Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / A Modern Utopia Chapter 2 - Concerning Freedoms, Sections 1-3

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A Modern Utopia Chapter 2 - Concerning Freedoms, Sections 1-3 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter the second 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: A Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells. Recording by Christopher Taylor.
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  Speaker 1: Chapter the second, concerning freedoms, Section one. Now, what sort
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  Speaker 1: of question would first occur to two men descending upon
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  Speaker 1: the planet of a modern utopia? Probably graves solicitude about
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  Speaker 1: their personal freedom towards the stranger. As I have already remarked,
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  Speaker 1: the utopias of the past displayed their least amiable aspect.
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  Speaker 1: Would this new sort of utopian state spread to the
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  Speaker 1: dimensions of a world be any less forbidding? We should
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  Speaker 1: take comfort in the thought that universal toleration is certainly
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  Speaker 1: a modern idea, and it's upon modern ideas that this
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  Speaker 1: world state rests. But even suppose we are tolerated and
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  Speaker 1: admitted to this unavoidable citizenship, there will still remain a
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  Speaker 1: wide range of possibility. I think we should try to
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  Speaker 1: work the problem out from an inquiry into first principles,
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  Speaker 1: and that we should follow the trend of our time
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  Speaker 1: and kind by taking up the question as one of
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  Speaker 1: man versus the state, and discussing the compromise of liberty.
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  Speaker 1: The idea of individual liberty is one that has grown
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  Speaker 1: in importance and grows with every development of modern thought.
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  Speaker 1: To the classical utopists, freedom was relatively trivial. Clearly, they
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  Speaker 1: considered virtue and happiness as entirely separable from liberty, and
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  Speaker 1: as being altogether more important things. But the modern view,
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  Speaker 1: with its deepening insistence upon individuality and upon the significance
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  Speaker 1: of its uniqueness, steadily intensifies the value of freedom, until
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  Speaker 1: at last we begin to see liberty as the very
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  Speaker 1: substance of life, that indeed, it is life, and that
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  Speaker 1: only the dead things, the choiceless things, live in absolute obedience. Too.
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  Speaker 1: Law to have free play for one's individuality is, in
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  Speaker 1: the modern view the subjective triumph of existence, as survival
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  Speaker 1: in creative work in offspring is its objective triumph. But
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  Speaker 1: for all men, since man is a social creature, the
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  Speaker 1: play of will must fall short of absolute freedom. Perfect
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  Speaker 1: human liberty is possible only to a despot who is
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  Speaker 1: absolutely and universally obeyed. Then to will would be to
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  Speaker 1: command and achieve, and within the limits of natural law,
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  Speaker 1: we could at any moment do exactly as it pleased
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  Speaker 1: us to do all other Liberty is a compromise between
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  Speaker 1: our own freedom of will and the wills of those
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  Speaker 1: with whom we come in contact. In an organized state,
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  Speaker 1: each one of us has a more or less elaborate
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  Speaker 1: code of what he may do to others and to himself,
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  Speaker 1: and what others may do to him. He limits others
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  Speaker 1: by his rights, and is limited by the rights of
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  Speaker 1: others and by considerations affecting the welfare of the community
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  Speaker 1: as a whole. Individual liberty in a community is not,
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  Speaker 1: as mathematicians would say, always of the same sign To
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  Speaker 1: ignore this is the essential fallacy of the cult called individualism.
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  Speaker 1: But in truth, a general prohibition in a state may
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  Speaker 1: increase the summ of liberty, and a general permission may
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  Speaker 1: diminish it. It does not follow, as these people would
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  Speaker 1: have us believe, that a man is more free where
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  Speaker 1: there is least law, and more restricted where there is
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  Speaker 1: most law. A socialism or a communism is not necessarily
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  Speaker 1: a slavery, and there is no freedom under anarchy. Consider
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  Speaker 1: how much liberty we gain by the loss of the
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  Speaker 1: common liberty to kill Thereby one may go to and
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  Speaker 1: fro in all ordered parts of the earth, unencumbered by
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  Speaker 1: arms or armour, free of the fear of playful poison,
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  Speaker 1: whimsical barbers, or hotel trapdoors. Indeed, it means freedom from
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  Speaker 1: a thousand fears and precautions. Suppose there existed even the
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  Speaker 1: limited freedom to kill in vendetta, and think what would
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  Speaker 1: happen in our suburbs. Consider the inconvenience of two households
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  Speaker 1: in a modern suburb, estranged and provided with modern weapons
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  Speaker 1: of precision, the inconvenience not only to each other, but
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  Speaker 1: to the neutral pedestrian, the practical loss of freedoms all
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  Speaker 1: about them. The butcher, if he came at all, would
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  Speaker 1: have come round in an armored cart. It follows, therefore,
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  Speaker 1: in a modern utopia, which finds the final hope of
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  Speaker 1: the world in the evolving interplay of unique individualities, that
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  Speaker 1: the state will have effectually chipped away just all those
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  Speaker 1: spendthrift liberties that waste liberty, and not one liberty more,
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  Speaker 1: and so have attained the maximum general freedom. There are
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  Speaker 1: two distinct, contrasting methods of limiting liberty. The first is
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  Speaker 1: prohibition thou shalt not, and the second command thou shalt
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  Speaker 1: there is However, a sort of prohibition that takes the
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  Speaker 1: form of a conditional command, and this one needs to
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  Speaker 1: bear in mind. It says, if you do so and so,
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  Speaker 1: you must also do so and so. If, for example,
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  Speaker 1: you go to sea with menu employ you must go
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  Speaker 1: in a sea worthy vessel. But the pure command is unconditional.
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  Speaker 1: It says, whatever you have done, or are doing, or
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  Speaker 1: want to do, you are to do this, as when
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  Speaker 1: the social system, working through the base necessities of base
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  Speaker 1: parents and bad laws, sends a child of thirteen into
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  Speaker 1: a factory. Prohibition takes one definite thing from the indefinite
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  Speaker 1: liberty of a man, but it still leaves him an
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  Speaker 1: unbounded choice of actions. He remains free, and you have
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  Speaker 1: merely taken a bucketful from the sea of his freedom.
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  Speaker 1: But compulsion destroys freedom altogether. In this utopia of ours,
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  Speaker 1: there may be many prohibitions, but no indirect compulsions, if
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  Speaker 1: one may so contrive it, and few or no commands.
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  Speaker 1: As far as I see it now in this present discussion,
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  Speaker 1: I think indeed, there should be no positive compulsions at
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  Speaker 1: all in utopia, at any rate for the adult utopian,
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  Speaker 1: unless they fall upon him as penalties incurred Section two.
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  Speaker 1: What prohibition should we be under? We two ate landers.
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  Speaker 1: In this utopian world, we should certainly not be free
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  Speaker 1: to kill, assault, or threaten anyone we met, and in
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  Speaker 1: that we Earth trained men would not be likely to offend.
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  Speaker 1: And until we knew more exactly the utopian idea of property,
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  Speaker 1: we should be very carey of touching anything that might
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  Speaker 1: conceivably be appropriated. If it was not the property of individuals,
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  Speaker 1: it might be the property of the state, But beyond
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  Speaker 1: that we might have our doubts. Are we right in
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  Speaker 1: wearing the strange costumes we do, in choosing the path
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  Speaker 1: that pleases us athwart this rock and turf, in coming
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  Speaker 1: striding with unfumigated rucksacks and snow wet hobnails into what
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  Speaker 1: is conceivably an extremely neat and orderly world. We have
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  Speaker 1: passed our first utopian now with an answered vague gesture,
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  Speaker 1: and have noted with secret satisfaction there is no access
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  Speaker 1: of dismay. We have rounded a bend, and down the valley.
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  Speaker 1: In the distance we get a glimpse of what appears
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  Speaker 1: to be a singularly well kept road. I submit that
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  Speaker 1: to the modern minded man it can be no sort
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  Speaker 1: of utopia worth desiring that does not give the utmost
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  Speaker 1: freedom of going to and fro. Free movement is to
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  Speaker 1: many people one of the greatest of life's privileges to
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  Speaker 1: go wherever the spirit moves them, to wander and see.
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  Speaker 1: And though they have every comfort, every security, every virtuous discipline,
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  Speaker 1: they will still be unhappy if that is denied them.
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  Speaker 1: Short of damage to things cherished and made. The utopians
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  Speaker 1: will surely have this right. So we may expect no
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  Speaker 1: unclimbable walls and fences, nor the discovery of any laws
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  Speaker 1: we may transgress in coming down these mountain places. And yet,
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  Speaker 1: just as civil liberty itself is a compromise defended by prohibitions,
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  Speaker 1: so this particular sort of liberty must also have its
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  Speaker 1: qualifications carried to the absolute pitch. The right of free
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  Speaker 1: movement ceases to be distinguishable from the right of free
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  Speaker 1: intrusion we have already In a comment on Moore's Utopia,
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  Speaker 1: hinted at an agreement with Aristotle's argument against communism that
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  Speaker 1: it flings people into an intolerable continuity of contact. Schopenhauer
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  Speaker 1: carried out Aristotle in the vein of his own bitterness
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  Speaker 1: and with the truest of images when he likened human
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  Speaker 1: society to hedgehogs, clustering for warmth and unhappy when either
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  Speaker 1: too closely packed or too widely separated. In Pedocles found
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  Speaker 1: no significance in life whatever, except as an unsteady play
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  Speaker 1: of love and hate, of attraction and repulsion of assimilation,
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  Speaker 1: and the assertion of difference. So long as we ignore difference,
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  Speaker 1: so long as we ignore individuality, And that I hold
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  Speaker 1: has been the common sin of all utopias. Hitherto we
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  Speaker 1: can make absolute statements, prescribe communisms or individualisms, and all
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  Speaker 1: sorts of hard theoretic arrangements. But in the world of reality,
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  Speaker 1: which to modernize Heraclitis and Empedocles, is nothing more nor
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  Speaker 1: less than the world of individuality, there are no absolute
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  Speaker 1: rights and wrongs. There are no qualitative questions at all,
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  Speaker 1: but only quantitative adjustments. Equally strong in the normal civilized
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  Speaker 1: man is the desire for freedom of movement, and the
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  Speaker 1: desire for a certain privacy, for a corner definitely his,
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  Speaker 1: And we have to consider where the line of reconciliation comes.
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  Speaker 1: The desire for absolute personal privacy is perhaps never a
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  Speaker 1: very strong or persistent craving in the great majority of
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  Speaker 1: human beings, the gregarious instinct is sufficiently powerful to render
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  Speaker 1: any but the most temporary isolations not simply disagreeable but painful.
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  Speaker 1: The savage has all the privacy he needs within the
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  Speaker 1: compass of his skull. Like dogs and timid women, he
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  Speaker 1: prefers ill treatment to desertion. And it is only a
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  Speaker 1: scarce and complex modern type that finds comfort and refreshment
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  Speaker 1: in quite lonely places and quite solitary occupations. Yet such
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  Speaker 1: there are men who can neither sleep well, nor think well,
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  Speaker 1: nor attain to a full perception of beautiful objects, who
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  Speaker 1: do not savor the best of existence until they are
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  Speaker 1: securely alone. And for the sake of these even it
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  Speaker 1: would be reasonable to draw some limits to the general
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  Speaker 1: right of free movement. But their particular need is only
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  Speaker 1: a special and exceptional aspect of an almost universal claim
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  Speaker 1: to privacy among modern people, not so much for the
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  Speaker 1: sake of isolation as for congenial companionship. We want to
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  Speaker 1: go apart from the great crowd, not so much to
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  Speaker 1: be alone as to be with those who appeal to
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  Speaker 1: us particularly, and to whom we particularly appeal. We want
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  Speaker 1: to form households and societies with them to give our
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  Speaker 1: individualities play in intercourse with them, and in the appointments
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  Speaker 1: and furnishings of that intercourse. We want gardens and enclosures
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  Speaker 1: and exclusive freedoms for our like and our choice, just
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  Speaker 1: as spacious as we can get them. And it is
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  Speaker 1: only the multitudinous uncongenial anxious also for similar developments in
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  Speaker 1: some opposite direction that checks this expansive movement of personal
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  Speaker 1: selection and necessitates a compromise on privacy. Glancing back from
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  Speaker 1: our utopian mountain side, down which this discourse marches to
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  Speaker 1: the confusions of old Earth, we may remark that the
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  Speaker 1: need and desire for privacies there is exceptionally great at
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  Speaker 1: the present time, that it was less in the past,
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  Speaker 1: that in the future it may be less again, and
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  Speaker 1: that under the utopian conditions to which we shall come,
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  Speaker 1: when presently we strike yonder road, it may be reduced
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  Speaker 1: to quite manageable dimensions. But this is to be affected
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  Speaker 1: not by the suppression of individualities to some common pattern
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  Speaker 1: footnote More's utopia quote whoso will may go in, for
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  Speaker 1: there is nothing within the houses that is private or
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  Speaker 1: any man's own unquote, but by the broadening of public charity,
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  Speaker 1: and the general amelioration of mind and manners. It is
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  Speaker 1: not by assimilation, that is to say, but by un understanding,
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  Speaker 1: that the modern utopia achieves itself. The ideal community of
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  Speaker 1: man's past was one with a common belief, with common
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  Speaker 1: customs and common ceremonies, common manners, and common formulae. Men
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  Speaker 1: of the same society dressed in the same fashion, each
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  Speaker 1: according to his defined and understood grade, behaved in the
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  Speaker 1: same fashion, loved, worshiped, and died in the same fashion.
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  Speaker 1: They did or felt. Little that did not find a
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  Speaker 1: sympathetic publicity. The natural disposition of all peoples, white, black,
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  Speaker 1: or brown, a natural disposition that education seeks to destroy,
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  Speaker 1: is to insist upon uniformity, to make publicity extremely unsympathetic
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  Speaker 1: to even the most harmless departures from the code. To
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  Speaker 1: be dressed odd, to behave oddly, to eat in a
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  Speaker 1: different manner or of different food, to commit Indeed, any
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  Speaker 1: breach of the established convention is to give offense and
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  Speaker 1: to incur hostility among unsophisticated men. But the disposition of
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  Speaker 1: the more original and enterprising minds at all times has
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  Speaker 1: been to make such innovations. This is particularly in evidence
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  Speaker 1: In this present age, the almost cataclysmal development of new machinery,
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  Speaker 1: the discovery of new materials, and the appearance of new
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  Speaker 1: social possibilities through the organized pursuit of material science has
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  Speaker 1: given enormous and unprecedented facilities to the spirit of innovation.
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  Speaker 1: The old local order has been broken up, or is
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  Speaker 1: now being broken up, all over the Earth, and everywhere.
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  Speaker 1: Societies deliquests everywhere. Men are afloat amidst the wreckage of
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  Speaker 1: their flooded conventions, and still tremendously unaware of the thing
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  Speaker 1: that has happened. The old local orthodoxies of behavior, of precedence,
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  Speaker 1: the old accepted amusements and employments, the old ritual of conduct,
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  Speaker 1: and the important small things of the daily life, and
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  Speaker 1: the old ritual of thought, and the things that make
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  Speaker 1: discussion are smashed up and scattered and mixed discordantly together,
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  Speaker 1: one use with another, and no world wide culture toleration,
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  Speaker 1: no courteous admission of differences, no wider understanding has yet
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  Speaker 1: replaced them, And so publicity in the modern Earth has
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  Speaker 1: become confusedly unsympathetic for everyone. Classes are intolerable to classes,
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  Speaker 1: and sets to sets. Contact provokes aggressions comparisons, persecutions and discomforts,
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  Speaker 1: and the subtler people are excessively tormented by a sense
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  Speaker 1: of observation, unsympathetic always and often hostile. To live without
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  Speaker 1: some sort of segregation from the general mass is impossible
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  Speaker 1: in exact proportion to one's individual distinction. Of course, things
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  Speaker 1: will be very different in utopia. Utopia will be saturated
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  Speaker 1: with consideration to us, clad as we are in mountain,
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  Speaker 1: soiled tweeds, and with no money but British banknotes negotiable
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  Speaker 1: only at a practically infinite distance. This must needs be
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  Speaker 1: a reassuring induction, and Utopian manners will not only be tolerant,
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  Speaker 1: but almost universally tolerable. Endless things will be understood perfectly
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  Speaker 1: and universally that on Earth are understood only by a
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  Speaker 1: scattered few. Baseness of bearing, grossness of manner will be
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  Speaker 1: the distinctive mark of no section of the community. Whatever
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  Speaker 1: the coarser reasons for privacy therefore will not exist here.
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  Speaker 1: And that savage sort of shyness too, that make so
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  Speaker 1: many half educated people on Earth recluse and defensive, that too,
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  Speaker 1: the Utopians will have escaped by their more liberal breeding
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  Speaker 1: in the cultivated state, we are assuming it will be
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  Speaker 1: ever so much easier for people to eat in public,
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  Speaker 1: rest and amuse themselves in public, and even work in public.
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  Speaker 1: Our present need for privacy in many things marks indeed
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  Speaker 1: a phase of transition from an ease in public in
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  Speaker 1: the past due to homogeneity, to an ease in public
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  Speaker 1: in the future due to intelligence and good breeding, and
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  Speaker 1: in utopia that transition will be complete. We must bear
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  Speaker 1: that in mind throughout the consideration of this question. Yet,
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  Speaker 1: after this allowance has been made, there still remains a
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  Speaker 1: considerable claim for privacy. In utopia. The room or apartments,
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  Speaker 1: or home or mansion, whatever it may be a man
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  Speaker 1: or woman maintains, must be private and under his or
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  Speaker 1: her complete dominion. It seems harsh and intrusive to forbid
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  Speaker 1: a central garden plot or a peristyle such as one
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  Speaker 1: seasoned pompey within the house walls, and it is almost
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  Speaker 1: as difficult to deny a little private territory beyond the house.
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  Speaker 1: Yet if we concede that, it is clear that without
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  Speaker 1: some further provision, we concede the possibility that the poorer townsmen,
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  Speaker 1: if there are to be rich and poor in the world,
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  Speaker 1: will be forced to walk through endless miles of high
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  Speaker 1: fence villa gardens before he may expand in his little
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  Speaker 1: scrap of reserved open country. Such is already the poor
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  Speaker 1: Londoner's miserable fate. Our utopia will have, of course, faultless
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  Speaker 1: roads and beautifully arranged interurban communications swift trains, are motor
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  Speaker 1: services or what not to diffuse its population. And without
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  Speaker 1: some anticipatory provisions, the prospect of the residential areas becoming
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  Speaker 1: a vast area of defensively walled vill at edens is
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  Speaker 1: all too possible. This is a quantitative question, be it remembered,
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  Speaker 1: and not to be dismissed by any statement or principle.
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  Speaker 1: Our utopians will meet it, I presume, by detailed regulations,
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  Speaker 1: very probably varying locally with local conditions. Privacy beyond the
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  Speaker 1: house might be made a privilege, to be paid for
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  Speaker 1: in proportion to the area occupied, and the tax on
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: these licenses of privacy might increase as this square of
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the area affected. A maximum fraction of private enclosure for
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  Speaker 1: each urban and suburban square mile could be fixed. A
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  Speaker 1: distinction could be drawn between an absolute private garden and
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  Speaker 1: a garden private enclosed only for a day or a
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  Speaker 1: couple of days a week, and at other times open
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: to the well behaved public, who in a really civilized
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: community would grudge that measure of invasion. Walls could be
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  Speaker 1: taxed by height and length, and the enclosure of really
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  Speaker 1: natural beauties of rapids, cascades, gorges, viewpoints, and so forth
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  Speaker 1: made impossible. So a reasonable compromise between the vital and
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  Speaker 1: conflicting claims of the freedom of movement and the freedom
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  Speaker 1: of seclusion might be attained. And as we argue, thus
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: we draw nearer and nearer to the road that goes
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  Speaker 1: up and over the Guitard crest and down the vault
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  Speaker 1: Tremolot towards Italy. What sort of road would that be?
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  Speaker 1: Section three? Freedom of movement in a utopia planted under
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  Speaker 1: modern conditions must involve something more than unrestricted pedestrian wanderings.
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  Speaker 1: And the very proposition of a world state speaking one
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: common tongue carries with it the idea of a world
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  Speaker 1: population traveled and traveling to an extent quite beyond anything
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  Speaker 1: our native earth has seen. It is now our terrestrial
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: experience that whenever economic and political development set a class
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  Speaker 1: free to travel, that class at once begins to travel.
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  Speaker 1: In England, for example, of the five or six hundred
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  Speaker 1: pounds a year level, it is hard to find anyone
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  Speaker 1: who is not habitually migratory, who has not been frequently,
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  Speaker 1: as people say abroad. In the modern utopia, travel must
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  Speaker 1: be in the common texture of life, to go into
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  Speaker 1: fresh climates and fresh scenery, to meet a different complexion
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  Speaker 1: of humanity, and a different type of home and food
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  Speaker 1: and apparatus, To mark unfamiliar trees and plants and flowers
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  Speaker 1: and beasts. To climb mountains, to see the snowy night
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  Speaker 1: of the north in the blaze of the tropical mid day,
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  Speaker 1: to follow great rivers, to taste loneliness in desert places,
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  Speaker 1: to traverse the gloom of tropical forests, and to cross
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  Speaker 1: the high seas. Will be an essential part of the
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  Speaker 1: reward and adventure of life, even for the commonest people.
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  Speaker 1: This is a bright and pleasant particular in which a
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  Speaker 1: modern utopia must differ again, and differ diametrically from its predecessors.
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  Speaker 1: We may conclude from what has been done in places
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: upon our earth that the whole utopian world will be
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: open and accessible and is safe for the world. As
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: France or England is today. The peace of the world
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: will be established forever and everywhere, except in remote and
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: desolate places, there will be convenient ends, at least as
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: convenient and trustworthy as those of Switzerland today. The touring
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: clubs and hotel associations that have tariffed that country and
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: France so effectually will have had their fine Utopian equivalents,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: and the whole world will be habituated to the coming
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: and going of strangers. The greater part of the world
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: will be as secure and cheaply and easily accessible to
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: everyone as is Zermatt Orlescern to a Western European of
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: the middle class at the present time. On this account alone,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: no places will be so congested as these two are
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: now on Earth, with freedom to go everywhere, with easy
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: access everywhere, with no dread of difficulties about language, coinage,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: customer law, Why should everyone continue to go to just
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: a few special places. Such congestions are merely the measure
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: of the gil general inaccessibility and insecurity and costliness of
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: contemporary life, an awkward transitory phase in the first beginnings
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: of the travel age of mankind. No doubt the utopian
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: will travel in many ways. It is unlikely there will
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: be any smoke disgorging steam railway trains in utopia. They
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: are already doomed on earth, already threatened with that obsolescence
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: that will endear them to the ruskins of tomorrow. But
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: a thin spider's web of inconspicuous special routes will cover
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: the land of the world, pierce the mountain masses, and
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: tunnel under the seas. These may be double railways, or monorails,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: or what not. We are no engineers to judge between
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: such devices, but by means of them, the Utopian will
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: travel about the earth room one chief point to another,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: at a speed of two or three hundred miles or
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: more an hour that will abolish the greater distances. One
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: figures these main communications as something after the manner of
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: corridor trains, smooth running and roomy, open from end to end,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: with cars in which one may sit and read, cars
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: in which one may take refreshment, Cars into which the
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: news of the day comes, printing itself from the wires
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: beside the track, Cars in which one may have privacy
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: and sleep. If one is so disposed, bathroom cars, library cars,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: a train as comfortable as a good club, there will
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: be no distinctions of class in such a train, because
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: in a civilized world there would be no offense between
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: one kind of man and another. And for the good
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: of the whole world, such traveling will be as cheap
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: as it can be, and well within the reach of
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: any but the almost criminally poor. Such great tramways as
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: this will be used when the Utopians wish to travel
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: fast and far. Thereby you will glide all over the
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: land surface of the planet, and feeding them and distributing
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: from them innumerable minor systems. Clean little electric tramways I
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: picture them, will spread out over the land in finer reticulations,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: growing close and dense in the urban regions, and thinning
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: as the population thens. And running beside these lighter railways,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: and spreading beyond the range, will be the smooth minor
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: high roads such as this one we now approach, upon
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: which independent vehicles, motor cars, cycles and whatnot will go.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: I doubt if we shall see any horses upon this fine, smooth,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: clean road. I doubt if there will be many horses
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: on the high roads of Utopia. And indeed, if they
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: will use draft horses at all upon that planet, why
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: should they Where the world gives turf and sand, or
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: along special tracks. The horse will perhaps be ridden for
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: exercise and pleasure, but that will be all the use
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: for him. And as for the other beast of burthen.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: On the remoter mountain tracks, the mule will no doubt
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: still be a picturesque survival. In the desert. Men will
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: still find a use for the camel, and the elephant
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: may linger to play a part in the pageant of
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: the east. But the burthen of the minor traffic, if
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: not the whole of it, will certainly be mechanical. This
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: is what we shall see, even while the road is
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: still remote, swift and shapely motor cars going back past cyclists,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: and in these agreeable mountain regions there will also be
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: pedestrians upon their way. Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: sometimes following beside the great high roads, but oftener, taking
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: their own more agreeable line amidst woods and crops and pastures.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: And there will be a rich variety of footpaths and
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: minor ways. There will be many footpaths in Utopia. There
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: will be pleasant ways over the scented needles of the mountain,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: pine woods, primrose strewn tracks admit the budding thickets of
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: the lower country, paths running beside rushing streams, paths across
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the wide spaces of the cornland, and above all, paths
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: through the flowery garden spaces amidst which the houses and
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: the towns will stand. And everywhere about the world, on
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: road and path, by sea and land, the happy holiday
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Utopians will go. The population of Utopia will be a
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: migratory population, beyond any earthly precedent, now simply a traveling population,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: but migratory. The old u Utopias were all localized, as
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: localized as a parish councilor But it is manifest that
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: nowadays even quite ordinary people live over areas that would
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: have made a kingdom in those former days would have
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: filled the Athenian of Laws with incredulous astonishment. Except for
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: the habits of the very rich. During the Roman Empire,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: there was never the slightest precedent for this modern detachment
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: from place. It is nothing to us that we go
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: eighty or ninety miles from home to place of business,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: or take an hour's spin of fifty miles to our
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: weekend golf every summer. Has become a fixed custom to
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: travel wide and far. Only the clumsiness of communications limit
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: us now, and every facilitation of locomotion widens not only
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: our potential but our habitual range. Not only this, but
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: we change our habitations with a growing frequency and facility.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: To Sir Thomas Moore, we should seem a breed of nomads,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: a trick of rooting man learnt from a time from
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: his new found friends, the corn and the vine and
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: the hearth. The untimed spirit of the young has turned
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: for ever to wandering in the sea. The soul of
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: man has never yet in any land been willingly adscript
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: to the glebe. Even mister Bellock, who preaches the happiness
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: of a peasant proprietary, is so much wiser than his
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: thoughts that he sails about the seas in a little yacht,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: or goes afoot from Belgium to Rome. We are winning
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: our freedom again once more, a freedom renewed and enlarged.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: And there is now neither necessity nor advantage in a
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: permanent life's servitude to this place, or that men may
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: settle down in our modern utopia for love and the family.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: At last, the first and most abundantly they will see
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: the world. And with this loosening of the fetters of
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: a locality from the feet of men. Necessarily there will
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: be all sorts of fresh distributions of the factors of
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: life on our own, poor, haphazard earth, wherever men work,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: wherever there are things to be grown, minerals to be won,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: power to be used. There, Regardless of all the joys
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: and decencies of life, the household's needs must cluster. But
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: in utopia there will be wide stretches of cheerless or unhealthy,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: or toilsome or dangerous land, with never a household. There
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: will be regions of mining and smelting, black with the
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: smoke of furnaces, and gashed and desolated by mines, with
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: a sort of weird inhospitable grandeur of industrial desolation. And
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: the men will come thither and work for a spell,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: and return to civilization again, washing and changing their attire
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: in the swift gliding train, and by way of compensation,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: there will be beautiful regions of the earth, specially set
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: apart and favored for children. In them, the presence of
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: children will remit taxation, while in other less wholesome places
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: the presence of children will be taxed. The lower passes
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: and fore hills of these very alps, for example, will
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: be populous with homes serving the vast arable levels of
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: upper Italy. So we shall see as we come down
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: by our little lake in the Lapelissandro, and even before
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: we reach the road, the first scattered sh als and
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: households in which these micropeople live the upper summer homes.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: With the coming of summer, as the snows on the
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: high alps recede, a tide of households and schools, teachers
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: and doctors and all such attendant services will flow up
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: the mountain masses and eb again when the September snows return.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: It is essential to the modern ideal of life that
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: the period of education and growth should be prolonged to
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: as late a period as possible, and puberty correspondingly retarded.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: And by wise regulation. The statesmen of Utopia will constantly
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: adjust and readjust regulations and taxation to diminish the proportion
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: of children reared in hot and stimulating conditions. These high
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: mountains will, in the bright, sweet summer be populous with youth,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: even up towards this high place where the snow is
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: scarce gone until July. These households will extend and below
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: the whole long valley of Urserine will be a scattered
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: summer town. One figures one of the more urban highways,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: one of those along which the light railways of the
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: second order run, such as that in the valley of Urseren,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: into which we should presently come. I figured, as one
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: would see it at night, a band a hundred yards
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: perhaps in width, the footpath on either side shaded with
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: high trees and lit softly with orange glow lights, while
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: down the center the tramway of the road will go
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: with sometimes a nocturnal tramcar gliding lit and gay, but
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: almost noiselessly passed. Lantern lit cyclists will flit along the
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: track like fireflies, and ever and again some humming motor
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: car will hurry by to or from the Rhoneland or
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: the Rhineland, or Switzerland or Italy. Away. On either side,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: the lights of the little country homes up the mountain
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: slopes will glow. I figured it at night, because so
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: it is. We should see it. First. We should come
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: out of our mountain valley into the minor road that
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: runs down the lonely rock wilderness of the Sancutard Pass.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: We should descend that nine miles of winding route, and
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: so arrive towards twilight among the clustering homes and upland
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: unenclosed gardens of rill and hostile spenthal and and Demot,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: between Rup and Onobat and down the school and in
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: gorge the greater road would run. By the time we
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: reached it, we should be in the way of understanding
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: our adventure a little better. We should know already when
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: we saw those two familiar clusters of chalets and hotels
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: replaced by a great dispersed multitude of houses. We should
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: see their window lights, but little else that we were
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: the victims of some strange transition in space or time.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: And we should come down by dimly seen buildings into
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: the park that would answer to hospital wondering and perhaps
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: a little afraid. We should come out into this great
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: main roadway, this roadway like an urban avenue, and look
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: up it and down, hesitating whether to go along the
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: valley furkuward or down by Andermot through the gorge that
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: leads to Golskanen. People would pass us in the twilight,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: and then more people we should see. They walked well
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: and wore a graceful, unfamiliar draft. The more we cannot
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: distinguish good night, they would say to us in clear,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: fine voices. Their dim faces would turn with the passing
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: scrutiny towards us. We should answer, out of our perplexity,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: good night. For by the conventions established in the beginning
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: of this book, we are given the freedom of their tongue.