Chapter X: Current Opinions
This is what I gathered. That in that country if a man falls into
ill health, or catches any disorder, or fails bodily in any way
before he is seventy years old, he is tried before a jury of his
countrymen, and if convicted is held up to public scorn and
sentenced more or less severely as the case may be. There are
subdivisions of illnesses into crimes and misdemeanours as with
offences amongst ourselves--a man being punished very heavily for
serious illness, while failure of eyes or hearing in one over
sixty-five, who has had good health hitherto, is dealt with by fine
only, or imprisonment in default of payment. But if a man forges a
cheque, or sets his house on fire, or robs with violence from the
person, or does any other such things as are criminal in our own
country, he is either taken to a hospital and most carefully tended
at the public expense, or if he is in good circumstances, he lets
it be known to all his friends that he is suffering from a severe
fit of immorality, just as we do when we are ill, and they come and
visit him with great solicitude, and inquire with interest how it
all came about, what symptoms first showed themselves, and so
forth,--questions which he will answer with perfect unreserve; for
bad conduct, though considered no less deplorable than illness with
ourselves, and as unquestionably indicating something seriously
wrong with the individual who misbehaves, is nevertheless held to
be the result of either pre-natal or post-natal misfortune.
The strange part of the story, however, is that though they ascribe
moral defects to the effect of misfortune either in character or
surroundings, they will not listen to the plea of misfortune in
cases that in England meet with sympathy and commiseration only.
Ill luck of any kind, or even ill treatment at the hands of others,
is considered an offence against society, inasmuch as it makes
people uncomfortable to hear of it. Loss of fortune, therefore, or
loss of some dear friend on whom another was much dependent, is
punished hardly less severely than physical delinquency.
Foreign, indeed, as such ideas are to our own, traces of somewhat
similar opinions can be found even in nineteenth-century England.
If a person has an abscess, the medical man will say that it
contains "peccant" matter, and people say that they have a "bad"
arm or finger, or that they are very "bad" all over, when they only
mean "diseased." Among foreign nations Erewhonian opinions may be
still more clearly noted. The Mahommedans, for example, to this
day, send their female prisoners to hospitals, and the New Zealand
Maories visit any misfortune with forcible entry into the house of
the offender, and the breaking up and burning of all his goods.
The Italians, again, use the same word for "disgrace" and
"misfortune." I once heard an Italian lady speak of a young friend
whom she described as endowed with every virtue under heaven, "ma,"
she exclaimed, "povero disgraziato, ha ammazzato suo zio." ("Poor
unfortunate fellow, he has murdered his uncle.")
On mentioning this, which I heard when taken to Italy as a boy by
my father, the person to whom I told it showed no surprise. He
said that he had been driven for two or three years in a certain
city by a young Sicilian cabdriver of prepossessing manners and
appearance, but then lost sight of him. On asking what had become
of him, he was told that he was in prison for having shot at his
father with intent to kill him--happily without serious result.
Some years later my informant again found himself warmly accosted
by the prepossessing young cabdriver. "Ah, caro signore," he
exclaimed, "sono cinque anni che non lo vedo--tre anni di militare,
e due anni di disgrazia," &c. ("My dear sir, it is five years
since I saw you--three years of military service, and two of
misfortune")--during which last the poor fellow had been in prison.
Of moral sense he showed not so much as a trace. He and his father
were now on excellent terms, and were likely to remain so unless
either of them should again have the misfortune mortally to offend
the other.
In the following chapter I will give a few examples of the way in
which what we should call misfortune, hardship, or disease are
dealt with by the Erewhonians, but for the moment will return to
their treatment of cases that with us are criminal. As I have
already said, these, though not judicially punishable, are
recognised as requiring correction. Accordingly, there exists a
class of men trained in soul-craft, whom they call straighteners,
as nearly as I can translate a word which literally means "one who
bends back the crooked." These men practise much as medical men in
England, and receive a quasi-surreptitious fee on every visit.
They are treated with the same unreserve, and obeyed as readily, as
our own doctors--that is to say, on the whole sufficiently--because
people know that it is their interest to get well as soon as they
can, and that they will not be scouted as they would be if their
bodies were out of order, even though they may have to undergo a
very painful course of treatment.
When I say that they will not be scouted, I do not mean that an
Erewhonian will suffer no social inconvenience in consequence, we
will say, of having committed fraud. Friends will fall away from
him because of his being less pleasant company, just as we
ourselves are disinclined to make companions of those who are
either poor or poorly. No one with any sense of self-respect will
place himself on an equality in the matter of affection with those
who are less lucky than himself in birth, health, money, good
looks, capacity, or anything else. Indeed, that dislike and even
disgust should be felt by the fortunate for the unfortunate, or at
any rate for those who have been discovered to have met with any of
the more serious and less familiar misfortunes, is not only
natural, but desirable for any society, whether of man or brute.
The fact, therefore, that the Erewhonians attach none of that guilt
to crime which they do to physical ailments, does not prevent the
more selfish among them from neglecting a friend who has robbed a
bank, for instance, till he has fully recovered; but it does
prevent them from even thinking of treating criminals with that
contemptuous tone which would seem to say, "I, if I were you,
should be a better man than you are," a tone which is held quite
reasonable in regard to physical ailment. Hence, though they
conceal ill health by every cunning and hypocrisy and artifice
which they can devise, they are quite open about the most flagrant
mental diseases, should they happen to exist, which to do the
people justice is not often. Indeed, there are some who are, so to
speak, spiritual valetudinarians, and who make themselves
exceedingly ridiculous by their nervous supposition that they are
wicked, while they are very tolerable people all the time. This
however is exceptional; and on the whole they use much the same
reserve or unreserve about the state of their moral welfare as we
do about our health.
Hence all the ordinary greetings among ourselves, such as, How do
you do? and the like, are considered signs of gross ill-breeding;
nor do the politer classes tolerate even such a common
complimentary remark as telling a man that he is looking well.
They salute each other with, "I hope you are good this morning;" or
"I hope you have recovered from the snappishness from which you
were suffering when I last saw you;" and if the person saluted has
not been good, or is still snappish, he says so at once and is
condoled with accordingly. Indeed, the straighteners have gone so
far as to give names from the hypothetical language (as taught at
the Colleges of Unreason), to all known forms of mental
indisposition, and to classify them according to a system of their
own, which, though I could not understand it, seemed to work well
in practice; for they are always able to tell a man what is the
matter with him as soon as they have heard his story, and their
familiarity with the long names assures him that they thoroughly
understand his case.
The reader will have no difficulty in believing that the laws
regarding ill health were frequently evaded by the help of
recognised fictions, which every one understood, but which it would
be considered gross ill-breeding to even seem to understand. Thus,
a day or two after my arrival at the Nosnibors', one of the many
ladies who called on me made excuses for her husband's only sending
his card, on the ground that when going through the public market-
place that morning he had stolen a pair of socks. I had already
been warned that I should never show surprise, so I merely
expressed my sympathy, and said that though I had only been in the
capital so short a time, I had already had a very narrow escape
from stealing a clothes-brush, and that though I had resisted
temptation so far, I was sadly afraid that if I saw any object of
special interest that was neither too hot nor too heavy, I should
have to put myself in the straightener's hands.
Mrs. Nosnibor, who had been keeping an ear on all that I had been
saying, praised me when the lady had gone. Nothing, she said,
could have been more polite according to Erewhonian etiquette. She
then explained that to have stolen a pair of socks, or "to have the
socks" (in more colloquial language), was a recognised way of
saying that the person in question was slightly indisposed.
In spite of all this they have a keen sense of the enjoyment
consequent upon what they call being "well." They admire mental
health and love it in other people, and take all the pains they can
(consistently with their other duties) to secure it for themselves.
They have an extreme dislike to marrying into what they consider
unhealthy families. They send for the straightener at once
whenever they have been guilty of anything seriously flagitious--
often even if they think that they are on the point of committing
it; and though his remedies are sometimes exceedingly painful,
involving close confinement for weeks, and in some cases the most
cruel physical tortures, I never heard of a reasonable Erewhonian
refusing to do what his straightener told him, any more than of a
reasonable Englishman refusing to undergo even the most frightful
operation, if his doctors told him it was necessary.
We in England never shrink from telling our doctor what is the
matter with us merely through the fear that he will hurt us. We
let him do his worst upon us, and stand it without a murmur,
because we are not scouted for being ill, and because we know that
the doctor is doing his best to cure us, and that he can judge of
our case better than we can; but we should conceal all illness if
we were treated as the Erewhonians are when they have anything the
matter with them; we should do the same as with moral and
intellectual diseases,--we should feign health with the most
consummate art, till we were found out, and should hate a single
flogging given in the way of mere punishment more than the
amputation of a limb, if it were kindly and courteously performed
from a wish to help us out of our difficulty, and with the full
consciousness on the part of the doctor that it was only by an
accident of constitution that he was not in the like plight
himself. So the Erewhonians take a flogging once a week, and a
diet of bread and water for two or three months together, whenever
their straightener recommends it.
I do not suppose that even my host, on having swindled a confiding
widow out of the whole of her property, was put to more actual
suffering than a man will readily undergo at the hands of an
English doctor. And yet he must have had a very bad time of it.
The sounds I heard were sufficient to show that his pain was
exquisite, but he never shrank from undergoing it. He was quite
sure that it did him good; and I think he was right. I cannot
believe that that man will ever embezzle money again. He may--but
it will be a long time before he does so.
During my confinement in prison, and on my journey, I had already
discovered a great deal of the above; but it still seemed
surpassingly strange, and I was in constant fear of committing some
piece of rudeness, through my inability to look at things from the
same stand-point as my neighbours; but after a few weeks' stay with
the Nosnibors, I got to understand things better, especially on
having heard all about my host's illness, of which he told me fully
and repeatedly.
It seemed that he had been on the Stock Exchange of the city for
many years and had amassed enormous wealth, without exceeding the
limits of what was generally considered justifiable, or at any
rate, permissible dealing; but at length on several occasions he
had become aware of a desire to make money by fraudulent
representations, and had actually dealt with two or three sums in a
way which had made him rather uncomfortable. He had unfortunately
made light of it and pooh-poohed the ailment, until circumstances
eventually presented themselves which enabled him to cheat upon a
very considerable scale;--he told me what they were, and they were
about as bad as anything could be, but I need not detail them;--he
seized the opportunity, and became aware, when it was too late,
that he must be seriously out of order. He had neglected himself
too long.
He drove home at once, broke the news to his wife and daughters as
gently as he could, and sent off for one of the most celebrated
straighteners of the kingdom to a consultation with the family
practitioner, for the case was plainly serious. On the arrival of
the straightener he told his story, and expressed his fear that his
morals must be permanently impaired.
The eminent man reassured him with a few cheering words, and then
proceeded to make a more careful diagnosis of the case. He
inquired concerning Mr. Nosnibor's parents--had their moral health
been good? He was answered that there had not been anything
seriously amiss with them, but that his maternal grandfather, whom
he was supposed to resemble somewhat in person, had been a
consummate scoundrel and had ended his days in a hospital,--while a
brother of his father's, after having led a most flagitious life
for many years, had been at last cured by a philosopher of a new
school, which as far as I could understand it bore much the same
relation to the old as homoeopathy to allopathy. The straightener
shook his head at this, and laughingly replied that the cure must
have been due to nature. After a few more questions he wrote a
prescription and departed.
I saw the prescription. It ordered a fine to the State of double
the money embezzled; no food but bread and milk for six months, and
a severe flogging once a month for twelve. I was surprised to see
that no part of the fine was to be paid to the poor woman whose
money had been embezzled, but on inquiry I learned that she would
have been prosecuted in the Misplaced Confidence Court, if she had
not escaped its clutches by dying shortly after she had discovered
her loss.
As for Mr. Nosnibor, he had received his eleventh flogging on the
day of my arrival. I saw him later on the same afternoon, and he
was still twinged; but there had been no escape from following out
the straightener's prescription, for the so-called sanitary laws of
Erewhon are very rigorous, and unless the straightener was
satisfied that his orders had been obeyed, the patient would have
been taken to a hospital (as the poor are), and would have been
much worse off. Such at least is the law, but it is never
necessary to enforce it.
On a subsequent occasion I was present at an interview between Mr.
Nosnibor and the family straightener, who was considered competent
to watch the completion of the cure. I was struck with the
delicacy with which he avoided even the remotest semblance of
inquiry after the physical well-being of his patient, though there
was a certain yellowness about my host's eyes which argued a
bilious habit of body. To have taken notice of this would have
been a gross breach of professional etiquette. I was told,
however, that a straightener sometimes thinks it right to glance at
the possibility of some slight physical disorder if he finds it
important in order to assist him in his diagnosis; but the answers
which he gets are generally untrue or evasive, and he forms his own
conclusions upon the matter as well as he can. Sensible men have
been known to say that the straightener should in strict confidence
be told of every physical ailment that is likely to bear upon the
case; but people are naturally shy of doing this, for they do not
like lowering themselves in the opinion of the straightener, and
his ignorance of medical science is supreme. I heard of one lady,
indeed, who had the hardihood to confess that a furious outbreak of
ill-humour and extravagant fancies for which she was seeking advice
was possibly the result of indisposition. "You should resist
that," said the straightener, in a kind, but grave voice; "we can
do nothing for the bodies of our patients; such matters are beyond
our province, and I desire that I may hear no further particulars."
The lady burst into tears, and promised faithfully that she would
never be unwell again.
But to return to Mr. Nosnibor. As the afternoon wore on many
carriages drove up with callers to inquire how he had stood his
flogging. It had been very severe, but the kind inquiries upon
every side gave him great pleasure, and he assured me that he felt
almost tempted to do wrong again by the solicitude with which his
friends had treated him during his recovery: in this I need hardly
say that he was not serious.
During the remainder of my stay in the country Mr. Nosnibor was
constantly attentive to his business, and largely increased his
already great possessions; but I never heard a whisper to the
effect of his having been indisposed a second time, or made money
by other than the most strictly honourable means. I did hear
afterwards in confidence that there had been reason to believe that
his health had been not a little affected by the straightener's
treatment, but his friends did not choose to be over-curious upon
the subject, and on his return to his affairs it was by common
consent passed over as hardly criminal in one who was otherwise so
much afflicted. For they regard bodily ailments as the more venial
in proportion as they have been produced by causes independent of
the constitution. Thus if a person ruin his health by excessive
indulgence at the table or by drinking, they count it to be almost
a part of the mental disease which brought it about, and so it goes
for little, but they have no mercy on such illnesses as fevers or
catarrhs or lung diseases, which to us appear to be beyond the
control of the individual. They are only more lenient towards the
diseases of the young--such as measles, which they think to be like
sowing one's wild oats--and look over them as pardonable
indiscretions if they have not been too serious, and if they are
atoned for by complete subsequent recovery.
It is hardly necessary to say that the office of straightener is
one which requires long and special training. It stands to reason
that he who would cure a moral ailment must be practically
acquainted with it in all its bearings. The student for the
profession of straightener is required to set apart certain seasons
for the practice of each vice in turn, as a religious duty. These
seasons are called "fasts," and are continued by the student until
he finds that he really can subdue all the more usual vices in his
own person, and hence can advise his patients from the results of
his own experience.
Those who intend to be specialists, rather than general
practitioners, devote themselves more particularly to the branch in
which their practice will mainly lie. Some students have been
obliged to continue their exercises during their whole lives, and
some devoted men have actually died as martyrs to the drink, or
gluttony, or whatever branch of vice they may have chosen for their
especial study. The greater number, however, take no harm by the
excursions into the various departments of vice which it is
incumbent upon them to study.
For the Erewhonians hold that unalloyed virtue is not a thing to be
immoderately indulged in. I was shown more than one case in which
the real or supposed virtues of parents were visited upon the
children to the third and fourth generation. The straighteners say
that the most that can be truly said for virtue is that there is a
considerable balance in its favour, and that it is on the whole a
good deal better to be on its side than against it; but they urge
that there is much pseudo-virtue going about, which is apt to let
people in very badly before they find it out. Those men, they say,
are best who are not remarkable either for vice or virtue. I told
them about Hogarth's idle and industrious apprentices, but they did
not seem to think that the industrious apprentice was a very nice
person.
Erewhon : Chapter XI - Some Erewhonian Trials
Erewhon