I own that all this seemed rather hard, and not of a piece with the many admirable institutions existing among them.  I once ventured to say a part of what I thought about it to one of the Professors of Unreason.  I did it very tenderly, but his justification of the system was quite out of my comprehension.  I remember asking him whether he did not think it would do harm to a lad’s principles, by weakening his sense of the sanctity of his word and of truth generally, that he should be led into entering upon a solemn declaration as to the truth of things about which all that he can certainly know is that he knows nothing—­whether, in fact, the teachers who so led him, or who taught anything as a certainty of which they were themselves uncertain, were not earning their living by impairing the truth-sense of their pupils (a delicate organisation mostly), and by vitiating one of their most sacred instincts.

The Professor, who was a delightful person, seemed greatly surprised at the view which I took, but it had no influence with him whatsoever.  No one, he answered, expected that the boy either would or could know all that he said he knew; but the world was full of compromises; and there was hardly any affirmation which would bear being interpreted literally.  Human language was too gross a vehicle of thought—­thought being incapable of absolute translation.  He added, that as there can be no translation from one language into another which shall not scant the meaning somewhat, or enlarge upon it, so there is no language which can render thought without a jarring and a harshness somewhere—­and so forth; all of which seemed to come to this in the end, that it was the custom of the country, and that the Erewhonians were a conservative people; that the boy would have to begin compromising sooner or later, and this was part of his education in the art.  It was perhaps to be regretted that compromise should be as necessary as it was; still it was necessary, and the sooner the boy got to understand it the better for himself.  But they never tell this to the boy.

From the book of their mythology about the unborn I made the extracts which will form the following chapter.

CHAPTER XIX:  THE WORLD OF THE UNBORN

The Erewhonians say that we are drawn through life backwards; or again, that we go onwards into the future as into a dark corridor.  Time walks beside us and flings back shutters as we advance; but the light thus given often dazzles us, and deepens the darkness which is in front.  We can see but little at a time, and heed that little far less than our apprehension of what we shall see next; ever peering curiously through the glare of the present into the gloom of the future, we presage the leading lines of that which is before us, by faintly reflected lights from dull mirrors that are behind, and stumble on as we may till the trap-door opens beneath us and we are gone.