2. A Loiterer in a Living World

by H.G. Wells

　　Section 1

　　In a few days Mr. Barnstaple had recovered strength of body andmind. He no longer lay in bed in a loggia, filled with self-pityand the beauty of a world subdued; he went about freely and wassoon walking long distances over the Utopian countryside, seekingacquaintances and learning more and more of this wonderland ofaccomplished human desires.

　　For that is how it most impressed him. Nearly all the greater evilsof human life had been conquered; war, pestilence and malaise,famine and poverty had been swept out of human experience. Thedreams of artists, of perfected and lovely bodies and of a worldtransfigured to harmony and beauty had been realized; the spiritsof order and organization ruled triumphant. Every aspect of humanlife had been changed by these achievements.

　　The climate of this Valley of Rest was bland and sunny like theclimate of South Europe, but nearly everything characteristic of theItalian or Spanish scene had gone. Here were no bent and aged cronescarrying burthens, no chattering pursuit by beggars, no raggedworkers lowering by the wayside. The puny terracing, the distressingaccumulations of hand cultivation, the gnarled olives, hacked vines,the little patches of grain or fruit, and the grudged litigiousirrigation of those primitive conditions, gave place to sweepingschemes of conservation, to a broad and subtle handling of slopeand soil and sunshine. No meagre goats nor sheep, child-tended,cropped among the stones, no tethered cattle ate their apportionedcircles of herbage and no more. There were no hovels by thewayside, no shrines with tortured, blood-oozing images, no slinkingmis-begotten curs nor beaten beasts sweating and panting betweentheir overloaded paniers at the steeper places of rutted,rock-strewn and dung-strewn roads. Instead the great smoothindestructible ways swept in easy gradients through the land,leaping gorges and crossing valleys upon wide-arched viaducts,piercing cathedral-like aisles through the hillsides, throwing offbastions to command some special splendour of the land. Here wereresting places and shelters, stairways clambering to pleasantarbours and summer-houses where friends might talk and loversshelter and rejoice. Here were groves and avenues of such trees ashe had never seen before. For on earth as yet there is scarcely sucha thing as an altogether healthy fully grown tree, nearly all ourtrees are bored and consumed by parasites, rotten and tumorous withfungi, more gnarled and crippled and disease-twisted even thanmankind.

　　The landscape had absorbed the patient design of five-and-twentycenturies. In one place Mr. Barnstaple found great works inprogress; a bridge was being replaced, not because it was outworn,but because someone had produced a bolder, more delightful design.

　　For a time he did not observe the absence of telephonic ortelegraphic communication; the posts and wires that mark a moderncountryside had disappeared. The reasons for that difference hewas to learn later. Nor did he at first miss the railway, therailway station and the wayside inn. He perceived that the frequentbuildings must have specific functions, that people came and wentfrom them with an appearance of interest and preoccupation, thatfrom some of them seemed to come a hum and whir of activity; workof many sorts was certainly in progress; but his ideas of themechanical organization of this new world were too vague andtentative as yet for him to attempt to fix any significance to thissort of place or that. He walked agape like a savage in a garden.

　　He never came to nor saw any towns. The reason for any such closeaccumulations of human beings had largely disappeared. In certainplaces, he learnt, there were gatherings of people for studies,mutual stimulation, or other convenient exchanges, in great seriesof communicating buildings; but he never visited any of thesecentres.

　　And about this world went the tall people of Utopia, fair andwonderful, smiling or making some friendly gesture as they passedhim but giving him little chance for questions or intercourse. Theytravelled swiftly in machines upon the high road or walked, and everand again the shadow of a silent soaring aeroplane would pass overhim. He went a little in awe of these people and felt himself aqueer creature when he met their eyes. For like the gods of Greeceand Rome theirs was a cleansed and perfected humanity, and it seemedto him that they were gods. Even the great tame beasts that walkedfreely about this world had a certain divinity that checked theexpression of Mr. Barnstaple's friendliness.

　　Section 2

　　Presently he found a companion for his rambles, a boy of thirteen, acousin of Lychnis, named Crystal. He was a curly-headed youngster,brown-eyed as she was; and he was reading history in a holiday stageof his education.

　　So far as Mr. Barnstaple could gather the more serious part ofhis intellectual training was in mathematical work interrelatedto physical and chemical science, but all that was beyond anEarthling's range of ideas. Much of this work seemed to be done inco-operation with other boys, and to be what we should call researchon earth. Nor could Mr. Barnstaple master the nature of some othersort of study which seemed to turn upon refinements of expression.But the history brought them together. The boy was just learningabout the growth of the Utopian social system out of the effortsand experiences of the Ages of Confusion. His imagination was alivewith the tragic struggles upon which the present order of Utopiawas founded, he had a hundred questions for Mr. Barnstaple, and hewas full of explicit information which was destined presently tosink down and become part of the foundations of his adult mind.Mr. Barnstaple was as good as a book to him, and he was as good asa guide to Mr. Barnstaple. They went about together talking upona footing of the completest equality, this rather exceptionallyintelligent Earthling and this Utopian stripling, who topped himby perhaps an inch when they stood side by side.

　　The boy had the broad facts of Utopian history at his fingers' ends.He could explain and find an interest in explaining how artificialand upheld the peace and beauty of Utopia still were. Utopians werein essence, he said, very much what their ancestors had been inthe beginnings of the newer stone-age, fifteen thousand or twentythousand years ago. They were still very much what Earthlings hadbeen in the corresponding period. Since then there had been onlysix hundred or seven hundred generations and no time for any veryfundamental changes in the race. There had not been even a generaladmixture of races. On Utopia as on earth there had been duskyand brown peoples, and they remained distinct. The various racesmingled socially but did not interbreed very much; rather theypurified and intensified their racial gifts and beauties. Therewas often very passionate love between people of contrasted race,but rarely did such love come to procreation. There had been acertain deliberate elimination of ugly, malignant, narrow, stupidand gloomy types during the past dozen centuries or so; but exceptfor the fuller realization of his latent possibilities, the commonman in Utopia was very little different from the ordinary energeticand able people of a later stone-age or early bronze-age community.They were infinitely better nourished, trained and educated, andmentally and physically their condition was clean and fit, but theywere the same flesh and nature as we are.

　　"But," said Mr. Barnstaple, and struggled with that idea for atime. "Do you mean to tell me that half the babies born on earthto-day might grow to be such gods as these people I meet?"

　　"Given our air, given our atmosphere."

　　"Given your heritage."

　　"Given our freedom."

　　In the past of Utopia, in the Age of Confusion, Mr. Barnstaple hadto remember, everyone had grown up with a crippled or a thwartedwill, hampered by vain restrictions or misled by plausibledelusions. Utopia still bore it in mind that human nature wasfundamentally animal and savage and had to be adapted to socialneeds, but Utopia had learnt the better methods of adaptation--afterendless failures of compulsion, cruelty and deception. "On earth wetame our animals with hot irons and our fellow men by violenceand fraud," said Mr. Barnstaple, and described the schools andbooks, newspapers and public discussions of the early twentiethcentury to his incredulous companion. "You cannot imagine how beatenand fearful even decent people are upon earth. You learn of theAge of Confusion in your histories but you do not know what therealities of a bad mental atmosphere, an atmosphere of feeble laws,hates and superstitions, are. As night goes round the earth alwaysthere are hundreds of thousands of people who should be sleeping,lying awake, fearing a bully, fearing a cruel competition, dreadinglest they cannot make good, ill of some illness they cannotcomprehend, distressed by some irrational quarrel, maddened by somethwarted instinct or some suppressed and perverted desire."...

　　Crystal admitted that it was hard to think now of the Age ofConfusion in terms of misery. Much of the every-day misery of earthwas now inconceivable. Very slowly Utopia had evolved its presentharmony of law and custom and education. Man was no longer crippledand compelled; it was recognized that he was fundamentally an animaland that his daily life must follow the round of appetites satisfiedand instincts released. The daily texture of Utopian life waswoven of various and interesting foods and drinks, of free andentertaining exercise and work, of sweet sleep and of the interestand happiness of fearless and spiteless love-making. Inhibition wasat a minimum. But where the power of Utopian education began wasafter the animal had been satisfied and disposed of. The jewel onthe reptile's head that had brought Utopia out of the confusions ofhuman life, was curiosity, the play impulse, prolonged and expandedin adult life into an insatiable appetite for knowledge and anhabitual creative urgency. All Utopians had become as littlechildren, learners and makers.

　　It was strange to hear this boy speaking so plainly and clearlyof the educational process to which he was being subjected, andparticularly to find he could talk so frankly of love.

　　An earthly bashfulness almost prevented Mr. Barnstaple from asking,"But you-- You do not make love?"

　　"I have had curiosities," said the boy, evidently saying what he hadbeen taught to say. "But it is not necessary nor becoming to makelove too early in life nor to let desire take hold of one. Itweakens youth to become too early possessed by desire--which oftenwill not leave one again. It spoils and cripples the imagination.I want to do good work as my father has done before me."

　　Mr. Barnstaple glanced at the beautiful young profile at his sideand was suddenly troubled by memories of a certain study number fourat school, and of some ugly phases of his adolescence, the stuffy,secret room, the hot and ugly fact. He felt a beastlier Earthlingthan ever. "Heigho!" he sighed. "But this world of yours is as cleanas starlight and as sweet as cold water on a dusty day."

　　"Many people I love," said the boy, "but not with passion. Some daythat will come. But one must not be too eager and anxious to meetpassionate love or one might make-believe and give or snatch at asham.... There is no hurry. No one will prevent me when my timecomes. All good things come to one in this world in their own goodtime."

　　But work one does not wait for; one's work, since it concerns one'sown self only, one goes to meet. Crystal thought very much about thework that he might do. It seemed to Mr. Barnstaple that work, in thesense of uncongenial toil, had almost disappeared from Utopia. Yetall Utopia was working. Everyone was doing work that fitted naturalaptitudes and appealed to the imagination of the worker. Everyoneworked happily and eagerly--as those people we call geniuses do onour earth.

　　For suddenly Mr. Barnstaple found himself telling Crystal of thehappiness of the true artist, of the true scientific worker, ofthe original man even on earth as it is to-day. They, too, likethe Utopians, do work that concerns themselves and is in their ownnature for great ends. Of all Earthlings they are the most enviable.

　　"If such men are not happy on earth," said Mr. Barnstaple, "it isbecause they are touched with vulgarity and still heed the soiledsuccesses and honours and satisfactions of vulgar men, still feelneglect and limitation that should concern them no more. But to himwho has seen the sun shine in Utopia surely the utmost honour andglory of earth can signify no more and be no more desirable thanthe complimentary spittle of the chieftain and a string of barbaricbeads."

　　Section 3

　　Crystal was still of an age to be proud of his savoir faire. Heshowed Mr. Barnstaple his books and told him of his tutors andexercises.

　　Utopia still made use of printed books; books were still thesimplest, clearest way of bringing statement before a tranquil mind.Crystal's books were very beautifully bound in flexible leather thathis mother had tooled for him very prettily, and they were made ofhand-made paper. The lettering was some fluent phonetic script thatMr. Barnstaple could not understand. It reminded him of Arabic; andfrequent sketches, outline maps and diagrams were interpolated.Crystal was advised in his holiday reading by a tutor for whom heprepared a sort of exercise report, and he supplemented his readingby visits to museums; but there was no educational museum convenientin the Valley of Peace for Mr. Barnstaple to visit.

　　Crystal had passed out of the opening stage of education which wascarried on, he said, upon large educational estates given up whollyto the lives of children. Education up to eleven or twelve seemedto be much more carefully watched and guarded and taken care of inUtopia than upon earth. Shocks to the imagination, fear and evilsuggestions were warded off as carefully as were infection andphysical disaster; by eight or nine the foundations of a Utopiancharacter were surely laid, habits of cleanliness, truth, candourand helpfulness, confidence in the world, fearlessness and a senseof belonging to the great purpose of the race.

　　Only after nine or ten did the child go outside the garden of itsearly growth and begin to see the ordinary ways of the world. Untilthat age the care of the children was largely in the hands ofnurses and teachers, but after that time the parents became moreof a factor than they had been in a youngster's life. It was alwaysa custom for the parents of a child to be near and to see thatchild in its nursery days, but just when earthly parents tended toseparate from their children as they went away to school or wentinto business, Utopian parentage grew to be something closer. Therewas an idea in Utopia that between parent and child there was anecessary temperamental sympathy; children looked forward to thefriendship and company of their parents, and parents looked forwardto the interest of their children's adolescence, and though a parenthad practically no power over a son or daughter, he or she tooknaturally the position of advocate, adviser and sympathetic friend.The friendship was all the franker and closer because of that lackof power, and all the easier because age for age the Utopians wereso much younger and fresher-minded than Earthlings. Crystal itseemed had a very great passion for his mother. He was very proud ofhis father, who was a wonderful painter and designer; but it was hismother who possessed the boy's heart.

　　On his second walk with Mr. Barnstaple he said he was going to hearfrom his mother, and Mr. Barnstaple was shown the equivalent ofcorrespondence in Utopia. Crystal carried a little bundle of wiresand light rods; and presently coming to a place where a pillarstood in the midst of a lawn he spread this affair out like a longcat's cradle and tapped a little stud in the pillar with a key thathe carried on a light gold chain about his neck. Then he took up areceiver attached to his apparatus, and spoke aloud and listenedand presently heard a voice.

　　It was a very pleasant woman's voice; it talked to Crystal for atime without interruption, and then Crystal talked back, andafterwards there were other voices, some of which Crystal answeredand some which he heard without replying. Then he gathered up hisapparatus again.

　　This Mr. Barnstaple learnt was the Utopian equivalent of letter andtelephone. For in Utopia, except by previous arrangement, people donot talk together on the telephone. A message is sent to the stationof the district in which the recipient is known to be, and thereit waits until he chooses to tap his accumulated messages. Andany that one wishes to repeat can be repeated. Then he talks backto the senders and dispatches any other messages he wishes. Thetransmission is wireless. The little pillars supply electric powerfor transmission or for any other purpose the Utopians require.For example, the gardeners resort to them to run their mowers anddiggers and rakes and rollers.

　　Far away across the valley Crystal pointed out the district stationat which this correspondence gathered and was dispersed. Only a fewpeople were on duty there; almost all the connexions were automatic.The messages came and went from any part of the planet.

　　This set Mr. Barnstaple going upon a long string of questions.

　　He discovered for the first time that the message organization ofUtopia had a complete knowledge of the whereabouts of every soulupon the planet. It had a record of every living person and it knewin what message district he was. Everyone was indexed and noted.

　　To Mr. Barnstaple, accustomed to the crudities and dishonesties ofearthly governments, this was an almost terrifying discovery. "Onearth that would be the means of unending blackmail and tyranny,"he said. "Everyone would lie open to espionage. We had a fellow atScotland Yard. If he had been in your communication department wouldhave made life in Utopia intolerable in week. You cannot imagine thenuisance he was."...

　　Mr. Barnstaple had to explain to Crystal what blackmail meant. Itwas like that in Utopia to begin with, Crystal said. Just as onearth so in Utopia there was the same natural disposition to useknowledge and power to the disadvantage of one's fellows, and thesame jealousy of having one's personal facts known. In the stone-agein Utopia men kept their true names secret and could only be spokenof by nicknames. They feared magic abuses. "Some savages still dothat on earth," said Mr. Barnstaple. It was only very slowlythat Utopians came to trust doctors and dentists and only veryslowly that doctors and dentists became trustworthy. It was a matterof scores of centuries before the chief abuses of the confidencesand trusts necessary to a modern social organization could beeffectively corrected.

　　Every young Utopian had to learn the Five Principles of Liberty,without which civilization is impossible. The first was thePrinciple of Privacy. This is that all individual personal facts areprivate between the citizen and the public organization to which heentrusts them, and can be used only for his convenience and with hissanction. Of course all such facts are available for statisticaluses, but not as individual personal facts. And the second principleis the Principle of Free Movement. A citizen, subject to the duedischarge of his public obligations, may go without permission orexplanation to any part of the Utopian planet. All the means oftransport are freely at his service. Every Utopian may change hissurroundings, his climate and his social atmosphere as he will. Thethird principle is the Principle of Unlimited Knowledge. All thatis known in Utopia, except individual personal facts about livingpeople, is on record and as easily available as a perfected seriesof indices, libraries, museums and inquiry offices can make it.Whatever the Utopian desires to know he may know with the utmostclearness, exactness and facility so far as his powers of knowingand his industry go. Nothing is kept from him and nothing ismisrepresented to him. And that brought Mr. Barnstaple to the fourthPrinciple of Liberty, which was that Lying is the Blackest Crime.

　　Crystal's definition of Lying was a sweeping one; the inexactstatement of facts, even the suppression of a material fact, waslying.

　　"Where there are lies there cannot be freedom."

　　Mr. Barnstaple was mightily taken by this idea. It seemed at oncequite fresh to him and one that he had always unconsciouslyentertained. Half the difference between Utopia and our world heasserted lay in this, that our atmosphere was dense and poisonouswith lies and shams.888

　　"When one comes to think of it," said Mr. Barnstaple, and began toexpatiate to Crystal upon all the falsehoods of human life. Thefundamental assumptions of earthly associations were still largelylies, false assumptions of necessary and unavoidable differences inflags and nationality, pretences of function and power in monarchy;impostures of organized learning, religious and moral dogmasand shams. And one must live in it; one is a part of it. You arerestrained, taxed, distressed and killed by these insane unrealities."Lying the Primary Crime! How simple that is! how true andnecessary it is! That dogma is the fundamental distinction of thescientific world-state from all preceding states." And going on fromthat Mr. Barnstaple launched out into a long and loud tirade againstthe suppression and falsifications of earthly newspapers.

　　It was a question very near his heart. The London newspapershad ceased to be impartial vehicles of news; they omitted, theymutilated, they misstated. They were no better than propagandarags. Rags! Nature, within its field, was shiningly accurate andfull, but that was a purely scientific paper; it did not touch theevery-day news. The Press, he held, was the only possible salt ofcontemporary life, and if the salt had lost its savour--!

　　The poor man found himself orating as though he was back at hisSydenham breakfast-table after a bad morning's paper.

　　"Once upon a time Utopia was in just such a tangle," said Crystalconsolingly. "But there is a proverb, 'Truth comes back where onceshe has visited.' You need not trouble so much as you do. Some dayeven your press may grow clear."

　　"How do _you_ manage about newspapers and criticism?" said Mr.Barnstaple.

　　Crystal explained that there was a complete distinction between newsand discussion in Utopia. There were houses--one was in sight--whichwere used as reading-rooms. One went to these places to learn thenews. Thither went the reports of all the things that were happeningon the planet, things found, things discovered, things done. Thereports were made as they were needed; there were no advertisementcontracts to demand the same bulk of news every day. For some timeCrystal said the reports had been very full and amusing about theEarthlings, but he had not been reading the paper for many daysbecause of the interest in history the Earthling affair had arousedin him. There was always news of fresh scientific discoveries thatstirred the imagination. One frequent item of public interest andexcitement was the laying out of some wide scheme of research. Thenew spatial work that Arden and Greenlake had died for was producingmuch news. And when people died in Utopia it was the custom to tellthe story of their lives. Crystal promised to take Mr. Barnstapleto a news place and entertain him by reading him some of theUtopian descriptions of earthly life which had been derived fromthe Earthlings, and Mr. Barnstaple asked that when this was done hemight also hear about Arden and Greenlake, who had been not onlygreat discoverers, but great lovers, and of Serpentine and Cedar,for whom he had conceived an intense admiration. Utopian news lackedof course the high spice of an earthly newspaper; the intriguingmurders and amusing misbehaviours, the entertaining and excitingconsequences of sexual ignorance and sexual blunderings, the libelcases and detected swindles, the great processional movements ofRoyalty across the general traffic, and the romantic fluctuationsof the stock exchange and sport. But where the news of Utopialacked liveliness, the liveliness of discussion made up for it.For the Fifth Principle of Liberty in Utopia was Free Discussionand Criticism.

　　Any Utopian was free to criticize and discuss anything in the wholeuniverse provided he told no lies about it directly or indirectly;he could be as respectful or disrespectful as he pleased; he couldpropose anything however subversive. He could break into poetry orfiction as he chose. He could express himself in any literary formhe liked or by sketch or caricature as the mood took him. Only hemust refrain from lying; that was the one rigid rule of controversy.He could get what he had to say printed and distributed to the newsrooms. There it was read or neglected as the visitors chanced toapprove of it or not. Often if they liked what they read they wouldcarry off a copy with them. Crystal had some new fantastic fictionabout the exploration of space among his books; imaginative storiesthat boys were reading very eagerly; they were pamphlets of thirtyor forty pages printed on a beautiful paper that he said was madedirectly from flax and certain reeds. The librarians noted whatbooks and papers were read and taken away, and these they replacedwith fresh copies. The piles that went unread were presently reducedto one or two copies and the rest went back to the pulping mills.But many of the poets and philosophers, and story-tellers whoseimaginations found no wide popularity were nevertheless treasuredand their memories kept alive by a few devoted admirers.

　　Section 4

　　"I am not at all clear in my mind about one thing," said Mr.Barnstaple. "I have seen no coins and nothing like money passing inthis world. By all outward appearance this might be a Communism suchas was figured in a book we used to value on earth, a book calledNews from Nowhere by an Earthling named William Morris. It was agraceful impossible book. In that dream everyone worked for thejoy of working and took what he needed. But I have never believedin Communism because I recognize, as here in Utopia you seem torecognize, the natural fierceness and greediness of the untutoredman. There is joy in creation for others to use, but no natural joyin unrequited service. The sense of justice to himself is greaterin man than the sense of service. Somehow here you must balance thework anyone does for Utopia against what he destroys or consumes.How do you do it?"

　　Crystal considered. "There were Communists in Utopia in the Last Ageof Confusion. In some parts of our planet they tried to abolishmoney suddenly and violently and brought about great economicconfusion and want and misery. To step straight to communismfailed--very tragically. And yet Utopia to-day is practically acommunism, and except by way of curiosity I have never had a coin inmy hand in all my life."

　　In Utopia just as upon earth, he explained, money came as a greatdiscovery; as a method of freedom. Hitherto, before the invention ofmoney, all service between man and man had been done through bondageor barter. Life was a thing of slavery and narrow choice. But moneyopened up the possibility of giving a worker a free choice in hisreward. It took Utopia three thousand years and more to realize thatpossibility. The idea of money abounded in pitfalls and was easilycorruptible; Utopia floundered its way to economic lucidity throughlong centuries of credit and debt, false and debased money;extravagant usury and every possibility of speculative abuse. Inthe matter of money more than in any other human concern, humancunning has set itself most vilely and treacherously to prey uponhuman necessity. Utopia once carried, as earth carries now, aload of parasitic souls, speculators, forestallers, gamblers andbargain-pressing Shylocks, exacting every conceivable advantageout of the weaknesses of the monetary system; she had neededcenturies of economic sanitation. It was only when Utopia had gotto the beginnings of world-wide political unity and when therewere sufficiently full statistics of world resources and worldproduction, that human society could at last give the individualworker the assurance of a coin of steadfast significance, a cointhat would mean for him to-day or to-morrow or at any time thecertainty of a set quantity of elemental values. And with peacethroughout the planet and increasing social stability, interest,which is the measure of danger and uncertainty, dwindled at last tonothing. Banking became a public service perforce, because it nolonger offered profit to the individual banker. "Rentier classes,"Crystal conveyed, "are not a permanent element in any community.They mark a phase of transition between a period of insecurity andhigh interest and a period of complete security and no interest.They are a dawn phenomenon."

　　Mr. Barnstaple digested this statement after an interval ofincredulity. He satisfied himself by a few questions that youngUtopia really had some idea of what a rentier class was, what itsmoral and imaginative limitations were likely to be and the role itmay have played in the intellectual development of the world byproviding a class of independent minds.

　　"Life is intolerant of all independent classes," said Crystal,evidently repeating an axiom. "Either you must earn or you mustrob.... We have got rid of robbing."

　　The youngster still speaking by his book went on to explain how thegradual disuse of money came about. It was an outcome of the generalprogressive organization of the economic system, the substitution ofcollective enterprises for competitive enterprises and of wholesalefor retail dealing. There had been a time in Utopia when moneychanged hands at each little transaction and service. One paid moneyif one wanted a newspaper or a match or a bunch of flowers or aride on a street conveyance. Everybody went about the world withpockets full of small coins paying on every slight occasion. Thenas economic science became more stable and exact the methods of theclub and the covering subscription extended. People were able to buypasses that carried them by all the available means of transport fora year or for ten years or for life. The State learnt from clubs andhotels provide matches, newspapers, stationery and transport fora fixed annual charge. The same inclusive system spread from smalland incidental things great and essential matters, to housing andfood and even clothing. The State postal system knew where everyUtopian citizen was, was presently able in conjunction with thepublic banking system to guarantee his credit in any part of theworld. People ceased to draw coin for their work; the variousdepartments of service, and of economic, educational and scientificactivity would credit the individual with his earnings in the publicbank an debit him with his customary charges for all the normalservices of life.

　　"Something of this sort is going on on earth even now," said Mr.Barnstaple. "We use money in the last resort, but a vast volume ofour business is already a matter of book-keeping."

　　Centuries of unity and energy had given Utopia very complete controlof many fountains of natural energy upon the planet, and this was theheritage of every child born therein. He was credited at his birthwith a sum sufficient to educate and maintain him up to four- orfive-and-twenty, and then he was expected to choose some occupationto replenish his account.

　　"But if he doesn't?" said Mr. Barnstaple.

　　"Everyone does."

　　"But if he didn't?"

　　"He'd be miserable and uncomfortable. I've never heard of such acase. I suppose he'd be discussed. Psychologists might examinehim.... But one must do something."

　　"But suppose Utopia had no work for him to do?"

　　Crystal could not imagine that. "There is always something to bedone."

　　"But in Utopia once, in the old times, you had unemployment?"

　　"That was part of the Confusion. There was a sort of hypertrophyof debt; it had become paralysis. Why, when they had unemploymentat that same time there was neither enough houses nor food norclothing. They had unemployment and shortage at one and the sametime. It is incredible."

　　"Does everyone earn about the same amount of pay?"

　　"Energetic and creative people are often given big grants if theyseem to need the help of others or a command of natural resources....And artists sometimes grow rich if their work is much desired."

　　"Such a gold chain as yours you had to buy?"

　　"From the maker in his shop. My mother bought it."

　　"Then there are shops?"

　　"You shall see some. Places where people go to see new anddelightful things."

　　"And if an artist grows rich, what can he do with his money?"

　　"Take time and material to make some surpassingly beautiful thing toleave the world. Or collect and help with the work of other artists.Or do whatever else he pleases to teach and fine the common sense ofbeauty in Utopia. Or just do nothing.... Utopia can afford it--if hecan."

　　Section 5

　　"Cedar and Lion," said Mr. Barnstaple, "explained to the rest of ushow it is that your government is as it were broken up and dispersedamong the people who have special knowledge of the mattersinvolved. The balance between interests, we gathered, was maintainedby those who studied the general psychology and the educationalorganization of Utopia. At first it was very strange to our earthlyminds that there should be nowhere a pretended omniscience and apractical omnipotence, that is to say a sovereign thing, a personor an assembly whose fiat was final. Mr. Burleigh and Mr. Catskillthought that such a thing was absolutely necessary, and so, lesssurely, did I. 'Who will decide?' was their riddle. They expectedto be taken to see the President or the Supreme Council of Utopia. Isuppose it seems to you the most natural of things that there shouldbe nothing of the sort, and that a question should go simply andnaturally to the man who knows best about it."

　　"Subject to free criticism," said Crystal.

　　"Subject to the same process that has made him eminent andresponsible. But don't people thrust themselves forward evenhere--out of vanity? And don't people get thrust forward in frontof the best--out of spite?"

　　"There is plenty of spite and vanity in every Utopian soul," saidCrystal. "But people speak very plainly and criticism is verysearching and free. So that we learn to search our motives beforewe praise or question."

　　"What you say and do shows up here plainly at its true value," saidMr. Barnstaple. "You cannot throw mud in the noise and darknessunchallenged or get a false claim acknowledged in the disorder."

　　"Some years ago there was a man, an artist, who made a great troubleabout the work of my father. Often artistic criticism is very bitterhere, but he was bitter beyond measure. He caricatured my fatherand abused him incessantly. He followed him from place to place. Hetried to prevent the allocation of material to him. He was quiteineffective. Some people answered him, but for the most part he wasdisregarded...."

　　The boy stopped short.

　　"Well?"

　　"He killed himself. He could not escape from his own foolishness.Everyone knew what he had said and done...."

　　"But in the past there were kings and councils and conferences inUtopia," said Mr. Barnstaple, returning to the main point.

　　"My books teach me that our state could have grown up in no otherway. We had to have these general dealers in human relationship,politicians and lawyers, as a necessary stage in political andsocial development. Just as we had to have soldiers and policemento save people from mutual violence. It was only very slowly thatpoliticians and lawyers came to admit the need for special knowledgein the things they had to do. Politicians would draw boundarieswithout any proper knowledge of ethnology or economic geography, andlawyers decide about will and purpose with the crudest knowledgeof psychology. They produced the most preposterous and unworkablearrangements in the gravest fashion."

　　"Like Tristram Shandy's parish bull--which set about begetting thepeace of the world at Versailles," said Mr. Barnstaple.

　　Crystal looked puzzled.

　　"A complicated allusion to a purely earthly matter," said Mr.Barnstaple. "This complete diffusion of the business of politicsand law among the people with knowledge, is one of the mostinteresting things of all to me in this world. Such a diffusionis beginning upon earth. The people who understand world-healthfor instance are dead against political and legal methods, and soare many of our best economists. And most people never go into alaw court, and wouldn't dream of doing so upon business of theirown, from their cradles to their graves. What became of yourpoliticians and lawyers? Was there a struggle?"

　　"As light grew and intelligence spread they became more and moreevidently unnecessary. They met at last only to appoint men ofknowledge as assessors and so forth, and after a time even theseappointments became foregone conclusions. Their activities meltedinto the general body of criticism and discussion. In places thereare still old buildings that used to be council chambers and lawcourts. The last politician to be elected to a legislative assemblydied in Utopia about a thousand years ago. He was an eccentric andgarrulous old gentleman; he was the only candidate and one man votedfor him, and he insisted upon assembling in solitary state andhaving all his speeches and proceedings taken down in shorthand.Boys and girls who were learning stenography used to go to reporthim. Finally he was dealt with as a mental case."

　　"And the last judge?"

　　"I have not learnt about the last judge," said Crystal. "I must askmy tutor. I suppose there was one, but I suppose nobody asked him tojudge anything. So he probably got something more respectable todo."

　　Section 6

　　"I begin to apprehend the daily life of this world," said Mr.Barnstaple. "It is a life of demi-gods, very free, stronglyindividualized, each following an individual bent, each contributingto great racial ends. It is not only cleanly naked and sweet andlovely but full of personal dignity. It is, I see, a practicalcommunism, planned and led up to through long centuries of educationand discipline and collectivist preparation. I had never thoughtbefore that socialism could exalt and ennoble the individual andindividualism degrade him, but now I see plainly that here the thingis proved. In this fortunate world--it is indeed the crown of allits health and happiness--there is no Crowd. The old world, theworld to which I belong, was and in my universe alas still is, theworld of the Crowd, the world of that detestable crawling mass ofun-featured, infected human beings.

　　"You have never seen a Crowd, Crystal; and in all your happy lifeyou never will. You have never seen a Crowd going to a footballmatch or a race meeting or a bull-fight or a public execution or thelike crowd joy; you have never watched a Crowd wedge and stick in anarrow place or hoot or howl in a crisis. You have never watched itstream sluggishly along the streets to gape at a King, or yell for awar, or yell quite equally for a peace. And you have never seen theCrowd, struck by some Panic breeze, change from Crowd proper to Moband begin to smash and hunt. All the Crowd celebrations have goneout of this world; all the Crowd's gods, there is no Turf here, noSport, no war demonstrations, no Coronations and Public Funerals, nogreat shows, but only your little theatres.... Happy Crystal! whowill never see a Crowd!"

　　"But I have seen Crowds," said Crystal.

　　"Where?"

　　"I have seen cinematograph films of Crowds, photographed thirtycenturies ago and more. They are shown in our history museums. Ihave seen Crowds streaming over downs after a great race meeting,photographed from an aeroplane, and Crowds rioting in some publicsquare and being dispersed by the police. Thousands and thousandsof swarming people. But it is true what you say. There are no moreCrowds in Utopia. Crowds and the crowd-mind have gone for ever."

　　Section 7

　　When after some days Crystal had to return to his mathematicalstudies, his departure left Mr. Barnstaple very lonely. He found noother companion. Lychnis seemed always near him and ready to be withhim, but her want of active intellectual interests, so remarkable inthis world of vast intellectual activities, estranged him from her.Other Utopians came and went, friendly, amused, polite, but intentupon their own business. They would question him curiously, attendperhaps to a question or so of his own, and depart with an air ofbeing called away.

　　Lychnis, he began to realize, was one of Utopia's failures. She wasa lingering romantic type and she cherished a great sorrow in herheart. She had had two children whom she had loved passionately.They were adorably fearless, and out of foolish pride she had urgedthem to swim out to sea and they had been taken by a current anddrowned. Their father had been drowned in attempting their rescueand Lychnis had very nearly shared their fate. She had been rescued.But her emotional life had stopped short at that point, had, as itwere, struck an attitude and remained in it. Tragedy possessedher. She turned her back on laughter and gladness and looked fordistress. She had rediscovered the lost passion of pity, first pityfor herself and then a desire to pity others. She took no interestany more in vigorous and complete people, but her mind concentratedupon the consolation to be found in consoling pain and distress inothers. She sought her healing in healing them. She did not want totalk to Mr. Barnstaple of the brightness of Utopia; she wanted himto talk to her of the miseries of earth and of his own miseries.That she might sympathize. But he would not tell her of his ownmiseries because indeed, such was his temperament, he had none;he had only exasperations and regrets.

　　She dreamt, he perceived, of being able to come to earth and giveher beauty and tenderness to the sick and poor. Her heart went outto the spectacle of human suffering and weakness. It went out tothese things hungrily and desirously....

　　Before he detected the drift of her mind he told her many thingsabout human sickness and poverty. But he spoke of these matters notwith pity but indignation, as things that ought not to be. And whenhe perceived how she feasted on these things he spoke of them hardlyand cheerfully as things that would presently be swept away. "Butthey will still have suffered," she said....

　　Since she was always close at hand, she filled for him perhaps morethan her legitimate space in the Utopian spectacle. She lay acrossit like a shadow. He thought very frequently about her and about thepity and resentment against life and vigour that she embodied. In aworld of fear, weakness, infection, darkness and confusion, pity,the act of charity, the alms and the refuge, the deed of starkdevotion, might show indeed like sweet and gracious presences; butin this world of health and brave enterprises, pity betrayed itselfa vicious desire. Crystal, Utopian youth, was as hard as his name.When he had slipped one day on some rocks and twisted and tornhis ankle, he had limped but he had laughed. When Mr. Barnstaplewas winded on a steep staircase Crystal was polite rather thansympathetic. So Lychnis had found no confederate in the dedicationof her life to sorrow; even from Mr. Barnstaple she could win nosympathy. He perceived that indeed so far as temperament went he wasa better Utopian than she was. To him as to Utopia it seemed ratheran occasion for gladness than sorrow that her man and her childrenhad met death fearlessly. They were dead; a brave stark death; thewaters still glittered and the sun still shone. But her loss hadrevealed some underlying racial taint in her, something very ancientin the species, something that Utopia was still breeding out onlyvery slowly, the dark sacrificial disposition that bows and respondsto the shadow. It was strange and yet perhaps it was inevitable thatMr. Barnstaple should meet again in Utopia that spirit which earthknows so well, the spirit that turns from the Kingdom of Heavento worship the thorns and the nails, which delights to representits God not as the Resurrection and the Life but as a woeful anddefeated cadaver.

　　She would talk to him of his sons as if she envied him becauseof the loss of her own, but all she said reminded him of theeducational disadvantages and narrow prospects of his boys and howmuch stouter and finer and happier their lives would have been inUtopia. He would have risked drowning them a dozen times to havesaved them from being clerks and employees of other men. Even byearthly standards he felt now that he had not done his best by them;he had let many things drift in their lives and in the lives ofhimself and his wife that he now felt he ought to have controlled.Could he have his time over again he felt that he would see to itthat his sons took a livelier interest in politics and science andwere not so completely engulfed in the trivialities of suburbanlife, in tennis playing, amateur theatricals, inane flirtations andthe like. They were good boys in substance he felt, but he had leftthem to their mother; and he had left their mother too much toherself instead of battling with her for the sake of his own ideas.They were living trivially in the shadow of one great catastropheand with no security against another; they were living in a worldof weak waste and shabby insufficiency. And is own life also hadbeen--weak waste.

　　His life at Sydenham began to haunt him. "I criticized everythingbut I altered nothing," he said. "I was as bad as Peeve. Was I anymore use in that world than I am in this? But on earth we are allwasters...."

　　He avoided Lychnis for a day or so and wandered about the valleyalone. He went into a great reading-room and fingered books he couldnot read; he was suffered to stand in a workshop, and he watchedan artist make a naked girl of gold more lovely than any earthlystatuette and melt her again dissatisfied; here he came upon menbuilding, and here was work upon the fields, here was a great shaftin the hillside and something deep in the hill that flashed andscintillated strangely; they would not let him go in to it; he sawa thousand things he could not understand. He began to feel asperhaps a very intelligent dog must sometimes feel in the world ofmen, only that he had no master and no instincts that could finda consolation in canine abjection. The Utopians went about theirbusiness in the day-time, they passed him smiling and they filledhim with intolerable envy. They knew what to do. They belonged. Theywent by in twos and threes in the evening, communing together andsometimes singing together. Lovers would pass him, their sweetlysmiling faces close together, and his loneliness became an agonyof hopeless desires.

　　Because, though he fought hard to keep it below the threshold ofhis consciousness, Mr. Barnstaple desired greatly to love and beloved in Utopia. The realization that no one of these people couldever conceive of any such intimacy of body or spirit with him wasa humiliation more fundamental even than his uselessness. Theloveliness of the Utopian girls and women who glanced at himcuriously or passed him with a serene indifference, crushed downhis self-respect and made the Utopian world altogether intolerableto him. Mutely, unconsciously, these Utopian goddesses concentratedupon him the uttermost abasement of caste and race inferiority.He could not keep his thoughts from love where everyone it seemedhad a lover, and in this Utopian world love for him was a thinggrotesque and inconceivable....

　　Then one night as he lay awake distressed beyond measure by thethought of such things, an idea came to him whereby it seemed tohim he might restore his self-respect and win a sort of citizenshipin Utopia.

　　So that they might even speak of him and remember him with interestand sympathy.