Which these points were, I
invariably found myself unable to determine; indeed, it seemed to be
counted the perfection of scholarship and good breeding among them not to
have--much less to express--an opinion on any subject on which it might
prove later that they had been mistaken. The art of sitting gracefully
on a fence has never, I should think, been brought to greater perfection
than at the Erewhonian Colleges of Unreason.
Even when, wriggle as they may, they find themselves pinned down to some
expression of definite opinion, as often as not they will argue in
support of what they perfectly well know to be untrue. I repeatedly met
with reviews and articles even in their best journals, between the lines
of which I had little difficulty in detecting a sense exactly contrary to
the one ostensibly put forward. So well is this understood, that a man
must be a mere tyro in the arts of Erewhonian polite society, unless he
instinctively suspects a hidden "yea" in every "nay" that meets him.
Granted that it comes to much the same in the end, for it does not matter
whether "yea" is called "yea" or "nay," so long as it is understood which
it is to be; but our own more direct way of calling a spade a spade,
rather than a rake, with the intention that every one should understand
it as a spade, seems more satisfactory.
Pages:
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261