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

the real

power of the world resides.”

 

“Ah!” said I, “and now we come to the thing that interests me most.

For it is quite clear, in my mind, that these samurai form the real

body of the State. All this time that I have spent going to and fro

in this planet, it has been growing upon me that this order of men

and women, wearing such a uniform as you wear, and with faces

strengthened by discipline and touched with devotion, is the

Utopian reality; but that for them, the whole fabric of these fair

appearances would crumble and tarnish, shrink and shrivel, until at

last, back I should be amidst the grime and disorders of the life

of earth. Tell me about these samurai, who remind me of Plato’s

guardians, who look like Knights Templars, who bear a name that

recalls the swordsmen of Japan … and whose uniform you yourself are

wearing. What are they? Are they an hereditary caste, a specially

educated order, an elected class? For, certainly, this world turns

upon them as a door upon its hinges.”

 

Section 4

 

“I follow the Common Rule, as many men do,” said my double,

answering my allusion to his uniform almost apologetically. “But my

own work is, in its nature, poietic; there is much dissatisfaction

with our isolation of criminals upon islands, and I am analysing the

psychology of prison officials and criminals in general with a view

to some better scheme. I am supposed to be ingenious with expedients

in this direction. Typically, the samurai are engaged in

administrative work. Practically the whole of the responsible rule

of the world is in their hands; all our head teachers and

disciplinary heads of colleges, our judges, barristers, employers of

labour beyond a certain limit, practising medical men, legislators,

must be samurai, and all the executive committees, and so forth,

that play so large a part in our affairs are drawn by lot

exclusively from them. The order is not hereditary—we know just

enough of biology and the uncertainties of inheritance to know how

silly that would be—and it does not require an early consecration

or novitiate or ceremonies and initiations of that sort. The samurai

are, in fact, volunteers. Any intelligent adult in a reasonably

healthy and efficient state may, at any age after five-and-twenty,

become one of the samurai, and take a hand in the universal

control.”

 

“Provided he follows the Rule.”

 

“Precisely—provided he follows the Rule.”

 

“I have heard the phrase, ‘voluntary nobility.’”

 

“That was the idea of our Founders. They made a noble and privileged

order—open to the whole world. No one could complain of an unjust

exclusion, for the only thing that could exclude from the order was

unwillingness or inability to follow the Rule.”

 

“But the Rule might easily have been made exclusive of special

lineages and races.”

 

“That wasn’t their intention. The Rule was planned to exclude the

dull, to be unattractive to the base, and to direct and co-ordinate

all sound citizens of good intent.”

 

“And it has succeeded?”

 

“As well as anything finite can. Life is still imperfect, still a

thick felt of dissatisfactions and perplexing problems, but most

certainly the quality of all its problems has been raised, and there

has been no war, no grinding poverty, not half the disease, and an

enormous increase of the order, beauty, and resources of life since

the samurai, who began as a private aggressive cult, won their way

to the rule of the world.”

 

“I would like to have that history,” I said. “I expect there was

fighting?” He nodded. “But first—tell me about the Rule.”

 

“The Rule aims to exclude the dull and base altogether, to

discipline the impulses and emotions, to develop a moral habit and

sustain a man in periods of stress, fatigue, and temptation, to

produce the maximum co-operation of all men of good intent, and, in

fact, to keep all the samurai in a state of moral and bodily health

and efficiency. It does as much of this as well as it can, but, of

course, like all general propositions, it does not do it in any case

with absolute precision. On the whole, it is so good that most men

who, like myself, are doing poietic work, and who would be just as

well off without obedience, find a satisfaction in adhesion. At

first, in the militant days, it was a trifle hard and uncompromising;

it had rather too strong an appeal to the moral prig and harshly

righteous man, but it has undergone, and still undergoes, revision

and expansion, and every year it becomes a little better adapted to

the need of a general rule of life that all men may try to follow.

We have now a whole literature, with many very fine things in it,

written about the Rule.”

 

He glanced at a little book on his desk, took it up as if to show it

me, then put it down again.

 

“The Rule consists of three parts; there is the list of things that

qualify, the list of things that must not be done, and the list of

things that must be done. Qualification exacts a little exertion, as

evidence of good faith, and it is designed to weed out the duller

dull and many of the base. Our schooling period ends now about

fourteen, and a small number of boys and girls—about three per

cent.—are set aside then as unteachable, as, in fact, nearly

idiotic; the rest go on to a college or upper school.”

 

“All your population?”

 

“With that exception.”

 

“Free?”

 

“Of course. And they pass out of college at eighteen. There are

several different college courses, but one or other must be followed

and a satisfactory examination passed at the end—perhaps ten per

cent. fail—and the Rule requires that the candidate for the samurai

must have passed.”

 

“But a very good man is sometimes an idle schoolboy.”

 

“We admit that. And so anyone who has failed to pass the college

leaving examination may at any time in later life sit for it

again—and again and again. Certain carefully specified things

excuse it altogether.”

 

“That makes it fair. But aren’t there people who cannot pass

examinations?”

 

“People of nervous instability–-”

 

“But they may be people of great though irregular poietic

gifts.”

 

“Exactly. That is quite possible. But we don’t want that sort of

people among our samurai. Passing an examination is a proof of a

certain steadiness of purpose, a certain self-control and

submission–-”

 

“Of a certain ‘ordinariness.’”

 

“Exactly what is wanted.”

 

“Of course, those others can follow other careers.”

 

“Yes. That’s what we want them to do. And, besides these two

educational qualifications, there are two others of a similar kind

of more debateable value. One is practically not in operation now.

Our Founders put it that a candidate for the samurai must possess

what they called a Technique, and, as it operated in the beginning,

he had to hold the qualification for a doctor, for a lawyer, for a

military officer, or an engineer, or teacher, or have painted

acceptable pictures, or written a book, or something of the sort. He

had, in fact, as people say, to ‘be something,’ or to have ‘done

something.’ It was a regulation of vague intention even in the

beginning, and it became catholic to the pitch of absurdity. To play

a violin skilfully has been accepted as sufficient for this

qualification. There may have been a reason in the past for this

provision; in those days there were many daughters of prosperous

parents—and even some sons—who did nothing whatever but idle

uninterestingly in the world, and the organisation might have

suffered by their invasion, but that reason has gone now, and the

requirement remains a merely ceremonial requirement. But, on the

other hand, another has developed. Our Founders made a collection of

several volumes, which they called, collectively, the Book of the

Samurai, a compilation of articles and extracts, poems and prose

pieces, which were supposed to embody the idea of the order. It was

to play the part for the samurai that the Bible did for the ancient

Hebrews. To tell you the truth, the stuff was of very unequal merit;

there was a lot of very second-rate rhetoric, and some nearly

namby-pamby verse. There was also included some very obscure verse

and prose that had the trick of seeming wise. But for all such

defects, much of the Book, from the very beginning, was splendid and

inspiring matter. From that time to this, the Book of the Samurai

has been under revision, much has been added, much rejected, and

some deliberately rewritten. Now, there is hardly anything in it

that is not beautiful and perfect in form. The whole range of noble

emotions finds expression there, and all the guiding ideas of our

Modern State. We have recently admitted some terse criticism of its

contents by a man named Henley.”

 

“Old Henley!”

 

“A man who died a little time ago.”

 

“I knew that man on earth. And he was in Utopia, too! He was a great

red-faced man, with fiery hair, a noisy, intolerant maker of

enemies, with a tender heart—and he was one of the samurai?”

 

“He defied the Rules.”

 

“He was a great man with wine. He wrote like wine; in our world he

wrote wine; red wine with the light shining through.”

 

“He was on the Committee that revised our Canon. For the revising

and bracing of our Canon is work for poietic as well as kinetic men.

You knew him in your world?”

 

“I wish I had. But I have seen him. On earth he wrote a thing … it

would run—

 

“Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever Gods may be,

For my unconquerable soul….”

 

“We have that here. All good earthly things are in Utopia also. We

put that in the Canon almost as soon as he died,” said my

double.

 

Section 5

 

“We have now a double Canon, a very fine First Canon, and a Second

Canon of work by living men and work of inferior quality, and a

satisfactory knowledge of both of these is the fourth intellectual

qualification for the samurai.”

 

“It must keep a sort of uniformity in your tone of thought.”

 

“The Canon pervades our whole world. As a matter of fact, very much

of it is read and learnt in the schools…. Next to the intellectual

qualification comes the physical, the man must be in sound health,

free from certain foul, avoidable, and demoralising diseases, and in

good training. We reject men who are fat, or thin and flabby, or

whose nerves are shaky—we refer them back to training. And finally

the man or woman must be fully adult.”

 

“Twenty-one? But you said twenty-five!”

 

“The age has varied. At first it was twenty-five or over; then the

minimum became twenty-five for men and twenty-one for women. Now

there is a feeling that it ought to be raised. We don’t want to take

advantage of mere boy and girl emotions—men of my way of thinking,

at any rate, don’t—we want to get our samurai with experiences,

with a settled mature conviction. Our hygiene and regimen are

rapidly pushing back old age and death, and keeping men hale and

hearty to eighty and more. There’s no need to hurry the young. Let

them have a chance of wine, love, and song; let them feel the bite

of full-bodied desire, and know what devils they have to reckon

with.”

 

“But there is a certain fine sort of youth that knows the

desirability of the better things at nineteen.”

 

“They may