"Erewhon Revisited," written thirty years after
"Erewhon," is less well known.
Mr. Moreby Acklom (whose name, let me assure the suspicious
reader, is his own and not an Erewhonian inversion), in a most
informing preface to a new edition, makes two assertions which may
serve as my excuse for again endeavoring to explain the
fascination for our generation of the work of Samuel Butler.
College professors, he avers, have an antipathy for Samuel Butler;
the chief interest of Butler, he further states, was in theology.
Now I am a college professor without antipathy to Samuel Butler,
with, on the contrary, the warmest admiration for his sardonic
genius. And furthermore Butler's antipathy for college professors,
which is supposed to have drawn their fire in return, is based
upon a ruling passion far deeper than his accidental interest in
theology, a passion that gives the tone and also the key to the
best of his writings and which brought him into conflict with the
"vested interests" of his times. It is his passion for honest
thinking. If Butler's mark had been theology merely, his books
would have passed with the interest in his target.
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