n quiet,
I should have slept; then had I been at rest with kings and counsellors
of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves; or with princes
that had gold, who filled their houses with silver; or as an hidden
untimely birth, I had not been; as infants which never saw light. There
the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.' Be very
sure that the guilt of being born carries this punishment at times to all
men; but how can they ask for pity, or complain of any mischief that may
befall them, having entered open-eyed into the snare?

"One word more and we have done. If any faint remembrance, as of a
dream, flit in some puzzled moment across your brain, and you shall feel
that the potion which is to be given you shall not have done its work,
and the memory of this existence which you are leaving endeavours vainly
to return; we say in such a moment, when you clutch at the dream but it
eludes your grasp, and you watch it, as Orpheus watched Eurydice, gliding
back again into the twilight kingdom, fly--fly--if you can remember the
advice--to the haven of your present and immediate duty, taking shelter
incessantly in the work which you have in hand. This much you may
perhaps recall; and this, if you will imprint it deeply upon your every
faculty, will be most likely to bring you safely and honourably home
through the trials that are before you." {47}

This is the fashion in which they reason with those who would be for
leaving them, but it is seldom that they do much good, for none but the
unquiet and unreasonable ever think of being born, and those who are
foolish enough to think of it are generally foolish enough to do it.
Finding therefore that they can do no more, the friends follow weeping to
the courthouse of the chief magistrate, where the one who wishes to be
born declares solemnly and openly that he accepts the conditions attached
to his decision. On this he is presented with the potion, which
immediately destroys his memory and sense of identity, and dissipates the
thin gaseous tenement which he has inhabited: he becomes a bare vital
principle, not to be perceived by human senses, nor appreciated by any
chemical test. He has but one instinct, which is that he is to go to
such and such a place, where he will find two persons whom he is to
importune till they consent to undertake him; but whether he is to find
these persons among the race of Chowbok or the Erewhonians themselves is
not