On the other hand, the
Erewhonian system lends itself better to the suppression of that
downrightness which it seems the express aim of Erewhonian philosophy to
discountenance.
However this may be, the fear-of-giving-themselves-away disease was fatal
to the intelligence of those infected by it, and almost every one at the
Colleges of Unreason had caught it to a greater or less degree. After a
few years atrophy of the opinions invariably supervened, and the sufferer
became stone dead to everything except the more superficial aspects of
those material objects with which he came most in contact. The
expression on the faces of these people was repellent; they did not,
however, seem particularly unhappy, for they none of them had the
faintest idea that they were in reality more dead than alive. No cure
for this disgusting fear-of-giving-themselves-away disease has yet been
discovered.
* * *
It was during my stay in City of the Colleges of Unreason--a city whose
Erewhonian name is so cacophonous that I refrain from giving it--that I
learned the particulars of the revolution which had ended in the
destruction of so many of the mechanical inventions which were formerly
in common use.
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