A Modern Utopia | Page 2

here. If your mind is "made
up" upon such issues your time will be wasted on these pages. And
even if you are a willing reader you may require a little patience for the
peculiar method I have this time adopted.
That method assumes an air of haphazard, but it is not so careless as it
seems. I believe it to be--even now that I am through with the book--the
best way to a sort of lucid vagueness which has always been my
intention in this matter. I tried over several beginnings of a Utopian
book before I adopted this. I rejected from the outset the form of the

argumentative essay, the form which appeals most readily to what is
called the "serious" reader, the reader who is often no more than the
solemnly impatient parasite of great questions. He likes everything in
hard, heavy lines, black and white, yes and no, because he does not
understand how much there is that cannot be presented at all in that
way; wherever there is any effect of obliquity, of incommensurables,
wherever there is any levity or humour or difficulty of multiplex
presentation, he refuses attention. Mentally he seems to be built up
upon an invincible assumption that the Spirit of Creation cannot count
beyond two, he deals only in alternatives. Such readers I have resolved
not to attempt to please here. Even if I presented all my tri-clinic
crystals as systems of cubes----! Indeed I felt it would not be worth
doing. But having rejected the "serious" essay as a form, I was still
greatly exercised, I spent some vacillating months, over the scheme of
this book. I tried first a recognised method of viewing questions from
divergent points that has always attracted me and which I have never
succeeded in using, the discussion novel, after the fashion of Peacock's
(and Mr. Mallock's) development of the ancient dialogue; but this
encumbered me with unnecessary characters and the inevitable
complication of intrigue among them, and I abandoned it. After that I
tried to cast the thing into a shape resembling a little the double
personality of Boswell's Johnson, a sort of interplay between
monologue and commentator; but that too, although it got nearer to the
quality I sought, finally failed. Then I hesitated over what one might
call "hard narrative." It will be evident to the experienced reader that by
omitting certain speculative and metaphysical elements and by
elaborating incident, this book might have been reduced to a
straightforward story. But I did not want to omit as much on this
occasion. I do not see why I should always pander to the vulgar
appetite for stark stories. And in short, I made it this. I explain all this
in order to make it clear to the reader that, however queer this book
appears at the first examination, it is the outcome of trial and
deliberation, it is intended to be as it is. I am aiming throughout at a
sort of shot-silk texture between philosophical discussion on the one
hand and imaginative narrative on the other.
H. G. WELLS.

CONTENTS
The Owner of the Voice



Chapter the
First--Topographical



Chapter the
Second--Concerning Freedoms



Chapter the
Third--Utopian Economics



Chapter the
Fourth--The Voice of Nature



Chapter the
Fifth--Failure in a Modern Utopia



Chapter the

Sixth--Women in a Modern Utopia



Chapter the
Seventh--A Few Utopian Impressions



Chapter the
Eighth--My Utopian Self



Chapter the
Ninth--The Samurai



Chapter the
Tenth--Race in Utopia



Chapter the
Eleventh--The Bubble Bursts Appendix--Scepticism of the Instrument
A MODERN UTOPIA
THE OWNER OF THE VOICE
There are works, and this is one of them, that are best begun with a
portrait of the author. And here, indeed, because of a very natural
misunderstanding this is the only course to take. Throughout these

papers sounds a note, a distinctive and personal note, a note that tends
at times towards stridency; and all that is not, as these words are, in
Italics, is in one Voice. Now, this Voice, and this is the peculiarity of
the matter, is not to be taken as the Voice of the ostensible author who
fathers these pages. You have to clear your mind of any preconceptions
in that respect. The Owner of the Voice you must figure to yourself as a
whitish plump man, a little under the middle size and age, with such
blue eyes as many Irishmen have, and agile in his movements and with
a slight tonsorial baldness--a penny might cover it--of the crown. His
front is convex. He droops at times like most of us, but for the greater
part he bears himself as valiantly as