by Samuel Butler 1835-1902

On Having the Socks

In Erewhon, apologise by saying you have the socks and everyone will understand.

1872

Queen Victoria 1837-1901

Introduction

You would be forgiven for thinking that our politicians today seem more sympathetic towards criminals than they do towards the sick and unemployed. In Erewhon, Samuel Butler’s dystopian Utopia, this had been enshrined as policy — which involved the Erewhonians in some ingenious evasions in order to avoid prosecution for a cold.

by Samuel Butler 1835-1902

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.

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* The straightener was a kind of apothecary, who helped those who had succumbed to the impulses of crime. The term, says the narrator, means “one who bends back the crooked”, and sufferers might have to bear painful cures, such as lengthy lockdowns or ‘cruel physical tortures’. Crime, though eliciting sympathy rather than censure, was taken as seriously as any disease in our own world.

* So-called because the Erewhonians were of the opinion that Reason is a destructive force that tends to hard-and-fast rules and ultimately to extremes, and therefore they preferred to take Unreason to a high art, since in messy daily life Unreason was more practical. Moreover, Reason itself relies on unreason for its very existence. “If, then, reason would be non-existent were there no such thing as unreason, surely it follows that the more unreason there is, the more reason there must be also?”

Précis

In Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, the narrator has told us that the country’s policy is to commiserate with criminals but prosecute the sick. Consequently, politeness demands that people ask solicitously after one each other’s morality, not their health, and their scientists have developed a bewildering lexicon of technical terms to categorise a person’s moral state precisely.

Sevens

Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.

How does one Erewhonian properly greet another?

Suggestion

With an enquiry after his moral well-being.

Jigsaws

Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.

Yesterday you were bad tempered. Are you bad tempered today?

See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.

IAs. IIBout. IIIStill.

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