Page 163 - erewhon

invisible to human eyesight. They are capable of being pro-
pitiated by mankind and of coming to the assistance of
those who ask their aid. Their interest in human affairs is
keen, and on the whole beneficent; but they become very
angry if neglected, and punish rather the first they come
upon, than the actual person who has offended them; their
fury being blind when it is raised, though never raised with-
out reason. They will not punish with any less severity when
people sin against them from ignorance, and without the
chance of having had knowledge; they will take no excuses
of this kind, but are even as the English law, which assumes
itself to be known to every one.
Thus they have a law that two pieces of matter may not
occupy the same space at the same moment, which law is pre-
sided over and administered by the gods of time and space
jointly, so that if a flying stone and a man’s head attempt to
outrage these gods, by ‘arrogating a right which they do not
possess’ (for so it is written in one of their books), and to oc-
cupy the same space simultaneously, a severe punishment,
sometimes even death itself, is sure to follow, without any
regard to whether the stone knew that the man’s head was
there, or the head the stone; this at least is their view of the
common accidents of life. Moreover, they hold their deities
to be quite regardless of motives. With them it is the thing
done which is everything, and the motive goes for nothing.
Thus they hold it strictly forbidden for a man to go
without common air in his lungs for more than a very few
minutes; and if by any chance he gets into the water, the air-
god is very angry, and will not suffer it; no matter whether

1 Erewhon