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CHAPTER XXVII:

THE VIEWS OF AN

EREWHONIAN

PHILOSOPHER

CONCERNING

THE RIGHTS OF VEGETABLES

Let me leave this unhappy story, and return to the course
of events among the Erewhonians at large. No matter how
many laws they passed increasing the severity of the pun-
ishments inflicted on those who ate meat in secret, the
people found means of setting them aside as fast as they
were made. At times, indeed, they would become almost
obsolete, but when they were on the point of being repealed,
some national disaster or the preaching of some fanatic
would reawaken the conscience of the nation, and people
were imprisoned by the thousand for illicitly selling and
buying animal food.
About six or seven hundred years, however, after the
death of the old prophet, a philosopher appeared, who,

Erewhon