One would have
thought that this was an elementary principle,--one of the first things
that an honourable man would teach his boy to do; but in practice it was
not so.
I even saw cases in which parents bought the right of presenting to the
office of cashier at one of these banks, with the fixed determination
that some one of their sons (perhaps a mere child) should fill it. There
was the lad himself--growing up with every promise of becoming a good and
honourable man--but utterly without warning concerning the iron shoe
which his natural protector was providing for him. Who could say that
the whole thing would not end in a life-long lie, and vain chafing to
escape?
I confess that there were few things in Erewhon which shocked me more
than this.
BIRTH FORMULAE. (CHAPTER XVII. OF EREWHON.)
I heard what follows not from Arowhena, but from Mr. Nosnibor and some of
the gentlemen who occasionally dined at the house: they told me that the
Erewhonians believe in pre-existence; and not only this (of which I will
write more fully in the next chapter), but they believe that it is of
their own free act and deed in a previous state that people come to be
born into this world at all.
They hold that the unborn are perpetually plaguing and tormenting the
married (and sometimes even the unmarried) of both sexes, fluttering
about them incessantly, and giving them no peace either of mind or body
until they have consented to take them under their protection.
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