Page 216 - erewhon

object to progress.’
After which there was no more to be said. Later on, how-
ever, a young Professor took me aside and said he did not
think I quite understood their views about progress.
‘We like progress,’ he said, ‘but it must commend itself
to the common sense of the people. If a man gets to know
more than his neighbours he should keep his knowledge to
himself till he has sounded them, and seen whether they
agree, or are likely to agree with him. He said it was as im-
moral to be too far in front of one’s own age, as to lag too far
behind it. If a man can carry his neighbours with him, he
may say what he likes; but if not, what insult can be more
gratuitous than the telling them what they do not want to
know? A man should remember that intellectual over- in-
dulgence is one of the most insidious and disgraceful forms
that excess can take. Granted that every one should exceed
more or less, inasmuch as absolutely perfect sanity would
drive any man mad the moment he reached it, but … ‘
He was now warming to his subject and I was begin-
ning to wonder how I should get rid of him, when the party
broke up, and though I promised to call on him before I left,
I was unfortunately prevented from doing so.
I have now said enough to give English readers some
idea of the strange views which the Erewhonians hold con-
cerning unreason, hypothetics, and education generally. In
many respects they were sensible enough, but I could not
get over the hypothetics, especially the turning their own
good poetry into the hypothetical language. In the course
of my stay I met one youth who told me that for fourteen

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