Erewhon: 150th Anniversary Edition
Erewhon: 150th Anniversary Edition
EREWHON: 150th Anniversary Edition
Original Map of Erewhon drawn by Samuel Butler
Preface to the First Edition
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the Revised Edition
Looking Back to Local Utopia: An Introduction
Wastelands
In the Wool Shed
Up the River
The Saddle
The River and the Range
Into Erewhon
First Impressions
In Prison
To the Metropolis
Current Opinions
Some Erewhonian Trials
Malcontents
The Views of the Erewhonians Concerning Death
Mahaina
The Musical Banks
Arowhena
Ydgrun and the Ydrunites
Birth Formulae
The World of the Unborn
What They Mean by It
The Colleges of Unreason
The Colleges of Reason—Continued
The Book of the Machines
The Machines—continued
The Machines—concluded
The Views of an Erewhonian Prophet Concerning the Rights of Animals
The Views of an Erewhonian Philosopher Concerning the Rights of Vegetables
Escape
Conclusion
About the Authors
Contents
Guide
Table of Contents
Start of Content
(There is no action save upon a balance of considerations.)
Preface to the First Edition
The Author wishes it to be understood that Erewhon is pronounced as a word of three syllables, all short—thus, Ĕ-rĕ-whŏn.
Preface to the Second Edition
Having been enabled by the kindness of the public to get through an unusually large edition of Erewhon in a very short time, I have taken the opportunity of a second edition to make some necessary corrections, and to add a few passages where it struck me that they would be appropriately introduced; the passages are few, and it is my fixed intention never to touch the work again.
I may perhaps be allowed to say a word or two here in reference to The Coming Race, to the success of which book Erewhon has been very generally set down as due. This is a mistake, though a perfectly natural one. The fact is that Erewhon was finished, with the exception of the last twenty pages and a sentence or two inserted from time to time here and there throughout the book, before the first advertisement of The Coming Race appeared. A friend having called my attention to one of the first of these advertisements, and suggesting that it probably referred to a work of similar character to my own, I took Erewhon to a well-known firm of publishers on the 1st of May 1871, and left it in their hands for consideration. I then went abroad, and on learning that the publishers alluded to declined the manuscript, I let it alone for six or seven months, and, being in an out-of-the-way part of Italy, never saw a single review of The Coming Race, nor a copy of the work. On my return, I purposely avoided looking into it until I had sent back my last revises to the printer. Then I had much pleasure in reading it, but was indeed surprised at the many little points of similarity between the two books, in spite of their entire independence to one another.
I regret that reviewers have in some cases been inclined to treat the chapters on Machines as an attempt to reduce Mr. Darwin’s theory to an absurdity. Nothing could be further from my intention, and few things would be more distasteful to me than any attempt to laugh at Mr. Darwin; but I must own that I have myself to thank for the misconception, for I felt sure that my intention would be missed, but preferred not to weaken the chapters by explanation, and knew very well that Mr. Darwin’s theory would take no harm. The only question in my mind was how far I could afford to be misrepresented as laughing at that for which I have the most profound admiration. I am surprised, however, that the book at which such an example of the specious misuse of analogy would seem most naturally levelled should have occurred to no reviewer; neither shall I mention the name of the book here, though I should fancy that the hint given will suffice.
I have been held by some whose opinions I respect to have denied men’s responsibility for their actions. He who does this is an enemy who deserves no quarter. I should have imagined that I had been sufficiently explicit, but have made a few additions to the chapter on Malcontents, which will, I think, serve to render further mistake impossible.
An anonymous correspondent (by the hand-writing presumably a clergyman) tells me that in quoting from the Latin grammar I should at any rate have done so correctly, and that I should have written “agricolas” instead of “agricolae.” He added something about any boy in the fourth form, etc., etc., which I shall not quote, but which made me very uncomfortable. It may be said that I must have misquoted from design, from ignorance, or by a slip of the pen; but surely in these days it will be recognized as harsh to assign limits to the all-embracing boundlessness of truth, and it will be more reasonably assumed that each of the three possible causes of misquotation must have had its share in the apparent blunder. The art of writing things that shall sound right and yet be wrong has made so many reputations, and affords comfort to such a large number of readers, that I could not venture to neglect it; the Latin grammar, however, is a subject on which some of the younger members of the community feel strongly, so I have now written “agricolas.” I have also parted with the word “infortuniam” (though not without regret), but have not dared to meddle with other similar inaccuracies.
For the inconsistencies in the book, and I am aware that there are not a few, I must ask the indulgence of the reader. The blame, however, lies chiefly with the Erewhonians themselves, for they were really a very difficult people to understand. The most glaring anomalies seemed to afford them no intellectual inconvenience; neither, provided they did not actually see the money dropping out of their pockets, nor suffer immediate physical pain, would they listen to any arguments as to the waste of money and happiness which their folly caused them. But this had an effect of which I have little reason to complain, for I was allowed almost to call them life-long self-deceivers to their faces, and they said it was quite true, but that it did not matter.
I must not conclude without expressing my most sincere thanks to my critics and to the public for the leniency and consideration with which they have treated my adventures.
June 9, 1872
Preface to the Revised Edition
My publisher wishes me to say a few words about the genesis of the work, a revised and enlarged edition of which he is herewith laying before the public. I therefore place on record as much as I can remember on this head after a lapse of more than thirty years.
The first part of Erewhon written was an article headed “Darwin among the Machines,” and signed Cellarius. It was written in the Upper Rangitata district of the Canterbury Province (as it then was) of New Zealand, and appeared at Christchurch in the Press Newspaper, June 13, 1863. A copy of this article is indexed under my books in the British Museum catalogue. In passing, I may say that the opening chapters of Erewhon were also drawn from the Upper Rangitata district, with such modifications as I found convenient.
A second article on the same subject as the one just referred to appeared in the Press shortly after the first, but I have no copy. It treated Machines from a different point of view, and was the basis of pp. 270-274 of the present edition of Erewhon.1 This view ultimately led me to the theory I put forward in “Life and Habit,” published in November 1877. I have put a bare outline of this theory (which I believe to be quite sound) into the mouth of
an Erewhonian philosopher in Chapter XXVII of this book.
In 1865 I rewrote and enlarged “Darwin among the Machines” for the Reasoner, a paper published in London by Mr. G. J. Holyoake. It appeared July 1, 1865, under the heading, “The Mechanical Creation,” and can be seen in the British Museum. I again rewrote and enlarged it, till it assumed the form in which it appeared in the first edition of Erewhon.
The next part of Erewhon that I wrote was the “World of the Unborn,” a preliminary form of which was sent to Mr. Holyoake’s paper, but as I cannot find it among those copies of the Reasoner that are in the British Museum, I conclude that it was not accepted. I have, however, rather a strong fancy that it appeared in some London paper of the same character as the Reasoner, not very long after July 1, 1865, but I have no copy.
I also wrote about this time the substance of what ultimately became the Musical Banks, and the trial of a man for being in a consumption. These four detached papers were, I believe, all that was written of Erewhon before 1870. Between 1865 and 1870 I wrote hardly anything, being hopeful of attaining that success as a painter which it has not been vouchsafed me to attain, but in the autumn of 1870, just as I was beginning to get occasionally hung at Royal Academy exhibitions, my friend, the late Sir F. N. (then Mr.) Broome, suggested to me that I should add somewhat to the articles I had already written, and string them together into a book. I was rather fired by the idea, but as I only worked at the manuscript on Sundays it was some months before I had completed it.
I see from my second Preface that I took the book to Messrs. Chapman & Hall May 1, 1871, and on their rejection of it, under the advice of one who has attained the highest rank among living writers, I let it sleep, till I took it to Mr. Trübner early in 1872. As regards its rejection by Messrs. Chapman & Hall, I believe their reader advised them quite wisely. They told me he reported that it was a philosophical work, little likely to be popular with a large circle of readers. I hope that if I had been their reader, and the book had been submitted to myself, I should have advised them to the same effect.
Erewhon appeared with the last day or two of March 1872. I attribute its unlooked-for success mainly to two early favorable reviews—the first in the Pall Mall Gazette of April 12, and the second in the Spectator of April 20. There was also another cause. I was complaining once to a friend that though Erewhon had met with such a warm reception, my subsequent books had been all of them practically stillborn. He said, “You forget one charm that Erewhon had, but which none of your other books can have.” I asked what? and was answered, “The sound of a new voice, and of an unknown voice.”
The first edition of Erewhon sold in about three weeks; I had not taken molds, and as the demand was strong, it was set up again immediately. I made a few unimportant alterations and additions, and added a Preface, of which I cannot say that I am particularly proud, but an inexperienced writer with a head somewhat turned by unexpected success is not to be trusted with a preface. I made a few further very trifling alterations before molds were taken, but since the summer of 1872, as new editions were from time to time wanted, they have been printed from stereos then made.
Having now, I fear, at too great length done what I was asked to do, I should like to add a few words on my own account. I am still fairly well satisfied with those parts of Erewhon that were repeatedly rewritten, but from those that had only a single writing I would gladly cut out some forty or fifty pages if I could.
This, however, may not be, for the copyright will probably expire in a little over twelve years. It was necessary, therefore, to revise the book throughout for literary inelegancies—of which I found many more than I had expected—and also to make such substantial additions as should secure a new lease of life—at any rate for the copyright. If, then, instead of cutting out, say fifty pages, I have been compelled to add about sixty invitâ Minervâ—the blame rests neither with my publisher nor with me, but with the copyright laws. Nevertheless I can assure the reader that, though I have found it an irksome task to take up work which I thought I had got rid of thirty years ago, and much of which I am ashamed of, I have done my best to make the new matter savor so much of the better portions of the old, that none but the best critics shall perceive at what places the gaps of between thirty and forty years occur.
Lastly, if my readers note a considerable difference between the literary technique of Erewhon and that of Erewhon Revisited, I would remind them that, as I have just shown, Erewhon look something like ten years in writing, and even so was written with great difficulty, while Erewhon Revisited was written easily between November 1900 and the end of April 1901. There is no central idea underlying Erewhon, whereas the attempt to realize the effect of a single supposed great miracle dominates the whole of its successor. In Erewhon there was hardly any story, and little attempt to give life and individuality to the characters; I hope that in Erewhon Revisited both these defects have been in great measure avoided. Erewhon was not an organic whole, Erewhon Revisited may fairly claim to be one. Nevertheless, though in literary workmanship I do not doubt that this last-named book is an improvement on the first, I shall be agreeably surprised if I am not told that Erewhon, with all its faults, is the better reading of the two.
Samuel Butler
August 7, 1901
1 The last part of Chapter XXIII
Looking Back to Local Utopia
An Introduction
by Octavia Cade
There’s something particularly strange about living in New Zealand. We’re so far away from everyone else that they see us, often, through a dreamy, idealistic haze. We’re the modern utopia. It’s an attitude that’s been fairly prominent over the course of the ongoing pandemic. There we were, Down Under, a small country coming together to take what we widely saw as strong and sensible measures to combat an unfamiliar disease. Little did we know that common sense would find us so lauded by so many, and I’d have been more flattered if I were certain those who held us up as a pinnacle of competence and community care could at least locate us on a map. This sounds ungrateful, but we’ve got our own problems. Modern-day New Zealand is no utopia. We have, however, been the setting for some.
The most famous was created by Samuel Butler (1835–1902), who emigrated to New Zealand in 1859, mostly to get away from his family.1 There, Butler took up a job farming sheep on Mesopotamia Station in the high country of the South Island.2 He also began to write articles for The Press, a daily newspaper out of Christchurch, which was the closest major settlement to the Station. The first of these articles, a dialogue titled “Darwin on the Origin of Species,” was published in 1862.3 Charles Darwin had only published On the Origin of Species in 1859, so evolution was a hot topic, and one that engaged Butler immensely. Later Press articles included the 1863 publication of “Darwin Among the Machines,”4 which applied the idea of natural selection to technology as well as biology. What would happen to humanity, Butler wondered, if machines became intelligent and started outcompeting us? The outcome, he concluded, would be slavery, and moreover, that slavery was already in progress: “Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life.”5 The scientific drive to invent and to perfect those inventions was, Butler argued, probable cause for the rise of “the next successor in the supremacy of the earth,” and over time “we shall find ourselves the inferior race.”6
Today’s science fiction readers may find nothing exceptional in the prospect of conflict between humanity and artificial intelligence, but that familiarity is the product of generations of stories that pit humans against machines. That Butler—a mere four years after On the Origin of Species had firmly established evolution in the imaginations of the general public—applied that theory to the future of machines is extraordinary. The idea that technological development can be viewed through the lens of n
atural selection is not in itself difficult to grasp, as more-efficient machines render their less-efficient competitors obsolete. Simple observation, too, makes it plain that effective machines can outcompete human labour. Butler was certainly aware of this, given that the Industrial Revolution had comprehensively replaced large numbers of labourers and artisans with machines in many different industries. Furthermore, inventions such as Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, even when not wholly successful, indicated a future where machines could more effectively perform intelligence-based tasks in addition to those involving physical labour. In “Darwin Among the Machines,” Butler combined these three elements and extrapolated them to a future where machines were broadly competitive with, and ultimately superior to, humanity. It was a compelling imaginative feat, and one that stayed with him.
Butler returned to Britain in 1864, the brief years of his Antipodean experiment over and done with. Unsure of what he wanted to do, he writes that “I began tinkering up the old magazine articles I had written in New Zealand, and they strung themselves together into Erewhon.”7 One of those articles was “Darwin Amongst the Machines,” which became the genesis of an Erewhon chapter titled “The Book of the Machines.” The novel was eventually published anonymously in 1872.
A shift in focus from sheep farming to utopian satire is a leap; one from sheep farming to how artificial intelligence may overthrow its human creators is quite another. Looking particularly at the parts of New Zealand ecology that Butler describes, however, the leap from sheep to machines can be traced, primarily through Erewhon’s concern with the applications of Darwinism. Butler’s relationship with Darwinism was a complex one. Joseph Jones, who during his time in New Zealand as a visiting Fulbright lecturer in literature, researched Butler’s time here and its influence on the development of the novel, describes that relationship as occurring in two parts: