His clothes are adopted for
national wear (although through uncertainty as to how to put them
on one part of the kingdom goes with buttons and pockets behind).
Sunchildism becomes the state religion. The musical banks, which
had been trading in stale idealism, take it over and get new life;
and the professors of Bridgeford, the intellectuals of the
kingdom, capitalize it, as we say to-day, and thus tighten their
grip on the public's mind and purse.
Butler's purpose is transparent. It is not, as Longmans, who
refused the work, believed, to attack Christianity. It is rather
to expose the ease with which a good man and his message (Higgs
brought with him to Erewhon evangelical Christianity) can become
miraculous, can become an instrument for politics and a cause of
sham. Indeed, Butler says in so many words to the Anglicans of his
day: "Hold fast to your Christianity, for false as it is it is better
than what its enemies would substitute; but go easy with
the miraculous, the mythical, the ritualistic. These 'tamper with
the one sure and everlasting word of God revealed to us by human
experience.'"
All this is permanent enough, but I cannot believe, as most
commentators do, that it is the heart of the book; or if it is the
heart of the book, it is not its fire.
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