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A Modern Utopia Chapter 5 - A Failure in a Modern Utopia, Sections 4-8 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter the Fifth of a Modern Utopia, sections four through eight.
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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 volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Christopher Taylor. A Modern
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  Speaker 1: Utopia by H. G. Wells, Chapter the Fifth Failure in
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  Speaker 1: a Modern Utopia, section four. The existence of our blond,
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  Speaker 1: barefooted friend was evidence enough that in a modern utopia
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  Speaker 1: man will be free to be just as idle or
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  Speaker 1: uselessly busy as it pleases him. After he has earned
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  Speaker 1: the minimum wage. He must do that, of course, to
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  Speaker 1: pay for his keep, to pay his assurance tax against
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  Speaker 1: ill health or old age, and any charge or debt
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  Speaker 1: paternity may have brought upon him. The world state of
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  Speaker 1: the modern utopis is no state of moral compulsions. If,
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  Speaker 1: for example, under the restricted utopian scheme of inheritance, a
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  Speaker 1: man inherited sufficient money to release him from the need
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  Speaker 1: to toil, he would be free to go where he
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  Speaker 1: pleased and do what he liked. A certain proportion of
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  Speaker 1: men at ease is good for the world. Work is
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  Speaker 1: a moral obligation, is the morality of slaves, And so
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  Speaker 1: long as no one is overworked. There is no need
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  Speaker 1: to worry because some few are underworked. Utopia does not
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  Speaker 1: exist as a solace for envy. From leisure and a
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  Speaker 1: good moral and intellectual atmosphere, come experiments, come philosophy, and
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  Speaker 1: the new departures. In any modern utopia, there must be
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  Speaker 1: many leisurely people. We are all too obsessed in the
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  Speaker 1: real world by the strenuous ideal, by the idea that
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  Speaker 1: the vehement, incessant fool is the only righteous man. Nothing
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  Speaker 1: done in a hurry, nothing done under strain, is really
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  Speaker 1: well done. A state where all are working hard, where
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  Speaker 1: none go to and fro easily and freely, loses touch
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  Speaker 1: with the purpose of freedom, but inherited independence will be
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  Speaker 1: the rarest and least permanent of utopian facts. For the
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  Speaker 1: most part, that wider freedom will have to be earned,
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  Speaker 1: and the inducements to men and women to raise their
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  Speaker 1: personal value far above the minimum wage will be very great. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: thereby will come privacies, more space in which to live,
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  Speaker 1: liberty to go everywhere and do no end of things,
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  Speaker 1: the power and freedom to initiate interesting enterprises and assist
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  Speaker 1: and cooperate with interesting people, And indeed all the best
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  Speaker 1: things of life. The modern utopia will give a universal security, indeed,
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  Speaker 1: and exercise the minimum of compulsions to toil, but it
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  Speaker 1: will offer some acutely desirable prizes. The aim of all
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  Speaker 1: these devices, the minimum wage, the standard of life, provision
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  Speaker 1: for all the feeble and unemployed, and so forth, is
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  Speaker 1: not to rob life of incentives, but to change their nature,
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  Speaker 1: to make life not less energetic, but less panic stricken
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  Speaker 1: and violent in base, to shift the incidence of the
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  Speaker 1: struggle for existence from our lower to our higher emotions,
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  Speaker 1: so to anticipate and neutralize the motives of the cowardly
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  Speaker 1: and bestial, that the ambitious and inner energetic imagination, which
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  Speaker 1: is man's finest quality, may become the incentive and determining
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  Speaker 1: factor in survival. Section five. After we have paid for
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  Speaker 1: our lunch in the little inn that corresponds to Vasan,
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  Speaker 1: the botanists and I would no doubt spend the rest
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  Speaker 1: of the a forenoon in the discussion of various aspects
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  Speaker 1: and possibilities of utopian labor laws. We should examine our
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  Speaker 1: remaining change copper coins of an appearance ornamental rather than reassuring,
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  Speaker 1: and we should decide that after what we had gathered
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  Speaker 1: from the man with the blonde hair. It would, on
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  Speaker 1: the whole be advisable to come to the point with
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  Speaker 1: the labor question. Forthwith. At last we should draw the
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  Speaker 1: deep breath of resolution and arise and ask for the
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  Speaker 1: public office. We should know by this time that the
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  Speaker 1: Labor Bureau is sheltered with the post office and other
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  Speaker 1: public services in one building. The public officer utopia would
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  Speaker 1: of course contain a few surprises for two men from
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  Speaker 1: terrestrial England. You imagine us entering the botanist lagging a
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  Speaker 1: little behind me, and my first attempts to be offhand
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  Speaker 1: in commonplace in a demand for work. The office is
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  Speaker 1: in charge of a quick eyed little woman of six
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  Speaker 1: and thirty perhaps, and she regards us with a certain
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  Speaker 1: keenness of scrutiny. Where are your papers? She asks? I think,
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  Speaker 1: for a moment, of the documents in my pocket, my
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  Speaker 1: passport checkered with vises and addressed in my commendation and
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  Speaker 1: in the name of her Late Majesty, by we Robert
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  Speaker 1: Arthur Talbot, Gascoyne Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury, Earl of Salisbury,
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  Speaker 1: Vice Count Cranborne, Baron Cecil, and so forth, to all
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  Speaker 1: whom it may concern macart didenteite useful on minor occasions
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  Speaker 1: of the Touring Club de France, and my green ticket
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  Speaker 1: to the reading room of the British Museum, and my
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  Speaker 1: let tree di indication from the London and County Bank.
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  Speaker 1: A foolish humor prompts me to unfold all these, hand
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  Speaker 1: them to her and take the consequences. But I resist. Lost,
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  Speaker 1: I say, both lost, she asks, looking at my friend both.
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  Speaker 1: I answer, how. I astonish myself by the readiness of
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  Speaker 1: my answer. I fell down a snow slope and they
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  Speaker 1: came out of my pocket, and exactly the same thing
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  Speaker 1: happened to both of you. No, he given me his
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  Speaker 1: to put with my own, She raised her eyebrows. His
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  Speaker 1: pocket is defective, I add, a little hastily. Her manners
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  Speaker 1: are too utopian for her to follow that up. She
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  Speaker 1: seems to reflect on procedure. What are your numbers? She
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  Speaker 1: asks abruptly. A vision of that confounded visitor's book at
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  Speaker 1: the inn above comes into my mind. Let me see,
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  Speaker 1: I say, and I pat my forehead and reflect, refraining
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  Speaker 1: from the official eye before me. Let me see what
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  Speaker 1: is yours? She asked. The botanist A B. He says slowly,
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  Speaker 1: little A nine four seven, I think, don't you know?
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  Speaker 1: Not exactly, says the botanist, very agreeably. No, do you
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  Speaker 1: mean to say neither of you know your own numbers?
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  Speaker 1: Says the little postmistress with a rising note. Yes, I say,
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  Speaker 1: with an engaging smile and trying to keep up a
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  Speaker 1: good social tone. It's queer, isn't it. We've both forgotten?
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  Speaker 1: You're joking? She suggests, Well, I temporize, I suppose you've
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  Speaker 1: got your thumbs. The fact is, I say, and hesitate,
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  Speaker 1: we've got our thumbs. Of course, then I shall have
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  Speaker 1: to send a thumb print down to the office and
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  Speaker 1: get your number from that. But are you sure you
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  Speaker 1: haven't your papers or numbers? It's very queer, we admit
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  Speaker 1: rather sheepishly, that it's queer, and question one another silently.
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  Speaker 1: She turns thoughtfully for the thumb marking slab, and as
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  Speaker 1: she does so, a man enters the office. At the
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  Speaker 1: sight of him, she asks, with a note of relief,
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  Speaker 1: what am I to do? Sir? Here? He looks from
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  Speaker 1: her to ask gravely, and its eye lights to curiosity
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  Speaker 1: at our dress. What is the matter, madam? He asks,
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  Speaker 1: in a courteous voice. She explains, so far the impression
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  Speaker 1: we have had of our utopia is one of a
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  Speaker 1: quite unearthly sanity, of good management and comprehensive design in
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  Speaker 1: every material thing. And it has seemed to us a
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  Speaker 1: little incongruous that all the utopians we have talked to,
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  Speaker 1: our host of last night, the postmistress, and our garrulous tramp,
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  Speaker 1: have been of the most commonplace type. But suddenly there
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  Speaker 1: looks out from this man's pose in regard a different quality,
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  Speaker 1: a quality altogether nearer that of the beautiful tramway and
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  Speaker 1: of the gracious order of the mountain houses. He is
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  Speaker 1: a well built man of perhaps five and thirty, with
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  Speaker 1: the easy movement that comes with perfect physical condition. His
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  Speaker 1: face is clean shaven and shows the firm mouth of
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  Speaker 1: a disciplined man, and his gray eyes are clear and steady.
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  Speaker 1: His legs are clad in some woven stuff deep red
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  Speaker 1: in color, and over this he wears a white shirt,
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  Speaker 1: fitting pretty closely and with a woven purple hymn. His
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  Speaker 1: general effect reminds me somehow of the Knight's templars. On
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  Speaker 1: his head is a cap of thin leather and still
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  Speaker 1: thinner steel, and with the vestiges of ears, rather like
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  Speaker 1: an attenuated version of the caps that were worn by
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  Speaker 1: Cromwell's ironsides. He looks at us, and we interpolate a
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  Speaker 1: word or so as she explains, and feel a good
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  Speaker 1: deal of embarrassment at the foolish position we have made
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  Speaker 1: for ourselves. I determined to cut my way out of
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  Speaker 1: this entanglement before it complicates itself further. The fact is,
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  Speaker 1: I say, yes, he says, with a faint smile. We've
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  Speaker 1: perhaps been disingenuous. Our position is so entirely exceptional, so
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  Speaker 1: difficult to explain. What have you been doing? No, I say,
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  Speaker 1: with decision, it can't be explained like that. He looks
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  Speaker 1: down at his feet. Go on, he says, I try
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  Speaker 1: to give the thing a quiet, matter of fact error.
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  Speaker 1: You see, I say, in the tone one adopts for
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  Speaker 1: really lucid explanations. We come from another world. Consequently, whatever
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  Speaker 1: thumb mark, registration or number you have in this planet
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  Speaker 1: doesn't apply to us, and we don't know our numbers
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  Speaker 1: because we haven't got any. We are really, you know, explorers, strangers.
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  Speaker 1: But what world do you mean. It's a different planet,
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  Speaker 1: a long way away, practically at an infinite distance. He
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  Speaker 1: looks up in my face with the patient expression of
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  Speaker 1: a man who listens to nonsense. I know it sounds impossible,
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  Speaker 1: I say, but here is a simple fact. We appear
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  Speaker 1: in your world. We appeared suddenly upon the neck of
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  Speaker 1: Lessandro the pas Lessandro, yesterday afternoon, and I defy you
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  Speaker 1: to discover the faintest trace of us before that time.
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  Speaker 1: Down we marched into the Sangatard road, and here we are.
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  Speaker 1: That's our fact. And as for papers, where in your
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  Speaker 1: world have you seen papers like this? I produce my
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  Speaker 1: pocket book, extract my passport and present it to him.
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  Speaker 1: His expression is changed. He takes the document and examines it,
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  Speaker 1: turns it over, looks at me and smiles that faint
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  Speaker 1: smile of his again. Have some more, I say, and
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  Speaker 1: proffer the card of the tc F. I follow up
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  Speaker 1: that blow with my green British Museum ticket, as tattered
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  Speaker 1: as a flag in a night's chapel. You'll get found out,
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  Speaker 1: he says, with my documents in his hand. You've got
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  Speaker 1: your thumbs. You'll be measured. We'll refer to the central
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  Speaker 1: registers and there you'll be. That's just it, I say,
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  Speaker 1: We shan't be he reflects. It's a queer sort of
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  Speaker 1: joke for you two men to play, he decides, handing
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  Speaker 1: me back my documents. It's no joke at all, I say,
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  Speaker 1: replacing them in my pocketbook. The postmistress intervenes, what would
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  Speaker 1: you advise me to do? No money, he asks, No,
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  Speaker 1: he makes some suggestions. Frankly, he says, I think you
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  Speaker 1: have escaped from some island. How you got so far
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  Speaker 1: as here, I can't imagine or what you'll think you'll do,
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  Speaker 1: But anyhow, there's the stuff for your thumbs. He points
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  Speaker 1: to the thumb marking apparatus and turns to attend to
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  Speaker 1: his own business. Presently, we emerge from the office and
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  Speaker 1: estate between discomfiture and amusement, each with a tramway ticket
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  Speaker 1: for Licern in his hand, and with sufficient money to
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  Speaker 1: pay our expenses until tomorrow. We are to go to
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  Speaker 1: Licern because there is a demand for comparatively unskilled labor
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  Speaker 1: in carving wood, which seems to us a sort of
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  Speaker 1: work within our range, and a sort that will not
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  Speaker 1: compel our separation. Section six. The old utopias are cescil organizations.
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  Speaker 1: The new must square itself to the needs of a
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  Speaker 1: migratory population to an endless coming and going to a
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  Speaker 1: people as fluid and title as the sea. It does
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  Speaker 1: not enter into the scheme of earthly statesmanship. But indeed
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  Speaker 1: all local establishments, all definitions of place, are even now
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  Speaker 1: melting under our eyes. Presently all the world will be
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  Speaker 1: awash with anonymous stranger men. Now, the simple laws of custom,
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  Speaker 1: the homely methods of identification that served in the little
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  Speaker 1: communities of the past, when everyone knew everyone, fail in
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  Speaker 1: the face of this liquefication. If the modern utopia is
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  Speaker 1: indeed to be a world of responsible citizens, it must
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  Speaker 1: have devised some scheme by which every person in the
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  Speaker 1: world can be promptly and certainly recognized, and by which
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  Speaker 1: anyone missing can be traced and found. Footnote. It is
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  Speaker 1: quite possible that the actual thumb mark may play only
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  Speaker 1: a small part in the work of identification. But it
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  Speaker 1: is an obvious convenience to our threat of story to
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  Speaker 1: assume that it is the one sufficient feature about the
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  Speaker 1: buildings in which this great main index would be gathered.
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  Speaker 1: Would be a system of other indices with cross references
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  Speaker 1: to the main one, arranged under names, under professional qualifications,
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  Speaker 1: under diseases, crimes, and the like. These index cards might
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  Speaker 1: conceivably be transparent and so contrived as to give a
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  Speaker 1: photographic copy promptly whenever it was needed, and they could
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  Speaker 1: have an attachment into which would slip a ticket bearing
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  Speaker 1: the name of the locality in which the individual was
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  Speaker 1: last reported. A little army of attendants would be at
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  Speaker 1: work upon this index day and night, from substations constantly
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  Speaker 1: engaged in checking back thumb marks and numbers. An incessant
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  Speaker 1: stream of information would come of births, of deaths, of
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  Speaker 1: arrival at inns, of applications to post offices for letters,
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  Speaker 1: of tickets taken for long journeys, of criminal convictions, marriages,
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  Speaker 1: applications for public doles, and the like. A filter up
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  Speaker 1: offices would sort the stream, and all day and all
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  Speaker 1: night forever, a swarm of clerks would go to and fro,
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  Speaker 1: correcting this central register and photographing copies of its entries
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  Speaker 1: for transmission to the subordinate local stations in response to
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  Speaker 1: their inquiries. So the inventory of the state would watch
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  Speaker 1: its every man and the wide world write its history
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  Speaker 1: as the fabric of its destiny flowed on. At last,
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  Speaker 1: when the citizen died, would come the last entry of
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  Speaker 1: all his age and the cause of his death, and
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  Speaker 1: the date and place of his cremation, and his card
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  Speaker 1: would be taken out and passed on to the universal pedigree,
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  Speaker 1: to a place of greater quiet, to the ever growing
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  Speaker 1: galleries of the records of the dead. Such a record
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  Speaker 1: is inevitable if a modern utopia is to be achieved.
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  Speaker 1: Yet at this too, our blond haired friend would no
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  Speaker 1: doubt rebel. One of the many things to which some
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  Speaker 1: will make claim as a right is that of going
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  Speaker 1: unrecognized and secret. Whither one will but that, so far
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  Speaker 1: as one's fellow wayfarers were concerned, would still be possible.
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  Speaker 1: Only the state would share the secret of one's little concealment.
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  Speaker 1: To the eighteenth century liberal, to the old fashioned nineteenth
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: century liberal, that is to say, to all professed liberals
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  Speaker 1: brought up to be against the government. On principle, this
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: organized clairvoyance will be the most hateful of dreams. Perhaps too,
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  Speaker 1: the individualists would see it in that light. But these
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: are only the mental habits acquired in an evil time.
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  Speaker 1: The old liberalism assumed bad government. The more powerful the government,
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  Speaker 1: the worse it was, just as it assumed the natural
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  Speaker 1: righteousness of the free individual darkness and secrecy were indeed
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: the natural refuges of liberty, when every government had in
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: it the near possibility of tyranny. And the Englishman or
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: American looked at the papers of a Russian or a
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: German as one might look at the chains of a slave.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: You imagine that father of the old liberalism, Rousseau, slinking
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: off from his offspring at the door of the foundling hospital,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: and you can understand what a crime against natural virtue
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: this quiet eye of the state would have seen to him.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: But suppose we do not assume that government is necessarily
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  Speaker 1: bad and the individual necessarily good, and the hypothesis upon
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: which we are working practically abolishes either alternative, then we
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  Speaker 1: alter the case altogether. The government of a modern utopia
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  Speaker 1: will be no perfection of intentions, ignorantly ruling the world. Footnote.
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  Speaker 1: In the typical modern state of our own world, with
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: its population of many millions and its extreme facility of movement,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: undistinguished men who adopt an alias can make themselves untraceable
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: with the utmost ease. The temptation of the opportunities thus
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: offered has developed a new type of criminality, the deeming
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: or crossman type. Base men who subsist and feed their
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: heavy imaginations in the wooing, betrayal, ill treatment, and sometimes
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: even the murder of undistinguished women. This is a large,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: a growing, and what is gravest a prolific class fostered
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: by the practical amninimity of the common man. It is
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: only the murderers who attract much public attention, but the
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: supply of low class prostitutes is also largely due to
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: these free adventures of the base. It is one of
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  Speaker 1: the by products of state liberalism, and at present it
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: is very probably drawing ahead in the race against the
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: development of police organization such as the eye of the
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: state that is now slowly beginning to apprehend our existences
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: too queer and inexplicable parties disturbing the fine order of
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  Speaker 1: its field division, the I that will presently be focusing
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: itself upon us with a growing astonishment and interrogation. Who
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: in the name of Galton and Bertlan when fancies utopia? Exclaiming,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: are you I perceive I shall cut a queer figure
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  Speaker 1: in that focus. I shall effect a certain spurious ease
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  Speaker 1: of carriage. No doubt. The fact is I shall begin
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  Speaker 1: section seven, and now see how an initial hypothesis may
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  Speaker 1: pursue and overtake its maker. Our thumb marks have been taken.
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  Speaker 1: They have traveled by pneumatic tube to the central office
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  Speaker 1: of the Municipality hard By Licerne, and have gone on
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  Speaker 1: thence to the headquarters of the Index at Paris, there
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  Speaker 1: after a rough preliminary classification. I imagine them photographed on
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: glass and flung by means of a lantern, in colossal
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: images upon a screen, all finely squared, and the careful
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  Speaker 1: experts marking and measuring their several convolutions. And then off
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  Speaker 1: goes a brisk clerk to the long galleries of the
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  Speaker 1: Index building. I have told them they will find no
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  Speaker 1: sign of us. But you see him going from gallery
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  Speaker 1: to gallery, from bay to bay, from drawer to drawer,
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  Speaker 1: and from card to card. Here he is, he mutters
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  Speaker 1: to himself, and he whips out a card and reads.
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  Speaker 1: But that is impossible, he says. You figure us returning
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: after a day or so of such utopian experiences as
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: I must presently describe to the central office in Licerne,
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  Speaker 1: even as we've been told to do. I make my
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: way to the desk of the man who has dealt
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  Speaker 1: with us before well, I say, cheerfully. Have you heard?
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: His expression dashes me a little. We've heard, he says,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: and adds it's very peculiar. I told you you wouldn't
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: find out about us, I say, triumphantly. But we have,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: he says. But that makes your freak none the less remarkable.
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  Speaker 1: You've heard you know who we are? Well, tell us
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: we had an idea, but we're beginning to doubt you,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: says the official, addressing the botanist are and he breathes
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: his name. Then he turns to me and gives me mine.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: For a moment, I am dumbfounded. Then I think of
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: the entries we made at the inn in the Urserenthal,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: and then in a flash, I have the truth. I
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: wrap the desks smartly with my fingertips and shake my
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: index finger in my friend's face. By jove, I say
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: in English, they've got our doubles. The buttonist snaps his fingers.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Of course, I didn't think of that. Do you mind,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: I say to this official telling us some more about ourselves.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: I can't think why you keep it up, he remarks,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: and then almost wearily tells me the facts about my
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: utopian self. They are a little difficult to understand, he says,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: I am one of the samurai, which sounds Japanese. But
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: you will be degraded, he says, with a gesture almost
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: of despair. He describes my position in this world and
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: phrase that convey very little. The queer thing, he remarks,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: is that you're in Norway only three days ago. I
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: am there still at least. I'm sorry to be so
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: much trouble to you. But do you mind following up
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: that last clue and inquiring if the person to whom
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: the thumb mark really belongs isn't in Norway? Still the
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: idea needs explanation, he says, something incomprehensible about a pilgrimage.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Sooner or later, I say, you will have to believe
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: there are two of us with the same thumb mark.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I won't trouble you with any apparent nonsense about other
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: planets and so forth. Again, here I am. If I
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: was in Norway a few days ago, you ought to
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: be able to trace my journey hither and my friend
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: he was in India. The official is beginning to look perplexed.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: It seems to me. I say that the difficulties in
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: this case are only just beginning. How did I get
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: from Norway. Hither does my friend look like hopping from
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: India to the sand guitard at one hop. The situation
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: is a little more difficult than that. But here, says
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: the official, and waves, what are, no doubt photographic copies
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: of the index cards. But we are not those individuals.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: You are those individuals you will see, I say. He
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: dabs his finger argumentatively upon the thumb marks. I see now,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: he says, there is a mistake. I maintain, an unprecedented mistake.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: There's the difficulty. If you inquire, you will find to
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: begin to unravel what reason is there for us to
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: remain casual workmen here when you allege we are men
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: of position in the world. If there isn't something wrong,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: we shall stick to this wood carving work you have
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: found for us here. And meanwhile, I think you ought
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: to inquire again. That's how the thing shapes to me.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Your case will certainly have to be considered further, he says,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: with the faintest of threatening note in his tone. But
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: at the same time, hand out to those copies from
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: the index again. There you are, you know section eight.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: We my botanists and I have talked over and exhausted
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: every possibility of our immediate place position. We should turn,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: I think, to more general questions. I should tell him
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: the thing that was becoming more and more apparent in
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: my own mind. Here, I should say, is a world,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: obviously on the face of it well organized. Compared with
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: our world. It is like a well oiled engine beside
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: a scrap heap. It has even got this confounded visual
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: organ swiveling about in the most alert and lively fashion.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: But that's by the way. You have only to look
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: at all these houses below. We should be sitting on
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: a seat on the gutsk and looking down on the
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: liscern of Utopia, a liscern that would, I insist, quite
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: arbitrarily still keep the vasterm and the Capelbruk. You have
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: only to mark the beauty, the simple, cleanliness and balance
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: of this world. You have only to see the free carriage,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: the unaffected graciousness of even the common people to understand
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: how fine and complete the arrangements of this world must be,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: how are they made So we of the twentieth century
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: are not going to accept the sweetish, faintly nasty slops
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: of Russoism that so gratified our great, great grains parents
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: in the eighteenth We know that order and justice do
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: not come by nature. If only the policemen will go away,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: These things mean intention, will carried to a scale that
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: our poort, vacillating hot and cold earth has never known.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: What am really seeing, more and more clearly, is the
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: will beneath this visible utopia. Convenient houses, admirable engineering that
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: is no offense, admits natural beauties, beautiful bodies, and the
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: universally gracious carriage. These are only the outward and visible
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: signs of an inward and spiritual grace. Such an order
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: means discipline. It means triumph over the petty egotisms and
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: vanities that keep men of our earth apart. It means
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: devotion and a nobler hope. It cannot exist without a
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: gigantic process of inquiry, trial, forethought, and patience in an
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: atmosphere of mutual trust and concession. Such a world as
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: this utopia is not made by the chance occasional cooperations
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: of self indulgent men by autocratic rulers, or by the
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: bawling wisdom of the democratically and an unrestricted competition for gain,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: an enlightened selfishness that too fails. Us I have compared
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: the system of indexing humanity. We have come upon to
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: an eye, an eye so sensitive an alert that two
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: strangers cannot appear anywhere upon the planet without discovery. Now,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: an eye doesn't see without a brain. An eye does
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: not turn round and look without a will and purpose.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: A utopia that deals only with appliances and arrangements is
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: a dream of superficialities. The essential problem here, the body
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: within these garments, is a moral and an intellectual problem.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Behind all this material order, these perfected communications, perfected public services,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: and economic organizations, there must be men and women willing
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: these things. There must be a considerable number and a
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: succession of these men and women of will. No single person,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: no transitory group of people, could order and sustain this
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: vast complexity. They must have a collective, if not a
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: common wit of aim, and that involves as spoken or
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: written literature, a living literature. Stain the harmony of their
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: general activity in some way. They must have put the
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: more immediate objects of desire into a secondary place, and
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: that means renunciation. They must be effectual in action and
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: persistent in will, and that means discipline. But in the
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: modern world, in which progress advances without limits. It will
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: be evident that whatever common creed or formula they have
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: must be of the simplest sort, that whatever organization they
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: have must be as mobile and flexible as a thing alive.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: All this follows inevitably from the general propositions of a
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: utopian dream. When we made those, we bound ourselves helplessly
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: to come to this. The botanists would not an abstracted ascent.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: I should cease to talk. I should direct my mind
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: to the confused mass of memories. Three days in utopia
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: will have given us. Besides the personalities with whom we
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: have come into actual contact, our various hosts, our foremen
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: and workfellows, the blonde man, the public officials, and so on,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: there will be a great multitude of other impressions. There
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: will be many bright snows shots of little children, for example,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: of girls and women and men, seen in shops and
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: offices and streets, on quays, at windows and by the wayside,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: people riding hither and thither, and walking to and fro.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: A very human crowd, it has seemed to me. But
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: among them were there any who might be thought as
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: having a wider interest than the others, who seemed in
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: any way detached from the rest by a purpose that
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: passed beyond the scene. Then suddenly I recall that clean
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: shaven man who talked with us for a little while
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: in the public office at Boston, the man who reminded
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: me of my boyish conception of a night templar, And
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: with him come momentary impressions of the other lithe and
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: serious looking people dressed after the same manner, words and
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: phrases we have read in such scraps of utopian reading
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: as have come our way, and expressions that fell from
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: the loose mouth of the man with the blonde hair
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: end of Chapter five,