This much you may
perhaps recall; and this, if you will imprint it deeply upon your every
faculty, will be most likely to bring you safely and honourably home
through the trials that are before you." {3}
This is the fashion in which they reason with those who would be for
leaving them, but it is seldom that they do much good, for none but the
unquiet and unreasonable ever think of being born, and those who are
foolish enough to think of it are generally foolish enough to do it.
Finding, therefore, that they can do no more, the friends follow weeping
to the courthouse of the chief magistrate, where the one who wishes to be
born declares solemnly and openly that he accepts the conditions attached
to his decision. On this he is presented with a potion, which
immediately destroys his memory and sense of identity, and dissipates the
thin gaseous tenement which he has inhabited: he becomes a bare vital
principle, not to be perceived by human senses, nor to be by any chemical
test appreciated. He has but one instinct, which is that he is to go to
such and such a place, where he will find two persons whom he is to
importune till they consent to undertake him; but whether he is to find
these persons among the race of Chowbok or the Erewhonians themselves is
not for him to choose.
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