against infection and
the proper treatment of their own disease actually demanded, men would give
themselves up to the police as readily on perceiving that they had taken
smallpox, as they go now to the straightener when they feel that they are on the
point of forging a will, or running away with somebody else's wife.
    But the main argument on which they rely is that of economy; for they know
that they will sooner gain their end by appealing to men's pockets, in which
they have generally something of their own, than to their heads, which contain
for the most part little but borrowed or stolen property; and also, they believe
it to be the readiest test and the one which has most to show for itself. If a
course of conduct can be shown to cost a country less, and this by no
dishonourable saving and with no indirectly increased expenditure in other ways,
they hold that it requires a good deal to upset the arguments in favour of its
being adopted, and whether rightly or wrongly I cannot pretend to say, they
think that the more medicinal and humane treatment of the diseased of which they
are the advocates would in the long run be much cheaper to the country; but I
did not gather that these reformers were opposed to meeting some of the more
violent forms of illness with the cat-of-nine-tails, or with death; for they saw
no so effectual way of checking them; they would therefore both flog and hang,
but they would do so pitifully.
    I have perhaps dwelt too long upon opinions which can have no possible
bearing upon our own, but I have not said the tenth part of what these would-be
reformers urged upon me. I feel, however, that I have sufficiently trespassed
upon the attention of the reader.
 

                                Chapter Thirteen

                          The Views of the Erewhonians

                                Concerning Death

The Erewhonians regard death with less abhorrence than disease. If it is an
offence at all, it is one beyond the reach of the law, which is therefore silent
on the subject; but they insist that the greater number of those who are
commonly said to die, have never yet been born - not, at least, into that unseen
world which is alone worthy of consideration. As regards this unseen world I
understand them to say that some miscarry in respect to it before they have even
reached the seen, and some after, while few are ever truly born into it at all -
the greater part of all the men and women over the whole country miscarrying
before they reach it. And they say that this does not matter so much as