een side of things. For
the laws affecting the seen world he claimed the sanction of seen powers;
for the unseen (of which he knows nothing save that it exists and is
powerful) he appealed to the unseen power (of which, again, he knows
nothing save that it exists and is powerful) to which he gives the name
of God.

Some Erewhonian opinions concerning the intelligence of the unborn
embryo, that I regret my space will not permit me to lay before the
reader, have led me to conclude that the Erewhonian Musical Banks, and
perhaps the religious systems of all countries, are now more or less of
an attempt to uphold the unfathomable and unconscious instinctive wisdom
of millions of past generations, against the comparatively shallow,
consciously reasoning, and ephemeral conclusions drawn from that of the
last thirty or forty.

The saving feature of the Erewhonian Musical Bank system (as distinct
from the quasi-idolatrous views which coexist with it, and on which I
will touch later) was that while it bore witness to the existence of a
kingdom that is not of this world, it made no attempt to pierce the veil
that hides it from human eyes. It is here that almost all religions go
wrong. Their priests try to make us believe that they know more about
the unseen world than those whose eyes are still blinded by the seen, can
ever know--forgetting that while to deny the existence of an unseen
kingdom is bad, to pretend that we know more about it than its bare
existence is no better.

This chapter is already longer than I intended, but I should like to say
that in spite of the saving feature of which I have just spoken, I cannot
help thinking that the Erewhonians are on the eve of some great change in
their religious opinions, or at any rate in that part of them which finds
expression through their Musical Banks. So far as I could see, fully
ninety per cent. of the population of the metropolis looked upon these
banks with something not far removed from contempt. If this is so, any
such startling event as is sure to arise sooner or later, may serve as
nucleus to a new order of things that will be more in harmony with both
the heads and hearts of the people.

CHAPTER XVI: AROWHENA

The reader will perhaps have learned by this time a thing which I had
myself suspected before I had been twenty-four hours in Mr. Nosnibor's
house--I mean, that though the Nosnibors showed me every attention, I
could not cordially like them, wi