Those who came from the country were better; they seemed to have lived
less as a separate class, and to be freer and healthier; but in spite of
my seeing not a few whose looks were benign and noble, I could not help
asking myself concerning the greater number of those whom I met, whether
Erewhon would be a better country if their expression were to be
transferred to the people in general. I answered myself emphatically,
no. A man's expression is his sacrament; it is the outward and visible
sign of his inward and spiritual grace, or, want of grace; and as I
looked at the majority of these men, I could not help feeling that there
must be a something in their lives which had stunted their natural
development, and that they would have been more healthily-minded in any
other profession.
I was always sorry for them, for in nine cases out of ten they were well-
meaning persons; they were in the main very poorly paid; their
constitutions were as a rule above suspicion; and there were recorded
numberless instances of their self-sacrifice and generosity; but they had
had the misfortune to have been betrayed into a false position at an age
for the most part when their judgment was not matured, and after having
been kept in studied ignorance of the real difficulties of the system.
But this did not make their position the less a false one, and its bad
effects upon themselves were unmistakable.
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