in
creatures who have so much wronged them as the unborn have done; and
though a man generally hates the unwelcome little stranger for the first
twelve months, he is apt to mollify (according to his lights) as time
goes on, and sometimes he will become inordinately attached to the beings
whom he is pleased to call his children.

Of course, according to Erewhonian premises, it would serve people right
to be punished and scouted for moral and intellectual diseases as much as
for physical, and I cannot to this day understand why they should have
stopped short half way. Neither, again, can I understand why their
having done so should have been, as it certainly was, a matter of so much
concern to myself. What could it matter to me how many absurdities the
Erewhonians might adopt? Nevertheless I longed to make them think as I
did, for the wish to spread those opinions that we hold conducive to our
own welfare is so deeply rooted in the English character that few of us
can escape its influence. But let this pass.

In spite of not a few modifications in practice of a theory which is
itself revolting, the relations between children and parents in that
country are less happy than in Europe. It was rarely that I saw cases of
real hearty and intense affection between the old people and the young
ones. Here and there I did so, and was quite sure that the children,
even at the age of twenty, were fonder of their parents than they were of
any one else; and that of their own inclination, being free to choose
what company they would, they would often choose that of their father and
mother. The straightener's carriage was rarely seen at the door of those
houses. I saw two or three such cases during the time that I remained in
the country, and cannot express the pleasure which I derived from a sight
suggestive of so much goodness and wisdom and forbearance, so richly
rewarded; yet I firmly believe that the same thing would happen in nine
families out of ten if the parents were merely to remember how they felt
when they were young, and actually to behave towards their children as
they would have had their own parents behave towards themselves. But
this, which would appear to be so simple and obvious, seems also to be a
thing which not one in a hundred thousand is able to put in practice. It
is only the very great and good who have any living faith in the simplest
axioms; and there are few who are so holy as to feel that 19 and 1