o see them
without being attracted towards them; and I thought to myself that he
must be indeed an ill-grained and ungrateful person who can have been a
member of one of these colleges without retaining an affectionate feeling
towards it for the rest of his life. All my misgivings gave way at once
when I saw the beauty and venerable appearance of this delightful city.
For half-an-hour I forgot both myself and Arowhena.

After supper Mr. Thims told me a good deal about the system of education
which is here practised. I already knew a part of what I heard, but much
was new to me, and I obtained a better idea of the Erewhonian position
than I had done hitherto: nevertheless there were parts of the scheme of
which I could not comprehend the fitness, although I fully admit that
this inability was probably the result of my having been trained so very
differently, and to my being then much out of sorts.

The main feature in their system is the prominence which they give to a
study which I can only translate by the word "hypothetics." They argue
thus--that to teach a boy merely the nature of the things which exist in
the world around him, and about which he will have to be conversant
during his whole life, would be giving him but a narrow and shallow
conception of the universe, which it is urged might contain all manner of
things which are not now to be found therein. To open his eyes to these
possibilities, and so to prepare him for all sorts of emergencies, is the
object of this system of hypothetics. To imagine a set of utterly
strange and impossible contingencies, and require the youths to give
intelligent answers to the questions that arise therefrom, is reckoned
the fittest conceivable way of preparing them for the actual conduct of
their affairs in after life.

Thus they are taught what is called the hypothetical language for many of
their best years--a language which was originally composed at a time when
the country was in a very different state of civilisation to what it is
at present, a state which has long since disappeared and been superseded.
Many valuable maxims and noble thoughts which were at one time concealed
in it have become current in their modern literature, and have been
translated over and over again into the language now spoken. Surely then
it would seem enough that the study of the original language should be
confined to the few whose instincts led them naturally to pursue it.

But the Erewho