Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / A Modern Utopia Chapter 2 - Concerning Freedoms, Sections 4-7

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A Modern Utopia Chapter 2 - Concerning Freedoms, Sections 4-7 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter the second of A Modern Utopia, sections four through seven.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Christopher Taylor. A Modern
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  Speaker 1: Utopia by H. G. Wells. Chapter the second, concerning freedoms,
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  Speaker 1: section four. Were this a story? I should tell at length,
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  Speaker 1: how much we were helped by the good fortune of
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  Speaker 1: picking up a utopian coin of gold, how at last
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  Speaker 1: we had ventured into the utopian inn and found it
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  Speaker 1: all marvelously easy. You see us the shyest and most
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  Speaker 1: watchful of guests. But of the food they put before us,
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  Speaker 1: and the furnishings of the house, and all our entertainment,
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  Speaker 1: it will be better to speak later. We are in
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  Speaker 1: a migratory world, we know, one greatly accustomed to foreigners.
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  Speaker 1: Our mountain clothes are not strange enough to attract acute attention,
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  Speaker 1: though ill made and shabby, no doubt, by utopian standards,
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  Speaker 1: we are dealt with as we might best wish to
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  Speaker 1: be dealt with, that is to say, as rather untidy,
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  Speaker 1: inconspicuous men. We look about us and watch for hints
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  Speaker 1: and examples, and indeed get through with the thing. And
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  Speaker 1: after a queer yet not unpleasant dinner in which we
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  Speaker 1: remark no meat figures, we go out of the house
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  Speaker 1: for a breath of air and for quiet counsel with
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  Speaker 1: one another. And there it is we discovered those strange
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  Speaker 1: constellations overhead. It comes to us, then, clear and full
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  Speaker 1: that our imagination has realized itself. We dismiss quite finally
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  Speaker 1: a rip band winkle fancy. We have entertained all the
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  Speaker 1: unfamiliarities of our descent from the mountain pass gathered together
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  Speaker 1: into one fullness of conviction, and we know, we know,
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  Speaker 1: we are in utopia. We wander under the trees by
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  Speaker 1: the main road, watching the dim passers by as though
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  Speaker 1: they were the phantoms of a dream. We say little
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  Speaker 1: to one another. We turn aside into a little pathway,
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  Speaker 1: and come to a bridge over the turbulent wreaths, hurrying
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  Speaker 1: down towards the Devil's Bridge and the gorge below. Far
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  Speaker 1: away over the Furka ridge, a pallid glow preludes the
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  Speaker 1: rising of the moon. Two lovers pass us, whispering, and
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  Speaker 1: we follow them with our eyes. This utopia certainly preserved
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  Speaker 1: the fundamental freedom to love. And then a sweet voice
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  Speaker 1: bell from somewhere high up towards Oberal chimes two and
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  Speaker 1: twenty times. I break the silence that might mean ten o'clock,
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  Speaker 1: I say. My companion leans upon the bridge and looks
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  Speaker 1: down into the dim river below. I become aware of
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  Speaker 1: the keen edge of the moon, like a needle of
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  Speaker 1: incandescent silver, creeping over the crest, And suddenly the river
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  Speaker 1: is alive with flashes. He speaks and astonishes me with
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  Speaker 1: the hidden coursest thoughts have taken. We too were boy
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  Speaker 1: and girl lovers like that, he says, and jerks ahead
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  Speaker 1: at the receding Utopians. I loved her first, and I
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  Speaker 1: do not think I have ever thought of loving anyone
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  Speaker 1: but her. It is a curiously human thing, and upon
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  Speaker 1: my honor, not one I had designed that. When at
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  Speaker 1: last I stand in the twilight, in the midst of
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  Speaker 1: a utopian township, when my whole beings should be taken
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  Speaker 1: up with speculative wonder, this man should be standing by
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  Speaker 1: my side and lugging my attention persistently towards himself, towards
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  Speaker 1: his limited, futile self. This thing perpetually happens to me
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  Speaker 1: this intrusion of something small and irrelevant and alive upon
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  Speaker 1: my great impressions. The time I first saw the matterhorn,
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  Speaker 1: that queen among the Alpine summits, I was distracted beyond
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  Speaker 1: appreciation by the tale of a man who could not
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  Speaker 1: eat sardines. Always sardines did this with him? And that
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  Speaker 1: and my first wanderings along the brown streets of Pompey,
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  Speaker 1: an experience I had anticipated with a strange intensity, was
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  Speaker 1: shot with the most stupidly intelligent discourse on vehicular tariffs
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  Speaker 1: and the chief capitals of Europe that it is possible
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  Speaker 1: to imagine. And now this man, on my first night
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  Speaker 1: in Utopia, talks and talks and talks of his poor
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  Speaker 1: little love affair. It shapes itself as the most trite
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  Speaker 1: and feeble of tragedies, one of those stories of effortless
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  Speaker 1: submission to chance and custom in which mister Hardy or
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  Speaker 1: George Gissing might have found a theme. I do but
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  Speaker 1: half listen at first, watching the black figures in the
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  Speaker 1: moonlit roadway, pacing to and fro. Yet I cannot trace
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  Speaker 1: how he conveys the subtle conviction to my mind the
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  Speaker 1: woman he loves is beautiful. They were boy and girl together,
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  Speaker 1: and afterward they met again as fellow students in a
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  Speaker 1: world of comfortable discretions. He seems to have taken the
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  Speaker 1: decorums of life with a confiding good faith, to have
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  Speaker 1: been shy and innocent in a suppressed sort of way,
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  Speaker 1: and of a mental type not made for worldly successes.
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  Speaker 1: But he must have dreamt about her and loved her
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  Speaker 1: well enough. How she felt for him I could never gather.
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  Speaker 1: It seemed to be all of that fleshless friendliness into
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  Speaker 1: which we train our girls. Then abruptly happened stresses. The
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  Speaker 1: man who became her husband appeared with a very evident passion.
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  Speaker 1: He was a year or so than either of them,
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  Speaker 1: and he had the habit and quality of achieving his ends.
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  Speaker 1: He was already successful and with a promise of wealth.
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  Speaker 1: And I at least perceived from my botanists phrasing that
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  Speaker 1: his desire was for her beauty. And as my botanist talked,
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  Speaker 1: I seemed to see the whole little drama rather clearer
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  Speaker 1: than his words gave it me. The actors all absurdly
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  Speaker 1: in Hampstead middle class raiment meetings of a Sunday after church.
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  Speaker 1: The men in silk hats, frock coats and tightly rolled umbrellas,
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  Speaker 1: rare excursions into evening dress, the decorously vulgar fiction read
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  Speaker 1: in their homes, its ambling sentimentalities of thought, the amiably
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  Speaker 1: worldly mothers, the respectable fathers, the aunts, the people, his
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  Speaker 1: people and her people, the piano music and the song.
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  Speaker 1: And in this setting our friend quite clever at botany
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  Speaker 1: and going in for it as a profession, and the
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  Speaker 1: girl gratuitously beautif so I figured the arranged and orderly
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  Speaker 1: environment into which this claw of an elemental force had
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  Speaker 1: thrust itself to grip. The stranger who had come in
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  Speaker 1: got what he wanted. The girl considered that she thought
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  Speaker 1: she had never loved the botanist, had had only friendship
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  Speaker 1: for him, though little she knew of the meaning of
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  Speaker 1: those fine words. They parted a little incoherently and in tears,
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  Speaker 1: and it had not occurred to the young man to
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  Speaker 1: imagine she was not going off to some conventional life
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  Speaker 1: and some other of the endless frognals he imagined as
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  Speaker 1: the cellular tissue of the world. But she wasn't. He
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  Speaker 1: had kept her photograph in her memory, sweet and if
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  Speaker 1: ever he strayed from the severest constancy. It seemed only
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  Speaker 1: in the end to strengthen with the stuff of experience,
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  Speaker 1: to enhance by comparative disappointment his imagination of what she
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  Speaker 1: might have meant to him. Then eight years afterward they
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  Speaker 1: met again. By the time it gets to this part
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  Speaker 1: of his story, we have, at my initiative, left the
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  Speaker 1: bridge and are walking towards the utopian guest house. The
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  Speaker 1: utopian guest His voice rises and falls, and sometimes he
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  Speaker 1: holds my arm. My attention comes and goes. Good Night,
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  Speaker 1: Two sweet voiced utopians cry to us in their universal tongue,
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  Speaker 1: and I answer them, good night. You see, he persists,
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  Speaker 1: I saw her only a week ago. It was in Licerne,
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  Speaker 1: while I was waiting for you to come on from England.
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  Speaker 1: I talked to her three or four times altogether. And
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  Speaker 1: her face, the change in her I can't get it
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  Speaker 1: out of my head night or day. The miserable waste
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  Speaker 1: of her before us. Through the tall pine stems shine
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  Speaker 1: the lights of our utopian inn. He talks vaguely of
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  Speaker 1: ill usage. The husband is vain, boastful, dishonest to the
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  Speaker 1: very confines of the law, and a drunkard. There are
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  Speaker 1: scenes and insults. She told you not much, but some
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  Speaker 1: one else did. He brings other women almost into her
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  Speaker 1: presence to spite her, And it's going on. I interrupted, Yes,
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  Speaker 1: now need it go on? What do you mean, lady
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  Speaker 1: in trouble? I say, night at hand? Why not stop
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  Speaker 1: this dismal grizzling and carry her off? You figure the
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  Speaker 1: heroic sweep of the arm that belongs to the voice.
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  Speaker 1: I positively forget for the moment that we are in
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  Speaker 1: utopia at all? You mean take her away from him?
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  Speaker 1: What's all this emotion of yours worth if it isn't
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  Speaker 1: equal to that? Positively? He seems aghast at me. Do
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  Speaker 1: you mean elope with her? It seems a most suitable
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  Speaker 1: case for a space? He is silent, and we go
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  Speaker 1: on through the trees. A utopian tramcar passes and I
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  Speaker 1: see his face, poor bitted wretch, looking pinched and scared
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  Speaker 1: in its trailing glow of light. That's all very well
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  Speaker 1: in a novel, he says. But how could I go
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  Speaker 1: back to my laboratory, mix classes with young ladies, you know?
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  Speaker 1: After a thing like that? How could we live? And
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  Speaker 1: where could we live? We might have a house in London,
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  Speaker 1: but who call upon us. Besides, you don't know her.
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  Speaker 1: She is not the sort of woman. Don't think I'm
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  Speaker 1: timid or conventional. Don't think I don't feel feel. You
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  Speaker 1: don't know what it is to feel in a case
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  Speaker 1: of this sort, He halts, and then flies out viciously. Ugh,
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  Speaker 1: there are times when I could strangle him with my hands,
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  Speaker 1: which is nonsense. He flings out his lean, botanizing hands
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  Speaker 1: in an impotent gesture. My dear man, I say, and
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  Speaker 1: say no more. For a moment, I forget we are
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  Speaker 1: in utopia altogether. Section five. Let us come back to utopia.
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  Speaker 1: We were speaking of travel. Besides roadways and railways and
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  Speaker 1: tramways for those who go to and fro in the earth,
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  Speaker 1: the modern Utopians will have very many other ways of traveling.
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  Speaker 1: There will be rivers, for example, with a vast variety
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  Speaker 1: of boats, canals with diverse sorts of haulage. There will
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  Speaker 1: be lakes and lagoons. And when one comes at last
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  Speaker 1: to the borders of the last, and the pleasure craft
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  Speaker 1: will be there, coming and going, And the swift great
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  Speaker 1: passenger vessels, very big and steady, doing thirty knots an
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  Speaker 1: hour or more, will trace long wakes as they go,
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  Speaker 1: dwindling out athwart the restless vastness of the sea, they
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  Speaker 1: will be just beginning to fly in utopia. We owe
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  Speaker 1: much to M. Santos Dumint. The world is immeasurably more
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  Speaker 1: disposed to believe this wonder is coming, and coming nearly
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  Speaker 1: that it was five years ago. But unless we are
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  Speaker 1: to suppose utopian scientific acknowledge far in advance of hours,
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  Speaker 1: and though that supposition was not proscribed in our initial undertaking,
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  Speaker 1: it would be inconvenient for us, and not quite in
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  Speaker 1: the vein of the rest of our premises, they too,
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  Speaker 1: will only be in the same experimental stage as ourselves.
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  Speaker 1: In utopia. However, they will conduct research by the Army Corps.
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  Speaker 1: While we conduct it. We don't conduct it. We let
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  Speaker 1: it happen. Fools make the researches, and wise men exploit them.
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  Speaker 1: That is our earthly way of dealing with the question.
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  Speaker 1: And we thank Heaven for an assumed abundance of financially
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  Speaker 1: impotent and sufficiently ingenious fools. In utopia, a great multitude
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  Speaker 1: of selected men, chosen volunteers, will be collaborating upon this
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  Speaker 1: new step in man struggle with the elements. Bacon's visionary
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  Speaker 1: house of Solomon footnote in the new Atlantis will be
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  Speaker 1: a thing realized, and it will be humming with this business.
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  Speaker 1: Every university in the world will be urgently working for
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  Speaker 1: priority in this aspect of the problem, or that reports
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  Speaker 1: of experiments as fool and as prompt as the telegraphic
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  Speaker 1: reports of cricket in our more sportive atmosphere will go
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  Speaker 1: about the world. All this will be passing, as it were,
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  Speaker 1: behind the act drop of our first experience, behind this
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  Speaker 1: first picture of the urbanized Erthriine valley, the literature of
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  Speaker 1: the subject will be growing and developing with the easy
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  Speaker 1: swiftness of an eagle swoop as we come down the hillside,
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  Speaker 1: unseen in that twilight, unthought of by us until this moment.
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  Speaker 1: A thousand men at a thousand glowing desks, a busy
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  Speaker 1: specialist press will be perpetual sifting, criticizing, condensing, and clearing
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  Speaker 1: the ground for further speculation. Those who are concerned with
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  Speaker 1: the problems of public locomotion will be following these aeronautic
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  Speaker 1: investigations with a keen and enterprising interest, and so will
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  Speaker 1: the psychologist and the sociologist. That utopian research will i say,
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  Speaker 1: go like an eagle swoop in comparison with the blind
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  Speaker 1: man's fumbling of our terrestrial way. Even before our own
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  Speaker 1: brief utopian journey is out, we may get a glimpse
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  Speaker 1: of the swift ripening of all this activity that will
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  Speaker 1: be in progress at our coming tomorrow. Perhaps, or in
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  Speaker 1: a day or so, some silent, distant thing will come
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  Speaker 1: gliding into view over the mountains, will turn and soar
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  Speaker 1: and pass again beyond our astonished site. Section six. But
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  Speaker 1: my friend, in his great trouble, turn my mind from
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  Speaker 1: these questions of locomotion and the freedoms that cluster about them.
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  Speaker 1: In spite of myself, I find myself framing his case.
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  Speaker 1: He is a lover, the most conventional of Anglican lovers,
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  Speaker 1: with the heart that has had its training. I should
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  Speaker 1: think in the clean but limited school room of missus
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  Speaker 1: henry Wood indiotopia, I think they will fly with stronger opinions.
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  Speaker 1: It will not be in these superficialities of life, merely
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  Speaker 1: that movement will be wide and free. They will mount
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  Speaker 1: higher and swoop more steeply than he in his cage
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  Speaker 1: can believe. What will their range be? The prohibitions? What
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  Speaker 1: jars to our preconceptions will he and I receive. Here
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  Speaker 1: my mind flows with the free, thin flow that it
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  Speaker 1: has at the end of an eventful day, And as
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  Speaker 1: we walk along in silence towards our end, I rove
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  Speaker 1: from issue to issue. I find myself ranging admidst the
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  Speaker 1: fundamental things of the individual life and all the perplexity
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  Speaker 1: of desires and passions. I turn my questionings to the
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  Speaker 1: most difficult of all sets of compromises, those mitigations of
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  Speaker 1: spontaneous freedom that constitute the marriage laws, the mystery of
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  Speaker 1: balancing justice against the good of the future amidst these
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  Speaker 1: violent and elusive passions, wherefore the balance of freedoms. Here
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  Speaker 1: I pass for a time from utopianizing altogether to ask
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  Speaker 1: the question that, after all Schopenhauer failed completely to answer, why, sometimes,
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  Speaker 1: in the case of hurtful, pointless and destructive things, we
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  Speaker 1: want so vehemently. I come back from this unavailing glance
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  Speaker 1: into the deeps to the general question of freedoms. In
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  Speaker 1: this new relation, I find myself far adrift from the
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  Speaker 1: case of the frognobotanist, and asking how far a modern
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  Speaker 1: utopia will deal with personal morals. As Plato demonstrated long ago,
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  Speaker 1: the principles of the relation of state control to personal
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  Speaker 1: morals may be best discussed in the case of intoxication,
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  Speaker 1: the most isolated and least complicated of all this group
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  Speaker 1: of problems. But Plato's treatment of this issue as a
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  Speaker 1: question of who may or may not have the use
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  Speaker 1: of wine, though suitable enough in considering a small state
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  Speaker 1: in which everybody was the effectual inspector of everybody, is
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  Speaker 1: entirely beside the mark. Under modern conditions, in which we
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  Speaker 1: are to have an extraordinary, late higher standard individual privacy,
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  Speaker 1: and an amplitude and quantity of migration inconceivable to the
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  Speaker 1: academic imagination, we may accept as principle and put this
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  Speaker 1: particular freedom of the use of wine among the distinctive
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  Speaker 1: privileges of maturity, and still find all that a modern
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  Speaker 1: would think of as the drink question untouched. That question
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  Speaker 1: in utopia will differ, perhaps in the proportion of its factors,
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  Speaker 1: but no other respect from what it is upon Earth.
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  Speaker 1: The same desirable ends will be sought, the maintenance of
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  Speaker 1: public order and decency, the reduction of inducements to form
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  Speaker 1: this bad and wasteful habit to their lowest possible minimum,
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  Speaker 1: and the complete protection of the immature. But the modern Utopians,
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  Speaker 1: having systemaized their sociology, will have given some attention to
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  Speaker 1: the psychology of minor officials, a matter altogether too much
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  Speaker 1: neglected by the social reformer on earth. They will not
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  Speaker 1: put into the hands of a common policeman powers direct
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  Speaker 1: and indirect that would be dangerous to the public in
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  Speaker 1: the hands of a judge, And they will have avoided
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  Speaker 1: the immeasurable error of making their control of the drink
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  Speaker 1: traffic a source of public revenue. Privacies they will not invade,
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  Speaker 1: but they will certainly restrict the public consumption of intoxicants
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  Speaker 1: to specified licensed places, and the sale of them to
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  Speaker 1: unmistakable adults. And they will make the temptation of the
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  Speaker 1: young a grave offense. In so migratory a population as
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: the modern utopian, the licensing of inns and bars would
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  Speaker 1: be under the same control as the railways and high roads.
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  Speaker 1: Inns exist for the stranger and not for the locality,
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  Speaker 1: and we shall meet with nothing there to correspond with
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  Speaker 1: our terrestrial absurdity of local option. The Utopians will certainly
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  Speaker 1: control this trade, and as certainly punish personal excesses public drunkenness,
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  Speaker 1: as distinguished from the mere elation that follows. A generous
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  Speaker 1: but controlled use of wine will be an offense against
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  Speaker 1: public decency, and will be dealt with in some very
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  Speaker 1: drastic manner. It will, of course be an aggravation of
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  Speaker 1: and not an excuse for crime. But I doubt whether
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  Speaker 1: the state will go beyond that. Whether an adult shall
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  Speaker 1: use wine or beer, or spirits or not seems to
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  Speaker 1: be entirely a matter for his doctor in his own
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  Speaker 1: private conscience. I doubt if we explorers shall meet any
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  Speaker 1: drunk men, and I doubt not we shall meet many
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  Speaker 1: who have never availed themselves to their adult freedom. In
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  Speaker 1: this respect, the conditions of physical happiness will be better
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  Speaker 1: understood in utopia. It will be worth while to be
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  Speaker 1: well there, and the intelligent citizen will watch himself closely.
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  Speaker 1: Half and more of the drunkenness of earth is an
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  Speaker 1: attempt to lighten dull days and hopelessly sordid and disagreeable lives,
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  Speaker 1: And in Utopia they do not suffer these things. Assuredly.
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  Speaker 1: Utopia will be temperate, not only drinking but eating with
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  Speaker 1: the soundest discretion. Yet I do not think wine and
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  Speaker 1: good ale will be altogether wanting there nor good mellow whiskey,
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  Speaker 1: nor upon occasion the engaging variously cours. I do not
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  Speaker 1: think so. My botanist, who abstains altogether, is of another opinion.
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  Speaker 1: We differ here and leave the question to the earnest reader.
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  Speaker 1: I have the utmost respect for all teetotalers, prohibitionists, and
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  Speaker 1: haters and persecutors of innkeepers. Their energy of reform awakens
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  Speaker 1: responsive notes in me and to their species. I look
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  Speaker 1: for a large part of the urgent repair of our earth.
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  Speaker 1: Yet for all that, there is burgundy, for example, a
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  Speaker 1: bottle of soft and kindly burgundy, taken to make a
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  Speaker 1: sunshine on one's lunch, when four strenuous hours of toil
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  Speaker 1: have left one on the further side of appetite. Or ale,
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  Speaker 1: a foaming tankard of ale, ten miles of sturdy trampling
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: in the sleet and slush as a prelude, and then
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: good bread and good butter, and ripe hollow stilton and celery,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: and ale ale with a certain quantitative freedom. Or again,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: where is the sin in a glass of tawny port?
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Three or four times? Or it may be five a
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: year when the walnuts come round in their season. If
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: you drink no port, then what are walnuts for such
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: things I hold for the reward of vast intervals of abstinence.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: They justify your wide, immaculate margin, which is else a
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: mere unmeaning blankness on the page of palate God has
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: given you. I write of these things as a fleshly man, confessedly,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: annoyingly fleshly, and more than usually aware of my liability
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: to err. I know myself for a gross creature, more
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: given to sedentary world mending than to brisk activities, and
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: not one tenth is active as the dullest newspaper boy
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: in London. Yet still I have my uses, uses that
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: vanish in monotony. And still I must ask why should
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: we bury the talent of these bright sensations altogether? Under
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: no circumstances can I think of my utopians maintaining their
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: fine order of life on ginger ale and lemonade and
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the ale that is copses, those terrible tempered strengths, solutions
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: of qualified sugar mixed with vast volumes of gas, as
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: for example, soda, siltzer, lemonade, and fire extinctures hand grenades
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: minerals they call such stuff in England, man with wind
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: and self righteousness. Indeed they do. Coffee destroys brain and kidney,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: a fact now universally recognized and advertised throughout America. And tea,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: except for a kind of green tea best used with
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: discretion in punch, tans the entrails and turns honest stomachs
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: into leather bags. Rather, would I be Metchnikoff's footnote see
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: The Nature of Man by Professor Eli Metchnikoff at once,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: and have a clean, good stomach of German silver. No,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: if we are to have no ale in utopia, give
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: me the one good, clean temperance drink that is worthy
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: to set beside wine, and that is simple water. Best
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: it is when not quite pure and with a trace
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: of organic matter, for then it tastes and sparkles. My
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: botanist would still argue, Thank Heaven, this is my book,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: and that the ultimate decision rests with me. It is
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: open to him to write his own utopia and arrange
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: that everybody shall do nothing except by the consent of
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: the savants of the republic, either in his eating, drinking, dressing,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: or lodging. Even as Cabot proposed, it is open to
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: him to try a news from nowhere utopia. With the
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: wine left out, I have my short way with him.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Here quite effectually I turn in the entrance of our
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: end to the civil but by no means obsequious landlord,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: and with a careful ambiguity of manner, for the thing
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: may be considered an outrage, and I try to make
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: it possible. The idea is a jest. Put my test
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: demand you see, my dear teetotler. He sets before me
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: tray and glass, and here follows the necessary experiment with
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: a deep sigh, Yes, a bottle of quite excellent light beer.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: So there are also cakes and ale in utopia. Let us,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: in this saner and more beautiful world, drink perdition to
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: all earthly excesses. Let us drink more, particularly to the
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: coming of the day when men beyond there will learn
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: to distinguish between qualitative and quantitative questions. To temper good
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: intentions with good intelligence and righteousness with wisdom. One of
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: the darkest evils of our world is surely the unteachable
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: wildness of the good section seven. So presently to bed
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: into sleep, but not at once to sleep at first,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: my brain, like a dog in unfamiliar quarters, must turn
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: itself round for a time or so before it lies down,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: this strange mystery of a world of which I have
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: seen so little as yet a mountain slope, a twilight road,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: a traffic of ambiguous vehicles and dim shapes. The window
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: lights of many homes fills me with curiosities, figures, and
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: incidents come and go. The people we have passed. Our
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: landlord quietly attentive, and yet I feel, with the keenest
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: curiosity peeping from his eyes, the unfamiliar forms of the
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: house parts and furnishings, the unfamiliar courses of the meal.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Outside this little bedroom is a world, A whole unimagined world.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: A thousand million things lie outside in the darkness beyond
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: this lit in of ours, unthought of possibilities, overlooked considerations, surprises,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: riddles incommensurables, a whole, monstrous, intricate universe of consequences that
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: I have to do my best to unravel. I attempt
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: impossible recapitulations, and mingle the weird quality of dream stuff
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: with my thoughts. Athwart all this tumult of my memory,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: goes this queer figure of my unanticipated companion, so obsessed
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: by himself and his own egotistical love, that the sudden
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: change to another world seems only a change of scene
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: for his gnawing, uninvigorating passion. It occurs to me that
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: she must also have an equivalent in utopia, and then
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: that idea and all ideas grow thin and vague, and
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: are dissolved at last in the rising tide of Sleep.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: End of chapter this second sections four through seven. Recording
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: by Christopher her Tailor