ed, miracle,
others will accrete round it; then, in all religions that have so
originated, there will follow temples, priests, rites, sincere believers,
and unscrupulous exploiters of public credulity. To chronicle the events
that followed Higgs's balloon ascent without shewing that they were much
as they have been under like conditions in other places, would be to hold
the mirror up to something very wide of nature.

Analogy, however, between courses of events is one thing--historic
parallelisms abound; analogy between the main actors in events is a very
different one, and one, moreover, of which few examples can be found. The
development of the new ideas in Erewhon is a familiar one, but there is
no more likeness between Higgs and the founder of any other religion,
than there is between Jesus Christ and Mahomet. He is a typical middle-
class Englishman, deeply tainted with priggishness in his earlier years,
but in great part freed from it by the sweet uses of adversity.

If I may be allowed for a moment to speak about myself, I would say that
I have never ceased to profess myself a member of the more advanced wing
of the English Broad Church. What those who belong to this wing believe,
I believe. What they reject, I reject. No two people think absolutely
alike on any subject, but when I converse with advanced Broad Churchmen I
find myself in substantial harmony with them. I believe--and should be
very sorry if I did not believe--that, mutatis mutandis, such men will
find the advice given on pp. 277-281 and 287-291 of this book much what,
under the supposed circumstances, they would themselves give.

Lastly, I should express my great obligations to Mr. R. A. Streatfeild of
the British Museum, who, in the absence from England of my friend Mr. H.
Festing Jones, has kindly supervised the corrections of my book as it
passed through the press.

SAMUEL BUTLER.
May 1, 1901.

CHAPTER I: UPS AND DOWNS OF FORTUNE--MY FATHER STARTS FOR EREWHON

Before telling the story of my father's second visit to the remarkable
country which he discovered now some thirty years since, I should perhaps
say a few words about his career between the publication of his book in
1872, and his death in the early summer of 1891. I shall thus touch
briefly on the causes that occasioned his failure to maintain that hold
on the public which he had apparently secured at first.

His book, as the reader may perhaps know, was published a