er poor
or poorly. No one with a due 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;
what progress either of body or soul had been otherwise possible? 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 kind of cunning, they are
quite open about even the most flagrant mental diseases, should they
happen to exist, which to do the people justice is not often. Indeed,
there are some who, so to speak, are 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.

It has followed that 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 was 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, and is condoled with accordingly. Nay, 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
have classified them according to a system of their own, which, though I