Page 186 - erewhon

Having waded through many chapters like the above,
I came at last to the unborn themselves, and found that
they were held to be souls pure and simple, having no ac-
tual bodies, but living in a sort of gaseous yet more or less
anthropomorphic existence, like that of a ghost; they have
thus neither flesh nor blood nor warmth. Nevertheless they
are supposed to have local habitations and cities wherein
they dwell, though these are as unsubstantial as their in-
habitants; they are even thought to eat and drink some thin
ambrosial sustenance, and generally to be capable of doing
whatever mankind can do, only after a visionary ghostly
fashion as in a dream. On the other hand, as long as they re-
main where they are they never die—the only form of death
in the unborn world being the leaving it for our own. They
are believed to be extremely numerous, far more so than
mankind. They arrive from unknown planets, full grown,
in large batches at a time; but they can only leave the un-
born world by taking the steps necessary for their arrival
here—which is, in fact, by suicide.
They ought to be an exceedingly happy people, for they
have no extremes of good or ill fortune; never marrying,
but living in a state much like that fabled by the poets as
the primitive condition of mankind. In spite of this, how-
ever, they are incessantly complaining; they know that we
in this world have bodies, and indeed they know every-
thing else about us, for they move among us whithersoever
they will, and can read our thoughts, as well as survey our
actions at pleasure. One would think that this should be
enough for them; and most of them are indeed alive to the

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