I was shown more than one case in which the
real or supposed virtues of parents were visited upon the children to the
third and fourth generation. The straighteners say that the most that
can be truly said for virtue is that there is a considerable balance in
its favour, and that it is on the whole a good deal better to be on its
side than against it; but they urge that there is much pseudo-virtue
going about, which is apt to let people in very badly before they find it
out. Those men, they say, are best who are not remarkable either for
vice or virtue. I told them about Hogarth's idle and industrious
apprentices, but they did not seem to think that the industrious
apprentice was a very nice person.
CHAPTER XI: SOME EREWHONIAN TRIALS
In Erewhon as in other countries there are some courts of justice that
deal with special subjects. Misfortune generally, as I have above
explained, is considered more or less criminal, but it admits of
classification, and a court is assigned to each of the main heads under
which it can be supposed to fall. Not very long after I had reached the
capital I strolled into the Personal Bereavement Court, and was much both
interested and pained by listening to the trial of a man who was accused
of having just lost a wife to whom he had been tenderly attached, and who
had left him with three little children, of whom the eldest was only
three years old.
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