Page 168 - erewhon

CHAPTER XVII: YDGRUN

AND THE YDGRUNITES

n spite of all the to-do they make about their idols, and the
Itemples they build, and the priests and priestesses whom
they support, I could never think that their professed reli-
gion was more than skin-deep; but they had another which
they carried with them into all their actions; and although
no one from the outside of things would suspect it to have
any existence at all, it was in reality their great guide, the
mariner’s compass of their lives; so that there were very few
things which they ever either did, or refrained from doing,
without reference to its precepts.
Now I suspected that their professed faith had no great
hold upon them—firstly, because I often heard the priests
complain of the prevailing indifference, and they would
hardly have done so without reason; secondly, because of
the show which was made, for there was none of this about
the worship of the goddess Ydgrun, in whom they really did
believe; thirdly, because though the priests were constantly
abusing Ydgrun as being the great enemy of the gods, it was
well known that she had no more devoted worshippers in
the whole country than these very persons, who were often
priests of Ydgrun rather than of their own deities. Neither
am I by any means sure that these were not the best of the

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