class would have looked happier and better men.  When I met them in the streets they did not seem like other people, but had, as a general rule, a cramped expression upon their faces which pained and depressed me.

Those who came from the country were better; they seemed to have lived less as a separate class, and to be freer and healthier; but in spite of my seeing not a few whose looks were benign and noble, I could not help asking myself concerning the greater number of those whom I met, whether Erewhon would be a better country if their expression were to be transferred to the people in general.  I answered myself emphatically, no.  A man’s expression is his sacrament; it is the outward and visible sign of his inward and spiritual grace, or, want of grace; and as I looked at the majority of these men, I could not help feeling that there must be a something in their lives which had stunted their natural development, and that they would have been more healthily-minded in any other profession.

I was always sorry for them, for in nine cases out of ten they were well-meaning persons; they were in the main very poorly paid; their constitutions were as a rule above suspicion; and there were recorded numberless instances of their self-sacrifice and generosity; but they had had the misfortune to have been betrayed into a false position at an age for the most part when their judgment was not matured, and after having been kept in studied ignorance of the real difficulties of the system.  But this did not make their position the less a false one, and its bad effects upon themselves were unmistakable.

Few people would speak quite openly and freely before them, which struck me as a very bad sign.  When they were in the room every one would talk as though all currency save that of the musical banks should be abolished; and yet they knew perfectly well that even the cashiers themselves hardly used the musical bank money more than other people.  It was expected of them that they should appear to do so, but this was all.  The less thoughtful of them did not seem particularly unhappy, but many were plainly sick at heart, though perhaps they hardly knew it, and would not have owned to being so.  Some few were opponents of the whole system; but these were liable to be dismissed from their employment at any moment, and this rendered them very careful, for a man who had once been cashier at a musical bank was out of the field for other employment, and was generally unfitted for it by reason of that course of treatment which was commonly called his education.  In fact it was a career from which retreat was virtually impossible, and into which young men were generally induced to enter before they could be reasonably expected, considering their training, to have formed any opinions of their own.  Few indeed were those who had the courage to insist on seeing both sides of the question before they committed themselves to either.  One would have thought that this was an elementary principle,—one of the first things that an honourable man would teach his boy to do; but in practice it was not so.

I even saw cases in which parents bought the right of presenting to the office of cashier at one of these banks, with the fixed determination that some one of their sons (perhaps a mere child) should fill it.  There was the lad himself—growing up with every promise

of becoming a good and honourable man—but utterly without warning concerning the iron shoe which his natural protector was providing for him.  Who could say that the whole thing would not end in a life-long lie, and vain chafing to escape?

I confess that there were few things in Erewhon which shocked me more than this.

BIRTH FORMULÆ.  (chapter xvii. of erewhon.)

I heard what follows not from Arowhena, but from Mr. Nosnibor and some of the gentlemen who occasionally dined at the house: they told me that the Erewhonians believe in pre-existence; and not only this (of which I will write more fully in the next chapter), but they believe that it is of their own free act and deed in a previous state that people come to be born into this world at all.

They hold that the unborn are perpetually plaguing and tormenting the married (and sometimes even the unmarried) of both sexes, fluttering about them incessantly, and giving them no peace either of mind or body until they have consented to take them under their protection.  If this were not so—this is at least what they urge—it would be a monstrous freedom for one man to take with another, to say that he should undergo the chances and changes of this mortal life without any option in the matter.  No man would have any right to get married at all, inasmuch as he can never tell what misery his doing so may entail forcibly upon his children who cannot be unhappy as long as they remain unborn.  They feel this so strongly that they are resolved to shift the blame on to other shoulders; they have therefore invented a long mythology as to the world in which the unborn people live, what they do,

and the arts and machinations to which they have recourse in order to get themselves into our own world.

I cannot think they seriously believe in this mythology concerning pre-existence; they do and they do not; they do not know themselves what they believe; all they know is that it is a disease not to believe as they do.  The only thing of which they are quite sure is that it is the pestering of the unborn, which causes them to be brought into this world, and that they would not be here if they would only let peaceable people alone.

It would be hard to disprove this position, and they might have a good case if they would only leave it as it stands.  But this they will not do; they must have assurance doubly sure; they must have the written word of the child itself as soon as it is born, giving the parents indemnity from all responsibility on the score of its birth, and asserting its own pre-existence.  They have therefore devised something which they call a birth formula—a document which varies in words according to the caution of parents, but is much the same practically in all cases; for it has been the business of the Erewhonian lawyers during many ages to exercise their skill in perfecting it and providing for every contingency.

These formulæ are printed on common paper at a moderate cost for the poor; but the rich have them written on parchment and handsomely bound, so that the getting up of a person’s birth formula is a test of his social position.  They commence by setting forth, That whereas A. B. was a member of the kingdom of the unborn, where he was well provided for in every way, and had no cause of discontent, &c. &c., he did of his own wanton restlessness conceive a desire

to enter into this present world; that thereon having taken the necessary steps as set forth in laws of the unborn kingdom, he set himself with malice aforethought to plague and pester two unfortunate people who had never wronged him, and who were quite contented until he conceived this base design against their peace; for which wrong he now humbly entreats their pardon.  He acknowledges that he is responsible for all physical blemishes and deficiencies which may render him answerable to the laws of his country; that his parents have nothing whatever to do with any of these things; and that they have a right to kill him at once if they be so minded, though he entreats them to show their marvellous goodness and clemency towards him by sparing his life.  If they