The satiric rage of Butler,
who in the person of Higgs returns to Erewhon to find himself
deified, does not fall upon the fanatic worshipers of the
sunchild, nor even upon the musical banks who have grown strong
through his cult. It kindles for the ridiculous Hanky and Panky,
professors respectively of worldly wisdom and worldly unwisdom at
Bridgeford, and hence, according to Mr. Acklom, the antipathy
toward Butler of all college professors.
But it is not because they are professors that Butler hates Hanky
and Panky; it is because they represent that guaranteed authority
which in every civilization can and does exploit the passions and
the weaknesses of human nature for its own material welfare.
Butler had been conducting a lifelong warfare against scholars who
defended the _status quo_ of the church and against scientists who
were consolidating a strategic (and remunerative) position for
themselves in the universities. He saw, or thought he saw, English
religion milked for the benefit of Oxford and Cambridge graduates
needful of "livings"; and Darwinism and the new sciences generally
being swept into the maw of the same professionally intellectual
class.
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