Page 259 - erewhon

many extra-corporeal members, which are of more impor-
tance to him than a good deal of his hair, or at any rate than
his whiskers. His memory goes in his pocket-book. He be-
comes more and more complex as he grows older; he will
then be seen with see-engines, or perhaps with artificial
teeth and hair: if he be a really well-developed specimen of
his race, he will be furnished with a large box upon wheels,
two horses, and a coachman.’
It was this writer who originated the custom of classify-
ing men by their horse-power, and who divided them into
genera, species, varieties, and subvarieties, giving them
names from the hypothetical language which expressed
the number of limbs which they could command at any
moment. He showed that men became more highly and
delicately organised the more nearly they approached the
summit of opulence, and that none but millionaires pos-
sessed the full complement of limbs with which mankind
could become incorporate.
‘Those mighty organisms,’ he continued, ‘our leading
bankers and merchants, speak to their congeners through
the length and breadth of the land in a second of time; their
rich and subtle souls can defy all material impediment,
whereas the souls of the poor are clogged and hampered by
matter, which sticks fast about them as treacle to the wings
of a fly, or as one struggling in a quicksand: their dull ears
must take days or weeks to hear what another would tell
them from a distance, instead of hearing it in a second as
is done by the more highly organised classes. Who shall
deny that one who can tack on a special train to his identity,

Erewhon