Page 194 - erewhon

CHAPTER XX: WHAT

THEY MEAN BY IT

have given the above mythology at some length, but it is
I only a small part of what they have upon the subject. My
first feeling on reading it was that any amount of folly on
the part of the unborn in coming here was justified by a
desire to escape from such intolerable prosing. The mythol-
ogy is obviously an unfair and exaggerated representation
of life and things; and had its authors been so minded they
could have easily drawn a picture which would err as much
on the bright side as this does on the dark. No Erewhonian
believes that the world is as black as it has been here paint-
ed, but it is one of their peculiarities that they very often do
not believe or mean things which they profess to regard as
indisputable.
In the present instance their professed views concern-
ing the unborn have arisen from their desire to prove that
people have been presented with the gloomiest possible
picture of their own prospects before they came here; oth-
erwise, they could hardly say to one whom they are going
to punish for an affection of the heart or brain that it is all
his own doing. In practice they modify their theory to a
considerable extent, and seldom refer to the birth formula
except in extreme cases; for the force of habit, or what not,

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