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A Modern Utopia Chapter 7 - A Few Utopian Impressions, Sections 1-3 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter the seventh of A Modern Utopia. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Christopher Taylor. A Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter the seventh. A few Utopian impressions, Section one. But
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  Speaker 1: now we're in a better position to describe the houses
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  Speaker 1: and ways of the utopian townships about the Lake of Lucerne,
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  Speaker 1: and to glance a little more nearly at the people
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  Speaker 1: who pass you figure us as curiously settle down in utopia,
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  Speaker 1: as working for a low wage of wood carving, until
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  Speaker 1: the authorities at the Central Registry in Paris can solve
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  Speaker 1: the perplexing problem we have set them. We stay at
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  Speaker 1: an inn looking out upon the lake, and go to
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  Speaker 1: and fro for a five hours work a day with
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  Speaker 1: a curious effect of having been born utopians. The rest
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  Speaker 1: of our time is our own. Our inn is one
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  Speaker 1: of those inns and lodging houses which have a minimum tariff,
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  Speaker 1: inns which are partly regulated and in the default the
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  Speaker 1: private enterprise maintained and controlled by the world state. Throughout
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  Speaker 1: the entire world. It is one of several such establishments
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  Speaker 1: in Licerne. It possesses many hundreds of practically self cleaning
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  Speaker 1: little bedrooms, equipped very much after the fashion of the
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  Speaker 1: rooms we occupied In a similar but much smaller inn
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  Speaker 1: in Hospenthal, differing only a little in the decoration, there
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  Speaker 1: is the same dressing room recess, with its bath, the
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  Speaker 1: same graceful proportion in the succinct simplicity of its furniture.
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  Speaker 1: This particular inn is a quadrangle after the fashion of
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  Speaker 1: an Oxford college. It is perhaps forty feet high and
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  Speaker 1: with about five stories of bedrooms above its lower apartments.
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  Speaker 1: The windows of the rooms look either outward or inward
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  Speaker 1: to the quadrangle, and the doors give upon artificially lit
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  Speaker 1: passages with staircases passing up and down. These passages are
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  Speaker 1: carpeted with a sort of cork carpet, but are otherwise bare.
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  Speaker 1: The lower's story is occupied by the equivalent of a
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  Speaker 1: London club, kitchens and other offices, dining room, writing room,
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  Speaker 1: smoking and assembly rooms, a barber's shop, and a library.
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  Speaker 1: A colonnade with seats runs about the quadrangle, and in
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  Speaker 1: the middle is a grass plot. In the center of
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  Speaker 1: this is a bronze figure a sleeping child reposes above
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  Speaker 1: a little basin and fountain in which water lilies are growing.
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  Speaker 1: The place has been designed by an architect happily free
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  Speaker 1: of the hampering traditions of Greek temple building and of
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  Speaker 1: Roman in Italian palaces. It is simple, unaffected, gracious. The
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  Speaker 1: material is some artificial stone with a dull surface in
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  Speaker 1: something of the tint of yellow ivory. The color is
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  Speaker 1: a little irregular, and the partial confession of girders and
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  Speaker 1: pillars breaks this front of tender color with lines and
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  Speaker 1: moldings of greenish gray that blend with the tones of
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  Speaker 1: the leaden gutters in rain pipes from the light red roof.
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  Speaker 1: At one point only does any explicit effort toward artistic
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  Speaker 1: effect appear, and that is in the great arched gateway
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  Speaker 1: opposite my window. Two or three abundant yellow roses climb
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  Speaker 1: over the face of the building. And when I look
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  Speaker 1: out of my window in the early morning, for the
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  Speaker 1: usual Utopian working day commences within an hour of sunrise,
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  Speaker 1: I see pilatus above the outlook rosy in the morning sky.
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  Speaker 1: This quadrigle type of building is the prevalent element in
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  Speaker 1: Utopian lcerne, and one may go from end to end
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  Speaker 1: of the town along corridors and covered colonnades without emerging
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  Speaker 1: by a gateway into the open roads. At all. Small
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  Speaker 1: shops are found in these colonnades, but the larger stores
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  Speaker 1: are usually housed in buildings specially adapted to their needs.
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  Speaker 1: The majority of the residential edifices are far finer and
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  Speaker 1: more substantial than our own modest shelter. Though we gather
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  Speaker 1: from such chants glimpses as we get of their arrangements,
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  Speaker 1: that the labor saving ideal runs through every grade of
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  Speaker 1: this servant life, and what we should consider a complete
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  Speaker 1: house in earthly England is hardly known. Here the autonomy
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  Speaker 1: of the household has been reduced far below terrestrial conditions
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  Speaker 1: by hotels and clubs and all sorts of cooperative expedients.
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  Speaker 1: People who do not live in hotels seem usually to
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  Speaker 1: live in clubs. The fairly prosperous utopian belongs in most
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  Speaker 1: cases to one or two residential clubs of congenial men
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  Speaker 1: and women. These clubs usually possess an addition to furnished bedrooms,
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  Speaker 1: more or less elaborate suites of apartments, and if a
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  Speaker 1: man prefers it. One of these latter can be taken
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  Speaker 1: and furnished according to his personal taste. A pleasant boudoir,
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  Speaker 1: a private library and study, a private garden plot are
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  Speaker 1: among the commonest of such luxuries. Devices to secure roof gardens, loggias, verandas,
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  Speaker 1: and such like open air privacies to the more sumptuous
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  Speaker 1: of these apartments gives interest and variety to utopian architecture.
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  Speaker 1: There are some type little cooking corners in these flats,
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  Speaker 1: as one would call them on Earth. But the ordinary
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  Speaker 1: utopian would no more think of a special private kitchen
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  Speaker 1: for his dinners than he would think of a private
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  Speaker 1: flour mill or dairy farm. Business private work and professional
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  Speaker 1: practice go on sometimes in the house apartments, but often
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  Speaker 1: in special offices in the great warren of the business quarter.
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  Speaker 1: A common garden, an infant school, play rooms, and a
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  Speaker 1: playing garden for children are universal features of the club quadrangles.
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  Speaker 1: Two or three main roads with their tramways, their cyclists pass,
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  Speaker 1: and swift traffic paths will converge on the urban center,
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  Speaker 1: where the public offices will stand in a group close
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  Speaker 1: to the two or three theaters and the larger shops,
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  Speaker 1: and hither too. In the case of Discern the head
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  Speaker 1: of the swift railway to Paris and England in Scotland
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  Speaker 1: and to the Rhineland and Germany will run, and as
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  Speaker 1: one walks out from the town center, one will come
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  Speaker 1: to that mingling of homesteads and open country which will
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  Speaker 1: be the common condition of all the more habitable parts
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  Speaker 1: of the globe. Here and there, no doubt will stand
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  Speaker 1: quite solitary homesteads, homesteads that will nevertheless be lit and
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  Speaker 1: warmed by cables from the central force station, that will
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  Speaker 1: share the common water supply, will have their perfected telephonic
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  Speaker 1: connection with the rest of the world, with doctor shop
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  Speaker 1: and so forth, and may even have a pneumatic tube
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  Speaker 1: for books and small parcels to the nearest post office.
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  Speaker 1: But the solitary homestead as a permanent residence will be
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  Speaker 1: something of a luxury, the resort of rather wealthy garden lovers,
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  Speaker 1: and most people with a bias for retirement will probably
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  Speaker 1: get as much residential solitude as they care for in
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  Speaker 1: the hire of a holiday chalet in a forest, by
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  Speaker 1: remote lagoons or high up the mountain side. The solitary
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  Speaker 1: house may indeed prove to be very rare. Indeed, in utopia,
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  Speaker 1: the same forces, the same facilitation of communications that will
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  Speaker 1: diffuse the towns will tend to little concentrations of the
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  Speaker 1: agricultural population over the countryside. The field workers will probably
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  Speaker 1: take their food with them to their work during the day,
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  Speaker 1: and for the convenience of an interesting dinner and of
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  Speaker 1: civilized intercourse. After the working day is over, they will
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  Speaker 1: most probably live in a college quadrangle with a common
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  Speaker 1: room and club. I doubt if there will be any
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  Speaker 1: agricultural laborers drawing wages in utopia. I am inclined to
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  Speaker 1: imagine farming done by tenant associations, by little, democratic, unlimited
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  Speaker 1: liability companies, working under elected managers and not paying a
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  Speaker 1: fixed rent but a share of the produce to the state.
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  Speaker 1: Such companies could reconstruct annually to weed out indolent members.
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  Speaker 1: Footnote Schemes for the cooperative association of producers will be
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  Speaker 1: found in doctor Hertzka's free Land. A minimum standard of
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  Speaker 1: efficiency in farming would be insured by fixing a minimum
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  Speaker 1: beneath which the rent must not fall, and perhaps by inspection.
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  Speaker 1: The general laws respecting the stamp of life would of
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  Speaker 1: course apply to such associations. This type of cooperation presents
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  Speaker 1: itself to me as socially the best arrangement for productive
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  Speaker 1: agriculture and horticulture. But such enterprises as stock breeding, seed
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  Speaker 1: farming in the stocking and loan of agricultural implements are
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  Speaker 1: probably and agricultural research and experiment certainly best handled directly
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  Speaker 1: by large companies or the municipality or the state. But
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  Speaker 1: I should do little to investigate this question. These are
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  Speaker 1: presented as quite incidental impressions. You must suppose that, for
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  Speaker 1: the most part, our walks and observations keep us within
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  Speaker 1: the more urban quarters of Licern. From a number of
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  Speaker 1: beautifully printed placards at the street corners, adorned with caricatures
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  Speaker 1: of considerable pungency, we discover an odd little election as
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  Speaker 1: in progress. This is the selection upon strictly democratic lines,
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  Speaker 1: with a suffrage that includes every permanent resident in the
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  Speaker 1: discerned ward over the age of fifteen of the ugliest
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  Speaker 1: local building. The old little urban and local governing bodies
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  Speaker 1: we find have long since been superseded by great provincial
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  Speaker 1: municipalities for all the more serious administrative purposes, but they
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  Speaker 1: still survive to discharge a number of curious minor functions
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  Speaker 1: and not the least among these is this sort of
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  Speaker 1: esthetic ostracism. Every year, every minor local governing body pulls
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  Speaker 1: down a building selected by local plebiscite, and the greater
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  Speaker 1: government pays a slight compensation to the owner and resumes
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  Speaker 1: possession of the land it occupies. The idea would strike
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  Speaker 1: as at first is simply whimsical, But in practice it
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  Speaker 1: appears to work as a cheap and practical device for
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  Speaker 1: the esthetic education of builders, engineers, businessmen, opulent persons, and
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  Speaker 1: the general body of the public. But when we come
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  Speaker 1: to consider its application to our own world, we should
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  Speaker 1: perceive it was the most utopian thing we had so
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  Speaker 1: far encountered. Section two. The factory that employs us is
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  Speaker 1: something very different from the ordinary earthly model. Our business
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  Speaker 1: is to finish making little wooden toys, bears, cattlemen, and
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  Speaker 1: the like for children. The things are made in the
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  Speaker 1: rough by machinery and then finished by hand. Because the
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  Speaker 1: work of unskillful but interested men, and it really is
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  Speaker 1: an extremely amusing employment, is found to give a personality
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  Speaker 1: and interest to these objects, no machine can ever attain.
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  Speaker 1: We carvers, who are the riff raff of utopia, work
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  Speaker 1: in a long shed together nominally by time. We must
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  Speaker 1: keep at the job for the length of the spell,
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  Speaker 1: but we are expected to finish a certain number of
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  Speaker 1: toys for each spell of work. The rules of the
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  Speaker 1: game is between employer and employed in this particular industry.
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  Speaker 1: Hang on the wall behind us. They are up by
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  Speaker 1: a conference of the Common Council of wages workers with
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  Speaker 1: the employers, a common council which has resulted in utopia
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  Speaker 1: from the synthesis of the old trades unions, and which
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  Speaker 1: has become a constitutional power. But any man who has
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  Speaker 1: skill or humor is presently making his own bargain with
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  Speaker 1: our employer. More or less above that datum line. Our
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  Speaker 1: employer is a quiet, blue eyed man with a humorous smile.
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  Speaker 1: He dresses wholly in an indigo blue that later we
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  Speaker 1: come to consider a sort of voluntary uniform for utopian artists.
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  Speaker 1: As he walks about the workshop, stopping to laugh at
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  Speaker 1: this production or praise that, one is reminded inevitably of
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  Speaker 1: an art school. Every now and then he carves a
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  Speaker 1: little himself, or makes a sketch, or departs to the
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  Speaker 1: machinery to order some change in the rough shapes that
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  Speaker 1: is turning out our work is by no means confined
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  Speaker 1: to animals. After time, I am told to specialize in
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  Speaker 1: a comical life little Roman nosed pony. But several of
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  Speaker 1: the better paid carvers work up caricature images of imminent Utopians.
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  Speaker 1: Over these, our employer is most disposed to meditate, and
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  Speaker 1: from them he darts off most frequently to improve the type.
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  Speaker 1: It is high summer, and our shed lies open at
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  Speaker 1: either end. On one hand is a steep mountain side
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  Speaker 1: down which there comes now bridging a chasm, now a
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  Speaker 1: mere straight groove across the meadow. Now hidden among green branches,
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  Speaker 1: the water slide that brings our trees from the purple
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  Speaker 1: forest overhead above us, but nearly hidden hums the machine shed.
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  Speaker 1: But we see a corner of the tank, into which,
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  Speaker 1: with a mighty splash, the pine trees are delivered. Every
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  Speaker 1: now and then, bringing with him a gust of resinous smell.
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  Speaker 1: A white clad machinist will come in with a basketful
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  Speaker 1: of crude, unwrought little images, and will turn them out
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  Speaker 1: upon the table from which we carvers select them. Whenever
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  Speaker 1: I think of Utopia, that faint and fluctuating smell of
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  Speaker 1: resin returns to me, and whenever I smell resin comes
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  Speaker 1: the memory of the open end of the shed, looking
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  Speaker 1: out upon the lake, the blue green lake, the boats
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  Speaker 1: mirrored in the water, and far and high beyond floats,
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  Speaker 1: the atmospheric fury land of the mountains of Glarus twenty
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  Speaker 1: miles away. The secession of the second and last spell
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  Speaker 1: of work comes about midday, and then we walk home
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  Speaker 1: through this beautiful intricacy of a town, to our cheap
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  Speaker 1: hotel beside the lake. We should go our way with
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  Speaker 1: a curious contentment, for all that we were earning scarcely
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  Speaker 1: more than the minimum wage. We should have, of course,
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  Speaker 1: our uneasiness about the final decisions of that universal eye
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  Speaker 1: which has turned upon us. We should have those ridiculous
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  Speaker 1: sham numbers on our consciences. But that general restlessness, that
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  Speaker 1: brooding stress that pursues the weekly worker on earth, that
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  Speaker 1: aching anxiety that drives him so often to stupid bedding,
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  Speaker 1: stupid drinking, and violent and mean offenses, will have vanished
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  Speaker 1: out of mortal experience. Section three. I should find myself
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  Speaker 1: contrasting my position with my preconceptions about a utopian visit.
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  Speaker 1: I had always imagined myself standing outside the general machinery
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  Speaker 1: of the state in the Distinguished Visitors Gallery, as it were,
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  Speaker 1: and getting the new world in a series of comprehensive
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: perspective views. But this utopia, for all the sweeping floats
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  Speaker 1: of generalization I do my best to maintain, is swallowing
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  Speaker 1: me up. I find myself going between my work and
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  Speaker 1: the room in which I sleep, and the place in
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  Speaker 1: which I dine, very much as I went to and
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  Speaker 1: fro in that real world into which I fell five
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  Speaker 1: and forty years ago. I find about me mountains and
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  Speaker 1: horizons that limit my view, institutions that vanish also without
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  Speaker 1: an explanation beyond the limit of sight, and a great
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  Speaker 1: complexity of things I do not understand and about which
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  Speaker 1: to tell the truth I do not formulate. Acute curiosities, people,
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  Speaker 1: very unrepresentative people, people just as casual as people in
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  Speaker 1: the real world, come into personal relations with us, and
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: little threads of private and immediate interests spin themselves rapidly
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: into a thickening gray veil across the general view. I
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  Speaker 1: lose the comprehensive interrogation of my first arrival. I find
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  Speaker 1: myself interested in the grain of wood. I work in
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  Speaker 1: birds among the tree branches, and little irrelevant things. And
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  Speaker 1: it is only now and then that I get fairly
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  Speaker 1: back to the mood that takes all utopia for its picture.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: We spend our first surplus of utopian money in the
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: reorganization of our wardrobes upon more utopian lines. We develop
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: a quaintance with several of our fellow workers, and of
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  Speaker 1: those who share our table. At the end we pass
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  Speaker 1: insensibly into acquaintanceships in the beginning of friendships. The world utopia,
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  Speaker 1: I say, seems for a time to be swallowing me
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  Speaker 1: up at the thought of detail. It looms too big
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  Speaker 1: for me. The question of government, of its sustaining ideas,
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  Speaker 1: of race, and the wider future hang like the arch
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  Speaker 1: of the sky over these daily incidents. Very great, indeed,
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  Speaker 1: but very remote. These people about me are every day people,
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  Speaker 1: people not so very far from the minimum wage, a
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  Speaker 1: customed much as the everyday people of Earth are accustomed
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  Speaker 1: to take their world as they find it. Such inquiries
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  Speaker 1: as I attempt, are pretty obviously a bore to them,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: pass outside their range as completely as utopian speculation on
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Earth outranges a Stevodoor, or a member of parliament, or
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: a working plumber. Even the little things of day to
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  Speaker 1: life enters them in a different way. So I get
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  Speaker 1: on with my facts and reasoning rather slowly. I find
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  Speaker 1: myself looking among the pleasant multitudes of the streets for
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: types that promise congenial conversation. My sense of loneliness is
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  Speaker 1: increased during this interlude by the better social success of
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  Speaker 1: the botanist. I find him presently falling into conversation with
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  Speaker 1: two women who are accustomed to set at a table
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  Speaker 1: near our own. They wear the loose colored robes of
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: soft material that are the usual ware of common adult
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Utopian women. They are both dark and sallow, and the
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: effect amber and crimson in their garments. Their faces strike
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  Speaker 1: me as a little unintelligent, and there is a faint
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: touch of middle aged coquetterie in their bearing that I
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: do not like. Yet on earth we should consider them
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: women of exceptional refinement. But the botanist evidently sees in
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  Speaker 1: this direction scope for the feelings that have wilted a
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  Speaker 1: little under my inattention, and he begins that petty intercourse
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: of a war bird, of a slight civility, of vague
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: inquiries in comparisons, that leads at last to associations and
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: competences such superficial confidence as that is to say, as
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: he finds satisfactory. This throws me back upon my private observations.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: The general effect of a utopian population is vigor Everyone
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  Speaker 1: one needs seems not only to be in good health,
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  Speaker 1: but in training. One rarely meets fat people, bald people,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: or bent or gray. People who would be obese or
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: bent and obviously aged on earth are here in good repair,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: and as a consequence, the whole effect of a crowd
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: is livelier and more invigorating than on Earth. The dress
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: is varied and graceful. That of the women reminds one
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: most of the Italian fifteenth century. They have an abundance
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: of soft and beautifully colored stuffs, and the clothes, even
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  Speaker 1: if the poorest fit admirably. Their hair is very simply,
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  Speaker 1: but very carefully and beautifully dressed, and except in very
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: sunny weather, they do not wear hats or bonnets. There
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  Speaker 1: is little difference in deportment between one class and another.
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  Speaker 1: They are all graceful and bear themselves with quiet dignity.
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  Speaker 1: And among a group of them, a European woman of fashion,
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  Speaker 1: in her lace and feathers, her hat and metal ornaments,
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  Speaker 1: her mixed accumulation of trimmings would look like a barbarian
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: tricked out with the miscellaneous plunder of a museum. Boys
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: and girls wear much the same sort of costume, brown
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: leather shoes, then a sort of combination of hose and
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: a close fitting trousers that reach from the toe to waste,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: and over this a beltless jacket fitting very well, or
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: a belta tunic. Many slender women wear the same sort
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  Speaker 1: of costume. We should see them in it very often
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: in such a place as Lecerne, as they returned from
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: expeditions in the mountains. The older men would wear long
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: robes very frequently, but the greater proportion of the men
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  Speaker 1: would go in variations of much the same costume as
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  Speaker 1: the children. There would certainly be hooded cloaks and umbrellas
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  Speaker 1: for rainy weather, high boots for mud and snow, and
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: cloaks and coats and furry robes for the winter. There
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: would be, no doubt a freer use of color than
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: terrestrial europe sees in these days. But the costume of
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: the women, at least would be soberer and more practical,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: and in harmony with our discussion in the previous chapter.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Less differentiated from the men's. But these, of course are generalizations.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: These are the mere translation of the social facts we
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: have hypatheticated into a language of costume. There will be
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: a great variety of costume, and no compulsions. The doubles
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: of people who are naturally foppish on earth will be
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: foppish in Utopia, and people who have no natural taste
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: on earth will have in artistic equivalents. Everyone will not
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: be quiet in tone, or harmonious or beautiful. Occasionally, as
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I go through the streets to my work, I shall
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: turn round to glance again at some robe shot with
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: gold embroidery, some slashing of the sleeves, some eccentricity of cut,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: or some discord or in tidiness. But these will be
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: but transient flashes, and a general flow of harmonious graciousness.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Dress will have scarcely any of that effect of disorderly
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: conflict of self assertion, qualified by the fear of ridicule,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: that it has in the crudely competitive civilizations of Earth.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: I shall have the seeker's attitude of mind. During those
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: few days at Locerne, I shall become a student of faces.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I shall be as it were looking for some one.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: I shall see heavy faces, dull faces, faces with an
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: uncongenial animation, alien faces, and among these some with an
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: immediate quality of appeal. I should see desirable men approaching me,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: and I should think, now, if I were to speak
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: to you, many of these latter I should note wore
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: the same clothing as the man who spoke to us
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: at Wassen. I should begin to think of it as
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: a sort of uniform. Then I should see grave faced girls,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: girls of that budding age when their bearing becomes delusively wise,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: and the old deception of my youth will recur to me.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Could you and I but talked together, I should think
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: women will pass me lightly, women with open and inviting faces,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: but they will not attract me. And there will come
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: beautiful women, women with that touch of closterl preoccupation which
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: forbids the thought of any near approach. They are private
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: and secret, and I may not enter, I know, into
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: their thoughts. I go as often as I can to
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: the seat by the end of the old kapabroque and
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: watch the people passing over. I shall find a quality
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: of dissatis faction. Throughout all these days, I shall come
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: to see this period more and more distinctly as a pause,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: as a weeding interlude, and the idea of an encounter
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: with my double, which came at me at first if
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: it were a witticism, as something verbal and surprising, begins
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: to take substance. The idea grows in my mind that,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: after all, this is the someone I am seeking, this
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: utopian self of mine. I had at first an idea
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: of a grotesque encounter, as of something happening in a
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: looking glass. But presently it dawns on me that my
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: utopian self must be a very different person from me.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: His training will be different, his mental content different, but
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: between us there will be a strange link of essential identity,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: a sympathy, an understanding. I find the thing rising suddenly
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: to a preponderance in my mind. I find the interest
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: of details dwindling to the vanishing point that I have
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: come to utopia is the lesser thing. Now, The greater
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: is that I have come to meet myself. I spend
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: hours trying to imagine the encounter, inventing little dialogues. I
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: go alone to the bureau to find if any news
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: has come to hand from the great Index in Paris.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: But I am told to wait another twenty four hours.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: I cease absolutely to be interested in anything else, except
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: so far as it leads towards intercourse with this being,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: who is to be at once so strangely alien and
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: so totally mine. End of Chapter seven, Sections one through three.