I have given the above mythology at some length, but it is only a small
part of what they have upon the subject. My first feeling on reading it
was that any amount of folly on the part of the unborn in coming here
was justified by a desire to escape from such intolerable prosing. The
mythology is obviously an unfair and exaggerated representation of life
and things; and had its authors been so minded they could have easily
drawn a picture which would err as much on the bright side as this does
on the dark. No Erewhonian believes that the world is as black as it
has been here painted, but it is one of their peculiarities that they
very often do not believe or mean things which they profess to regard
as indisputable.
In the present instance their professed views concerning the unborn
have arisen from their desire to prove that people have been presented
with the gloomiest possible picture of their own prospects before they
came here; otherwise, they could hardly say to one whom they are going
to punish for an affection of the heart or brain that it is all his own
doing. In practice they modify their theory to a considerable extent,
and seldom refer to the birth formula except in extreme cases; for the
force of habit, or what not, gives many of them a kindly interest even
in creatures who have so much wronged them as the unborn have done; and
though a man generally hates the unwelcome little stranger for the
first twelve months, he is apt to mollify (according to his lights) as
time goes on, and sometimes he will become inordinately attached to the
beings whom he is pleased to call his children.
Of course, according to Erewhonian premises, it would serve people
right to be punished and scouted for moral and intellectual diseases as
much as for physical, and I cannot to this day understand why they
should have stopped short half way. Neither, again, can I understand
why their having done so should have been, as it certainly was, a
matter of so much concern to myself. What could it matter to me how
many absurdities the Erewhonians might adopt? Nevertheless I longed to
make them think as I did, for the wish to spread those opinions that we
hold conducive to our own welfare is so deeply rooted in the English
character that few of us can escape its influence. But let this pass.
In spite of not a few modifications in practice of a theory which is
itself revolting, the relations between children and parents in that
country are less happy than in Europe. It was rarely that I saw cases
of real hearty and intense affection between the old people and the
young ones. Here and there I did so, and was quite sure that the
children, even at the age of twenty, were fonder of their parents than
they were of any one else; and that of their own inclination, being
free to choose what company they would, they would often choose that of
their father and mother. The straightener’s carriage was rarely seen at
the door of those houses. I saw two or three such cases during the time
that I remained in the country, and cannot express the pleasure which I
derived from a sight suggestive of so much goodness and wisdom and
forbearance, so richly rewarded; yet I firmly believe that the same
thing would happen in nine families out of ten if the parents were
merely to remember how they felt when they were young, and actually to
behave towards their children as they would have had their own parents
behave towards themselves. But this, which would appear to be so simple
and obvious, seems also to be a thing which not one in a hundred
thousand is able to put in practice. It is only the very great and good
who have any living faith in the simplest axioms; and there are few who
are so holy as to feel that 19 and 13 make 32 as certainly as 2 and 2
make 4.
I am quite sure that if this narrative should ever fall into Erewhonian
hands, it will be said that what I have written about the relations
between parents and children being seldom satisfactory is an infamous
perversion of facts, and that in truth there are few young people who
do not feel happier in the society of their nearest relations[4] than
in any other. Mr. Nosnibor would be sure to say this. Yet I cannot
refrain from expressing an opinion that he would be a good deal
embarrassed if his deceased parents were to reappear and propose to pay
him a six months’ visit. I doubt whether there are many things which he
would regard as a greater infliction. They had died at a ripe old age
some twenty years before I came to know him, so the case is an extreme
one; but surely if they had treated him with what in his youth he had
felt to be true unselfishness, his face would brighten when he thought
of them to the end of his life.
In the one or two cases of true family affection which I met with, I am
sure that the young people who were so genuinely fond of their fathers
and mothers at eighteen, would at sixty be perfectly delighted were
they to get the chance of welcoming them as their guests. There is
nothing which could please them better, except perhaps to watch the
happiness of their own children and grandchildren.
This is how things should be. It is not an impossible ideal; it is one
which actually does exist in some few cases, and might exist in almost
all, with a little more patience and forbearance upon the parents’
part; but it is rare at present—so rare that they have a proverb which
I can only translate in a very roundabout way, but which says that the
great happiness of some people in a future state will consist in
watching the distress of their parents on returning to eternal
companionship with their grandfathers and grandmothers; whilst
“compulsory affection” is the idea which lies at the root of their word
for the deepest anguish.
There is no talisman in the word “parent” which can generate miracles
of affection, and I can well believe that my own child might find it
less of a calamity to lose both Arowhena and myself when he is six
years old, than to find us again when he is sixty—a sentence which I
would not pen did I not feel that by doing so I was giving him
something like a hostage, or at any rate putting a weapon into his
hands against me, should my selfishness exceed reasonable limits.
Money is at the bottom of all this to a great extent. If the parents
would put their children in the way of earning a competence earlier
than they do, the children would soon become self-supporting and
independent. As it is, under the present system, the young ones get old
enough to have all manner of legitimate wants (that is, if they have
any “go” about them) before they have learnt the means of earning money
to pay for them; hence they must either do without them, or take more
money than the parents can be expected to spare. This is due chiefly to
the schools of Unreason, where a boy is taught upon hypothetical
principles, as I will explain hereafter; spending years in being
incapacitated for doing this, that, or the other (he hardly knows
what), during all which time he ought to have been actually doing the
thing itself, beginning at the lowest grades, picking it up through
actual practice, and rising according to the energy which is in him.
These schools of Unreason surprised me much. It would be easy to fall
into pseudo-utilitarianism, and I would fain believe that the system
may be good for the children of very rich parents, or for those who
show a natural instinct to acquire hypothetical lore; but the misery
was that their Ydgrun-worship required all people with any pretence to
respectability to send their children to some one or other of these
schools, mulcting them of years of money. It astonished me to see what
sacrifices the parents would make in order to render their children as
nearly useless as possible; and it was hard to say whether the old
suffered most from the expense which they were thus put to, or the
young from being deliberately swindled in some of the most important
branches of human inquiry, and directed into false channels or left to
drift in the great majority of cases.
I cannot think I am mistaken in believing that the growing tendency to
limit families by infanticide—an evil which was causing general alarm
throughout the country—was almost entirely due to the way in which
education had become a fetish from one end of Erewhon to the other.
Granted that provision should be made whereby every child should be
taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, but here compulsory
state-aided education should end, and the child should begin (with all
due precautions to ensure that he is not overworked) to acquire the
rudiments of that art whereby he is to earn his living.
He cannot acquire these in what we in England call schools of technical
education; such schools are cloister life as against the rough and
tumble of the world; they unfit, rather than fit for work in the open.
An art can only be learned in the workshop of those who are winning
their bread by it.
Boys, as a rule, hate the artificial, and delight in the actual; give
them the chance of earning, and they will soon earn. When parents find
that their children, instead of being made artificially burdensome,
will early begin to contribute to the well-being of the family, they
will soon leave off killing them, and will seek to have that plenitude
of offspring which they now avoid. As things are, the state lays
greater burdens on parents than flesh and blood can bear, and then
wrings its hands over an evil for which it is itself mainly
responsible.
With the less well-dressed classes the harm was not so great; for among
these, at about ten years old, the child has to begin doing something:
if he is capable he makes his way up; if he is not, he is at any rate
not made more incapable by what his friends are pleased to call his
education. People find their level as a rule; and though they
unfortunately sometimes miss it, it is in the main true that those who
have valuable qualities are perceived to have them and can sell them. I
think that the Erewhonians are beginning to become aware of these
things, for there was much talk about putting a tax upon all parents
whose children were not earning a competence according to their degrees
by the time they were twenty years old. I am sure that if they will
have the courage to carry it through they will never regret it; for the
parents will take care that the children shall begin earning money
(which means “doing good” to society) at an early age; then the
children will be independent early, and they will not press on the
parents, nor the parents on them, and they will like each other better
than they do now.
This is the true philanthropy. He who makes a colossal fortune in the
hosiery trade, and by his energy has succeeded in reducing the price of
woollen goods by the thousandth part of a penny in the pound—this man
is worth ten professional philanthropists. So strongly are the
Erewhonians impressed with this, that if a man has made a fortune of
over £20,000 a year they exempt him from all taxation, considering him
as a work of art, and too precious to be meddled with; they say, “How
very much he must have done for society before society could have been
prevailed upon to give him so much money;” so magnificent an
organisation overawes them; they regard it as a thing dropped from
heaven.
“Money,” they say, “is the symbol of duty, it is the sacrament of
having done for mankind that which mankind wanted. Mankind may not be a
very good judge, but there is no better.” This used to shock me at
first, when I remembered that it had been said on high authority that
they who have riches shall enter hardly into the kingdom of heaven; but
the influence of Erewhon had made me begin to see things in a new
light, and I could not help thinking that they who have not riches
shall enter more hardly still.
People oppose money to culture, and imply that if a man has spent his
time in making money he will not be cultivated—fallacy of fallacies! As
though there could be a greater aid to culture than the having earned
an honourable independence, and as though any amount of culture will do
much for the man who is penniless, except make him feel his position
more deeply. The young man who was told to sell all his goods and give
to the poor, must have been an entirely exceptional person if the
advice was given wisely, either for him or for the poor; how much more
often does it happen that we perceive a man to have all sorts of good
qualities except money, and feel that his real duty lies in getting
every half-penny that he can persuade others to pay him for his
services, and becoming rich. It has been said that the love of money is
the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.
The above may sound irreverent, but it is conceived in a spirit of the
most utter reverence for those things which do alone deserve it—that
is, for the things which are, which mould us and fashion us, be they
what they may; for the things that have power to punish us, and which
will punish us if we do not heed them; for our masters therefore. But I
am drifting away from my story.
They have another plan about which they are making a great noise and
fuss, much as some are doing with women’s rights in England. A party of
extreme radicals have professed themselves unable to decide upon the
superiority of age or youth. At present all goes on the supposition
that it is desirable to make the young old as soon as possible. Some
would have it that this is wrong, and that the object of education
should be to keep the old young as long as possible. They say that each
age should take it turn in turn about, week by week, one week the old
to be topsawyers, and the other the young, drawing the line at
thirty-five years of age; but they insist that the young should be
allowed to inflict corporal chastisement on the old, without which the
old would be quite incorrigible. In any European country this would be
out of the question; but it is not so there, for the straighteners are
constantly ordering people to be flogged, so that they are familiar
with the notion. I do not suppose that the idea will be ever acted
upon; but its having been even mooted is enough to show the utter
perversion of the Erewhonian mind.