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 organization
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 Nineteen

                            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.
    They say at other times that the future and the past are as a panorama upon
two rollers; that which is on the roller of the future unwraps itself on to the
roller of the past; we cannot hasten it, and we may not stay it; we must see all
that is unfolded