rials that are before you." {3}

This is the fashion in which they reason with those who would be for
leaving them, but it is seldom that they do much good, for none but the
unquiet and unreasonable ever think of being born, and those who are
foolish enough to think of it are generally foolish enough to do it.
Finding, therefore, that they can do no more, the friends follow weeping
to the courthouse of the chief magistrate, where the one who wishes to be
born declares solemnly and openly that he accepts the conditions attached
to his decision. On this he is presented with a potion, which
immediately destroys his memory and sense of identity, and dissipates the
thin gaseous tenement which he has inhabited: he becomes a bare vital
principle, not to be perceived by human senses, nor to be by any chemical
test appreciated. He has but one instinct, which is that he is to go to
such and such a place, where he will find two persons whom he is to
importune till they consent to undertake him; but whether he is to find
these persons among the race of Chowbok or the Erewhonians themselves is
not for him to choose.

CHAPTER XX: WHAT THEY MEAN BY IT

I have given the above mythology at some length, but it is only a small
part of what they have upon the subject. My first feeling on reading it
was that any amount of folly on the part of the unborn in coming here was
justified by a desire to escape from such intolerable prosing. The
mythology is obviously an unfair and exaggerated representation of life
and things; and had its authors been so minded they could have easily
drawn a picture which would err as much on the bright side as this does
on the dark. No Erewhonian believes that the world is as black as it has
been here painted, but it is one of their peculiarities that they very
often do not believe or mean things which they profess to regard as
indisputable.

In the present instance their professed views concerning the unborn have
arisen from their desire to prove that people have been presented with
the gloomiest possible picture of their own prospects before they came
here; otherwise, they could hardly say to one whom they are going to
punish for an affection of the heart or brain that it is all his own
doing. In practice they modify their theory to a considerable extent,
and seldom refer to the birth formula except in extreme cases; for the
force of habit, or what not, gives many of them a kindly interest even