A Modern Utopia | Page 3

a sparrow. Occasionally his hand
flies out with a fluttering gesture of illustration. And his Voice (which
is our medium henceforth) is an unattractive tenor that becomes at
times aggressive. Him you must imagine as sitting at a table reading a
manuscript about Utopias, a manuscript he holds in two hands that are
just a little fat at the wrist. The curtain rises upon him so. But
afterwards, if the devices of this declining art of literature prevail, you
will go with him through curious and interesting experiences. Yet, ever
and again, you will find him back at that little table, the manuscript in
his hand, and the expansion of his ratiocinations about Utopia
conscientiously resumed. The entertainment before you is neither the
set drama of the work of fiction you are accustomed to read, nor the set
lecturing of the essay you are accustomed to evade, but a hybrid of
these two. If you figure this owner of the Voice as sitting, a little
nervously, a little modestly, on a stage, with table, glass of water and
all complete, and myself as the intrusive chairman insisting with a
bland ruthlessness upon his "few words" of introduction before he
recedes into the wings, and if furthermore you figure a sheet behind our
friend on which moving pictures intermittently appear, and if finally
you suppose his subject to be the story of the adventure of his soul
among Utopian inquiries, you will be prepared for some at least of the
difficulties of this unworthy but unusual work.
But over against this writer here presented, there is also another earthly
person in the book, who gathers himself together into a distinct
personality only after a preliminary complication with the reader. This
person is spoken of as the botanist, and he is a leaner, rather taller,
graver and much less garrulous man. His face is weakly handsome and

done in tones of grey, he is fairish and grey-eyed, and you would
suspect him of dyspepsia. It is a justifiable suspicion. Men of this type,
the chairman remarks with a sudden intrusion of exposition, are
romantic with a shadow of meanness, they seek at once to conceal and
shape their sensuous cravings beneath egregious sentimentalities, they
get into mighty tangles and troubles with women, and he has had his
troubles. You will hear of them, for that is the quality of his type. He
gets no personal expression in this book, the Voice is always that
other's, but you gather much of the matter and something of the manner
of his interpolations from the asides and the tenour of the Voice.
So much by way of portraiture is necessary to present the explorers of
the Modern Utopia, which will unfold itself as a background to these
two enquiring figures. The image of a cinematograph entertainment is
the one to grasp. There will be an effect of these two people going to
and fro in front of the circle of a rather defective lantern, which
sometimes jams and sometimes gets out of focus, but which does
occasionally succeed in displaying on a screen a momentary moving
picture of Utopian conditions. Occasionally the picture goes out
altogether, the Voice argues and argues, and the footlights return, and
then you find yourself listening again to the rather too plump little man
at his table laboriously enunciating propositions, upon whom the
curtain rises now.




CHAPTER THE
FIRST
Topographical
Section 1
The Utopia of a modern dreamer must needs differ in one fundamental
aspect from the Nowheres and Utopias men planned before Darwin
quickened the thought of the world. Those were all perfect and static

States, a balance of happiness won for ever against the forces of unrest
and disorder that inhere in things. One beheld a healthy and simple
generation enjoying the fruits of the earth in an atmosphere of virtue
and happiness, to be followed by other virtuous, happy, and entirely
similar generations, until the Gods grew weary. Change and
development were dammed back by invincible dams for ever. But the
Modern Utopia must be not static but kinetic, must shape not as a
permanent state but as a hopeful stage, leading to a long ascent of
stages. Nowadays we do not resist and overcome the great stream of
things, but rather float upon it. We build now not citadels, but ships of
state. For one ordered arrangement of citizens rejoicing in an equality
of happiness safe and assured to them and their children for ever, we
have to plan "a flexible common compromise, in which a perpetually
novel succession of individualities may converge most effectually upon
a comprehensive onward development." That is the first, most
generalised difference between a Utopia based upon modern
conceptions and all the Utopias that were written in the former