Page 262 - erewhon

CHAPTER XXVI:

THE VIEWS OF AN

EREWHONIAN PROPHET

CONCERNING THE

RIGHTS OF ANIMALS

It will be seen from the foregoing chapters that the Ere-
whonians are a meek and long-suffering people, easily led by
the nose, and quick to offer up common sense at the shrine
of logic, when a philosopher arises among them, who car-
ries them away through his reputation for especial learning,
or by convincing them that their existing institutions are
not based on the strictest principles of morality.
The series of revolutions on which I shall now briefly
touch shows this even more plainly than the way (already
dealt with) in which at a later date they cut their throats
in the matter of machinery; for if the second of the two re-
formers of whom I am about to speak had had his way—or
rather the way that he professed to have—the whole race
would have died of starvation within a twelve-month. Hap-
pily common sense, though she is by nature the gentlest

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