Erewhon

Chapter 21. The Colleges of Unreason

If a man gets to know more than his neighbours he should keep this knowledge to himself till he has sounded them, and seen whether they agree, or are likely to agree with him. He said it was as immoral to be too far in front of one's own age, as to lag too far behind it. If a man can carry his neighbours with him, he may say what he likes; but if not, what insult can be more gratuitous than the telling them what they do not want to know?

Chapters 23 to 25. The Book of the Machines

“Who would plough or sow if he disbelieved in the fixity of the future? Who would throw water on a blazing house if the action of water upon fire were uncertain?

Man, he said, was a machinate mammal.

'Observe a man digging with a spade; his right fore-arm has become artificially lengthened, and his hand has become a joint. The handle at the end of the spade is like the knob at the end of the humerus; the shaft is the additional bone, and the oblong iron plate is the new form of the hand which enables its possessor to disturb the earth in a way to which his original hand was unequal. [...]'