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A Modern Utopia Chapter 9 - The Samurai, Sections 4-5 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter nine, sections four and five of A Modern Utopia.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to find out
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  Speaker 1: how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. A
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  Speaker 1: Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells, Chapter nine, sections four
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  Speaker 1: and five. I follow the common rule, as many men do,
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  Speaker 1: said my double answering my allusion to his uniform, almost apologetically.
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  Speaker 1: But my own work is in its nature poetic. There
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  Speaker 1: is much dissatisfaction with our isolation of criminals upon islands,
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  Speaker 1: and I am analyzing the psychology of prison officials and
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  Speaker 1: criminals in general, with a view to some better scheme.
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  Speaker 1: I am supposed to be ingenious with expedients in this directions. Typically,
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  Speaker 1: the samurai are engaged in administrative work. Practically, the whole
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  Speaker 1: of the responsible rule of the world is in their hands.
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  Speaker 1: All our head teachers and disciplinary heads of colleges are judges, barristers,
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  Speaker 1: employers of labor beyond a certain limit, practicing medical men,
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  Speaker 1: legislators must be samurai. And all the executive committees and
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  Speaker 1: so forth that play so large a part in our
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  Speaker 1: affairs are drawn by lot exclusively from them. The order
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  Speaker 1: is not hereditary. We know just enough of biology and
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  Speaker 1: the uncertainties of inheritance to know how silly that would be.
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  Speaker 1: And it does not require an early consecration or novitiate,
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  Speaker 1: or ceremonies and initiations of that sort. The Samurai are,
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  Speaker 1: in fact volunteers. Any intelligent adult in a reasonably healthy
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  Speaker 1: and efficient state may, at any age after five and
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  Speaker 1: twenty become one of the Samurai and take a hand
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  Speaker 1: in the universal control, provided he follows the rule precisely,
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  Speaker 1: provided he follows the rule. I've heard the phrase voluntary nobility. Well,
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  Speaker 1: that was the idea of our founders. They made a
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  Speaker 1: noble and privileged order open to the whole world. No
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  Speaker 1: one could complain of an unjust exclusion, for the only
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  Speaker 1: thing that could exclude from the order was unwillingness or
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  Speaker 1: inability to follow the rule. But the rule might easily
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  Speaker 1: have been made exclusive of special lineages and races. That
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  Speaker 1: wasn't their intention. The rule was planned to exclude the doll,
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  Speaker 1: to be unattractive to the base, and to direct and
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  Speaker 1: coordinate all sound citizens of good intent, And it succeeded
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  Speaker 1: as well as anything fine I can. Life is still imperfect,
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  Speaker 1: still a thick felt of dissatisfaction and perplexing problems. But
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  Speaker 1: most certainly the quality of all its problems has been raised,
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  Speaker 1: and there has been no war, no grinding poverty, not
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  Speaker 1: half the disease, and an enormous increase of the order,
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  Speaker 1: beauty and resources of life since the samurai, who began
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  Speaker 1: as a private, aggressive cult won their way to the
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  Speaker 1: rule of the world. I would like to have that history,
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  Speaker 1: I said, I expect there was fighting. He nodded, But
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  Speaker 1: first tell me about the rule. The rule aims to
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  Speaker 1: exclude the dole and base altogether, to discipline the impulses
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  Speaker 1: and emotions, to develop a moral habit and sustain a
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  Speaker 1: man in periods of stress, fatigue, and temptation, to produce
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  Speaker 1: the maximum cooperation of all men of good intent, and
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  Speaker 1: in fact, to keep all the samurai in a state
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  Speaker 1: of moral and bodily health and efficiency. It does as
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  Speaker 1: much of this as well as it can, but of course,
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  Speaker 1: like all general propositions, it does not do it in
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  Speaker 1: any case with absolute precision. On the whole. It is
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  Speaker 1: so good that most men, who like myself for doing
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  Speaker 1: poetic work, and who would be just as well off
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  Speaker 1: without obedience, find a satisfaction in adhesion. At first, in
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  Speaker 1: the military days, it was a trifle hard and uncompromising.
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  Speaker 1: It had rather too strong an appeal to the moral
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  Speaker 1: prig and harshly righteous man. But it is undergone, and
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  Speaker 1: still under goes revision and expansion, and every year it
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  Speaker 1: becomes a little better adapted to the need of a
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  Speaker 1: general rule of life that all men may try to follow.
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  Speaker 1: We now have a whole literature, with many very fine
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  Speaker 1: things in it written about the rule. He glanced at
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  Speaker 1: a little book on his desk, took it up as
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  Speaker 1: if to show it to me, then put it down again.
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  Speaker 1: The rule consists of three parts. There is the list
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  Speaker 1: of things that qualify, the list of things that must
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  Speaker 1: not be done, and the list of things that must
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  Speaker 1: be done. Qualification exacts a little exertion as evidence of
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  Speaker 1: good faith, and it is designed to weed out the
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  Speaker 1: dula dole and many of the base. Our schooling period
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  Speaker 1: ends now about fourteen, and a small number of boys
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  Speaker 1: and girls, about three percent, are set aside then as unteachable,
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  Speaker 1: as in fact nearly idiotic. The rest go on to
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  Speaker 1: college or upper school. All your population with that exception
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  Speaker 1: free of course, and they pass out of college at eighteen.
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  Speaker 1: There are several different college courses, but one or other
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  Speaker 1: must be followed and a satisfactory examination passed at the end.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps ten percent fail, and the rule requires that the
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  Speaker 1: candidate for the samurai must have passed. But a very
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  Speaker 1: good man is sometimes an idle schoolboy. We admit that,
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  Speaker 1: And so anyone who has failed to pass the college
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  Speaker 1: leaving examination may, at any time in his later life
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  Speaker 1: sit for it again and again and again. Certain carefully
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  Speaker 1: specified things excuse it altogether. Well, that makes it fair.
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  Speaker 1: But aren't there people who cannot pass examinations, people of
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  Speaker 1: nervous and stability. But they may be the people of
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  Speaker 1: great though irregular, poetic gifts. Exactly that is quite possible.
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  Speaker 1: But we don't want that sort of people among our samurai.
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  Speaker 1: Passing an examination is a proof of a certain steadiness
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  Speaker 1: of purpose, a certain self control, and submission of a
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  Speaker 1: certain ordinariness exactly what is wanted. Of course, those others
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  Speaker 1: can follow other careers. Yes, that's what we want them
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  Speaker 1: to do. And besides these two educational qualifications, there are
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  Speaker 1: others of a similar kind, of more debatable value. One
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  Speaker 1: is practically not an operation. Now. Our founders put it
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  Speaker 1: that a candidate for the Samurai must possess what they
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  Speaker 1: call a technique, And as it operated in the beginning,
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  Speaker 1: he had to hold the qualification for a doctor, for
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  Speaker 1: a lawyer, for a military officer, or an engineer or teacher,
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  Speaker 1: or of painted acceptable pictures or written a book, or
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  Speaker 1: something of that sort. He had, in fact, as people say,
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  Speaker 1: to be something or to have done something. It was
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  Speaker 1: a regulation of vague intention even in the beginning, and
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  Speaker 1: it became catholic to the pitch of absurdity. To play
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  Speaker 1: violin skillfully has been accepted as sufficient for this qualification.
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  Speaker 1: There may have been a reason in the past for
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  Speaker 1: this provision. In those days there were many daughters of
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  Speaker 1: prosperous parents, and even some who did nothing whatever but
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  Speaker 1: idle uninterestingly in the world, and the organization might have
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  Speaker 1: suffered by their invasion. But that reason is gone now,
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  Speaker 1: and the requirement remains a merely ceremonial requirement. But on
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  Speaker 1: the other hand, another has developed. Our founders made a
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  Speaker 1: collection of several volumes, which they called collectively the Book
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  Speaker 1: of the Samurai, a compilation of articles and extracts, poems
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  Speaker 1: and prose pieces which were supposed to embody the idea
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  Speaker 1: of the order. It was to play the part for
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  Speaker 1: the Samurai that the Bible did for the ancient Hebrews.
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  Speaker 1: To tell you the truth, the stuff was a very
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  Speaker 1: unequal merit. There was a lot of very second rate rhetoric,
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  Speaker 1: and some nearly namby pamby verse. There were also included
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  Speaker 1: some very obscure verse in prose that had the trick
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  Speaker 1: of seeming wise. But for all such defects, much of
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  Speaker 1: the book from the very beginning was splendid and inspiring matter.
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  Speaker 1: From that time to this the Book of the Samurai
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  Speaker 1: has been under a vision. Much has been added, much rejects,
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  Speaker 1: and some deliberately rewritten. Now there is hardly anything in
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  Speaker 1: it that is not beautiful and perfect in form. The
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  Speaker 1: whole range of noble emotions finds expression there, and all
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  Speaker 1: the guiding ideas of our modern state. We have recently omitted.
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  Speaker 1: Some terse criticism of its contents by a man named Henley.
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  Speaker 1: Old Henley, a man who died a little time ago.
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  Speaker 1: I knew that man on earth, and he was in
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  Speaker 1: Utopia too. He was a great, red faced man with
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  Speaker 1: fiery hair and noisy, intolerant maker of enemies, with a
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  Speaker 1: tender heart and he was one of the samurai. He
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  Speaker 1: defied the rules. He was a great man with wine.
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  Speaker 1: He wrote like wine in our world. He wrote wine,
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  Speaker 1: red wine, with the light shining through. He was on
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  Speaker 1: the committee that revised our cannon. For the revising and
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  Speaker 1: bracing of our cannon is work for poetic as well
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  Speaker 1: as kinetic men. You knew him in your world. I
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  Speaker 1: wish I had, but I have seen him on earth.
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  Speaker 1: If he wrote a thing, it would run out of
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  Speaker 1: the night that covers me. Black is the pid from
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  Speaker 1: pole to pole. I thank whatever gods may be for
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  Speaker 1: my unconquerable soul. We have that here. All good earthly
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  Speaker 1: things are in utopia. Also we put that in the cannon.
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  Speaker 1: Almost as soon as he died, said my double section five.
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  Speaker 1: We have now a double cannon, a very fine first cannon,
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  Speaker 1: and a second canon of work by living men and
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  Speaker 1: work of inferior quality. And a satisfactory knowledge of both
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  Speaker 1: of these is the fourth intellectual qualification for the samurai.
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  Speaker 1: It must keep a sort of uniformity in your tone
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  Speaker 1: of thought. The cannon pervades our whole world. As a
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  Speaker 1: matter of fact, very much of it is read and
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  Speaker 1: learnt in the schools Next to the intellectual qualifications come
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  Speaker 1: the physical. The man must be in sound health, free
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  Speaker 1: from certain foul, avoidable and demoralizing diseases, and in good training.
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  Speaker 1: We reject men who are fat or thin and flabby,
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  Speaker 1: or whose nerves are shaky, them back to training. And finally,
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  Speaker 1: the man or woman must be fully adult twenty one.
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  Speaker 1: But you said twenty five. The age is varied. At
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  Speaker 1: first there was twenty five or over that the minimum
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  Speaker 1: became twenty five for men and twenty one for women.
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  Speaker 1: Now there is a feeling that it ought to be raised.
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  Speaker 1: We don't want to take advantage of mere boy and
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  Speaker 1: girl emotions men of my way of thinking. At any rate,
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  Speaker 1: don't we want to get our samurai with experiences, with
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  Speaker 1: a settled, mature conviction. Our hygiene and regiment are rapidly
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  Speaker 1: pushing back old age and death and keeping men hale
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  Speaker 1: and hearty to eighty and more. There's no need to
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  Speaker 1: hurry the young. Let them have a chance of wine,
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  Speaker 1: love and song, Let them feel the bite of full
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  Speaker 1: bodied desire, and know what devils they have to reckon with.
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  Speaker 1: But there is a certain fine sort of youth that
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  Speaker 1: knows the desirability of better things. At nineteen. They may
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  Speaker 1: keep the rule at any time without its privileges. But
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  Speaker 1: a man who breaks the rule after his adult adhesion
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  Speaker 1: at five and twenty is no more in the samurai forever.
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  Speaker 1: Before that age, he is free to break it and repent.
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  Speaker 1: And now what is forbidden we forbid a good deal.
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  Speaker 1: Many small pleasures do no great harm, but we think
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  Speaker 1: it well to forbid them none the less, so that
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  Speaker 1: we can weed out the self indulgent. We think that
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  Speaker 1: a constant resistance to little seductions is good for a
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  Speaker 1: man's quality. At any rate. It shows that a man
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  Speaker 1: is prepared to pay something for his honor and privileges.
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  Speaker 1: We prescribe a regiment of food. Forbid tobacco, wine, or
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  Speaker 1: any alcoholic drink, all narcotic drugs. Meat. In all the
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  Speaker 1: round world of utopia, there is no meat. There used
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  Speaker 1: to be, but now we cannot stand the thought of
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  Speaker 1: slaughter houses. And in a population that is all educated
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  Speaker 1: and about the same level of physical refinement, it is
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  Speaker 1: practically impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead
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  Speaker 1: ox or pig. We never settled the hygienic question of
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  Speaker 1: meat eating at all. This other aspect decided us I
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  Speaker 1: can still remember as a boy the rejoicings of the
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  Speaker 1: closings of the last slaughterhouse. You eat fish. It isn't
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  Speaker 1: a matter of logic. In our barbaric past, horrible flayed
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  Speaker 1: carcasses of brutes, dripping blood were hung for sale in
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  Speaker 1: the public streets. He shrugged his shoulders. They do that
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  Speaker 1: still in London, in my world, I said. He looked
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  Speaker 1: again at my laxer, coarser face, and did not say
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  Speaker 1: whatever thought had passed across his mind. Originally the samurai
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  Speaker 1: were forbidden usery, that is to say, the lending of
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  Speaker 1: money at fixed rates of interest. They are still under
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  Speaker 1: that interdiction. But since our commercial code practically prevents usery altogether,
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  Speaker 1: and our law will not recognize contracts for interest upon
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  Speaker 1: private accommodation loans to unprosperous borrowers, it is now scarcely necessary.
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  Speaker 1: The idea of a man growing richer by mere inaction
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  Speaker 1: and at the expense of an impoverishing debtor is profoundly
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  Speaker 1: distasteful to utopian ideas, and our state insists pretty effectually
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  Speaker 1: now upon the participation of the lender in the borrowers risks. This, however,
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  Speaker 1: is only one part of a series of limitations of
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  Speaker 1: the same character. It is felt that to buy simply
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  Speaker 1: an order to sell again brings out many unsocial human qualities.
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  Speaker 1: It makes a man seek to enhance profits and falsify values.
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  Speaker 1: And so the Samurai are forbidden to buy, to sell
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  Speaker 1: on their own account or for any employer save the state,
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  Speaker 1: unless some process of manufacture changes the nature of the commodity.
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  Speaker 1: A mere change in bulk or packaging does not suffice,
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  Speaker 1: and they are forbidden salesmanship and all its arts. Consequently,
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  Speaker 1: they cannot be hotel keepers, or hotel proprietors or hotel shareholders.
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  Speaker 1: And a doctor All practicing doctors must be samurai. Cannot
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  Speaker 1: sell drugs except as a public servant of the municipality
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  Speaker 1: of the state. That, of course, runs counter to all
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  Speaker 1: our current terrestrial ideas. I said, we are obsessed by
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  Speaker 1: the power of money. These rules will work out as
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  Speaker 1: a vow of moderate poverty. And if your samurai are
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  Speaker 1: an order of poor men, they need not be. Samurai
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  Speaker 1: who have invented, organized and developed new industries have become
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  Speaker 1: rich men. And many men who have grown rich by
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  Speaker 1: brilliant and original trading have subsequently become samurai. But these
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  Speaker 1: are exceptional cases. The bulk of your money making business
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  Speaker 1: must be confined to men who are not samurai. You
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  Speaker 1: must have a class of rich, powerful outsiders. Have we
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  Speaker 1: I don't see the evidences of them. As a matter
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  Speaker 1: of fact, we have such people. There are rich traders,
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  Speaker 1: men who have made discoveries in the economy of distribution,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: or have called attention by intelligent, truthful advertisement to the
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  Speaker 1: possibilities of neglected commodities, for example. But aren't they in power?
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  Speaker 1: Why should they be? Wealth is power? I had to
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  Speaker 1: explain that phrase. He protested. Wealth, He said, is no
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  Speaker 1: sort of power at all unless you make it one.
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  Speaker 1: If it is so in your world, it is so
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  Speaker 1: by inadvertency. Wealth is a state made, that a convention,
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  Speaker 1: the most artificial of powers. You can, by subtle statesmanship,
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  Speaker 1: contrive what it shall buy and what it shall not.
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  Speaker 1: In your world, it would seem you have made leisure movement,
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  Speaker 1: any sort of freedom, life itself purchasable. The more fools
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  Speaker 1: you a poor working man with you as a man
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  Speaker 1: in discomfort and fear, no wonder, your rich have power.
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  Speaker 1: But here reasonable leisure, a decent life is to be
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  Speaker 1: had by every man on easier terms than by selling
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  Speaker 1: himself to the rich and rich as men are here,
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  Speaker 1: there is no private fortune in the whole world that
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: is more than a little thing beside the wealth of
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: the state. The samurai control the state and the wealth
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: of the state, and by their vows they may not
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: avail themselves of any of the course or pleasures wealth
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: can still buy. Where then is the power of your
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: wealthy man? But then where is the incentive? Oh, A
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: man gets things for himself with wealth, no end of things,
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  Speaker 1: but little or no power over his fellows unless they
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  Speaker 1: are exceptionally weak or self indulgent person I reflected? What
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  Speaker 1: else may not the samurai do? Acting, singing, or reciting
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  Speaker 1: are forbidden them, though they may lecture authoritatively or debate.
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  Speaker 1: But professional mimicry is not only held to be undignified
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  Speaker 1: in a man or woman, but to weaken and corrupt
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  Speaker 1: the soul. The mind becomes foolishly dependent on applause over
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: skillful in producing tawdry and momentary illusions of excellence. It
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: is our experience that actors and actresses are a class
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  Speaker 1: of loud, ignoble, and insincere. If they have not such
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  Speaker 1: flamboyant qualities, then they are tepid and ineffectual players. Nor
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  Speaker 1: may the samurai do personal services, except in the matter
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: of medicine or surgery. They may not be barberous, for example,
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  Speaker 1: nor in waiters nor boot cleaners, but nowadays we have
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: scarcely any barbers or boot cleaners. Men do these things
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  Speaker 1: for themselves. Nor may a man under the rule be
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: any man's servant, pledged to do whatever he is told.
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  Speaker 1: He may neither be a servant nor keep one. He
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: must shave and dress and serve himself, carry his own
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  Speaker 1: food from the helper's place to the table, read his
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: sleeping room, and leave it clean. That is all easy
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  Speaker 1: enough in a world as order as yours, I suppose.
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  Speaker 1: No samurai may bet, absolutely not. He may insure his
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: life and his old age for the better equipment of
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: his children, or for certain other specified ends, but that
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: is all his dealings with chance. And he is also
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: forbidden to play games in public or to watch them
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  Speaker 1: being played. Certain dangerous and hardy sports and exercises are
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: prescribed for him, but not competitive sports between man and
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: man or side and side. That lesson was learned long
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  Speaker 1: ago before the coming of the samurai. Gentlemen of honor,
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  Speaker 1: according to the old standards. Rode horses, raced, chariots, fought
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  Speaker 1: and played competitive games of skill, and the dull, cowardly
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: and bass came in thousands to admire and howell and
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: bet the gentleman of honor degenerated fast enough into a
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: sort of athletic prostitute, with all the defects, all the vanity, trickery,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: and self assertion of the common actor, and with even
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  Speaker 1: less intelligence. Our founders made no peace with this organization
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  Speaker 1: of public sports. They did not spend their lives to
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  Speaker 1: secure for all men and women on earth freedom, health,
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  Speaker 1: and leisure, in order that they might waste lives in
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  Speaker 1: such folly. We have those abuses, I said, But some
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: of our earthly games have a fine side. There is
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  Speaker 1: a game called cricket. It is a fine, generous game.
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  Speaker 1: Our boys play that, and men too, but it is
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  Speaker 1: thought rather puerile to give very much time to it.
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  Speaker 1: Men should have graver interests. It was undignified and unpleasant
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: for the samurai to play conspicuously ill, and impossible for
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  Speaker 1: them to play so constantly as to keep hand denying
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  Speaker 1: training against the man who was fool enough and cheap
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  Speaker 1: enough to become an expert cricket, tennis, fives billiards. You
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  Speaker 1: will find clubs and a class of men to play
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  Speaker 1: all these things in Utopia, but not the samurai. And
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: they must play their games as games, not as displays.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: The price of a privacy for playing cricket so that
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: they could charge for our mission would be overwhelmingly high.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Negroes are often very clever at cricket. For a time,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: most of the samurai had their sword play, but few
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: do those exercises now. And until about fifty years ago,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: they went out for military training a fortnight and every year,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: marching long distances, sleeping in the open, carying provisions, and
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: sham fighting over unfamiliar ground dotted with disappearing targets. There
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: was a curious inability in our world to realize that
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: war was really over for good and all. And now
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I said, haven't we got very nearly to the end
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: of your prohibitions. You have forbidden alcohol, drugs, smoking, bedding,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: and usury games, trade servants. But isn't there a vow
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: of chastity that is a rule for your earthly orders? Yes,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: except if I remember correctly, for Plato's guardians, there is
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: a rule of chastity here, but not of celibacy. We
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: know quite clearly that civilization is an artificial arrangement, and
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: that all the physical and emotional instincts of man are
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: too strong and his natural instinct of restraint too weak
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: for him to live easily in the civilized state. Civilizations
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: have developed far more rapidly than man has modified. Under
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: the unnatural perfection of security, liberty, and abundance our civilization
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: has attained. The normal, untrained human being is disposed to
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: excess in almost every direction. He tends to eat too
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: much and too elaborately, to drink too much, to become
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: lazy faster than his work can be reduced, to waste
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: his interest upon displays, and to make love too much
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: and too elaborately. He gets out of training and concentrates
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: upon egoistic or erotic broodings. The past history of our
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: race is very largely a history of social collapse due
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: to demoralization by indulgences following security and abundance. In the
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: time of our founders, the signs of a worldwide epoch
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: of prosperity and relaxation were plentiful. Both sexes drifted towards
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: sexual excesses, the man towards sentimental extravagances, imbecile devotions, and
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: the complication and refinement of physical indulgences, the women towards
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: those expansions and differentiations of feelings that find expression in
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: music and costly and distinguished dress. Both sexes became unstable
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: and promiscuous. The whole world seemed disposed to do exactly
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: the same thing with its sexual interest as it had
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: done with its appetite for food and drink. Make the
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: most of it, he paused, satiety came to help you,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: I said, destruction may come before satiety. Our founders organized
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: motives from all sorts of sources. But I think the
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: chief force to give men's self control is pride. Pride
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: may not be the noblest thing in the soul, but
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: it is the best king there for all that they
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: looked at it to keep a man clean and sound insane.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: In this matter, as in all matters of natural desire,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: they held, no appetite must be glutted, no appetite must
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: have artificial wets, and also in equally that no appetite
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: should be starved. A man must come from the table
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: satisfied but not replete. And in the matter of love.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: A straight and clean desire for a clean and straight
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: fellow creature was our founder's ideal. They enjoined marriage between
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: equals as the samurai's duty to the race, and they
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: frame directions of the precisest sort to prevent that luxurious inseparableness,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: that connubiality, which will reduce a couple of people to
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: something jointly less than either That canon is too long
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: to tell you. Now, a man under the rule who
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: loves a woman who does not follow it must either
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: leave the samurai to marry her or induce her to
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: accept what is called the woman's rule, which, while it
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: accepts her from the severe qualifications and disciplines, brings her
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: regimen of life into a working harmony with his. Suppose
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: she breaks the rule, afterward he must leave either her
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: or the order. There is matter for a novel or
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: so on that there has been matter for hundreds Is
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: the woman's rule a sumptuary law as well as a regimen?
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, may she dresses she pleases, not a bit
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: of it, said my double. Every woman who could command
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: money used that we found to make under bred aggressions
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: on other women. As men emerged to civilization, women seemed
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: going back to savagery to paint and feathers. But the samurai,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: both men and women, and the women under the lesser
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: rule also all have a particular dress. No difference is
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: made between women under either the great or the lesser rule.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: You've seen the men's dress always like this I wear.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: The women may wear the same, either with the hair
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: cut short or plaited behind them, or they may have
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: a high waisted dress, a very fine soft wool material,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: with their hair coiled up behind. I've seen it, I said. Indeed,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: nearly all the women had seemed to be wearing variants
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: of that simple formula. It seems to me a very
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: beautiful dress. The other I'm not used to it, but
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: I like it on girls and slender women. I had
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: a thought and added, don't they sometimes well take a
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: good deal of care dressing their hair? My double laughed
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: in his eyes. They do, he said, And the rule,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: the rule is never fussy, said my devil, still smiling.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: We don't want women to cease to be beautiful, and
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: consciously beautiful, if you like, he added, the more real
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: beauty of form and face. We have the finer our world,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: but costly sexualized trappings. I should have thought, I said,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: a class of women who traded on their sex would
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: have risen women. I mean, who found an interest and
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: an advantage in emphasizing their individual womanly beauty. There is
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: no lot to prevent it. Surely they would tend to
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: counteract the severity of costume. The rule dictates there are
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: such women. But for all that, the rule sets the
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: key of every day dress. If a woman is possessed
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: by the passion for gorgeous raiment, she usually satisfies it
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: in her own private circle or with rare occasional onslaughts
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: upon the public eye. Her every day mood and the
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: disposition of most people is against being conspicuous abroad. And
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: I should say, there are little liberties under the lesser rule.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: A discreete use of fine needlework and embroidery, a wider
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: choice of materials. You have, no changing fashions, none For
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: all that, are not our dresses as beautiful as ours?
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Our women's dresses are not beautiful at all, I said,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: forced for a time towards the mysterious philosophy of dress beauty.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: That isn't their concern? Then what are they after, my
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: dear man, what is all my world after end. Chapter nine,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Sections four and five,