It seems as
though the need for some law over and above, and sometimes even
conflicting with, the law of the land, must spring from something that
lies deep down in man's nature; indeed, it is hard to think that man
could ever have become man at all, but for the gradual evolution of a
perception that though this world looms so large when we are in it, it
may seem a little thing when we have got away from it.
When man had grown to the perception that in the everlasting Is-and-Is-
Not of nature, the world and all that it contains, including man, is at
the same time both seen and unseen, he felt the need of two rules of
life, one for the seen, and the other for the unseen side of things. For
the laws affecting the seen world he claimed the sanction of seen powers;
for the unseen (of which he knows nothing save that it exists and is
powerful) he appealed to the unseen power (of which, again, he knows
nothing save that it exists and is powerful) to which he gives the name
of God.
Some Erewhonian opinions concerning the intelligence of the unborn
embryo, that I regret my space will not permit me to lay before the
reader, have led me to conclude that the Erewhonian Musical Banks, and
perhaps the religious systems of all countries, are now more or less of
an attempt to uphold the unfathomable and unconscious instinctive wisdom
of millions of past generations, against the comparatively shallow,
consciously reasoning, and ephemeral conclusions drawn from that of the
last thirty or forty.
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