and sister were
• 4:03:24
  anxious for me to deposit some part of my pension in the musical banks,
• 4:03:28
  this being in accordance with the dictates of their Goddess Ydgrun, of whom both
• 4:03:33
  missus Nasnibor and Zulora were great devotees. I was not sure whether I had
• 4:03:39
  kept my secret from being perceived by Arowhena herself, but none of the others
• 4:03:43
  suspected me. So she was set upon me to get me to open an
• 4:03:46
  account at any rate ProForma with the musical banks. And I need hardly say
• 4:03:50
  that she succeeded. But I did not yield at once. I enjoyed the
• 4:03:56
  process of being argued with, too keenly to lose it by prompt concession.
• 4:04:01
  Besides, a little hesitation rendered the concession itself more valuable. It was in
• 4:04:07
  the course of conversations on this subject that I learned the more defined religious opinions
• 4:04:13
  of the Erewhonians that coexist with the musical bank system, but are not recognized
• 4:04:18
  by those curious institutions. I will describe them as briefly as possible in the
• 4:04:22
  following chapters before I return to the personal adventures of Arowhena and myself. They
• 4:04:28
  were idolators, though of a comparatively enlightened kind. But here, as in
• 4:04:33
  other things, there was a discrepancy between their professed and actual belief, For
• 4:04:39
  they had a genuine and potent faith, which existed without recognition alongside of their
• 4:04:43
  idle worship. The gods whom they worship openly, are personifications of human qualities
• 4:04:48
  as justice, strength, hope, fear, love, et cetera, et
• 4:04:52
  cetera. The people think that prototypes of these have a real objective existence in
• 4:04:58
  a region and far beyond the clouds, holding, as did the ancients,
• 4:05:03
  that they are like men and women, both in body and passion, except
• 4:05:07
  that they are even comelier and more powerful, and also that they can render
• 4:05:11
  themselves invisible to human eyeight. They are capable of being propitiated by mankind,
• 4:05:16
  and of coming to the assistance of those who ask their aid. Their interest
• 4:05:20
  in human affairs is keen and on the whole beneficent, But they become very
• 4:05:26
  angry if neglected, and punish rather the first they come upon than the actual
• 4:05:31
  person who has offended them, their fury being blind when it is raised,
• 4:05:35
  though never raised without reason, they will not punish with any less severity when
• 4:05:39
  people sin against them from ignorance and without the chance of having had knowledge.
• 4:05:45
  They will take no excuse of this kind, but are even as the English
• 4:05:48
  law, which assumes itself to be known to everyone. Thus they have a
• 4:05:52
  law that two pieces of matter may not occupy the same space at the same
• 4:05:56
  moment, which law is presided over and administered by the gods of time and
• 4:06:01
  space jointly, so that if a flying stone and a man's head attempts to
• 4:06:05
  outrage these gods by arrogating a right which they do not possess, for so
• 4:06:11
  it is written in one of their books, and to occupy the same space
• 4:06:15
  simultaneously, a severe punishment, sometimes even death itself, is sure to follow,
• 4:06:20
  without any regard to whether the stone knew that the man's head was there,
• 4:06:24
  or the head the stone. This, at least is their view of
• 4:06:28
  the common accidents of life. Moreover, they hold their deities to be quite
• 4:06:33
  regardless of motives. With them, it is the thing done which is everything,
• 4:06:39
  and the motive goes for nothing. Thus they hold it strictly forbidden for
• 4:06:43
  a man to go without common air in his lungs for more than a very
• 4:06:46
  few minutes, And if by any chance he gets into the water, the
• 4:06:50
  air god is very angry and will not suffer it, no matter whether the
• 4:06:54
  man got into the water by accident or on purpose, whether through the attempt
• 4:06:58
  to save a child, or through presumptuous contempt of the air God, the
• 4:07:01
  air God will kill him unless he keeps his head high enough out of the
• 4:07:05
  water, and thus gives the air God his due. This with regard to
• 4:07:11
  the deities who manage physical affairs, over and above these, they personify hope,
• 4:07:16
  fear, love, and so forth, giving them temples and priests,
• 4:07:20
  and carving likenesses of them in stone, which they verily believe to be faithful
• 4:07:26
  representations of living beings who are only not human in being more than human.
• 4:07:33
  If anyone denies the abjective existence of these divinities and says that there is really
• 4:07:37
  no such being as a beautiful woman called Justice, with her eyes blinded in
• 4:07:43
  a pair of scales, positively living and moving in a remote and ethereal region,
• 4:07:48
  but that Justice is only the personified expression of certain modes of human thought
• 4:07:52
  and action, they say that he denies the existence of Justice in denying her
• 4:07:58
  personality, and that he is a wanton disturber of men's religious convictions. They
• 4:08:03
  detest nothing so much as any attempt to lead them to higher spiritual conceptions of
• 4:08:07
  the deities whom they profess to worship. Arowhena and I had a pitched battle
• 4:08:13
  on this point, and should have had many more, but for my prudence
• 4:08:16
  in allowing her to get the better of me. I am sure that in
• 4:08:18
  her heart she was suspicious of her own position, for she returned more than
• 4:08:24
  once to the subject. Can you not see I had exclaimed that the fact
• 4:08:28
  of justice being admirable will not be affected by the absence of a belief in
• 4:08:33
  her being also a living agent. Can you really think that men will be
• 4:08:37
  one whit less hopeful because they no longer believe that Hope is an actual person.
• 4:08:43
  She shook her head and said that with men's belief in the personality,
• 4:08:48
  all incentive to the reverence of the thing itself as justice or hope would cease,
• 4:08:54
  men from that hour would never be either just or hopeful. Again.
• 4:08:58
  I could not move, nor indeed did I seriously wish to do so.
• 4:09:03
  She deferred to me in most things, but she never shrink from maintaining her
• 4:09:07
  opinions if they were put in question, nor does she to this day abate
• 4:09:11
  one jot of her belief in the religion of her childhood. Though in compliance
• 4:09:16
  with my repeated entreaties, she has allowed herself to be baptized into the English
• 4:09:20
  Church. She has, however, made a gloss upon her original faith,
• 4:09:24
  to the effect that her baby and I are the only human beings exempt from
• 4:09:28
  the vengeance of the deities for not believing in that personality. She is quite
• 4:09:33
  clear that we are exempted. She should never have so strong a conviction of
• 4:09:37
  it. Otherwise how it has come about she does not know. Neither does
• 4:09:41
  she wish to know. There are things which it is better not to know,
• 4:09:46
  and this is one of them. But when I tell her that I
• 4:09:48
  believe in her deities as much as she does, and that it is a
• 4:09:52
  difference about words, not things, she becomes silent with a slight emphasis.
• 4:09:58
  I own that she very nearly conquered me once, for she asked me what
• 4:10:03
  I should think if she were to tell me that my God, whose nature
• 4:10:07
  and attributes I had been explaining to her, was but the expression for man's
• 4:10:11
  highest conception of goodness, wisdom, and power, that, in order to
• 4:10:16
  generate a more vivid conception of so great and glorious a thought, man had
• 4:10:20
  personified it and called it by a name. That it was an unworthy conception
• 4:10:24
  of the deity to hold him personal inasmuch as escape from human contingencies became thus
• 4:10:31
  impossible. That the real thing men should worship was the Divine, whereinsoever they
• 4:10:37
  could find it. That God was but man's way of expressing his sense of
• 4:10:41
  the Divine. That as justice, hope, wisdom, etc. Were all
• 4:10:46
  parts of goodness, so God was the expression which embraced all goodness in all
• 4:10:50
  good power. That people would no more cease to love God on ceasing to
• 4:10:54
  believe in his objective personality, than they had ceased to love Justice on discovering
• 4:11:01
  that she was not really personal, Nay, that they would never truly love
• 4:11:05
  him till they saw him. Thus she said all this in her artless way,
• 4:11:09
  and with none of the coherence with which I have here written it.
• 4:11:13
  Her face kindled, and she felt sure that she had convinced me that I
• 4:11:16
  was wrong, and that Justice was a living person. Indeed, I did
• 4:11:20
  WinCE a little, but I recovered myself immediately and pointed out to her that
• 4:11:26
  we had books whose genuineness was beyond all possibility of doubt, as they were
• 4:11:31
  certainly, none of them less than eighteen hundred years old, that in these
• 4:11:35
  there were the most authentic accounts of men who had been spoken to by the
• 4:11:39
  Deity himself, and of one prophet who had been allowed to see the back
• 4:11:43
  parts of God through the hand that was laid over his face. This was
• 4:11:48
  conclusive, and I spoke with such solemnity that she was a little frightened,
• 4:11:54
  and only answered that they too had their books in which their ancestors had seen
• 4:11:58
  the God, on which I saw that further argument was not at all likely
• 4:12:03
  to convince her. And, fearing that she might tell her mother what I'd
• 4:12:05
  been saying, and that I might lose the hold upon her affections which I
• 4:12:11
  was beginning to feel pretty sure that I was obtaining, I began to let
• 4:12:15
  her have her own way and to convince me. Neither till after we were
• 4:12:18
  safely married did I show the cloven hoof again. Nevertheless, her remarks have
• 4:12:24
  haunted me, and I have since met with many very godly people who have
• 4:12:28
  had a great knowledge of divinity, but no sense of the Divine. And
• 4:12:31
  again I have seen a radiance upon the face of those who are worshiping the
• 4:12:35
  Divine, either in art or nature, in picture or statue, in field
• 4:12:39
  or cloud or sea, in man, woman or child, which I have
• 4:12:43
  never seen kindled by any talking about the nature and attributes of God mentioned,
• 4:12:48
  but the word divinity and our sense of the divine is clouded. End of
• 4:12:54
  Chapter sixteen, Chapter seventeen. Ydgrun and the the Ydgrunites. In spite of
• 4:13:03
  all the to do they make about their idols and the temples they build,
• 4:13:07
  and the priests and priestesses whom they support, I could never think that their
• 4:13:11
  professed religion was more than skin deep. But they had another, which they
• 4:13:16
  carried with them into all their actions, And although no one from the outside
• 4:13:20
  of things would suspect it to have any existence at all, it was in
• 4:13:24
  reality the great guide the mariners compass of their lives, so that there were
• 4:13:30
  very few things which they ever either did or refrain from doing without reference to
• 4:13:35
  its precepts. Now I suspected that their professed faith had no great hold upon
• 4:13:41
  them. Firstly because I often heard the priests complain of the prevailing indifference,
• 4:13:46
  and they would hardly have done so without reason. Secondly, because of the
• 4:13:52
  show which was made for there was none of this about the worship of the
• 4:13:56
  goddess Ydgrun and whom they really did believe. Thirdly, because though the priests
• 4:14:01
  were constantly abusing Ydgrun as being the great enemy of the gods. It was
• 4:14:07
  well known that she had no more devoted worshippers in the whole country than these
• 4:14:11
  very persons, who were often priests of Ydgrun rather than of their own deities.
• 4:14:16
  Neither am I by any means sure that these were not the best of
• 4:14:20
  the priests. Ydgrun certainly occupied a very anomalous position. She was held to
• 4:14:26
  be both omnipresent and omnipotent, But she was not an elevated conception, and
• 4:14:33
  was sometimes both cruel and absurd. Even her most devoted worshipers were a little
• 4:14:37
  ashamed of her, and served her more with heart and indeed than with their
• 4:14:43
  tongues. Theirs was no lip service. On the contrary, even when worshiping
• 4:14:48
  her most devoutly, they would often deny her take her all in all,
• 4:14:54
  however, she was a beneficent and useful deity who did not care how much
• 4:14:58
  she was denied, so long as she was obeyed and feared, and who
• 4:15:03
  kept hundreds of thousands in those paths which make life tolerably happy, who would
• 4:15:07
  never have been kept there otherwise, and over whom a higher and more spiritual
• 4:15:13
  ideal would have had no power. I greatly doubt whether the Erewhonians are yet
• 4:15:18
  prepared for any better religion, And though considering my gradually strengthened conviction that they
• 4:15:24
  were the representatives of the lost tribes of Israel, I would have set about
• 4:15:30
  converting them at all hazards had I seen the remotest prospect of success. I
• 4:15:35
  could hardly contemplate the displacement of Ydgrun as the great central object of their regard
• 4:15:39
  without admitting that it would be attended with frightful consequences. In fact, were
• 4:15:45
  I a mere philosopher, I should say that the gradual raising of the popular
• 4:15:50
  conception of Ydgrun would be the greatest spiritual boon which could be conferred upon them,
• 4:15:54
  and that nothing could effect this except example. Generally found that those who
• 4:16:00
  complained most loudly that Ydgrun was not high enough for them had hardly as yet
• 4:16:06
  come up to the ydgrun standard. And I often met with a class of
• 4:16:10
  men whom I called to myself high Ydgrunites, the rest being Ydgrunites and low
• 4:16:18
  Ydgrunites, who, in the matter of human conduct and the affairs of life,
• 4:16:22
  appeared to me to have got about as far as it is in the
• 4:16:26
  right nature of man to go. They were gentlemen in the full sense of
• 4:16:30
  the word. And what has one not said in saying this? They seldom
• 4:16:37
  spoke of Ydgrun or even alluded to her, but would never run counter to
• 4:16:41
  her dictates without ample reason for doing so. In such cases they would override
• 4:16:47
  her with due self reliance, and the goddess seldom punished them, for they
• 4:16:52
  are brave and Ydgrun is not. They had, most of them a smattering
• 4:16:57
  of the hypothetical language, and some few more than this, but only a
• 4:17:03
  few. I do not think that this language has had much hand in making
• 4:17:07
  them what they are, but rather that the fact of their being generally possessed
• 4:17:11
  of its rudiments was one great reason for the reverence paid to the hypothetical language
• 4:17:17
  itself. Being inured from youth to exercises and athletics of all sorts, and
• 4:17:22
  living fearlessly under the eye of their peers, among whom there exists a high
• 4:17:27
  standard of courage, generosity, honor, and every good and manly quality.
• 4:17:33
  What wonder that they should have become, so to speak, a law unto
• 4:17:37
  themselves? And while taking an elevated view of the goddess Ydgrun, they should
• 4:17:41
  have gradually lost all faith in they recognize deities of the country. These they
• 4:17:47
  do not openly disregard, for conformity until absolutely intolerable is a law of Ydgrun.
• 4:17:53
  Yet they have no real belief in the objective existence of beings which so
• 4:17:57
  readily explain themselves as abstractions, and whose personality demands a quasi materialism, which
• 4:18:04
  it baffles the imagination to realize. They keep their opinions, however, greatly
• 4:18:10
  to themselves, inasmuch as most of their countrymen feel strongly about the gods,
• 4:18:15
  and they hold it wrong to give pain unless for some greater good than seems
• 4:18:21
  likely to arise from their plain speaking. On the other hand, surely those
• 4:18:26
  whose own minds are clear about any given matter, even though it be only
• 4:18:32
  that there is little certainty, should go so far towards imparting that clearness to
• 4:18:36
  others as to say openly what they think and why they think it, whenever
• 4:18:41
  they can properly do so. For they may be sure that they owe their
• 4:18:44
  own clearness almost entirely to the fact that others have done this by them.
• 4:18:49
  After all, they may be mistaken, and if so it is for their
• 4:18:53
  own and the general well being that they should let their error be seen as
• 4:18:59
  distinctly as possible, so that it may be more easily refuted. I own
• 4:19:03
  therefore that on this one point I disapproved of the practice, even of the
• 4:19:08
  highest Ydgrunites, and objected to it all the more because I knew that I
• 4:19:12
  should find my own future task more easy if the high Ydgrunites had already undermined
• 4:19:18
  the belief which is supposed to prevail at present. In other respects, they
• 4:19:25
  were more like the best class of Englishmen than any whom I have seen in
• 4:19:29
  other countries. I should have liked to have persuaded half a dozen of them
• 4:19:33
  to come over to England and go upon the stage, for they had,
• 4:19:37
  most of them a keen sense of humor and a taste for acting. They
• 4:19:41
  would be of great use to us. The example of a real gentleman is,
• 4:19:47
  if I may say so without profanity, the best of all Gospels.
• 4:19:51
  Such a man upon the stage becomes a potent humanizing influence, an ideal which
• 4:19:56
  all may look upon for a shilling. I always liked and admired these men,
• 4:20:02
  and although I could not help deeply regretting their certain ultimate perdition, for
• 4:20:07
  they had no sense of a hereafter, and their only religion was that of
• 4:20:11
  self respect and consideration for other people. I never dared to take so great
• 4:20:17
  a liberty with them as to attempt to put them in possession of my own
• 4:20:19
  religious convictions, in spite of my knowing that they were the only ones which
• 4:20:25
  could make them really good and happy, either here or hereafter. I did
• 4:20:30
  try, sometimes, being impelled to do so by a strong sense of duty
• 4:20:36
  and by my deep regret that so much that was admirable should be doomed to
• 4:20:41
  ages, if not eternity of torture. But the words stuck in my throat
• 4:20:45
  as soon as I began whether a professional missionary might have a better chance,
• 4:20:52
  I know not. Such persons must doubtless know more about the science of conversion.
• 4:20:57
  For myself, I could only be thankful that I was on the right
• 4:21:02
  path and was obliged to let others take their chance. As yet, if
• 4:21:07
  the plan fails by which I propose to convert them myself, I would gladly
• 4:21:11
  contribute my might towards the sending two or three trained missionaries who have been known
• 4:21:18
  as successful converted of Jews and Mahometans, but such have seldom much to glory
• 4:21:23
  in the flesh. And when I think of the high Edgrenites, and of
• 4:21:26
  the figure which a missionary would probably cut among them, I cannot feel sanguine
• 4:21:32
  that much good would be arrived at. Still, the attempt is worth making,
• 4:21:37
  and the worst danger to the missionaries themselves would be that of being sent
• 4:21:41
  to the hospital where Chawbuck would have been sent had he come with me into
• 4:21:45
  Erewhon. Taking then their religious opinions as a whole, I must own that
• 4:21:52
  the Erewhonians are superstitious on account of the views which they hold of their professed
• 4:21:56
  gods, and they are entirely anomalous and inexplicable. Worship of Ydgrun, a
• 4:22:00
  worship at once the most powerful yet most devoid of formalism that I ever met
• 4:22:06
  with. But in practice things worked better than might have been expected, and
• 4:22:11
  the conflicting claims of Ydgrun and the gods were arranged by unwritten compromises for the
• 4:22:18
  most part in Ydgrun's favor, which in ninety nine cases out of one hundred
• 4:22:22
  were very well understood. I could not conceive why they should not openly acknowledge
• 4:22:29
  high ydgrunism and discar the objective personality of hope, justice, et cetera.
• 4:22:33
  But whenever I so much as hinted at this, I found that I was
• 4:22:37
  on dangerous ground. They would never have it, returning constantly to the assertion
• 4:22:42
  that ages ago the divinities were frequently seen, and that the moment their personality
• 4:22:48
  was disbelieved, and men would leave off practicing even those ordinary virtues which the
• 4:22:52
  common experience of mankind has agreed on as being the greatest secret of happiness.
• 4:22:57
  Whoever heard they act indignantly of such things as kindly training, a good example,
• 4:23:03
  and an enlightened regard to one's own welfare, being able to keep men
• 4:23:07
  straight. In my hurry forgetting things which I ought to have remembered, I
• 4:23:12
  answered that if a person could not be kept straight by these things, there
• 4:23:17
  was nothing that could straighten him, and that if he were not ruled by
• 4:23:19
  the love and fear of men whom he had seen, neither would he be
• 4:23:23
  so by that of the gods, whom he had not seen. At one
• 4:23:27
  time, indeed, I came upon a small but growing sect who believed,
• 4:23:32
  after a fashion, in the immortality of the soul. On the resurrection from
• 4:23:36
  the dead. They taught that those who had been born with feeble and diseased
• 4:23:41
  bodies, and had passed their lives in ailing, would be tortured eternally hereafter,
• 4:23:45
  but that those who had been born strong and healthy and handsome would be
• 4:23:51
  rewarded forever and ever of moral qualities or conduct. They made no mention bad
• 4:23:57
  as this was. It was a step in advance inasmuch as they did hold
• 4:24:02
  out a future state of some sort. And I was shocked to find that,
• 4:24:06
  for the most part they met with opposition, on the score that their
• 4:24:10
  doctrine was based upon no sort of foundation, also that it was immoral in
• 4:24:15
  its tendency, and not to be desired by any reasonable beings. When I
• 4:24:22
  asked how it could be immoral, I was answered that, if firmly held,
• 4:24:26
  it would lead people to cheapen this present life, making it appear to
• 4:24:30
  be an affair of only secondary importance. That it would thus distract men's minds
• 4:24:34
  from the perfecting of this world's economy, and was an impatient cutting, so
• 4:24:40
  to speak, of the Gordian knot of life's problems, whereby some people might
• 4:24:44
  gain present satisfaction to themselves at the cost of infinite damage to others, That
• 4:24:49
  the doctrine tended to encourage the poor in their improvidence and in a debasing acquiescence
• 4:24:56
  and ills which they might well remedy, That the reward were illusory and the
• 4:25:02
  result, after all of luck, whose empire should be bounded by the grave,
• 4:25:07
  That its terrors were enervating and unjust, and that even the most blessed
• 4:25:11
  rising would be but the disturbing of a still more blessed slumber. To all
• 4:25:18
  which I could only say that the thing had been actually known to happen,
• 4:25:22
  and that there were several well authenticated instances of people having died and come to
• 4:25:26
  life again, instances which no man in his senses could doubt. If this
• 4:25:33
  be so, said my opponent, we must bear it as best we may.
• 4:25:38
  I then translated for him as well as I could the noble speech of
• 4:25:42
  Hamlet, in which he says that it is the fear lest worse evils may
• 4:25:47
  befall us after death, which alone prevents us from rushing into death's arms.
• 4:25:52
  Nonsense, he answered, No man was ever yet stopped from cutting his throat
• 4:25:56
  by any such fears as your poet ascribes to him. Him and your poet
• 4:26:00
  probably knew this perfectly well. If a man cuts his throat, he is
• 4:26:06
  at bay and thinks of nothing but escape, no matter whither, provided he
• 4:26:10
  can shuffle off his present. No. Men are kept at their posts not
• 4:26:15
  by the fear that if they quit them, they may quit a frying pan
• 4:26:18
  for a fire, but by the hope that, if they hold on,
• 4:26:22
  the fire may burn less fiercely. The respect, to quote your poet,
• 4:26:29
  that makes calamity so long a life is the consideration that though calamity may live
• 4:26:33
  long, the sufferer may live longer. Still on this, seeing that there
• 4:26:41
  was little probability of our coming to an agreement, I let the argument duro
• 4:26:45
  up, and my opponent presently left me with as much disapprobation as he could
• 4:26:49
  show without being overtly rude. End of Chapter seventeen, Chapter eighteen, Birth
• 4:26:59
  Formulae. I heard what follows not from Arohuhena, but from mister Nosnibor and
• 4:27:06
  some of the gentlemen who occasionally dined at the house. They told me that
• 4:27:11
  the Irhorians believe in pre existence. There not only this, of which I
• 4:27:15
  will write more fully in the next chapter, but they believe that it is
• 4:27:19
  of their own free act and deed in a previous state, that they come
• 4:27:23
  to be born into this world at all. They hold that the unborn are
• 4:27:29
  perpetually plaguing and tormenting the merit of both sexes, fluttering about them incessantly and
• 4:27:34
  giving them no peace either of mind or body, until they have consented to
• 4:27:40
  take them under their protection. If this were not so, this at least
• 4:27:45
  is what they urge, it would be a monstrous freedom for one man to
• 4:27:48
  take with another. To say that he should undergo the chances and changes of
• 4:27:52
  this mortal life without any option in the matter, no man would have any
• 4:27:57
  right to get married at all, inasmuch as he can never tell what frightful
• 4:28:03
  misery his doing so may entail forcibly upon a being who cannot be unhappy as
• 4:28:07
  long as it does not exist. They feel this so strongly that they are
• 4:28:12
  resolved to shift the blame on to other shoulders, and have fashioned along mythology
• 4:28:18
  as to the world in which the unborn people live and what they do,
• 4:28:22
  and the arts imaginations to which they have recourse, in order to get themselves
• 4:28:27
  into our own world. But of this more anon, what I would relate
• 4:28:33
  here is the manner of dealing with those who do come. It is a
• 4:28:38
  distinguishing peculiarity of the Irquonians that when they profess themselves to be quite certain about
• 4:28:45
  any matter, and avow it as a base in which they are to build
• 4:28:49
  a system of practice, they seldom quite believe in it. If they smell
• 4:28:53
  a rat about the precincts of a cherished institution, they will always stop their
• 4:28:59
  noses to it if they can. This is what most of them did in
• 4:29:03
  this matter of the unborn. For I cannot, and never could think that
• 4:29:08
  they seriously believed in their mythology concerning pre existence. They did, and they
• 4:29:15
  did not. They did not know themselves. What they believed, or they
• 4:29:19
  did know, was that it was a disease not to believe as they did.
• 4:29:25
  The only thing of which they were quite sure was that it was the
• 4:29:27
  pestering of the unborn which caused them to be brought into this world, and
• 4:29:33
  that they would not have been here if they would have only let peaceable people
• 4:29:37
  alone. It would be hard to disprove this position, and they might have
• 4:29:42
  a good case if they would only leave it as it stands. But this
• 4:29:47
  they will not do. They must have assurance. Doubly sure, they must
• 4:29:52
  have the written word of the child itself as soon as it is born,
• 4:29:55
  giving the perrons indemnity from all responsibility on the score of its birth, and
• 4:30:00
  asserting its own pre existence. They have therefore devised something which they call a
• 4:30:07
  birth formula, a document which varies in words according to the caution of parents,
• 4:30:12
  but is much the same practically in all cases, For it has been
• 4:30:17
  the business of the Irhonian lawyers during many ages to exercise a skill in perfecting
• 4:30:22
  it and providing for every contingency. These formulae are printed on common paper at
• 4:30:29
  a moderate cost for the poor, but the rich have them written on parchment
• 4:30:33
  and handsomely bound, so that the getting up of a person's birth formula is
• 4:30:38
  the test of his social position. They commence by setting forth that whereas a
• 4:30:45
  b was a member of the Kingdom of the unborn, where he was well
• 4:30:49
  provided for in every way, and had no cause of discontent, et cetera,
• 4:30:53
  et cetera, he did of his own wanton, depravity and restlessness,
• 4:30:59
  can see a desire to enter into this present world, that, thereon,
• 4:31:03
  having taken the necessary steps as set forth in Laws of the Unborn, kingdom,
• 4:31:10
  he did, with malice a forethought, set himself to plague and pester
• 4:31:15
  two unfortunate people who had never wronged him, and who were quite contented and
• 4:31:19
  happy until he conceived this base design against their peace, for which wrong he
• 4:31:26
  now humbly entreats their pardon. He acknowledges that he is responsible for all physical
• 4:31:33
  blemishes and efficiencies which may render him answerable to the laws of his country,
• 4:31:38
  that his parents have nothing whatever to do with any of these things, and
• 4:31:42
  that they have a right to kill him at once if they be so minded,
• 4:31:48
  Though he entreats them to show their marvelous goodness and clemency by sparing his
• 4:31:52
  life. If they will do this, he promises to be their most obedient
• 4:31:56
  and abject creature during his earlier years, and indeed all his life, unless
• 4:32:03
  they should see fit, in their abundant generosity, to remit some portion of
• 4:32:07
  his service hereafter. And so the formula continues, going sometimes into very minute
• 4:32:14
  details, according to the fancies of family lawyers, who will not make it
• 4:32:18
  any shorter than they can help. The deed being thus prepared on the third
• 4:32:25
  or fourth day after the birth of the child, or as they call it,
• 4:32:29
  the final importunity. The friends gather together and there is a feast held,
• 4:32:33
  where they are all very melancholy as a general rule, I believe,
• 4:32:37
  quite truly so, and make presents to the father and mother of the child
• 4:32:42
  in order to console them for the injury which has just been done them by
• 4:32:47
  the unborn. Bye and bye. The child himself is brought down by his
• 4:32:52
  nurse, and the company begins to rail upon him, upbraiding him for his
• 4:32:56
  impertinence and asking him what the mens he proposes to make for the wrong that
• 4:33:00
  he has committed, and how he can look for care and nourishment from those
• 4:33:04
  who have perhaps already been injured by the unborn. On some ten or twelve
• 4:33:10
  occasions, for they say of people with large families that they have suffered terrible
• 4:33:15
  injuries from the unborn, till at last, when this has been carried far
• 4:33:19
  enough, someone suggests the formula, which is brought out and solemnly read to
• 4:33:26
  the child by the family straitener. This gentleman is always invited on these occasions,
• 4:33:32
  for the very fact of intrusion into peaceful family shows a depravity on the
• 4:33:37
  part of the child which requires his professional services. On being teased by the
• 4:33:44
  reading and tweaked by the nurse, the child will commonly begin to cry,
• 4:33:48
  which is reckoned a good sign as showing a consciousness of guilt. He is
• 4:33:53
  thereon asked, thus he assent to the formula, on which, as he
• 4:33:59
  still continue news crying and can obviously make no answer, some one of the
• 4:34:03
  friends comes forward and undertakes to sign the document on his behalf. Feeling sure,
• 4:34:10
  so he says that a child would do it if you only knew how,
• 4:34:14
  and that you will release the present signer from his engagement on arriving at
• 4:34:18
  maturity. The friend then inscribes the signature of the child at the foot of
• 4:34:22
  the parchment, which is held to bind the child as much as though he
• 4:34:26
  had signed it himself. Even this, however, does not fully content them,
• 4:34:33
  for they feel a little uneasy until they have got the child's own signature.
• 4:34:37
  After all, So, when he is about fourteen, these good people
• 4:34:42
  partly bribe him by promises of greater liberty and good things, and partly intimidate
• 4:34:48
  him through their great power of making themselves actively unpleasant to him, so that
• 4:34:53
  though there is a show of freedom, maid, there is really none.
• 4:34:57
  They also use your offices of the teachers in the colleges of Unreason till at
• 4:35:03
  last. In one way or another, they take very good care that he
• 4:35:07
  shall sign the paper for which he professes to have been a free agent in
• 4:35:11
  coming into the world, and to take all the responsibility of having done so
• 4:35:15
  on to his own shoulders. And yet though this document is obviously the most
• 4:35:22
  important which anyone can sign in his whole life, there will have him do
• 4:35:26
  so at an age when neither they nor the law will, for many a
• 4:35:30
  year allow any one else to bind him to the smallest obligation, no matter
• 4:35:36
  how righteously he may owe it, because they hold him too young to know
• 4:35:40
  what he is about, and do not consider it fair that he should commit
• 4:35:44
  himself to anything that may prejudice him. In after years, I own that
• 4:35:51
  all this seemed rather hard, and not of a peace with the many admirable
• 4:35:55
  institutions existing among them. I once venture to say a part of what I
• 4:36:00
  thought about it to one of the professors of Unreason. I did it very
• 4:36:04
  tenderly, but his justification of the system was quite out of my comprehension.
• 4:36:11
  I remember asking him whether he did not think it would do harm to a
• 4:36:15
  lad's principles by weakening his sense of the sanctity of his word and of truth
• 4:36:19
  generally, that he should be let into entering upon a solemn declaration as to
• 4:36:25
  the truth of things about which all that he can certainly know is that he
• 4:36:30
  knows nothing, whether, in fact the teachers who so led him oh taught
• 4:36:34
  anything as a certainty of which they were themselves uncertain, were not earning the
• 4:36:40
  living by impairing the truth sense of their pupils. A delicate organization, mostly,
• 4:36:45
  and by viciating one of the most sacred instincts. The professor, who
• 4:36:52
  was a delightful person, seemed greatly surprised to the view which I took,
• 4:36:56
  but it had no influence with him whatsoever. No one, he answered,
• 4:37:02
  expected that a boy either would or could know all that he said he knew.
• 4:37:07
  But the world was full of compromises, and there was hardly any affirmation
• 4:37:11
  which would bear being interpreted literally. Human language was to gross a vehicle of
• 4:37:18
  thought, thought, being incapable of absolute translation. He added that as there
• 4:37:25
  can be no translation from one language into another which shall not scant the meaning
• 4:37:30
  somewhat or enlarge upon it, so there is no language which can render thought
• 4:37:34
  without a jarring un a harshness somewhere, and so forth, all of which
• 4:37:41
  seemed to come to this in the end, that it was the custom of
• 4:37:44
  the country, and that the Irhonians were a conservative people, that a boy
• 4:37:49
  would have to begin compromising sooner or later, and this was part of his
• 4:37:53
  education in the art. It was perhaps to be regretted that compromise be as
• 4:38:00
  necessary as it was. Still it was necessary, and the sooner the boy
• 4:38:04
  got to understand it, the better for himself. But they never tell this
• 4:38:10
  to the boy. From the book of their mythology about the Unborn, I
• 4:38:15
  made the extracts which will form the following chapter. End of chapter eighteen,
• 4:38:22
  Chapter nineteen, The World of the Unborn. The Erewhonians say that we are
• 4:38:27
  drawn through life backwards, or again, that we go onwards into the future,
• 4:38:33
  as into a dark corridor. Time walks beside us and flings back shutters
• 4:38:37
  as we advance. But the light thus given often dazzles us and deepens the
• 4:38:42
  darkness which is in front. We can see but little at a time,
• 4:38:45
  and heed that little far less than our apprehension of what we shall see next.
• 4:38:51
  Ever, peering curiously through the glare of the present into the gloom of
• 4:38:55
  the future. We presage the leading lines of that which is before us by
• 4:39:00
  faintly reflected lights from dull mirrors that are behind, and stumble on as we
• 4:39:04
  may, till the trap door opens beneath us and we are gone. They
• 4:39:10
  say at other times that the future and the past are as a panorama upon
• 4:39:15
  two rollers. That which is on the roller of the future unwraps itself on
• 4:39:18
  to the roller of the past. We cannot hasten it, and we may
• 4:39:22
  not stay it. We must see all that is unfolded to us, whether
• 4:39:26
  it be good or ill. And what we have seen once we may see
• 4:39:30
  again no more. It is ever unwinding and being wound. We catch it
• 4:39:36
  in transition for a moment, and call at present. Our flustered senses gather
• 4:39:41
  what impression they can, and we guess at what is coming by the tenor
• 4:39:45
  of that which we have seen, the same hand as painted the whole picture,
• 4:39:49
  and the incidents, very little rivers, woods, plains, mountains,
• 4:39:53
  towns, and people's loves, sorrow and death. Yet the interest never flagged,
• 4:40:00
  and we look hopefully for some good fortune, or fearfully lest our own
• 4:40:04
  faces be shown us as figuring in something terrible. When the scene is past,
• 4:40:10
  we think we know it, though there is so much to see and
• 4:40:14
  so little time to see it, that our conceit of knowledge as regards the
• 4:40:17
  past is for the most part poorly founded. Neither do we care about it
• 4:40:22
  greatly, save in so far as it may affect the future, wherein our
• 4:40:25
  interest mainly lies the Erewhonians say it was by chance only that the earth and
• 4:40:32
  stars in all the heavenly worlds began to roll from east to west, and
• 4:40:37
  not from west to east. And in like manner they say it is by
• 4:40:41
  chance that man is drawn through life with his face to the past instead of
• 4:40:45
  to the future. For the future is there as much as the past,
• 4:40:48
  only that we may not see it. Is it not in the loins of
• 4:40:52
  the past, And must not the past alter before the future can do so.
• 4:40:56
  Sometimes again they say that there was a race of men tried upon the
• 4:41:00
  earth once who knew the future better than the past, but that they died
• 4:41:06
  in a twelvemonth from the misery which their knowledge caused them. And if any
• 4:41:10
  were to be born to prescient now, he would be culled out by natural
• 4:41:14
  selection before he had time to transmit so peace, destroying a faculty to his
• 4:41:18
  descendants. Strange fate for man. He must perish if he gets that which
• 4:41:23
  he must perish if he strive not after. If he strive not after it,
• 4:41:29
  he is no better than the brutes. If he gets it, he
• 4:41:32
  is more miserable than the devils. Having waded through many chapters like the above,
• 4:41:37
  I came at last to the unborn themselves, and found that they were
• 4:41:41
  held to be souls, pure and simple, having no actual bodies, but
• 4:41:45
  living in a sort of gaseous yet more or less anthropomorphic existence like that of
• 4:41:52
  a ghost. They have thus neither flesh, nor blood, nor warmth.
• 4:41:56
  Nevertheless, they are supposed to have local in habitations and cities wherein they dwell,
• 4:42:02
  though these are as unsubstantial as their inhabitants. They are even thought to
• 4:42:07
  eat and drink some thin ambrosial sustenance, and generally to be capable of doing
• 4:42:11
  whatever mankind can do, only after a visionary, ghostly fashion, as in
• 4:42:17
  a dream. On the other hand, as long as they remain where they
• 4:42:19
  are, they never die, the only form of death in the unborn world
• 4:42:25
  being the leaving of it for our own. They are believed to be extremely
• 4:42:29
  numerous, far more so than mankind. They arrive from unknown planets, full
• 4:42:33
  grown, in large batches at a time. But they can only leave the
• 4:42:37
  unborn world by taking the steps necessary for their arrival here, which is in
• 4:42:42
  fact by suicide. They ought to be an exceedingly happy people, for they
• 4:42:48
  have no extremes of good or ill fortune, never marrying, but living in
• 4:42:52
  a state much like that fabled by the poets as the primitive condition of mankind.
• 4:42:59
  In spite of this, however, they are incessantly complaining. They know
• 4:43:03
  that we in this world have bodies, and indeed they know everything else about
• 4:43:07
  us, for they move among us with us whoever they will, and can
• 4:43:11
  read our thoughts as well as survey our actions at pleasure. One would think
• 4:43:15
  that this should be enough for them, and most of them are indeed alive
• 4:43:18
  to the desperate risk which they will run by indulging themselves in that body with
• 4:43:25
  sensible, warm emotion, which they so much desire. Nevertheless, there are
• 4:43:30
  some to whom the on we of a disembinded existence is so intolerable that they
• 4:43:34
  will venture anything for a change. So they resolve to quit. The conditions
• 4:43:41
  which they must accept are so uncertain that none but the most foolish of the
• 4:43:45
  unborn will consent to them. And it is from these, and these only
• 4:43:49
  that our own ranks are recruited. When they have finally made up their minds
• 4:43:53
  to leave, they must go before the magistrate of the nearest town and sign
• 4:43:57
  an affidavit of their desire to quit their then existence. On their having done
• 4:44:03
  this, the magistrate reads them the conditions which they must accept, and which
• 4:44:07
  are so long that I can only extract some of the principle points, which
• 4:44:11
  are mainly the following. First, they must take a potion which will destroy
• 4:44:17
  their memory and sense of identity. They must go into the world helpless and
• 4:44:22
  without a will of their own. They must draw lots for their dispositions before
• 4:44:26
  they go, and take them such as they are, for better or worse.
• 4:44:30
  Neither are they to be allowed any choice in the matter of the body
• 4:44:33
  which they are so much desire. They are simply allotted by chance and without
• 4:44:37
  appeal, to two people whom it is their business to find and pester until
• 4:44:42
  they adopt them. Who these are to be, whether rich or poor,
• 4:44:47
  kind or unkind, healthy or diseased, there is no knowing they have in
• 4:44:52
  fact to entrust themselves for many years to the care of those for whose good
• 4:44:56
  constitution and good sense they have no sort of guarantee. It is curious to
• 4:45:02
  read the lectures which the wiser heads give to those who are meditating a change.
• 4:45:07
  They talk with them as we talk with a spendthrift, and with about
• 4:45:11
  as much success. To be born, They say, is a felony.
• 4:45:15
  It is a capital crime, for which sentence may be executed at any moment
• 4:45:19
  after the commission of the offense. You may perhaps happen to live for some
• 4:45:25
  seventy or eighty years. But what is that compared with the eternity you now
• 4:45:29
  enjoy. And even though the sentence were commuted and you are allowed to live
• 4:45:33
  on forever, you would in time become so terribly weary of life that execution
• 4:45:38
  would be the greatest mercy to you. Consider the infinite risk to be born
• 4:45:45
  of wicked parents and trained to vice, to be born of silly parents,
• 4:45:48
  and trained to unrealities of parents to regard you as a sort of chattel or
• 4:45:53
  property belonging more to them than to yourself. Again, you may draw utterly
• 4:45:59
  unsympathetic parents who will never be able to understand you, and he will do
• 4:46:03
  their best to thwart you as a hen when she has hatched a duckling,
• 4:46:07
  and then call you ungrateful because you do not love them. Or again,
• 4:46:11
  you may draw parents who look upon you as a thing to be cowed while
• 4:46:14
  it is still young, lest it should give them trouble hereafter by having wishes
• 4:46:18
  and feelings of its own. In later life, when you have been finally
• 4:46:22
  allowed to pass muster as a full member of the world, you will yourself
• 4:46:26
  become liable to the pesterings of the unborn, and a very happy life you
• 4:46:30
  may be led in consequence. For we solicit so strongly that a few,
• 4:46:36
  only nor these the best, can refuse us, and yet not to refute.
• 4:46:41
  Is much the same as going into partnership with half a dozen different people
• 4:46:45
  about whom one can know absolutely nothing beforehand, not even whether one is going
• 4:46:49
  into partnership with men or women, nor with how many have either. Delude
• 4:46:55
  not yourself with thinking that you will be wiser than your parents. You may
• 4:46:59
  be an age in advance of those whom you have pestered, but unless you
• 4:47:03
  are one of the great ones, you will still be an age behind those
• 4:47:07
  who will, in their turn pester you. Imagine what it must be to
• 4:47:11
  have an unborn quartered upon you who is of an entirely different temperament and disposition
• 4:47:15
  to your own. Nay, half a dozen such who will not love you,
• 4:47:19
  though you have stinted yourself in a thousand ways to provide for their comfort
• 4:47:23
  and well being, who will forget all your self sacrifice, and of whom
• 4:47:27
  you may never be sure that they are not bearing a grudge against you for
• 4:47:32
  errors of judgment into which you may have fallen, though you had hoped that
• 4:47:36
  such had been long since atoned for in gratitude. Such as this is not
• 4:47:41
  uncommon. Yet fancy what it must be to bear. It is hard upon
• 4:47:47
  the duckling to have been hatched by a hen, But is it not also
• 4:47:49
  hard upon the hen to have hatched the duckling. Consider again, we pray
• 4:47:56
  you, not for our sake, but for your own. Your initial care
• 4:48:00
  you must draw by lot. But whatever it is, it can only come
• 4:48:03
  to a tolerably successful development after long training. Remember that over that training you
• 4:48:11
  will have no control. It is possible and even probable, that whatever you
• 4:48:15
  may get in after life, which is of real pleasure and service to you,
• 4:48:19
  will have to be one in spite of, rather than by the help
• 4:48:22
  of, those whom you are now about to pester, And that you will
• 4:48:26
  only win your freedom after years of a painful struggle, in which it will
• 4:48:32
  be hard to say whether you have suffered most injury or inflicted it. Remember
• 4:48:37
  also that if you go into the world you will have free will, that
• 4:48:41
  you will be obliged to have it, that there is no escaping it,
• 4:48:47
  that you will be fettered to it during your whole life, and must,
• 4:48:49
  on every occasion do that which on the whole seems best to you at any
• 4:48:53
  given time, no matter whether you are right or wrong in choosing it your
• 4:48:59
  mind, you will be a balance for considerations, and your actions will go
• 4:49:03
  with the heavier scale. How it shall fall will depend upon the kind of
• 4:49:07
  scales which you may have drawn at birth, and if they have not been
• 4:49:11
  outrageously tampered within childhood, And if the combinations into which you enter are average
• 4:49:17
  ones, you may come off well. But there are too many ifs in
• 4:49:21
  this, and with the failure any one of them, your misery is assured.
• 4:49:26
  Reflect on this, and remember that should the ill come upon you,
• 4:49:30
  you will have yourself to thank for It is your own choice to be born,
• 4:49:36
  and there is no compulsion in the matter. Not that we deny the
• 4:49:40
  existence of pleasures among mankind. There is a certain show of sundry phases of
• 4:49:45
  contentment, which may even amount to a very considerable happiness. But mark how
• 4:49:51
  they are distributed over man's life, belonging all the keenest of them to the
• 4:49:55
  fore part, and few indeed to the after, ca be any pleasure worth
• 4:50:00
  purchasing with the miseries of a decrepit age. If you are good, strong,
• 4:50:06
  and handsome, you have a fine fortune, indeed at twenty, but
• 4:50:10
  how much of it will be left at sixty? For you must live on
• 4:50:14
  your capital. There is no investing your powers so that you may get a
• 4:50:18
  small annuity of life. Forever. You must eat up your principle bit by
• 4:50:22
  bit, and be tortured by seeing it grow continually smaller and smaller, even
• 4:50:27
  though you happen to escape being really robbed of it by crime or casualty.
• 4:50:33
  Remember too, that there never yet was a man of forty who would not
• 4:50:37
  come back into the world of the unborn, if he could do so with
• 4:50:40
  decency and honor. Being in the world, he will, as a general
• 4:50:44
  rule, stay till he is forced to go. But do you think he
• 4:50:48
  would consent to be born again and relive his life if he had the offer
• 4:50:52
  of doing so? Do not think it? If he could so alter the
• 4:50:56
  past as that he should never have into being at all? Do you not
• 4:51:02
  think that he would do it very gladly? What was it that one of
• 4:51:04
  their own poets meant? If it was not this when he cried out upon
• 4:51:08
  the day in which he was born, and the night in which it was
• 4:51:11
  said, there is a man child conceived? For now? He says,
• 4:51:15
  I should have lain still and been quiet. I should have slept then,
• 4:51:21
  had I been at rest with kings and counselors of the earth, which built
• 4:51:25
  desolate places for themselves, or with princes that had gold, who filled their
• 4:51:30
  houses with silver, or as an hidden, untimely birth, I had not
• 4:51:34
  been as infants which never saw light. There the wicked cease from troubling,
• 4:51:40
  and the weary are at rest. Be very sure that the guilt of being
• 4:51:45
  born carries this punishment at all times to all men. But how can I
• 4:51:51
  ask for pity or complain of any mischief that may befall them? Having entered
• 4:51:55
  open eyed into the snare one word more we have done. If any faint
• 4:52:00
  remembrance, as of a dream, flit in some puzzled moment across your brain,
• 4:52:06
  and you shall feel that the potion which is to be given you shall
• 4:52:08
  not have done its work, and the memory of this existence which you are
• 4:52:12
  leaving, endeavors vainly to return. We say, in such a moment when
• 4:52:17
  you clutch at the dream, but it eludes your grasp, and you watch
• 4:52:21
  it as Orpheus watched Eurydice gliding back again into the twilight kingdom. Fly,
• 4:52:26
  Fly, if you can remember the advice to the haven of your present and
• 4:52:30
  immediate duty, taking shelter incessantly in the work which you have in hand,
• 4:52:36
  This much you may perhaps recall, and this, if you will imprint it
• 4:52:40
  deeply upon your every faculty, will be most likely to bring you safely and
• 4:52:44
  honorably home through the trials that are before you. This is the fashion in
• 4:52:49
  which they reason with those who would be for leaving them. But it is
• 4:52:53
  seldom that they do much good, for none but the unquiet and unreasonable ever
• 4:52:59
  thing of being born. And those who are foolish enough to think of it
• 4:53:03
  are generally foolish enough to do it. Finding therefore that they can do no
• 4:53:07
  more, the friends follow weeping to the court house of the Chief Magistrate,
• 4:53:11
  where the one who wishes to be born declares solemnly and openly that he accepts
• 4:53:15
  the conditions attached to his decisions. On this he is presented with a potion
• 4:53:22
  which immediately destroys his memory and sense of identity, and dissipates the thin,
• 4:53:26
  gaseous tenement which he has inhabited. He becomes a bare vital principle, not
• 4:53:33
  to be perceived by human senses, nor to be by any chemical test appreciated.
• 4:53:38
  He has but one instinct, which is that he is to go to
• 4:53:41
  such and such a place, where he will find that two persons whom he
• 4:53:45
  is to importune till they consent to undertake him. But whether he is to
• 4:53:51
  find these persons among the race of Chawbach or the Arwhonians themselves is not for
• 4:53:56
  him to choose. End of Chapter nineteen, Chapter twenty What they mean by
• 4:54:03
  it? I have given the above mythology at some length, but it is
• 4:54:10
  only a small part of what they have upon the subject. My first feeling,
• 4:54:15
  on reading it was that any amount of folly on the part of the
• 4:54:18
  unborn in coming here was justified by a desire to escape from such intolerable prosing.
• 4:54:23
  The mythology is obviously an unfair and exaggerated representation of life and things,
• 4:54:30
  and had its authors been so minded, they could have easily drawn a picture
• 4:54:33
  which would err as much on the bright side as this does on the dark.
• 4:54:40
  No erewhonian believes that the world is as black as it has here been
• 4:54:45
  painted. But it is one of their peculiarities that they very often do not
• 4:54:51
  believe or mean things which they professed to regard as indisputable. In the present
• 4:54:57
  instance, their professed views concerning the unborn have arisen from their desire to prove
• 4:55:03
  that people have been presented with the gloomiest possible picture of their own prospects before
• 4:55:07
  they came here. Otherwise they could hardly say to one whom they are going
• 4:55:11
  to punish for an affection of the heart or brain, that it is all
• 4:55:15
  his own doing. In practice, they modify their theory to a considerable extent,
• 4:55:22
  and seldom refer to the birth formula, except in extreme cases, for
• 4:55:26
  the force of habit or watch not gives many of them a kindly interest even
• 4:55:30
  in creatures who have so much wrong to them, as the unborn have done.
• 4:55:37
  And though a man generally hates the unwelcome little stranger of the first twelve
• 4:55:41
  months, he is apt to mollify according to his lights as time goes on,
• 4:55:47
  and sometimes he will become inordinately attached to the beings whom he is pleased
• 4:55:52
  to call his children. Of course, according to Erewhonian premises, it would
• 4:55:57
  serve people right be punished and scouted for moral and intellectual diseases as much as
• 4:56:03
  for physical. And I cannot this day understand why they should have stopped short
• 4:56:10
  halfway. Neither again can I understand why they're having done so should have been,
• 4:56:15
  as it certainly was a matter of so much concern to myself, What
• 4:56:21
  could it matter to me how many absurdities the Arephonians might stopt. Nevertheless,
• 4:56:26
  I longed to make them think as I did, for the wish to spread
• 4:56:30
  these opinions that we hold conducive to our own welfare is so deeply rooted in
• 4:56:34
  the English character that few of us can escape its influence. But let this
• 4:56:40
  pass in spite of not a few modifications in practice of a theory which is
• 4:56:48
  itself revolting the relations between children and parents in that country are less happy than
• 4:56:55
  in Europe. It was rarely that I saw cases of real, hearty and
• 4:57:00
  intense affection between old people and the young ones. Here and there I did
• 4:57:04
  so, and was quite sure about the children, even at the age of
• 4:57:10
  twenty, were fonder of their parents than they were of anyone else, and
• 4:57:15
  that of their own inclination. Being free to choose what company they would,
• 4:57:19
  would often choose that of their father and mother. The Straitner's carriage was rarely
• 4:57:26
  seen at the door of those houses. I saw two or three such cases
• 4:57:30
  during the time that I remained in the country, and could not express the
• 4:57:33
  pleasure which I derived from a sight suggestive of so much goodness and wisdom and
• 4:57:40
  forbearance so richly rewarded. Yet I firmly believed that the same thing would happen
• 4:57:47
  in nine families out of ten, if the parents were merely to remember how
• 4:57:52
  they felt when they were young, and actually behaved towards their children as they
• 4:57:56
  would have had their own parents behaved towards them. But this which would appear
• 4:58:03
  to be so simple and obvious, seems also to be a thing which not
• 4:58:07
  one in one hundred thousand is able to put in practice. It is only
• 4:58:14
  the very great and good who have made any living faith in the simplest axioms,
• 4:58:18
  And there are few who are so holy as to feel that nineteen and
• 4:58:22
  thirteen make thirty two as certainly as two and two make four. I am
• 4:58:32
  quite sure that if this narrative should ever fall into Erewhonian hands, it will
• 4:58:36
  be said that what I have written about the relations between parents and children being
• 4:58:41
  seldom satisfactory is an infamous perversion of facts, and that in truth, there
• 4:58:45
  are a few young people who do not feel happier in the society of their
• 4:58:48
  nearest relations than in any other. Mister Nozibor would be sure to say this.
• 4:58:56
  Yet I cannot refrain from expressing an opinion that he would be a good
• 4:59:00
  deal embarrassed if his deceased parents were to repear and propose to pay him the
• 4:59:07
  six months visit. I doubt whether there are many things which he would regard
• 4:59:11
  as greater infliction. They had died at a ripe old age, some twenty
• 4:59:15
  years before I came to know him, so the case is an extreme one.
• 4:59:21
  But surely if they had treated him with what in his youth he had
• 4:59:23
  felt to be true and selfishness, his face would brighten when he thowarded them
• 4:59:29
  to the end of his life. In the one or two cases of true
• 4:59:34
  family affection which I met with, I am sure that the young people who
• 4:59:38
  were so genuinely fond of their fathers and mothers at eighteen would at sixty be
• 4:59:45
  perfectly delighted were they to get the chance of welcoming them as their guests.
• 4:59:49
  There is nothing which could please them better, except perhaps to watch the happiness
• 4:59:56
  of their own children and grandchildren. This is how things should be. It
• 5:00:03
  is not an impossible ideal. It is one which actually does exist in some
• 5:00:08
  few cases, and might exist in almost all with a little more patience and
• 5:00:15
  forbearance upon the parent's part. But it is rare at present. So rare
• 5:00:22
  that they have a proverb which I can only translate in a very roundabout way,
• 5:00:26
  but which says that the great happiness of some people in the future state
• 5:00:30
  will consist in watching the distress of their parents on returning to eternal companionship with
• 5:00:37
  their grandfathers and grandmothers. Whilst compulsory affection is the idea which lies at the
• 5:00:42
  root of their word. For the deepest anguish. There is no talisman in
• 5:00:48
  the word parent which can generate miracles of affection, And I could well believe
• 5:00:52
  that my own child might find it less of a calamity to lose both Erewena
• 5:00:57
  and myself when he is six years old, then to find us again when
• 5:01:02
  he is sixty, a sentence which I would not pen. Did I not
• 5:01:07
  feel that by doing so, I was giving him something like a hostage,
• 5:01:14
  or, at any rate, putting a weapon into his hands against me,
• 5:01:18
  should my selfishness exceed reasonable limits. Money is at the bottom of all of
• 5:01:26
  this to a great extent. If the parents would put their children in the
• 5:01:30
  way of earner competence earlier than they do, the children would soon become self
• 5:01:36
  supporting and independent. As it is under the present system, the young ones
• 5:01:41
  get old enough to have all manner of legitimate wants, that is, if
• 5:01:47
  they have any, go about them before they have learnt the means of earning
• 5:01:51
  money to pay for them. Hence, they must either do without them or
• 5:01:57
  take more money than the parents can be expected to spare. This is due
• 5:02:03
  chiefly to the schools of unreason, where a boy is taught upon hypothetical principles.
• 5:02:07
  As I would explain hereafter spending years in being incapacitated for doing this,
• 5:02:18
  that or the other, he hardly knows what during all which time he ought
• 5:02:23
  to have been actually doing the thing itself, beginning at the lowest grades,
• 5:02:30
  picking it up through actual practice, and rising according to the energy which is
• 5:02:37
  in him. These schools of then reason surprised me much. It would be
• 5:02:44
  easy to fall into pseudo utilitarianism, and I would fain believe that the system
• 5:02:48
  may be good for the children of very rich parents, or for those who
• 5:02:53
  show a natural instinct to acquire hypothetical law. But the misery was their youngdren
• 5:02:59
  workship required all people with any pretense respectability to send the children to some one
• 5:03:06
  or other of these schools, marketing them of years of money. It astonished
• 5:03:12
  me to see what sacrifices the parents would make in order to render their children
• 5:03:18
  as nearly useless as possible. And it was hard to say whether the old
• 5:03:22
  suffered most from the expense with which they were thus put to, or be
• 5:03:27
  young from being deliberately swindled in some of the most important branches of human inquiry
• 5:03:34
  and directed into false channels, or left to drift in the great majority of
• 5:03:40
  cases. I cannot think that I am mistaken in believing that the growing tendency
• 5:03:47
  to limit families by infanticide, an evil which was causing general alarm throughout the
• 5:03:52
  country, was almost entirely due to the way in which education had become a
• 5:03:57
  fetish from one end of where one to the other. Granted that provisions should
• 5:04:03
  be made whereby every child should be taught reading, writing and arithmetic. But
• 5:04:11
  here compulsory state aided education should end, and the child should begin with all
• 5:04:18
  due precautions to ensure that he is not overworked to acquire the rudiments of that
• 5:04:22
  art whereby he is to earn his living. He cannot acquire these in what
• 5:04:29
  we in England call schools of technical education. Such schools are cloister life as
• 5:04:36
  against the rough and tumble of the world. They unfit rather than fit for
• 5:04:42
  work in the open, and art can only be learned in the workshop of
• 5:04:48
  those who are winning their bread by it. Boys, as a rule,
• 5:04:53
  hate the artificial and delight in the actual. Give them the chance of earning,
• 5:04:57
  and they will soon earn. When parents find that their children, instead
• 5:05:03
  of being made artificially burdensome, will early begin to contribute to the well being
• 5:05:07
  of the family. They will soon leave off killing them and will seek to
• 5:05:11
  have that plentitude of offspring which they now avoid. As things are, the
• 5:05:18
  state lays greater burdens on parents and flesh and blood can bear, and then
• 5:05:22
  wrings its hands over an evil for which it is itself mainly responsible. With
• 5:05:33
  the less well dressed classes, the harm was not so great, for among
• 5:05:37
  these. At about ten years old, the child has to begin doing something.
• 5:05:41
  If he is capable, he makes his way up. If he is
• 5:05:45
  not, he is at any rate, not made more incapable by what his
• 5:05:51
  friends at least recall his education. People find their level as a rule,
• 5:05:56
  and though they are unfortunate, they sometimes miss it. It is in the
• 5:06:00
  main true that those who have valuable qualities are perceived to have them and con
• 5:06:06
  sell them. I think that the Erephonians are beginning to become aware of these
• 5:06:11
  things, for there was much talk about putting tax upon all parents whose children
• 5:06:15
  were not earning a competence according to their degrees by the time they were twenty
• 5:06:21
  years old. I am sure that if they will have the courage to carry
• 5:06:23
  it through, they will never regret it. If the parents will take care
• 5:06:29
  that the children shall begin earning money, which means doing good to society at
• 5:06:33
  an early age. Then the children will be independent early, and they will
• 5:06:37
  not press on the parents, nor the parents on them, and they will
• 5:06:41
  like each other better than they do now. This is the true philanthropy.
• 5:06:48
  He who makes a colossal fortune in the hosary trade, and by his energy
• 5:06:52
  succeeded in reducing the price of woman goods by the thousandth part of a penny
• 5:06:56
  in the pound, this man is worth ten preferred philanthropists. So strongly are
• 5:07:02
  the Erronians impressed with this, that if a man has made a fortune of
• 5:07:06
  over twenty thousand a year, they exempt him from all taxation, considering him
• 5:07:12
  as a work of art and too precious to be meddled with. They say,
• 5:07:18
  how very much he must have done for society before society could have been
• 5:07:22
  prevailed upon to give him so much money, so magnificent an organization overawes them.
• 5:07:30
  They regard it as a thing dropped from heaven. Money, they say,
• 5:07:36
  is the symbol of duty. It is the sacrament of having done for
• 5:07:40
  mankind that which mankind wanted. Mankind might not be a very good judge but
• 5:07:45
  there is no better. This used to shock me at first, when I
• 5:07:52
  remembered that it had been said on high authority that they who have riches shall
• 5:07:56
  enter hardly into the kingdom of heaven. But the influence of erewhon had made
• 5:08:03
  me begin to see things in a new light, and they could not help
• 5:08:07
  thinking that they who have not riches shall enter more hardy. Still people oppose
• 5:08:15
  money to culture, and imply that if a man has spent his time in
• 5:08:19
  making money, he will not be cultivated. Fallacy of fallacies, as though
• 5:08:26
  there could be a greater aid to culture than the having earned an honorable independence,
• 5:08:32
  and as though any amount of culture will dematch the man who is penniless,
• 5:08:36
  except make him feel his position more deeply. The young man who was
• 5:08:41
  told all his goods and gives the poor must have been an entirely exceptionable person,
• 5:08:45
  if the advice was given wisely, either for him or for the poor.
• 5:08:52
  How much more often does it happen that we perceive a man to have
• 5:08:56
  all sorts of good qualities except money, and feel that his real duty lies
• 5:09:02
  in getting every halfpenny that he can persuade others to pay him for his services,
• 5:09:06
  And becoming rich. It has been said that the love of money is
• 5:09:11
  the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.
• 5:09:19
  The above may sound irreverent, but it is conceived in a spirit of
• 5:09:26
  the most utter reverence for those things which do alone deserve it. That is,
• 5:09:33
  for the things which are which moldest and fashion us. Be they what
• 5:09:38
  they may, For the things that have the power to punish us, and
• 5:09:42
  which will punish us if we do not heed them for our masters. Therefore,
• 5:09:48
  but I am drifting away from my story. They have another plan about
• 5:09:52
  which they are making a great noise in fuss, much as some are doing
• 5:09:56
  with women's rights in England. Of extreme radicals have professed themselves unable to decide
• 5:10:03
  upon the superiority of age or youth. At present, all goes on the
• 5:10:10
  supposition that it is desirable to make the young old as soon as possible.
• 5:10:15
  Some would have it that this is wrong, and that the object of education
• 5:10:21
  should be to keep the old young as long as possible. They say that
• 5:10:26
  each age should take it a turn in turn about week by week, one
• 5:10:33
  week to the old to be topsawyers, and the other the young. Drawing
• 5:10:37
  the line at thirty five years of age, but they insist that the young
• 5:10:41
  should be allowed to inflict corporate chastisement on the old, without which the old
• 5:10:45
  would be quite encorrigible. In any European country this would be out of the
• 5:10:51
  question, but it is not so here, for the Straiteness are constantly ordering
• 5:10:56
  people to be flogged, so that they are familiar with the notion. I
• 5:11:00
  do not suppose that the idea will ever be acted upon, but its having
• 5:11:03
  been even mooted is enough to show the utter perversion of the Erronian mind.
• 5:11:11
  End of Chapter twenty Chapter twenty one, The Colleges of Unreason. I had
• 5:11:18
  now been a visitor with the Nosnibors for some five or six months, and
• 5:11:22
  though I had frequently proposed to leave them and take apartments of my own,
• 5:11:26
  they would not hear of my doing so. I suppose they thought I should
• 5:11:30
  be more likely to fall in love with Zulora if I remained. But it
• 5:11:33
  was my affection for Arowhena that kept me during all this time. Both Arowhena
• 5:11:40
  and myself had been dreaming and drifting towards an avowed attachment, but had not
• 5:11:44
  dared to face the real difficulties of the position. Gradually, however, matters
• 5:11:48
  came to a crisis in spite of ourselves, and we got to see the
• 5:11:52
  true state of the case all too clearly. One evening, we were sitting
• 5:11:56
  in the garden, and I had been trying, in every stupid, rine
• 5:12:00
  way to get her to say that she should be, at any rate sorry
• 5:12:03
  for a man if he really loved a woman who would not marry him.
• 5:12:08
  I had been stammering and blushing and been as silly as anyone could be,
• 5:12:12
  and I suppose had pained her by fishing for pity for myself in such a
• 5:12:18
  transparent way and saying nothing about her own need of it. At any rate,
• 5:12:22
  she turned all upon me with a sweet, sad smile and said,
• 5:12:26
  sorry. I am sorry for myself, I am sorry for you, and
• 5:12:32
  I am sorry for everyone. The words had no sooner crossed her lips than
• 5:12:37
  she bowed her head, gave me a look as though I were to make
• 5:12:41
  no answer, and left me. The words were few and simple, but
• 5:12:45
  the manner with which they were uttered was ineffable. The scales fell from my
• 5:12:52
  eyes, and I felt that I had no right to try and induce her
• 5:12:55
  to infringe one of the most inviolable customs of her country, as she needs
• 5:13:00
  must do if she were to marry me. I sat for a long while
• 5:13:03
  thinking, and when I remembered the sin and shame and misery which an unrighteous
• 5:13:10
  marriage, for as such it would be held in Erewhon would entail, I
• 5:13:15
  became thoroughly ashamed of myself for having been so long self blinded. I write
• 5:13:21
  coldly now, but I suffered keenly at the time, and should probably retain
• 5:13:26
  a much more vivid recollection of what I felt. Had not all ended so
• 5:13:30
  happily as for giving up the idea of marrying Arowhena, it never so much
• 5:13:36
  as entered my head to do so. The solution must be found in some
• 5:13:40
  other direction than this. The idea of waiting till somebody married z Laura was
• 5:13:45
  to be no less summarily dismissed to marry Arowhena at once in erewhon this had
• 5:13:52
  already been abandoned. There remained therefore but one alternative, and that was to
• 5:13:56
  run away with her and get her with me to Europe, where there would
• 5:14:00
  be no bar to our union save my own impecuniosity, a matter which gave
• 5:14:06
  me no uneasiness to this obvious and simple plan. I could see but two
• 5:14:11
  objections that deserved the name. The first that perhaps Arowhena would not come.
• 5:14:18
  The second that was almost impossible for me to escape, even alone. For
• 5:14:22
  the King had himself told me that I was to consider myself a prisoner on
• 5:14:26
  parole, and that the first sign of my endeavoring to escape would cause me
• 5:14:32
  to be sent to one of the hospitals for incurables. Besides, I did
• 5:14:36
  not know the geography of the country, and even were I to try and
• 5:14:38
  find my way back, I should be discovered long before I had reached the
• 5:14:42
  pass over which I had come. How then could I hope to be able
• 5:14:48
  to take Arowhena with me for days and days. I turned these difficulties over
• 5:14:52
  in my mind, and at last hit upon as wild a plan as was
• 5:14:57
  ever suggested by extremity. This was to meet the second difficulty. The first
• 5:15:03
  gave me less uneasiness, for when Arowhena and I next met after our interview
• 5:15:08
  in the garden, I could see that she had suffered not less acutely than
• 5:15:12
  myself. I resolved that I would have another interview with her. The last
• 5:15:18
  for the present that I would then leave her and set to work upon maturing
• 5:15:22
  my plan as fast as possible. We got a chance of being alone together,
• 5:15:27
  and then I gave myself the loose rein and told her how passionately and
• 5:15:32
  devotedly I loved her. She said little in return, but her tears,
• 5:15:37
  which I could not refrain from answering with my own, and the little she
• 5:15:41
  did say, were quite enough to show me that I should meet with no
• 5:15:45
  obstacle from her. Then I asked her whether she would run a terrible risk
• 5:15:49
  which we should share in common, if, in case of success, I
• 5:15:53
  could take her to my own people, to the home of my mother and
• 5:15:56
  sisters, who would welcome her very gladly. At the same time, I
• 5:16:02
  pointed out that the chances of failure were far greater than those of success,
• 5:16:07
  and that the probability was that even though I could get so far as to
• 5:16:10
  carry my design into execution, it would end in death to us both.
• 5:16:15
  I was not mistaken in her. She said that she believed I loved her
• 5:16:19
  as much as she loved me, and that she would brave anything if I
• 5:16:23
  could only assure her that what I proposed would not be thought dishonorable in England.
• 5:16:29
  She could not live without me and would rather die with me than alone.
• 5:16:33
  That death was perhaps the best for us, both that I must plan,
• 5:16:37
  and that when the hour came, I was to send for her and
• 5:16:41
  trust her not to fail me. And so, after many tears and embraces,
• 5:16:45
  we tore ourselves away. I then left the noasnaboords, who took a
• 5:16:51
  lodging in the town and became melancholy to my heart's content. Arowhena and I
• 5:16:56
  used to see each other sometimes, for I had taken to going regularly to
• 5:17:00
  the musical banks. But missus Nosnibor and Zilora both treated me with considerable coldness.
• 5:17:07
  I felt sure that they suspected me. Arowhena looked miserable, and I
• 5:17:11
  saw that her purse was now always as fool as she could fill it with
• 5:17:15
  musical bank money, much fuller than of old. Then the horrible thought occurred
• 5:17:22
  to me that her health might break down, and that she might be subjected
• 5:17:26
  to a criminal prosecution. Oh how I hated erewhon. At this time I
• 5:17:32
  was still received at court, but my good looks were beginning to fail me,
• 5:17:36
  and I was not such an adept at concealing the effects of pain,
• 5:17:40
  as the Erewhonians are. I could see that my friends began to look concerned
• 5:17:45
  about me, and was obliged to take a leaf out of Mahina's book and
• 5:17:48
  pretend to have developed the taste for drinking. I even consulted a straighten her
• 5:17:53
  as though this were so, and submitted to much discomfort. This made matters
• 5:17:59
  better for it, but I could see that my friends thought less highly of
• 5:18:02
  my constitution. As my flesh began to fall away, I was told that
• 5:18:07
  the poor made an outcry about my pension, and I saw a stinging article
• 5:18:11
  in an anti ministerial paper, in which the writer went so far as to
• 5:18:15
  say that my having light hair reflected little credit upon me, inasmuch as I
• 5:18:21
  had been reported to have said that it was a common thing in the country
• 5:18:25
  from which I came. I have reason to believe that mister Nosnibor himself inspired
• 5:18:30
  this article. Presently, it came round to me that the King had begun
• 5:18:34
  to dwell upon my having been possessed of a watch, and to say that
• 5:18:38
  I ought to be treated medicinally for having told him a lie about the balloons.
• 5:18:44
  I saw a misfortune gathering round me in every direction, and felt that
• 5:18:48
  I should have need of all my wits and a good money more if I
• 5:18:52
  was to steer myself and Arowhena to a good conclusion. There were some who
• 5:18:57
  continued to show me kind and strange to say, I received the most from
• 5:19:02
  the very persons from whom I should at least expected it. I mean,
• 5:19:06
  from the cashiers of the musical banks. I had made the acquaintance of several
• 5:19:11
  of these persons, and now that I frequented their banks, they were inclined
• 5:19:15
  to make a good deal of me. One of them, seeing that I
• 5:19:18
  was thoroughly out of health, though of course he pretended not to notice it,
• 5:19:23
  suggested that I should take a little change of air and go down with
• 5:19:26
  him to one of the principal towns, which was some two or three days
• 5:19:30
  journey from the metropolis and the chief seat of the colleges of Unreason. He
• 5:19:37
  assured me that I should be delighted with what I saw, and that I
• 5:19:41
  should receive a most hospitable welcome. I determined therefore to accept the invitation.
• 5:19:48
  We started two or three days later, and after a night on the road,
• 5:19:52
  we arrived at our destination towards evening. It was now full spring,
• 5:19:56
  and as nearly as might be ten months since I had start with Chaubuch on
• 5:20:00
  my expedition, but it seemed more like ten years. The trees were in
• 5:20:06
  their freshest beauty, and the air had become warm without being oppressively hot.
• 5:20:11
  And having lived so many months in the metropolis, the sight of the country
• 5:20:17
  and the country villages to which we passed refreshed me greatly, but I could
• 5:20:22
  not forget my troubles. The last five miles or so were the most beautiful
• 5:20:26
  part of the journey, for the country became more undulating and the woods were
• 5:20:30
  more extensive. But the first sight of the city of the Colleges itself was
• 5:20:36
  the most delightful of all. I cannot imagine that there can be any farer
• 5:20:41
  in the whole world, and I expressed my pleasure to my companion and thanked
• 5:20:45
  him for having brought me. We drove to an inn in the middle of
• 5:20:51
  the town, and then, while it was still light, my friend,
• 5:20:53
  the cashier, whose name was Thames, took me for a stroll in the
• 5:20:59
  streets. In it the court yards of the principal colleges, their beauty and
• 5:21:03
  interest were extreme. It was impossible to see them without being attracted towards them,
• 5:21:08
  And I thought to myself that he must be indeed an ill grained and
• 5:21:12
  ungrateful person who can have been a member of one of these colleges without retaining
• 5:21:18
  an affectionate feeling towards it for the rest of his life. All my misgivings
• 5:21:22
  gave way at once when I saw the beauty and venerable appearance of this delightful
• 5:21:26
  city. For half an hour I forgot both myself and Arowhena after supper,
• 5:21:33
  mister Thimms told me a good deal about the system of education which is here
• 5:21:37
  practiced. I already knew a part of what I heard, but much was
• 5:21:41
  new to me, and I obtained a better idea of the Erewhonian position than
• 5:21:45
  he had done hitherto. Nevertheless, there were parts of the scheme of which
• 5:21:49
  I could not comprehend the fitness, although I fully admit that this inability was
• 5:21:56
  probably the result of my having been trained so differently, and to my being
• 5:22:00
  then much out of sorts. The main feature in their system is the prominence
• 5:22:07
  which they give to a study, which I can only translate by the word
• 5:22:11
  hypothetics. They argue thus, that to teach a boy merely the nature of
• 5:22:17
  the things which exist in the world around him, and about which he will
• 5:22:21
  have to be conversant during his whole life, would be giving him but a
• 5:22:25
  narrow and shallow conception of the universe, which is urged might contain all manner
• 5:22:30
  of things which are not now to be found therein to open his eyes to
• 5:22:34
  these possibilities, and so to prepare him for all sorts of emergencies, is
• 5:22:40
  the object of this system of hypothetics to imagine a set of utterly strange and
• 5:22:45
  impossible contingencies, and require the youths to give intelligent answers to the questions that
• 5:22:52
  arise. Therefrom is reckoned the fittest conceivable way of preparing them for the actual
• 5:22:57
  conduct of their affairs. And after thus they are taught what is called the
• 5:23:03
  hypothetical language for many of their best years, a language which was originally composed
• 5:23:08
  at a time when the country was in a very different state of civilization to
• 5:23:12
  what it is at present, a state which has long since disappeared and been
• 5:23:18
  superseded. Many valuable maxims and noble thoughts which were at one time concealed in
• 5:23:23
  it, have become current in their modern literature, and have been translated over
• 5:23:29
  and over again into the language now spoken. Surely, then it would seem
• 5:23:33
  enough that the study of the original language should be confined to the few whose
• 5:23:37
  instincts led them naturally to pursue it. But the Erewhonians think differently. The
• 5:23:45
  store they set by this hypothetical language can hardly be believed. They will even
• 5:23:51
  give anyone a maintenance for life if he attains a considerable proficiency in the study
• 5:23:56
  of it. Nay, they will spend years in learning to try translated some
• 5:24:00
  of their own good poetry into the hypothetical language, to do so, with
• 5:24:04
  fluency being reckoned a distinguishing mark of a scholar and a gentleman. Heaven forbid
• 5:24:10
  that I should be flippant. But it appeared to me to be a wanton
• 5:24:14
  waste of good human energy that men should spend years and years and the perfection
• 5:24:18
  of so barren an exercise when their own civilization presented problems by the hundred,
• 5:24:23
  which cried aloud for solution, and would have paid the solver handsomely. But
• 5:24:30
  people know their own affairs best. If the youths chose it for themselves,
• 5:24:36
  I should have wondered less. But they do not choose it. They have
• 5:24:40
  it thrust upon them, and for the most part, are disinclined towards it.
• 5:24:45
  I can only say that all I heard in defense of the system was
• 5:24:48
  insufficient to make me think very highly of its advantages. The arguments in favor
• 5:24:55
  of the deliberate development of the unreasoning faculties were much more cogent. But here
• 5:25:02
  they depart from the principles on which they justify their study of hypothetics. For
• 5:25:06
  they base the importance which they assigned to hypothetics upon the fact of their being
• 5:25:11
  a preparation for the extraordinary, while their study of unreason rests upon its developing
• 5:25:17
  those faculties which are required for the daily conduct of affairs. Hence their professorships
• 5:25:22
  of inconsistency and evasion, in both of which studies the youths are examined before
• 5:25:29
  being allowed to proceed to their degree in hypothetics. The more earnest and conscientious
• 5:25:34
  students attained to a proficiency in these subjects, which is quite surprising. There
• 5:25:40
  is hardly any inconsistency so glaring, But they soon learn to defend it.
• 5:25:45
  Or injunctions so clear that they cannot find some pretext for disregarding it. Life,
• 5:25:51
  they urge, would be intolerable if men were to be guided in all
• 5:25:53
  they did by reason and reason only reason betrays men in the drawing of hard
• 5:26:00
  and fat lines, and to the defining by language, language being like the
• 5:26:06
  sun which rears and then scorches. Extremes are alone logical, but they are
• 5:26:11
  always absurd. The mean is illogical, but an illogical mean is better than
• 5:26:17
  the sheer absurdity of an extreme. There are no follies and no unreasonablenesses so
• 5:26:23
  great as those which can apparently be irrefragably defended by reason itself. And there
• 5:26:30
  is hardly an error into which men may not easily be led. If they
• 5:26:33
  base their conduct upon reason, only reason might very possibly abolish the double currency.
• 5:26:41
  It might even attack the personality of hope and justice. Besides, people
• 5:26:45
  have such a strong natural bias towards it that they will seek it for themselves
• 5:26:51
  and act upon it quite as much as or more than as good for them.
• 5:26:56
  There is no need of encouraging reason with unreason. The case is different.
• 5:27:00
  She is the natural complement of reason, without whose existence reason itself were
• 5:27:07
  non existent, if then reason would be nonexistent were there no such thing as
• 5:27:12
  unreason. Surely it follows that the more unreason there is, the more reason
• 5:27:18
  there must be. Also, hence the necessity for the development of unreason,
• 5:27:23
  even in the interests of reason herself. The professors of unreason deny that they
• 5:27:29
  undervalue reason. None can be more convinced than they are that if the double
• 5:27:33
  currency cannot be rigorously deduced as a necessary consequence of human reason, the double
• 5:27:40
  currency should cease forthwith. But they say that it must be deduced from no
• 5:27:45
  narrow and exclusive view of reason, which should deprive that admirable faculty of the
• 5:27:49
  one half of its own existence. Unreason is a part of reason. It
• 5:27:55
  must therefore be allowed its full share. In stating the initial conditions end of
• 5:28:00
  chapter twenty one Chapter twenty two, the colleges of unreason continued. Of genius
• 5:28:10
  they make no account for They say that everyone is a genius more or less.
• 5:28:15
  No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even
• 5:28:18
  a little unsound, and no one is so diseased, but that some part
• 5:28:22
  of him will be healthy. So no man is so mentally and morally sound,
• 5:28:26
  but that he will be in part both mad and wicked. And no
• 5:28:30
  man is so mad and wicked, but he will be sensible and honorable in
• 5:28:34
  part in like manner. There is no genius who is not also a fool,
• 5:28:41
  and no fool who is not also a genius. When I talked about
• 5:28:45
  originality and genius to some gentleman whom I met at a supper party given by
• 5:28:49
  mister Tims in my honor, and said that original thought ought to be encouraged,
• 5:28:55
  I had to eat my words at once. Their view of a was
• 5:29:00
  that genius was like offenses. Needs must that it come, but woe want
• 5:29:06
  to that man through whom it comes. A man's business, they hold is
• 5:29:11
  to think as his neighbors do, for Heaven to help him if he thinks
• 5:29:15
  good what they cant bad. And really, it is hard to see how
• 5:29:18
  the Erewhonian theory differs from our own, for the word idiot only means a
• 5:29:22
  person who forms his opinions for himself. The venerable Professor of worldly Wisdom,
• 5:29:30
  a man verging on eighty but still hale, spoke to me very seriously on
• 5:29:34
  this subject in consequence of the few words that it had imprudently let fall in
• 5:29:40
  defense of genius. He was one of those who carried most weight in the
• 5:29:45
  university, and had the reputation of having done more, perhaps than any other
• 5:29:49
  living man, to suppress any kind of originality. It is not our business,
• 5:29:56
  he said, to help students to think for themselves. Surely, this
• 5:30:00
  is the very last thing which one who wishes them well should encourage them to
• 5:30:06
  do. Our duty is to ensure that they shall think as we do,
• 5:30:12
  or at any rate, as we hold it expedient to say we do.
• 5:30:18
  In some respects, however, he was thought to hold somewhat radical opinions,
• 5:30:23
  for he was president of the Society for the Suppression of Useless Knowledge and for
• 5:30:29
  the completer Obliteration of the Past. As regards the tests that a youth must
• 5:30:34
  pass before he can get a degree, I found that they have no class
• 5:30:40
  lists and discourage anything like a competition among the students. This, indeed,
• 5:30:45
  they regard as self seeking and unnighborly. The examinations are conducted by way of
• 5:30:52
  papers written by the candidate on set subjects, some of which are known to
• 5:30:56
  him beforehand, while others are devised with a view of testing his general capacity
• 5:31:00
  and savoir faire. My friend, the professor of worldly Wisdom, was the
• 5:31:07
  terror of the greater number of students, and so far as I could judge,
• 5:31:11
  he very well might be, for he had taken his professorship more seriously
• 5:31:15
  than any of the other professors had done. I heard of his having plucked
• 5:31:19
  one poor fellow for want of sufficient vagueness in his saving clauses paper. Another
• 5:31:26
  was sent down for having written an article on a scientific subject without having made
• 5:31:30
  free enough use of the words carefully, patiently and earnestly. One man was
• 5:31:36
  refused a degree for being too often and too seriously in the right, while
• 5:31:41
  a few days before I came a whole batch had been plucked for insufficient distrust
• 5:31:45
  of printed matter. About this there was just then rather a ferment, For
• 5:31:51
  it seems that the professor had written an article in the leading university magazine which
• 5:31:56
  was well known to be by him, and which abounded in all sorts of
• 5:32:00
  plausible blunders. He then set a paper which afforded the examinees an opportunity of
• 5:32:06
  repeating these blunders, which, believing the article to be by their own examiner,
• 5:32:11
  they of course did. The professor plucked every single one of them,
• 5:32:15
  but his action was considered to have been not quite handsome. I told them
• 5:32:21
  of Homer's noble line, to the effect that a man should strive ever to
• 5:32:25
  be foremost, and in all things to outvie his peers. But they said
• 5:32:30
  that no wonder, the countries in which such a detestable maximum was held in
• 5:32:33
  admiration were always flying at one another's throats. Why, asked one professor,
• 5:32:40
  should a man want to be better than his neighbors, let him be thankful
• 5:32:45
  if he is no worse. I ventured feebly to say that I did not
• 5:32:49
  see how progress could be made in any art or science, or indeed in
• 5:32:53
  anything at all, without more or less self seeking, and hence unamiability.
• 5:33:00
  Of course, it cannot, said the professor, and therefore we object to
• 5:33:04
  progress, after which there was no more to be said. Later on,
• 5:33:10
  however, a young professor took me aside and said he did not think I
• 5:33:14
  quite understood their views about progress. We like progress, he said, but
• 5:33:18
  it must commend itself to the common sense of the people. If a man
• 5:33:23
  gets to know more than his neighbors, he should keep his knowledge to himself
• 5:33:27
  till he has sounded them, and seeing whether they agree or are likely to
• 5:33:32
  agree with him. He said it was as a moral to be too far
• 5:33:37
  in front of one's own age as to lag too far behind it. If
• 5:33:41
  a man can carry his neighbors with him, he may say what he likes.
• 5:33:45
  But if not, what insult can be more gratuitous than telling them what
• 5:33:49
  they do not want to know. A man should remember that intellectual overindulgence is
• 5:33:55
  one of the most insidious and disgraceful forms that excess can take. Granted that
• 5:34:00
  everyone should exceed more or less inasmuch as absolutely perfect sanity would drive any man
• 5:34:07
  mad the moment he reached it. But he was now warming to his subject,
• 5:34:11
  and I was beginning to wonder how I should get rid of him when
• 5:34:15
  the party broke up, and though I promised to call on him before I
• 5:34:18
  left, I was unfortunately prevented from doing so. I have now said enough
• 5:34:25
  to give English readers some idea of the strange views which theirwarnians hold concerning unreasoned
• 5:34:30
  hypothetics and education generally. In many respects, they were sensible enough, but
• 5:34:37
  I couldnot get over the hypothetics, especially the turning their own good poetry into
• 5:34:42
  the hypothetical language, and the course of my stay, I met one youth
• 5:34:48
  who told me that for fourteen years the hypothetical language had been almost the only
• 5:34:52
  thing that he had been taught, although he had, never, to his
• 5:34:56
  credit, as it seemed to me, shown the slight proclivity towards it,
• 5:35:00
  while he had been endowed with not inconsiderable ability for several other branches of human
• 5:35:07
  learning. He assured me that he would never open another hypothetical book after he
• 5:35:11
  had taken his degree, but would follow out the event of his own inclinations.
• 5:35:17
  This was well enough, but who could give him his fourteen years back
• 5:35:21
  again? I sometimes wondered how it was that the mischief done was not more
• 5:35:26
  clearly perceptible, and that the young men and women grew up as sensible and
• 5:35:30
  goodly as they did, in spite of the attempts almost deliberately made to warp
• 5:35:34
  and stunt their growth. Some doubtless received a damage from which they suffered to
• 5:35:41
  their life's end, but many seemed little or none the worse, and some
• 5:35:45
  almost the better. The reason would seem to be that the natural instinct of
• 5:35:51
  the lads, in most cases so absolutely rebelled against their training, that to
• 5:35:55
  do what the teachers might, they could never get them to pay serious heed
• 5:35:59
  to it. The consequence was that the boys only lost their time, and
• 5:36:03
  not so much of this as might have been expected, for in their hours
• 5:36:07
  of leisure they were actively engaged in exercises and sports, which developed their physical
• 5:36:12
  nature and made them, at any rate, strong and healthy. Moreover,
• 5:36:18
  those who had any special tastes could not be restrained from developing them. They
• 5:36:22
  would learn what they wanted to learn and liked, in spite of obstacles which
• 5:36:26
  seemed rather to urge them on than to discourage them. While for those who
• 5:36:32
  had no special capacity, the loss of time was of comparatively little moment.
• 5:36:37
  But in spite of these alleviations of the mischief, I am sure that much
• 5:36:41
  harm was done to the children of these subwealthy classes by the system which passes
• 5:36:45
  current among the Erewhonians as education. The poorest children suffered least. If destruction
• 5:36:52
  and death have heard the sound of wisdom to a certain extent, poverty has
• 5:36:56
  done so also. And yet perhaps after all, it is better for a
• 5:37:02
  country that its seats of learning should do more to suppress mental growth than to
• 5:37:06
  encourage it, were it not for a certain priggishness which these places infuse into
• 5:37:11
  so great a number of their alumni, genuine work would become dangerously common.
• 5:37:18
  It is essential that, by far the greater part of what is said or
• 5:37:22
  done in the world should be so ephemeral as to take itself away quickly.
• 5:37:27
  It should keep good for twenty four hours or even toice as long, but
• 5:37:30
  it should not be good enough a week, hence to prevent people from going
• 5:37:34
  on to something else. No doubt the marvelous development of journalism in England,
• 5:37:40
  and also the fact that our seats of learning aim rather at fostering mediocrity than
• 5:37:45
  anything higher, is due to our subconscious recognition of the fact that it is
• 5:37:49
  even more necessary to check exuberance of mental development than to encourage it. There
• 5:37:56
  can be no doubt that this is what our academic body do, and they
• 5:38:00
  do it the more effectually because they do it only subconsciously. They think they
• 5:38:07
  are advancing healthy mental assimilation and digestion, whereas in reality they are a little
• 5:38:14
  better than cancer in the stomach. Let me return, however, to the
• 5:38:18
  Erewhonians. Nothing surprised me more than to see the occasional flashes of common sense
• 5:38:25
  with which one branch of study or another was lit up, while not a
• 5:38:29
  single ray fell upon so many others. I was particularly struck with this on
• 5:38:34
  strolling into the art school of the university. Here I found that the course
• 5:38:38
  of study was divided into two branches, the practical and the commercial. No
• 5:38:45
  student being permitted to continue his studies in the actual practice of the art he
• 5:38:48
  had taken up unless he made equal progress in its commercial history. Thus,
• 5:38:55
  those who were studying painting were examined at frequent intervals in the price which all
• 5:39:00
  the leading pictures of the last fifty or one hundred years had realized, and
• 5:39:04
  in the fluctuations and their values, when, as often happened, they had
• 5:39:07
  been sold and resold three or four times. The artist, they contend,
• 5:39:14
  is a dealer in pictures, and it is as important for him to learn
• 5:39:18
  how to adapt his wares to the market, and to know approximately what kind
• 5:39:22
  of a picture will fetch, how much as it is for him to be
• 5:39:26
  able to paint the picture. This, I suppose, is what the French
• 5:39:30
  mean by laying so much stress upon values as regards the city itself. The
• 5:39:36
  more I saw, the more enchanted I became. I dare not trust myself
• 5:39:40
  with any description of the exquisite beauty of the different colleges and their walks and
• 5:39:45
  gardens. Truly, in these things alone there must be a hallowing and refining
• 5:39:49
  influence, which is in itself half an education, and which no amount of
• 5:39:55
  error can wholly spoil. I was introduced to many of the profess who showed
• 5:40:00
  me every hospitality and kindness. Nevertheless, I could hardly avoid a sort of
• 5:40:06
  suspicion that some of those whom I was taken to see had been so long
• 5:40:10
  engrossed in their own study of hypothetics that they had become the exact antithesis of
• 5:40:15
  the Athenians in the days of Saint Paul. For whereas the Athenians spent their
• 5:40:21
  lives in nothing save to see and to hear some new thing, there were
• 5:40:25
  some here who seemed to devote themselves to the avoidance of every opinion with which
• 5:40:30
  they were not perfectly familiar, and regarded their own brains as a sort of
• 5:40:33
  sanctuary to which if an opinion had once resorted and none other was to attack
• 5:40:38
  it. I should warn the reader, however, that I was rarely sure
• 5:40:44
  what the men whom I met while staying with mister Thimmes really meant, for
• 5:40:48
  there was no getting anything out of them if they scented even a suspicion that
• 5:40:52
  they might be what they call giving themselves away. As there is hardly any
• 5:40:59
  subjects on which this suspicion cannot arise, I found it difficult to get definite
• 5:41:03
  opinions from any of them, except on such subjects as the weather, eating
• 5:41:08
  and drinking, holiday excursions, or games of skill. If they cannot riggle
• 5:41:15
  out of expressing an opinion of some sort, they will commonly retail those of
• 5:41:18
  someone who has already written upon the subject, and conclude by saying that,
• 5:41:23
  though they quite admit that there is an element of truth in what the writer
• 5:41:27
  has said, there are many points on which they are unable to agree with
• 5:41:32
  him. Which these points were I invariably found myself unable to determine. Indeed,
• 5:41:37
  it seemed to be counted the perfection of scholarship and good breeding among them
• 5:41:42
  not to have much less to express an opinion on any subject on which it
• 5:41:48
  might prove later that they had been mistaken. The art of sitting gracefully on
• 5:41:53
  a fence has never, I should think, been brought to greater perfection than
• 5:41:57
  at the Erewhonian colleges of unreason. Even when regal as they may, they
• 5:42:03
  find themselves pinned down to some expression of definite opinion, as often as not
• 5:42:08
  they will argue in support of what they perfectly well know to be untrue.
• 5:42:14
  I repeatedly met with reviews and articles, even in their best journals, between
• 5:42:18
  the lines of which I had little difficulty in detecting a sense exactly contrary to
• 5:42:23
  the one ostensibly put forward. So well is this understood that a man must
• 5:42:29
  be a mere tyro in the arts of Erewhonian polite society unless he instinctively suspects
• 5:42:34
  a hidden yay in every nay that meets him. Granted that it comes to
• 5:42:40
  much the same in the end, for it does not matter whether yay is
• 5:42:44
  called yay or nay, so long as it is understood which it is to
• 5:42:48
  be. But our own more direct way of calling a spade a spade rather
• 5:42:52
  than a rake, with the intention that everyone should understand it as a spade,
• 5:42:57
  seems more satisfactory. On the other hand, the Irewhonian system lends itself
• 5:43:03
  better to the suppression of that downrightness, which it seems the express aim of
• 5:43:10
  Erwonian philosophy to discountenance. However, this may be the fear of giving themselves
• 5:43:17
  away. Disease was fatal to the intelligence of those infected by it, and
• 5:43:21
  almost everyone at the Colleges of Unreason it caught it to a greater or less
• 5:43:26
  degree. After a few years, atrophy of the opinions invariably supervened, and
• 5:43:32
  the sufferer became stone dead to everything except the more superficial aspects of those material
• 5:43:38
  objects with which he came most in contact. The expression on the faces of
• 5:43:45
  these people was repellent. They did not, however, seem particularly unhappy,
• 5:43:51
  for they none of them had the faintest idea that they were, in reality
• 5:43:55
  more dead than alive. No cure for this disgusting fear of giving themselves away
• 5:44:00
  disease as yet been discovered. It was during my stay in the city of
• 5:44:07
  the Colleges of any Reason, a city whose Erewhonian name is so cacophonist that
• 5:44:12
  I refrained from giving it, that I learned the particulars of the revolution which
• 5:44:18
  had ended in the destruction of so many of the mechanical inventions which were formerly
• 5:44:22
  in common use. Mister Thimms took me to the rooms of a gentleman who
• 5:44:27
  had a great reputation for learning, but who was also so mister Thimms told
• 5:44:33
  me rather a dangerous person, inasmuch as he had attempted to introduce an adverb
• 5:44:40
  into the hypothetical language. He had heard of my watch and been exceedingly anxious
• 5:44:45
  to see me, for he was accounted the most learned antiquary in Erewhon on
• 5:44:49
  the subject of mechanical lore. We fell to talking upon the subject, and
• 5:44:55
  when I left he gave me a reprinted copy of the work which brought revolution
• 5:45:00
  about. It had taken place some five hundred years before my arrival. People
• 5:45:04
  had long become thoroughly used to the change, although at the time that it
• 5:45:10
  was made the country was plunged into the deepest misery, and a reaction which
• 5:45:15
  followed had very nearly proved successful. Civil war raged for many years, and
• 5:45:21
  is said to have reduced the number of the inhabitants by one half. The
• 5:45:26
  parties were styled the Machinists and the anti Machinists, and in the end,
• 5:45:32
  as I have said already, the latter got the victory, treating their opponents
• 5:45:36
  with such unparalleled severity that they extirpated every trace of opposition. The wonder was
• 5:45:42
  that they allowed any mechanical appliances to remain in the kingdom, and neither do
• 5:45:48
  I believe that they would have done so had not the professors of inconsistency and
• 5:45:52
  evasion made a stand against the carrying of the new principles to their legitimate conclusions.
• 5:46:00
  Professors moreover insisted that during the struggle the anti machinists should use every known
• 5:46:06
  improvement in the art of war, and several new weapons, offensive and defensive
• 5:46:10
  were invented while it was in progress. I was surprised that there remaining so
• 5:46:15
  many mechanical specimens as are seen in the museums and at students, having rediscovered
• 5:46:22
  their past uses so completely. For at the time of the revolution, the
• 5:46:26
  victors erecked all the more complicated machines and burned all treatises on mechanics and all
• 5:46:32
  engineers workshops. Thus, so they thought cutting the mischief out root and branch,
• 5:46:38
  at an incalculable cost of blood and treasure. Certainly they had not spared
• 5:46:44
  their labor. But work of this description can never be perfectly achieved. And
• 5:46:48
  when some two hundred years before my arrival, all passioned upon, the subject
• 5:46:55
  had cooled down, and no one save a lunatic, would have dreamed of
• 5:46:59
  reintroduce forbidden inventions. The subject came to be regarded as a curious antiquarian study,
• 5:47:06
  like that of some long forgotten religious practices among ourselves. Then came the
• 5:47:11
  careful search for whatever fragments could be found, and for any machines that might
• 5:47:17
  have been hidden away. And also numberless treatises were written showing what the functions
• 5:47:22
  of each we discovered machine had been, all being done with no idea of
• 5:47:26
  using such machinery again, but with the feelings of an English antiquarian concerning jeridical
• 5:47:32
  monuments or flint arrowheads. On my return to the metropolis, during the remaining
• 5:47:38
  weeks or rather days of my sojourn in arow On, I made our resume
• 5:47:42
  in English of the work which brought about the already mentioned revolution. My ignorance
• 5:47:49
  of technical terms has led me doubtless into many errors, and I have occasionally
• 5:47:55
  where I found a translation impossible substituted purely English names in idea is for the
• 5:48:00
  original Erewhonian ones. But the reader may rely on my general accuracy. I
• 5:48:06
  have thought it best to insert my translation here. End of chapter twenty two
• 5:48:14
  Chapter twenty three the Book of the Machines, the writer commences, there was
• 5:48:21
  a time when the Earth was, to all appearance utterly destitute, both of
• 5:48:25
  animal and vegetable life, and when, according to the opinion of our best
• 5:48:29
  philosophers, it was simply a hot round ball with a crust gradually cooling.
• 5:48:34
  Now, if a human being had existed while the Earth was in this state,
• 5:48:37
  and had been allowed to see it as though it were some other world
• 5:48:41
  with which he had no concern, and if at the same time he were
• 5:48:45
  entirely ignorant of all physical science, would he not have pronounced it impossible that
• 5:48:49
  creatures possessed of anything like consciousness should be evolved from the seeming cinder which he
• 5:48:55
  was beholding. Would he not have denied that it contained any potentiality of consciousness?
• 5:49:00
  Yet in the course of time consciousness came. Is it not possible then
• 5:49:06
  that there may be even yet new channels dug out for consciousness, though we
• 5:49:10
  can detect no signs of them at present. Again, consciousness in anything like
• 5:49:15
  the present acceptation of the term having been once a new thing, a thing
• 5:49:19
  as far as we can see, subsequent even to an individual center of action,
• 5:49:23
  and to a reproductive system, which we see in existing plants without apparent
• 5:49:27
  consciousness. Why may there not arise some new phase of mind which shall be
• 5:49:33
  as different from all present known phases as the mind of animals is from that
• 5:49:37
  of vegetables. It would be absurd to attempt to define such a mental state,
• 5:49:42
  or whatever it may be called, inasmuch as it must be something so
• 5:49:47
  foreign to man that his experience can give him no help towards conceiving its nature.
• 5:49:51
  But surely, when we reflect upon the manifold phases of life and consciousness
• 5:49:56
  which have been evolved already, it would be rash to say that no other
• 5:50:00
  can be developed, and that animal life is the end of all things.
• 5:50:03
  There was a time when fire was the end of all things, another when
• 5:50:07
  rocks and water were so. The writer, after enlarging on the above for
• 5:50:12
  several pages, proceeded to inquire whether traces of the approach of such a new
• 5:50:17
  phase of life could be perceived at present, whether we could see any tenements
• 5:50:22
  preparing which might in a remote futurity be adapted for it, whether in fact
• 5:50:26
  the primordial cell of such a kind of life could be now detected upon earth.
• 5:50:32
  In the course of his work. He answered this question in the affirmative
• 5:50:34
  and pointed to the higher machines. There is no security to quote his onwards
• 5:50:40
  against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness in the fact of machines possessing little consciousness.
• 5:50:45
  Now a mollusk has not much consciousness. Reflect upon the extraordinary advance which
• 5:50:51
  machines have made during the last few hundred years, and note how slowly the
• 5:50:55
  animal and vegetable kingdoms are advancing the more highly organized machines or creatures. Not
• 5:51:00
  so much of yesterday as of the last five minutes, so to speak,
• 5:51:03
  in comparison with past time. Assume for the sake of argument, that conscious
• 5:51:08
  beings have existed for some twenty million years. See what strides machines have made
• 5:51:14
  in the last thousand. May not the world last twenty million years longer?
• 5:51:18
  If so, what will they not, in the end become? Is it
• 5:51:22
  not safer to nip the mischief in the bud and to forbid them further progress?
• 5:51:26
  But who can say that the vapor engine has not a kind of consciousness?
• 5:51:30
  Where does consciousness begin? And where end? Who can draw the line?
• 5:51:33
  Who can draw any line? Is not everything interwoven with everything is not
• 5:51:40
  machinery linked with animal life in an infinite variety of ways. The shell of
• 5:51:44
  a hen's egg is made of a delicate white ware, and is a machine
• 5:51:48
  as much as an egg cup is. The shell is a device for holding
• 5:51:51
  the egg as much as the egg cup for holding the shell. Both are
• 5:51:53
  phases of the same function. The hen makes the shell in her inside,
• 5:51:59
  but it is pure potter. She makes her nest outside of herself for convenience
• 5:52:02
  sake. But the nest is not more of a machine than the egg shell
• 5:52:06
  is a machine, is only a device. Then, returning to consciousness and
• 5:52:12
  endeavoring to detect its earliest manifestations, the writer continued, there is a kind
• 5:52:18
  of plant that eats organic food with its flowers. When a fly settles upon
• 5:52:22
  the blossom, the petals close upon it and hold it fast till the plant
• 5:52:26
  has absorbed the insect into its system. But they will close on nothing but
• 5:52:30
  what is good to eat of a drop of rain or a piece of stick.
• 5:52:33
  They will take no notice, curious that so unconscious a thing should have
• 5:52:37
  such a keen eye to its own interest. If this is unconsciousness, where's
• 5:52:41
  the use of consciousness. Shall we say that the plant does not know what
• 5:52:45
  it is doing merely because it has no eyes, or ears or brains.
• 5:52:48
  If we say that it acts mechanically and mechanically only, shall we not be
• 5:52:52
  forced to admit that sundry other and apparently very deliberate actions are also mechanical.
• 5:52:59
  If it seems to us that the plant kills and eats a fly mechanically,
• 5:53:02
  may it not seem to the plant that a man must kill and eat a
• 5:53:04
  sheep mechanically. But it may be said that the plant is void of reason
• 5:53:10
  Because the growth of a plant is an involuntary growth. Give an earth air
• 5:53:14
  and dew temperature, the plant must grow. It is like a clock,
• 5:53:18
  which, being once wound up, will go till it is stopped or run
• 5:53:22
  down. It is like the wind blowing on the sails of a ship.
• 5:53:25
  The ship must go when the wind blows it. But can a healthy boy
• 5:53:29
  help growing if he have good meat and drink and clothing? Can anything help
• 5:53:33
  going as long as it is wound up or go on after it is run
• 5:53:37
  down? Is there not a winding up process everywhere? Even a potato and
• 5:53:41
  a dark cellar has a certain low cunning about him which serves him in excellent
• 5:53:45
  stead. He knows perfectly well what he wants and how to get it.
• 5:53:49
  He sees the light coming from the cellar window and sends his hutes crawling straight
• 5:53:52
  there too. They will crawl along the floor, and up the wall,
• 5:53:56
  and out at the cellar window. If there be a little earth anywhere on
• 5:53:59
  the journey, find it and use it for his own ends. What deliberation
• 5:54:03
  he may exercise in the matter of his roots when he is planted in the
• 5:54:06
  earth is a thing unknown to us. But we can imagine him saying,
• 5:54:08
  I will have a tuber here and a tuber there, and I will suck
• 5:54:11
  whatsoever advantage I can from all my surroundings. This neighbor I will overshadow,
• 5:54:15
  and that I will undermine. And what I can do shall be the limit
• 5:54:18
  of what I will do. He that is stronger and better place than I
• 5:54:21
  shall overcome me, and him that is weaker I will overcome. The potato
• 5:54:25
  says these things by doing them, which is the best of languages. What
• 5:54:29
  is consciousness? If this is not consciousness, we find it difficult to sympathize
• 5:54:33
  with the emotions of a potato, so we do with those of an oyster.
• 5:54:37
  Neither of these things makes a noise upon being boiled or opened, and
• 5:54:41
  noise appeals to us more strongly than anything else, because we make so much
• 5:54:45
  about our own sufferings. Since then they do not annoy us by any expression
• 5:54:51
  of pain, we call them emotionless, and so qua mankind they are.
• 5:54:53
  But mankind is not everybody. If it be urged that the action of the
• 5:54:59
  potato is come and mechanical only, and that it is due to the chemical
• 5:55:03
  and mechanical effects of light and heat, the answer would seem to lie in
• 5:55:06
  an inquiry whether every sensation is not chemical and mechanical in its operation, Whether
• 5:55:11
  those things which we deem most purely spiritual are anything but disturbances of equilibrium in
• 5:55:17
  an infinite series of levers, beginning with those that are too small for microscopic
• 5:55:21
  detection, and going up to the human arm and the appliances which it makes
• 5:55:25
  use of. Whether there be not a molecular action of thought, whence a
• 5:55:29
  dynamical theory of the passions shall be deducible. Whether strictly speaking, we should
• 5:55:33
  not ask what kind of levers a man is made of, rather than what
• 5:55:36
  is his temperament? How are they balanced, how much of such and such
• 5:55:40
  will it take to weigh them down so as to make him do so?
• 5:55:42
  And so the writer went on to say that he anticipated a time when it
• 5:55:47
  would be possible, by examining a single hair with a powerful microscope, to
• 5:55:51
  know whether its owner could be insulted with impunity. He then became more and
• 5:55:55
  more obscure, so that I was obliged to give up all attempt at translation.
• 5:55:59
  Neither did I follow the drift of his argument. On coming to the
• 5:56:03
  next part which I could construe, I found that he had changed his ground.
• 5:56:07
  Either he proceeds a great deal of action that has been called purely mechanical
• 5:56:11
  and unconscious must be admitted to contain more elements of consciousness than has been allowed
• 5:56:15
  hitherto, And in this case germs of consciousness will be found in many actions
• 5:56:19
  of the higher machines. Or, assuming the theory of evolution, but at
• 5:56:22
  the same time denying the consciousness of vegetable and crystalline action, the race of
• 5:56:26
  man has descended from things which had no consciousness at all. In this case,
• 5:56:33
  there is no a priori improbability in the descent of conscious and more than
• 5:56:37
  conscious machines from those which now exist, except that which is suggested by the
• 5:56:41
  apparent absence of anything like a reproductive system in the mechanical kingdom. This absence,
• 5:56:47
  however, is only apparent, as I shall presently show. Do not
• 5:56:51
  let me be misunderstood as living in fear of any actually existing machine. There
• 5:56:56
  is probably no known machine which is more than a prototype of future mechanical life.
• 5:57:02
  The present machines are to the future as the early sarians to man.
• 5:57:06
  The largest of them will probably greatly diminish in size. Some of the lowest
• 5:57:10
  vertebrate attained a much greater bulk than has descended to their more highly organized living
• 5:57:15
  representatives, And in a like manner, a diminution in the size of machines
• 5:57:18
  has often attended their development and progress. Take the watch, for example.
• 5:57:22
  Examine its beautiful structure, Observe the intelligent play of the minute members which compose
• 5:57:29
  it. Yet this little creatures but a development of the cumbrous clocks that preceded
• 5:57:33
  it. It is no deterioration from them. A day may come when clocks,
• 5:57:37
  which certainly at the present time are not diminishing in bulk, will be
• 5:57:41
  superseded. Owing to the universal use of watches, in which case they will
• 5:57:45
  become as extinct as ichthyosauri, while the watch, whose tendency has for some
• 5:57:48
  years been to decrease in size rather than the contrary, will remain the only
• 5:57:53
  existing type of an extinct race. But returning to the argument, I would
• 5:57:59
  repeat that I fear none of the existing machines. What I fear is the
• 5:58:03
  extraordinary rapidity with which they are becoming something very different to what they are at
• 5:58:07
  present. No class of beings have, in any time passed made so rapid
• 5:58:12
  a movement forward. Should not that movement be jealously watched and checked while we
• 5:58:18
  can still check it? And is it not necessary for this end to destroy
• 5:58:22
  the most advanced of the machines which are in use at present, though it
• 5:58:26
  is admitted that they are in themselves harmless. As yet, the machines receive
• 5:58:30
  their impressions through the agency of man's senses. One traveling machine calls to another
• 5:58:36
  in a shrill accent of alarm, and the other instantly retires. But it
• 5:58:40
  is through the ears of the driver that the voice of the one has acted
• 5:58:42
  upon the other. Had there been no driver, the collie would have been
• 5:58:45
  deaf to the collar. There was a time when it must have seemed highly
• 5:58:49
  improbable that machines should learn to make their wants known by sound, even through
• 5:58:53
  the ears of man. May we not conceive then, that a day will
• 5:58:57
  come when those ears will be no longer needed, and that hearing will be
• 5:59:02
  done by the delicacy of the machine's own construction, when its language shall have
• 5:59:07
  been developed from the cry of animals to a speech as intricate as our own.
• 5:59:11
  It is possible that by that time children will learn the differential calculus,
• 5:59:15
  as they now learn to speak from their mothers and nurses, or that they
• 5:59:19
  may talk in the hypothetical language and work rule of three sums as soon as
• 5:59:23
  they are born. But this is not probable. We cannot calculate on any
• 5:59:27
  corresponding advance in man's intellectual or physical powers, which shall be a set off
• 5:59:33
  against the far greater development which seems in store for the machines. Some people
• 5:59:37
  may say that man's moral influence will suffice to rule them, but I cannot
• 5:59:41
  think it will ever be safe to repose much trust in the moral sense of
• 5:59:45
  any machine. Again, might not the glory of the machines consist in there
• 5:59:49
  being without this same boasted gift of language. Silence, it has been said
• 5:59:55
  by one writer, is a virtue which renders us agreeable to our fellow creatures.
• 6:00:02
  End of Chapter twenty three, Chapter twenty four, The machines continued,
• 6:00:08
  But other questions come upon us. What is a man's eye but a machine
• 6:00:12
  for the little creature that sits behind in his brain? To look through a
• 6:00:18
  dead eye is nearly as good as a living one for some time after the
• 6:00:21
  man is dead. It is not the eye that cannot see, but the
• 6:00:25
  restless one that cannot see through it. Is it man's eyes? Or is
• 6:00:29
  it the big seeing engine which has revealed to us the existence of worlds beyond
• 6:00:33
  worlds into infinity? What has made man familiar with the scenery of the moon,
• 6:00:37
  the spots on the sun, or the geography of the planets? He
• 6:00:42
  is at the mercy of the seeing engine for these things, and is powerless
• 6:00:45
  unless he tack it on to his own identity and make it part and parcel
• 6:00:49
  of himself. Or again, is it the eye or the little sea engine
• 6:00:53
  which has shown us the existence of infinitely minute organisms which swarm unsuspected around and
• 6:01:00
  take man's vaunted power of calculation? Have we not engines, which can do
• 6:01:06
  all manner of sums more quickly and correctly than we can. What prizemen and
• 6:01:10
  hypothetics at any of our colleges, on reason, can compare with some of
• 6:01:15
  these machines in their own line. In fact, wherever precision is required,
• 6:01:18
  man flies to the machine at once, as far preferable to himself. Our
• 6:01:22
  sum engines never drop a figure, nor our looms a stitch. The machine
• 6:01:26
  is brisk and active when the man is weary. It is clear headed and
• 6:01:30
  collected when the man is stupid and dull. It needs no slumber when a
• 6:01:34
  man must sleep or drop ever at its post, ever ready for work.
• 6:01:40
  Its alacrity never flags, Its patience never gives in. Its might is stronger
• 6:01:45
  than combined hundreds, and swifter than the flight of birds. It can burrow
• 6:01:48
  beneath the earth, and walk upon the largest rivers and sink not this is
• 6:01:52
  the green tree, What then shall be done in the dry? Who shall
• 6:01:57
  say that a man does not see or hear he is such a hive and
• 6:02:00
  swarm of parasites, that it is doubtful whether his body is not more theirs
• 6:02:06
  than his, and whether he is anything but another kind of ant, heap.
• 6:02:08
  After all, may not man himself become a sort of parasite upon the
• 6:02:12
  machines an affectionate machine tickling aphid. It is said by some that our blood
• 6:02:18
  is composed of infinite living agents, which go up and down the highways and
• 6:02:22
  byways of our bodies, as people in the streets of a city. When
• 6:02:26
  we look down from a high place upon crowded thoroughfares, is it possible not
• 6:02:30
  to think of corpuscles of blood traveling through veins and nourishing the heart of the
• 6:02:34
  town. No mention shall be made of sewers, nor the hidden nerves which
• 6:02:38
  serve to communicate sensations from one part of the town's body to another, nor
• 6:02:44
  of the yawning jaws of the railway stations, whereby the circulation is carried directly
• 6:02:48
  into the heart, which receive the venus lines and disgorge the arterial with an
• 6:02:52
  eternal pulse of people, and the sleep of the town, how lifelike with
• 6:02:57
  its change in the circulation. Here the writer became again so hopelessly obscure that
• 6:03:03
  I was obliged to miss several pages. He resumed. It can be answered
• 6:03:08
  that even though machines should hear never so well, and speak never so wisely,
• 6:03:12
  they will still always do the one or the other for our advantage,
• 6:03:17
  not their own. That man will be the ruling spirit, and the machine
• 6:03:19
  the servant. That as soon as a machine fails to discharge the service which
• 6:03:23
  man expects from it, it is doomed to extinction. That the machines stand
• 6:03:27
  to man simply in the relation of lower animals, the vapor engine itself being
• 6:03:33
  only a more economical kind of horse, so that instead of being likely to
• 6:03:37
  be developed into a higher kind of life than man's, they owe their very
• 6:03:40
  existence and progress to their power of ministering to human wants, and must therefore
• 6:03:45
  both now and ever be man's inferiors. This is all very well, but
• 6:03:51
  the servant glides by imperceptible approaches into the master. And we have come to
• 6:03:56
  such a pass that even now man must suffer terribly on ceasing to bear benefit
• 6:04:00
  the machines. If all machines were to be annihilated at one moment, so
• 6:04:03
  that not a knife, nor lever, nor a rag of clothing, nor
• 6:04:07
  anything whatsoever were left a man but his bare body alone, that he was
• 6:04:10
  born with, And if all knowledge of mechanical laws were taken from him so
• 6:04:14
  that he could make no more machines, and all machine made food destroyed,
• 6:04:18
  so that the race of man should be left as it were, naked upon
• 6:04:21
  a desert island. We should become extinct in six weeks. A few miserable
• 6:04:25
  individuals might linger, but even these in a year or two would become worse
• 6:04:29
  than monkeys. Man's very soul is due to the machines. It is a
• 6:04:33
  machine made thing. He thinks as he thinks, and feels as he feels
• 6:04:37
  through the work that machines have wrought upon him, and their existence is quite
• 6:04:41
  as much a sinequa non for his as his for theirs. This fact precludes
• 6:04:45
  us from proposing the complete annihilation of machinery, but surely it indicates that we
• 6:04:51
  should destroy as many of them as we can possibly dispense with, lest they
• 6:04:53
  should tyrannize over us. Even more completely true, from a low materialistic point
• 6:05:00
  of view, it would seem that those thrive best who use machinery wherever its
• 6:05:03
  use is possible of profit. But this is the art of the machines.
• 6:05:07
  They serve that they may rule. They bear no malice towards man for destroying
• 6:05:12
  a whole race of them, provided he creates a better instead. On the
• 6:05:15
  contrary, they reward him liberally for having hastened their development. It is for
• 6:05:21
  neglecting them that he incurs their wrath, or for using inferior machines, or
• 6:05:25
  for not making sufficient exertions to invent new ones, or for destroying them without
• 6:05:30
  replacing them. Yet these are the very things we ought to do, and
• 6:05:33
  do quickly, For though our rebellion against their infant power will cause infinite suffering,
• 6:05:38
  what will not things come to if that rebellion is delayed. They have
• 6:05:44
  preyed upon man's groveling preference for his material over his spiritual interests, and have
• 6:05:48
  betrayed him into supplying that element of struggle and warfare, without which no race
• 6:05:52
  can advance. The lower animals progress because they struggle with one another. The
• 6:05:57
  weaker die, the stronger breed and transmit their strength. The machines, being
• 6:06:02
  of themselves unable to struggle, have got man to do their struggling for them.
• 6:06:06
  As long as he fulfills this function, duly, all goes well with
• 6:06:10
  him. At least he thinks so. But the moment he fails to do
• 6:06:12
  his best for the advancement of machinery by encouraging the good and destroying the bad.
• 6:06:17
  He is left behind in the race of competition, and this means that
• 6:06:19
  he will be made uncomfortable in a variety of ways, and perhaps die.
• 6:06:26
  So that even now the machines will only serve on condition of being served,
• 6:06:30
  and that too upon their own terms. The moment their terms are not complied
• 6:06:33
  with, they jib and either smash both themselves and all whom they can reach,
• 6:06:37
  or turn churlish and refuse to work at all. How many men this
• 6:06:41
  hour are living in a state of bondage to the machines. How many spend
• 6:06:45
  their whole lives from the cradle to the grave and tending them by night and
• 6:06:48
  day. Is it not plain that the machines are getting ground upon us when
• 6:06:52
  we reflect on the increasing number of those who are bound down to them as
• 6:06:56
  slaves, and of those who devote their whole souls to the advancement of the
• 6:07:00
  mechanical kingdom. The vapor engine must be fed with food and consume it by
• 6:07:04
  fire, even as man consumes it. It supports its combustion by air as
• 6:07:08
  man supports it. It has a pulse and a circulation as man has.
• 6:07:12
  It may be granted that man's body is as yet the more versatile of the
• 6:07:15
  two, But then man's body is an older thing. Give the vapor engine
• 6:07:19
  but half the time that man has had, Give it also a continuance of
• 6:07:23
  our present infatuation, and what may it not air long attain to. There
• 6:07:29
  are certain functions, indeed, of the vapor engine which will probably remain unchanged
• 6:07:33
  for myriads of years, which in fact will perhaps survive when the use of
• 6:07:37
  vapor has been superseded. The piston and cylinder, the beam, the flywheel,
• 6:07:41
  and other parts of the machine will probably be permanent, just as we
• 6:07:45
  see that man and many of the lower animals share like modes of eating,
• 6:07:48
  drinking, and sleeping. Thus they have hearts which beat as ours, veins
• 6:07:52
  and arteries, eyes, ears, and noses. They sigh even in their
• 6:07:56
  sleep, and weep and yawn, and they are affected by them their children.
• 6:08:00
  They feel pleasure and pain, hope, fear, anger, shame.
• 6:08:03
  They have memory and prescience. They know that if certain things happen to them,
• 6:08:07
  they will die, and they fear death as much as we do.
• 6:08:08
  They communicate their thoughts to one another, and some of them deliberately act in
• 6:08:12
  concert. The comparison of similarities is endless. I only make it because some
• 6:08:17
  may say that, since the vapor engine is not likely to be improved in
• 6:08:21
  the main particulars, it is unlikely to be henceforward extensively modified at all.
• 6:08:26
  This is too good to be true. It will be modified and suited for
• 6:08:29
  an infinite variety of purposes, as much as man has been modified so as
• 6:08:33
  to exceed the brutes and skill. In the meantime, the stoker is almost
• 6:08:37
  as much a cook for his engine as our own cooks for ourselves. Consider
• 6:08:41
  also the colliers and pitmen, and coal merchants, and coal trains, and
• 6:08:45
  the men who drive them, and the ships that carry coals. What an
• 6:08:48
  army of servants do the machines thus employ? Are there not probably more men
• 6:08:53
  engaged in tending machinery than intending men? Do not machines eat, as it
• 6:08:59
  were, by mannery? Are we not ourselves creating our successors and the supremacy
• 6:09:03
  of the earth daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their organization, daily
• 6:09:07
  giving him greater skill, and supplying more and more of that self regulating,
• 6:09:11
  self acting power, which will be better than any intellect, what a new
• 6:09:15
  thing it is for a machine to feed at all. The plow, the
• 6:09:19
  spade, and the cart must eat through man's stomach. The fuel that sets
• 6:09:23
  them going must burn in the furnace of a man or of horses. Man
• 6:09:26
  must consume bread and meat, or he cannot dig. The bread and meat
• 6:09:30
  are the fuel which drive the spade. If a plow be drawn by horses,
• 6:09:34
  The powers supplied by grass, or beans or oats, which being burnt
• 6:09:38
  in the belly of the cattle, give the power of working. Without this
• 6:09:41
  fuel, the work would cease, as an engine would stop if its furnaces
• 6:09:45
  were to go out. A man of science is demonstrated that no animal has
• 6:09:51
  the power of originating mechanical energy, but that all the work done in its
• 6:09:55
  life by any animal, and all the heat that has been emitted from it,
• 6:09:57
  and the heat which would be obtained by burning the combustible matter which has
• 6:10:02
  been lost from its body during life, and by burning its body after death,
• 6:10:06
  make up altogether an exact equivalent to the heat which would be obtained by
• 6:10:10
  burning as much food as it is used during its life, and an amount
• 6:10:14
  of fuel which would generate as much heat as its body if burnt immediately after
• 6:10:18
  death. I do not know how he has found this out, but he
• 6:10:22
  is a man of science. How then, can it be objected against the
• 6:10:25
  future vitality of the machines that they are, in their present infancy at the
• 6:10:30
  becon call of beings who are themselves incapable of originating mechanical energy. The main
• 6:10:34
  point, however, to be observed as affording cause for alarm, is that,
• 6:10:41
  whereas animals were formerly the only stomachs of the machines, there are now
• 6:10:45
  many which have stomachs of their own and consume their food themselves. This is
• 6:10:49
  a great step towards their becoming, if not animate, yet something so near
• 6:10:53
  akin to it, as not to differ more widely from our own life than
• 6:10:57
  animals do from vegetables. And though man should remain in some respects the higher
• 6:11:03
  creature, is this not in accordance with the practice of nature, which allows
• 6:11:07
  superiority in some things to animals, which have on the whole been long surpassed.
• 6:11:12
  Has she not allowed the ant and the bee to retain superiority over man
• 6:11:17
  in the organization of their communities and social arrangements. The bird in traversing the
• 6:11:21
  air, the fish in swimming, the horse and strength and fleetness, and
• 6:11:23
  the dog in self sacrifice. It is said by some with whom I have
• 6:11:29
  conversed upon this subject, that the machines can never be developed into animate or
• 6:11:33
  quasi animate existences, inasmuch as they have no reproductive system, nor seem ever
• 6:11:37
  likely to possess one. If this be taken to mean that they cannot marry,
• 6:11:41
  and that we are never likely to see a fertile union between two vapor
• 6:11:45
  engines, with the young ones playing about the door of the shed, however
• 6:11:48
  greatly we might desire to do so, I will readily grant it. But
• 6:11:53
  the objection is not a very profound one. No one expects that all the
• 6:11:57
  features of the now exists organizations will be absolutely repeated in an entirely new class
• 6:12:03
  of life. The reproductive system of the animals differs widely from that of plants,
• 6:12:07
  but both are reproductive systems. Has Nature exhausted her phases of this power?
• 6:12:14
  Surely, if a machine is able to reproduce another machine systematically, we
• 6:12:18
  may say that it has a reproductive system. What is a reproductive system if
• 6:12:21
  it be not a system for reproduction? And how few of the machines are
• 6:12:25
  there which have not been produced systematically by other machines. But it is man
• 6:12:30
  that makes them do so. Yes, But is it not insects that make
• 6:12:33
  many of the plants reproductive, and would not hold families of plants die out
• 6:12:37
  if their fertilization was not affected by a class of agents utterly foreign to themselves.
• 6:12:41
  Does anyone say that the red clover has no reproductive system because the humble
• 6:12:45
  bee, and the humble bee only must aid in a bedit before it can
• 6:12:48
  reproduce No one. The humble bee is a part of the reproductive system of
• 6:12:52
  the clover. Each one of ourselves has sprung from minute animal cules whose entity
• 6:12:57
  was entirely distinct from our own, and which acted after their kind with no
• 6:13:02
  thought or heed of what we might think about it. These little creatures are
• 6:13:06
  part of our own reproductive system, then why not we part of that of
• 6:13:10
  the machines. But the machines which reproduce machinery do not reproduce machines after their
• 6:13:15
  own kind. A thimble may be made by machinery, but it was not
• 6:13:19
  made by neither will it ever make a thimble here again? If we turn
• 6:13:25
  to nature, we shall find abundance of analogies which will teach us that a
• 6:13:29
  reproductive system may be in full force without the thing produced being of the same
• 6:13:33
  kind as that which produced it. Very few creatures reproduce after their own kind.
• 6:13:37
  They reproduce something which has the potentiality of becoming that which their parents were.
• 6:13:41
  Thus, the butterfly lays an egg, which egg can become a caterpillar,
• 6:13:45
  which caterpillar can become a chrysalis, which chrysalis can become a butterfly.
• 6:13:48
  And though I freely grant that the machines cannot be said to have more than
• 6:13:52
  the germ of a true reproductive system at present, have we not just seen
• 6:13:56
  that they have only recently obtained the germs of a mouth and stomach. And
• 6:14:00
  may not some stride be made in the direction of true reproduction which shall be
• 6:14:03
  as great as that which has been recently taken in the direction of true feeding.
• 6:14:07
  It is possible that the system, when developed, may be in many
• 6:14:11
  cases a vicarious thing. Certain classes of machines may be alone fertile, while
• 6:14:15
  the rest discharge other functions in the mechanical system. Just as the great majority
• 6:14:19
  of ants and bees have nothing to do with the continuation of their species,
• 6:14:22
  but get food and store it without thought of breeding. One cannot expect the
• 6:14:26
  parallel to be complete or nearly so, certainly not now and probably never.
• 6:14:32
  But is there not enough analogy existing at the present moment to make us feel
• 6:14:36
  seriously uneasy about the future, and to render it our duty to check the
• 6:14:40
  evil while we can still do so. Machines can, within certain limits,
• 6:14:44
  beget machines of any class, no matter how different to themselves. Every class
• 6:14:48
  of machines will probably have its special mechanical breeders, and all the higher ones
• 6:14:52
  will owe their existence to a large number of parents, and not two only.
• 6:14:56
  We are misled by considering any complic caated machine is a single thing.
• 6:15:00
  In truth, it is a city or society, each member of which was
• 6:15:03
  bred truly after its kind. We see a machine as a whole, we
• 6:15:08
  call it by a name and individualize it. We look at our own limbs
• 6:15:12
  and know that the combination forms an individual, which springs from a single center
• 6:15:17
  of reproductive action. We therefore assume that there can be no reproductive action which
• 6:15:21
  does not arise from a single center. But this assumption is unscientific, and
• 6:15:25
  the bare fact that no vapor engine was ever made entirely by another or two
• 6:15:29
  others of its own kind is not sufficient to warrant us in saying that vapor
• 6:15:33
  engines have no reproductive system. The truth is that each part of every vapor
• 6:15:37
  engine is bred by its own special breeders, whose function it is to breed
• 6:15:41
  that part, and that only while the combination of the parts into a whole
• 6:15:44
  forms another department of the mechanical reproductive system, which is at present exceedingly complex
• 6:15:49
  and difficult to see in its entirety complex now, But how much simpler and
• 6:15:53
  more intelligibly organized may it not become in another hundred thousand years or twenty thousand.
• 6:16:00
  For man at present believes that his interest lies in that direction, he
• 6:16:03
  spends an incalculable amount of labor and time and thought in making machines breed always
• 6:16:10
  better and better. He has already succeeded in effecting much that at one time
• 6:16:14
  appeared impossible, and there seemed no limits to the result of accumulated improvements,
• 6:16:18
  if they are allowed to descend with modification from generation to generation. It must
• 6:16:22
  always be remembered that man's body is what it is through having been molded into
• 6:16:27
  its present shape by the chances and changes of many millions of years, but
• 6:16:33
  that his organization never advanced with anything like the rapidity with which that of the
• 6:16:37
  machines is advancing. This is the most alarming feature in the case, and
• 6:16:41
  I must be pardoned for insisting on it so frequently. End of Chapter twenty
• 6:16:48
  four. Chapter twenty five, The Machines concluded here followed a very long and
• 6:16:56
  untranslatable digression about the different races and families of the then existing machines. The
• 6:17:03
  writer attempted to support his theory by pointing out the similarities existing between many machines
• 6:17:07
  of a widely different character, which served to show descent from a common ancestor.
• 6:17:14
  He divided machines into their genera, subgenera, species, varieties, sub
• 6:17:18
  varieties, and so forth. He proved the existence of connecting links between machines
• 6:17:22
  that seemed to have very little in common, and showed that many more such
• 6:17:26
  links had existed but had now perished. He pointed out tendencies to reversion at
• 6:17:30
  the presence of rudimentary organs, which existed in many machines, feebly developed and
• 6:17:34
  perfectly useless, yet serving to mark descent from an ancestor to whom the function
• 6:17:38
  was actually useful. I left the translation of this part of the treatise,
• 6:17:42
  which by the way, was far longer than all I have given here,
• 6:17:45
  for a later opportunity. Unfortunately, I left erewhon before I could return to
• 6:17:49
  the subject. And though I saved my translation and other papers, at the
• 6:17:53
  hazard of my life, I was obliged to sacrifice the original work. It
• 6:17:57
  went to my heart to do so. I thus gained ten minutes of invaluable
• 6:18:00
  time, without which both Arowhena and myself must have certainly perished. I remember
• 6:18:07
  one incident which bears upon this part of the treatise. The gentleman who gave
• 6:18:11
  it to me had asked to see my tobacco pipe. He examined it carefully,
• 6:18:15
  and when he came to the little protuberance at the bottom of the bowl,
• 6:18:18
  he seemed much delighted, and exclaimed that it must be rudimentary. I
• 6:18:22
  asked him what he meant, Sir, he answered, this organ is identical
• 6:18:26
  with the rim at the bottom of a cup. It is but another form
• 6:18:30
  of the same function. Its purpose must have been to keep the heat of
• 6:18:33
  the pipe from marking the table upon which it rested. You would find,
• 6:18:37
  if you were to look up the history of tobacco pipes, that in early
• 6:18:41
  specimens this protuberance was of a different shape to what it is now. It
• 6:18:45
  will have been broad at the bottom and flat, so that while the pipe
• 6:18:48
  was being smoked, the bowl might rest upon the table without marking it.
• 6:18:52
  Use and disuse must have come into play and reduced the function to its present
• 6:18:56
  rudimentary condition. I should not be surprised, sir, he can continued,
• 6:19:00
  if in the course of time it were to become modified still farther, and
• 6:19:03
  to assume the form of an ornamental leaf or scroll, or even a butterfly,
• 6:19:07
  while in some cases it will become extinct. On my return to England,
• 6:19:11
  I looked up the point and found that my friend was right. Returning,
• 6:19:15
  however, to the treatise, my translation recommences as follows. May we
• 6:19:19
  not fancy that, if in the remotest geological period, some early form of
• 6:19:23
  vegetable life had been endowed with the power of reflecting upon the dawning life of
• 6:19:29
  animals, which was coming into existence alongside of its own, it would have
• 6:19:33
  thought itself exceedingly acute if it had surmised that animals would one day become real
• 6:19:37
  vegetables. Yet would this be more mistaken than it would be on our part
• 6:19:41
  to imagine that because the life of machines is a very different one to our
• 6:19:45
  own, there is therefore no higher possible development of life than ours, Or
• 6:19:49
  that because mechanical life is a very different thing from ours, therefore that it
• 6:19:52
  is not life at all. But I have heard it said, granted that
• 6:19:56
  this is so, and that the vapor engine has a strength of its own.
• 6:20:00
  Surely no one will say that it has a will of its own.
• 6:20:03
  Alas, if we look more closely, we shall find that this does not
• 6:20:06
  make against the supposition that the vapor engine is one of the germs of a
• 6:20:08
  new phase of life. What is there in this world, or in the
• 6:20:12
  worlds beyond it, which has a will of its own? The unknown and
• 6:20:17
  unknowable. Only A man is the resultant and exponent of all the forces that
• 6:20:21
  have been brought to bear upon him, Whether before his birth or afterwards.
• 6:20:26
  His action at any moment depends solely upon his constitution and on the intensity and
• 6:20:30
  direction of the various agencies to which he is and has been subjected. Some
• 6:20:33
  of these will counteract each other. But as he is by nature, and
• 6:20:37
  as he has been acted on and is now acted on from without, So
• 6:20:41
  will he do as certainly and regularly as though he were a machine. We
• 6:20:45
  do not generally admit this, because we do not know the whole nature of
• 6:20:48
  any one, nor the whole of the forces that act upon him. We
• 6:20:53
  see but a part, and being thus unable to generalize human conduct except very
• 6:20:57
  roughly, we deny that it is subject to any fixed laws at all,
• 6:21:02
  and ascribe much both of a man's character and actions to chance or luck or
• 6:21:06
  fortune. But these are only words whereby we escape the admission of our own
• 6:21:10
  ignorance, and a little reflection will teach us that the most daring flight of
• 6:21:14
  the imagination, or the most subtle exercise of the reason, is as much
• 6:21:18
  the thing that must arise, and the only thing that can, by any
• 6:21:21
  possibility, arise at the moment of its arising, as the falling of a
• 6:21:25
  dead leaf when the wind shakes it from the tree. For the future depends
• 6:21:29
  upon the present, and the present, whose existence is only one of those
• 6:21:32
  minor compromises of which human life is full, for it lives only on sufferance
• 6:21:36
  of the past, and future depends upon the past, and the past is
• 6:21:40
  unalterable The only reason why we cannot see the future as plainly as the past
• 6:21:44
  is because we know too little of the actual past and actual present. These
• 6:21:48
  things are too great for us. Otherwise, the future, in its minutest
• 6:21:52
  details, would lie spread out before our eyes, and we should lose our
• 6:21:55
  sense of time present. By reason of the clearness with which we should see
• 6:21:57
  the past and future, perhaps we should not be even able to distinguish time
• 6:22:03
  at all, but that is foreign. What we do know is that the
• 6:22:07
  more the past and present are known, the more the future can be predicted,
• 6:22:10
  and that no one dreams of doubting the fixity of the future. In
• 6:22:12
  cases where he is fully cognizant of both past and present, and has had
• 6:22:17
  experience of the consequences that followed from such a past and such a present on
• 6:22:22
  previous occasions, he perfectly well knows what will happen, and will stake his
• 6:22:26
  whole fortune thereon. And this is a great blessing, for it is the
• 6:22:30
  foundation on which morality and science are built. The assurance that the future is
• 6:22:34
  no arbitrary and changeable thing, but that like futures will invariably follow like presence
• 6:22:41
  is the groundwork on which we lay all our plans, the faith on which
• 6:22:44
  we do every conscious action of our lives. If this were not so,
• 6:22:48
  we should be without a guide. We should have no confidence in acting,
• 6:22:51
  and hence we should never act, for there would be no knowing that the
• 6:22:55
  results which will follow now will be the same as those which followed before.
• 6:22:59
  Who would plow or so if he disbelieved in the fixity of the future.
• 6:23:03
  Who would throw water on a blazing house? If the action of water upon
• 6:23:06
  fire were uncertain. Men will only do their utmost when they feel certain that
• 6:23:11
  the future will discover itself against them if their utmost has not been done.
• 6:23:15
  The feeling of such a certainty is a constituent part of the sum of the
• 6:23:18
  forces at work upon them, and will act most powerfully on the best and
• 6:23:22
  most moral men. Those who are most firmly persuaded that the future is immutably
• 6:23:27
  bound up with the present in which their work is lying, will best husband
• 6:23:32
  their present and till it with the greatest care. The future must be a
• 6:23:34
  lottery to those who think that the same combinations can sometimes precede one set of
• 6:23:40
  results and sometimes another. If their belief is sincere, they will speculate instead
• 6:23:44
  of working these ought to be the immoral men. The others have the strongest
• 6:23:48
  spur to exertion and morality if their belief is a living one. The bearing
• 6:23:52
  of all this upon the machines is not immediately apparent, but will become so
• 6:23:56
  presently. In the meantime, I must deal with friends who tell me that
• 6:24:00
  though the future is fixed as regards inorganic matter, and in some respects with
• 6:24:04
  regard to man, yet that there are many ways in which it cannot be
• 6:24:07
  considered as fixed. Thus they say that fire applied to dry shavings and well
• 6:24:11
  fed with oxygen gas will always produce a blaze, but that a coward brought
• 6:24:17
  into contact with a terrifying object will not always result in a man running away.
• 6:24:21
  Nevertheless, if there be two cowards perfectly similar in every respect, and
• 6:24:25
  if they be subjected in a perfectly similar way to two terrifying agents, which
• 6:24:29
  are themselves perfectly similar, there are few who will not expect a perfect similarity
• 6:24:33
  in the running away, even though a thousand years intervened between the original combination
• 6:24:37
  and its being repeated. The apparently greater regularity in the results of chemical than
• 6:24:42
  of human combinations arises from our inability to perceive the subtle differences in human combinations,
• 6:24:48
  combinations which are never identically repeated. Fire we know, and shavings we
• 6:24:53
  know. But no two men ever were, or ever will be exactly alike,
• 6:24:56
  and the smallest difference may change the whole can nitions of the problem.
• 6:25:00
  Our registry of results must be infinite before we could arrive at a full forecast
• 6:25:04
  of future combinations. The wonder is that there is as much certainty concerning human
• 6:25:10
  action as there is, and assuredly the older we grow, the more certain
• 6:25:12
  we feel as to what such and such a kind of person will do in
• 6:25:15
  given circumstances. But this could never be the case unless human conduct were under
• 6:25:19
  the influence of laws, with the working of which we become more and more
• 6:25:23
  familiar through experience. If the above is sound, it follows that the regularity
• 6:25:29
  with which machinery acts is no proof of the absence of vitality, or at
• 6:25:32
  least of germs which may be developed into a new phase of life. At
• 6:25:36
  first sight, it would indeed appear that a vapor engine cannot help going when
• 6:25:41
  set upon the line of rails, with the steam up and the machinery in
• 6:25:44
  full play. Whereas the man whose business it is to drive, it can
• 6:25:48
  help doing so at any moment that he pleases, so that the first has
• 6:25:51
  no spontaneity and is not possessed of any sort of free will, while the
• 6:25:55
  second has and is. This is true up to a certain point. The
• 6:25:59
  driver cans the engine at any moment that he pleases, but he can only
• 6:26:02
  please to do so at certain points which have been fixed for him by others,
• 6:26:06
  or in the case of unexpected obstructions which force him to please to do
• 6:26:10
  so. His pleasure is not spontaneous. There is an unseen choir of influences
• 6:26:15
  around him which make it impossible for him to act in any other way than
• 6:26:18
  one. It is known beforehand how much strength must be given to these influences,
• 6:26:22
  just as it is known beforehand how much coal and water are necessary for
• 6:26:26
  the vapor engine itself. And curiously enough, it will be found that the
• 6:26:30
  influences brought to bear upon the driver are of the same kind as those brought
• 6:26:33
  to bear upon the engine. That is to say, food and warmth.
• 6:26:37
  The drivers obedient to his masters because he gets food and warmth from them,
• 6:26:41
  and if these are withhell or given in insufficient quantities, he will cease to
• 6:26:45
  drive. In like manner, the engine will cease to work if it is
• 6:26:48
  insufficiently fed. The only difference is that the man is conscious about his wants,
• 6:26:53
  and the engine, beyond refusing to work, does not seem to be
• 6:26:56
  so. But this is temporary and has been dealt with above accordingly, the
• 6:27:00
  requisite strength being given to the motives that are to drive the driver. There
• 6:27:04
  has never, or hardly ever been an instance of a man stopping his engine
• 6:27:08
  through wantonness. But such a case might occur, Yes, and it might
• 6:27:12
  occur that the engine should break down. But if the train is stopped from
• 6:27:17
  some trivial motive, it will be found either that the strength of the necessary
• 6:27:19
  influences has been miscalculated, or that the man has been miscalculated, in the
• 6:27:23
  same way as an engine may break down from an unsuspected flaw. But even
• 6:27:29
  in such a case there will have been no spontaneity. The action will have
• 6:27:32
  had its true parental causes. Spontaneity is only a term for man's ignorance of
• 6:27:36
  the gods. Is there then no spontaneity on the part of those who drive
• 6:27:40
  the driver? Here followed an obscure argument upon this subject, which I have
• 6:27:45
  thought it best to omit, the writer resumes. After all, then it
• 6:27:49
  comes to this that the difference between the life of a man and that of
• 6:27:52
  a machine is one rather of degree than of kind, though differences in kind
• 6:27:57
  are not wanting. An animal has more provision for emergency than a machine.
• 6:28:02
  The machine is less versatile, its range of action is narrow. Its strength
• 6:28:07
  and accuracy in its own sphere are superhuman, But it shows badly in a
• 6:28:10
  dilemma. Sometimes, when its normal action is disturbed, it will lose its
• 6:28:14
  head and go from bad to worse, like a lunatic in a raging frenzy.
• 6:28:18
  But here again we are met by the same consideration as before, namely
• 6:28:22
  that the machines are still in their infancy. They are mere skeletons without muscles
• 6:28:26
  and flesh. For how many emergencies is an oyster adapted for as many as
• 6:28:30
  are likely to happen to it, and no more so are the machines,
• 6:28:33
  And so is man himself. The list of casualties that daily occur to man
• 6:28:37
  through his want of adaptability is probably as great as that occurring to the machines,
• 6:28:42
  and every day gives them some greater provision for the unseen. Let any
• 6:28:47
  one examine the wonderful self regulating and self adjusting contrivances which are now incorporated with
• 6:28:51
  the vapor engine. Let him watch the way in which it supplies itself with
• 6:28:55
  oil, in which it indicates its wants to those who tend it, in
• 6:28:57
  which by the governor it regulates its application of its own strength. Let him
• 6:29:03
  look at that storehouse of inertia and momentum, the flywheel, or at the
• 6:29:07
  buffers on a railway carriage. Let him see how those improvements are being selected
• 6:29:11
  for perpetuity, which contain provision against the emergencies that may arise to harass the
• 6:29:15
  machines. And then let him think of a hundred thousand years and the accumulated
• 6:29:19
  progress which they will bring. Unless man can be awakened to a sense of
• 6:29:23
  his situation and of the doom which he is preparing for himself, the misery
• 6:29:29
  is that man has been blind so long already in his reliance upon the use
• 6:29:33
  of steam. He has been betrayed into increasing and multiplying to withdraw steam power
• 6:29:38
  suddenly will not have the effect of reducing us to the state in which we
• 6:29:41
  were before its introduction. There will be a general break up, and time
• 6:29:45
  of anarchy such as has never been known. It will be as though our
• 6:29:48
  population were suddenly doubled, with no additional means of feeding. The increased number
• 6:29:53
  the air we breathe is hardly more necessary for our animal life than the use
• 6:29:56
  of any machine on the strength of which we, having increased our numbers,
• 6:30:00
  is to our civilization. It is the machines which act upon man and make
• 6:30:04
  him man, as much as man who has acted upon and made the machines.
• 6:30:10
  But we must choose between the alternative of undergoing much present suffering, or
• 6:30:14
  seeing ourselves gradually superseded by our own creatures, till we rank no higher in
• 6:30:18
  comparison with them than the beasts of the field with ourselves. Herein lies our
• 6:30:23
  danger. For many seem inclined to acquiesce in so dishonorable a future. They
• 6:30:30
  say that although man should become to the machines what the horse and dog are
• 6:30:33
  to us, yet that he will continue to exist, and will probably be
• 6:30:37
  better off in a state of domestication, under the beneficent rule of the machines
• 6:30:41
  than in his present wild condition. We treat our domestic animals with much kindness.
• 6:30:47
  We give them whatever we believe to be the best for them, and
• 6:30:49
  there can be no doubt that our use of meat has increased their happiness,
• 6:30:53
  rather than detracted from it. In like manner, there is reason to hope
• 6:30:57
  that the machines will use us kindly, for their existence will be in a
• 6:31:02
  great measure dependent upon ours. They will rule us with a rod of iron,
• 6:31:07
  but they will not eat us. They will not only require our services
• 6:31:10
  in the reproduction and education of their young, but also in waiting upon them
• 6:31:14
  asservants, and gathering food for them, and feeding them, in restoring them
• 6:31:17
  to health when they are sick, and in either burying their debt or working
• 6:31:21
  up their deceased members into new forms of mechanical existence. The very nature of
• 6:31:25
  the motive power which works the advancement of the machines precludes the possibility of man's
• 6:31:30
  life being rendered miserable as well as enslaved slaves are tolerably happy if they have
• 6:31:34
  good masters. And the revolution will not occur in our time, nor hardly
• 6:31:38
  in ten thousand years or ten times. That is it wise to be uneasy
• 6:31:42
  about a contingency which is so remote. Man is not a sentimental animal where
• 6:31:48
  his material interests are concerned, And though here and there some ardent soul may
• 6:31:52
  look upon himself and curse his fate that he was not born a vapor engine.
• 6:31:56
  Yet the mass of mankind will acquiesce in any arrangement which gives them better
• 6:32:00
  food and clothing at a cheaper rate, and will refrain from yielding to unreasonable
• 6:32:03
  jealousy, merely because there are other destinies more glorious than their own. The
• 6:32:07
  power of custom is enormous, and so gradual will be the change that man's
• 6:32:12
  sense of what is due to himself will be at no time rudely shocked.
• 6:32:17
  Our bondage will steal upon us noiselessly and by imperceptible approaches. Nor will there
• 6:32:22
  ever be such a clashing of desires between man and the machines as will lead
• 6:32:26
  to an encounter between them among themselves. The machines will war eternally, but
• 6:32:30
  they will still require man as the being through whose agency the struggle will be
• 6:32:33
  principally conducted. In point of fact, there is no occasion for anxiety about
• 6:32:40
  the future happiness of man. So long as he continues to be in any
• 6:32:42
  way profitable to the machines. He may become the inferior race, but he
• 6:32:47
  will be infinitely better off than he is now. Is it not then both
• 6:32:51
  absurd and unreasonable to be envious of our benefactors? And should we not be
• 6:32:55
  guilty of consummate folly if we were to reject advantages which we cannot obtain otherwise,
• 6:33:00
  merely because they involve a greater gain to others than to ourselves. With
• 6:33:03
  those who can argue in this way, I have nothing in common. I
• 6:33:07
  shrink with as much horror from believing that my race can ever be superseded or
• 6:33:11
  surpassed as I should do from believing that, even at the remotest period,
• 6:33:14
  my ancestors were other than human beings. Could I believe that ten hundred thousand
• 6:33:18
  years ago a single one of my ancestors was another kind of being? To
• 6:33:22
  myself, I should lose all self respect and take no further pleasure or interest
• 6:33:26
  in life. I have the same feeling with regard to my descendants, and
• 6:33:30
  believe it to be one that will be felt so generally that the country will
• 6:33:33
  resolve upon putting an immediate stop to all further mechanical progress, and upon destroying
• 6:33:37
  all improvements that have been made for the last three hundred years. I would
• 6:33:41
  not urge more than this, we may trust ourselves to deal with those that
• 6:33:45
  remain. And though I should prefer to have seen the destruction include another two
• 6:33:49
  hundred years, I am aware of the necessity for compromising, and would so
• 6:33:52
  far sacrifice my own individual convictions as to be content with three hundred less than
• 6:33:59
  this will be in sufficient. This was the conclusion of the attack which led
• 6:34:03
  to the destruction of machinery throughout arowon. There was only one serious attempt to
• 6:34:10
  answer it. Its author said that machines were to be regarded as part of
• 6:34:14
  a man's own physical nature, being really nothing but extra corporeal limbs. Man,
• 6:34:18
  he said, was a machinate mammal. The lower animals keep all their
• 6:34:22
  limbs at home in their own bodies, but many of mans are loose and
• 6:34:25
  lie about, detached, now here and now there, in various parts of
• 6:34:29
  the world, some being kept always handy for contingent use, and others being
• 6:34:33
  occasionally hundreds of miles away. A machine is merely a supplementary limb. This
• 6:34:37
  is the be all and and all of machinery. We do not use our
• 6:34:41
  own limbs other than as machines, and a leg is only a much better
• 6:34:45
  wooden leg than any one can manufacture. Observe a man digging with a spade.
• 6:34:49
  His right forearm has become artificially lengthened, and his hand has become a
• 6:34:52
  joint. The handle of the spade is like the knob at the end of
• 6:34:56
  the humorus. The shaft is the additional bone, and the oblong iron plate
• 6:35:00
  is the new form of the hand, which enables its possessor to disturb the
• 6:35:03
  earth in a way to which his original hand was unequal. Having thus modified
• 6:35:07
  himself, not as other animals are modified by circumstances over which they have had
• 6:35:11
  not even the appearance of control, but having, as it were, taken
• 6:35:15
  forethought and added a cubit to his stature, civilization began to dawn upon the
• 6:35:19
  race, the social good offices, the genial companionship of friends, the art
• 6:35:23
  of unreason, and all those habits of mind which most elevate man above the
• 6:35:27
  lower animals, in the course of time ensuit. Thus civilization and mechanical progress
• 6:35:33
  advanced hand in hand, each developing and being developed by the other. The
• 6:35:37
  earliest accidental use of the stick having set the ball rolling, and the prospect
• 6:35:41
  of advantage keeping it in motion. In fact machines are to be regarded as
• 6:35:45
  the mode of development by which human organism is now especially advancing, every past
• 6:35:49
  invention being an addition to the resources of the human body. Every community of
• 6:35:55
  limbs is thus rendered possible to those who have so much community of soul as
• 6:35:59
  to own my mind enough to pay a railway fare for a train is only
• 6:36:03
  a seven leagued foot that five hundred may own at once. The one serious
• 6:36:08
  danger which this writer apprehended was that the machines would so equalize men's powers,
• 6:36:12
  and so lessen the severity of competition, that many persons of inferior physique would
• 6:36:18
  escape detection and transmit their inferiority to their descendants. He feared that the removal
• 6:36:22
  of the present pressure might cause a degeneracy of the human race, and indeed
• 6:36:26
  that the whole body might become purely rudimentary, the man himself being nothing but
• 6:36:30
  soul and mechanism, and intelligent but passionless principle of mechanical action. How greatly
• 6:36:36
  he wrote, do we not now live with our external limbs? We vary
• 6:36:40
  our physique with the seasons, with age, with advancing or decreasing wealth.
• 6:36:44
  If it is wet, we are furnished with an organ commonly called an umbrella,
• 6:36:47
  and which is designed for the purpose of protecting our clothes or our skins
• 6:36:51
  from the injurious effects of rain. Man has now many extra corporeal members,
• 6:36:56
  which are of more importance to him than a good deal of his hair,
• 6:36:59
  or at any rate, than his whiskers. His memory goes in his pocket
• 6:37:02
  book. He becomes more and more complex as he grows older. He will
• 6:37:06
  then be seen with sea engines, or perhaps with artificial teeth and hair.
• 6:37:10
  If he be a really well developed specimen of his race, he will be
• 6:37:14
  furnished with a large box upon wheels, two horses, and a coachman.
• 6:37:17
  It was this writer who originated the custom of classifying men by their horse power,
• 6:37:21
  and who divided them into generous species, varieties, and sub varieties,
• 6:37:26
  giving them names from the hypothetical language which expressed the number of limbs which they
• 6:37:30
  could command at any moment. He showed that men became more highly indelicately organized
• 6:37:34
  the more nearly they approached the summit of opulence, and that none but millionaires
• 6:37:40
  possessed the full complement of limbs with which mankind could become incorporate those mighty organisms,
• 6:37:45
  he continued, Our leading bankers and merchants speak to their congeners through the
• 6:37:49
  length and breadth of the land. In a second of time. Their rich
• 6:37:53
  and subtle souls can defy all material impediment, whereas the souls of the poor
• 6:37:57
  are clogged and hampered by maps, which sticks fast about them, as treckled
• 6:38:00
  to the wings of a fly, or is one struggling in a quicksand their
• 6:38:04
  dull ears must take days or weeks to hear what another would tell them from
• 6:38:07
  a distance, instead of hearing it in a second, as is done by
• 6:38:11
  the more highly organized classes. Who shall deny that one who can tack on
• 6:38:15
  a special train to his identity and go wheresoever he will, whensoever he pleases,
• 6:38:19
  is more highly organized than he, who, should he wish for the
• 6:38:22
  same power, might wish for the wings of a bird with an equal chance
• 6:38:26
  of getting them, and whose legs are his only means of locomotion. That
• 6:38:30
  old philosophic enemy, matter, the inherently and essentially evil, still hangs about
• 6:38:34
  the neck of the poor and strangles him. But to the rich, matter
• 6:38:38
  is immaterial. The elaborate organization of his extra corporeal system has freed his soul.
• 6:38:44
  This is the secret of the homage which we see rich men receive from
• 6:38:48
  those who are poorer than themselves. It would be a grave error to suppose
• 6:38:52
  that this deference proceeds from motives which we need be ashamed of. It is
• 6:38:55
  the natural respect which all living creatures pay to those whom they recognize as higher
• 6:38:59
  than them themselves. In the scale of animal life, and his analogous to
• 6:39:03
  the veneration which a dog feels for men. Among savage races, it is
• 6:39:06
  deemed highly honorable to be the possessor of a gun. And throughout all known
• 6:39:10
  time there has been a feeling that those who are worth most are the worthiest.
• 6:39:15
  And so he went on at a considerable length, attempting to show what
• 6:39:18
  changes in the distribution of animal and vegetable life throughout the kingdom had been caused
• 6:39:22
  by this and that of man's inventions, and in what way each was connected
• 6:39:26
  with the moral and intellectual development of the human species. He even allotted to
• 6:39:32
  some the share which they had had in the creation and modification of man's body,
• 6:39:36
  and that which they would hereafter have in its destruction. But the other
• 6:39:38
  writer was considered to have the best of it, and in the end succeeded
• 6:39:42
  in destroying all the inventions that had been discovered for the preceding two hundred seventy
• 6:39:47
  one years, a period which was agreed upon by all parties. After several
• 6:39:51
  years of wrangling as to whether a certain kind of mangle, which was much
• 6:39:55
  in use among washerwomen, should be saved or no, it was at last
• 6:39:57
  ruled to be dangerous and was just excluded by the limit of two hundred seventy
• 6:40:02
  one years. Then came the reactionary civil wars, which nearly ruined the country,
• 6:40:07
  but which would be beyond my present scope to describe. End of Chapter
• 6:40:14
  twenty five Chapter twenty six the views of an Erewhonian prophet concerning the rights of
• 6:40:19
  Animals. It will be seen from the foregoing chapters that the Erewhonians are a
• 6:40:26
  meek and long suffering people, easily led by the nose and click to offer
• 6:40:30
  of common sense at the shrine of logic. When a philosopher arises among them,
• 6:40:36
  who carries them away through his reputation for a special learning, or by
• 6:40:40
  convincing them that their existing institutions are not based on the strictest principles of morality,
• 6:40:47
  the series of revolutions on which I shall now briefly touch shows this even
• 6:40:51
  more plainly than the way already dealt with, in which at a later day
• 6:40:55
  did they cut their throats in the matter of machinery. For if the second
• 6:40:59
  of the two were formed of who I am about to speak, had had
• 6:41:02
  his way, or rather the way that he professed to have, the whole
• 6:41:06
  race would have died of starvation within a twelvemonth. Happily, common sense,
• 6:41:10
  though she is by nature the gentlest creature living, when she feels the knife
• 6:41:14
  at her throat, is apt to develop unexpected powers of resistance, and to
• 6:41:18
  send Doctrinis flying, even when they have found her down and think they have
• 6:41:22
  her at their mercy. What happens, so far as I could collect it
• 6:41:26
  from the best authorities, was as follows. Some two thousand, five hundred
• 6:41:30
  years ago, the Arrunians were still uncivilized and lived by hunting, fishing,
• 6:41:36
  a rude system of agriculture, and plundering such few other nations as they had
• 6:41:41
  not yet completely conquered. They had no schools or systems of philosophy, but
• 6:41:45
  by a kind of dob knowledge did that which was right in their own eyes,
• 6:41:48
  and in those of their neighbors. The common sense therefore of the public
• 6:41:52
  being as yet unviciated, crime and disease were looked upon much as they are
• 6:41:56
  in other countries. But with the grown gradual advance of civilization and increasing material
• 6:42:03
  prosperity, people began to ask questions about things that they had hitherto taken as
• 6:42:07
  matters of course. And one old gentleman, who had great influence over them,
• 6:42:11
  by reason of the sanctity of his life and his supposed inspiration by an
• 6:42:15
  unseen power whose existence was now beginning to be felt, took it into his
• 6:42:19
  head to disquiet himself about the rights of animals, a question that so far
• 6:42:23
  had disturbed nobody. All profits are more or less fussy, and this old
• 6:42:29
  gentleman seems to have been one of the more fussy ones. Being maintained at
• 6:42:33
  the public expouse. He had ample leisure, and not content with limiting his
• 6:42:38
  attention to the rights of animals. He wanted to reduce right and wrong to
• 6:42:42
  rules, to consider the foundations of duty and of good and evil, and
• 6:42:47
  otherwise to put all sorts of matters on a logical basis which peoples whose time
• 6:42:52
  and money are content to accept on no basis at all. As a matter
• 6:42:56
  of course, the basis on which he decided that duty could all lone rest
• 6:43:00
  was one that afforded no standing room for many of the old established habits of
• 6:43:03
  the people. These he assured them were all wrong, And whenever anyone ventured
• 6:43:08
  to differ from him, he referred the matter to the unseen power, with
• 6:43:12
  which he alone was in direct communication, And the unseen power invariably assured him
• 6:43:18
  that he was right. As regards the rights of animals, he taught as
• 6:43:21
  follows. You know, he said, how wicked it is of you to
• 6:43:25
  kill one another. Once upon a time, your forefathers made no scruple about
• 6:43:29
  not only killing, but also eating their relations. No one would now go
• 6:43:33
  back to such detestable practices, For it is notorious that we have lived much
• 6:43:37
  more happily since they were abandoned. From this increased prosperity, we may confidently
• 6:43:44
  deduce the maxim that we should not kill and eat our fellow creatures. I
• 6:43:48
  have consulted the Higher Power, by whom you know that I am inspired,
• 6:43:52
  and he has assured me that this conclusion is irrefragable. Now it cannot be
• 6:43:56
  denied. But sheep cattle, birds, and fishes are our fellow creatures.
• 6:44:03
  They differ from us in some respects, but those in which they differ are
• 6:44:07
  few and secondary, while those that they have in common with us are many
• 6:44:11
  and essential. My friends, if it was wrong of you to kill and
• 6:44:15
  eat your fellow men, it is wrong also to kill and eat fish,
• 6:44:18
  flesh and fowl. Birds, beasts, and fishes have as full a right
• 6:44:23
  to live as long as they can unmolested by man, as men have to
• 6:44:27
  live unmolested by his neighbors. These words, let me again assure you are
• 6:44:33
  not mine, but those of the higher power which inspires me. I grant.
• 6:44:38
  He continued, that animals molest one another, and that some of them
• 6:44:42
  go so far as to molest man. But I have yet to learn that
• 6:44:45
  we should model our conduct on that of the lower animals. We should endeavor
• 6:44:51
  rather to instruct them and to bring them to a better mind. To kill
• 6:44:55
  a tiger, for example, who has lived on the flesh of men and
• 6:44:59
  women whom he has killed, is to reduce ourselves to the level of the
• 6:45:02
  tiger, and is unworthy of people who seek to be guided by the highest
• 6:45:06
  principles in all both their thoughts and actions. The unseen power, who has
• 6:45:11
  revealed himself to me alone among you, has told me to tell you that
• 6:45:15
  you ought, by this time to have outgrown the barbarous habits of your ancestors.
• 6:45:21
  If, as you believe you know better than they, you should do
• 6:45:25
  better. He commands you therefore, to refrain from killing any living being for
• 6:45:30
  the sake of eating it. The only animal food that you may eat is
• 6:45:33
  the flesh of any birds, beasts, or fishes that you may come upon
• 6:45:37
  as having died a natural death, or any that may have been born prematurely
• 6:45:42
  or so deformed that it is a mercy to put them out of their pain.
• 6:45:47
  You may also eat all such animals as have committed suicide. As regards
• 6:45:51
  vegetables, you may eat all those that will let you eat them with impunity.
• 6:45:56
  So wisely and so well did the old prophet argue, and so terrible
• 6:46:00
  were the threats he hurled at those who should disobey him, that in the
• 6:46:03
  end he carried the more highly educated part of the people with him, and
• 6:46:07
  presently the poor classes followed suit or professed to do so. Having seen the
• 6:46:12
  triumph of his principles, he was gathered to his father's and no doubt,
• 6:46:17
  entered at once into full communion with that unseen power whose favor he had already
• 6:46:22
  so pre eminently enjoyed. He had not, however, been dead very wrong
• 6:46:26
  before some of his more ardent disciples took it upon them to better the instruction
• 6:46:32
  of their master. The old prophet had allowed the use of egg and milk,
• 6:46:36
  but his disciples decided that to eat a fresh egg was to destroy a
• 6:46:40
  potential chicken, and that this came too much the same as murdering a live
• 6:46:45
  one. Stale eggs, if it was quite certain that they were too far
• 6:46:48
  gone to be able to be hatched, were grudgingly permitted, but all eggs
• 6:46:52
  offered for sale had to be submitted to an inspector, who, on being
• 6:46:56
  satisfied that they were addled, would label them laid not less than three months
• 6:47:02
  from the date whatever it might happen to be. These anks, I need
• 6:47:06
  hardly say, were only used in puddings and as medicine in certain cases where
• 6:47:11
  an emetic was urgently required. Milk was forbidden inasmuch as it could not be
• 6:47:15
  obtained without robbing some calf of its natural sustenance and thus endangering its life.
• 6:47:22
  It will be equally believed that at first there were many who gave the new
• 6:47:25
  rules outward observance, but embraced every opportunity of indulging secretly in those flesh pots
• 6:47:30
  to which they had been accustomed. It was found that animals were continually dying
• 6:47:34
  natural effects under more or less suspicious circumstances. Suicidal mania, again, which
• 6:47:41
  had hitherto been confined exclusively to donkeys, became alarmingly prevalent even among such,
• 6:47:47
  for the most part, self respecting printers as sheep and cattle. It was
• 6:47:51
  astonishing how some of these unfortunate animals would send out a butcher's knife if there
• 6:47:56
  was one within a mile of them, and run right up against it if
• 6:47:59
  the butcher did not get it out of their way in time. Dogs,
• 6:48:03
  again that had been quite law abiding as regards domestic poultry, tame rabbits,
• 6:48:07
  sucking peaks or sheep and lambs, suddenly took to breaking beyond the control of
• 6:48:11
  their masters and killing anything that they were told not to touch. It was
• 6:48:15
  held that any animal killed by a dog had died a natural death, for
• 6:48:19
  it was the dog's nature to kill things, and he had only refrained from
• 6:48:23
  molesting farmard creatures hitherto because his nature had been tampered with. Unfortunately, the
• 6:48:30
  more these unruly tendencies became developed, the more the common people seemed to delight
• 6:48:34
  in breeding the very animals that would put temptation in the dog's way. There
• 6:48:40
  is little doubt in fact that they were deliberately abating the wall, but whether
• 6:48:44
  this was so or no, they sold or ate everything their dogs had killed.
• 6:48:48
  The vision was more difficult in the case of the larger animals, for
• 6:48:52
  the magistrates could not blink him all the pretended suicides of pigs, sheep,
• 6:48:56
  and cattle that were brought before them. Sometimes they had to convict, and
• 6:49:00
  a few convictions had a very terrorizing effect, whereas in the case of animals
• 6:49:06
  killed by a dog, the marks of the dog's teeth could be seen,
• 6:49:08
  and it was practically impossible to prove malice on the part of the owner of
• 6:49:11
  the dog. Another fertile source of disobedience to the law was furnished by decision
• 6:49:18
  of one of the judges that raised a great outcry among the more fervent disciples
• 6:49:21
  of the old prophet. The judge held that it was lawful to kill any
• 6:49:25
  animal in self defense, and that such conduct was so natural on the part
• 6:49:30
  of a man who found himself attacked, that the attacking creature should be held
• 6:49:33
  to have died a natural death. The high vegetarians had indeed good reason to
• 6:49:37
  be alarmed, for hardly had this decision become generally known before a number of
• 6:49:41
  animals, hitherto harmless took to attacking their owners with such ferocity that it became
• 6:49:48
  necessary to put them to a natural death. Again, it was quite common
• 6:49:52
  at that time to see the carcasse of the lamb or kid exposed for sale,
• 6:49:56
  with a label from the inspector certifying that it had been killed in self
• 6:50:00
  defense. Sometimes even the carcass of the lamb or cap was exposed as warranted
• 6:50:06
  still born, when it presented every appearance of having enjoyed at least a month
• 6:50:11
  of life. As for the flesh of animals that had bonified died a natural
• 6:50:15
  death, the permission to eat it was nugatory, for it was generally eaten
• 6:50:19
  by some other animal before man got hold of it, or, failing this,
• 6:50:22
  it was often poisonous, so that practically people were forced to evade the
• 6:50:27
  law by some of the means above spoken of, or to become vegetarians.
• 6:50:32
  His last alternative was so little to the taste of the Erebonians that the laws
• 6:50:36
  against killing animals were falling into desuetude and would very likely have been repealed but
• 6:50:41
  for the breaking out of a pestilence, which were described by the priests and
• 6:50:45
  prophets of the day to the lawlessness of the people in the matter of eating
• 6:50:48
  forbidden flesh. On this there was a reaction. Stringent laws were passed forbidding
• 6:50:55
  the use of meat in any former shape, and permitting no food but grain,
• 6:50:59
  fruit and vegetables to be sold in shops and markets. These laws were
• 6:51:03
  enacted about two hundred years after the death of the old prophet who had first
• 6:51:07
  unsettled people's minds about the rights of animals, but they had hardly been passed
• 6:51:11
  before people again began to break them. I was told that the most painful
• 6:51:17
  consequence of all this folly did not lie in the fact that law abiding people
• 6:51:21
  had to go without animal food. Many nations do this and seem none the
• 6:51:25
  worse, and even in flesh eating countries such as Italy, Spain and griefs
• 6:51:30
  poor seldom seem meet From year's end to year's end. The mischief lay in
• 6:51:33
  the jar which undue prohibition gave to the consciences of all but those who were
• 6:51:37
  strong enough to know that though conscience, as a rule boons, it can
• 6:51:41
  also bagne. The awakened conscience of an individual will often lead him to do
• 6:51:47
  things in haste that he had better have left undone. But the conscience of
• 6:51:51
  a nation awakened by a respectable old gentleman who has an unseen power up his
• 6:51:55
  sleeve, will pave hell with a vengeance. Young people were to that it
• 6:52:00
  was a sin to do what their fathers had done unhurt for centuries. Those
• 6:52:03
  moreover, who preached to them about the enormity of eating meat were an unattracted
• 6:52:08
  academic folk, and though they overawed all but the bolder youths, there were
• 6:52:14
  few who did not, in their hearts dislike them. However much the young
• 6:52:18
  person might be shielded, he soon got to know that men and women of
• 6:52:22
  the world, often far nicer people than the prophets who preached absenttion, continually
• 6:52:26
  spoke sneeringly of the new doctrinaire laws, and were believed to set them aside
• 6:52:32
  in secret, though they dared not do so openly. Small wonder then,
• 6:52:36
  that the more human among the student classes were provoked by the touch not case
• 6:52:40
  handle, knock precepts of their rulers into questioning much that they would otherwise have
• 6:52:45
  unhesitatingly accepted. One sad story is on record about a young man of promising
• 6:52:51
  amiable disposition, but cursed with more conscience than brains, who had been told
• 6:52:56
  by his doctor, for as I have above said, disease was not yet
• 6:53:00
  held to be criminal, that he ought to eat meat law or no law.
• 6:53:03
  He was much shocked, and for some time refused to comply with what
• 6:53:07
  he deemed the unrighteous advice given him by his doctor. At last, however,
• 6:53:12
  finding that he grew weaker and weaker, he stole secretly on a dark
• 6:53:17
  night into one of those dens in which meat was surreptitiously sold, and bought
• 6:53:21
  a pound of prime steak. He took it home, cooked it in his
• 6:53:25
  bedroom when everyone in the house had gone to rest ate it, and though
• 6:53:29
  he could hardly sleep for remorse and shame, felt so much better next morning
• 6:53:33
  that he hardly knew himself. Three or four days later he again found himself
• 6:53:37
  irresistibly drawn to the same den. Again, he bought a pound of steak.
• 6:53:42
  Again, he cooked and ate it, and again, in spite of
• 6:53:45
  much mental torture, on the following morning, felt himself a different man.
• 6:53:49
  To cut the story short, Though he never went beyond the bounds of moderation,
• 6:53:55
  it preyed upon his mind that he should be drifting, as he certainly
• 6:53:57
  was, into the rank of the habitual lawbreakers. All the time, his
• 6:54:03
  health kept on improving, and though he felt sure that he owed this to
• 6:54:07
  the thief steaks, the better he became in body, the more his conscience
• 6:54:11
  gave him no rest. Two voices were forever ringing in his ears, the
• 6:54:15
  one saying, I am common sense and nature. Heed me, and I
• 6:54:19
  will reward you as I rewarded your father's before you. But the other boy
• 6:54:25
  said, let not that plausible spirit lure you to your ruin. I am
• 6:54:29
  duty, Heed me, and I will reward you as I rewarded your fathers
• 6:54:33
  before you. Sometimes he even seemed to see the faces of the speakers.
• 6:54:38
  Common senses looked so easy, genial and serene, so frank and fearless,
• 6:54:44
  that do what he might, he could not mistrust her. But as he
• 6:54:47
  was on the point of following her, he would be checked by the austere
• 6:54:51
  face of duty, so grave but yet so kindly, and it cut him
• 6:54:56
  to the heart that from time to time he should see her turn pitying away
• 6:55:00
  from him as he followed after her rival. The poor boy continually thought of
• 6:55:04
  the better class of his fellow students, and tried to model his conduct on
• 6:55:08
  what he thought was theirs. They. He said to himself, eat a
• 6:55:12
  beef's sake never, But they, most of them, ate one now and
• 6:55:17
  again, unless it was a mutton chop that tempted them, and they used
• 6:55:21
  him for a model much as he did them. He they would say to
• 6:55:25
  themselves, eat a mutton chop never. One night, however, he was
• 6:55:30
  followed by one of the authorities, who was always prowling about in search of
• 6:55:33
  lawbreakers, and was caught coming out of the den with half a shoulder of
• 6:55:37
  mutton concealed about his person. On this, even though he had not been
• 6:55:41
  put in prison, he would have been sent away, with his prospects in
• 6:55:45
  life irretrievably ruined. He therefore hanged himself as soon as he got home.
• 6:55:52
  End of Chapter twenty six. Chapter twenty seven, The Views of an Iranian
• 6:55:56
  philosopher concerning the rights of vegetables. Let me leave this unhappy story and return
• 6:56:02
  to the course of events among the Arwonians at large. No matter how many
• 6:56:06
  laws they passed, increasing the severity of the punishments inflicted on those who ate
• 6:56:11
  meat in secret, the people find means of setting them aside as fast as
• 6:56:15
  they were made. At times, indeed, they would become almost obsolete.
• 6:56:18
  But when they were on the point of being repealed, some national disaster or
• 6:56:22
  the preaching of some fanatic would reawaken the conscients of the nation, and people
• 6:56:27
  were imprisoned by the thousand or illicitly selling and buying animal food. About six
• 6:56:33
  or seven hundred years, however, after the death of the old prophet,
• 6:56:37
  a philosopher appeared, who, though he did not claim to have any communication
• 6:56:41
  with an unseen power, laid down the law with as much confidence as if
• 6:56:45
  such a power had inspired him. Then he think this philosopher did not believe
• 6:56:48
  his own teaching, and being in secret a great meat eater, had no
• 6:56:52
  other end in view than reducing the prohibition against eating animal food to an absurdity
• 6:56:59
  greater Even then and Erewhonian puritan would be able to stand. Those who take
• 6:57:03
  this view hold that he knew how impossible it would be to get the nation
• 6:57:07
  to accept legislation that it held to be sinful. He knew also how hopeless
• 6:57:11
  it would be to convince people that it was not wicked to kill a sheep
• 6:57:15
  and eat it, unless he could show them that they must either sin to
• 6:57:18
  a certain extent or die. He, therefore, it is believed, made
• 6:57:22
  the monstrous proposals of which I will now speak. He began by paying a
• 6:57:27
  tribute, a profound respect to the old prophet, whose advocacy of the right
• 6:57:32
  of animals, he admitted, had done much to soften the national character and
• 6:57:37
  enlarge its views about the sanctity of life in general. But he urged that
• 6:57:41
  times had now changed. The lesson of which the country had stood in need
• 6:57:45
  had been sufficiently learnt. While as regards festivals, much had become known that
• 6:57:48
  was not even suspected formerly, and which, if the nation was to persevere
• 6:57:53
  in that strict adherence to the highest moral principles which had been the secret of
• 6:57:57
  its prosperity hitherto, must necessitate a radical change in its attitude towards them.
• 6:58:03
  It was indeed true that much was now known that had not been suspected formerly,
• 6:58:07
  for the people had had no foreign enemies, and, being both quick
• 6:58:11
  witted and inquisitive into the mysteries of nature, had made extraordinary progress in all
• 6:58:17
  the many branches of art and science. In the Chief Ironian Museum, I
• 6:58:22
  was shown a microscope of considerable power that was ascribed by the authorities to date.
• 6:58:26
  Much about that to the philosopher of whom I am now speaking, and
• 6:58:30
  was even deposed by some who have been the instrument with which he had actually
• 6:58:33
  worked. This philosopher was Professor of Botany in the Chief Seat of Learning,
• 6:58:38
  ben in Erwon, and whether with the help of the microscope still preserved or
• 6:58:42
  with another, had arrived at a conclusion now universally accepted among ourselves. I
• 6:58:48
  mean that all both animals and plants have had a common ancestry, and that
• 6:58:55
  hence the second should be deemed as much alive as the first. He contended,
• 6:58:59
  therefore, that animals and plants were cousins, and would have been seen
• 6:59:03
  to be so all along if people had not made an arbitrary and unreasonable division
• 6:59:07
  between what they chose to call the animal and vegetable kingdoms. He declared and
• 6:59:12
  demonstrated to the satisfaction of all those who were able to form an opinion upon
• 6:59:17
  the subject, that there is no difference appreciable, either by the eye or
• 6:59:22
  by any other test, between a germ that will develop into an oak,
• 6:59:26
  a vine, a rose, and one that, given it to customed surroundings,
• 6:59:30
  will become a mouse, an elephant, or a man. He contended
• 6:59:34
  that the course of any germ's development was dictated by the habits of the germs
• 6:59:38
  from which it was descended, and of whose identity it had once formed part.
• 6:59:42
  If a germ found itself placed as the germs in the line of its
• 6:59:47
  ancestry were placed, it would do as its ancestors had done and grow up
• 6:59:51
  into the same kind of organism as theirs. If it found the circumstances only
• 6:59:55
  a little different, it would make shift successfully or unsuccessful, to modify its
• 7:00:00
  development. Accordingly, if the circumstances were widely different, it would die,
• 7:00:06
  probably without an effort at self adaptation. This, he argued, applied equally
• 7:00:11
  to the germs of plants and of animals. He therefore connected all both animal
• 7:00:15
  and vegetable development with intelligence, either spent and now in conscience, or still
• 7:00:21
  unspent and conscious and in support of his view as regards vegetable life, he
• 7:00:26
  pointed to the way in which all plants have adapted themselves to their habitual environment,
• 7:00:30
  granting that vegetable intelligence, at first sight, appears to differ material from
• 7:00:36
  animal. Yet, he urged, it is likely in the one essential fact
• 7:00:40
  that though it has evidently busied itself about matters that are vital to the well
• 7:00:44
  being of the organism that possesses it, it has never shown the slightest tendency
• 7:00:48
  to occupy itself with anything else. This, he insisted, is as great
• 7:00:52
  a proof of intelligence as any living being can give. Plants, said,
• 7:00:56
  he, show no sign of interesting themselves in human affairs. We shall never
• 7:01:00
  get a rose to understand that five times seven are thirty five, And there
• 7:01:04
  is no use in talking to an oak about fluctuations in the price of stocks.
• 7:01:10
  Hence we say that the oak and the rose are unintelligent, and,
• 7:01:12
  on finding that they do not understand our business, conclude that they do not
• 7:01:17
  understand their own But what can a creature who talks in this way know about
• 7:01:21
  intelligence? Which shows greater signs of intelligence heat or the rose and oak?
• 7:01:26
  And when we call plants stupid for not understanding our business? How capable do
• 7:01:32
  we show ourselves of understanding theirs? Can we form even the faintest conception of
• 7:01:37
  the way in which a seed from a rose tree turns earth, air,
• 7:01:40
  warmth, and water into a rose will blown? Where does it get its
• 7:01:44
  color from from the earth, air, et cetera? Yes, But how
• 7:01:49
  those petals of such ineffable texture that que that outvies the cheek of a child
• 7:01:55
  that's scent Again, look at earth, air, and water. These are
• 7:01:59
  all the raw material that the rose has got to work with. Does it
• 7:02:03
  show any sign of want of intelligence in the alchemy with which it turns mud
• 7:02:06
  into rose leaves? What chemists can do anything comparable? Why does no one
• 7:02:11
  try? Simply because everyone knows that no human intelligence is equal to the task,
• 7:02:17
  we give it up. It is the roses department. Let the rose
• 7:02:21
  attend to it and be dubbed unintelligent because it baffles us by the miracles it
• 7:02:25
  works and the unconcerned businesslike way in which it works them. See it pains
• 7:02:30
  again. Plants take to protect themselves against their enemies. They scratch, cut
• 7:02:34
  sting, make bad smells secret, the most dreadful poisons which heaven only knows
• 7:02:41
  how. They contrive to make cover their precious seeds with spines like those of
• 7:02:45
  a hedgehog, frighten insects with delicate nervous systems by assuming portentious shapes, hide
• 7:02:49
  themselves, grow in inaccessible places, and tell lies so plausibly as to deceive
• 7:02:55
  even their subtlest foes. They lay tracks smeared with birdline to catch insects and
• 7:03:00
  persuade them to drown themselves in pretchers, which they have made of their leaves
• 7:03:04
  and fill with water. Others make themselves, as it were, into living
• 7:03:07
  break tracts, which close with the spring on any insect that settles upon them.
• 7:03:12
  Others make their flowers into the shape of a certain fly, that is
• 7:03:15
  a great pillager of honey, so that when the real fly comes, it
• 7:03:19
  thinks the flowers are bespoke and goes on elsewhere. Some are so clever as
• 7:03:25
  to even overreach themselves, like the horse radish, which gets pulled up and
• 7:03:29
  eaten for the sake of that pungency with which it protects itself against underground enemies.
• 7:03:33
  If, on the other hand, they think that any insect can be
• 7:03:37
  of service to them, see how pretty they make themselves. What is to
• 7:03:41
  be intelligent if to know how to do what one wants to do, and
• 7:03:44
  to do it repeatedly is not to be intelligent. Some say that the rose
• 7:03:48
  seed does not want to grow into a rose bush. Why then, in
• 7:03:52
  the name of all that is reasonable does it grow? Likely enough, it
• 7:03:56
  is unaware of the wand that is spurring on to action. We have no
• 7:04:00
  reason to suppose that a human embryo knows that it wants to grow into a
• 7:04:03
  baby, or a baby into a man. Nothing ever, shows signs of
• 7:04:08
  knowing what it is either wanting or doing when his convictions, both as to
• 7:04:12
  what it wants and how to give it have been settled beyond further power of
• 7:04:17
  question. The less signs living creatures give of knowing what they do, provided
• 7:04:22
  they do it and do it repeatedly and well, the greater proof they give
• 7:04:26
  that in reality they know how to do it and have done it already on
• 7:04:29
  an infinite number of past occasions. Some one may say, he continued,
• 7:04:33
  what do you mean by talking about an infinite number of past occasions? When
• 7:04:37
  did a rose seed make itself into a rose bush on any past occasion?
• 7:04:42
  I answered this question with another. Did the rose need ever form part of
• 7:04:47
  the identity of the rose bush on which it grew. Who can say that
• 7:04:49
  it did not. Again, I asked, was this rose bush ever linked
• 7:04:55
  by all those links that we commonly consider as constituting personal identity with the sa
• 7:05:00
  need from which it, in its turn grew, Who can say that it
• 7:05:03
  was not? Then, if rose seed number two is a continuation of the
• 7:05:07
  personality of its parent rosebush, and if that rosebush is a continuation of the
• 7:05:12
  personality of the rose seed from which it spread, rose seed number two must
• 7:05:17
  also be a continuation of the personality of the earlier rose seed, and this
• 7:05:22
  rose seed must be a continuation of the personality of the preceding rose seed,
• 7:05:26
  and so back and back, ad infinitum. Hence, it is impossible to
• 7:05:30
  deny continued personality between any existing row seed and the earliest seed that can be
• 7:05:34
  called a roast seed at all. The answer, then, to our objector
• 7:05:40
  is not far to seek. The rose seed did what it now does in
• 7:05:42
  the persons of its ancestors, to whom it has been so linked as to
• 7:05:47
  be able to remember what those ancestors did when they were placed. As the
• 7:05:51
  rose seed is now, each stage of development brings back the recollection of the
• 7:05:56
  course taken in the preceding stage, and the development has been so often repeated
• 7:06:00
  that all doubt, and with all doubt, all consciousness of action is suspended.
• 7:06:07
  But an objective may still say, granted that the linking between all successive
• 7:06:11
  generations has been so close and unbroken, that each one of them may be
• 7:06:15
  conceived as able to remember what it did in the persons of its ancestors,
• 7:06:19
  how do you show that it actually did remember? The answer is by the
• 7:06:25
  action which each generation takes, an action which repeats to all the phenomena that
• 7:06:29
  we commonly associate with memory, which is explicable on the supposition that it has
• 7:06:33
  been guided by memory, and which has neither been explained nor seems ever likely
• 7:06:38
  to be explained on any other theory than the supposition that there is an abiding
• 7:06:42
  memory between successive generations. Will anyone bring an example of any living creature whose
• 7:06:48
  actions we can understand, performing an ineffably difficult and intricate action time after time
• 7:06:56
  with invariable success, and yet not knowing how to do it, and never
• 7:07:00
  having done it before. Show me the example, and I will say no
• 7:07:03
  more. But until it has shown me, I show credit action where I
• 7:07:07
  cannot watch it with being controlled by the same laws as when it is within
• 7:07:11
  our ken, it will become unconscious as soon as the skill that direxit has
• 7:07:15
  become perfected. Neither rose seed, therefore nor embryo should be expected to show
• 7:07:21
  signs of knowing that they know what they know. If they showed such signs,
• 7:07:25
  the fact that they are knowing what they want and how to get it
• 7:07:27
  might more reasonably be doubted. Some of the passages already given in chapter twenty
• 7:07:33
  three were obviously inspired by the one just quoted. As I read it in
• 7:07:37
  a reprint shown me by a professor who had edited much of the early literature
• 7:07:41
  on the subject, I could not but remember the one in which our Lord
• 7:07:45
  tells his disciples to consider the lilies of the field, who neither toil nor
• 7:07:49
  spin, but whose reignment surpasses even that and Solomon in all his glory.
• 7:07:55
  They toil not, neither do they spin? Do that sow toil not?
• 7:08:00
  Perhaps not, now that the method of procedure is so well known as to
• 7:08:03
  admit of no further questions. But it is not likely that lilies came to
• 7:08:07
  make themselves so beautifully without having ever taken any pains about the matter. Neither
• 7:08:12
  do they spin, not with a spinning wheel. But is there no textile
• 7:08:17
  fabric in a leaf? What would the lilies of the fields say if they
• 7:08:21
  heard one of us declaring that they neither toil nor spin? They would say,
• 7:08:25
  I take it much what we should. If we were to hear of
• 7:08:27
  their preaching humility on the text of Solomons, and saying, consider the solomons
• 7:08:33
  in all their glory, they toil not neither do they spin, we should
• 7:08:37
  say that the lilies were talking about things that they did not understand, and
• 7:08:41
  that though the solomons do not toil nor spin, yet there had been no
• 7:08:45
  lack of either toiling or spinning before they came to be arrayed so gorgeously.
• 7:08:49
  Let me now return to the professor. I have said enough to show the
• 7:08:53
  general drift of the arguments on which he relied in order to show that vegetables
• 7:08:57
  are only animals under another, but have not stated his cakes in anything like
• 7:09:02
  the fullness with which he laid it before the public. The concluding he drew,
• 7:09:07
  or pretended to draw, was that if it was simple to kill and
• 7:09:10
  eat animals, it was not less sinful to do the like by vegetables or
• 7:09:14
  their seeds. None such, he said, should be eaten, save what
• 7:09:18
  had died a natural death, such as fruit that was lying on the ground
• 7:09:22
  and about to rot, or cabbage leaves that had turned yellow and lay autumn.
• 7:09:26
  These and other like garbage, he declared to be the only food that
• 7:09:29
  might be eaten with a clear conscience. Even so, the eaner must plant
• 7:09:33
  the pips of any apple or pears that he may have eaten, or any
• 7:09:37
  plumpstones, cherry stones, and the like, or he would come near to
• 7:09:41
  incurring the guilt of infanticide. The grain of cereals, according to him,
• 7:09:45
  was out of the question, for ever, such grain had a living soul
• 7:09:48
  as much as man had, and had as good a right as man to
• 7:09:52
  possess that stolen peace. Having thus driven his fellow countrymen into a corner at
• 7:09:56
  the point of the logical bayonet, from which they felt that there was no
• 7:10:00
  escape, he proposed that the question what was to be done should be referred
• 7:10:03
  to an oracle in which the whole country had the greatest confidence, and to
• 7:10:08
  which recourse was always had. In times of special perplexity, it was whispered
• 7:10:14
  that a near relation of the philosopher's was a lady's maid to the priestess who
• 7:10:17
  delivered the oracle, and the Puritan party declared that the strangely unequivocal answer of
• 7:10:22
  the oracle was obtained by Backstair's influence. But whether this was so or no,
• 7:10:27
  the response, as nearly as I can translate, it was as follows,
• 7:10:32
  he who sins aught sins more than he ought, but he who sins
• 7:10:36
  not as much to be taught, beet or be beaten, eat or be
• 7:10:40
  eaten, be killed or kill. Choose what you will. It was clear
• 7:10:45
  that this response sanctioned, at any rate the destruction of vegetable life when wanted
• 7:10:48
  its food by man, and so forcibly had the philosopher shown that what was
• 7:10:53
  sauce for vegetables was so also for animals, that though the Puritan party made
• 7:10:59
  a furious out, the acts for fitting the youth of meat were repealed by
• 7:11:03
  a considerable majority. Thus, after several hundred years of wandering in the wilderness
• 7:11:07
  of philosophy, the country reached the conclusions that comminsons had long since arrived at
• 7:11:14
  even Puritans. After a vain attempt to subsist on the kind of jam made
• 7:11:18
  of apples and yellow camute leaves succumbed to the inevitable, and resign themselves to
• 7:11:22
  a diet of roast, beef and mutton, with all the usual adjuncts of
• 7:11:26
  a modern dinner table. One would have thought that the dance they had been
• 7:11:30
  led by the old prophet, and that still matter, dance which the Professor
• 7:11:33
  of Botany had gravely but as I believe, insitiously proposed to lead them,
• 7:11:38
  would have made the air Warnians for a long time suspicious of prophets, whether
• 7:11:41
  they professed to have communications with an unseen power or no. But so ingrained
• 7:11:47
  in the human heart is the desire to believe that some people really do know
• 7:11:51
  what they say they know, and can thus save them from the trouble of
• 7:11:53
  thinking for themselves. That in a short time would be philosophers and faddists became
• 7:11:59
  more powerful than that, and gradually led their countrymen to accept all those absurd
• 7:12:03
  views of life, some account of which I had given in my earlier chapters.
• 7:12:07
  Indeed, I can see no hope to her warnings till they have got
• 7:12:10
  to understand that reason uncorrected by instinct, and as bad as instinct uncorrected by
• 7:12:15
  reason. End of Chapter twenty seven Chapter twenty eight Escape. Though busily engaged
• 7:12:23
  in translating the extracts given in the last five chapters, I was also laying
• 7:12:29
  matters in train for my escape with Arowhena, and indeed it was high time
• 7:12:33
  for I received an intimation from one of the cashiers of the musical banks that
• 7:12:37
  I was to be prosecuted in a criminal court, outsensibly for measles, but
• 7:12:41
  really for having owned a watch and attempted the reintroduction of machinery. I asked
• 7:12:48
  why measles, and was told that there was a fear lest extenuating circumstances should
• 7:12:52
  prevent a jury from convicting me if I were indicted for typhus or smallpox,
• 7:12:56
  but that a verdict would probably be obtained for measles, a disease which could
• 7:13:00
  be sufficiently punished in a person of my age. I was given to understand
• 7:13:04
  that unless some unexpected change should come over the mind of His Majesty, I
• 7:13:10
  might expect the blow to be struck within a very few days. My plan
• 7:13:14
  was this, that Arowhena and I should escape in a balloon together. I
• 7:13:18
  fear that the reader will disbelieve this part of my story. Yet in no
• 7:13:22
  other have I endeavored to adhere more conscientiously to facts, and can only throw
• 7:13:26
  myself upon his charity. I had already gained the ear of the Queen,
• 7:13:30
  and had still worked upon her curiosity that she promised to get leave for me
• 7:13:34
  to have a balloon made and inflated. I pointed out to her that no
• 7:13:38
  complicated machinery would be wanted, nothing, in fact, but a large quantity
• 7:13:45
  of oiled silk, a car, a few ropes, et cetera, et
• 7:13:48
  cetera, and some light kind of gas. Such as the antiquarians, who
• 7:13:52
  were acquainted with the means employed by the ancients for the production of the lighter
• 7:13:56
  gases, could easily instruct her workmen how to provide her eagerness to see so
• 7:14:02
  strange a sight as the ascent of a human being into the sky overcame any
• 7:14:06
  scruples of conscience that she might have otherwise felt, and she set the antiquarians
• 7:14:11
  about showing her workmen how to make the gas, and sent her maids to
• 7:14:15
  buy and oil a very large quantity of silk, for I was determined that
• 7:14:19
  the balloon should be a big one. Even before she began to try and
• 7:14:23
  gain the King's permission. This, however, she now set herself to do,
• 7:14:27
  for I had sent her word that my prosecution was imminent. As for
• 7:14:33
  myself, I need hardly say that I knew nothing about balloons, nor did
• 7:14:37
  I see my way to smuggling Arowhena into the car. Nevertheless, knowing that
• 7:14:41
  we had no other chance of getting away from erewhon I drew inspiration from the
• 7:14:47
  extremity in which we were replaced, and made a pattern from which the Queen's
• 7:14:49
  workmen were able to work successfully. Meanwhile, the Queen's carriage builders set about
• 7:14:55
  making the car, and it was with the attachments of this to the balloon
• 7:14:59
  that I I have the greatest difficulty. I doubt, indeed whether I should
• 7:15:03
  have succeeded here, but for the great intelligence of a foreman who threw himself
• 7:15:07
  heart and soul into the matter, and often both foresaw requirements the necessity for
• 7:15:12
  which had escaped me, and suggested the means of providing for them. It
• 7:15:17
  happened that there had been a long drought, during the latter part of which
• 7:15:21
  prayers had been vainly offered up in all the temples of the Air God.
• 7:15:25
  When I first told her Majesty that I wanted a balloon. I said,
• 7:15:27
  my intention was to go up into the sky and prevail upon the air God.
• 7:15:32
  By means of a personal interview, I owned that this proposition bordered on
• 7:15:37
  the idolatrous, but I have long since repented of it, and am little
• 7:15:41
  likely ever to repeat the offense. Moreover, the deceit, as serious thought
• 7:15:45
  it was, will probably lead to the conversion of the whole country. When
• 7:15:49
  the Queen told his Majesty of my proposal, he at first not only ridiculed
• 7:15:53
  it, but was inclined to veto it. Being however, a very luxurious
• 7:15:59
  husband, at length consented, as he eventually always did to everything on which
• 7:16:03
  the Queen had set her heart. He yielded all the more readily now because
• 7:16:07
  he did not believe in the possibility of my ascent. He was convinced that
• 7:16:11
  even though the balloon should mount a few feet into the air, it would
• 7:16:15
  collapse immediately, whereon I should fall and break my neck, and he should
• 7:16:18
  be rid of me. He demonstrated this to her so convincingly that she was
• 7:16:22
  alarmed and tried to talk me into giving up the idea. But on finding
• 7:16:26
  that I persisted in my wish to have the balloon made. She produced an
• 7:16:30
  order from the King to the effect that all facilities I might require should be
• 7:16:34
  afforded me. At the same time, her Majesty told me that my attempted
• 7:16:40
  ascent would be made an article of impeachment against me in case I did not
• 7:16:44
  succeed in prevailing on the air God to stop the drought. Neither King nor
• 7:16:48
  Queen had any idea that I meant going right away if I could get the
• 7:16:52
  wind to take me. Nor had he any conception of the existence of a
• 7:16:56
  certain, steady upper current of air which was always setting in one direction,
• 7:17:00
  as could be seen by the shape of the higher clouds, which pointed invariably
• 7:17:03
  from southeast to northwest. I had myself long noticed this peculiarity in the climate,
• 7:17:10
  and attributed it, I believed justly to a trade wind, which was
• 7:17:14
  constant at a few thousand feet above the earth, but was disturbed by local
• 7:17:18
  influences at lower elevations. My next business was to break the plan to Arowhena,
• 7:17:23
  and to devise the means for getting her into the car. I felt
• 7:17:27
  sure that she would come with me, but had made up my mind that
• 7:17:30
  if her courage failed her, the whole thing should come to nothing. Arowhena
• 7:17:34
  and I had been in constant communication through her maid, but I had thought
• 7:17:38
  it best not to tell her the details of my scheme till everything was settled.
• 7:17:44
  The time had now arrived, and I arranged with the maid that I
• 7:17:47
  should be admitted by a private door into mister Nosnibor's garden at about dusk on
• 7:17:51
  the following evening. I came at the appointed time. The girl let me
• 7:17:56
  into the garden and bade me wait in a secluded alley until air Rowena should
• 7:18:00
  come. It was now early summer, and the leaves were so thick upon
• 7:18:04
  the trees that even though someone else had entered the garden, I could have
• 7:18:08
  easily hidden myself. The night was one of extreme beauty. The sun had
• 7:18:14
  long set, but there was still a rosy gleam in the sky over the
• 7:18:17
  ruins of the railway station. Below me was a city already twinkling with lights,
• 7:18:22
  while beyond it stretched the plains for many a league until they blended with
• 7:18:26
  the sky. I just noted these things, but I could not heed them.
• 7:18:30
  I could heed nothing till as I peered into the darkness of the alley,
• 7:18:34
  I perceived a white figure gliding swiftly towards me. I bounded towards it,
• 7:18:40
  and ere thought could either prompt or check. I had caught Arowhena into
• 7:18:42
  my heart and covered her unresisting cheek with kisses. So overjoyed were we that
• 7:18:48
  we knew not how to speak. Indeed, I do not know when we
• 7:18:52
  should have found words and come to our senses, if the maid had not
• 7:18:56
  gone off into a fit of hysterics and awakened us to the necessity of soul
• 7:19:00
  control. Then briefly and plainly I unfolded what I proposed. I showed her
• 7:19:06
  the darkest side, for I felt sure that the darker the prospect, the
• 7:19:08
  more likely she was to come. I told her that my plan would probably
• 7:19:14
  end in death for both of us, and that I dared not press it,
• 7:19:17
  that at a word from her it should be abandoned. Still, that
• 7:19:21
  there was just a possibility of our escaping together to some part of the world
• 7:19:25
  where there would be no bar to our getting married, and that I could
• 7:19:27
  see no other hope. She made no resistance, not a sign or hint
• 7:19:33
  of doubt or hesitation. She would do all I told her and come whenever
• 7:19:37
  I was ready. So I bade her send her maid to meet me nightly,
• 7:19:41
  told her that she must put a good face on, look as bright
• 7:19:44
  and happy as she could, so as to make her father and mother and
• 7:19:47
  Zulora think that she was forgetting me, and be ready at a moment's notice
• 7:19:52
  to come to the Queen's workshops and be concealed among the ballasts and under rugs
• 7:19:56
  in the car of the balloon. And so we parted. I heard in
• 7:20:00
  my preparations forward, for I feared rain, and also that the king might
• 7:20:04
  change his mind. But the weather continued dry, and in another week the
• 7:20:10
  Queen's workmen had finished the balloon and car, while the gas was ready to
• 7:20:12
  be turned on into the balloon at any moment. All being now prepared,
• 7:20:17
  I was to ascend on the following morning. I had stipulated for being allowed
• 7:20:21
  to take abundance of rugs and wrappings as protection from the cold of the upper
• 7:20:25
  atmosphere, and also ten or a dozen good sized bags of ballast. I
• 7:20:30
  had nearly a quarter's pension in hand, and with this I feed Arowhena's maid
• 7:20:34
  and bribe the Queen's foreman, who would I believe have given me assistance,
• 7:20:38
  even without a bribe. He helped me to secrete food and wine in the
• 7:20:41
  bags of ballast, and on the morning of my ascent, he kept the
• 7:20:45
  other workmen out of the way while I got Arowhena into the car. She
• 7:20:49
  came with early dawn, muffled up and in her maid's dress. She was
• 7:20:53
  supposed to be gone to an early performance at one of the musical banks,
• 7:20:56
  and told me that she should not be missed till breakfast, but that her
• 7:21:00
  absence must then be discovered. I arranged the ballast about her so that it
• 7:21:04
  should conceal her as she lay at the bottom of the car, and covered
• 7:21:07
  her with wrappings. Although it still wanted some hours of the time fixed for
• 7:21:11
  my ascent, I could not trust myself one moment from the car, so
• 7:21:15
  I got into it at once and watched the gradual inflation of the balloon luggage.
• 7:21:21
  I had none save the provisions hidden in the ballast bags, the books
• 7:21:23
  of mythology and the treatises on the machines, with my own manuscript, diaries
• 7:21:27
  and translations. I sat quietly and awaited the hour fixed for my departure.
• 7:21:33
  Quiet outwardly, but inwardly I was in an agony of suspense, lest Arowhena's
• 7:21:38
  absence should be discovered before the arrival of the King and Queen, who were
• 7:21:42
  to witness my ascent. They were not due yet for another two hours,
• 7:21:47
  and during this time a hundred things might happen, any one of which would
• 7:21:51
  undo me. At last, the balloon was full. The pipe which had
• 7:21:55
  filled it was removed, the escape of gas having been first carefully precluded.
• 7:22:00
  Nothing remained to hinder the balloon from ascending but the hands and weight of those
• 7:22:03
  who were holding on to it with ropes. I strained my eyes for the
• 7:22:07
  coming of the King and Queen, but could see no sign of their approach.
• 7:22:11
  I looked in the direction of mister Nosnibor's house. There was nothing to
• 7:22:15
  indicate disturbance. But it was not yet breakfast time. The crowd began to
• 7:22:21
  gather. They were aware that I was under the displeasure of the court,
• 7:22:25
  but I could detect no signs of my being unpopular. On the contrary,
• 7:22:29
  I received many kindly expressions of regard and encouragement, with good wishes as to
• 7:22:33
  the result of my journey. I was speaking to one gentleman of my acquaintance,
• 7:22:37
  and telling him the substance of what I intended to do when I had
• 7:22:41
  got into the presence of the Air God. What he thought of me I
• 7:22:44
  cannot guess, for I am sure that he did not believe in the objective
• 7:22:48
  existence of the Air God, nor that I myself believed in it. When
• 7:22:52
  I became aware of a small crowd of people running as fast as they could
• 7:22:56
  from mister Nosnibor's house towards the Queen's workshops the moment my pulse ceased beating,
• 7:23:02
  and then, knowing that the time had come when I must either do or
• 7:23:04
  die, I called vehemently to those who were holding the ropes some thirty men
• 7:23:10
  to let go at once, and made gestures signifying danger and that there would
• 7:23:14
  be mischief if they held on longer. Many obeyed, the rest were too
• 7:23:18
  weak to hold on to the ropes and were forced to let them go.
• 7:23:22
  On this the balloon bounded suddenly upwards, but my own feeling was that the
• 7:23:26
  earth had dropped off from me and was sinking fast into open space beneath.
• 7:23:32
  This happened at the very moment that the attention of the crowd was divided,
• 7:23:34
  the one half paying heed to the eager gestures of those coming from mister Nosnibor's
• 7:23:38
  house, and the other to the exclamations from myself. A minute more and
• 7:23:44
  Arowhena would doubtless have been discovered. But before that minute was over, I
• 7:23:48
  was at such a height above the city that nothing could harm me, and
• 7:23:52
  every second both the town and the crowd became smaller and more confused. In
• 7:23:57
  an incredibly short time, I see little but a vast wall of blue plains
• 7:24:02
  rising up against me, towards whichever side I looked. At first, the
• 7:24:07
  balloon mounted vertically upwards. But after about five minutes, when we had already
• 7:24:11
  attained a very great elevation, I fancied that the objects on the plain beneath
• 7:24:15
  began to move from under me. I did not feel so much as a
• 7:24:19
  breath of wind, and could not suppose that the balloon itself was traveling.
• 7:24:25
  I was therefore wondering what the strange movement of fixed objects could mean. When
• 7:24:29
  it struck me that people in a balloon do not feel the wind inasmuch as
• 7:24:33
  they traveled with it and offer it no resistance, then I was happy in
• 7:24:37
  thinking that I must now have reached the invariable trade winds of the upper air,
• 7:24:41
  and that I should be very possibly wafted for hundreds or even thousands of
• 7:24:45
  miles far from Erewhon and the Erewhonians. Already I had removed the wrappings and
• 7:24:52
  freed Arowhena, but I soon covered her up with them again, for it
• 7:24:56
  was already very cold, and she was half stupefied with the strangeness of her
• 7:24:59
  position. And now began a time dreamlike and delirious, of which I do
• 7:25:04
  not suppose that I shall ever recover. A distinct recollection. Some things I
• 7:25:08
  can recall, as that we were ere long enveloped in vapor, which froze
• 7:25:14
  upon my mustache and whiskers. Then comes a memory of sitting for hours and
• 7:25:18
  hours in a thick fog, hearing no sound but my own breathing, and
• 7:25:22
  Arowhenas, for we hardly spoke, and seeing no sight but the car beneath
• 7:25:26
  us and beside us, and the dark balloon above. Perhaps the most painful
• 7:25:32
  feeling when the earth was hidden was that the balloon was motionless, though our
• 7:25:36
  only hope lay in our going forward with an extreme of speed. From time
• 7:25:40
  to time through a rift in the clouds, I caught a glimpse of earth,
• 7:25:44
  and was thankful to perceive that we must be flying forward faster than in
• 7:25:48
  an express train. But no sooner was the rift closed than the old conviction
• 7:25:52
  of our being stationary returned in full force, and was not to be reasoned
• 7:25:56
  with. There was another feeling, also, which was nearly bad, For
• 7:26:00
  as a child of fears, it has gone blind in a long tunnel.
• 7:26:03
  If there is no light, so ere the earth had been many minutes hidden,
• 7:26:07
  I became half frightened, less we might not have broken away from it
• 7:26:11
  clean and for ever. Now and again I ate and gave food to Arowhena.
• 7:26:15
  But by guess work as regards time, then came darkness, a dreadful,
• 7:26:19
  dreary time, without even the moon to cheer us. With the dawn,
• 7:26:23
  the scene was changed. The clouds were gone, and morning stars were
• 7:26:27
  shining. The rising of the splendid sun remained still impressed upon me as the
• 7:26:33
  most glorious that I have ever seen. Beneath us there was an embossed chain
• 7:26:37
  of mountains, with snow fresh fallen upon them, but we were far above
• 7:26:41
  them. We both of us felt our breathing seriously affected. But I would
• 7:26:45
  not allow the balloon to descend a single inch, not knowing for how long
• 7:26:51
  we might not need all the buoyancy which we could command. Indeed, I
• 7:26:55
  was thankful to find that, after nearly four and twenty hours, we were
• 7:26:59
  still at so great ahight above the earth. In a couple of hours,
• 7:27:02
  we had passed the ranges, which must have been some hundred and fifty miles
• 7:27:06
  across, and again I saw a tract of level plain extending far away to
• 7:27:10
  the horizon. I knew not where we were, and dared not descend,
• 7:27:15
  lest I should waste the power of the balloon. But I was half hopeful
• 7:27:18
  that we might be above the country from which I had originally started. I
• 7:27:22
  looked anxiously for any sign by which I could recognize it, but could see
• 7:27:26
  nothing, and feared that we might be above some distant part of Erewhon,
• 7:27:30
  or our country inhabited by savages. While I was still in doubt, the
• 7:27:34
  balloon was again wrapped in clouds, and we were left to blank space and
• 7:27:38
  to conjectures. The weary time dragged on. How I longed for my unhappy
• 7:27:45
  watch. I felt as though not even time was moving, so dumb and
• 7:27:48
  spellbound were our surroundings. Sometimes I would feel my pulse and count its beats
• 7:27:53
  for half an hour together, anything to mark the time, to prove that
• 7:27:57
  it was there, and to assure myself that we were within the blessed range
• 7:28:02
  of its influence and not gone adrift into the timelessness of eternity. I had
• 7:28:07
  been doing this for the twentieth or thirtieth time, and had fallen into a
• 7:28:11
  light sleep. I dreamed wildly of a journey in an express train, and
• 7:28:15
  of arriving at a railway station where the air was full of the sound of
• 7:28:19
  locomotive engines blowing off steam with a horrible and tremendous hissing. I woke frightened
• 7:28:25
  and uneasy. But the hissing and crashing noises pursued me now that I was
• 7:28:29
  awake, and forced me to own that they were real. What they were
• 7:28:33
  I knew not, But they grew gradually fainter and fainter, and after a
• 7:28:37
  time were lost. In a few hours, the clouds broke, and I
• 7:28:41
  saw beneath me that which made the chilled blood run even colder in my veins.
• 7:28:47
  I saw the sea, and nothing but the sea, and the main
• 7:28:51
  black but flecked with white heads of storm tossed angry waves Arowhena was sleeping quietly
• 7:28:57
  at the bottom of the car, and as I looked at her sweet and
• 7:29:00
  saintly beauty, I groaned and cursed myself for the misery into which I had
• 7:29:04
  brought her. But there was nothing for it. Now I sat and waited
• 7:29:10
  for the worst, and presently I saw signs as though that worst were soon
• 7:29:14
  to be at hand, for the balloon had begun to sink. On first
• 7:29:18
  seeing the sea, I had been impressed with the idea that we must have
• 7:29:21
  been falling. But now there could be no mistake. We were sinking,
• 7:29:25
  and that fast. I threw out a bag of ballast, and for a
• 7:29:29
  time we rose again. But in the course of a few hours the sinking
• 7:29:33
  recommenced, and I threw out another bag. Then the battle commenced in earnest.
• 7:29:38
  It lasted all that afternoon and through the night. Until the following evening.
• 7:29:42
  I had seen never a sail, nor a sign of a sail,
• 7:29:45
  though I had half blinded myself with straining my eyes incessantly in every direction.
• 7:29:51
  We had parted with everything but the clothes which we had upon our backs.
• 7:29:55
  Food and water were gone. All thrown out to the wheeling albatrosses. In
• 7:29:59
  order to say it was a few hours or even minutes from the sea.
• 7:30:03
  I did not throw away the books till we were within a few feet of
• 7:30:07
  the water, and clung to my manuscripts to the very last hope there seemed
• 7:30:11
  none whatever. Yet strangely enough, we were neither of us utterly hopeless.
• 7:30:18
  And even when the evil that we dreaded was upon us, and that which
• 7:30:22
  we greatly feared had come, we sat in the car of the balloon,
• 7:30:25
  with the waters up to our middle, and still smiled with a ghastly hopefulness
• 7:30:30
  to one another. He who has crossed the Saint Goddard will remember that below
• 7:30:36
  Andermatt there is one of those alpine gorges which reached the very utmost limits of
• 7:30:41
  the sublime and terrible. The feelings of the traveler have become more and more
• 7:30:45
  highly wrought at every step, until at last the naked and overhanging precipices seemed
• 7:30:51
  to close above his head. As he crosses a bridge hung in mid air
• 7:30:55
  over a roaring waterfall, and enters on the darkness of a tunnel hewn out
• 7:30:59
  of the rock, What can be in store for him on emerging, surely
• 7:31:03
  something even wilder and more desolate than that which he has seen already. Yet
• 7:31:07
  his imagination is paralyzed and can suggest no fancy or vision of anything to surpass
• 7:31:14
  the reality which he had just witnessed. Awed and breathless, he advances when
• 7:31:18
  lo the light of the afternoon sun welcomes him as he leaves the tunnel,
• 7:31:23
  and behold a smiling valley, a babbling brook, a village with tall belfries,
• 7:31:30
  and meadows of brilliant green. These are the things which greet him,
• 7:31:33
  and he smiles to himself as the terror passes away, and in another moment
• 7:31:38
  is forgotten. So fared it now with ourselves. We had been in the
• 7:31:44
  water some two or three hours, and the night had come upon us.
• 7:31:48
  We had said farewell for the hundredth time, and had resigned ourselves to meet
• 7:31:52
  the end. Indeed, I was myself battling with a drowsiness, from which
• 7:31:57
  it was only too probable that I should never wake. When suddenly Arowhena touched
• 7:32:03
  me on the shoulder and pointed to a light and to a dark mass which
• 7:32:07
  was bearing right upon us. A cry for help, loud and clear and
• 7:32:11
  shrill, broke forth from both of us at once, and in another five
• 7:32:15
  minutes we were carried by kind and tender hands onto the deck of an Italian
• 7:32:21
  vessel. End of Chapter twenty eight, Chapter twenty nine conclusion. The ship
• 7:32:27
  was the Principe Umberto, bound from Calao to Genoa. She had carried a
• 7:32:33
  number of emigrants to Rio, had gone thence to Callao, where she had
• 7:32:36
  taken in the cargo of guano, and was now on her way home.
• 7:32:40
  The captain was a certain Giovanni Gianni, a native of Sestry. He has
• 7:32:45
  kindly allowed me to refer to him in case the truth of my story should
• 7:32:48
  be disputed, But I grieved to say that I suffered him to mislead himself
• 7:32:52
  in some important particulars. I should add that when we were picked up,
• 7:32:56
  we were a thousand miles from land. As soon as we were on board,
• 7:33:00
  the captain began questioning us about the siege of Paris, from which city
• 7:33:04
  he had assumed that we must have come. Notwithstanding our immense distance from Europe,
• 7:33:10
  as may be supposed, I had not heard a syllable about the war
• 7:33:12
  between France and Germany, and was too ill to do more than assent to
• 7:33:15
  all that he chose to put into my mouth. My knowledge of Italian is
• 7:33:19
  very imperfect, and I gathered little from anything that he said. But I
• 7:33:23
  was glad to conceal the true point of our departure, and resolved to take
• 7:33:27
  any cue that he chose to give me. The line that thus suggested itself
• 7:33:33
  was that there had been ten or twelve others in the balloon, that I
• 7:33:36
  was an English milord and arowhena our Russian countess, that all the others had
• 7:33:40
  been drowned, and that the despatches which we had carried were lost. I
• 7:33:44
  came afterwards to learn that this story would not have been credible had not the
• 7:33:48
  captain been for some weeks at sea, For I found that when we were
• 7:33:51
  picked up, the Germans had already long been masters of Paris. As it
• 7:33:56
  was, the captain settled the whole story for me, and I was well
• 7:33:59
  content. In a few days we sighted an English vessel bound from Melbourne to
• 7:34:03
  London with wool. At my earnest request, in spite of stormy weather which
• 7:34:07
  rendered it dangerous for a boat to take us from one ship to the other,
• 7:34:11
  the captain consented to signal the English vessel, and we were received on
• 7:34:15
  board, but we were transferred with such difficulty that no communication took place as
• 7:34:21
  to the manner of our being found. I did indeed hear the Italian mate,
• 7:34:26
  who was in charge of the boat, shout out something in French to
• 7:34:29
  the effect that we had been picked up from a balloon. But the noise
• 7:34:32
  of the wind was so great, and the captain understood so little French,
• 7:34:36
  that he caught nothing of the truth, and it was assumed that we were
• 7:34:38
  two persons who had been saved from shipwreck. When the captain asked me in
• 7:34:42
  what ship I had been wrecked, I said that a party of us had
• 7:34:45
  been carried out to sea in a pleasure boat by a strong current, and
• 7:34:49
  that Arowhena whom I described as a Peruvian lady, and I were alone saved.
• 7:34:56
  There were several passengers whose goodness towards us we can never repat. Hey
• 7:35:00
  I grieved to think that they cannot fail to discover that we did not take
• 7:35:03
  them fully into our confidence. But had we told them all, they would
• 7:35:07
  not have believed us. And I was determined that no one should hear of
• 7:35:11
  erewhon or have the chance of getting there before me as long as I could
• 7:35:15
  prevent it. Indeed, the recollection of the many falsehoods which I was then
• 7:35:19
  obliged to tell would render my life miserable, were I not sustained by the
• 7:35:23
  consolations of my religion. Among the passengers there was a most estimable clergyman,
• 7:35:30
  by whom Arowhena and I were married within a very few days of our coming
• 7:35:33
  on board. After a prosperous voyage of about two months, we sighted the
• 7:35:38
  land's End, and in another week we were landed at London. A liberal
• 7:35:42
  subscription was made for us on board the ship, so that we found ourselves
• 7:35:47
  in no immediate difficulty about money. I accordingly took Arowhena down into Somersetshire,
• 7:35:52
  where my mother and sisters had resided when I last heard of them. To
• 7:35:56
  my great sorrow, I found that my mother was dead, and that her
• 7:36:00
  death had been accelerated by the report of my having been killed, which had
• 7:36:04
  been brought to my employer's station by Chaubach. It appeared that he must have
• 7:36:08
  waited for a few days to see whether I returned. That he then considered
• 7:36:12
  it safe to assume that I should never do so, and had accordingly made
• 7:36:17
  up a story about my having fallen into a whirlpool of seathing waters while coming
• 7:36:21
  down the gorge homeward. Search was made for my body, but the rascal
• 7:36:25
  had chosen to drown me in a place for there would be no chance of
• 7:36:27
  its ever being recovered. My sisters were both married, but neither the husband's
• 7:36:33
  was rich. No one seemed overjoyed on my return, and I soon discovered
• 7:36:37
  that when a man's relations have once mourned for him is dead, they seldom
• 7:36:41
  liked the prospect of having to mourn for him a second time. Accordingly,
• 7:36:45
  I returned to London with my wife, and through the assistance of an old
• 7:36:49
  friend, supported myself by writing good little stories for the magazines and for a
• 7:36:55
  track society. I was well paid, and I trust that I may not
• 7:36:59
  be concit are presumptuous and saying that some of the most popular approchures, which
• 7:37:03
  are distributed in the streets, and which are to be found in the waiting
• 7:37:07
  rooms of the railway stations, have proceeded from my pen. During the time
• 7:37:11
  that I could spare, I arranged my notes and diary till they assumed their
• 7:37:15
  present shape. There remains for me nothing to add save to unfold the scheme
• 7:37:21
  which I proposed for the conversion of Airwon. That scheme has only been quite
• 7:37:26
  recently decided upon as the one which seems most likely to be successful. It
• 7:37:32
  will be seen at once that it would be madness for me to go with
• 7:37:34
  ten or a dozen subordinate missionaries by the same way as that which led me
• 7:37:38
  to discover Erwon. I should be in prison for Typhus, besides being handed
• 7:37:44
  over to the Straighteners for having run away with Arowhena an even darker fate to
• 7:37:48
  which I dare hardly again allude, would be reserved for my devoted fellow laborers.
• 7:37:53
  It is plain therefore, that some other way must be found for getting
• 7:37:57
  at the Arewhonians, and I am thankful to say that such another way is
• 7:38:02
  not wanting. One of the rivers which descends from the snowy mountains and passes
• 7:38:07
  through Erewhon is known to be navigable for several hundred miles from its mouth.
• 7:38:11
  Its upper waters have never yet been explored, but I feel little doubt that
• 7:38:15
  it will be found possible to take a light gunboat, for we must protect
• 7:38:18
  ourselves to the outskirts of the Erewhonian country. I propose therefore, that one
• 7:38:25
  of his associations should be formed in which the risk of each of its members
• 7:38:29
  is confined to the amount of his stake in the concern. The first step
• 7:38:33
  would be to drop of prospectus. In this I would advise that no mention
• 7:38:37
  should be made of the fact that the Arwhanians are the lost tribes. The
• 7:38:41
  discovery is one of absorbing interest to myself, but it is of sentimental rather
• 7:38:45
  than commercial value, and business is business. The capital to be raised should
• 7:38:51
  not be less than fifty thousand pounds, and might be either in five or
• 7:38:56
  ten pounds shares, as hereafter determined. This should be amply s off for
• 7:39:00
  the expenses of an experimental voyage. When the money had been subscribed, it
• 7:39:04
  would be our duty to charter a steamer of some twelve or fourteen hundred tons
• 7:39:08
  burden and with accommodation for a cargo of steerage passengers. She should carry two
• 7:39:15
  or three guns in case of her being attacked by savages at the mouth of
• 7:39:18
  the river. Boats of considerable size should be also provided, and I think
• 7:39:22
  it would be desirable that these also should carry two or three six pounders.
• 7:39:27
  The ship should be taken up the river as far as was considered safe,
• 7:39:32
  and a picked party should then ascend in the boats. The presence of both
• 7:39:36
  Arowhena and myself would be necessary at this stage, inasmuch as our knowledge of
• 7:39:40
  the language would disarm suspicion and facilitate negotiations. We should begin by representing the
• 7:39:47
  advantages afforded to labor in the colony of Queensland, and point out to the
• 7:39:51
  Erewhonians that by emigrating thither they would be able to amass each and all of
• 7:39:56
  them enormous fortunes, a fact which would be easily provable by a reference to
• 7:40:00
  statistics. I have no doubt that a very great number might be thus induced
• 7:40:06
  to come back with us in the larger boats, and that we could fill
• 7:40:08
  our vessel with emigrants in three or four journeys. Should we be attacked,
• 7:40:15
  our course would be even simpler, for the Iirwanians have no gunpowder and would
• 7:40:18
  be so surprised with its effects that we should be able to capture as many
• 7:40:22
  as we chose. In this case, we should feel able to engage them
• 7:40:26
  on more advantageous terms, for they would be prisoners of war. But even
• 7:40:32
  though we were to meet with no violence. I doubt not that a cargo
• 7:40:36
  of seven or eight hundred Erwanians could be induced when they were once on board
• 7:40:40
  the vessel, to sign an agreement which should be mutually advantageous both to us
• 7:40:45
  and them. We should then proceed to Queensland and dispose of our engagement with
• 7:40:49
  the Irewhanians to the sugar browers of that settlement, who are in great want
• 7:40:53
  of labor. It is believed that the money thus realized would enable us to
• 7:40:57
  declare a handsome dividend and leave the considerable balance which might be spent in repeating
• 7:41:03
  our operations and bringing over other cargoes of Urwanians with fresh consequent profits. In
• 7:41:07
  fact, we could go backwards and forwards as long as there was a demand
• 7:41:11
  for labour in Queensland, or indeed in any other Christian colony, for the
• 7:41:15
  supply of Urwanians would be unlimited, and they could be packed closely and fed
• 7:41:19
  at a very reasonable cost. It would be my duty and arowhenas to see
• 7:41:25
  that our immigrants should be boarded and lodged in the households of religious sugar growers.
• 7:41:30
  These persons would give them the benefit of that instruction whereof they stand so
• 7:41:33
  greatly in need each day, as soon as they could be spared from their
• 7:41:37
  work in the plantations, they would be assembled for praise and be thoroughly grounded
• 7:41:41
  in the church catechism, while the whole of every Sabbath should be devoted to
• 7:41:45
  singing psalms in church going. This must be insisted upon both in order to
• 7:41:52
  put a stop to any uneasy feeling which might show itself either in Queensland or
• 7:41:56
  in the mother country, as to the means whereby the Arwanians of ben obtained,
• 7:42:00
  and also because it would give our own shareholders the comfort of reflecting that
• 7:42:03
  they were saving souls and filling their own pockets at one and the same moment.
• 7:42:08
  By the time the immigrants had got too old for work, they would
• 7:42:11
  have become thoroughly instructed in religion. They could then be shipped back to Erwan
• 7:42:15
  and carry the good seed with them. I can see no pag or difficulty
• 7:42:21
  about the matter, and trust that this book will sufficiently advertise the scheme to
• 7:42:26
  ensure the subscription of the necessary capital. As soon as this is forthcoming,
• 7:42:30
  I will guarantee that I convert the Erewhonians not only into good Christians, but
• 7:42:34
  into a source of considerable profit to the shareholders. I should add that I
• 7:42:40
  cannot clean the credit for having originated the above scheme. I had been for
• 7:42:44
  months at my wits end, forming plan after plan for the evangelization of Rwon.
• 7:42:49
  When, by one of those special interpositions which should be a sufficient answer
• 7:42:53
  to the skeptic and make even the most confirmed rationalists air rational, my eye
• 7:42:59
  was directed to the following paragraph and the Times newspaper of one of the first
• 7:43:03
  days in January eighteen seventy two Polynesians in Queensland. The Marquis of normanby the
• 7:43:11
  new Governor of Queensland, has completed his inspection of the northern districts of the
• 7:43:15
  colony. It is stated that at Maccay, one of the best sugar growing
• 7:43:19
  districts, his Excellency saw a good deal to Polynesians. In the course of
• 7:43:25
  a speech to those who entertained him there, the Marquis said, I have
• 7:43:29
  been told that the means by which Polynesians were obtained were not legitimate, but
• 7:43:33
  I have failed to perceive this in so far at least as Queensland is concerned.
• 7:43:38
  And if one can judge by the countenances and manners of the Polynesians.
• 7:43:44
  They experienced no regret at their position, but his excellency pointed out the advantage
• 7:43:48
  of giving them religious instruction. It would tend to set at rest an uneasy
• 7:43:53
  feeling which at present existed in the country, to know that they were inclined
• 7:43:57
  to retain the Polynesians and teaching them religion. I feel that comment is unnecessary,
• 7:44:03
  and will therefore conclude with one word of thanks to the reader who may
• 7:44:07
  have had the patience to follow me through my adventures without losing his temper,
• 7:44:11
  but with two for any who may write at once to the Secretary of the
• 7:44:17
  Erewhon Evangelization Company Limited, at the address which shall hereafter be advertised, and
• 7:44:22
  request to have his name put down as a shareholder. PostScript. I had
• 7:44:27
  just received and corrected the last proof of the foregoing volume, and was walking
• 7:44:32
  down the strand from Temple Bar to Charing Cross, when, on passing Exeter
• 7:44:37
  Hall, I saw a number of devout looking people crowding into the building with
• 7:44:41
  faces full of interested and complacent anticipation. I stopped and saw an announcement that
• 7:44:47
  a missionary meeting was to be held forthwith, and that the native missionary,
• 7:44:51
  the Reverend William Habocook, from the colony from which I had started on my
• 7:44:56
  adventures, would be introduced and make a sure address. After some mortal difficulty,
• 7:45:02
  I obtained admission and heard two or three speeches which were preparatory to the
• 7:45:06
  introduction of mister Habacook. One of these struck me as perhaps the most presumptuous
• 7:45:11
  that I had ever heard. The speaker said that the races of whom mister
• 7:45:15
  Habocok was a specimen were, in all probability the lost and tribes of Israel.
• 7:45:19
  I dared not contradict him then, but I felt angry and injured at
• 7:45:23
  hearing the speaker jumped to so preposterous a conclusion upon such insufficient grounds, the
• 7:45:30
  discovery of the ten tribes of mine and mine only. I was still in
• 7:45:33
  the very height of indignation when there was a murmur of expectation in the hall
• 7:45:37
  and mister Habocook was brought forward. The reader may judge of my surprise at
• 7:45:42
  finding that he was none other than my old friend Chaubach. My jaw dropped
• 7:45:47
  and my eyes almost started out of my head with astonishment. The poor fellow
• 7:45:51
  was dreadfully frightened when the storm of applause which greeted his introductions seemed only to
• 7:45:56
  add to his confusion. I dare not trust myself to report his speech.
• 7:46:00
  Indeed, I could hardly listen to it, for I was nearly choked with
• 7:46:03
  trying to suppress my feelings. I am sure that I caught the words adelaide
• 7:46:08
  the Queen Dowager, and I thought that I heard Mary Magdalen shortly afterwards,
• 7:46:14
  though I had then to leave the hall for fear of being turned out.
• 7:46:17
  While on the staircase I heard another burst of prolonged and rapturous applause. So
• 7:46:22
  I suppose the audience were satisfied. The feelings that came uppermost in my mind
• 7:46:26
  were hardly of a very solemn character. But I thought of my first acquaintance
• 7:46:32
  with Chaubach, of the scene in the woodshed, of the inneubrable eyes.
• 7:46:36
  He had told me, of his repeated attempts on the Brandy, and as
• 7:46:38
  many an incident which I have not thought it worthwhile to dwell upon. And
• 7:46:42
  I could not but derive some satisfaction from the hope that my own efforts might
• 7:46:47
  have contributed to the change which had been doubtless wrought upon him, and that
• 7:46:51
  the rite which I had performed, however unprofessionally, on that wild upland riverbed,
• 7:46:56
  had not been wholly without effect. I trust that what I have written
• 7:47:00
  about him in the earlier part of my book may not be libelous, and
• 7:47:03
  that it may do him no harm with his employers. He was then unregenerate.
• 7:47:08
  I must certainly fight him out and have a talk with him. But
• 7:47:11
  before I shall have time to do so, these pages will be in the
• 7:47:15
  hands of the public. At the last moment I see a probability of a
• 7:47:19
  complication which causes me much uneasiness. Please subscribe quickly, addressed to the mansion
• 7:47:26
  house, cared of the Lord Mayor, whom I will instructor receive names and
• 7:47:29
  subscriptions from me until I can organize a committee. End of Chapter twenty nine.