Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / A Modern Utopia Chapter 9 - The Samurai, Sections 6-8

Transcript

A Modern Utopia Chapter 9 - The Samurai, Sections 6-8 · The H. G. Wells Library

0:00
Speaker 1: Chapter nine, section six eight of A Modern Utopia. This
0:05
Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
0:08
Speaker 1: public domain from our information or to volunteer, please visit
0:13
Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. A Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells,
0:17
Speaker 1: Chapter nine, section six eight. I should come to our
0:22
Speaker 1: third talk with a great curiosity to hear of the
0:25
Speaker 1: last portion of the rule of the things that the
0:27
Speaker 1: samurai are obliged to do. There would be many precise
0:32
Speaker 1: directions regarding his health, and rules that would aim at
0:35
Speaker 1: once at health and that constant exercise of will that
0:38
Speaker 1: makes life good, save in specified exceptional circumstances. The samurai
0:44
Speaker 1: must bathe in cold water, and the men must shave
0:47
Speaker 1: every day. They have the precisest directions in such matters.
0:51
Speaker 1: The body must be in health, the skin and muscles
0:54
Speaker 1: and nerves in perfect tone, or the samurai must go
0:56
Speaker 1: to the doctors of the order and give implicit obedience
0:59
Speaker 1: to the regis prescribed. They must sleep alone at least
1:03
Speaker 1: four nights and five They must eat and talk to
1:05
Speaker 1: anyone in their fellowship who cares for their conversation for
1:08
Speaker 1: an hour at least at the nearest club house of
1:12
Speaker 1: the Samurai once on three chosen days in every week. Moreover,
1:17
Speaker 1: they must read aloud from the Book of the Samurai
1:19
Speaker 1: for at least ten minutes every day. Every month, they
1:23
Speaker 1: must buy and read faithfully through at least one book
1:26
Speaker 1: that has been published during the past five years. And
1:29
Speaker 1: the only intervention with private choice in that matter is
1:32
Speaker 1: the prescription of a certain minimum of length for the
1:35
Speaker 1: monthly book or books. But the full rule in these
1:38
Speaker 1: minor compulsory matters is so voluminous and detailed, and it
1:43
Speaker 1: abounds with alternatives. Its aim is rather to keep before
1:47
Speaker 1: the samurai by a number of sample duties, as it were,
1:50
Speaker 1: the need of and some of the cheap methods towards
1:54
Speaker 1: health of body and mind, rather than to provide a
1:57
Speaker 1: comprehensive rule, and to ensure the maintenance of a community
2:00
Speaker 1: of feeling and interests among the samurai through habit, intercourse
2:04
Speaker 1: and a living contemporary literature. These minor obligations do not
2:09
Speaker 1: earmark more than an hour in the day, yet they
2:12
Speaker 1: serve to break down isolations of sympathy, all sorts of
2:16
Speaker 1: physical and intellectual sluggishness, and the development of unsocial preoccupations
2:22
Speaker 1: of many sorts. Women samurai who are married. My double
2:27
Speaker 1: told me must bear children if they are to remain married,
2:31
Speaker 1: as well as in the order before the second period
2:34
Speaker 1: for terminating a childless marriage is exhausted. I fail to
2:37
Speaker 1: ask for the precise figures from my double at the time,
2:40
Speaker 1: but I think it is beyond doubt that it is
2:43
Speaker 1: from samurai mothers of the greater or lesser rule that
2:47
Speaker 1: a very large proportion of the future population of Utopia
2:50
Speaker 1: will be derived. There is one liberty accorded to women
2:53
Speaker 1: samurai which is refused to men, and that is to
2:56
Speaker 1: marry outside the rule, and women married to men not
2:59
Speaker 1: under the rule are also free to become samurai. Here, too,
3:03
Speaker 1: will it will manifest There is a scope for novels
3:07
Speaker 1: in the drama of life. In practice, it seems that
3:10
Speaker 1: it is only men of great poetic distinction outside the
3:14
Speaker 1: rule or great commercial leaders who have wives under it.
3:18
Speaker 1: The tendency of such unions is either to bring the
3:21
Speaker 1: husband under the rule or take the wife out of it.
3:24
Speaker 1: There can be no doubt that these marriage limitations tend
3:27
Speaker 1: to make the samurai something of an hereditary class. Their children,
3:31
Speaker 1: as a rule, becomes samurai, but it is not an
3:35
Speaker 1: exclusive cast subject to the most reasonable qualifications. Any one
3:39
Speaker 1: who sees fit can enter it at any time, And
3:42
Speaker 1: so unlike all other privileged castes the world has seen,
3:47
Speaker 1: it increases relatively to the total population, and may indeed
3:51
Speaker 1: at last assimilate almost the whole population of the earth.
3:56
Speaker 1: So much my double told me readily. But now he
3:59
Speaker 1: came to the heart of all his explanations, to the
4:02
Speaker 1: will and motives at the center that made men and
4:05
Speaker 1: women ready to undergo discipline, to renounce the richness and
4:08
Speaker 1: elaboration of the sensuous life, to master emotions and control impulses,
4:14
Speaker 1: to keep in the key of effort while they have
4:16
Speaker 1: abundance about them, to rouse and satisfy all desires. And
4:20
Speaker 1: his exposition was more difficult. He tried to make his
4:23
Speaker 1: religion clear to me. The leading principle of the Utopian
4:27
Speaker 1: religion is the repudiation of the doctrine of original sin.
4:31
Speaker 1: The Utopians hold that man on the whole is good.
4:36
Speaker 1: That is their cardinal belief. Man has pride and conscience.
4:39
Speaker 1: They hold that you may refine by training as you
4:42
Speaker 1: refine his eye or ear. He has remorse and sorrow
4:45
Speaker 1: in his being, coming on the heels of all inconsequent enjoyments.
4:49
Speaker 1: How can one think of him as bad he is?
4:52
Speaker 1: Religious religion is as natured to him as lust and anger,
4:57
Speaker 1: less intense, indeed, but coming with the wide, s sweeping inevitableness,
5:01
Speaker 1: as peace comes after all tumults and sounds. And in Utopia,
5:05
Speaker 1: they understand this, or at least the samurai do clearly.
5:09
Speaker 1: They accept religion as they accept thirst as something inseparably
5:14
Speaker 1: in the mysterious rhythms of life, And just as thirst
5:18
Speaker 1: and pride and all desires may be perverted in an
5:20
Speaker 1: age of abundant opportunities, and men may be degraded and
5:25
Speaker 1: wasted by intemperance, and drinking by display or by ambition,
5:29
Speaker 1: may be turned evil by the dull, the base, and
5:32
Speaker 1: the careless, slovenly indulgence religious inclinations. A failure to think
5:38
Speaker 1: hard and discriminate as fairly as possible in religious matters
5:41
Speaker 1: is just as alien to the men under the rule
5:44
Speaker 1: as it would be to drink deeply because they were thirsty,
5:47
Speaker 1: eat when glutted, evade a bath because the day was chilly,
5:51
Speaker 1: or make love to any bright eyed girl who chanced
5:53
Speaker 1: to look pretty in the desk. Utopia, which is to
5:56
Speaker 1: have every type of character that one finds on earth
5:59
Speaker 1: will have its temples and its priests, just as it
6:02
Speaker 1: will have its actresses and wine. But the samurai will
6:05
Speaker 1: be forbidden the religion of dramatically, the altars, organ music,
6:09
Speaker 1: and incense, as distinctly as they are forbidden to love
6:13
Speaker 1: the painted woman or the consolations of brandy, and to
6:17
Speaker 1: all the things that are less than religion and that
6:20
Speaker 1: seek to comprehend it, to cosmogonies and philosophies, to creeds
6:25
Speaker 1: and formulae, to catechisms and easy explanations. The attitude of
6:29
Speaker 1: the Samurai, the note of the Book of the Samurai,
6:32
Speaker 1: will be distrust. These things, the Samurai will say are
6:35
Speaker 1: part of the indulgences that should come before a man
6:38
Speaker 1: submits himself to the rule. They are like the early
6:41
Speaker 1: gratifications of young men, experiences to establish renunciation. The samurai
6:47
Speaker 1: will have emerged above these things. The theology of the
6:50
Speaker 1: utopian rulers will be saturated with that same philosophy of uniqueness,
6:54
Speaker 1: the repudiation of anything beyond similarities and practical parallelisms, that
6:59
Speaker 1: saturates all their inns institutions. They will have analyzed exhaustively
7:03
Speaker 1: those fallacies and assumptions that arise between the one and
7:05
Speaker 1: the many that have troubled philosophy since philosophy began. Just
7:10
Speaker 1: as they will have escaped their delusive unification of every
7:13
Speaker 1: species under its specific definition that is dominated unearthly resoning,
7:17
Speaker 1: so they will have escaped the delusive simplification of God
7:21
Speaker 1: that vitiates all terrestrial theology. They will hold God to
7:25
Speaker 1: be complex and of an endless variety of aspects, to
7:29
Speaker 1: be expressed by no universal formula, nor approved in any
7:33
Speaker 1: uniform manner. Just as the language of Utopia will be synthesis,
7:38
Speaker 1: even so will its God be. The aspect of God
7:41
Speaker 1: is different in measure of every man's individuality, and the
7:45
Speaker 1: intimate thing of religion must therefore exist in human solitude
7:49
Speaker 1: between man and God alone. Religion, in its quintessence, is
7:54
Speaker 1: a relation between God and man. It is perversion to
7:57
Speaker 1: make it a relation between man and man. And a
8:00
Speaker 1: man may no more reach God through a priest than
8:02
Speaker 1: love his wife through a priest. But just as a
8:05
Speaker 1: man in love may refine the interpretation of his feelings
8:08
Speaker 1: and borrow expression from the poems and music of poietic men,
8:12
Speaker 1: so an individual man may at his discretion, read books
8:15
Speaker 1: of devotion and few music that is in harmony with
8:18
Speaker 1: his incoit feelings. Many of the samurai therefore will set
8:22
Speaker 1: themselves private regimens that will help their secret religious life,
8:26
Speaker 1: will pray habitually and read books of devotion. But with
8:30
Speaker 1: these things the rule of the order will have nothing
8:32
Speaker 1: to do. Clearly, the God of the Samurai is a
8:36
Speaker 1: transcendental and mystical god. So far as the Samurai have
8:40
Speaker 1: a purpose in common in maintaining the state in the
8:43
Speaker 1: order and progress of the world, so far by their
8:46
Speaker 1: discipline and denial, by their public work and effort, they
8:49
Speaker 1: worship God together. But the fount of motives lies in
8:53
Speaker 1: the individual life, that lies in silence and deliberate reflections.
8:57
Speaker 1: And at this the most striking of all rules of
9:00
Speaker 1: the Samurai aims for seven consecutive days in the year,
9:03
Speaker 1: at least each man or woman under the rule must
9:07
Speaker 1: go right out of all life of man into some
9:09
Speaker 1: wild and solitary place, must speak to no man or woman,
9:13
Speaker 1: and have no sort of intercourse with mankind. They must
9:16
Speaker 1: go bookless and weaponless, without pen or paper or money.
9:20
Speaker 1: Provisions must be taken for the period of the journey
9:22
Speaker 1: a rug or sleeping sack, for they must sleep under
9:25
Speaker 1: the open sky, but no means of making a fire.
9:29
Speaker 1: They may study maps beforehand to guide them, showing any
9:32
Speaker 1: difficulties and dangers in the journey, but they may not
9:34
Speaker 1: carry such helps. They must not go by beaten ways
9:37
Speaker 1: or wherever there are inhabited houses, but into the bare,
9:40
Speaker 1: quiet places of the globe the regions set apart for them.
9:44
Speaker 1: This discipline, my double said, was invented to secure a
9:47
Speaker 1: certain stoutness of heart and body in the members of
9:50
Speaker 1: the order, which otherwise might have lain open to too many timorous,
9:54
Speaker 1: merely abstemious men and women. Many things had been suggested,
10:00
Speaker 1: swordplay and tests that verge on torture, climbing in giddy places,
10:03
Speaker 1: in the like, before this was chosen. Partly it is
10:07
Speaker 1: to ensure good training and sturdiness of body and mind,
10:10
Speaker 1: but partly also it is to draw their mind for
10:13
Speaker 1: space from the insistent details of life, from the intricate
10:16
Speaker 1: arguments and the fretting effort to work, from personal corals
10:20
Speaker 1: and personal affections, and the things of the heated room.
10:23
Speaker 1: Out they must go clean out the world. Certain great
10:27
Speaker 1: areas are set apart for these yearly pilgrimages. Beyond the
10:30
Speaker 1: securities of the state. There are thousands of square miles
10:33
Speaker 1: of sandy desert in Africa and Asia, set apart much
10:36
Speaker 1: of the Arctic and Antarctic circles, vast areas of mountain
10:40
Speaker 1: land and frozen marsh, secluded reserves of forest, and innumerable
10:44
Speaker 1: unfrequented lines upon the sea. Some are dangerous and laborious routes,
10:49
Speaker 1: some merely desolate. And there are even some sea journeys
10:52
Speaker 1: that one may take in the healthy and days. As
10:54
Speaker 1: one drifts through a dream. Upon the seas, one must
10:58
Speaker 1: go in a little undecked sailing boat that may be
11:01
Speaker 1: rowed in a calm. All the other journeys one must
11:03
Speaker 1: do afoot, none aiding. There are about all these desert
11:08
Speaker 1: regions in alongmost coasts, little offices at which the samurai
11:12
Speaker 1: says good bye to the world of men, and at
11:14
Speaker 1: which they arrive after their minimum time of silence is overpassed.
11:18
Speaker 1: For the intervening days they must be alone with nature, necessity,
11:22
Speaker 1: and their own thoughts. It is good, I said, it
11:26
Speaker 1: is good, My double answered, we civilized men go back
11:29
Speaker 1: to the stark mother that so many of us would
11:32
Speaker 1: have forgotten were it not for this rule. And one
11:34
Speaker 1: thinks only two weeks ago I did my journey for
11:37
Speaker 1: the year. I went with my gear by the sea
11:40
Speaker 1: to Tromsau, and then inland to a starting place, and
11:43
Speaker 1: took my ice axe and rocksack and said good bye
11:46
Speaker 1: to the world. I crossed over four glaciers, I climbed
11:50
Speaker 1: three high mountain passes, and slept on malls and desolate valleys.
11:54
Speaker 1: I saw no human being for seven days. Then I
11:57
Speaker 1: came down through the pine woods to the head of
11:59
Speaker 1: a road that runs to the Baltic shore. Altogether was
12:02
Speaker 1: thirteen days before I recorded myself again in that speech
12:06
Speaker 1: with fellow creatures and the woman do this the women,
12:10
Speaker 1: who are truly samurai, yes, equally with the men, unless
12:14
Speaker 1: the timing of a child intervenes. I asked how it
12:17
Speaker 1: had seemed to him and what he thought about during
12:19
Speaker 1: the journey. There is always a sense of effort for me,
12:22
Speaker 1: he said, when I leave the world. At the outside
12:25
Speaker 1: of the journey, I turn back again and again look
12:28
Speaker 1: at the little office as I go up my mountain side.
12:31
Speaker 1: The first day and night, I'm a little disposed to
12:34
Speaker 1: shirk the job. Every year it's the same a little disposed,
12:37
Speaker 1: for example, to sling my pack for my back, and
12:40
Speaker 1: sit down and go through its contents, and make sure
12:42
Speaker 1: I've got all my equipment. There's no chance of anyone
12:45
Speaker 1: overtaking you. Two men mustn't start from the same office
12:49
Speaker 1: on the same route within six hours of each other.
12:51
Speaker 1: If they come within sight of each other, they must
12:53
Speaker 1: shun an encounter and make no sign unless life is
12:56
Speaker 1: in danger. All that is arranged beforehand. It would be,
13:00
Speaker 1: of course, go on telling me of your journey. I
13:02
Speaker 1: dread the night, I dread discomfort and bad weather. I
13:05
Speaker 1: only begin to brace up after the second day. Don't
13:08
Speaker 1: you worry about losing your way? No, there are cairns
13:12
Speaker 1: and skyline signs. If it was for that, of course,
13:16
Speaker 1: we should be wearing with maps the whole time. But
13:19
Speaker 1: I'm only sure of being a man after the second night,
13:22
Speaker 1: and sure of my power to go through. And then
13:25
Speaker 1: one begins to get into it. The first two days
13:28
Speaker 1: one is apt to have the events of one's journey,
13:32
Speaker 1: little incidents of travel, and thoughts of one's work and affairs,
13:35
Speaker 1: rising and fading and coming again. But then the perspectives begin.
13:39
Speaker 1: I don't sleep much on the nights of these journeys,
13:41
Speaker 1: I lie awake and stare at the stars above dawn perhaps,
13:45
Speaker 1: and in the morning sunshine I sleep. The nights this
13:49
Speaker 1: last time were very short, never more than twilight, and
13:52
Speaker 1: I saw the glow of the sun always just over
13:55
Speaker 1: the edge of the world. But I had chosen the
13:57
Speaker 1: days of the new moon so that I had to
13:59
Speaker 1: groom over the stars. Years ago I went from the
14:02
Speaker 1: nile across the Libyan desert east, and then the stars.
14:06
Speaker 1: The stars in the later days of the journey brought
14:08
Speaker 1: me near weeping. You begin to feel alone on the
14:11
Speaker 1: third day, when you find yourself out on the shining
14:14
Speaker 1: snow fields, and nothing of mankind visible on the whole
14:17
Speaker 1: world save one landmark, one remote, thin triangle of iron,
14:21
Speaker 1: perhaps in the saddle of the ridge against the sky.
14:24
Speaker 1: All this busy world that has done so much and
14:26
Speaker 1: so marvelously is still so little. You see it, little
14:29
Speaker 1: as it is, and far off. All day long you
14:32
Speaker 1: go when the nights come, and there might be another planet. Then,
14:36
Speaker 1: in the quiet waking hours, one thinks of one's self,
14:39
Speaker 1: the great external things of space and eternity, and what
14:43
Speaker 1: means God he mws You think of death, not of
14:48
Speaker 1: my own. But when I go among snow and desolations,
14:51
Speaker 1: and usually I take my pilgrimages mountains of the north,
14:54
Speaker 1: I think very much of the night of this world,
14:57
Speaker 1: the time when our sun will be red and dull,
14:59
Speaker 1: and air and water, wild life frozen together in the
15:02
Speaker 1: common snowfield, where now the forests of the tropics are streaming.
15:07
Speaker 1: I think very much of that. And whether it is
15:09
Speaker 1: indeed God's purpose that our kind should end in the
15:12
Speaker 1: cities we have built, the books, we have written, all
15:14
Speaker 1: that we have given such sence and a form should
15:17
Speaker 1: lie dead beneath the snows. You don't believe in that, no,
15:21
Speaker 1: But if it is not so, I went threading my
15:25
Speaker 1: way among gorges and precipes, with my poor brain, dreaming
15:29
Speaker 1: of what the alternative should be, with my imagination straining
15:32
Speaker 1: and failing. Yet in those high airs and in such solitude,
15:37
Speaker 1: I kind of exaltation comes to a man. I remember
15:41
Speaker 1: that one night I sat up and told the rascal stars,
15:44
Speaker 1: very earnestly, health I should not escape us. In the end,
15:48
Speaker 1: he glanced at me for a moment, as though he
15:49
Speaker 1: doubted I should understand. One becomes a personification of up
15:54
Speaker 1: there he said, one becomes the ambassador of mankind to
15:57
Speaker 1: the outer world. There is time to think over a
16:00
Speaker 1: lot of things. One puts one's self in one's ambitions
16:03
Speaker 1: in a new pair of scales. Then there are hours
16:06
Speaker 1: when one is just exploring the wilderness like a child. Sometimes,
16:09
Speaker 1: perhaps one gets a glimpse from some precipice edge of
16:13
Speaker 1: the plains far away and houses and roadways, and remembers
16:17
Speaker 1: that there is still a busy world of men. And
16:19
Speaker 1: at last one turns one's feet down some slope, some
16:22
Speaker 1: gorge that leads back who came down, perhaps into a
16:26
Speaker 1: pine forest, and hear that queer clatter reindeer make. And
16:30
Speaker 1: then it may be you see a herdsman very far
16:34
Speaker 1: away watching you. You wear your pilgrim's badge and make
16:37
Speaker 1: no sign of seeing you. You know, after these solitudes,
16:41
Speaker 1: I feel just the same queer disinclination to go back
16:44
Speaker 1: to the world of men that I feel when I
16:46
Speaker 1: have to leave it. I think of dusty roads and
16:48
Speaker 1: hot valleys and being looked at by many people. I
16:51
Speaker 1: think of the trouble of working with colleagues and opponents.
16:54
Speaker 1: This last journey, I outstayed my time camping in the
16:57
Speaker 1: pine woods of six stays. Then why thoughts came round
17:01
Speaker 1: to my proper work again? I got keen to go
17:03
Speaker 1: on with it, and so I came back into the world.
17:06
Speaker 1: You come back physically clean, as though you had had
17:09
Speaker 1: your arteries and veins watched out, and your brain has
17:11
Speaker 1: been clean too. I shall stick to the mountains now
17:14
Speaker 1: until I am old, and then I shall sail a
17:16
Speaker 1: boat in Polynesia. That is what so many old men do.
17:20
Speaker 1: Only last year, one of the great leaders of the Samurai,
17:23
Speaker 1: a white haired man who followed the rule in spite
17:25
Speaker 1: of his one hundred and eleven years, was found dead
17:27
Speaker 1: in his boat, far away from many land, far to
17:29
Speaker 1: the south, like a child asleep. That's better than a
17:33
Speaker 1: tumbled bed, said I. And some boy of a doctor
17:36
Speaker 1: jabbing you with infections, and distrustful people hovering about you, Yes,
17:41
Speaker 1: said my double in Utopia. We who are Samurai, died
17:45
Speaker 1: better than that. Is that how your great men die.
17:49
Speaker 1: It came to me suddenly as very strange that, even
17:52
Speaker 1: as we sat and talked across deserted seas, on burning sands,
17:55
Speaker 1: through the still aisles of forests, and in all the
17:58
Speaker 1: high and lonely places of the world, beyond the margin
18:01
Speaker 1: where the ways and houses go solitary men and women
18:04
Speaker 1: sailed alone, or marched alone, or clamored quiet resolute exiles.
18:10
Speaker 1: They stood alone amidst wildernesses of ice, on the precipicious
18:13
Speaker 1: banks of roaring torrents, in monstrous caverns, or steering a
18:18
Speaker 1: tossing boat in the little circle of the horizon, amidst
18:21
Speaker 1: the tumbled, incessant sea, all in their several ways, communing
18:25
Speaker 1: with the emptiness the enigmatic spaces and silences, the winds
18:29
Speaker 1: in torrents, and soulless forces that lie above the lit
18:33
Speaker 1: and ordered life of man. I saw more clearly now
18:37
Speaker 1: something I had seen dimly already, and the bearing in
18:40
Speaker 1: the faces of this utopian chivalry, a faint, persistent tinge
18:44
Speaker 1: of detachment from the immediate heats and hurries, the little
18:47
Speaker 1: graces and delights, the tensions and simulations of the daily world.
18:52
Speaker 1: It pleased me strangely to think of this steadfast, yearly
18:55
Speaker 1: pilgrimage of solitude, and how near men might come then
18:59
Speaker 1: to the high distances of God. After that, I remember
19:03
Speaker 1: we fell talking of the discipline of the rule of
19:06
Speaker 1: the courts that try breaches of it, and interpret doubtful cases.
19:11
Speaker 1: For though a man may resign due notice and be
19:14
Speaker 1: free you after a certain time to rejoin again, one
19:17
Speaker 1: deliberate breach may exclude a man forever. Of the same
19:21
Speaker 1: of law that has grown up about such trials, and
19:24
Speaker 1: of the triennial Council that revises and alters the rule.
19:28
Speaker 1: From that we pass a discussion of the general constitution
19:32
Speaker 1: of this world state. Practically all political power of vests
19:35
Speaker 1: in the samurai. Not only are they administrations, lawyers, practicing, doctors,
19:41
Speaker 1: and public officials almost all countings, but they are the
19:45
Speaker 1: only voters. Yet, by a curious exception, the Supreme Legislative
19:50
Speaker 1: Assembly must have one tenth and may have one half
19:53
Speaker 1: of its members outside the order. Because it is alleged
19:56
Speaker 1: that there is a sort of wisdom that comes of
19:58
Speaker 1: a sin and laxness, which is necessary to the perfect
20:01
Speaker 1: ruling of life. My double quoted me a verse from
20:05
Speaker 1: the canon on this matter, that my unfortunate verbal memory
20:08
Speaker 1: did not retain. But it is in the nature of
20:10
Speaker 1: a prayer to say the world from unfermented men. It
20:14
Speaker 1: would seem that Aristotle's idea of a rotation of rulers
20:18
Speaker 1: an idea that crops up again in Harrington's Oceania, that
20:23
Speaker 1: first utopia of the sovereign people, a utopia that, through
20:27
Speaker 1: Danton's reading in English, played a disastrous part in the
20:30
Speaker 1: French Revolution, gets a little respect. In utopia, the tendency
20:35
Speaker 1: is to give practically permanent tenure to good men. Every
20:39
Speaker 1: ruler and official, it is true, is put on his
20:41
Speaker 1: trial every three years before a jury drawn by lot
20:44
Speaker 1: according to the range of his activities, either from the
20:47
Speaker 1: samurai of his municipal area or from the general catalog
20:51
Speaker 1: of the samurai. But the business of this jury is
20:53
Speaker 1: merely to decide whether to continue him in office or
20:56
Speaker 1: order a new election. In the majority of cases the
21:00
Speaker 1: verdict discontinuation. Even if it is not. Smithia officials may
21:04
Speaker 1: still appear as a candidate before the second and separatury,
21:07
Speaker 1: which fills the vacant post. My devil mentioned a few
21:12
Speaker 1: scattered details of the electoral methods, but as at the
21:15
Speaker 1: time I believed we were have a number of further conversations,
21:18
Speaker 1: I did not exhaust my curiosities upon the subject. Indeed,
21:23
Speaker 1: I was more than a little preoccupied and inattentive. The
21:26
Speaker 1: religion of the samurai was after my heart, and it
21:28
Speaker 1: had taken hold of me very strongly, but presently I
21:32
Speaker 1: fell questioning him upon the complications that arise in the
21:35
Speaker 1: modern utopia, through the differences between the races of men,
21:39
Speaker 1: and found my attention at turning. But the matter of
21:41
Speaker 1: that discussion I shall put a part into a separate chapter.
21:45
Speaker 1: In the end we came back to the particulars of
21:48
Speaker 1: the great rule of life that any man desiring of
21:52
Speaker 1: joining the Samurai must follow. I remember how after our
21:56
Speaker 1: third bout of talking, I walked back through the streets
21:59
Speaker 1: of Utopia and young London to rejoin the botanist at
22:02
Speaker 1: our hotel. My double lived in an apartment in a great building.
22:06
Speaker 1: I should judge about where in our London the Tate
22:08
Speaker 1: Gallery squats. And as the day was fine, I had
22:11
Speaker 1: no reason for hurry. I went not by the covered
22:14
Speaker 1: mechanical way, but on foot along the broad tree set
22:18
Speaker 1: terraces that follow the river on either side. It was
22:21
Speaker 1: afternoon and the mellow Thames Valley sunlight, warm and gentle,
22:26
Speaker 1: with a clean and gracious world. There were many a
22:29
Speaker 1: people abroad going to and fro unhurrying but not aimless,
22:34
Speaker 1: and I watched them so attentively that were you to
22:37
Speaker 1: ask me for the most elementary details of the buildings
22:39
Speaker 1: in terrorists that back on either bank, or of the
22:43
Speaker 1: pinnacles and towers and parapets that laced the sky, I
22:46
Speaker 1: could not tell you. But of the people I could
22:48
Speaker 1: tell you a great deal. No Utopians were black, And
22:52
Speaker 1: for all the frequency of the Samurai uniform along the
22:54
Speaker 1: England ways, the general effect is a gaily colored population.
23:00
Speaker 1: Never see any one noticeably ragged or dirty. The police,
23:03
Speaker 1: who answer questions in keep order and are quite distinct
23:07
Speaker 1: from the organization of the pursuit of criminals see to them,
23:10
Speaker 1: and shabby people are very infrequent. People who want to
23:14
Speaker 1: save money for other purposes, or who do not much
23:18
Speaker 1: bother with their clothing, seem to wear costumes of rough
23:21
Speaker 1: woven cloth dyed on unapprusive brown or green over fine
23:26
Speaker 1: woolen underclothing, and so achieve a decent comfort in its
23:29
Speaker 1: simplest form. Others outside the rule of the Samurai range
23:34
Speaker 1: the spectrum for color and have every variety of texture.
23:37
Speaker 1: The colors attained by the Utopian dyers seem to me
23:41
Speaker 1: to be fuller and purer than the common range of
23:43
Speaker 1: stuffs on Earth, and the subtle folding of the woolen materials.
23:47
Speaker 1: Witness that utopian Bradford in no whit behind her earthly
23:50
Speaker 1: sister White is extraordinarily frequent white woolen tunics and robes
23:56
Speaker 1: into which our woven bands of brilliant color abound. Often
24:00
Speaker 1: these I the cut and purple edge that distinguishes the
24:03
Speaker 1: Samurai in utopia. In London, the air is clear and
24:07
Speaker 1: less dusty than it is among the high mountains. The
24:10
Speaker 1: roads are made of unbroken surfaces and of friable earth.
24:14
Speaker 1: All heating is done by electricity, and no coal ever
24:18
Speaker 1: enters the town. There are no horses or dogs, and
24:21
Speaker 1: so there is not a suspicion of smoke, and scarcely
24:23
Speaker 1: a particle of any sort of dirt to render white impossible.
24:27
Speaker 1: The radiated influence of the uniform of the Samurai has
24:30
Speaker 1: been keep costumes simple, and this perhaps emphasizes the general
24:36
Speaker 1: effect of vigorous health of shapely bodies. Everyone is well
24:41
Speaker 1: grown and well nourished. Everyone seems in good condition, Everyone
24:45
Speaker 1: walks well and has that clearness of eye that comes
24:48
Speaker 1: with cleanness. Abud. In London, I am apt to consider
24:53
Speaker 1: myself of a passable size and carriage. Here I feel
24:56
Speaker 1: small and meaning. Look the faint suspicions of spinal curvatures,
25:01
Speaker 1: skew feet, unequal legs, and ill grown bones that haunt
25:04
Speaker 1: one in a London crowd. The plain intimations in yellow faces,
25:09
Speaker 1: puffy faces, spotted and irregular complexions, in nervous movements and
25:13
Speaker 1: coughs and coals of bad habits, and an incompetent or
25:16
Speaker 1: disregarded medical profession do not appear here. I notice few
25:21
Speaker 1: old people, but there seems to be a great proportion
25:23
Speaker 1: of men and women at or near the prime of life.
25:27
Speaker 1: I hang upon that I have seen one or two
25:30
Speaker 1: fact people here. They are all the more noticeable because
25:33
Speaker 1: they are rare. But a wrinkled age have I yet
25:36
Speaker 1: in Utopia set eyes on a bald head. The Utopians
25:40
Speaker 1: have brought a sounder psychological science that ours to bear
25:43
Speaker 1: upon regimen. People know better what to do and what
25:47
Speaker 1: to avoid, and how to foresee and forestall come in trouble,
25:50
Speaker 1: and how to evade and suppress the subtle poisons that
25:53
Speaker 1: blunt the edge of sensation. They have put off the
25:56
Speaker 1: years of decay. They keep their teeth, they keep their digestions,
26:00
Speaker 1: They ward off gout and rheumatism, neuralgia, and influenza, and
26:04
Speaker 1: all those cognate decays that bend in wrinkle men in
26:06
Speaker 1: the middle of years of existence. They have extended the
26:10
Speaker 1: level years far into the seventies, and age, when it comes,
26:13
Speaker 1: comes swiftly and easily. The feverish hurry of our earth,
26:17
Speaker 1: and decay that begins before growth has ceased is replaced
26:21
Speaker 1: by a ripe, prolonged maturity. This modern utopia is an
26:25
Speaker 1: adult world. The flushed romance, the predominator roticisms, the adventurous
26:30
Speaker 1: uncertainty of a world in which youth prevails, gives place
26:33
Speaker 1: here to a grave deliberation, to a fuller and more
26:37
Speaker 1: powerful emotion, to a broader handling of life. Yet youth
26:41
Speaker 1: is here. Amidst the men whose faces have been made
26:45
Speaker 1: fine by thought and steadfast living among the serene eyed women,
26:49
Speaker 1: comes youth, gaily colored, buoyantly healthy, with challenging eyes, with fresh,
26:55
Speaker 1: eager faces. For everyone in utopia who is sane enough
26:58
Speaker 1: to benefit steady and training last until twenty then comes
27:03
Speaker 1: the travel year, and many are still students until twenty
27:06
Speaker 1: four or twenty five. Most are still, in a sense
27:09
Speaker 1: students throughout life, but it is thought that unless responsible
27:13
Speaker 1: action has begun in some form in the early twenties,
27:16
Speaker 1: will undergo a partial atrophy. But the full swing of
27:19
Speaker 1: adult life is hardly attained until thirty is reached. Men
27:23
Speaker 1: marry before the middle thirties, and the women rare their
27:26
Speaker 1: earlier few are mothers before twenty. The majority of those
27:31
Speaker 1: who become samurai do so between twenty seven and thirty five,
27:35
Speaker 1: and between seventeen and thirty. The Utopians have their dealings
27:38
Speaker 1: with love, and the play and excitement of love is
27:41
Speaker 1: a chief interest in life. Much freedom of act is
27:44
Speaker 1: allowed so that their wills may grow feely for the
27:47
Speaker 1: past they end man, and love gives place to some
27:51
Speaker 1: special and more enduring interest. Though indeed there is love
27:55
Speaker 1: between older men and fresh girls, and between youths and
27:58
Speaker 1: maturer women. It is in these most graceful and beautiful
28:02
Speaker 1: years of life that such freedoms of dress, as atmosphere
28:06
Speaker 1: of Utopia permits, are to be seen. And the crude,
28:09
Speaker 1: bright will and imagination of youth peeps out in ornament
28:12
Speaker 1: and color. Figures come into my sight and possess me
28:15
Speaker 1: for a moment, and pass and give place to others.
28:18
Speaker 1: There comes to a dusky little jewess, red lipped and
28:22
Speaker 1: amber clad with deep crimson flower I know not whether
28:26
Speaker 1: yell or sham in the dull black of her hair.
28:30
Speaker 1: She passes me with an unconscious stain. And then I
28:33
Speaker 1: am looking at a brightly smiling, blue eyed girl, tall,
28:36
Speaker 1: ruddy and freckly warming, clad like a stage rosalind, and
28:40
Speaker 1: talking gaily to a fair young man, a novice under
28:43
Speaker 1: the rule. A red haired mother under the lesser rule
28:46
Speaker 1: goes by, green gowned with green straps crossing between her breasts,
28:51
Speaker 1: and her two shock headed children, bare legged and lightly shod,
28:55
Speaker 1: tug at her hands on either side. Then a grave
28:59
Speaker 1: man in a long fur trimmed robe, a merchant paimy,
29:02
Speaker 1: debates some serious matter with a white tunic clerk. In
29:05
Speaker 1: the clerk's face I turned to mark the straight blue
29:08
Speaker 1: black hair. That man must be Chinese. Then come two
29:13
Speaker 1: short bearded men in careless indigo blue raiment, both of
29:17
Speaker 1: them convulsed with laughter, men outside the rule, who practiced
29:20
Speaker 1: perhaps some art. And then one of the samurai, in
29:23
Speaker 1: cheerful altercation with the blue robed girl of eight. But
29:28
Speaker 1: you could have swung back yesterday, dadda, she persists. He
29:31
Speaker 1: is deeply sun burnt, and suddenly there passes before my
29:34
Speaker 1: mind the picture of a snowy mountain waste at nightfall,
29:37
Speaker 1: and a solitary small finger under the stars. When I
29:41
Speaker 1: come back to the present thing again, my eye is
29:44
Speaker 1: caught at once by a young negro carrying books in
29:47
Speaker 1: his hand, A prosperous looking, self respecting young negro in
29:51
Speaker 1: a trimly cut coat of purple blue and silver. I
29:54
Speaker 1: am reminded of what my double said to me of
29:57
Speaker 1: a race. End of Chapter nine, section six eight. Recording
30:04
Speaker 1: by Vishnuma Bachem Windsor