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A Modern Utopia Chapter 11 - The Bubble Bursts · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter the eleventh of A Modern Utopia. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Christopher Taylor. A Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter the eleventh, The bubble Bursts, Section one. As I
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  Speaker 1: walk back along the river terrace to the hotel where
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  Speaker 1: the botanist awaits me and observe the utopians I encounter,
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  Speaker 1: I have no thought that my tenure of utopia becomes
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  Speaker 1: every moment more precarious. There float to my mind vague
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  Speaker 1: anticipations of more talks with my double, and still more
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  Speaker 1: of a steady elaboration of detail, of interesting journeys of exploration.
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  Speaker 1: I forget that a utopia is a thing of the
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  Speaker 1: imagination that becomes more fragile with every added circumstance, that
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  Speaker 1: like a soap bubble, it is most brilliantly and variously colored.
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  Speaker 1: At the very instant of its dissolution, this utopia is
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  Speaker 1: nearly done. All the broad lines of its social organization
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  Speaker 1: are completed. Now the discussion of all of its general
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  Speaker 1: difficulties and problems. Utopian individuals pass me by fine buildings. Tower.
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  Speaker 1: On either hand, it does not occur to me that
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  Speaker 1: I may look too closely to find the people, assuming
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  Speaker 1: the concrete and individual is not as I fondly imagine.
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  Speaker 1: The last triumph of realization, but the swimming moment of
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  Speaker 1: opacity before the film gives way to come to individual
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  Speaker 1: emotional cases is to return to the earth. I find
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  Speaker 1: the botanists sitting at a table in the hotel courtyard. Well,
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  Speaker 1: I say, standing before him, I've been in the gardens
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  Speaker 1: on the river terrace, he answers, hoping I might see
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  Speaker 1: her again. Nothing better to do, nothing in the world.
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  Speaker 1: You'll have your double back from any tomorrow, then you'll
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  Speaker 1: have conversation. I don't want it, he replies compactly. I
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  Speaker 1: shrugged my shoulders, and he adds, at least with him.
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  Speaker 1: I let myself down into a seat beside him. For
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  Speaker 1: a time I set restfully, enjoying his companionable silence, and
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  Speaker 1: thinking fragmentarily of those samurai and their rules. I entertained
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  Speaker 1: something of the satisfaction of a man who has finished
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  Speaker 1: building a bridge. I feel that I have joined together
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  Speaker 1: things that I had never joined before. My utopia seems
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  Speaker 1: real to me very real. I can believe in it
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  Speaker 1: until the medal chair back gives to my shoulder blades
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  Speaker 1: and utopian sparrows twitter and hop before my feet. I
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  Speaker 1: have a pleasant moment of unhesitating self satisfaction. I feel
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  Speaker 1: a shameless exultation to be there. For a moment, I
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  Speaker 1: forget the consideration the botanist demands. The mere pleasure of completeness,
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  Speaker 1: of holding and controlling all the threads possesses me. You
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  Speaker 1: will pursued and believing, I say, with an aggressive expository note,
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  Speaker 1: that if you meet this lady, she will be a
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  Speaker 1: person with the memories and sentiments of her double on earth.
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  Speaker 1: You think she will understand and pity and perhaps love you.
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  Speaker 1: Nothing of the sort is the case, I repeat, with
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  Speaker 1: confident rudeness. Nothing of the sort is the case. Things
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  Speaker 1: are different altogether here. You can hardly tell even now
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  Speaker 1: how different are I discover he is not listening to me.
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  Speaker 1: What is the matter, I asked abruptly. He makes no answer,
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  Speaker 1: but his expression startles me. What is the matter? And
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  Speaker 1: then I follow his eyes. A woman and a man
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  Speaker 1: are coming through the great archway, and instantly I guess
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  Speaker 1: what has happened? She it is arrests my attention. First,
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  Speaker 1: long ago I knew she was a sweetly beautiful woman.
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  Speaker 1: She is fair, with frank blue eyes that look with
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  Speaker 1: a sort of tender receptivity to her companion's face. For
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  Speaker 1: a moment or so, they remain grayish figures in the
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  Speaker 1: cool shit against the sunlit greenery of the gardens beyond.
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  Speaker 1: It is Mary. The botanist whispers with white lips, but
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  Speaker 1: he stares at the form of the man. His face whitens.
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  Speaker 1: It becomes so transfigured with emotion that for a moment
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  Speaker 1: it does not look weak. Then I see his thin
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  Speaker 1: hand as clenched. I realize how little I understand his emotions.
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  Speaker 1: A sudden fear of what he will do takes hold
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  Speaker 1: of me. He sets white and tense. As the two
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  Speaker 1: come into the clear light of the courtyard. The man
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  Speaker 1: I see as one of the samurai, a dark, strong
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  Speaker 1: faced man, a man I have never seen before, and
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  Speaker 1: she is wearing the robe that shows her a follower
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  Speaker 1: of the lesser rule. Some glimmering of the botanist's feelings
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  Speaker 1: strikes through to my slow sympathies. Of course, a strange man.
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  Speaker 1: I put out a restraining hand towards his arm. I
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  Speaker 1: told you, I say that very probably, most probably she
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  Speaker 1: would have met some other. I tried to prepare you nonsense,
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  Speaker 1: he whispers, without looking at me. It isn't that. It's
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  Speaker 1: that scoundrel. He has an impulse to rise. That scoundrel.
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  Speaker 1: He repeats, He isn't a scoundrel. I say, how do
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  Speaker 1: you know? Keep still? Why are you standing up? He
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  Speaker 1: and I stand up quickly, I as soon as he.
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  Speaker 1: But now the full meaning of the group has reached me.
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  Speaker 1: I grip his arm. Be sensible, I say, speaking very
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  Speaker 1: quickly and with my back to the approaching couple. He's
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  Speaker 1: not a scoundrel here, this world is different from that.
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  Speaker 1: It's caught his pride somehow and made a man of him.
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  Speaker 1: Whatever troubled them there. He turns a face of white
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  Speaker 1: wrath on me, of accusation, and for the moment of
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  Speaker 1: unexpected force, this is your doing, he says, you have
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  Speaker 1: done this to mock me. He of all men, for
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  Speaker 1: a moment's speech fails him. Then you you have done
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  Speaker 1: this to mock me. I try to explain very quickly.
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  Speaker 1: My tone is almost propitiatory. I never thought of it
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  Speaker 1: until now. But he how did I know he was
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  Speaker 1: the sort of man a disciplined world has a use for.
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  Speaker 1: He makes no answer, but he looks at me with
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  Speaker 1: eyes that are positively baleful, and in the instant I
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  Speaker 1: read his mute but mulish resolve that utopia must end.
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  Speaker 1: Don't let that old quarrel poison all this, I say,
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  Speaker 1: almost entreatingly, It happened all differently here. Everything is different here.
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  Speaker 1: Your double will be back tomorrow. Wait for him, perhaps
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  Speaker 1: then you will understand. He shakes his head and then
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  Speaker 1: bursts out with what do I want with the double double?
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  Speaker 1: What do I care if things a bit different here? This?
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  Speaker 1: He thrust me weakly back with his long white hand.
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  Speaker 1: My god, he says, almost forcibly, What nonsense? All this is,
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  Speaker 1: all these dreams, all utopias. There she is, Oh, but
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  Speaker 1: I have dreamt of her. And now a sob catches him.
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  Speaker 1: I am really frightened by this time. I still try
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  Speaker 1: to keep between him and these utopians, and to hide
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  Speaker 1: his gestures from them. It's different here, I persist. It's
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  Speaker 1: different here. The emotion you feel has no place in it.
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  Speaker 1: It's a scar from the earth, the sore scar of
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  Speaker 1: your past. And what are we all but scars. What
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  Speaker 1: is life but a scarring? It's you, you who don't understand.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, we are covered with scars. We live to
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  Speaker 1: be scarred. We are scars. We are the scars of
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  Speaker 1: the past. These dreams, these childish dreams. He does not
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  Speaker 1: need to finish his sentence. He waves an unteachable destructive arm.
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  Speaker 1: My utopia rocks about me. For a moment, the vision
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  Speaker 1: of that great courtyard hangs real there. The Utopians live
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  Speaker 1: real about me, going to and fro, and the great
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  Speaker 1: archway blazes with sunlight for the green gardens by the riverside.
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  Speaker 1: The man who is one of the samurai and his
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  Speaker 1: lady whom the botanist loved on Earth pass out of
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  Speaker 1: sight behind the marble flower set trident that spouts coolness
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  Speaker 1: in the middle of the place. For a moment, I
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  Speaker 1: see two working men in green tunics sitting on a
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  Speaker 1: marble seat in the shadow of the colonnade, and a
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  Speaker 1: sweet little silver haired old lady clad all in violet
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  Speaker 1: and carrying a book, comes towards us and lifts a
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  Speaker 1: curious eye at the botanist's gestures. And then scars of
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  Speaker 1: the past, scars of the past, These fanciful, useless dreams.
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  Speaker 1: Section two. There is no jerk, no sound, no hint
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  Speaker 1: of material shock. We are in London and clothed in
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  Speaker 1: the fashion of the town. The sullen roar of London
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  Speaker 1: fills our ears. I see that I am standing beside
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  Speaker 1: an iron seat of poor design, in that gray and
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  Speaker 1: gawky waste of asphalt Trafalgar Square, And the botanist, with
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  Speaker 1: perplexity in his face, stares from me to a poor, shriveled,
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  Speaker 1: dirt lined old woman. My god, what a neglected thing
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  Speaker 1: she is, who proffers a box of matches. He buys
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  Speaker 1: almost mechanically, and turns back to me I was saying,
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  Speaker 1: he says, the past rules us absolutely, these dreams. His
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  Speaker 1: sentence does not complete itself. He looks nervous and irritated.
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  Speaker 1: You have a trick at times, he says. Instead of
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  Speaker 1: making your suggestions so vivid, he takes a plunge. If
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  Speaker 1: you don't mind, he says, in a sort of quavering ultimatum,
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  Speaker 1: we won't discuss that aspect of the question. The lady,
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  Speaker 1: I mean further. He pauses, and there still hangs a
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  Speaker 1: faint perplexity between us. But I begin for a moment
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  Speaker 1: we stand there, and by dream of utopia runs off
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  Speaker 1: me like water from an oiled slab. Of course, we
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  Speaker 1: lunched at our club. We came back from Switzerland by
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  Speaker 1: no dream train, but by the ordinary Bala express. We
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  Speaker 1: have been talking of that Licerne woman, he harps upon,
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  Speaker 1: and I have made some novel comment on his story.
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  Speaker 1: I have touched certain possibilities you can't conceivably un stand,
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  Speaker 1: he says. The fact remains. He goes on, taking up
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  Speaker 1: the thread of his argument again, with an air of
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  Speaker 1: having defined our field. We are the scars of the past.
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  Speaker 1: That's a thing one can discuss without personalities. No, I say,
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  Speaker 1: rather stupidly. No, you are always talking as though you
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  Speaker 1: could kick the past to pieces, as though one could
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  Speaker 1: get right out from one's self and begin afresh. It
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  Speaker 1: is your weakness. If you don't mind me being frank,
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  Speaker 1: It makes you seem harsh and dogmatic. Life has gone
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  Speaker 1: easily for you. You have never been badly tried. You have
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  Speaker 1: been lucky. You do not understand the other way about
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  Speaker 1: You are hard. I answer nothing. He pants for breath.
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  Speaker 1: I perceive that in our discussion of his case, I
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  Speaker 1: must have gone too far and that he has rebelled. Clearly,
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  Speaker 1: I must have said something wounding about that ineffectual love
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  Speaker 1: story of his. You don't allow for my position, he says,
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  Speaker 1: And it occurs to me to say, I am a
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  Speaker 1: blome to look at the thing from my own point
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  Speaker 1: of view. One or other of us makes a move.
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  Speaker 1: What a lot of filthy, torn papers scattered about the world.
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  Speaker 1: We walk slowly, side by side towards the dirt littered
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  Speaker 1: basin of the fountain, and stand regarding two grimy tramps
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  Speaker 1: who set and argue on a further seat. One holds
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  Speaker 1: a horrible old boot in his hand and gesticulates with it,
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  Speaker 1: while his other hand caresses his rag wrapped foot. What
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  Speaker 1: does Chamberlain say? His words drift to us. Why he says,
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  Speaker 1: what's the good of investing your capital? Where these yer
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  Speaker 1: Americans may dump it flat any time they like? Were
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  Speaker 1: there not two men in green sitting on a marble seat?
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  Speaker 1: Section three? We walk on our talks suspended, past a
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  Speaker 1: ruthlessly clumsy hoarding towards where men and women and children
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  Speaker 1: are struggling about a string of omnibuses. A newsvendor at
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  Speaker 1: the corner spreads the newspaper placard upon the wood pavement
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  Speaker 1: pins the corner down with stones, and we glimpsed something
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  Speaker 1: about massacre and Odessa. Discovery of human remains at Chertsey,
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  Speaker 1: shocking lynching outrage in New York State. German intrigues get
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  Speaker 1: a setback the Birthday Honors Full list. Dear old familiar world.
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  Speaker 1: An angry parent, in conversation with the sympathetic friend, jostles
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  Speaker 1: against us. All knock his bloom and young ed arf
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  Speaker 1: if he cheeks me again. It's these ear brusted board schools.
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  Speaker 1: An omnibus passes bearing on a board beneath an incorrectly
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  Speaker 1: drawn union jack, an exhortation to the true patriot io
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  Speaker 1: by Bumper's British boiled jam. I am stunned, beyond the
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  Speaker 1: possibility of discussion. For space in this very place, it
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  Speaker 1: must have been that the high terrace ran, with the
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  Speaker 1: gardens below it, along which I came from my double
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  Speaker 1: to our hotel. I am going back, but now through
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  Speaker 1: reality along the path I pass so happily in my dream.
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  Speaker 1: And the people I saw then are the people I
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  Speaker 1: am looking at now with a difference. The botanist walks
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  Speaker 1: beside me, white and nervously jerky in his movements. Is
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  Speaker 1: ultimatum delivered. We start to cross the road. An open
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  Speaker 1: carriage drives by, and we see a jaded, red haired woman,
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  Speaker 1: smeared with paint, dressed in furs and petulantly discontented. Her
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  Speaker 1: face is familiar to me, her face with a difference.
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  Speaker 1: Why do I think of her as dressed in green?
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  Speaker 1: Of course she it was I saw leading her children
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  Speaker 1: by the hand. Comes a crash to our left and
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  Speaker 1: a running of people to see a cab horse down
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  Speaker 1: on the slippery, slanting pavement outside Saint Martin's Church. We
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  Speaker 1: go on up the street. A heavy eyed young jewess,
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  Speaker 1: a draggled prostitute, no crimson flower for her hair. Poor
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  Speaker 1: girl regards us with a momentary speculation, and we get
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  Speaker 1: a whiff of foul language from two newsboys on the curb.
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  Speaker 1: We can't go on talking. The botanist begins and ducks aside,
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  Speaker 1: just in time to save his eye from the phar
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  Speaker 1: roll of a stupidly held umbrella. He is going to
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  Speaker 1: treat our little tip about the lady as closed. He
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  Speaker 1: has the air of picking up our conversation again. At
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  Speaker 1: some earlier point. He steps into the gutter walks round outside.
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  Speaker 1: A negro hawker just escapes the wheel of a hansom
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  Speaker 1: and comes to my side again. We can't go on
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  Speaker 1: talking of your utopia, he says, in a noise and
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  Speaker 1: crowd like this. We are separated by a portly man
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  Speaker 1: going in the opposite direction, and join again. We can't
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  Speaker 1: go on talking of utopia, he repeats. In London, up
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  Speaker 1: in the mountains and holiday time, it was all right
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: we let ourselves go. I've been living in utopia, I
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: answer tacitly, adopting his tacit proposal to drop the lady
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  Speaker 1: out of the question. At times, he says, with a
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  Speaker 1: queer laugh. You almost maybe live there too, he reflects,
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  Speaker 1: It doesn't do you know, no, And I don't know
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  Speaker 1: whether after all I want. We are separated again by
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  Speaker 1: a half a dozen lifted flagstones, a burning brazier, and
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  Speaker 1: two engineers concerned with some underground business or other in
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: the busiest hour of the day's traffic. Why shouldn't it do,
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  Speaker 1: I ask? It spoils the world of every day to
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  Speaker 1: let your mind run on impossible perfections. I wish I
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: shout against the traffic. I could smash the world of
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  Speaker 1: every day my note becomes Quarrelsome you may accept this
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  Speaker 1: as the world of reality. You may consent to be
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  Speaker 1: one scar and an ill dressed compound wound, But so
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  Speaker 1: not I. This is a dream too. This world your dream,
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  Speaker 1: and you bring me back to it out of Utopia.
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  Speaker 1: The crossing of Bow Street gives me pause again. The
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  Speaker 1: face of a girl who is passing westward, a student girl,
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  Speaker 1: rather carelessly dressed, her book, hooks and a carrying strap,
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  Speaker 1: comes across my field of vision. The westward sun of
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  Speaker 1: London glows upon her face. She has eyes that dream.
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  Speaker 1: Surely no sensuous nor personal dream after all, after all, dispersed, hidden, disorganized, undiscovered,
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  Speaker 1: unsuspected even by themselves, the samurai of Utopia are in
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  Speaker 1: this world. The motives that are developed and organized there
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  Speaker 1: stir dumbly here and stifle in ten thousand futile hearts.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: I overtake the botanist who got ahead of the crossing
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  Speaker 1: by the advantage of a dust cart. You think this
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  Speaker 1: is real because you can't wake out of it. I say,
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  Speaker 1: it's all a dream. And there are people. I'm just
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: one of the first of a multitude between sleeping and waking,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: who will presently be rubbing it out of their eyes.
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  Speaker 1: A pinched and dirty little girl who soars upon her face,
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  Speaker 1: stretches out a bunch of wilting violets in a pitifully
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  Speaker 1: thin little fist, and interrupts my speech. Bunch of violets
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  Speaker 1: only a penny, no, I say, curtly, hardening my heart.
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  Speaker 1: A ragged and filthy nursing mother, with their last addition
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  Speaker 1: to our imperial people on her arm, comes out of
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: a drink shop and stands a little and steadily and
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: wipe's mouth and nose comprehensively with the back of a
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: red chapped hand. Section four. Isn't that reality, says the botanist,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: almost triumphantly, and leaves me aghast at his triumph That,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: I say, belatedly, it's a thing in a nightmare. He
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: shakes his head and smiles exasperatingly. I perceive quite abruptly
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: that the botanist and I have reached the limits of
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: our intercourse. The world dreams things like that, I say,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: because it suffers from an indigestion of such people as you.
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  Speaker 1: His low toned self complacency, like the faded banner of
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: an obstinate fort, still flies unconquered and you know he's
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: not even a happy man with it all. For ten
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  Speaker 1: seconds or more, I am furiously seeking in my mind
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: for a word, for a term of abuse, for one
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: compendious verbal missile that shall smash this man forever. It
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: has to express total inadequacy of imagination and will spiritual anemia,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: dull respectability, gross sentimentality, a cultivated pettiness of heart. That
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  Speaker 1: word will not come, But no other word will do. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: the word does not exist. There is nothing with sufficient
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: the tuperative concentration for this moral and intellectual stupidity of
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: educated people. Er, he begins, No, I can't endure him
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: with a passionate rapidity of movement. I leave his side,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: dart between a carriage and a van duck under the
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: head of a cab horse, and board a bus going
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: westward somewhere, but anyhow, going in exactly the reverse direction
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  Speaker 1: to the botanist. I clamber up the steps and thread
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: my swaying way to the seat immediately behind the driver. There,
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  Speaker 1: I say, as I whack myself down on the seat
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  Speaker 1: and pant. When I look round, the botanist is out
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  Speaker 1: of sight. Section five. But I am back in the
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: world for all that, and my utopia is done. It
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  Speaker 1: is good discipline for the utopis to visit this world occasionally,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: but from the front seat of the top of an
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: omnibus on a sunny September afternoon. The Strand and Charing
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Cross Corner and Whitehall, and the great multitude of people,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: the great uproar of vehicles streaming in all directions is
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  Speaker 1: apt to look a world altogether too formidable. It has
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: a glare, It has a tumult and vigor that shouts
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: one down. It shouts one down as shouting is to
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: carry it. What good was it to trot along the
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: pavement through this noise and tumult of life, pleading utopia
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: to that botanist? What good would it be to recommend
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: utopia in this driver's preoccupied ear. There are moments in
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: the life of every philosopher and dreamer when he feels
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: himself the flimsiest of absurdities, when the thing and being
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: has its way with him, its triumphant way, when it
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: asks in a roar, unanswerably with a fine, solid use
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: of the current vernacular, What good is all this rot about?
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Utopia's one inspects the thing and being with something of
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: the diffident speculation of primitive man peering from behind a
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: tree on an angry elephant. There is an omen in
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: that image on how many occasions must that ancestor of
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: ours have had just the Utopis's feeling of ambitious unreality,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: have decided that on the whole it was wiser to
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: go very quietly home again and leave the big beast alone.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: But in the end men rode upon the elephant's head.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: The thing and being that roars so tremendously about charing
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Cross corner seems a bigger antagonist than an elephant. But
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: then we have better weapons than chipped flint blades. After all,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: in a very little time, everything that impresses me so
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: mightily this September afternoon will have changed or passed away forever. Everything,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: these omnibuses, these great, stalwart, crowded, many colored things that
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: jostle one another and make so handsome a clatter clamor
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: will all have gone. They and their horses and drivers
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: in organization. You will come here, and you will not
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: find them. Something else will be here, some different sort
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: of vehicle that is now perhaps the mere germ of
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: an idea in some engineer student's brain, and this road
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: and pavement will have changed, and these impressive great buildings,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: other buildings will be here. Buildings are as yet more
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: impalpable than this page you read, more formless and flimsy
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: by far than anything that is reasoned. Here, little plans
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: sketched on paper, strokes of a pin or of a
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: brush will be the first materializations of what will at
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: last obliterate every detail and atom of these re echoing
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: actualities that overwhelm us now. And the clothing and gestures
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: of these innumerable people, the characters of their faces and bearing,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: These two will be recast in the spirit of what
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: are now obscure and impalpable beginnings. The new things will
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: be indeed of the substance of the thing that is,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: but differing just in the measure of the will and
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: imagination that goes to make them. They will be strong
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: and fair, as the will is sturdy and organized, and
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: the imagination comprehensive and bold. They will be ugly and
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: smeared with wretchedness, as the will is fluctuating and the
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: imagination timid and mean. Indeed, will is stronger than fact.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: It can mold and overcome fact. But this world has
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: still the discover its will. It is a world that
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: slumbers inertly, and all this roar and pulsation of life
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: is no more than its heavy breathing. My mind runs
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: on to the thought of an awakening. As my omnibus
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: goes lumbering up Cockspur Street through the clatdorattle of the
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: cabs and carriages. There comes another fancy in my mind.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Could one but realize an apocalyptic image and suppose an angel,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: such as was given to each of the seven churches
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: of Asia, give him for a space to the service
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: of the greater rule. I see him as a towering
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: figure of flame and color, standing between earth and sky,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: with a trumpet in his hands, over there above the
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: hay market against the October glow. And when he sounds
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: all the Samurai, all who are Samurai and Utopia will
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: know themselves in one another. Whoo, says a motor Brewham,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: and a policeman stays the traffic with his hand. All
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: of us who partake of the Samurai would know ourselves
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: in one another. For a moment, I have a vision
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: of this resurrection of the living, of a vague, magnificent
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: answer of countless myriads at attention of all that is
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: fine in humanity at attention round the compass of the earth.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Then that philosophy of individual uniqueness resumes its sway over
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: my thoughts, and I dream of a world's awakening fades
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: I had forgotten. Things do not happen like that. God
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: is not simple, God is not theatrical. The summons comes
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: to each man in its due time for him, with
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: an infinite subtlety of variety. If that is so, what
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: of my utopia? This infinite world must needs be flattened
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: to get it on one retina? The picture of a
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: solid thing, although it is flattened and simplified, is not
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: necessarily a lie. Surely, surely, in the end, by degrees
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: and steps, something of this sort, some such understanding as
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: this utopia must come first. Here. Then there single men,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: and then groups of men will fall into line, not
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: indeed with my poor, faulty, hesitating suggestions, but with a
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: great and comprehensive plan wrought out by many minds and
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: in many tongues. It is just because my plan is faulty,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: because it mistates so much and emits so much, that
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: they do not now fall in. It will not be
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: like my dream the world that is coming. My dream
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: is just my own poor dream, the thing sufficient for me.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: We fail in comprehension, We fail so variously and abundantly.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: We see as much as it is serviceable for us
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: to see, and we see no further. But the fresh,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: undaunted generations come to take on our work, beyond our
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: utmost effort, beyond the range of our ideas. They will
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: learn with certainty things that to us are guesses and riddles.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: There will be many utopias. Each generation will have its
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: new version of utopia, a little more certain and complete
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: and real, with its problems lying closer and closer to
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: the problems of the thing, and being until at lasts,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: from dreams. Utopias will have come to be working drawings,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: and the whole world will be shaping the final world state,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: the fair and great and fruitful world state that will
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: only not be out utopia, because it will be this world,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: so surely it must be. The policeman drops his hand,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Come up, says the bus driver, and the horse's strain
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: clitter clatter, cluck clack. The line of hurrying Hansoms overtakes
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: the omnibus going west. A dexterous lad on a bicycle
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: with a bale of newspapers on his back, dodges nimbly
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: across the head of the column, and vanishes up a
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: side street. The omnibus sways forward, wrapped in prophetic, his
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: plump hands clasped round the handle of his umbrella, his
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: billycock hat a trifle askew. This irascible little man of
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: the voice, this impatient dreamer, this scolding optimist, who has
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: argued so rudely and dogmatically about economics and philosophy and decoration,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: and indeed about everything under the sun, who has been
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: so hard on the botanist and fashionable women, and so
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: reluctant in the matter of beer, is carried onward, dreaming dreams,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: dreams that, with all the inevitable ironies of difference, may
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: be realities when you and I are dreams. He passes,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: and for a little space we are left with his
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: egoisms and idiosyncrasies, more or less in suspense. But why
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: was he intruded? You ask? Why could not a modern
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: utopia be discussed without this impersonation, impersonally? It has confused
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: the book, you say, made the argument hard to follow,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: and threw an a quality of insincerity over them. Whole
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: are we but mocking at utopia's you demand, using all
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: these noble and generalized hopes as the backcloth against which
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: two bickering personalities jar in squabble? Do I mean we
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: are never to view the promised land again except through
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: a foreground of fellow travelers. There is a common notion
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: that the reading of a utopia should end with a
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: swelling heart and clear resolves, with lists of names, formation
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: of committees, and even the commencement of subscriptions. But this
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: utopia began upon a philosophy of fragmentation and ends confusedly
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: amidst a gross tumult of immediate realities in dust and doubt,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: with at the best one individual's aspiration. Utopia's were once
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: in good faith projects for a fresh creation of the
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: world and of a most unworldly completeness. This so called
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: modern utopia is a mere story of personal adventures among
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: utopian philosophies. Indeed, that came about without the writer's intention.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: So it was the sum and vision came for. I
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: see about me a great multitude of little souls, and
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: groups of souls as darkened as derivative as my own.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: With the passage of years, I understand more and more
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: clearly the quality of the motives that urge me and
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: urge them to do whatever we do. Yet that is
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: not all I see, and I am not altogether bounded
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: by my littleness. Ever, and again, contrasting with this immediate
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: vision come glimpses of a comprehensive scheme in which these
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: personalities float, the scheme of a synthetic wider being, the
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: great state mankind, in which we all move and go
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: like blood corpuscles, like nerve cells, it may be at
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: times like brain cells in the body of a man.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: But the two visions are not seen consistently together, at
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: least by me, and I do not know surely that
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: they exist consistently together. The motives needed for those wider
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: issues come not into the interplay of my vanities and wishes.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Greater scheme lies about the men and women I know,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: as I have tried to make. The vistas and spaces,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: the mountains, cities, laws, and order of utopia lie about
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: my talking couple, too great for their sustained comprehension. When
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: one focuses upon these two, that wide landscape becomes indistinct
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: and distant. And when one regards that then the real
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: persons one knows grow vague and unreal. Nevertheless, I cannot
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: separate these two aspects of human life, each commenting on
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: the other in that incongruity between great and individual. And
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: here's the incompatibility I could not resolve, and which therefore
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: I have had to present in this conflicting form. At times,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: that great scheme does seem to me to enter certain
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: men's lives as a passion, as a real and living motive.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: There are those who know it almost as if it
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: were a thing of desire, even for me. Upon occasion,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: little lures of the immediate life are seen, small, vain,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: and the soul goes out to that mighty being to
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: apprehend it, and serve it and possess. But this is
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: an illumination that passes as it comes a rare transitory lucidity,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: leaving the soul's desires suddenly turn to presumption and hypocrisy.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Upon the lips one grasps that the universe and attains bathos.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: The hungers, the jealousies, the prejudices and habits have us again,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: and we are forced back to think it is so
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: and not otherwise, that we are meant to serve the
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: mysteries that in these blinkers it is we are driven
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: to an end we cannot understand. And then, for measured
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: moments in the night watches, whereas one walks alone, or
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: while one sits in thought and speech with a friend,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: the wider aspirations glow again with a sincere emotion, with
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: the colors of attainable desire. That is my all about utopia,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: and about the desire need for utopia, and how that
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: planet lies to this planet that bears the daily lives
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: amind end of Chapter the eleventh recording by Christopher Taylor