 until one of the
most learned professors of hypothetics wrote an extraordinary book (from which I
propose to give extracts later on), proving that the machines were ultimately
destined to supplant the race of man, and to become instinct with a vitality as
different from, and superior to, that of animals, as animal to vegetable life.
So convincing was his reasoning, or unreasoning, to this effect, that he carried
the country with him; and they made a clean sweep of all machinery that had not
been in use for more than two hundred and seventy-one years (which period was
arrived at after a series of compromises), and strictly forbade all further
improvements and inventions under pain of being considered in the eye of the law
to be labouring under typhus fever, which they regard as one of the worst of all
crimes.
    This is the only case in which they have confounded mental and physical
diseases, and they do it even here as by an avowed legal fiction. I became
uneasy when I remembered about my watch; but they comforted me with the
assurance that transgression in this matter was now so unheard of, that the law
could afford to be lenient towards an utter stranger, especially towards one who
had such a good character (they meant physique), and such beautiful light hair.
Moreover, the watch was a real curiosity, and would be a welcome addition to the
metropolitan collection; so they did not think I need let it trouble me
seriously.
    I will write, however, more fully upon this subject when I deal with the
Colleges of Unreason, and the Book of the Machines.
    In about a month from the time of our starting I was told that our journey
was nearly over. The bandage was now dispensed with, for it seemed impossible
that I should ever be able to find my way back without being captured. Then we
rolled merrily along through the streets of a handsome town, and got on to a
long, broad, and level road, with poplar trees on either side. The road was
raised slightly above the surrounding country, and had formerly been a railway;
the fields on either side were in the highest conceivable cultivation, but the
harvest and also the vintage had been already gathered. The weather had got
cooler more rapidly than could be quite accounted for by the progress of the
season; so I rather thought that we must have been making away from the sun, and
were some degrees farther from the equator than when we started. Even here the
vegetation showed that the climate was a hot one, yet there was no lack of
vigour among
