f the younger members of the community feel
strongly, so I have now written "agricolas". I have also parted with the
word "infortuniam" (though not without regret), but have not dared to
meddle with other similar inaccuracies.

For the inconsistencies in the book, and I am aware that there are not a
few, I must ask the indulgence of the reader. The blame, however, lies
chiefly with the Erewhonians themselves, for they were really a very
difficult people to understand. The most glaring anomalies seemed to
afford them no intellectual inconvenience; neither, provided they did not
actually see the money dropping out of their pockets, nor suffer
immediate physical pain, would they listen to any arguments as to the
waste of money and happiness which their folly caused them. But this had
an effect of which I have little reason to complain, for I was allowed
almost to call them life-long self-deceivers to their faces, and they
said it was quite true, but that it did not matter.

I must not conclude without expressing my most sincere thanks to my
critics and to the public for the leniency and consideration with which
they have treated my adventures.

June 9, 1872

PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION

My publisher wishes me to say a few words about the genesis of the work,
a revised and enlarged edition of which he is herewith laying before the
public. I therefore place on record as much as I can remember on this
head after a lapse of more than thirty years.

The first part of "Erewhon" written was an article headed "Darwin among
the Machines," and signed Cellarius. It was written in the Upper
Rangitata district of the Canterbury Province (as it then was) of New
Zealand, and appeared at Christchurch in the Press Newspaper, June 13,
1863. A copy of this article is indexed under my books in the British
Museum catalogue. In passing, I may say that the opening chapters of
"Erewhon" were also drawn from the Upper Rangitata district, with such
modifications as I found convenient.

A second article on the same subject as the one just referred to appeared
in the Press shortly after the first, but I have no copy. It treated
Machines from a different point of view, and was the basis of pp. 270-274
of the present edition of "Erewhon." {1} This view ultimately led me to
the theory I put forward in "Life and Habit," published in November 1877.
I have put a bare outline of this theory (which I believe to be quite
sound) int