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

keep the Rule at any time—without its privileges. But a

man who breaks the Rule after his adult adhesion at five-and-twenty

is no more in the samurai for ever. Before that age he is free to

break it and repent.”

 

“And now, what is forbidden?”

 

“We forbid a good deal. Many small pleasures do no great harm, but

we think it well to forbid them, none the less, so that we can weed

out the self-indulgent. We think that a constant resistance to

little seductions is good for a man’s quality. At any rate, it shows

that a man is prepared to pay something for his honour and

privileges. We prescribe a regimen of food, forbid tobacco, wine, or

any alcoholic drink, all narcotic drugs–-”

 

“Meat?”

 

“In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to

be. But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughter-houses. And, in

a population that is all educated, and at about the same level of

physical refinement, it is practically impossible to find anyone who

will hew a dead ox or pig. We never settled the hygienic question of

meat-eating at all. This other aspect decided us. I can still

remember, as a boy, the rejoicings over the closing of the last

slaughter-house.”

 

“You eat fish.”

 

“It isn’t a matter of logic. In our barbaric past horrible flayed

carcases of brutes dripping blood, were hung for sale in the public

streets.” He shrugged his shoulders.

 

“They do that still in London—in my world,” I said.

 

He looked again at my laxer, coarser face, and did not say whatever

thought had passed across his mind.

 

“Originally the samurai were forbidden usury, that is to say the

lending of money at fixed rates of interest. They are still under

that interdiction, but since our commercial code practically

prevents usury altogether, and our law will not recognise contracts

for interest upon private accommodation loans to unprosperous

borrowers, it is now scarcely necessary. The idea of a man growing

richer by mere inaction and at the expense of an impoverishing

debtor, is profoundly distasteful to Utopian ideas, and our State

insists pretty effectually now upon the participation of the lender

in the borrower’s risks. This, however, is only one part of a series

of limitations of the same character. It is felt that to buy simply

in order to sell again brings out many unsocial human qualities; it

makes a man seek to enhance profits and falsify values, and so the

samurai are forbidden to buy to sell on their own account or for any

employer save the State, unless some process of manufacture changes

the nature of the commodity (a mere change in bulk or packing does

not suffice), and they are forbidden salesmanship and all its arts.

Consequently they cannot be hotel-keepers, or hotel proprietors, or

hotel shareholders, and a doctor—all practising doctors must be

samurai—cannot sell drugs except as a public servant of the

municipality or the State.”

 

“That, of course, runs counter to all our current terrestrial

ideas,” I said. “We are obsessed by the power of money. These rules

will work out as a vow of moderate poverty, and if your samurai are

an order of poor men–-”

 

“They need not be. Samurai who have invented, organised, and

developed new industries, have become rich men, and many men who

have grown rich by brilliant and original trading have subsequently

become samurai.”

 

“But these are exceptional cases. The bulk of your money-making

business must be confined to men who are not samurai. You must have

a class of rich, powerful outsiders–-”

 

“Have we?”

 

“I don’t see the evidences of them.”

 

“As a matter of fact, we have such people! There are rich traders,

men who have made discoveries in the economy of distribution, or who

have called attention by intelligent, truthful advertisement to the

possibilities of neglected commodities, for example.”

 

“But aren’t they a power?”

 

“Why should they be?”

 

“Wealth is power.”

 

I had to explain that phrase.

 

He protested. “Wealth,” he said, “is no sort of power at all unless

you make it one. If it is so in your world it is so by inadvertency.

Wealth is a State-made thing, a convention, the most artificial of

powers. You can, by subtle statesmanship, contrive what it shall buy

and what it shall not. In your world it would seem you have made

leisure, movement, any sort of freedom, life itself, purchaseable.

The more fools you! A poor working man with you is a man in

discomfort and fear. No wonder your rich have power. But here a

reasonable leisure, a decent life, is to be had by every man on

easier terms than by selling himself to the rich. And rich as men

are here, there is no private fortune in the whole world that is

more than a little thing beside the wealth of the State. The samurai

control the State and the wealth of the State, and by their vows

they may not avail themselves of any of the coarser pleasures wealth

can still buy. Where, then, is the power of your wealthy man?”

 

“But, then—where is the incentive–-?”

 

“Oh! a man gets things for himself with wealth—no end of things.

But little or no power over his fellows—unless they are

exceptionally weak or self-indulgent persons.”

 

I reflected. “What else may not the samurai do?”

 

“Acting, singing, or reciting are forbidden them, though they may

lecture authoritatively or debate. But professional mimicry is not

only held to be undignified in a man or woman, but to weaken and

corrupt the soul; the mind becomes foolishly dependent on applause,

over-skilful in producing tawdry and momentary illusions of

excellence; it is our experience that actors and actresses as a

class are loud, ignoble, and insincere. If they have not such

flamboyant qualities then they are tepid and ineffectual players.

Nor may the samurai do personal services, except in the matter of

medicine or surgery; they may not be barbers, for example, nor inn

waiters, nor boot cleaners. But, nowadays, we have scarcely any

barbers or boot cleaners; men do these things for themselves. Nor

may a man under the Rule be any man’s servant, pledged to do

whatever he is told. He may neither be a servant nor keep one; he

must shave and dress and serve himself, carry his own food from the

helper’s place to the table, redd his sleeping room, and leave it

clean….”

 

“That is all easy enough in a world as ordered as yours. I suppose

no samurai may bet?”

 

“Absolutely not. He may insure his life and his old age for the

better equipment of his children, or for certain other specified

ends, but that is all his dealings with chance. And he is also

forbidden to play games in public or to watch them being played.

Certain dangerous and hardy sports and exercises are prescribed for

him, but not competitive sports between man and man or side and

side. That lesson was learnt long ago before the coming of the

samurai. Gentlemen of honour, according to the old standards, rode

horses, raced chariots, fought, and played competitive games of

skill, and the dull, cowardly and base came in thousands to admire,

and howl, and bet. The gentlemen of honour degenerated fast enough

into a sort of athletic prostitute, with all the defects, all the

vanity, trickery, and self-assertion of the common actor, and with

even less intelligence. Our Founders made no peace with this

organisation of public sports. They did not spend their lives to

secure for all men and women on the earth freedom, health, and

leisure, in order that they might waste lives in such folly.”

 

“We have those abuses,” I said, “but some of our earthly games have

a fine side. There is a game called cricket. It is a fine, generous

game.”

 

“Our boys play that, and men too. But it is thought rather puerile

to give very much time to it; men should have graver interests. It

was undignified and unpleasant for the samurai to play conspicuously

ill, and impossible for them to play so constantly as to keep hand

and eye in training against the man who was fool enough and cheap

enough to become an expert. Cricket, tennis, fives, billiards–-.

You will find clubs and a class of men to play all these things in

Utopia, but not the samurai. And they must play their games as

games, not as displays; the price of a privacy for playing cricket,

so that they could charge for admission, would be overwhelmingly

high…. Negroes are often very clever at cricket. For a time, most

of the samurai had their swordplay, but few do those exercises now,

and until about fifty years ago they went out for military training,

a fortnight in every year, marching long distances, sleeping in the

open, carrying provisions, and sham fighting over unfamiliar ground

dotted with disappearing targets. There was a curious inability in

our world to realise that war was really over for good and all.”

 

“And now,” I said, “haven’t we got very nearly to the end of your

prohibitions? You have forbidden alcohol, drugs, smoking, betting,

and usury, games, trade, servants. But isn’t there a vow of

Chastity?”

 

“That is the Rule for your earthly orders?”

 

“Yes—except, if I remember rightly, for Plato’s Guardians.”

 

“There is a Rule of Chastity here—but not of Celibacy. We know

quite clearly that civilisation is an artificial arrangement, and

that all the physical and emotional instincts of man are too strong,

and his natural instinct of restraint too weak, for him to live

easily in the civilised State. Civilisation has developed far more

rapidly than man has modified. Under the unnatural perfection of

security, liberty and abundance our civilisation has attained, the

normal untrained human being is disposed to excess in almost every

direction; he tends to eat too much and too elaborately, to drink

too much, to become lazy faster than his work can be reduced, to

waste his interest upon displays, and to make love too much and too

elaborately. He gets out of training, and concentrates upon egoistic

or erotic broodings. The past history of our race is very largely a

history of social collapses due to demoralisation by indulgences

following security and abundance. In the time of our Founders the

signs of a world-wide epoch of prosperity and relaxation were

plentiful. Both sexes drifted towards sexual excesses, the men

towards sentimental extravagances, imbecile devotions, and the

complication and refinement of physical indulgences; the women

towards those expansions and differentiations of feeling that find

expression in music and costly and distinguished dress. Both sexes

became unstable and promiscuous. The whole world seemed disposed to

do exactly the same thing with its sexual interest as it had done

with its appetite for food and drink—make the most of it.”

 

He paused.

 

“Satiety came to help you,” I said.

 

“Destruction may come before satiety. Our Founders organised motives

from all sorts of sources, but I think the chief force to give men

self-control is Pride. Pride may not be the noblest thing in the

soul, but it is the best King there, for all that. They looked to it

to keep a man clean and sound and sane. In this matter, as in all

matters of natural desire, they held no appetite must be glutted, no

appetite must have artificial whets, and also and equally that no

appetite should be starved. A man must come from the table

satisfied, but not replete. And, in the matter of love, a straight

and clean desire for a clean and straight fellow-creature was our

Founders’ ideal. They enjoined marriage between equals as the

samurai’s duty to the race,