In spite of all the to-do they make about their idols, and the temples
they build, and the priests and priestesses whom they support, I could
never think that their professed religion was more than skin-deep; but
they had another which they carried with them into all their actions;
and although no one from the outside of things would suspect it to have
any existence at all, it was in reality their great guide, the
mariner’s compass of their lives; so that there were very few things
which they ever either did, or refrained from doing, without reference
to its precepts.
Now I suspected that their professed faith had no great hold upon
them—firstly, because I often heard the priests complain of the
prevailing indifference, and they would hardly have done so without
reason; secondly, because of the show which was made, for there was
none of this about the worship of the goddess Ydgrun, in whom they
really did believe; thirdly, because though the priests were constantly
abusing Ydgrun as being the great enemy of the gods, it was well known
that she had no more devoted worshippers in the whole country than
these very persons, who were often priests of Ydgrun rather than of
their own deities. Neither am I by any means sure that these were not
the best of the priests.
Ydgrun certainly occupied a very anomalous position; she was held to be
both omnipresent and omnipotent, but she was not an elevated
conception, and was sometimes both cruel and absurd. Even her most
devoted worshippers were a little ashamed of her, and served her more
with heart and in deed than with their tongues. Theirs was no lip
service; on the contrary, even when worshipping her most devoutly, they
would often deny her. Take her all in all, however, she was a
beneficent and useful deity, who did not care how much she was denied
so long as she was obeyed and feared, and who kept hundreds of
thousands in those paths which make life tolerably happy, who would
never have been kept there otherwise, and over whom a higher and more
spiritual ideal would have had no power.
I greatly doubt whether the Erewhonians are yet prepared for any better
religion, and though (considering my gradually strengthened conviction
that they were the representatives of the lost tribes of Israel) I
would have set about converting them at all hazards had I seen the
remotest prospect of success, I could hardly contemplate the
displacement of Ydgrun as the great central object of their regard
without admitting that it would be attended with frightful
consequences; in fact were I a mere philosopher, I should say that the
gradual raising of the popular conception of Ydgrun would be the
greatest spiritual boon which could be conferred upon them, and that
nothing could effect this except example. I generally found that those
who complained most loudly that Ydgrun was not high enough for them had
hardly as yet come up to the Ydgrun standard, and I often met with a
class of men whom I called to myself “high Ydgrunites” (the rest being
Ydgrunites, and low Ydgrunites), who, in the matter of human conduct
and the affairs of life, appeared to me to have got about as far as it
is in the right nature of man to go.
They were gentlemen in the full sense of the word; and what has one not
said in saying this? They seldom spoke of Ydgrun, or even alluded to
her, but would never run counter to her dictates without ample reason
for doing so: in such cases they would override her with due
self-reliance, and the goddess seldom punished them; for they are
brave, and Ydgrun is not. They had most of them a smattering of the
hypothetical language, and some few more than this, but only a few. I
do not think that this language has had much hand in making them what
they are; but rather that the fact of their being generally possessed
of its rudiments was one great reason for the reverence paid to the
hypothetical language itself.
Being inured from youth to exercises and athletics of all sorts, and
living fearlessly under the eye of their peers, among whom there exists
a high standard of courage, generosity, honour, and every good and
manly quality—what wonder that they should have become, so to speak, a
law unto themselves; and, while taking an elevated view of the goddess
Ydgrun, they should have gradually lost all faith in the recognised
deities of the country? These they do not openly disregard, for
conformity until absolutely intolerable is a law of Ydgrun, yet they
have no real belief in the objective existence of beings which so
readily explain themselves as abstractions, and whose personality
demands a quasi-materialism which it baffles the imagination to
realise. They keep their opinions, however, greatly to themselves,
inasmuch as most of their countrymen feel strongly about the gods, and
they hold it wrong to give pain, unless for some greater good than
seems likely to arise from their plain speaking.
On the other hand, surely those whose own minds are clear about any
given matter (even though it be only that there is little certainty)
should go so far towards imparting that clearness to others, as to say
openly what they think and why they think it, whenever they can
properly do so; for they may be sure that they owe their own clearness
almost entirely to the fact that others have done this by them: after
all, they may be mistaken, and if so, it is for their own and the
general well-being that they should let their error be seen as
distinctly as possible, so that it may be more easily refuted. I own,
therefore, that on this one point I disapproved of the practice even of
the highest Ydgrunites, and objected to it all the more because I knew
that I should find my own future task more easy if the high Ydgrunites
had already undermined the belief which is supposed to prevail at
present.
In other respects they were more like the best class of Englishmen than
any whom I have seen in other countries. I should have liked to have
persuaded half-a-dozen of them to come over to England and go upon the
stage, for they had most of them a keen sense of humour and a taste for
acting: they would be of great use to us. The example of a real
gentleman is, if I may say so without profanity, the best of all
gospels; such a man upon the stage becomes a potent humanising
influence, an Ideal which all may look upon for a shilling.
I always liked and admired these men, and although I could not help
deeply regretting their certain ultimate perdition (for they had no
sense of a hereafter, and their only religion was that of self-respect
and consideration for other people), I never dared to take so great a
liberty with them as to attempt to put them in possession of my own
religious convictions, in spite of my knowing that they were the only
ones which could make them really good and happy, either here or
hereafter. I did try sometimes, being impelled to do so by a strong
sense of duty, and by my deep regret that so much that was admirable
should be doomed to ages if not eternity of torture; but the words
stuck in my throat as soon as I began.
Whether a professional missionary might have a better chance I know
not; such persons must doubtless know more about the science of
conversion: for myself, I could only be thankful that I was in the
right path, and was obliged to let others take their chance as yet. If
the plan fails by which I propose to convert them myself, I would
gladly contribute my mite towards the sending two or three trained
missionaries, who have been known as successful converters of Jews and
Mahometans; but such have seldom much to glory in the flesh, and when I
think of the high Ydgrunites, and of the figure which a missionary
would probably cut among them, I cannot feel sanguine that much good
would be arrived at. Still the attempt is worth making, and the worst
danger to the missionaries themselves would be that of being sent to
the hospital where Chowbok would have been sent had he come with me
into Erewhon.
Taking then their religious opinions as a whole, I must own that the
Erewhonians are superstitious, on account of the views which they hold
of their professed gods, and their entirely anomalous and inexplicable
worship of Ydgrun, a worship at once the most powerful, yet most devoid
of formalism, that I ever met with; but in practice things worked
better than might have been expected, and the conflicting claims of
Ydgrun and the gods were arranged by unwritten compromises (for the
most part in Ydgrun’s favour), which in ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred were very well understood.
I could not conceive why they should not openly acknowledge high
Ydgrunism, and discard the objective personality of hope, justice, &c.;
but whenever I so much as hinted at this, I found that I was on
dangerous ground. They would never have it; returning constantly to the
assertion that ages ago the divinities were frequently seen, and that
the moment their personality was disbelieved in, men would leave off
practising even those ordinary virtues which the common experience of
mankind has agreed on as being the greatest secret of happiness. “Who
ever heard,” they asked, indignantly, “of such things as kindly
training, a good example, and an enlightened regard to one’s own
welfare, being able to keep men straight?” In my hurry, forgetting
things which I ought to have remembered, I answered that if a person
could not be kept straight by these things, there was nothing that
could straighten him, and that if he were not ruled by the love and
fear of men whom he had seen, neither would he be so by that of the
gods whom he had not seen.
At one time indeed I came upon a small but growing sect who believed,
after a fashion, in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection
from the dead; they taught that those who had been born with feeble and
diseased bodies and had passed their lives in ailing, would be tortured
eternally hereafter; but that those who had been born strong and
healthy and handsome would be rewarded for ever and ever. Of moral
qualities or conduct they made no mention.
Bad as this was, it was a step in advance, inasmuch as they did hold
out a future state of some sort, and I was shocked to find that for the
most part they met with opposition, on the score that their doctrine
was based upon no sort of foundation, also that it was immoral in its
tendency, and not to be desired by any reasonable beings.
When I asked how it could be immoral, I was answered, that if firmly
held, it would lead people to cheapen this present life, making it
appear to be an affair of only secondary importance; that it would thus
distract men’s minds from the perfecting of this world’s economy, and
was an impatient cutting, so to speak, of the Gordian knot of life’s
problems, whereby some people might gain present satisfaction to
themselves at the cost of infinite damage to others; that the doctrine
tended to encourage the poor in their improvidence, and in a debasing
acquiescence in ills which they might well remedy; that the rewards
were illusory and the result, after all, of luck, whose empire should
be bounded by the grave; that its terrors were enervating and unjust;
and that even the most blessed rising would be but the disturbing of a
still more blessed slumber.
To all which I could only say that the thing had been actually known to
happen, and that there were several well-authenticated instances of
people having died and come to life again—instances which no man in his
senses could doubt.
“If this be so,” said my opponent, “we must bear it as best we may.”
I then translated for him, as well as I could, the noble speech of
Hamlet in which he says that it is the fear lest worse evils may befall
us after death which alone prevents us from rushing into death’s arms.
“Nonsense,” he answered, “no man was ever yet stopped from cutting his
throat by any such fears as your poet ascribes to him—and your poet
probably knew this perfectly well. If a man cuts his throat he is at
bay, and thinks of nothing but escape, no matter whither, provided he
can shuffle off his present. No. Men are kept at their posts, not by
the fear that if they quit them they may quit a frying-pan for a fire,
but by the hope that if they hold on, the fire may burn less fiercely.
‘The respect,’ to quote your poet, ‘that makes calamity of so long a
life,’ is the consideration that though calamity may live long, the
sufferer may live longer still.”
On this, seeing that there was little probability of our coming to an
agreement, I let the argument drop, and my opponent presently left me
with as much disapprobation as he could show without being overtly
rude.