 which the Professor of Botany had gravely, but as I
believe insidiously, proposed to lead them, would have made the Erewhonians for
a long time suspicious of prophets whether they professed to have communications
with an unseen power or no; but so engrained in the human heart is the desire to
believe that some people really do know what they say they know, and can thus
save them from the trouble of thinking for themselves, that in a short time
would-be philosophers and faddists became more powerful than ever, and gradually
led their countrymen to accept all those absurd views of life, some account of
which I have given in my earlier chapters. Indeed, I can see no hope for the
Erewhonians till they have got to understand that reason, uncorrected by
instinct, is as bad as instinct uncorrected by reason.
 

                              Chapter Twenty-Eight

                                     Escape

Though busily engaged in translating the extracts given in the last five
chapters, I was also laying matters in train for my escape with Arowhena. And
indeed it was high time, for I received an intimation from one of the cashiers
of the Musical Banks, that I was to be prosecuted in a criminal court ostensibly
for measles, but really for having owned a watch, and attempted the
reintroduction of machinery.
    I asked, why measles? and was told that there was a fear lest extenuating
circumstances should prevent a jury from convicting me, if I were indicted for
typhus or smallpox, but that a verdict would probably be obtained for measles, a
disease which could be sufficiently punished in a person of my age. I was given
to understand that unless some unexpected change should come over the mind of
his Majesty, I might expect the blow to be struck within a very few days.
    My plan was this - that Arowhena and I should escape in a balloon together.
I fear that the reader will disbelieve this part of my story, yet in no other
have I endeavoured to adhere more conscientiously to facts, and can only throw
myself upon his charity.
    I had already gained the ear of the Queen, and had so worked upon her
curiosity that she promised to get leave for me to have a balloon made and
inflated; I pointed out to her that no complicated machinery would be wanted -
nothing, in fact, but a large quantity of oiled silk, a car, a few ropes, etc.
etc., and some light kind of gas, such as the antiquarians who were acquainted
with the means employed by the ancients for the production of the lighter gases
could easily instruct her workmen how to provide. Her eagerness to see so
strange a sight as
