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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

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