He saw it all now. It was twenty years next Sunday since he and my
mother had eloped. That was the meaning of XIX. xii. 29. They had made
a new era, dating from the day of his return to the palace of the sun
with a bride who was doubtless to unite the Erewhonian nature with that
of the sun. The New Year, then, would date from Sunday, December 7,
which would therefore become XX. i. 1. The Thursday, now nearly if not
quite over, being only two days distant from the end of a month of thirty-
one days, which was also the last of the year, would be XIX. xii. 29, as
on the Professors' permit.

I should like to explain here what will appear more clearly on a later
page--I mean, that the Erewhonians, according to their new system, do not
believe the sun to be a god except as regards this world and his other
planets. My father had told them a little about astronomy, and had
assured them that all the fixed stars were suns like our own, with
planets revolving round them, which were probably tenanted by intelligent
living beings, however unlike they might be to ourselves. From this they
evolved the theory that the sun was the ruler of this planetary system,
and that he must be personified, as they had personified the air-god, the
gods of time and space, hope, justice, and the other deities mentioned in
my father's book. They retain their old belief in the actual existence
of these gods, but they now make them all subordinate to the sun. The
nearest approach they make to our own conception of God is to say that He
is the ruler over all the suns throughout the universe--the suns being to
Him much as our planets and their denizens are to our own sun. They deny
that He takes more interest in one sun and its system than in another.
All the suns with their attendant planets are supposed to be equally His
children, and He deputes to each sun the supervision and protection of
its own system. Hence they say that though we may pray to the air-god,