A Modern Utopia, H. G. Wells [i like reading books .txt] 📗

have has the

most insistent disposition to square itself with every fact in the

universe. It hypothesises very boldly, but on the other hand it will

not gravely make believe. Now the botanist’s imagination is always

busy with the most impossible make-believe. That is the way with all

children I know. But it seems to me one ought to pass out of it. It

isn’t as though the world was an untidy nursery; it is a place of

splendours indescribable for all who will lift its veils. It may be

he is essentially different from me, but I am much more inclined to

think he is simply more childish. Always it is make-believe. He

believes that horses are beautiful creatures for example, dogs are

beautiful creatures, that some women are inexpressibly lovely, and

he makes believe that this is always so. Never a word of criticism

of horse or dog or woman! Never a word of criticism of his

impeccable friends! Then there is his botany. He makes believe that

all the vegetable kingdom is mystically perfect and exemplary, that

all flowers smell deliciously and are exquisitely beautiful, that

Drosera does not hurt flies very much, and that onions do not smell.

Most of the universe does not interest this nature lover at all. But

I know, and I am querulously incapable of understanding why everyone

else does not know, that a horse is beautiful in one way and quite

ugly in another, that everything has this shot-silk quality, and is

all the finer for that. When people talk of a horse as an ugly

animal I think of its beautiful moments, but when I hear a flow of

indiscriminate praise of its beauty I think of such an aspect as one

gets for example from a dog-cart, the fiddle-shaped back, and that

distressing blade of the neck, the narrow clumsy place between the

ears, and the ugly glimpse of cheek. There is, indeed, no beauty

whatever save that transitory thing that comes and comes again; all

beauty is really the beauty of expression, is really kinetic and

momentary. That is true even of those triumphs of static endeavour

achieved by Greece. The Greek temple, for example, is a barn with a

face that at a certain angle of vision and in a certain light has a

great calm beauty.

 

But where are we drifting? All such things, I hold, are cases of

more and less, and of the right moment and the right aspect, even

the things I most esteem. There is no perfection, there is no

enduring treasure. This pet dog’s beautiful affection, I say, or

this other sensuous or imaginative delight, is no doubt good, but it

can be put aside if it is incompatible with some other and wider

good. You cannot focus all good things together.

 

All right action and all wise action is surely sound judgment and

courageous abandonment in the matter of such incompatibilities. If

I cannot imagine thoughts and feelings in a dog’s brain that cannot

possibly be there, at least I can imagine things in the future of

men that might be there had we the will to demand them….

 

“I don’t like this Utopia,” the botanist repeats. “You don’t

understand about dogs. To me they’re human beings—and more! There

used to be such a jolly old dog at my aunt’s at Frognal when I was

a boy–-”

 

But I do not heed his anecdote. Something—something of the nature

of conscience—has suddenly jerked back the memory of that beer I

drank at Hospenthal, and puts an accusing finger on the memory.

 

I never have had a pet animal, I confess, though I have been fairly

popular with kittens. But with regard to a certain petting of

myself–-?

 

Perhaps I was premature about that beer. I have had no pet animals,

but I perceive if the Modern Utopia is going to demand the sacrifice

of the love of animals, which is, in its way, a very fine thing

indeed, so much the more readily may it demand the sacrifice of many

other indulgences, some of which are not even fine in the lowest

degree.

 

It is curious this haunting insistence upon sacrifice and

discipline!

 

It is slowly becoming my dominant thought that the sort of people

whose will this Utopia embodies must be people a little heedless of

small pleasures. You cannot focus all good things at the same time.

That is my chief discovery in these meditations at Lucerne. Much of

the rest of this Utopia I had in a sort of way anticipated, but not

this. I wonder if I shall see my Utopian self for long and be able

to talk to him freely….

 

We lie in the petal-strewn grass under some Judas trees beside the

lake shore, as I meander among these thoughts, and each of us,

disregardful of his companion, follows his own associations.

 

“Very remarkable,” I say, discovering that the botanist has come to

an end with his story of that Frognal dog.

 

“You’d wonder how he knew,” he says.

 

“You would.”

 

I nibble a green blade.

 

“Do you realise quite,” I ask, “that within a week we shall face our

Utopian selves and measure something of what we might have

been?”

 

The botanist’s face clouds. He rolls over, sits up abruptly and puts

his lean hands about his knees.

 

“I don’t like to think about it,” he says. “What is the good of

reckoning … might have beens?”

 

Section 5

 

It is pleasant to think of one’s puzzling the organised wisdom of

so superior a planet as this Utopia, this moral monster State my

Frankenstein of reasoning has made, and to that pitch we have come.

When we are next in the presence of our Lucerne official, he has the

bearing of a man who faces a mystification beyond his powers, an

incredible disarrangement of the order of Nature. Here, for the

first time in the records of Utopian science, are two cases—not

simply one but two, and these in each other’s company!—of

duplicated thumbmarks. This, coupled with a cock-and-bull story

of an instantaneous transfer from some planet unknown to Utopian

astronomy. That he and all his world exists only upon a hypothesis

that would explain everyone of these difficulties absolutely, is

scarcely likely to occur to his obviously unphilosophic mind.

 

The official eye is more eloquent than the official lips and asks

almost urgently, “What in this immeasurable universe have you

managed to do to your thumbs? And why?” But he is only a very

inferior sort of official indeed, a mere clerk of the post, and he

has all the guarded reserve of your thoroughly unoriginal man. “You

are not the two persons I ascertained you were,” he says, with the

note of one resigned to communion with unreason; “because you”—he

indicates me—“are evidently at your residence in London.” I smile.

“That gentleman”—he points a pen at the botanist in a manner that

is intended to dismiss my smile once for all—“will be in London

next week. He will be returning next Friday from a special mission

to investigate the fungoid parasites that have been attacking the

cinchona trees in Ceylon.”

 

The botanist blesses his heart.

 

“Consequently”—the official sighs at the burthen of such nonsense,

“you will have to go and consult with—the people you ought to

be.”

 

I betray a faint amusement.

 

“You will have to end by believing in our planet,” I say.

 

He waggles a negation with his head. He would intimate his position

is too responsible a one for jesting, and both of us in our several

ways enjoy the pleasure we poor humans have in meeting with

intellectual inferiority. “The Standing Committee of Identification,”

he says, with an eye on a memorandum, “has remitted your case to the

Research Professor of Anthropology in the University of London, and

they want you to go there, if you will, and talk to him.”

 

“What else can we do?” says the botanist.

 

“There’s no positive compulsion,” he remarks, “but your work here

will probably cease. Here–-” he pushed the neat slips of paper

towards us—“are your tickets for London, and a small but sufficient

supply of money,”—he indicates two piles of coins and paper on

either hand of him—“for a day or so there.” He proceeds in the

same dry manner to inform us we are invited to call at our earliest

convenience upon our doubles, and upon the Professor, who is to

investigate our case.

 

“And then?”

 

He pulls down the corners of his mouth in a wry deprecatory smile,

eyes us obliquely under a crumpled brow, shrugs his shoulders, and

shows us the palms of his hands.

 

On earth, where there is nationality, this would have been a

Frenchman—the inferior sort of Frenchman—the sort whose only

happiness is in the routine security of Government employment.

 

Section 6

 

London will be the first Utopian city centre we shall see.

 

We shall find ourselves there with not a little amazement. It will

be our first experience of the swift long distance travel of Utopia,

and I have an idea—I know not why—that we should make the journey

by night. Perhaps I think so because the ideal of long-distance

travel is surely a restful translation less suitable for the active

hours.

 

We shall dine and gossip and drink coffee at the pretty little

tables under the lantern-lit trees, we shall visit the theatre, and

decide to sup in the train, and so come at last to the station.

There we shall find pleasant rooms with seats and books—luggage

all neatly elsewhere—and doors that we shall imagine give upon a

platform. Our cloaks and hats and such-like outdoor impedimenta will

be taken in the hall and neatly labelled for London, we shall

exchange our shoes for slippers there, and we shall sit down like

men in a club. An officious little bell will presently call our

attention to a label “London” on the doorway, and an excellent

phonograph will enforce that notice with infinite civility. The

doors will open, and we shall walk through into an equally

comfortable gallery.

 

“Where is the train for London?” we shall ask a uniformed fellow

Utopian.

 

“This is the train for London,” he will say.

 

There will be a shutting of doors, and the botanist and I, trying

not to feel too childish, will walk exploring through the capacious

train.

 

The resemblance to a club will strike us both. “A good club,” the

botanist will correct me.

 

When one travels beyond a certain speed, there is nothing but

fatigue in looking out of a window, and this corridor train, twice

the width of its poor terrestrial brother, will have no need of that

distraction. The simple device of abandoning any but a few windows,

and those set high, gives the wall space of the long corridors to

books; the middle part of the train is indeed a comfortable library

with abundant armchairs and couches, each with its green-shaded

light, and soft carpets upon the soundproof floor. Further on will

be a news-room, with a noiseless but busy tape at one corner,

printing off messages from the wires by the wayside, and further

still, rooms for gossip and smoking, a billiard room, and the dining

car. Behind we shall come to bedrooms, bathrooms, the hairdresser,

and so forth.

 

“When shall we start?” I ask presently, as we return, rather like

bashful yokels, to the library, and the old gentleman reading the

Arabian Nights in the armchair in the corner glances up at me with a

sudden curiosity.

 

The botanist touches my arm and nods towards a pretty little

lead-paned window, through which we see a village sleeping under

cloudy moonlight go flashing by. Then a skylit lake,