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Men Like Gods Book 3 Chapter 2 - The Loiter in a Living World · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Section fourteen of Men Like Gods. This is LibriVox recording.
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Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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Speaker 1: by Child Horner from Ballyclaire in County Anter, Northern Ireland.
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Speaker 1: Men Like Gods by H. G. Wells, Book three, Chapter two,
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Speaker 1: The Loiterer in a Living World, Section one. In a
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Speaker 1: few days, mister Barnstable had recovered strength of body and mind.
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Speaker 1: He no longer lay in bed in a loggia, filled
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Speaker 1: with self pity and the beauty of a world subdued.
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Speaker 1: He went about freely and was soon walking long distances
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Speaker 1: over the utopian countryside, seeking acquaintances and learning more and
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Speaker 1: more of this wonderland of accomplished human desires, for that
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Speaker 1: is how it most impressed him. Nearly all the greater
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Speaker 1: evils of human life have been conquered. War, pestilence and malaise,
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Speaker 1: famine and poverty had been swept out of human experience.
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Speaker 1: The dreams of artists, of perfected and lovely bodies, and
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Speaker 1: of a world transfigured to harmony and beauty had been realized.
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Speaker 1: The spirits of order and organization ruled triumphant. Every aspect
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Speaker 1: of human life had been changed by these achievements. The
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Speaker 1: climate of this valley of rest was bland and sunny,
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Speaker 1: like the climate of South Europe. But nearly everything characteristic
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Speaker 1: of the Italian or Spanish scene had gone. Here were
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Speaker 1: no bent and aged groans carrying burthens, no chattering pursuit
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Speaker 1: by beggars, no ragged workers luring by the wayside, the
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Speaker 1: puny terracing, the distressing accumulations of hand cultivation, the gnarled olives,
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Speaker 1: hacked vines, the little patches of grain or fruit, and
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Speaker 1: the grudged, litigious irrigation of those primitive conditions gave place
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Speaker 1: to sweeping schemes of conservation, to a broad and subtle
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Speaker 1: handling of slope and toil and sunshine. No meager goats
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Speaker 1: nor sheep child tended cropped among the stones, no tethered
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Speaker 1: cattle ate their apportioned circles of herbage, and no more.
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Speaker 1: There were no hovels by the wayside, no shrines with
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Speaker 1: tortured blood oozing images, no slinking, misbegotten curs, nor beaten
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Speaker 1: beasts sweating and panting between their overloaded pineers at the
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Speaker 1: staple places of rudded rock strain and dung strain roads. Instead,
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Speaker 1: the great, smooth, indestructible way swept in easy gradients through
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Speaker 1: the land, leaping gorges and crossing valleys upon wide arched viaducts,
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Speaker 1: piercing cathedral like isles, through the hillsides, throwing off bastions
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Speaker 1: to command some special splendor of the land. Here were
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Speaker 1: resting places and shelters, stairways clamoring to pleasant arbors and
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Speaker 1: summer houses, where friends might talk and lovers shelter and rejoice.
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Speaker 1: Here were groves and avenues of such trees as he
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Speaker 1: had never seen before. For on earth as yet, there
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Speaker 1: is scarcely such a thing as an altogether lovely, healthy,
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Speaker 1: fully grown tree. Nearly all our trees are bored and
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Speaker 1: consumed by parasites, rotten and timorous, with fungi, more gnarled
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Speaker 1: and crippled, and disease twisted even the mankind. The landscape
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Speaker 1: had absorbed the patient design of five and twenty centuries.
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Speaker 1: In one place, mister Barnstable found great works in progress,
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Speaker 1: a bridge being replaced not because it was outworn, but
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Speaker 1: because someone had produced a bolder, more delightful design. For
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Speaker 1: a time he had not observed the absence of telephonic
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Speaker 1: or telegraphic communication. The posts and wires that marked a
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Speaker 1: modern countryside had disappeared. The reasons for that difference he
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Speaker 1: was to learn later. Nor did he at first missed
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Speaker 1: the railway station and the wayside in He perceived that
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Speaker 1: the frequent buildings must have specific functions, that people came
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Speaker 1: and went from them with an appearance of interest and preoccupation,
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Speaker 1: that from some of them seemed to come a hum
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Speaker 1: and whir of activity. Work of many sorts was certainly
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Speaker 1: in progress. But his ideas of the mechanical organization of
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Speaker 1: this new world were too vague and tentative as yet
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Speaker 1: for him to attempt to fix any significance to this
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Speaker 1: sort of place, or that he walked agape like a
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Speaker 1: savage in a garden. He never came to nor saw
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Speaker 1: any towns. The reason for any such close accumulations of
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Speaker 1: human beings had largely disappeared. In certain places, he learned
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Speaker 1: there were gatherings of people for studies, mutual stimulation, or
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Speaker 1: other convenient exchanges in great series of communicating buildings, But
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Speaker 1: he never visited any of these cinators. And about this
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Speaker 1: world went the tall people of utopia, fair and wonderful,
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Speaker 1: smiling or making some friendly gesture as they passed him,
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Speaker 1: but giving him little chance for questions or intercourse. They
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Speaker 1: traveled swiftly in machines upon the high road, or walked,
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Speaker 1: and ever and again the shadow of a silent, soaring
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Speaker 1: aeroplane would pass over him. He went a little in
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Speaker 1: awe of these people, and felt himself a queer creature
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Speaker 1: when he met their eyes, For like the gods of
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Speaker 1: Grace and Rome, theirs was a cleaned and perfected humanity,
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Speaker 1: and it seemed to him that they were gods. Even
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Speaker 1: the great tame beasts that walked freely about this world
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Speaker 1: had a certain divinity that checked the expression of mister
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Speaker 1: Barnstable's friendliness Section two. Presently he found a companion for
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Speaker 1: his rambles, a boy of thirteen, a cousin of lishness
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Speaker 1: named Crystal. He was a curly headed youngster, brown eyed
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Speaker 1: as she was, and he was reading history in the
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Speaker 1: holiday stage of its education. So far as mister Barnstable
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Speaker 1: could gather, the more serious part of his intellectual training
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Speaker 1: was in mathematical work interrelated to physical and chemical science,
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Speaker 1: But all that was beyond the earthlings range of ideas.
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Speaker 1: Much of this work seemed to be done in cooperation
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Speaker 1: with other boys, and could be what we should call
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Speaker 1: research on earth. Nor could mister Barnstable master the nature
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Speaker 1: of some other sort of study which seemed to turn
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Speaker 1: upon refinements of expression. But the history brought them together.
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Speaker 1: The boy was just learning about the growth of the
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Speaker 1: utopian social system out of the efforts and experiences of
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Speaker 1: the ages of confusion. His imagination was alive with the
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Speaker 1: tragic struggles upon which the present order of utopia was founded.
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Speaker 1: He had a hundred questions for mister Barnstable, and he
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Speaker 1: was full of explicit information which was designed presently to
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Speaker 1: sink down and become part of the foundations of his
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Speaker 1: adult mind. Mister Barnstable was as good as a book
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Speaker 1: to him, and he was as good as a guide
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Speaker 1: to mister Barnstable. They went about together, talking upon a
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Speaker 1: footing of the completest equality, this rather exceptionally intelligent irtling,
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Speaker 1: and this utopian stripling who tapped him by perhaps an
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Speaker 1: inch when they stood side by side. The boy had
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Speaker 1: the broad acts of utopian history at his fingers ends.
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Speaker 1: He could explain and find an interest in explaining how
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Speaker 1: artificial and upheld the peace and beauty of Utopia still
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Speaker 1: were the Utopians were innocence, he said, very much what
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Speaker 1: their ancestors had been in the beginnings of the Near
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Speaker 1: Stone Age fifteen thousand or twenty thousand years ago. They
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Speaker 1: were still very much what Earth things had been in
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Speaker 1: the corresponding period. Since then, there had been only six
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Speaker 1: hundred or seven hundred generations, and no time for any
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Speaker 1: very fundamental changes in the race. There had not been
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Speaker 1: even a general admixture of races on Utopia, as on Earth.
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Speaker 1: There had been dusky and brown peoples, and they remained distinct.
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Speaker 1: The various races mingled socially, but did not interbreed very much. Rather,
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Speaker 1: they purified and intensified their racial gifts and beurties. There
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Speaker 1: was often very passionate love between people of contrasted race,
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Speaker 1: but rarely did such love come to pro creation. There
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Speaker 1: had been a certain deliberate elimination of ugly, malignant, narrow, stupid,
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Speaker 1: and gloomy types during the past dozen centuries or so.
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Speaker 1: But except for the fuller realization of his latent possibilities,
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Speaker 1: the common man in Utopia was very little different from
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Speaker 1: the ordinary, energetic and able people of a later Stone
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Speaker 1: Age or early Bronze Age community. They were infinitely better nourished,
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Speaker 1: trained and educated, had mentally and physically their condition was
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Speaker 1: clean and fit. But they were the same flesh and
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Speaker 1: nature as we are. But said mister Barnstaple, and struggled
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Speaker 1: with that idea for a time. Do you mean to
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Speaker 1: tell me that half the babies born on Earth to
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Speaker 1: day might grow to be such gods as these people
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Speaker 1: I meet? Given our air, given our atmosphere, given your heritage,
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Speaker 1: given our freedom in the past of Utopia, in the
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Speaker 1: age of confusion, mister Barnstaple had to remember every one
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Speaker 1: had grown up with a crippled or a thwart at will,
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Speaker 1: hampered by vain restrictions, or misled by plausible delusions. Utopia
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Speaker 1: still bore it in mind that human nature was fundamentally
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Speaker 1: animal and savage, and had to be adapted to social needs.
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Speaker 1: But Utopia had learnt the better methods of adaptation after
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Speaker 1: endless failures of compulsion, cruelty, and deception. On Earth. We
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Speaker 1: tame our animals with hot irons, and our fellow men
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Speaker 1: by violence and fraud, said mister Barnstaple, And describe the
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Speaker 1: skills and books newspapers and public discussions of the early
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Speaker 1: twentieth century. To his incredulous companion, you cannot imagine how
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Speaker 1: beaten and fearful even decent people are upon Earth. You
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Speaker 1: learn of the Age of Confusion in your histories, but
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Speaker 1: you do not know what the realities of a bad
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Speaker 1: mental atmosphere, an atmosphere of feeble laws, hates, and superstitions are.
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Speaker 1: As night goes round the earth always there are hundreds
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Speaker 1: of thousands of people who should be sleeping, lying awake,
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Speaker 1: fearing a billy, fearing a cruel competition, dreading lest they
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Speaker 1: cannot make good ill of some illness they cannot comprehend,
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Speaker 1: distressed by some irrational quarrel, madam, by some thwart it instinct,
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Speaker 1: or some suppressed and preferred it desire. Crystal admitted that
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Speaker 1: it was hard to think now of the Age of
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Speaker 1: Confusion in terms of misery. Much of the every day
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Speaker 1: misery of earth was nigh inconceivable. Very slowly utopia had
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Speaker 1: evolved its present harmony of law and custom and education.
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Speaker 1: Man was no longer crippled and compelled. It was recognized
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Speaker 1: that he was fundamentally an animal, and that his daily
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Speaker 1: life must follow the round of appetites satisfied and instincts released.
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Speaker 1: The daily texture of utopian life was woven of various
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Speaker 1: and interesting foods and drinks, of free and entertaining exercise
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Speaker 1: and work, of sweet sleep, and of the interest and
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Speaker 1: happiness of fearless and spiteless love. Making. Inhibition was at
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Speaker 1: a minimum. But where the power of utopian education began
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Speaker 1: was after the animal had been satisfied and disposed of
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Speaker 1: the duel on the reptile's head. That had brought Utopia
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Speaker 1: out of the confusions of human life was curiosity, the
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Speaker 1: play impulse prolonged and expanded in adult life into an
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Speaker 1: insatiable appetite for knowledge and an habitual creative urgency. All
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Speaker 1: Utopians have become as little children, learners and makers. It
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Speaker 1: was strange to hear this boy speaking so plainly and
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Speaker 1: clearly of the educational process to which he was being subjected,
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Speaker 1: and particularly to find he could talk so frankly of
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Speaker 1: love and earthly bashfulness almost prevent that mister Barnstable from asking,
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Speaker 1: but you you do not make love. I have had curiosity,
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Speaker 1: said the boy, evidently saying what he had been taught
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Speaker 1: to say. But it is not necessary or becoming to
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Speaker 1: make love too yearly in life, nor to let desire
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Speaker 1: take hold of one. It wakens youth to become too yearly,
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Speaker 1: possessed by desire, which often will not leave one again.
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Speaker 1: It spoils and cripples the imagination. I want to do
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Speaker 1: good work, as my father has done before me. Mister
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Speaker 1: Barnstable glanced at the beautiful young profile at his side,
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Speaker 1: and was suddenly troubled by memories of a certain study
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Speaker 1: number for at school, and of some ugly phases of
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Speaker 1: his adolescence, the luffy secret room, the hot and ugly
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Speaker 1: fact he felt a beastly or earthling than ever he
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Speaker 1: ho he sighed, But this world of yours is as
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Speaker 1: clean as starlight, and as sweet as cold water on
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Speaker 1: a dusty day. Many people I love, said the boy,
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Speaker 1: but not with passion. Some day that will come. But
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Speaker 1: one must not be too eager and anxious to meet
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Speaker 1: passionate love, or one might make believe, or give or
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Speaker 1: snatch at a sham. There is no hurry, No one
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Speaker 1: will prevent me when my time comes. All good things
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Speaker 1: come to one in this world in their own time.
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Speaker 1: But work. One does not wait for one's work, since
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Speaker 1: it concerns one's own self. Only one goes to meet
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Speaker 1: Crystal thought very much about the work that he might do.
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Speaker 1: It seemed to mister Barnstable that work in the sense
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Speaker 1: of uncongenial toil had almost disappeared from Utopia. Yet all
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Speaker 1: Utopia was working. Every One was doing work that fitted
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Speaker 1: natural aptitudes and appealed to the imagination of the worker.
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Speaker 1: Every One worked happily and eagerly, as those people we
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Speaker 1: call geniuses do on our earth. For suddenly mister Barnstable
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Speaker 1: find himself telling Cristel of the happiness of the true artist,
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Speaker 1: of the true scientific worker, of the original man. Even
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Speaker 1: on Earth, as it is to day, they too, like
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Speaker 1: the Utopians, do work that concerns themselves and is in
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Speaker 1: their own nature. For great ends of all are things
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Speaker 1: they are the most enviable. If such men are not
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Speaker 1: happy on earth, said mister Barnstable, it is because they
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Speaker 1: are touched with vulgarity, and still heed the soiled successes
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Speaker 1: and honors and satisfactions of vulgar men, still feel neglect
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Speaker 1: and limitation that to concern them no more. But to
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Speaker 1: him who has seen the sunshine in Utopia, surely the
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Speaker 1: utmost honor and glory of earth can signify no more
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Speaker 1: and be no more desirable than the complimentary spittle of
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Speaker 1: the chieftain and the string of barbaric beads. Section three.
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Speaker 1: Cristel was still of an age to be proud of
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Speaker 1: his so he showed mister Barnstable his books and told
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Speaker 1: him of his jetters and exercises. Utopia still made use
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Speaker 1: of printed books. The books were still the simplest, clearest
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Speaker 1: way of bringing statement before a tranquil mind. Cristel's books
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Speaker 1: were very beautifully bound in flexible leather that his mother
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Speaker 1: had told for him, very prettily, and they were made
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Speaker 1: of hand made paper. The letter was some fluent phonetic
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Speaker 1: script that mister Barnstable could not understand. It reminded him
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Speaker 1: of Arabic, and frequent sketches, outline, maps and diagrams were interpolated.
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Speaker 1: Cristel was advised in his holiday reading by a chatter
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Speaker 1: for whom he prepared a sort of exercise report, and
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Speaker 1: he supplemented his reading by visits to museums. But there
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Speaker 1: was no educational museum convenient in the Valley of Peace
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Speaker 1: for mister Barnstable to visit. Cristel had passed out of
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Speaker 1: the opening stage of education, which was carried on, he said,
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Speaker 1: upon large educational states given up wholly to the lives
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Speaker 1: of children. Education up to eleven or twelve seemed to
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Speaker 1: be much more carefully watched and guarded and taken care
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Speaker 1: of in Utopia than upon earth shocks. To the imagination,
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Speaker 1: fair and evil suggestions were worded off as carefully as
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Speaker 1: were infection and physical disaster. By eight or nine, the
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Speaker 1: foundations of a utopian character were surely laid, habits of cleanliness, truth,
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Speaker 1: candor and helpfulness, confidence in the world, fearlessness, and the
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Speaker 1: sense of belonging to the great purpose of the race.
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Speaker 1: Only after nine or ten did the child go outside
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Speaker 1: the garden of its early growth and begin to see
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Speaker 1: the ordinary ways of the world. Until that age, the
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Speaker 1: care of the children was largely in the hands of
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Speaker 1: nurses and teachers. But after that time the parents became
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Speaker 1: more of a factor than they had been. In a
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Speaker 1: youngster's life. It was always accustomed for the parents of
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Speaker 1: a child to be near and to see that child
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Speaker 1: in its nursery days. But just when earthly parents tended
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Speaker 1: to separate from their children as they went away to
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Speaker 1: skull or when into business, Utopian parentage grew to be
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Speaker 1: something closer. There was an idea in Utopia that between
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Speaker 1: parent and child there was a necessary temperamental sympathy. Children
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Speaker 1: looked forward to the friendship and company of their parents,
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Speaker 1: and parents looked forward to the interest of their children's adolescence.
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Speaker 1: And though a parent had particularly no power over his
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Speaker 1: son or daughter, he or she took naturally the position
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Speaker 1: of advocate, adviser and sympathetic friend. The friendship was all
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Speaker 1: the franker and closer because of that lack of power,
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Speaker 1: and all the easier because age for age, the Utopians
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Speaker 1: were so much younger and fresher minded than earthlings. Cristel,
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Speaker 1: it seemed, had a very great passion for his mother.
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Speaker 1: He was very proud of his father, who was a
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Speaker 1: wonderful painter and designer, but it was his mother who
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Speaker 1: possessed the boy's heart. On his second walk with mister Barnstable,
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Speaker 1: he said he was going to hear from his brother,
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Speaker 1: and mister Barnstable was shown the equivalent of correspondence in Utopia.
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Speaker 1: Cristel carried a little bundle of waiters and light rods,
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Speaker 1: and presently coming to a place where a pillar stood
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Speaker 1: in the midst of a lawn. He spread this affair
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Speaker 1: out like a long cat's cradle, and tapped a little
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Speaker 1: stud in the pillar with a key that he carried
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Speaker 1: on a light gold chain about his neck. Then he
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Speaker 1: took up a receiver attached to his apparatus, and spoke aloud,
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Speaker 1: and listened, and presently heard a voice. It was a
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Speaker 1: very pleasant woman's voice. It talked to Cristel for a
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Speaker 1: time without interruption, and then Crystal talked back. And afterwards
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Speaker 1: there were other voices, some of which Crystal answered in,
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Speaker 1: some of which he heard without replying. Then he gathered up
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Speaker 1: his apparatus again. This, mister Barnstable learnt, was the utopian
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Speaker 1: equivalent of letter and telephone. For in Utopia, except by
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Speaker 1: previous arrangement, people do not talk together on the telephone.
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Speaker 1: A message is sent to the station of the district
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Speaker 1: in which the recipient is known to be, and there
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Speaker 1: it waits until he chooses to tap his accumulated messages,
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Speaker 1: and any that one wishes to repeat can be repeated.
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Speaker 1: Then he talks by to the centers and dispatches any
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Speaker 1: other messages he wishes. The transmission is wireless. The little
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Speaker 1: pillars supply electric power for transmission or for any other
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Speaker 1: purpose the Utopians require. For example, the gardeners resort to
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Speaker 1: them to run their moards and diggers from rakes and
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Speaker 1: rollers far away across the valley. Crystal pointed out the
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Speaker 1: district station at which this correspondence gathered and was dispersed.
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Speaker 1: Only a few people were in jury there. Almost all
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Speaker 1: the connections were automatic, The messages came and went from
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Speaker 1: any part of the planet. This set mister Barnstable going
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Speaker 1: upon a long string of questions. He discovered for the
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Speaker 1: first time that the Message organization of Utopia had a
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Speaker 1: complete knowledge of the whereabouts of every soul upon the planet.
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Speaker 1: It had a record of every living person, and it
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Speaker 1: knew in what message district he was. Everyone was indexed
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Speaker 1: and noted. To mister Barnstable, accustomed to the crudities and
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Speaker 1: dishonesties of earthly governments, this was an almost terrifying discovery
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Speaker 1: on Earth. That would be the means of unending blackmail
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Speaker 1: and tyranny. He said, every one would lie open to espionage.
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Speaker 1: He had a fellow at Scotland Yard. If he had
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Speaker 1: been in your communication department, he would have made life
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Speaker 1: in Utopia intolerable in a week. You cannot imagine the
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Speaker 1: nuisance he was. Mister Barnstable had to explain to Crystal
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Speaker 1: what blackmail meant. It was like that in Utopia to
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Speaker 1: begin with, Cristel said, just as on Earth, so in
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Speaker 1: Utopia there was the same natural disposition to use knowledge
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Speaker 1: and power to the disadvantage of one's fellows, and the
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Speaker 1: same jealousy of having one's personal facts known. In the
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Speaker 1: Stone Age. In Utopia, men kept their true names secret
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Speaker 1: and could only be spoken of by nicknames. They feared
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Speaker 1: magic abuses. Some savages still do that on Earth, said
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Speaker 1: mister Barnstable. It was only very slowly that Utopians came
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Speaker 1: to trust doctors and dentists, and only very slowly that
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Speaker 1: doctors and dentists became trustworthy. It was a matter of
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Speaker 1: scores of centuries before or the chief abuses of the
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Speaker 1: confidences and trusts necessary to a modern social organization could
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Speaker 1: be effectively corrected. Every young Utopian had to learn the
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Speaker 1: five principles of liberty, without which civilization is impossible. The
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Speaker 1: first was the principle of privacy. This is that all
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Speaker 1: individual personal facts are private between the citizen and the public.
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Speaker 1: Organization to which he entrusts him, and can be used
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Speaker 1: only for his convenience and with his sanction. Of course,
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Speaker 1: all such facts are available for statistical uses, but not
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Speaker 1: as individual personal facts. And the second principle is the
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Speaker 1: principle of free movement. A citizen, subject to the due
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Speaker 1: discharge of his public obligations, may go without permission or
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Speaker 1: explanation to any part of the utopian planet. All the
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Speaker 1: means of transport are freely at a service. Every utopian
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Speaker 1: may change his surroundings, his climate, and his social atmosphere
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Speaker 1: as he will. The third principle is the principle of
20:58
Speaker 1: unlimited knowledge. Is known in utopia except individual personal facts
21:03
Speaker 1: about living people is on record and as easily available
21:07
Speaker 1: as a perfected series of indices. Libraries, museums, and inquiry
21:11
Speaker 1: offices can make it. Whatever the utopian desires to know,
21:16
Speaker 1: he may know with the utmost clearness, exactness, and facility.
21:20
Speaker 1: So far as his powers of knowing and his industry go,
21:23
Speaker 1: nothing is kept from him, and nothing is misrepresented to him.
21:27
Speaker 1: And that brought mister Barnstable to the fourth principle of liberty,
21:30
Speaker 1: which was that lying is the blackest crime. Cristel's definition
21:35
Speaker 1: of lying was a sweeping one. The inexact statement of facts,
21:40
Speaker 1: given the suppression of a material fact was lying. Where
21:43
Speaker 1: there are lies, there cannot be freedom. Mister Barnstable was
21:47
Speaker 1: mightily taken by this idea. It seemed at once quite
21:50
Speaker 1: fresh to him, and one that he had always unconsciously entertained.
21:55
Speaker 1: Half the difference between utopia and our world, he asserted,
21:58
Speaker 1: lay in this that our atmosphere was dense and poisonous
22:02
Speaker 1: with lies and shams. When one comes to think of him,
22:05
Speaker 1: said mister Barnstable, and began to expiate to crystal upon
22:09
Speaker 1: all the falsehoods of human life. The fundamental assumptions of
22:13
Speaker 1: earthly associations were still largely lies, false assumptions of necessary
22:17
Speaker 1: and unavoidable differences in flags and nationality, pretenses of function
22:22
Speaker 1: and power in monarchy, impostures of organized learning, religious and
22:27
Speaker 1: moral dogmas and shams. And one must live in it.
22:30
Speaker 1: One is a part of it. You are restrained, taxed, distressed,
22:34
Speaker 1: and killed by these insane unrealities. Lying is the primary crime.
22:39
Speaker 1: How simple is that? How true and necessary is that?
22:43
Speaker 1: That dogma is the fundamental distinction of the scientific world
22:47
Speaker 1: state from all preceding states, and going on from that,
22:50
Speaker 1: mister Barnstable lunched out into a long and loud tirade
22:54
Speaker 1: against the suppression and falsifications of earthly newspapers. It was
22:59
Speaker 1: the question very heart, the London newspapers had ceased to
23:03
Speaker 1: be impartial vehicles of news. They omitted, they mutilated, they
23:07
Speaker 1: mistated it. They were no better than propaganda rags rags.
23:11
Speaker 1: Nature within its field was shiningly, accurate and full, but
23:15
Speaker 1: that was a purely scientific paper. It did not touch
23:19
Speaker 1: the everyday news. The press, he held, was the only
23:22
Speaker 1: possible salt of contemporary life. And if the salt had
23:26
Speaker 1: lost its savor, the poor man found himself a rating,
23:29
Speaker 1: as though he was back at his Sydenham breakfast table
23:33
Speaker 1: after a bad morning's paper. Once upon a time, Utopia
23:37
Speaker 1: was in just such a tangle, said Cristel consolingly. But
23:42
Speaker 1: there is a proverb truth comes back, where once she
23:45
Speaker 1: has visited, you need not trouble so much as you do.
23:48
Speaker 1: Some day even your press may grow clear. How do
23:51
Speaker 1: you manage about newspapers and criticism, said mister Barnstable. Cristel
23:56
Speaker 1: explained that there was a complete distinction between news and discussion.
24:00
Speaker 1: In Utopia there were houses, one was in Sight, which
24:03
Speaker 1: were used as reading rooms. One went to these places
24:06
Speaker 1: to learn that the news. Thither went the reports of
24:09
Speaker 1: all the things that were happening on the planet, things find,
24:13
Speaker 1: things discovered, things done. The reports were made as they
24:16
Speaker 1: were needed. There were no advertisement contracts to demand the
24:20
Speaker 1: same bulk of news every day. For some time, Cristel
24:23
Speaker 1: said the reports had been very full and amusing about
24:27
Speaker 1: the Earthlings, but he had not been reading the paper
24:29
Speaker 1: for many days because of the interest in history the
24:32
Speaker 1: Earthling affair had arised in him. There was always news
24:35
Speaker 1: of fresh scientific discoveries that stirred the imagination. One frequent
24:40
Speaker 1: item of public interest and excitement was the lying out
24:43
Speaker 1: of some wide scheme of research. The new spatial work
24:46
Speaker 1: that Arden and green Lake had died for was producing
24:49
Speaker 1: much news, and when people died in Utopia, it was
24:53
Speaker 1: to custom to tell the story of their lives. Crystal
24:56
Speaker 1: promised to take mister Barnstable to a news place and
25:00
Speaker 1: the entertain him by writing him some of the Utopian
25:03
Speaker 1: descriptions of earthly life which had been derived from the Earthlings,
25:07
Speaker 1: and mister Barnstable asked that when this was done he
25:10
Speaker 1: might also hear about Arden and green Lake, who had
25:14
Speaker 1: been not only great discoverers, but great lovers, and of
25:17
Speaker 1: Serpentine and sedyor for whom he had conceived an intense admiration.
25:21
Speaker 1: Utopian news lacked, of course, the high spice of an
25:25
Speaker 1: earthly newspaper, the intriguing murders and amazing misbehaviors, the entertaining
25:30
Speaker 1: and exciting consequences of sexual ignorance and sexual blunderings, the
25:34
Speaker 1: libel cases and detected swindles, the great processional movements of
25:39
Speaker 1: royalty across the general traffic, and the romantic fluctuations of
25:43
Speaker 1: the stock exchange in sport. But where the news of
25:46
Speaker 1: Utopia lacked liveliness, the liveliness of discussion made up for it.
25:51
Speaker 1: For the fifth principle of liberty in utopia was free
25:53
Speaker 1: discussion and criticism. Any utopian was free to criticize and
25:58
Speaker 1: discuss anything in the whole universe, provided he told no
26:01
Speaker 1: lies about it, directly or indirectly. He could be as
26:05
Speaker 1: respectful or disrespectful as he pleased. He could propose anything,
26:09
Speaker 1: how advert subversive. He could break into poetry or fiction
26:14
Speaker 1: as he chose. He could express himself in any literary form.
26:17
Speaker 1: He liked, or by sketch or caricature, as the mood
26:21
Speaker 1: took him one only he must refrain from lying. That
26:24
Speaker 1: was the one rigid role of controversy. He could get
26:27
Speaker 1: what he had to say, print it, and distribute it
26:30
Speaker 1: to the news rooms. There it was read or neglected
26:33
Speaker 1: as the visitors chanced to approve of it or not. Often,
26:37
Speaker 1: if they liked what they read, they would carry off
26:40
Speaker 1: a copy with them. Cristel had some new fantastic fiction
26:43
Speaker 1: about the exploration of space among his books, imaginative stories
26:48
Speaker 1: that boys were reading very eagerly. There were pamphlets of
26:51
Speaker 1: thirty or forty pages printed on a beautiful paper that
26:54
Speaker 1: he said was made directly from flax, and certain reads.
26:58
Speaker 1: The liberians noted what books and papers were read and
27:01
Speaker 1: taken away, and these they replaced with fresh copies. The
27:05
Speaker 1: piles that, when unread, were presently reduced to one or
27:08
Speaker 1: two copies, and the rest went back to the pulping mills.
27:12
Speaker 1: But many of the poets and philosophers and story tellers
27:14
Speaker 1: whose imaginations found no wide popularity were nevertheless treasured and
27:19
Speaker 1: their memories kept alive by a few devoted admirers. I
27:22
Speaker 1: am not at all clear in my mind about one thing,
27:25
Speaker 1: said mister Barnstable. I have seen no coinds, and nothing
27:28
Speaker 1: like money passing in this world by all outward appearance.
27:31
Speaker 1: This might be a communism, such as was figured in
27:35
Speaker 1: the book we used to value on Earth, a book
27:37
Speaker 1: called News from Nowhere by an Earthling named William Morris.
27:41
Speaker 1: It was a graceful and possible book. In that dream,
27:45
Speaker 1: everyone worked for the joy of working, and took what
27:47
Speaker 1: he needed. But I have never believed in communism because
27:50
Speaker 1: I recognize as here in Yetobya used seemed to recognize
27:54
Speaker 1: the natural fierceness and greediness of the untutored man. There
27:57
Speaker 1: is joy and creation for others to use, but no
28:00
Speaker 1: natural joy in unrequited service. The sense of justice to
28:04
Speaker 1: himself is greater in man than the sense of service.
28:07
Speaker 1: Somehow here ye must balance the work any one does
28:10
Speaker 1: for Utopia against what he destroys or consumes. How do
28:13
Speaker 1: you do it? Cristel considered there were communists in Utopia
28:16
Speaker 1: in the last age of confusion. In some parts of
28:19
Speaker 1: our planet. They tried to abolish money suddenly and valiantly,
28:22
Speaker 1: and brought about great economic confusion and want and misery
28:26
Speaker 1: to step straight two. Communism failed very tragically, and yet
28:30
Speaker 1: Utopia today is practically a communism. And except by way
28:33
Speaker 1: of curiosity, I have never had a coin in my
28:36
Speaker 1: hand all my life in Utopia, just does upon earth.
28:39
Speaker 1: He explained, money came as a great discovery as a
28:42
Speaker 1: method of freedom. Hitherto, before the invention of money, all
28:46
Speaker 1: service between man and man had been done through bondage
28:49
Speaker 1: or barter. Life was a thing of slavery and narrow choice.
28:53
Speaker 1: But money opened up the possibility of giving a worker
28:56
Speaker 1: a free choice in his reward. It took Utopia three
28:59
Speaker 1: thousand years and more to realize that possibility. The idea
29:02
Speaker 1: of money abounded in pitfalls and was easily corruptible. Utopia
29:06
Speaker 1: floundered its way to economic lucidity through long centuries of
29:11
Speaker 1: credit and debt, false and debase, money, extravagant usury, and
29:15
Speaker 1: every possibility of speculative abuse. In the matter of money,
29:19
Speaker 1: more than any other human concern, human cunning has set
29:23
Speaker 1: itself most vilely and treacherously to prey upon human necessity. Utopia,
29:28
Speaker 1: once carried as earth carries, now allowed parasitic souls, speculators, foes, dollars, gamblers,
29:34
Speaker 1: and bargain pressing shylocks, exacting every conceivable advantage out of
29:39
Speaker 1: the weakness of the monetary system. She had made it
29:42
Speaker 1: centuries of economic sanitation. It was only when utopia had
29:45
Speaker 1: got to the beginnings of worldwide political unity, and when
29:48
Speaker 1: there were sufficiently full statistics of world resources in world production,
29:52
Speaker 1: that human society could at last give the individual worker
29:55
Speaker 1: the assurance of a coin of steadfast significance, a coin
29:59
Speaker 1: that would mean for him to day or tomorrow, or
30:02
Speaker 1: at any time, the certainty of a set quantity of
30:05
Speaker 1: elemental values, and with pace throughout the planet, an increasing
30:08
Speaker 1: social stability. Interest, which is the measure of danger and uncertainty,
30:13
Speaker 1: dwelled at last to nothing. Banking became a public service
30:16
Speaker 1: perforce because it no longer offered profit to the individual.
30:19
Speaker 1: Binker Rentier classes Crystel conveyed are not a permanent element
30:24
Speaker 1: in any community. They mark a phase of transition between
30:28
Speaker 1: a period of insecurity and high interest and a period
30:31
Speaker 1: of complete security and no interest. They are a dawn phenomenon.
30:35
Speaker 1: Mister Barnstable digested this statement after an interval of incredulity.
30:40
Speaker 1: He satisfied himself by a few questions that young Utobia
30:43
Speaker 1: really had some idea of what a rentier class was,
30:47
Speaker 1: what its moral and imaginative limitations were likely to be,
30:50
Speaker 1: and the role it may have played in the intellectual
30:53
Speaker 1: development of the world by providing a class of independent minds.
30:57
Speaker 1: Life is intolerant of all independent classes, evidently repaying an
31:01
Speaker 1: axiom either you must earn or you must rob. We
31:04
Speaker 1: have got rid of robbing the youngsters. Still speaking by
31:07
Speaker 1: his book went on to explain how the gradual disuse
31:10
Speaker 1: of money came about. It was an outcome of the
31:13
Speaker 1: general progressive organization of the economic system, the substitution of
31:17
Speaker 1: collective enterprises, and of wholesale for retail dealing. There had
31:21
Speaker 1: been a time in Utopia when money changed hands at
31:25
Speaker 1: each little transaction and service. One paid money if one
31:29
Speaker 1: wanted a newspaper, or a match, or a bundle of flowers,
31:32
Speaker 1: or a ride on a street conveyance. Everybody went about
31:36
Speaker 1: the world with pockets full of small coins, paying on
31:38
Speaker 1: every slight occasion. Then, as economic science became more stable
31:43
Speaker 1: and exact, the methods of the club and the covering
31:46
Speaker 1: subscription extend people were able to buy passes that carried
31:50
Speaker 1: them by all the available means of transport for a year,
31:53
Speaker 1: or for ten years, or for life. The state learned
31:56
Speaker 1: from clubs and hotels to provide matches, newspap papers, stationary
32:01
Speaker 1: and transport for a fixed annual charge. The same inclusive
32:04
Speaker 1: system spread from small and incidental things to great and
32:08
Speaker 1: essential matters, to housing and food, and even clothing. The
32:11
Speaker 1: state postal system, in which knew where every Utopian citizen was,
32:15
Speaker 1: was presently able to conjunction with the public banking system
32:19
Speaker 1: to guarantee his credit in any part of the world.
32:22
Speaker 1: People ceased to draw coin for their work, the various
32:25
Speaker 1: departments of service and of economic, educational, and scientific activity
32:29
Speaker 1: will credit the individual with his earnings in the public bank,
32:32
Speaker 1: and debit him with his customary charges for all the
32:36
Speaker 1: normal services of life. Something of this sort is going
32:39
Speaker 1: on on earth even now, said mister Barnstable. We use
32:43
Speaker 1: money in the last resort, but a vast volume of
32:46
Speaker 1: our business is already a matter of book keeping. Centuries
32:49
Speaker 1: of unity and energy had given Utopia a very complete
32:53
Speaker 1: control of many foundations of natural energy upon the planet,
32:57
Speaker 1: and this was the heritage of every child born therein.
33:00
Speaker 1: He was credited at his birth with a sum sufficient
33:03
Speaker 1: to educate and maintain him up to four or five
33:06
Speaker 1: and twenty, and then he was expected to choose some
33:09
Speaker 1: occupation to replenish as account. But if he doesn't, said
33:12
Speaker 1: mister Barnstable. Every one does. But if he didn't, he'd
33:16
Speaker 1: be miserable and uncomfortable. I've never heard such a case.
33:19
Speaker 1: I suppose he'd be discussed. Psychologists might examine him. But
33:23
Speaker 1: one must do something. But suppose Utopia had no work
33:26
Speaker 1: for him to do. Crystel could not imagine that there
33:29
Speaker 1: was always something to be done. But in Utopia, once
33:32
Speaker 1: in the old times you had unemployment. That was part
33:35
Speaker 1: of the confusion. There was a sort of hypertrophy of debt.
33:39
Speaker 1: It had become paralysis. Why when they had unemployment at
33:42
Speaker 1: that same time there was neither enough houses, nor food,
33:46
Speaker 1: nor clothing. They had unemployment and shortage at one and
33:49
Speaker 1: the same time. It is incredible does anyone earn about
33:53
Speaker 1: the same amount of pay. Energetic and creative people are
33:56
Speaker 1: often given big grants if they seem to need the
33:59
Speaker 1: help of others or a command of natural resources, and
34:02
Speaker 1: artists sometimes grow rich of their work as much desired.
34:05
Speaker 1: Such a gold chain as yours you had to buy
34:08
Speaker 1: from the maker in his shop. My mother bought it.
34:10
Speaker 1: Then there are shops you shall see, some places where
34:13
Speaker 1: people go to see new and delightful things. And if
34:16
Speaker 1: an artist grows rich, what can he do with his money,
34:19
Speaker 1: Take time and material to make some surpassingly beautiful thing
34:22
Speaker 1: to leave the world, or collect and help with the
34:24
Speaker 1: work of other artists, or do whatever else he pleases,
34:27
Speaker 1: to teach and find the common sense of beauty in Utopia,
34:31
Speaker 1: or just do nothing. Utopia can afford it if he can.
34:34
Speaker 1: Six and five Cedar and Lyon, said mister Barnstable explained
34:39
Speaker 1: to the rest of us how it is that your
34:41
Speaker 1: government is, as it were, broken up and dispersed among
34:44
Speaker 1: the people who have special knowledge of the matters involved.
34:48
Speaker 1: The balance between interests we gathered was maintained by those
34:51
Speaker 1: who studied the general psychology and the educational organization of Utopia.
34:56
Speaker 1: At first, it was very strange to our earthly minds
35:00
Speaker 1: that there should be nowhere a pretended omniscience and a
35:03
Speaker 1: practical omnipotence, that is to say, a sovereign thing, person
35:08
Speaker 1: or in assembly whose fate was final. Mister Burley and
35:11
Speaker 1: mister Catskill thought that such a thing was absolutely necessary,
35:15
Speaker 1: and so less surely did I who will decide? Was
35:18
Speaker 1: there a riddle they expected to be taken to, say
35:20
Speaker 1: the president or the Supreme Council of Utopia. I suppose
35:23
Speaker 1: it seems to you the most natural of things, that
35:26
Speaker 1: there should be nothing of the sort, and that a
35:29
Speaker 1: question should go simply and naturally to the man who
35:32
Speaker 1: knows best about it, subject to free criticism, said Cristel,
35:36
Speaker 1: subject to the same process that has made him eminent
35:39
Speaker 1: and responsible. But don't people thrust themselves forward even here
35:43
Speaker 1: out of vanity? And don't people get thrust forward in
35:46
Speaker 1: front of the best out of spite. There is plenty
35:48
Speaker 1: of spite and vanity in every utopian soul, said Cristel.
35:51
Speaker 1: But people speak very plainly, and criticism is very searching
35:55
Speaker 1: and free, so that we learn to search our motives
35:58
Speaker 1: before we praise our question, what do you say and do?
36:02
Speaker 1: Shows up here plainly at its true value, said mister Barnstable.
36:06
Speaker 1: You cannot throw mud in the noise and darkness unchallenged,
36:09
Speaker 1: or get a false claim acknowledged in the disorder. Some
36:12
Speaker 1: years ago there was a man, an artist, who made
36:14
Speaker 1: a great trouble about the work of my father. Often
36:17
Speaker 1: artistic criticism is very better here. But he was bitter
36:20
Speaker 1: beyond measure. He parttured my father and abused him incessantly.
36:25
Speaker 1: He followed him from place to place. He tried to
36:27
Speaker 1: prevent the allocation of material to him. He was quite
36:30
Speaker 1: in effective. Some people answered him, but for the most
36:33
Speaker 1: part he was disregarded. The boy stopped short well. He
36:37
Speaker 1: killed himself. He could not escape from his own foolishness.
36:40
Speaker 1: Every one knew what he had said and done. But
36:43
Speaker 1: in the past there were kings and councils and conferences
36:45
Speaker 1: in utopia, said mister Barnstable, returning to the main point.
36:49
Speaker 1: My books teach me that our state could have grown
36:51
Speaker 1: up in no other way. We had to have these
36:54
Speaker 1: general dealers in human relationship, politicians and lawyers, as a
36:58
Speaker 1: necessary stage and political and social development, just as we
37:02
Speaker 1: had to have soldiers and place men to save people
37:04
Speaker 1: from mutual violence. It was only very slowly that politicians
37:07
Speaker 1: and lawyers came to admit the need for special knowledge
37:10
Speaker 1: in the things they had to do. Politicians would draw
37:12
Speaker 1: boundaries without any proper knowledge of ethnology or economic geography,
37:18
Speaker 1: and lawyers decide it about will and purpose with the
37:20
Speaker 1: crudest knowledge of psychology. They produced the most prosperous and
37:25
Speaker 1: unworkable arrangements in the gravest fashion, like Tristram Shandy's Parish Bill,
37:30
Speaker 1: which set about begetting the peace of the world a
37:33
Speaker 1: precise said mister Barnstable. Crystal looked puzzled. A complicated allusion
37:38
Speaker 1: to your purely earthly matter, said mister Barnstable. This complete
37:41
Speaker 1: diffusion of the business of politics and law among the
37:44
Speaker 1: people with knowledge is one of the most interesting things
37:46
Speaker 1: of all to me. In this world, such a diffusion
37:49
Speaker 1: is beginning upon earth. That people who understand world health,
37:52
Speaker 1: for instance, are dead against political and legal methods, and
37:55
Speaker 1: so are many of our best economists. And most people
37:58
Speaker 1: never go into a law court, and wouldn't dream of
38:01
Speaker 1: doing so. Upon business of their own, from their cradles
38:05
Speaker 1: to their graves. What became of your politicians and lawyers
38:08
Speaker 1: was their struggle. As like grew and intelligence spread, they
38:12
Speaker 1: became more and more evidently unnecessary. They met at last
38:16
Speaker 1: only to appoint men of knowledge as ancestors and so forth,
38:19
Speaker 1: And after a time even these appointments became foregone conclusions.
38:23
Speaker 1: Their activities melted into the general body of criticism and
38:27
Speaker 1: discussion in places there are still old buildings that used
38:31
Speaker 1: to be council chambers and law courts. The last politician
38:34
Speaker 1: to be elected to a legislative Assembly died in Utopia
38:37
Speaker 1: about a thousand years ago. He was an eccentric and
38:40
Speaker 1: garrulous old gentleman. He was the only candidate, and one
38:43
Speaker 1: man voted for him, and he insisted upon assembling in
38:46
Speaker 1: solitary state and having all his speeches and proceedings taken
38:51
Speaker 1: down in shorthand. Boys and girls who were learning stenography
38:54
Speaker 1: used to go to report him. Finally, he was dealt
38:56
Speaker 1: with as a mental case, and the last judge. I
38:59
Speaker 1: have not learned about the last judge, said Cristel. I
39:03
Speaker 1: must ask my childer. I suppose there was one, But
39:06
Speaker 1: I suppose nobody asked him to judge anything, so he
39:09
Speaker 1: probably got something more respectable to do. Section six. I
39:12
Speaker 1: begin to apprehend the daily life of this world, said
39:16
Speaker 1: mister Barnstable. It is a life of demigods, very free,
39:20
Speaker 1: strongly individualized, each following an individual bent, each contributing to
39:24
Speaker 1: great racial ends. It is not only cleanly naked and
39:28
Speaker 1: sweet and lovely, but full of personal dignity. It is,
39:31
Speaker 1: I say, a practicle communism. Planned and led up through
39:35
Speaker 1: long centuries of education and discipline and collectivist preparation. I
39:39
Speaker 1: had never thought before that socialism could exact and ennoble
39:42
Speaker 1: the individual, and individualism degrade himself. But now I see
39:46
Speaker 1: plainly that here the thing is proved. In this fortunate world,
39:50
Speaker 1: it is indeed the crown of all its health and happiness.
39:53
Speaker 1: There is no crown. The old world, the world to
39:56
Speaker 1: which I belong was, and in my universe alas still
39:59
Speaker 1: is the world world of the crowd, the world of
40:01
Speaker 1: that detestable, crawling mass of unfeatured, infected human beings. You
40:06
Speaker 1: have never seen a crowd crystal, and in all your
40:09
Speaker 1: happy life, you never will. You have never seen a
40:12
Speaker 1: crowd going to a football match, or a race meeting,
40:15
Speaker 1: or a bull fight, or a public execution, or the
40:18
Speaker 1: like crowd joy. You have never watched a crowd wedge
40:21
Speaker 1: and stick in a narrow place, or hoot or howl
40:24
Speaker 1: in a crisis. You have never watched it streams sluggishly
40:28
Speaker 1: along the streets to gape at a king, or yell
40:30
Speaker 1: for a war, or yell quite equally for a piece.
40:34
Speaker 1: And you have never seen the crowd struck by some
40:37
Speaker 1: pathetic breeze, change from crowd proper to mob and begin
40:40
Speaker 1: to smash and hunt. All the crowd celebrations have gone
40:43
Speaker 1: out of this world, all the crowd's gods. There is
40:46
Speaker 1: no turf here, no sport, no war demonstrations, no coronations
40:51
Speaker 1: and public funerals, no great shows, but only your little theaters.
40:55
Speaker 1: Happy Crystal, who will never see a crowd. But I
40:58
Speaker 1: have seen crowds, said Cristel. Where I have seen cinematograph
41:02
Speaker 1: films of crowds photographed thirty centuries ago and more. They
41:06
Speaker 1: are shown in our history museums. I have seen crowds
41:09
Speaker 1: streaming over Downes after a great race meeting photographed from
41:13
Speaker 1: an aeroplane, and crowds rioting in some public square and
41:16
Speaker 1: being dispersed by the police, thousands and thousands of swarming people.
41:20
Speaker 1: But it is true what you say. There are no
41:23
Speaker 1: more crowds in Utopia. Crowds set, crowds, and crowd mind
41:26
Speaker 1: have gone forever. Section seven, when after some days Cristel
41:30
Speaker 1: had to return to his mathematical studies. His departure left
41:34
Speaker 1: mister Barnstable very lonely. He found no other companion. Listness
41:38
Speaker 1: seemed always near him and ready to be with him,
41:41
Speaker 1: but her want of act of intellectual interests, so remarkable
41:44
Speaker 1: in this world of vast intellectual activities, estranged him from her.
41:48
Speaker 1: Other Utopians came and went, friendly, amused, polite, but intent
41:51
Speaker 1: upon their own business. They would question him curiously, attend
41:55
Speaker 1: perhaps to a question or show of his own, and
41:58
Speaker 1: to part with an air of being called away. Listenness,
42:01
Speaker 1: he began to realize, was one of Utopia's failures. She
42:05
Speaker 1: was a lingering, romantic type, and she cherished a great
42:08
Speaker 1: sorrow in her heart. She had had two children whom
42:11
Speaker 1: she had loved passionately. They were adorably fearless, and out
42:14
Speaker 1: of foolish pride, she had urged them to swim out
42:17
Speaker 1: to see, and they had been taken by a current
42:20
Speaker 1: and drowned. Their father had been drowned in attempting their rescue,
42:23
Speaker 1: and Listness had very nearly shared their fate. She had
42:27
Speaker 1: been rescued, but her emotional life had stopped short at
42:31
Speaker 1: that point, had, as it were, struck an attitude and
42:34
Speaker 1: remained in it. Tragedy possessed her. She turned her back
42:37
Speaker 1: and laughter and gladness and looked for distress. She had
42:40
Speaker 1: rediscovered the lost passion of pity, first pity for herself,
42:44
Speaker 1: and then a desire to pity others. She took no
42:46
Speaker 1: interest any more in vigorous and complete people, but her
42:50
Speaker 1: mind concentrated upon the consolation to be found in consoling
42:54
Speaker 1: pain and distress, and others. She sought her healing in
42:56
Speaker 1: healing them. She did not want to talk to mister
42:59
Speaker 1: Barnstable of the brightness of utopia. She wanted him to
43:02
Speaker 1: talk to her of the miseries of earth, and of
43:05
Speaker 1: his own miseries that she might sympathize. But he would
43:09
Speaker 1: not tell her of his own miseries, because indeed, such
43:12
Speaker 1: was his temperament, he had none, He had only exasperations
43:16
Speaker 1: and regrets. She dreamt, he perceived of being able to
43:19
Speaker 1: come to earth and give her beauty and tenderness to
43:22
Speaker 1: the Second Power. Her heart went out to the spectacle
43:25
Speaker 1: of human suffering and weakness. It went out to these
43:27
Speaker 1: things hungrily and desirously. Before he detected the drift of
43:31
Speaker 1: her mind, he told her many things about human sickness
43:34
Speaker 1: and poverty, But he spoke of these matters not with
43:36
Speaker 1: purity but indignation, as things that ought not to be.
43:40
Speaker 1: And when he perceived how she faced it on these things.
43:42
Speaker 1: He spoke of them hardly and cheerfully, as things that
43:45
Speaker 1: would presently be swept away. But they will still have suffered,
43:48
Speaker 1: she said. Since she was always close at hand, she
43:51
Speaker 1: filed for him, perhaps more than her legitimate space. In
43:54
Speaker 1: the utopian spectacle. She lay across it like a shadow.
43:58
Speaker 1: He thought very frequently about her, and about the pity
44:01
Speaker 1: and resentment against life and vigor that she embodied. In
44:04
Speaker 1: a world of fear, weakness, affection, darkness of confusion, pity,
44:08
Speaker 1: an act of charity, the alms and the refuge, the
44:11
Speaker 1: deed of stark devotion might show indeed like sweet and
44:14
Speaker 1: gracious presences. But in this world of health and brave enterprises,
44:18
Speaker 1: Hidy betrayed itself a vicious sire. Crystal utopian youth was
44:23
Speaker 1: as hard as his name. When he had slipped one
44:25
Speaker 1: day on some rocks and twisted and torn his ankle,
44:28
Speaker 1: he had limped, but he had laughed when mister Barnstable
44:31
Speaker 1: was winded on a steep staircase. Cristel was polite rather
44:35
Speaker 1: than sympathetic, so dissness had found no confederate in the
44:39
Speaker 1: dedication of her life to sorrow, even from mister Barnstable,
44:43
Speaker 1: she could win no sympathy. He perceived that, indeed, so
44:46
Speaker 1: far as temperament went, he was a better Utopian than
44:49
Speaker 1: she was. To him. As to Utopia, it seemed rather
44:52
Speaker 1: an occasion for gladness than sorrow that her man and
44:56
Speaker 1: her children had met death fearlessly. They were dead of
45:00
Speaker 1: stark death. The waters still glittered and the sun still shone.
45:05
Speaker 1: But her loss had revealed some underlying racial taint in her,
45:10
Speaker 1: something very ancient in the species, something that Utopia was
45:13
Speaker 1: still breeding out, only very slowly, the dark sacrificial disposing
45:17
Speaker 1: that boys and responds to the shadow. It was strange,
45:20
Speaker 1: and yet perhaps it was inevitable that mister Barnstables should
45:24
Speaker 1: mate again in Utopia, that spirit which Earth knows so well,
45:28
Speaker 1: the spirit that turns from the kingdom of heaven to
45:30
Speaker 1: worship the thorns and the nails, which delights to present
45:33
Speaker 1: its God not as the resurrection and the life, but
45:35
Speaker 1: as a woeful and defeated cadaver. She would talk to
45:39
Speaker 1: him of his sons, as if she envied him because
45:42
Speaker 1: of the loss of her own. But all she had
45:44
Speaker 1: said reminded him of the educational disadvantages and narrow prospects
45:49
Speaker 1: of his boys, and how much stouder and finer and
45:51
Speaker 1: happier their lives would have been in utopia. He would
45:54
Speaker 1: have resked, drowning them a dozen times to have saved
45:57
Speaker 1: them from being clerks and employees of other men, even
46:00
Speaker 1: by earthly standards. He felt now that he had not
46:04
Speaker 1: done his best by them. He had let many things
46:06
Speaker 1: drift in their lives, and in the lives of himself
46:09
Speaker 1: and his wife, that he now felt he ought to
46:11
Speaker 1: have controlled. Could he have his time over again, he
46:14
Speaker 1: felt that he would say to it that his sons
46:18
Speaker 1: took a livelier interest in politics and science, and were
46:21
Speaker 1: not so completely engulfed in it of the trivialities of
46:24
Speaker 1: suburban life, in tennis, playing amateur theatricals, insane flirtations and
46:29
Speaker 1: the like. They were good boys and in substance, he felt,
46:32
Speaker 1: but he had left them to their mother, and had
46:34
Speaker 1: left their mother too much to herself instead of battling
46:37
Speaker 1: with her for the sake of his own ideas. They
46:40
Speaker 1: were living trivially in the shadow of one great catastrophe,
46:44
Speaker 1: and with no security against another. They were living in
46:46
Speaker 1: a world of weake, waste, and shabby insufficiencies, and his
46:50
Speaker 1: own life also had been weak waste. His life at
46:53
Speaker 1: Sydenham began to hunt him. I criticized everything, but I
46:56
Speaker 1: altered nothing, he said. I was as bad as was
47:00
Speaker 1: I any more use in that world than I am
47:04
Speaker 1: in this. But on earth we are all wasters. He
47:07
Speaker 1: avoided lishness for a day or so and wandered about
47:11
Speaker 1: the valley alone. He went into a great reading room
47:14
Speaker 1: and fingered books he could not read. He was suffered
47:17
Speaker 1: to stand in a workshop, and he watched an artist
47:20
Speaker 1: make a naked girl of gold, more lovely than an
47:23
Speaker 1: earthly statue at a melt her. Again dissatisfied, here he
47:28
Speaker 1: came upon men building, and here was work upon the fields.
47:32
Speaker 1: Here was a great shaft in the hillside, and something
47:35
Speaker 1: deep in the hill that flashed and scintillated it. Strangely,
47:38
Speaker 1: they would not let him go into it. He saw
47:42
Speaker 1: a thousand things he could not understand. He began to feel,
47:45
Speaker 1: as perhaps a very intelligent dog must sometimes feel in
47:49
Speaker 1: the world of men, only that he had no master
47:52
Speaker 1: and no instincts that could find a consolation In canine objection.
47:56
Speaker 1: The Utopians went about their business in the daytime. They
47:59
Speaker 1: passed him smiling, and they filled him with intolerable envy.
48:03
Speaker 1: They knew what to do. They belonged. They went by
48:06
Speaker 1: in twos and threes in the evening, communing together and
48:09
Speaker 1: sometimes singing together. Lovers would pass him, their sweetly smiling
48:13
Speaker 1: faces close together, and his loneliness became an agony of
48:16
Speaker 1: hopeless desires. Because, though he fought hard to keep it
48:19
Speaker 1: below the threshold of his consciousness, mister Barnstable desired greatly
48:23
Speaker 1: to love and to be loved in utopia. The realization
48:26
Speaker 1: that no one of these people could ever conceive of
48:29
Speaker 1: any such intimacy of body or spared with him was
48:32
Speaker 1: a humiliation more fundamental even than his uselessness. The loveliness
48:37
Speaker 1: of the utopian girls, of women who glanced at him
48:39
Speaker 1: curiously or passed him with his serene indifference, crushed down
48:43
Speaker 1: his self respect and made the utopian world altogether intolerable
48:46
Speaker 1: to him. Mutely, unconsciously, these utopian goddesses concentrated upon him
48:51
Speaker 1: the uttermost abasement of caste and race inferiority. He could
48:56
Speaker 1: not keep his thoughts from love, where everyone, it seemed,
48:58
Speaker 1: had a lover in this utopian world love for him
49:02
Speaker 1: was a thing grotesque and inconceivable. Then, one night, as
49:05
Speaker 1: he lay awake distress beyond measure by the thought of
49:08
Speaker 1: such things, an idea came to him, whereby it seemed
49:10
Speaker 1: to him he might restore his self respect and win
49:13
Speaker 1: a sort of citizenship in utopia, so that they might
49:16
Speaker 1: even speak of him and remember him with interest and sympathy.
49:21
Speaker 1: End of section fourteen. According by Chad Horner from Ballyclaire
49:24
Speaker 1: in County Antrim, Northern Ireland,