CHAPTER XX: WHAT THEY MEAN BY IT
I have given the above mythology at some length, but it is only a small
part of what they have upon the subject. My first feeling on reading it
was that any amount of folly on the part of the unborn in coming here was
justified by a desire to escape from such intolerable prosing. The
mythology is obviously an unfair and exaggerated representation of life
and things; and had its authors been so minded they could have easily
drawn a picture which would err as much on the bright side as this does
on the dark. No Erewhonian believes that the world is as black as it has
been here painted, but it is one of their peculiarities that they very
often do not believe or mean things which they profess to regard as
indisputable.
In the present instance their professed views concerning the unborn have
arisen from their desire to prove that people have been presented with
the gloomiest possible picture of their own prospects before they came
here; otherwise, they could hardly say to one whom they are going to
punish for an affection of the heart or brain that it is all his own
doing. In practice they modify their theory to a considerable extent,
and seldom refer to the birth formula except in extreme cases; for the
force of habit, or what not, gives many of them a kindly interest even in
creatures who have so much wronged them as the unborn have done; and
though a man generally hates the unwelcome little stranger for the first
twelve months, he is apt to mollify (according to his lights) as time
goes on, and sometimes he will become inordinately attached to the beings
whom he is pleased to call his children.
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