 gratuitous than the telling them what they do not want to know? A man
should remember that intellectual over- is one of the most insidious and
disgraceful forms that excess can take. Granted that every one should exceed
more or less, inasmuch as absolutely perfect sanity would drive any man mad the
moment he reached it, but ...«
    He was now warming to his subject and I was beginning to wonder how I should
get rid of him, when the party broke up, and though I promised to call on him
before I left, I was unfortunately prevented from doing so.
    I have now said enough to give English readers some idea of the strange
views which the Erewhonians hold concerning unreason, hypothetics, and education
generally. In many respects they were sensible enough, but I could not get over
the hypothetics, especially the turning their own good poetry into the
hypothetical language. In the course of my stay I met one youth who told me that
for fourteen years the hypothetical language had been almost the only thing that
he had been taught, although he had never (to his credit, as it seemed to me)
shown the slightest proclivity towards it, while he had been endowed with not
inconsiderable ability for several other branches of human learning. He assured
me that he would never open another hypothetical book after he had taken his
degree, but would follow out the bent of his own inclinations. This was well
enough, but who could give him his fourteen years back again?
    I sometimes wondered how it was that the mischief done was not more clearly
perceptible, and that the young men and women grew up as sensible and goodly as
they did, in spite of the attempts almost deliberately made to warp and stunt
their growth. Some doubtless received damage, from which they suffered to their
life's end; but many seemed little or none the worse, and some, almost the
better. The reason would seem to be that the natural instinct of the lads in
most cases so absolutely rebelled against their training, that do what the
teachers might they could never get them to pay serious heed to it. The
consequence was that the boys only lost their time, and not so much of this as
might have been expected, for in their hours of leisure they were actively
engaged in exercises and sports which developed their physical nature, and made
them at any rate strong and healthy.
    Moreover, those who had any special tastes could not be restrained from
developing them; they would learn what they wanted to learn and liked, in spite
of obstacles which seemed rather to urge them on than to
