CHAPTER XVIII: BIRTH FORMULAE
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 they come to be born
into this world at all. They hold that the unborn are perpetually
plaguing and tormenting the married 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 at least is 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 frightful misery his doing so may entail forcibly upon a being who
cannot be unhappy as long as he does not exist. They feel this so
strongly that they are resolved to shift the blame on to other shoulders;
and have fashioned a long mythology as to the world in which 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.
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