Page 100 - erewhon

would seem to say, ‘I, if I were you, should be a better man
than you are,’ a tone which is held quite reasonable in re-
gard to physical ailment. Hence, though they conceal ill
health by every cunning and hypocrisy and artifice which
they can devise, they are quite open about the most flagrant
mental diseases, should they happen to exist, which to do
the people justice is not often. Indeed, there are some who
are, so to speak, spiritual valetudinarians, and who make
themselves exceedingly ridiculous by their nervous sup-
position that they are wicked, while they are very tolerable
people all the time. This however is exceptional; and on the
whole they use much the same reserve or unreserve about
the state of their moral welfare as we do about our health.
Hence all the ordinary greetings among ourselves, such
as, How do you do? and the like, are considered signs of
gross ill-breeding; nor do the politer classes tolerate even
such a common complimentary remark as telling a man
that he is looking well. They salute each other with, ‘I hope
you are good this morning;’ or ‘I hope you have recovered
from the snappishness from which you were suffering when
I last saw you;’ and if the person saluted has not been good,
or is still snappish, he says so at once and is condoled with
accordingly. Indeed, the straighteners have gone so far as to
give names from the hypothetical language (as taught at the
Colleges of Unreason), to all known forms of mental indis-
position, and to classify them according to a system of their
own, which, though I could not understand it, seemed to
work well in practice; for they are always able to tell a man
what is the matter with him as soon as they have heard his