Erewhon quotes

neither, provided they did not actually see the money dropping out of their pockets, nor suffer immediate physical pain, would they listen to any arguments as to the waste of money and happiness which their folly caused them.

But this had an effect of which I have little reason to complain, for I was allowed almost to call them lifelong self-deceivers to their faces, and they said it was quite true, but that it did not matter.

I must not conclude without expressing my most sincere thanks to my critics and to the public for the leniency and consideration with which they have treated my adventures.

and there are few of us who are not protected from the keenest pain by our inability to see what it is that we have done, what we are suffering, and what we truly are.

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.

We found as soft a piece of ground as we could—though it was all stony—and having collected grass and so disposed of ourselves that we had a little hollow for our hipbones, we strapped our blankets around us and went to sleep.

All that I did, I did almost mechanically, for I could not realise my situation to myself, beyond knowing that I was alone, and that return through the chasm which I had just descended would be impossible.

It is a dreadful feeling that of being cut off from all one’s kind.

I was still full of hope, and built golden castles for myself as soon as I was warmed with food and fire; but I do not believe that any man could long retain his reason in such solitude, unless he had the companionship of animals.

I was still full of hope, and built golden castles for myself as soon as I was warmed with food and fire; but I do not believe that any man could long retain his reason in such solitude, unless he had the companionship of animals.

One begins doubting one’s own identity.

I remember deriving comfort even from the sight of my blankets, and the sound of my watch ticking—things which seemed to link me to other people;

and I strongly recommend him to remain in Europe if he can; or, at any rate, in some country which has been explored and settled, rather than go into places where others have not been before him.

Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.

I had not been long enough among them to ascertain their habits, but they did not give me the impression of being a religious people.

This too was natural: the ten tribes had been always lamentably irreligious.

But could I not make them change? To restore the lost ten tribes of Israel to a knowledge of the only truth: here would be indeed an immortal crown of glory! My heart beat fast and furious as I entertained the thought.

her hands and feet might have served as models to a sculptor. Having set the stew upon the table, she retired with a glance of pity, whereon (remembering pity’s kinsman) I decided that she should pity me a little more.

She returned with a bottle and a glass, and found me sitting on the bed with my hands over my face, looking the very picture of abject misery, and, like all pictures, rather untruthful.

As I watched her, through my fingers, out of the room again, I felt sure that she was exceedingly sorry for me. Her back being turned, I set to work and ate my dinner, which was excellent.

her hair was neatly braided from off her forehead; her complexion was simply exquisite; her figure as robust as was consistent with the most perfect female beauty, yet not more so; her hands and feet might have served as models to a sculptor.

Having set the stew upon the table, she retired with a glance of pity, whereon (remembering pity’s kinsman) I decided that she should pity me a little more.

She returned with a bottle and a glass, and found me sitting on the bed with my hands over my face, looking the very picture of abject misery, and, like all pictures, rather untruthful.

… what passed between us on this occasion, save that we were reconciled, and that she brought me surreptitiously a hot glass of spirits and water before I went to bed, as also a pile of extra blankets, and that next morning I was quite well.

I never remember to have lost a cold so rapidly.

This little affair explained much which had hitherto puzzled me.

“Ill or poor!” interrupted the interpreter, with a face of great alarm. “So that’s your notion of propriety!

You would consort with the basest criminals, and yet deem simple embezzlement a bar to friendly intercourse.

I cannot understand you.”

Scarcely was the ceremony of my introduction well completed before a servant announced that dinner was ready in the next room. I was exceedingly hungry, and the dinner was beyond all praise. Can the reader wonder that I began to consider myself in excellent quarters?

“That man embezzle money?” thought I to myself; “impossible.”

But I noticed that my host was uneasy during the whole meal, and that he ate nothing but a little bread and milk; towards the end of dinner there came a tall lean man with a black beard, to whom Mr.

With this gentleman Mr. Nosnibor retired into another room, from which there presently proceeded a sound of weeping and wailing. I could hardly believe my ears, but in a few minutes I got to know for a certainty that they came from Mr. Nosnibor himself.

“Poor papa,” said Arowhena, as she helped herself composedly to the salt, “how terribly he has suffered.”

“Yes,” answered her mother; “but I think he is quite out of danger now.”

The strange part of the story, however, is that though they ascribe moral defects to the effect of misfortune either in character or surroundings, they will not listen to the plea of misfortune in cases that in England meet with sympathy and commiseration only.

Ill luck of any kind, or even ill treatment at the hands of others, is considered an offence against society, inasmuch as it makes people uncomfortable to hear of it.

Loss of fortune, therefore, or loss of some dear friend on whom another was much dependent, is punished hardly less severely than physical delinquency.

The greater number, however, take no harm by the excursions into the various departments of vice which it is incumbent upon them to study.

For the Erewhonians hold that unalloyed virtue is not a thing to be immoderately indulged in.

I was shown more than one case in which the real or supposed virtues of parents were visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation.

but they urge that there is much pseudo-virtue going about, which is apt to let people in very badly before they find it out.

Those men, they say, are best who are not remarkable either for vice or virtue.

I told them about Hogarth’s idle and industrious apprentices, but they did not seem to think that the industrious apprentice was a very nice person.

but they urge that there is much pseudo-virtue going about, which is apt to let people in very badly before they find it out. Those men, they say, are best who are not remarkable either for vice or virtue.

I told them about Hogarth’s idle and industrious apprentices, but they did not seem to think that the industrious apprentice was a very nice person.

The lad, who was undefended, pleaded that he was young, inexperienced, greatly in awe of his guardian, and without independent professional advice. “Young man,” said the judge sternly, “do not talk nonsense.

People have no right to be young, inexperienced, greatly in awe of their guardians, and without independent professional advice.

If by such indiscretions they outrage the moral sense of their friends, they must expect to suffer accordingly.” He then ordered the prisoner to apologise to his guardian, and to receive twelve strokes with a cat-of-nine-tails.

… to lay these things to your charge, I answer that whether your being in a consumption is your fault or no, it is a fault in you, and it is my duty to see that against such faults as this the commonwealth shall be protected.

You may say that it is your misfortune to be criminal; I answer that it is your crime to be unfortunate.

“Lastly, I should point out that even though the jury had acquitted you—a supposition that I cannot seriously entertain—I should have felt it my duty to inflict a sentence hardly less severe than that which I must pass at present;

This universal unsuspecting confidence was imparted by sympathy to myself, in spite of all my training in opinions so widely different.

So it is with most of us: that which we observe to be taken as a matter of course by those around us, we take as a matter of course ourselves.

And after all, it is our duty to do this, save upon grave occasion.

it is the normal condition of human life that this should be done, and no right-minded person will complain of being subjected to the common treatment. There is no alternative open to us.

It is idle to say that men are not responsible for their misfortunes. What is responsibility?

Surely to be responsible means to be liable to have to give an answer should it be demanded, and all things which live are responsible for their lives and actions should society see fit to question them through the mouth of its authorised agent.

Surely to be responsible means to be liable to have to give an answer should it be demanded, and all things which live are responsible for their lives and actions should society see fit to question them through the mouth of its authorised agent.

What is the offence of a lamb that we should rear it, and tend it, and lull it into security, for the express purpose of killing it? Its offence is the misfortune of being something which society wants to eat, and which cannot defend itself.

This is ample. Who shall limit the right of society except society itself? And what consideration for the individual is tolerable unless society be the gainer thereby?

we would have it ourselves at once. For property is robbery, but then, we are all robbers or would-be robbers together, and have found it essential to organise our thieving, as we have found it necessary to organise our lust and our revenge.

Property, marriage, the law; as the bed to the river, so rule and convention to the instinct; and woe to him who tampers with the banks while the flood is flowing.

But to return. Even in England a man on board a ship with yellow fever is held responsible for his mischance, no matter what his being kept in quarantine may cost him. He may catch the fever and die; we cannot help it;

if this were otherwise we should not let him keep his money for a single hour; we would have it ourselves at once.

For property is robbery, but then, we are all robbers or would-be robbers together, and have found it essential to organise our thieving, as we have found it necessary to organise our lust and our revenge.

Property, marriage, the law; as the bed to the river, so rule and convention to the instinct; and woe to him who tampers with the banks while the flood is flowing.

The Erewhonians regard death with less abhorrence than disease.

If it is an offence at all, it is one beyond the reach of the law, which is therefore silent on the subject;

… cannot be quite certain that he is going to die, for he cannot know this till his death has actually taken place, and it will be too late then for him to discover that he was going to die at the appointed hour after all.

The Erewhonians, therefore, hold that death, like life, is an affair of being more frightened than hurt.

They burn their dead, and the ashes are presently scattered over any piece of ground which the deceased may himself have chosen. No one is permitted to refuse this hospitality to the dead:

Statues so begotten could never be anything but deformities, and this is the way in which they are sure to be begotten, as soon as the art of making them at all has become widely practised.

I know not why, but all the noblest arts hold in perfection but for a very little moment.

They soon reach a height from which they begin to decline, and when they have begun to decline it is a pity that they cannot be knocked on the head; for an art is like a living organism—better dead than dying.

They soon reach a height from which they begin to decline, and when they have begun to decline it is a pity that they cannot be knocked on the head; for an art is like a living organism—better dead than dying.

There is no way of making an aged art young again; it must be born anew and grow up from infancy as a new thing, working out its own salvation from effort to effort in all fear and trembling.

The Erewhonians five hundred years ago understood nothing of all this—I doubt whether they even do so now. They wanted to get the nearest thing they could to a stuffed man whose stuffing should not grow mouldy.

… not ordered, when it was known that they would be almost certainly broken up after fifty years, and in the second, public sculptors knowing their work to be so ephemeral, scamped it to an extent that made it offensive even to the most uncultured eye.

Hence before long subscribers took to paying the sculptor for the statue of their dead statesmen, on condition that he did not make it.

The tribute of respect was thus paid to the deceased, the public sculptors were not mulcted, and the rest of the public suffered no inconvenience.

On this Mrs. Nosnibor said that it was indeed melancholy to see what little heed people paid to the most precious of all institutions.

I could say nothing in reply, but I have ever been of opinion that the greater part of mankind do approximately know where they get that which does them good.

Mrs. Nosnibor went on to say that I must not think there was any want of confidence in the bank because I had seen so few people there;

… in a remote and ethereal region, but that justice is only the personified expression of certain modes of human thought and action—they say that he denies the existence of justice in denying her personality, and that he is a wanton disturber of men’s religious convictions.

They detest nothing so much as any attempt to lead them to higher spiritual conceptions of the deities whom they profess to worship.

Arowhena and I had a pitched battle on this point, and should have had many more but for my prudence in allowing her to get the better of me.

She has, however, made a gloss upon her original faith to the effect that her baby and I are the only human beings exempt from the vengeance of the deities for not believing in their personality.

She is quite clear that we are exempted. She should never have so strong a conviction of it otherwise.

How it has come about she does not know, neither does she wish to know; there are things which it is better not to know and this is one of them;

… seen a radiance upon the face of those who were worshipping the divine either in art or nature—in picture or statue—in field or cloud or sea—in man, woman, or child—which I have never seen kindled by any talking about the nature and attributes of God.

Mention but the word divinity, and our sense of the divine is clouded.

Nevertheless, her remarks have haunted me, and

I have since met with many very godly people who have had a great knowledge of divinity, but no sense of the divine

:

I should have liked to have persuaded half-a-dozen of them to come over to England and go upon the stage, for they had most of them a keen sense of humour and a taste for acting: they would be of great use to us.

The example of a real gentleman is, if I may say so without profanity, the best of all gospels

; such a man upon the stage becomes a potent humanising influence, an Ideal which all may look upon for a shilling.

But of this more anon: what I would relate here is their manner of dealing with those who do come.

It is a distinguishing peculiarity of the Erewhonians that when they profess themselves to be quite certain about any matter, and avow it as a base on which they are to build a system of practice, they seldom quite believe in it.

If they smell a rat about the precincts of a cherished institution, they will always stop their noses to it if they can.

It is a distinguishing peculiarity of the Erewhonians that when they profess themselves to be quite certain about any matter, and avow it as a base on which they are to build a system of practice, they seldom quite believe in it.

If they smell a rat about the precincts of a cherished institution, they will always stop their noses to it if they can.

This is what most of them did in this matter of the unborn, for I cannot (and never could) think that they seriously believed in their mythology concerning preexistence: they did and they did not; they did not know themselves what they believed;

It was perhaps to be regretted that compromise should be as necessary as it was; still it was necessary, and the sooner the boy got to understand it the better for himself.

But they never tell this to the boy.

From the book of their mythology about the unborn I made the extracts which will form the following chapter.

The Erewhonians say that we are drawn through life backwards; or again, that we go onwards into the future as into a dark corridor.

Time walks beside us and flings back shutters as we advance; but the light thus given often dazzles us, and deepens the darkness which is in front.

We can see but little at a time, and heed that little far less than our apprehension of what we shall see next;

and if any were to be born too prescient now, he would be culled out by natural selection, before he had time to transmit so peace-destroying a faculty to his descendants.

Strange fate for man! He must perish if he get that, which he must perish if he strive not after.

If he strive not after it he is no better than the brutes, if he get it he is more miserable than the devils.

Ingratitude such as this is not uncommon, yet fancy what it must be to bear!

It is hard upon the duckling to have been hatched by a hen, but is it not also hard upon the hen to have hatched the duckling?

“Consider it again, we pray you, not for our sake but for your own. Your initial character you must draw by lot; but whatever it is, it can only come to a tolerably successful development after long training;

But this, which would appear to be so simple and obvious, seems also to be a thing which not one in a hundred thousand is able to put in practice.

It is only the very great and good who have any living faith in the simplest axioms

; and there are few who are so holy as to feel that 19 and 13 make 32 as certainly as 2 and 2 make 4.

whilst “compulsory affection” is the idea which lies at the root of their word for the deepest anguish.

There is no talisman in the word “parent” which can generate miracles of affection

, and I can well believe that my own child might find it less of a calamity to lose both Arowhena and myself when he is six years old, than to find us again when he is sixty—a sentence which I would not pen did …

such schools are cloister life as against the rough and tumble of the world; they unfit, rather than fit for work in the open. An art can only be learned in the workshop of those who are winning their bread by it.

Boys, as a rule, hate the artificial, and delight in the actual; give them the chance of earning, and they will soon earn.

When parents find that their children, instead of being made artificially burdensome, will early begin to contribute to the well-being of the family, they will soon leave off killing them, and will seek to have that plenitude of offspring which they now avoid.

they say, “How very much he must have done for society before society could have been prevailed upon to give him so much money;” so magnificent an organisation overawes them; they regard it as a thing dropped from heaven.

“Money,” they say, “is the symbol of duty, it is the sacrament of having done for mankind that which mankind wanted. Mankind may not be a very good judge, but there is no better.”

This used to shock me at first, when I remembered that it had been said on high authority that they who have riches shall enter hardly into the kingdom of heaven;

… much more often does it happen that we perceive a man to have all sorts of good qualities except money, and feel that his real duty lies in getting every halfpenny that he can persuade others to pay him for his services, and becoming rich.

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.

The above may sound irreverent, but it is conceived in a spirit of the most utter reverence for those things which do alone deserve it—that is, for the things which are, which mould us and fashion us, be they what they may;

at any rate, she turned all upon me with a sweet sad smile and said,

“Sorry? I am sorry for myself; I am sorry for you; and I am sorry for everyone.”

The words had no sooner crossed her lips than she bowed her head, gave me a look as though I were to make no answer, and left me.

Reason betrays men into the drawing of hard and fast lines, and to the defining by language—language being like the sun, which rears and then scorches.

Extremes are alone logical, but they are always absurd; the mean is illogical, but an illogical mean is better than the sheer absurdity of an extreme.

There are no follies and no unreasonablenesses so great as those which can apparently be irrefragably defended by reason itself, and there is hardly an error into which men may not easily be led if they base their conduct upon reason only.

Extremes are alone logical, but they are always absurd; the mean is illogical, but an illogical mean is better than the sheer absurdity of an extreme.

There are no follies and no unreasonablenesses so great as those which can apparently be irrefragably defended by reason itself

, and there is hardly an error into which men may not easily be led if they base their conduct upon reason only.

Of genius they make no account, for they say that everyone is a genius, more or less.

No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even a little unsound, and no one is so diseased but that some part of him will be healthy—so no man is so mentally and morally sound, but that he will be …

and no man is so mad and wicked but he will be sensible and honourable in part.

In like manner there is no genius who is not also a fool, and no fool who is not also a genius.

When I talked about originality and genius to some gentlemen whom I met at a supper party given by Mr. Thims in my honour, and said that original thought ought to be encouraged, I had to eat my words at once.

A man’s business, they hold, is to think as his neighbours do, for Heaven help him if he thinks good what they count bad.

And really it is hard to see how the Erewhonian theory differs from our own, for the word “idiot” only means a person who forms his opinions for himself.

The venerable Professor of Worldly Wisdom, a man verging on eighty but still hale, spoke to me very seriously on this subject in consequence of the few words that I had imprudently let fall in defence of genius.

“It is not our business,” he said, “to help students to think for themselves. Surely this is the very last thing which one who wishes them well should encourage them to do.

Our duty is to ensure that they shall think as we do, or at any rate, as we hold it expedient to say we do.

” In some respects, however, he was thought to hold somewhat radical opinions, for he was President of the Society for the Suppression of Useless Knowledge, and for the Completer Obliteration of the Past.

I heard of his having plucked one poor fellow for want of sufficient vagueness in his saving clauses paper. Another was sent down for having written an article on a scientific subject without having made free enough use of the words “carefully,” “patiently,” and “earnestly.”

One man was refused a degree for being too often and too seriously in the right

, while a few days before I came a whole batch had been plucked for insufficient distrust of printed matter.

He then set a paper which afforded the examinees an opportunity of repeating these blunders—which, believing the article to be by their own examiner, they of course did.

The Professor plucked every single one of them, but his action was considered to have been not quite handsome.

I told them of Homer’s noble line to the effect that a man should strive ever to be foremost and in all things to outvie his peers;

but they said that no wonder the countries in which such a detestable maxim was held in admiration were always flying at one another’s throats.

“Why,” asked one Professor, “should a man want to be better than his neighbours? Let him be thankful if he is no worse.”

I ventured feebly to say that I did not see how progress could be made in any art or science, or indeed in anything at all, without more or less self-seeking, and hence unamiability.

I ventured feebly to say that I did not see how progress could be made in any art or science, or indeed in anything at all, without more or less self-seeking, and hence unamiability.

“Of course it cannot,” said the Professor, “and therefore we object to progress.”

After which there was no more to be said. Later on, however, a young Professor took me aside and said he did not think I quite understood their views about progress.

indeed, it seemed to be counted the perfection of scholarship and good breeding among them not to have—much less to express—an opinion on any subject on which it might prove later that they had been mistaken.

The art of sitting gracefully on a fence has never, I should think, been brought to greater perfection than at the Erewhonian Colleges of Unreason.

Even when, wriggle as they may, they find themselves pinned down to some expression of definite opinion, as often as not they will argue in support of what they perfectly well know to be untrue.

but they will close on nothing but what is good to eat; of a drop of rain or a piece of stick they will take no notice.

Curious! that so unconscious a thing should have such a keen eye to its own interest.

If this is unconsciousness, where is the use of consciousness?

“

The potato says these things by doing them, which is the best of languages.

What is consciousness if this is not consciousness? We find it difficult to sympathise with the emotions of a potato; so we do with those of an oyster.

“The potato says these things by doing them, which is the best of languages. What is consciousness if this is not consciousness?

We find it difficult to sympathise with the emotions of a potato; so we do with those of an oyster.

Neither of these things makes a noise on being boiled or opened, and noise appeals to us more strongly than anything else, because we make so much about our own sufferings.

“Do not let me be misunderstood as living in fear of any actually existing machine; there is probably no known machine which is more than a prototype of future mechanical life.

The present machines are to the future as the early Saurians to man.

The largest of them will probably greatly diminish in size.

“This is all very well.

But the servant glides by imperceptible approaches into the master

; and we have come to such a pass that, even now, man must suffer terribly on ceasing to benefit the machines.

A few miserable individuals might linger, but even these in a year or two would become worse than monkeys.

Man’s very soul is due to the machines; it is a machine-made thing

: he thinks as he thinks, and feels as he feels, through the work that machines have wrought upon him, and their existence is quite as much a sine qua non for his, as his for theirs.

Are there not probably more men engaged in tending machinery than in tending men? Do not machines eat as it were by mannery?

Are we not ourselves creating our successors in the supremacy of the earth?

daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their organisation, daily giving them greater skill and supplying more and more of that self-regulating self-acting power which will be better than any intellect?

Man has now many extra-corporeal members, which are of more importance to him than a good deal of his hair, or at any rate than his whiskers.

His memory goes in his pocketbook.

He becomes more and more complex as he grows older; he will then be seen with see-engines, or perhaps with artificial teeth and hair:

… them by reason of the sanctity of his life, and his supposed inspiration by an unseen power, whose existence was now beginning to be felt, took it into his head to disquiet himself about the rights of animals—a question that so far had disturbed nobody.

All prophets are more or less fussy, and this old gentleman seems to have been one of the more fussy ones.

Being maintained at the public expense, he had ample leisure, and not content with limiting his attention to the rights of animals, he wanted to reduce right and wrong to rules, to consider the foundations of duty and of good and evil, and otherwise to …

It was found that animals were continually dying natural deaths under more or less suspicious circumstances.

Suicidal mania, again, which had hitherto been confined exclusively to donkeys, became alarmingly prevalent even among such for the most part self-respecting creatures as sheep and cattle.

It was astonishing how some of these unfortunate animals would scent out a butcher’s knife if there was one within a mile of them, and run right up against it if the butcher did not get it out of their way in time.

It was found that animals were continually dying natural deaths under more or less suspicious circumstances. Suicidal mania, again, which had hitherto been confined exclusively to donkeys, became alarmingly prevalent even among such for the most part self-respecting creatures as sheep and cattle.

It was astonishing how some of these unfortunate animals would scent out a butcher’s knife if there was one within a mile of them, and run right up against it if the butcher did not get it out of their way in time.

Dogs, again, that had been quite law-abiding as regards domestic poultry, tame rabbits, sucking pigs, or sheep and lambs, suddenly took to breaking beyond the control of their masters, and killing anything that they were told not to touch.

… from the trouble of thinking for themselves, that in a short time would-be philosophers and faddists became more powerful than ever, and gradually led their countrymen to accept all those absurd views of life, some account of which I have given in my earlier chapters.

Indeed I can see no hope for the Erewhonians till they have got to understand that reason uncorrected by instinct is as bad as instinct uncorrected by reason.