Page 169 - erewhon

priests.
Ydgrun certainly occupied a very anomalous position;
she was held to be both omnipresent and omnipotent, but
she was not an elevated conception, and was sometimes both
cruel and absurd. Even her most devoted worshippers were
a little ashamed of her, and served her more with heart and
in deed than with their tongues. Theirs was no lip service;
on the contrary, even when worshipping her most devout-
ly, they would often deny her. Take her all in all, however,
she was a beneficent and useful deity, who did not care how
much she was denied so long as she was obeyed and feared,
and who kept hundreds of thousands in those paths which
make life tolerably happy, who would never have been kept
there otherwise, and over whom a higher and more spiri-
tual ideal would have had no power.
I greatly doubt whether the Erewhonians are yet pre-
pared for any better religion, and though (considering my
gradually strengthened conviction that they were the rep-
resentatives of the lost tribes of Israel) I would have set
about converting them at all hazards had I seen the re-
motest prospect of success, I could hardly contemplate the
displacement of Ydgrun as the great central object of their
regard without admitting that it would be attended with
frightful consequences; in fact were I a mere philosopher, I
should say that the gradual raising of the popular concep-
tion of Ydgrun would be the greatest spiritual boon which
could be conferred upon them, and that nothing could ef-
fect this except example. I generally found that those who
complained most loudly that Ydgrun was not high enough

1 Erewhon