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the unborn people live, and what they do, and the arts and machinations to which they have recourse in order to get themselves into our own world. But of this more anon: what I would relate here is their manner of dealing with those who do come.

It is a distinguishing peculiarity of the Erewhonians that when they profess themselves to be quite certain about any matter, and avow it as a base on which they are to build a system of practice, they seldom quite believe in it; but instead of coming to an understanding with themselves, and endeavouring to find out exactly what it is that commends itself to their judgments as on the whole most probable, and then chancing it, they content themselves in nine cases out of ten with saying that the subject has been examined over and over again, and assert their faith the more ostentatiously, and with the more pomp and circumstance, because of their misgivings; but they will always abuse those who would have them examine for themselves, an accusation of ill health being their favourite weapon. Indeed, there are few sights at once so pathetic and so amusing as that of a middle-aged Erewhonian in the act of smelling a rat about the precincts of a cherished institution, and stopping his nose to it.

This is what most of them did in this matter of the unborn, for I cannot (and never could) think that they seriously believed in their mythology concerning pre-existence: they did and they did not; they did not know themselves what they believed; all they did know was that it was a disease not to believe as they did. The only thing of which they were quite sure was that it was the pestering of the unborn which caused them to be brought into this world, and that