your poet
probably knew this perfectly well. If a man cuts his throat he is at
bay, and thinks of nothing but escape, no matter whither, provided he can
shuffle off his present. No. Men are kept at their posts, not by the
fear that if they quit them they may quit a frying-pan for a fire, but by
the hope that if they hold on, the fire may burn less fiercely. 'The
respect,' to quote your poet, 'that makes calamity of so long a life,' is
the consideration that though calamity may live long, the sufferer may
live longer still."

On this, seeing that there was little probability of our coming to an
agreement, I let the argument drop, and my opponent presently left me
with as much disapprobation as he could show without being overtly rude.

CHAPTER XVIII: BIRTH FORMULAE

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 they come to be born
into this world at all. They hold that the unborn are perpetually
plaguing and tormenting the married 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. If this were not so
(this at least is what they urge), it would be a monstrous freedom for
one man to take with another, to say that he should undergo the chances
and changes of this mortal life without any option in the matter. No man
would have any right to get married at all, inasmuch as he can never tell
what frightful misery his doing so may entail forcibly upon a being who
cannot be unhappy as long as he does not exist. They feel this so
strongly that they are resolved to shift the blame on to other shoulders;
and have fashioned a long mythology as to the world in which the unborn
people live, and what they do, and the arts and machinations to which
they have recourse in order to get themselves into our own world. But of
this more anon: what I would relate here is their manner of dealing with
those who do come.

It is a distinguishing peculiarity of the Erewhonians that when they
profess themselves to be quite certain about any matter, and avow it as a
base on which they are to build a system of practice, they seldom