ey told me that the
Erewhonians believe in pre-existence; and not only this (of which I will
write more fully in the next chapter), but they believe that it is of
their own free act and deed in a previous state that people come to be
born into this world at all.

They hold that the unborn are perpetually plaguing and tormenting the
married (and sometimes even the unmarried) of both sexes, fluttering
about them incessantly, and giving them no peace either of mind or body
until they have consented to take them under their protection. If this
were not so--this is at least what they urge--it would be a monstrous
freedom for one man to take with another, to say that he should undergo
the chances and changes of this mortal life without any option in the
matter. No man would have any right to get married at all, inasmuch as
he can never tell what misery his doing so may entail forcibly upon his
children who cannot be unhappy as long as they remain unborn. They feel
this so strongly that they are resolved to shift the blame on to other
shoulders; they have therefore invented a long mythology as to the world
in which the unborn people live, what they do, and the arts and
machinations to which they have recourse in order to get themselves into
our own world.

I cannot think they seriously believe in this mythology concerning pre-
existence; they do and they do not; they do not know themselves what they
believe; all they know is that it is a disease not to believe as they do.
The only thing of which they are quite sure is that it is the pestering
of the unborn, which causes them to be brought into this world, and that
they would not be here if they would only let peaceable people alone.

It would be hard to disprove this position, and they might have a good
case if they would only leave it as it stands. But this they will not
do; they must have assurance doubly sure; they must have the written word
of the child itself as soon as it is born, giving the parents indemnity
from all responsibility on the score of its birth, and asserting its own
pre-existence. They have therefore devised something which they call a
birth formula--a document which varies in words according to the caution
of parents, but is much the same practically in all cases; for it has
been the business of the Erewhonian lawyers during many ages to exercise
their skill in perfecting it and providing for every contingency.

These formulae are printed on commo