Page 181 - erewhon

thereon asked, Does he assent to the formula? on which, as
he still continues crying and can obviously make no answer,
some one of the friends comes forward and undertakes to
sign the document on his behalf, feeling sure (so he says)
that the child would do it if he only knew how, and that he
will release the present signer from his engagement on ar-
riving at maturity. The friend then inscribes the signature
of the child at the foot of the parchment, which is held to
bind the child as much as though he had signed it himself.
Even this, however, does not fully content them, for they
feel a little uneasy until they have got the child’s own sig-
nature after all. So when he is about fourteen, these good
people partly bribe him by promises of greater liberty and
good things, and partly intimidate him through their great
power of making themselves actively unpleasant to him, so
that though there is a show of freedom made, there is really
none; they also use the offices of the teachers in the Col-
leges of Unreason, till at last, in one way or another, they
take very good care that he shall sign the paper by which he
professes to have been a free agent in coming into the world,
and to take all the responsibility of having done so on to his
own shoulders. And yet, though this document is obviously
the most important which any one can sign in his whole life,
they will have him do so at an age when neither they nor the
law will for many a year allow any one else to bind him to
the smallest obligation, no matter how righteously he may
owe it, because they hold him too young to know what he
is about, and do not consider it fair that he should commit
himself to anything that may prejudice him in after years.

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