s him.
Granted that it comes to much the same in the end, for it does not matter
whether "yea" is called "yea" or "nay," so long as it is understood which
it is to be; but our own more direct way of calling a spade a spade,
rather than a rake, with the intention that every one should understand
it as a spade, seems more satisfactory. On the other hand, the
Erewhonian system lends itself better to the suppression of that
downrightness which it seems the express aim of Erewhonian philosophy to
discountenance.

However this may be, the fear-of-giving-themselves-away disease was fatal
to the intelligence of those infected by it, and almost every one at the
Colleges of Unreason had caught it to a greater or less degree. After a
few years atrophy of the opinions invariably supervened, and the sufferer
became stone dead to everything except the more superficial aspects of
those material objects with which he came most in contact. The
expression on the faces of these people was repellent; they did not,
however, seem particularly unhappy, for they none of them had the
faintest idea that they were in reality more dead than alive. No cure
for this disgusting fear-of-giving-themselves-away disease has yet been
discovered.

* * *

It was during my stay in City of the Colleges of Unreason--a city whose
Erewhonian name is so cacophonous that I refrain from giving it--that I
learned the particulars of the revolution which had ended in the
destruction of so many of the mechanical inventions which were formerly
in common use.

Mr. Thims took me to the rooms of a gentleman who had a great reputation
for learning, but who was also, so Mr. Thims told me, rather a dangerous
person, inasmuch as he had attempted to introduce an adverb into the
hypothetical language. He had heard of my watch and been exceedingly
anxious to see me, for he was accounted the most learned antiquary in
Erewhon on the subject of mechanical lore. We fell to talking upon the
subject, and when I left he gave me a reprinted copy of the work which
brought the revolution about.

It had taken place some five hundred years before my arrival: people had
long become thoroughly used to the change, although at the time that it
was made the country was plunged into the deepest misery, and a reaction
which followed had very nearly proved successful. Civil war raged for
many years, and is said to have reduced the number of the inhabitants by
one-half. The parties wer