Page 177 - erewhon

CHAPTER XVIII:

BIRTH FORMULAE

heard what follows not from Arowhena, but from Mr.
I Nosnibor and some of the gentlemen who occasional-
ly dined at the house: they told me that the Erewhonians
believe in pre-existence; and not only this (of which I will
write more fully in the next chapter), but they believe that it
is of their own free act and deed in a previous state that they
come to be born into this world at all. They hold that the un-
born are perpetually plaguing and tormenting the married
of both sexes, fluttering about them incessantly, and giving
them no peace either of mind or body until they have con-
sented to take them under their protection. If this were not
so (this at least is what they urge), it would be a monstrous
freedom for one man to take with another, to say that he
should undergo the chances and changes of this mortal life
without any option in the matter. No man would have any
right to get married at all, inasmuch as he can never tell
what frightful misery his doing so may entail forcibly upon
a being who cannot be unhappy as long as he does not ex-
ist. They feel this so strongly that they are resolved to shift
the blame on to other shoulders; and have fashioned a long
mythology as to the world in which the unborn people live,
and what they do, and the arts and machinations to which

1 Erewhon