I heard what follows not from Arowhena, but from Mr. Nosnibor and some of
the gentlemen who occasionally dined at the house: they 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 common paper at a moderate cost for the
poor; but the rich have them written on parchment and handsomely bound,
so that the getting up of a person's birth formula is a test of his
social position. They commence by setting forth, That whereas A. B. was
a member of the kingdom of the unborn, where he was well provided for in
every way, and had no cause of discontent, &c. &c., he did of his own
wanton restlessness conceive a desire to enter into this present world;
that thereon having taken the necessary steps as set forth in laws of the
unborn kingdom, he set himself with malice aforethought to plague and
pester two unfortunate people who had never wronged him, and who were
quite contented until he conceived this base design against their peace;
for which wrong he now humbly entreats their pardon. He acknowledges
that he is responsible for all physical blemishes and deficiencies which
may render him answerable to the laws of his country; that his parents
have nothing whatever to do with any of these things; and that they have
a right to kill him at once if they be so minded, though he entreats them
to show their marvellous goodness and clemency towards him by sparing his
life. If they will do this he promises to be their most abject creature
during his earlier years, and indeed unto his life's end, unless they
should see fit in their abundant generosity to remit some portion of his
service hereafter. And so the formula continues, going sometimes into
very minute details, according to the fancies of family lawyers, who will
not make it any shorter than they can help.
The deed being thus prepared, on the third or fourth day after the birth
of the child, or as they call it, the "final importunity," the friends
gather together, and there is a feast held, where they are all very
melancholy--as a general rule, I believe quite truly so--and make
presents to the father and mother of the child in order to console them
for the injury which has just been done them by the unborn. By and by
the child himself is brought down by his nurse, and the company begin to
rail upon him, upbraiding him for his impertinence and asking him what
amends he proposes to make for the wrong that he has committed, and how
he can look for care and nourishment from those who have perhaps already
been injured by the unborn on some ten or twelve occasions; for they say
of people with large families, that they have suffered terrible injuries
from the unborn; till at last, when this has been carried far enough,
some one suggests the formula, which is brought forth and solemnly read
to the child by the family straightener. This gentleman is always
invited on these occasions, for the very fact of intrusion into a
peaceful family shows a depravity on the part of the child which requires
his professional services.
On being teased by the reading and tweaked by the nurse, the child will
commonly fall a-crying, which is reckoned a good sign as showing a
consciousness of guilt. He is thereon asked, Does he assent to the
formula? on which, as he still continues crying and can obviously make no
answer, some one of the friends comes forward and undertakes to sign the
document on his behalf, feeling sure (so he says) that the child would do
it if he only knew how, and that he will release the present signer from
his engagement on arriving at maturity. The friend then inscribes the
signature of the child at the foot of the parchment, which is held to
bind the child as much as though he had signed it himself. Even this,
however, does not fully content them, for they feel a little uneasy until
they have got the child's own signature after all. So when he is about
fourteen these good people partly bribe him by promises of greater
liberty and good things, and partly intimidate him through their great
power of making themselves passively unpleasant to him, so that though
there is a show of freedom made, there is really none, and partly they
use the offices of the teachers in the Colleges of Unreason, till at
last, in one way or another, they take very good care that he shall sign
the paper by which he professes to have been a free agent in coming into
the world, and to take all the responsibility of having done so on to his
own shoulders. And yet, though this document is in theory the most
important which any one can sign in his whole life, they will have him
commit himself to it at an age when neither they nor the law will for
many a year allow any one else to bind him to the smallest obligation, no
matter how righteously he may owe it, because they hold him too young to
know what he is about.
I thought this seemed rather hard, and not of a piece with the many
admirable institutions existing among them. I once ventured to say a
part of what I thought about it to one of the Professors of Unreason. I
asked him whether he did not think it would do serious harm to a lad's
principles, and weaken his sense of the sanctity of his word, and of
truth generally, that he should be led into entering upon an engagement
which it was so plainly impossible he should keep even for a single day
with tolerable integrity--whether, in fact, the teachers who so led him,
or who taught anything as a certainty of which they were themselves
uncertain, were not earning their living by impairing the truth-sense of
their pupils. The professor, who was a delightful person, seemed
surprised at the view I took, and gave me to understand, perhaps justly
enough, that I ought not to make so much fuss about a trifle. No one, he
said, expected that the boy either would or could do all that he
undertook; but the world was full of compromises; and there was hardly
any engagement which would bear being interpreted literally. Human
language was too gross a vehicle of thought--thought being incapable of
absolute translation. He added, that as there can be no translation from
one language into another which shall not scant the meaning somewhat, or
enlarge upon it, so there is no language which can render thought without
a jarring and a harshness somewhere--and so forth; all of which seemed to
come to this in the end, that it was the custom of the country, and that
the Erewhonians were a conservative people; that the boy would have to
begin compromising sooner or later, and this was part of his education in
the art. It was perhaps to be regretted that compromise should be as
necessary as it was; still it was necessary, and the sooner the boy got
to understand it the better for himself. But they never tell this to the
boy.
From the book of their mythology about the unborn I made the extracts
which will form the following chapter.