A Modern Utopia

ice of

a history. We cross it and find the Reuss, for all that it has already lit and warmed and ventilated and cleaned several thousands of houses in the dale above, and for all that it drives those easy trams in the gallery overhead, is yet capable of as fine a

" says my friend, "and how on eart

t for obstructing change, in

ode intrudes. We are inva

at rubicund, knobby type I have heard an indignant mineralogist speak of as botryoidal, and about it waves a quantity of disorderly blond hair. He is dressed in leather doublet and knee breeches, and he wears over these a streaming woollen cloak of faded crimson that give him a fine dramatic outline as he comes

So do I! Why a man should consent to be dealt with as a bale of goods holding an

a gallery in the rock, follows it along until it turns the corner, picks it up as a viaduct far below, traces it

en discussing how we should broach our remarkable s

her from the botanist th

my

are brothers! We shall be in sympathy. I am amazed, I have been amazed as long as I can remember, and I shall die, most certainly, in a state of incredulous amazement, at this remarkable world. Eh?...

remains,"

ou, demanding Tact of an al

le selves, and for the rest of the time this picturesque and e

way as a most consummate ass. He talked first of the excellent and commodious trams that came from over the passes, and ran down the long valley towards middle Switzerland, and of all the growth of pleasant homes and chalets amidst the heigh

hey are a mere rash. Why should we men play th

ife is

er. That is the natural bloom of her complexion. But these houses and tramways and things, all made from ore and stuff torn from her ve

times in a ho

eld strong views about the extreme simplicity of everything, only that men, in their muddle-headedness, had confounded it all. "Hence, for example, these trams! They are always running up and down as though they were looking for the lost simplicity of nature. 'We dropped it here!'" He earned a living, we gathered, "some considerable way above the minimum wage," which threw a chance light on the labour problem-by perforating records for automatic musical machines-no doubt of the Pianotist and Pianola kind-and he spent all the leisure he

e-clothing, and it had been made especially for him at very great cost. "Simply because naturalness h

at any clothing whatever was somethi

"not at all! You forg

our hats or hair destructors. "Man is the real King of Beasts and should wear

fe of me I see no reason for confusing them. It is, I hold, a sin against Nature. I keep them distinct in my mind and I keep them distinct in my person. No animal substance inside, no vegetable without;-what could be simpler or more logical? Nothing upon me but leather and al

cigarette. He demanded and drank a great horn of unf

ere Wassen stands on earth, and it looked down the valley to the Uri Rothstock, and ever and aga

hard assertive lines. He would not pause to see how little we knew. Sometimes his wit rose so high that he would lose sight of it himself, and then he would pause, purse his lips as if he whistled, and then till the bird came back to the lure, fill his

opia did not at any rate go to that. He spoke, too, of the regulation of unions, of people who were not allowed

evil. He talked of the overmanagement of the world, and among other things of the laws that would not let a poor simple idiot, a "natural," go at large. And so we had our first glimpse of what Utopia di

first glimmering of a new ide

oluntary noblemen who have taken the world

ary noblemen!" and for the mom

nist to controversy. He denounced with great bitterness all

for a space in the perplexed examination of this parenthesis, while he and the botanist-who is sedulo

dition-you must leave it to Nature. But if you mix up things so distinctly and essentially separated a

ive chemicals as soap for example-and above all you consult doctors." He approved himself with a chuckle. "Have you ever found anyone seriously ill without doctors and medicine about? Never! You say a lot of

for his own part he broke that law whenever he could, found some corner of moss, shaded from an excess of dew, and there sat up to sleep. He slept, he said, always in a sitting position, with h

xpects a Cicerone, one expects a person as precise and insistent and instructive as an American advertisement-the advertisement of one of those land agents, for example, who print their own engaging photographs to instil confiden

s world any more, it is to have all and more of the mental contrariety we find in the world of the real; it is no longer to be perfectly explicable, it is just our own vast mysterious welter, with some of the bl

il

struck me as transiently remarkable that a man who could not be induced to forget himself and his personal troubles on coming into a whole new world, who could waste our first evening in Utopia upon a paltry egotistical love stor

ig siege gun being lugged into action over rough ground by a number of inexperienced men, "you pr

er the green trellis of the arbour, stretched my legs with a fine restfulness,

ings our garrulous friend had said, and

d in their collegiate groups over by the high road, and near the subordinate way that ran almost vertically below us and past us and up towards the valley of the Meien Reuss. There were one or two Utopians cutting and packing the flowery mountain grass in the carefully levelled and irrigated meadows by means of swift, light machines that ran

of problems, a progressive intention steadily achieving itself, and the aspect that

on of a great number of vigorous people to establish and sustain its progress, and on the other this creature of pose and van

the reductio ad absurdum of my vision, and must it even

indred sorts of persons in great abundance. The desire and gift to see life whole is not the lot of the great majority of men, the service of truth is the privilege of the elect, and

ss of each other's proceedings. The encounter had an air of being extremely lively, and the moments of contact were few. "But you mistake my point," the blond man was s

ted another cigarette and went aw

p our positions," silly little contentious creatures that we are, we will not see the right in one another, we will not patiently state and restate, and honestly accommodate and plan, and so we remain at sixes and sevens. We've all a touch of Gladstone in us, and try to the last moment to deny we have made a turn. And so our poor broken-springed world

e leaders, men who sway vast multitudes, who are indeed great and powerful men; when one sees how unfair they can be, how unteachable, the great blind areas in their eyes also, their want

a day, and then for ever more trusted to run alone. It is manifest this Utopia could not come about by chance and anarchy, but by co-ordinated effort and a community of design, and to tell of just land laws and wise government, a wisely balanced economic system, and wise social arrangements without telling h

is in mind w

entional courage, of honest thought, and steady endeavour. There must be a literature to embody their common idea, of which this M

in the nature of a Church? ... And there came into my mind the words

ely queer, and then I began to realise cert

st that here was his antithesis. Evidently what he is not,

tations by the hand of the

over the botanist h

was for a moment al

. "Weren't you l

said b

But by an effort he recalle

ling me, in spite of my sustained int

st managed to get it in.

o hate each other and can't

ow,"

unds a

t

hat is there to keep them t

ui

d tell i

his

here's no point in it. Is

f people mad with him,"

e scope of his inquiry, visibly if not verbally. "Dear me!" he said, and took up something he had ne

f earnestness. At least I meant my manner to b

f man. Do not be alarmed. Perhaps you

y dear

an inferior world! Like

uld be more

ere's no limit to the extent to which a wor

is eye had cease

each other; children are born-abominably, and reared in cruelty and folly; there is a thing called war, a horror of blood and vileness.

uld have begun, but I

reaking the law, displaying your wit on science and order, on the men who toil so ingloriously to swe

t you really come from some other worl

d

to me about it inste

es

t possibly do such things. It's-if you'll excuse me-ridiculous. He began-he would begin. A most tiresome story-simply bore me down. We'd been talking very agreeably before that, or rather I had, about the absurdity of marriage laws, the

" I heard him say. He was evidently deeply aggrieved by us. I saw him presently a little way off in the garden, talking to the landlord of our inn, and looking towards us as he talked-they both lo

ndard of bearing and clothing I remark about us, unattractive in dress and deportment. We have nothing to produce to explain our presence here, no bit of a flying machine or a space travelling sphere or any of the apparatus customary on these occasions. We hav

id one

sition-not to put too fine a point upon it-of tramps in this admirable world. The question of all others of importance to us at present is what do they do with

can get s

ess we can g

t w

range world-quite strange and new. I'm only beginning to realise just what it means for us. The mountains there are the same, the old Bristenstock

e bend of the valley there? Who knows what may happen to us anywh

ed, "we don'