Page 170 - erewhon

for them had hardly as yet come up to the Ydgrun standard,
and I often met with a class of men whom I called to my-
self ‘high Ydgrunites’ (the rest being Ydgrunites, and low
Ydgrunites), who, in the matter of human conduct and the
affairs of life, appeared to me to have got about as far as it is
in the right nature of man to go.
They were gentlemen in the full sense of the word; and
what has one not said in saying this? They seldom spoke of
Ydgrun, or even alluded to her, but would never run counter
to her dictates without ample reason for doing so: in such
cases they would override her with due self-reliance, and
the goddess seldom punished them; for they are brave, and
Ydgrun is not. They had most of them a smattering of the
hypothetical language, and some few more than this, but
only a few. I do not think that this language has had much
hand in making them what they are; but rather that the fact
of their being generally possessed of its rudiments was one
great reason for the reverence paid to the hypothetical lan-
guage itself.
Being inured from youth to exercises and athletics of
all sorts, and living fearlessly under the eye of their peers,
among whom there exists a high standard of courage, gen-
erosity, honour, and every good and manly quality—what
wonder that they should have become, so to speak, a law
unto themselves; and, while taking an elevated view of the
goddess Ydgrun, they should have gradually lost all faith
in the recognised deities of the country? These they do not
openly disregard, for conformity until absolutely intoler-
able is a law of Ydgrun, yet they have no real belief in the

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