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A Modern Utopia Chapter 9 - The Samurai, Sections 1-3 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter nine of A Modern Utopia. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells, Chapter nine, The Samurai
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  Speaker 1: Section one. Neither my utopian double nor I love emotion
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  Speaker 1: sufficiently to cultivate it, and my feelings are in a
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  Speaker 1: state of seemly subordination. When we meet again, he is
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  Speaker 1: now in possession of some clear general ideas about my
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  Speaker 1: own world, and I can broach almost at once the
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  Speaker 1: thoughts that have been growing and accumulating since my arrival
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  Speaker 1: on this planet of my dreams. We find our interest
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  Speaker 1: in a humanized statecraft makes us, in spite of our
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  Speaker 1: vast differences in training and habits. Curiously, Akin, I put
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  Speaker 1: it to him that I came to Utopia with but
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  Speaker 1: very vague ideas of the method of government, bias perhaps
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  Speaker 1: a little in favor of certain electoral devices, but for
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  Speaker 1: the rest and determine it, And that I have come
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  Speaker 1: to perceive more and more clearly that the large intricacy
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  Speaker 1: of utopian organization demands more powerful and efficient method of
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  Speaker 1: control than electoral methods. Can give. I have come to
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  Speaker 1: distinguish among the varied costumes and the innumerble types of personality,
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  Speaker 1: Utopia presents certain men and women of a distinctive costume
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  Speaker 1: and bearing, And I know now that these people constitute
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  Speaker 1: an order, the samurai, the voluntary nobility, which is essential
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  Speaker 1: in the scheme of the utopian state. I know that
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  Speaker 1: this order is open to every physically and mentally healthy
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  Speaker 1: adult in the Utopian state who will observe its prescribed
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  Speaker 1: austere rule of living, that much of the responsible work
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  Speaker 1: of the state is reserved for it, and I am
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  Speaker 1: inclined now, at the first onset of realization, to regard
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  Speaker 1: it as far more signific than it really is in
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  Speaker 1: the Utopian scheme, as being indeed in itself and completely
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  Speaker 1: the Utopian scheme. My predominant curiosity concerns the organization of disorder.
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  Speaker 1: As it has developed in my mind, it has reminded
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  Speaker 1: me more and more closely of that strange class of
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  Speaker 1: guardians which constitute the essential substance of Plato's Republic. And
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  Speaker 1: it is with the unimplicit reference to Plato's profound intuitions,
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  Speaker 1: that I, in my double discuss this question to clarify
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  Speaker 1: our comparison. He tells me something of the history of Utopia,
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  Speaker 1: and incidentally, it becomes necessary to make a corruption in
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  Speaker 1: the assumptions upon which I have based my enterprise. We
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  Speaker 1: are assuming a world identical in every respect with the
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  Speaker 1: real planet Earth, except for the profoundest differences in the
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  Speaker 1: mental content of life. This implies a different literature, a
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  Speaker 1: different philosophy, and a different history. And so soon as
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  Speaker 1: I come to talk to him, I find that though
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  Speaker 1: it remains unavoidable that we should assume the correspondence of
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  Speaker 1: the two populations man for man, unless we face unthinkable complications,
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  Speaker 1: we must assume also that a great succession of persons
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  Speaker 1: of extraordinary character and mental gifts, who on Earth died
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  Speaker 1: in childhood or at birth, or who never learned to read,
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  Speaker 1: or who lived and died amidst savage or brutalizing surroundings
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  Speaker 1: that gave their gifts no scope, did in Utopia encounter
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  Speaker 1: happier chances and take up the development and application of
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  Speaker 1: social theory. From the time of the first utopists, in
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  Speaker 1: a steady onward progress down to the present hour. The
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  Speaker 1: differences of condition therefore had widened with each successive year.
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  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ had been born into a liberal and progressive
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  Speaker 1: Roman empire that spread from the Arctic Ocean to the
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  Speaker 1: bite of Benin, and was to know no decline and fall,
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  Speaker 1: and Mahomet, instead of embodying the dense prejudices of Arab ignorance,
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  Speaker 1: opened his eyes upon an intellectual horizon already nearly as
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  Speaker 1: wide as the world. And through this empire the flow
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  Speaker 1: of thought, the flow of intention, always more abundantly. There
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  Speaker 1: were wars, but they were conclusive wars that established new
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  Speaker 1: and more permanent relations, that swept aside obstructions and abolished
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  Speaker 1: centers of decay. There were prejudices tempered to and ordered criticism,
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  Speaker 1: and hatreds that merged at last intolerant reactions. It was
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  Speaker 1: several hundred years ago that the great Organization of the
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  Speaker 1: Samurai came into its present form, and it was this
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  Speaker 1: organization's widely sustained activities that had shaped and established the
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  Speaker 1: world state in Utopia. The organization of the Samurai was
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  Speaker 1: a quite deliberate invention. It arose in the course of
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  Speaker 1: social and political troubles and complications analogous to those of
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  Speaker 1: our time on Earth, and was indeed the last of
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  Speaker 1: a number of political and religious experiments dating back to
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  Speaker 1: the first dawn of philosophical state craft in Greece, that
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  Speaker 1: hasty despair of specialization for government that gave our poor
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  Speaker 1: world individualism, democratic liberalism, and anarchism, and that a curious
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  Speaker 1: disregard of the fund of enthusiasm and self sacrifice in men,
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  Speaker 1: which is the fundamental weakness of worldly economics, do not
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  Speaker 1: appear in the history of utopian thought. All that history
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  Speaker 1: is pervaded with the recognition of the fact that self
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  Speaker 1: seeking is no more the whole of human life than
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  Speaker 1: the satisfaction of hunger, that it is an essential of
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  Speaker 1: a man's existence, no doubt, and that under stress of
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  Speaker 1: evil circumstances it may as entirely obsessed him, as with
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  Speaker 1: the food hunt during famine, but that life may pass
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  Speaker 1: beyond to an illimitable world of emotions and effort. Every
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  Speaker 1: sane person consists of possibilities beyond the unavoidable needs, is
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  Speaker 1: capable of disinterested feeling, even if it amounts only to
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  Speaker 1: enthusiasm for a sport or an industrial employment well done,
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  Speaker 1: for an art or for a locality or class. In
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  Speaker 1: our world now, as in the utopian past, this impersonal
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  Speaker 1: energy of a man goes out into religious emotion and work,
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  Speaker 1: into patriotic effort, into artistic enthusiasms, into games and amateur employments,
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  Speaker 1: and an enormous proportion of the whole world's fund of
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  Speaker 1: effort wastes itself in religious and political misunderstandings and conflicts,
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  Speaker 1: and in unsatisfying amusements and unproductive occupations. In a modern utopia,
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  Speaker 1: there will indeed be no perfection. In utopia. There must
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  Speaker 1: also be friction, conflicts, and waste, but the waste will
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  Speaker 1: be enormously less than in our world. The coordination of
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  Speaker 1: activities this relatively smaller waste will measure will be the
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  Speaker 1: achieved end for which the Order of the Samurai was
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  Speaker 1: first devised. Inevitably, such an order must have first arisen
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  Speaker 1: among a clash of social forces and political systems. As
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  Speaker 1: a revolutionary organization. It must have set before itself the
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  Speaker 1: attainment of some such utopian ideal, as this modern utopia does,
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  Speaker 1: and the key of mortal imperfection realize. At first, it
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  Speaker 1: may have directed itself to research and discussion, to the
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  Speaker 1: elaboration of its ideal, to the discussion of a plan
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  Speaker 1: of campaign. But its some stage it must have assumed
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  Speaker 1: a more militant organization, and have prevailed against and assimilated
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  Speaker 1: the pre existing political organizations, and to all intents and purposes,
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  Speaker 1: had become this present synthesized world state. Traces of that
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  Speaker 1: militancy would therefore pervade it still, and a campaigning quality
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  Speaker 1: no longer against specific disorders, but against universal human weaknesses
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  Speaker 1: and the inanimate forces that trouble man still remain as
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  Speaker 1: its essential quality. Something of this kind, I should tell
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  Speaker 1: my double had arisen in our thought. I jerked my
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  Speaker 1: head back to indicate an infinitely distant planet. Just before
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  Speaker 1: I came upon these explorations, the idea had reached me,
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  Speaker 1: for example, of something to be called a new republic,
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  Speaker 1: which was to be in fact an organization for revolution,
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  Speaker 1: something after the fashion of your Samurai. As I understand them,
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  Speaker 1: only most of the organization and the rule of life
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  Speaker 1: still remain to be invented. All sorts of people were
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  Speaker 1: thinking of something in that way about the time of
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  Speaker 1: my coming. The idea, as it reached me was pretty
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  Speaker 1: crude in several respects. It ignored the high possibility of
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  Speaker 1: a synthesis of languages in the future. It came from
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  Speaker 1: a literary man who wrote only English, and as I
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  Speaker 1: read him, he was a little vague in his proposals.
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  Speaker 1: It was to be a purely English speaking movement, and
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  Speaker 1: his ideas were colored too much by the peculiar opportunism
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  Speaker 1: of his time. He seemed to have more than half
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  Speaker 1: an eye for a prince or a millionaire of genius.
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  Speaker 1: He seemed looking here and there for support and the
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  Speaker 1: structural elements of a party. Still, the idea of a
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  Speaker 1: comprehensive movement of disillusioned and illuminated men behind the shams
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  Speaker 1: and patriotisms, the spites and personalities of the ostensible world,
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  Speaker 1: was there. I added some particulars. Our movement had something
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  Speaker 1: of that spirit in the beginning, said my utopian double.
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  Speaker 1: But while your men seemed to be thinking disconnectedly and
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  Speaker 1: upon a very narrow and fragmentary basis of accumulated conclusions,
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  Speaker 1: ours had a fairly comprehensive science of human association, and
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  Speaker 1: a very careful analysis of the failures of proceedings beginnings
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  Speaker 1: to draw upon. After all, your world must be as
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  Speaker 1: full as ours was of the wreckage and decay of
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  Speaker 1: previous attempts, churches, aristocracies, orders, cults. Only at present we
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  Speaker 1: seem to have lost heart altogether. And now there are
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  Speaker 1: no new religions, no new orders, no new cults, no
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  Speaker 1: beginnings anymore. But that's only a resting phase. Perhaps you
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  Speaker 1: are saying, Oh, let that distressful planet alone for a time.
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  Speaker 1: Tell me how you manage a utopia. Section two. The
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  Speaker 1: social theorists of utopia, my double explained, did not base
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  Speaker 1: their schemes upon the classification of men into labor and capital,
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  Speaker 1: the landed interests, the liquor trade, and the like. They
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  Speaker 1: esteem these as accidental categories, indefinitely amendable to statesmanship, and
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  Speaker 1: they looked for some practical and real classification upon which
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  Speaker 1: the base organization. But on the other hand, the assumption
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  Speaker 1: that men are unclassifiable because practically homogeneous, which underlies modern
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  Speaker 1: democratic methods and all the fallacies of our equal justice,
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  Speaker 1: is even more alien to the utopian minds. Throughout utopia,
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  Speaker 1: there is, of course no other than provisional classifications, since
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  Speaker 1: every being is regarded as finally unique. But for political
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  Speaker 1: and social purposes things have long rested upon a classification
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  Speaker 1: of temperaments, which attends mainly to differences in the range
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  Speaker 1: and quality and character of the individual imagination. This utopian
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  Speaker 1: classification was a rough one, but it served its purpose
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  Speaker 1: to determine the broad lines of political organization. It was
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  Speaker 1: so far unscientific that many individuals fall between or within
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  Speaker 1: two or even three of its classes, but that was
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  Speaker 1: met by giving the correlated organization a pensatory looseness of play.
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  Speaker 1: Four main classes of mind were distinguished, called, respectively, the poetic,
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  Speaker 1: the kinetic, the dull, and the base. The former two
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  Speaker 1: are supposed to constitute the living tissue of the state.
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  Speaker 1: The latter are the fulcra and resistances, the bone and
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  Speaker 1: cover of its body. They are not hereditary classes, nor
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  Speaker 1: is there any attempt to develop any class by special breeding,
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  Speaker 1: simply because the intricate interplay of hereditary is untraceable and incalculable.
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  Speaker 1: They are classes to which people drift of their own accord.
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  Speaker 1: Education is uniform until differentiation becomes unmistakable, and each man
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  Speaker 1: and woman must establish his position with regard to the
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  Speaker 1: lines of this abstract classification by his own quality, choice,
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  Speaker 1: and development. The poetic or creative class of mental individuality
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  Speaker 1: embraces a wide range of types, but they agree in
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  Speaker 1: possessing imaginations that range beyond the known and accept it
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  Speaker 1: and that involve the desire to bring the discoveries made
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  Speaker 1: in such excursions into knowledge and recognition. The scope and
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  Speaker 1: direction of the imaginative excursion may vary very greatly. It
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  Speaker 1: may be the invention of something new or the discovery
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  Speaker 1: of something hitherto unperceived. When the invention or discovery is
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  Speaker 1: primarily beauty, then we have the artistic type of poietic mind.
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  Speaker 1: When it is not so, we have the true scientific men.
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  Speaker 1: The range of discovery may be narrowed, as it is
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  Speaker 1: in the art of Whistler or the science of scytologist,
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  Speaker 1: or it may embrace a wide extent of relevance, until
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  Speaker 1: at last both artistic or scientific enquirer merge in the
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  Speaker 1: universal reference of the true philosopher. To The accumulated activities
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  Speaker 1: of the poietic type, reacted upon by circumstances, are due
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  Speaker 1: almost all the forms assumed by human thought and feeling,
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  Speaker 1: all religious ideas, all ideas of what is good or beautiful,
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  Speaker 1: entered life through the poetic in stace vpirations of men,
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  Speaker 1: except for processes of decay. The forms of the human
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  Speaker 1: future must come also through men of this same type,
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  Speaker 1: and it is a primary essential to our modern idea
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  Speaker 1: of an abundant secular progress, that these activities should be
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  Speaker 1: unhampered and stimulated. The kinetic class consists of types, various
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  Speaker 1: of course and merging insensibly along the boundary into the
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  Speaker 1: less representative constituents of the poetic group, but distinguished by
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  Speaker 1: a more restricted range of imagination. Their imaginations do not
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  Speaker 1: range beyond the known, experienced, and accepted, though within these
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  Speaker 1: limits they may imagine as vividly or more vividly the
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  Speaker 1: members of the former group. They are often very clear
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  Speaker 1: and capable people, but they do not do, and they
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  Speaker 1: do not desire to do new things. The more vigorous
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  Speaker 1: individuals of this class are the most teachable people in
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  Speaker 1: the world, and they are generally more moral and more
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  Speaker 1: trustworthy than the poetic types live, while the poetics are
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  Speaker 1: always something of experimentalists with life. The characteristics of either
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  Speaker 1: of these two classes may be associated with a good
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  Speaker 1: or bad physique, with excessive or defective energy, with the
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  Speaker 1: exceptional keenness of the senses in some determinate direction, of
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  Speaker 1: such things like bent and the kinetic type, just as
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  Speaker 1: the poetic type may display an imagination of restricted or
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  Speaker 1: of the most universal range, but a fairly energetic kinetic
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  Speaker 1: is probably the nearest thing to that ideal our earthly
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  Speaker 1: anthropologists have in mind when they speak of the normal
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  Speaker 1: human being. The very definition of the poetic class involves
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  Speaker 1: a certain abnormality. The Utopians distinguish two extremes of this
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  Speaker 1: kinetic class according to the quality of their imaginative preferences,
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  Speaker 1: the dan and Bursheba, as it were. Of this division,
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  Speaker 1: at one end is the mainly intellectual, unoriginal type, which
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  Speaker 1: with energy of personality makes an admirable judge or administrator,
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  Speaker 1: and without it an uninventive, laborious common mathematician or common
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  Speaker 1: scholar or common scientific man. While at the other end
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  Speaker 1: is the mainly emotional unoriginal man, the type to which,
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  Speaker 1: at a low level of personal energy, my botanist inclines
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  Speaker 1: the second type includes, amidst its energetic forms, great actors
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  Speaker 1: and popular politicians and preachers. Between these extremes is a
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  Speaker 1: long and wide region of varieties into which one would
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  Speaker 1: put most of the people who form the reputable workmen,
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  Speaker 1: the men of substance, the trustworthy men and women, the
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  Speaker 1: pillars of society on earth. Below these two classes, in
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  Speaker 1: the Utopian scheme of things and merging insensibly into them
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  Speaker 1: come the dull, the duller persons of altogether inadequate imagination,
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  Speaker 1: the people who never seem to learn thoroughly, or hear distinctly,
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  Speaker 1: or think clearly. I believe if everyone is to be
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  Speaker 1: carefully educated, they would be considerably in the minority in
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  Speaker 1: the world. But it is quite possible that will not
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  Speaker 1: be the reader's opinion. It is clearly a matter of
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  Speaker 1: an arbitrary line. They are the stupid people, the incompetent people,
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  Speaker 1: the formal imitative people, the people who, in any properly
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  Speaker 1: organized state should, as a class, gravitate towards and below
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  Speaker 1: the minimum wage that qualifies for marriage. The laws of
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  Speaker 1: heredity are far too mysterious for such offspring as they
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  Speaker 1: do produce, to be excluded from a fair chance in
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  Speaker 1: the world. But for themselves they count neither for work
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  Speaker 1: nor direction in the state. Finally, with the bold disregard
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  Speaker 1: of the logician's classificatory rules, these utopian statesmen who devise
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  Speaker 1: the world state hewed out in theory a class of
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  Speaker 1: the base. The base may indeed be either poetic, kinetic,
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  Speaker 1: or dull, though most commonly they are the last, and
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  Speaker 1: their definition concerns not so much the quality of their
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  Speaker 1: imagination as a certain bias in it that to a
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  Speaker 1: statesman makes it a matter for special attention. The base
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  Speaker 1: have a narrower and more persistent an egoistic reference than
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  Speaker 1: the common run of humanity. They may boast, but they
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  Speaker 1: have no frankness. They have relatively great powers of concealment,
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  Speaker 1: and they are capable of and sometimes have an aptitude
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  Speaker 1: and inclination towards cruelty. In the queer phrasing of earthly psychology,
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  Speaker 1: with its clumsy avoidance of analysis, they have no moral sense.
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  Speaker 1: They count as an antagonism to the state organization. Obviously,
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  Speaker 1: this is the rudest of classifications, and no utopian has
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  Speaker 1: ever supposed it to be a classification for individual application,
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  Speaker 1: a classification so precise that one can say this man
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  Speaker 1: is poetic and that man is base. In actual experience,
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  Speaker 1: these qualities mingle and vary in every possible way. It
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  Speaker 1: is not a classification for truth, but a classification to
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  Speaker 1: an end. Taking humanity is a multitude of unique individuals
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  Speaker 1: in mass, one may, for practical purposes, deal with it
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  Speaker 1: far more conveniently by disregards guarding its uniqueness and its
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: mixed cases altogether, and supposing it to be an assembly
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  Speaker 1: of poetic, kinetic, dull and based people. In many respects,
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  Speaker 1: it behaves as if it were that the state, dealing
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  Speaker 1: as it does only with non individualized affairs, is not
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  Speaker 1: only justified in disregarding, but is bound to disregard a
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  Speaker 1: man's special distinction, and to provide for him on the
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  Speaker 1: strength of his prevalent aspect as being on the whole, poetic,
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  Speaker 1: kinetic or whatnot. In a world of hasty judgments and
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  Speaker 1: carping criticism, it cannot be repeated too often that the
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  Speaker 1: fundamental ideas of a modern utopia imply everywhere and in
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  Speaker 1: everything margins and elasticities, a certain universal, compensatory looseness of play.
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  Speaker 1: Section three. Now, these utopian statesmen who founded the world
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: state put the problem of social organization in the following fashion.
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  Speaker 1: To contrive a revolutionary movement that shall absorb all existing
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  Speaker 1: governments and fuse them with itself, and that must be
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  Speaker 1: rapidly progressive and adaptable, and yet coherent, persistent, powerful, and efficient.
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  Speaker 1: The problem of combining progress with political stability had never
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  Speaker 1: been accomplished in utopia before that time, any more than
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  Speaker 1: it has been accomplished on Earth. Just as on Earth,
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  Speaker 1: utopian history was the succession of powers rising and falling
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  Speaker 1: in an alternation of efficient conservative with unstable liberal states.
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  Speaker 1: Just as on Earth, so in Utopia, the kinetic type
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  Speaker 1: of men had displayed a more or less unintentional antagonism
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  Speaker 1: to the poetic. The general life history of a state
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  Speaker 1: had been the same on either planet. First, through poetic activities,
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  Speaker 1: the idea of community has developed, and the state has
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  Speaker 1: shaped itself. Poetic men have arisen first in this department
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  Speaker 1: of national life and then that, and have given place
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  Speaker 1: to the kinetic man of a high type, For it
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  Speaker 1: seems to be in their nature that poetic men should
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  Speaker 1: be mutually repulsive and not succeed and develop one another consecutively.
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  Speaker 1: And a period of expansion and vigor, he said. In
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  Speaker 1: the general poetic activity has declined with the development of
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  Speaker 1: an efficient and settled social and political organization. The statesman
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  Speaker 1: has given way to the politician, who has incorporated the
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  Speaker 1: wisdom of the statesman with his own energy, the original
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  Speaker 1: genius in arts, letters, sciences, and every department of activity
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  Speaker 1: to the cultivated and scholarly man, the kinetic man of
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  Speaker 1: wide range, who has assimilated. His poetic predecessor succeeds with
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  Speaker 1: far more readiness than his poetic contemporary in almost every
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: human activity. The latter is, by his very nature and
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: disciplined and experimental, and is positively hampered by precedents in
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: good order. With this substitution of the efficient for the
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: creative type, the state ceases to grow first in this
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: department of activity, and then in that, And so long
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: as its conditions remain the same, it remains orderly inefficient.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: But it has lost its power of initiative and change.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Its power of adaptation is gone. And with that secular
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: change of conditions, which is the law of life, stresses
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: must arise within and without and bring it last, either
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: through revolution or through defeat the release of fresh poetic power.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: The process, of course, is not in its entirety simple.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: It may be masked by the fact that one department
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: of activity may be in its poetic stage while another
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: is in a phase of realization. In the United States
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: of America, for example, during the nineteenth century, there was
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: great poetic activity in industrial organization and none whatever in
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: political philosophy. But a careful analysis of the history of
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: any period will show the rhythm almost invariably present, and
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: the initial problem before the utopian philosopher therefore, was whether
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: this was an inevitable alternation, whether human progress was necessarily
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: a series of developments, collapses, and fresh beginnings after an
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: interval of disorder, unrest, and often great unhappiness, or whether
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: it was possible to maintain a secure, happy, and progressive
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: state beside an unbroken flow of poetic activity. Clearly they
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: decided upon the second alternative. If indeed I am listening
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: to my utopian self, then they not only decided the
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: problem could be solved, but they solved it. He tells
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: me how they solved it. A modern utopia differs from
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: all the older utopias in its recognition of the need
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: of poetic activities. One sees this new consideration creeping into
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: thought for the first time in the phrasing of Comp's
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: insistence that spiritual must precede political reconstruction, and in his
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: admission of the necessity of recurrent books and poems about utopias.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: And at first this recognition appears to omit only an
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: added complication to a problem already unmanageably complex, colm separation
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: of the activities of a state into the spiritual and
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: material does, to a certain extent anticipate this opposition of
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: poetic and kinetic, But the intimate texture of his mind
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: was dull and hard. The conception slipped from him again,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: and his suppression of literary activities and his imposition of
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: a rule of life under the poetic types, who are
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: at least able to sustain it, mark how deeply he
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: went under. To a large extent, he followed the older
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: utopists and assuming that the philosophical and constructive problem could
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: be done once for all, and he worked the results
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: out simply under an organized kinetic government. But what seems
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: to be merely an addition to the difficulty may in
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: the end turn out to be a simplification, just as
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: the addition of a fresh term to an intricate, irreducible
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: mathematical expression will at times bring it to unity. Now,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: philosophers after my utopian pattern, who find the ultimate significance
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: in life an individuality, novelty, and the undefined, would not
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: only regard the poetic as the most important element of society,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: but would perceive quite clearly the impossibility of its organization. This, indeed,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: is simply the application to the moral and intellectual fabric
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: of the principles already applied in discussing the state control
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: of reproduction. But just as in the case of births,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: it was possible for the state to frame limiting conditions
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: within which individuality plays more freely than in the void.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: So the founders of this modern utopia believed it possible
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: to define conditions under which every individual born with poetic
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: gifts should be enabled and encouraged to give them a
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: full development in art, philosophy, invention, and discovery. Certain general
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: conditions presented themselves as obviously reasonable to give every citizen
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: as good an education as he or she could acquire,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: for example, to so frame it that the directed educational
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: process would never at any period occupy the whole available
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: time of the learner, but would provide throughout a marginal
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: free leisure with opportunities for developing idiosyncrasies. And to ensure,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: by the expedient of a minimum wage for specified a
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: mine of work, that leisure and opportunity did not cease
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: throughout life. But in addition to thus making poetic activities
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: universally possible, the founders of this modern utopia sought to
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: supply incentives, which was an altogether more difficult research, a
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: problem in its nature irresolvably complex and admitting of no
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: systematic solution. But my double told me of a great
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: variety of devices by which poetic men and women were
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: given honor and enlarged freedoms so soon as they produced
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: an earnest of their quality, and explained to me how
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: great an ambition they might entertain. There were great systems
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: of laboratories attached to every municipal forestation at which research
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: could be conducted under the most favorable conditions. And every mind,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: and indeed almost every great industrial establishment was settled under
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: its lease with similar obligations. So much for poetic ability
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: and research in physical science. The world state tried the
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: claims of every living contributor to any materially valuable invention,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: and paid or charged a royalty on its use that
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: won partly to him personally and partly to the research
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: institution that had produced him. In the matter of literature,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: in the philosophical and sociological sciences, every higher educational establishment
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: carried its studentships, its fellowships, its occasional lectureships, and to
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: produce a poem, a novel, a speculative work of force
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: or merit was to become the object of a generous
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: competition between rival universities. In Utopia, any author has the
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: option either of publishing his works through the public bookseller
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: as a private speculation, or, if he is of sufficient merit,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: of accepting a university endowment and conceding his copyright to
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: the university press. All sorts of grants in the hands
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: of committees of the most varied constitution supplemented these academic
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: resources and ensured that no possible contributor to the wide
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: flow of the utopian mind slipped into the glass. Yet,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: apart from those who engaged mainly in teaching and administration,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: my double told me that the world wide House of
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Solomon thus created sustained over a million men for all
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: the rarity of large fortunes. Therefore, no original man with
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: the desire and capacity for material or mental experiments went
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: long without resources and the stimulus of attention, criticism, and rivalry.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: And finally, said my double, our rules ensure a considerable
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: understanding of the importance of poetic activities in the majority
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: of the samurai, in whose hands, as a class, all
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: the real power of the world resides. Ah said I,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: And now we come to the thing that interests me
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: the most, for it is quite clear in my mind
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: that these samurai form the real body of the state.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: All this time that I have spent going to and
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: fro on this planet has been growing upon me that
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: this order of men and women, wearing such a uniform
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: as you wear, and with faces strengthened by discipline and
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: touch with devotion, is the utopian reality. But that for
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: them the whole fabric of these fair appearances would crumble
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: and tarnish, shrink and shrivel, until at last back I
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: should be amidst the grime and disorders of the life
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: on earth. Tell me about these samurai, who remind me
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: of Plato's guardians, who look like knights templars, who bear
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: a name that recalls the swordsmen of Japan, and whose
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: uniform you yourself are wearing. What are they? Are they
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: an hereditary caste, especially educated order, an elected class? For
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: certainly this world turns upon them as a door upon
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: its hinges. End of Chapter nine, Section three