5. The Governance and History of Utopia

by H.G. Wells

　　Section 1

　　Came a pause. The Earthlings looked at one another and their gazeseemed to converge upon Mr. Cecil Burleigh. That statesman feignedto be unaware of the general expectation. "Rupert," he said."Won't _you_?"

　　"I reserve my comments," said Mr. Catskill. "Father Amerton, youare accustomed to treat of other worlds."

　　"Not in your presence, Mr. Cecil. No."

　　"But what am I to tell them?"

　　"What you think of it," said Mr. Barnstaple.

　　"Exactly," said Mr. Catskill. "Tell them what you think of it."

　　No one else appeared to be worthy of consideration. Mr. Burleighrose slowly and walked thoughtfully to the centre of the semicircle.He grasped his coat lapels and remained for some moments withface downcast as if considering what he was about to say. "Mr.Serpentine," he began at last, raising a candid countenance andregarding the blue sky above the distant lake through his glasses."Ladies and Gentlemen--"

　　He was going to make a speech!--as though he was at a PrimroseLeague garden party--or Geneva. It was preposterous and yet, whatelse was there to be done?

　　"I must confess, Sir, that although I am by no means a novice atpublic speaking, I find myself on this occasion somewhat at a loss.Your admirable discourse, Sir, simple, direct, lucid, compact, andrising at times to passages of unaffected eloquence, has set me apattern that I would fain follow--and before which, in all modesty,I quail. You ask me to tell you as plainly and clearly as possiblethe outline facts as we conceive them about this kindred world outof which with so little premeditation we have come to you. So far asmy poor powers of understanding or discussing such recondite mattersgo, I do not think I can better or indeed supplement in any way yourmarvellous exposition of the mathematical aspects of the case. Whatyou have told us embodies the latest, finest thoughts of terrestrialscience and goes, indeed, far beyond our current ideas. On certainmatters, in, for example, the relationship of time and gravitation,I feel bound to admit that I do not go with you, but that is rathera failure to understand your position than any positive dissent.Upon the broader aspects of the case there need be no difficultiesbetween us. We accept your main proposition unreservedly; namely,that we conceive ourselves to be living in a parallel universeto yours, on a planet the very brother of your own, indeed quiteamazingly like yours, having regard to all the possible contrastswe might have found here. We are attracted by and strongly disposedto accept your view that our system is, in all probability, alittle less seasoned and mellowed by the touch of time than yours,short perhaps by some hundreds or some thousands of years of yourexperiences. Assuming this, it is inevitable, Sir, that a certainhumility should mingle in our attitude towards you. As your juniorsit becomes us not to instruct but to learn. It is for us to ask:What have you done? To what have you reached? rather than to displayto you with an artless arrogance all that still remains for us tolearn and do...."

　　"No!" said Mr. Barnstaple to himself but half audibly. "This is adream.... If it were anyone else...."

　　He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes and opened them again, andthere he was still, sitting next to Mr. Mush in the midst of theseOlympian divinities. And Mr. Burleigh, that polished sceptic, whonever believed, who was never astonished, was leaning forward onhis toes and speaking, speaking, with the assurance of a man whohas made ten thousand speeches. He could not have been more sureof himself and his audience in the Guildhall in London. And theywere understanding him! Which was absurd!

　　There was nothing to do but to fall in with this stupendousabsurdity--and sit and listen. Sometimes Mr. Barnstaple's mindwandered altogether from what Mr. Burleigh was saying. Then itreturned and hung desperately to his discourse. In his halting,parliamentary way, his hands trifling with his glasses or clingingto the lapels of his coat, Mr. Burleigh was giving Utopia a briefaccount of the world of men, seeking to be elementary and lucidand reasonable, telling them of states and empires, of wars andthe Great War, of economic organization and disorganization, ofrevolutions and Bolshevism, of the terrible Russian famine thatwas beginning, of the difficulties of finding honest statesmenand officials, and of the unhelpfulness of newspapers, of all thedark and troubled spectacle of human life. Serpentine had used theterm "the Last Age of Confusion," and Mr. Burleigh had seized uponthe phrase and was making much of it....

　　It was a great oratorical impromptu. It must have gone on for anhour, and the Utopians listened with keen, attentive faces, now andthen nodding their acceptance and recognition of this statement orthat. "Very like," would come tapping into Mr. Barnstaple's brain."With us also--in the Age of Confusion."

　　At last Mr. Burleigh, with the steady deliberation of an oldparliamentary hand, drew to his end. Compliments.

　　He bowed. He had done. Mr. Mush startled everyone by a vigoroushand-clapping in which no one else joined.

　　The tension in Mr. Barnstaple's mind had become intolerable.He leapt to his feet.

　　Section 2

　　He stood making those weak propitiatory gestures that come sonaturally to the inexperienced speaker. "Ladies and Gentlemen," hesaid. "Utopians, Mr. Burleigh! I crave your pardon for a moment.There is a little matter. Urgent."

　　For a brief interval he was speechless.

　　Then he found attention and encouragement in the eye of Urthred.

　　"Something I don't understand. Something incredible--I mean,incompatible. The little rift. Turns everything into a fantasticphantasmagoria."

　　The intelligence in Urthred's eye was very encouraging. Mr.Barnstaple abandoned any attempt to address the company as a whole,and spoke directly to Urthred.

　　"You live in Utopia, hundreds of thousands of years in advance ofus. How is it that you are able to talk contemporary English--to useexactly the same language that we do? I ask you, how is that? It isincredible. It jars. It makes a dream of you. And yet you are not adream? It makes me feel--almost--insane."

　　Urthred smiled pleasantly. "We _don't_ speak English," he said.

　　Mr. Barnstaple felt the ground slipping from under his feet. "ButI _hear_ you speaking English," he said.

　　"Nevertheless we do not speak it," said Urthred.

　　He smiled still more broadly. "We don't--for ordinarypurposes--speak anything."

　　Mr. Barnstaple, with his brain resigning its functions, maintainedhis pose of deferential attention.

　　"Ages ago," Urthred continued, "we certainly used to speaklanguages. We made sounds and we heard sounds. People used to think,and then chose and arranged words and uttered them. The hearerheard, noted, and retranslated the sounds into ideas. Then, in somemanner which we still do not understand perfectly, people began to_get_ the idea before it was clothed in words and uttered in sounds.They began to hear in their minds, as soon as the speaker hadarranged his ideas and before he put them into word symbols even inhis own mind. They knew what he was going to say before he said it.This direct transmission presently became common; it was found outthat with a little effort most people could get over to each otherin this fashion to some extent, and the new mode of communicationwas developed systematically.

　　"That is what we do now habitually in this world. We think directly_to_ each other. We determine to convey the thought and it isconveyed at once--provided the distance is not too great. We usesounds in this world now only for poetry and pleasure and in momentsof emotion or to shout at a distance, or with animals, not forthe transmission of ideas from human mind to kindred human mindany more. When I think to you, the thought, so far as it findscorresponding ideas and suitable words in your mind, is reflectedin your mind. My thought clothes itself in words in your mind,which words you seem to hear--and naturally enough in your ownlanguage and your own habitual phrases. Very probably the membersof your party are hearing what I am saying to you, each with hisown individual difference of vocabulary and phrasing."

　　Mr. Barnstaple had been punctuating this discourse with sharp,intelligent nods, coming now and then to the verge of interruption.Now he broke out with: "And that is why occasionally--as forinstance when Mr. Serpentine made his wonderful explanation justnow--when you soar into ideas of which we haven't even a shadowin our minds, we just hear nothing at all."

　　"Are there such gaps?" asked Urthred.

　　"Many, I fear--for all of us," said Mr. Burleigh.

　　"It's like being deaf in spots," said Lady Stella. "Large spots."

　　Father Amerton nodded agreement.

　　"And that is why we cannot be clear whether you are called Urthredor Adam, and why I have found myself confusing Arden and Greentreesand Forest in my mind."

　　"I hope that now you are mentally more at your case?" said Urthred.

　　"Oh, quite," said Mr. Barnstaple. "Quite. And all things considered,it is really very convenient for us that there should be this methodof transmission. For otherwise I do not see how we could haveavoided weeks of linguistic bother, first principles of ourrespective grammars, logic, significs, and so forth, boring stufffor the most part, before we could have got to anything like ourpresent understanding."

　　"A very good point indeed," said Mr. Burleigh, turning round to Mr.Barnstaple in a very friendly way. "A very good point indeed. Ishould never have noted it if you had not called my attention to it.It is quite extraordinary; I had not noted anything of this--thisdifference. I was occupied, I am bound to confess, by my ownthoughts. I supposed they were speaking English. Took it forgranted."

　　Section 3

　　It seemed to Mr. Barnstaple that this wonderful experience was nowso complete that there remained nothing more to wonder at exceptits absolute credibility. He sat in this beautiful little buildinglooking out upon dreamland flowers and the sunlit lake amidst thisstrange mingling of week-end English costumes and this more thanOlympian nudity that had already ceased to startle him, he listenedand occasionally participated in the long informal conversationthat now ensued. It was a discussion that brought to light the mostamazing and fundamental differences of moral and social outlook. Yeteverything had now assumed a reality that made it altogether naturalto suppose that he would presently go home to write about it in theLiberal and tell his wife, as much as might seem advisable at thetime, about the manners and costumes of this hitherto undiscoveredworld. He had not even a sense of intervening distances. Sydenhammight have been just round the corner.

　　Presently two pretty young girls made tea at an equipage amongthe rhododendra and brought it round to people. Tea! It was whatwe should call China tea, very delicate, and served in littlecups without handles, Chinese fashion, but it was real and veryrefreshing tea.

　　The earlier curiosities of the Earthlings turned upon methods ofgovernment. This was perhaps natural in the presence of two suchstatesmen as Mr. Burleigh and Mr. Catskill.

　　"What form of government do you have?" asked Mr. Burleigh. "Is it amonarchy or an autocracy or a pure democracy? Do you separate theexecutive and the legislative? And is there one central governmentfor all your planet, or are there several governing centres?"

　　It was conveyed to Mr. Burleigh and his companions with somedifficulty that there was no central government in Utopia at all.

　　"But surely," said Mr. Burleigh, "there is someone or something,some council or bureau or what not, somewhere, with which the finaldecision rests in cases of collective action for the common welfare,Some ultimate seat and organ of sovereignty, it seems to me, there_must_ be."...

　　No, the Utopians declared, there was no such concentration ofauthority in their world. In the past there had been, but it hadlong since diffused back into the general body of the community.Decisions in regard to any particular matter were made by thepeople who knew most about that matter.

　　"But suppose it is a decision that has to be generally observed?A rule affecting the public health, for example? Who would enforceit?"

　　"It would not need to be enforced. Why should it?"

　　"But suppose someone refused to obey your regulation?"

　　"We should inquire why he or she did not conform. There might besome exceptional reason."

　　"But failing that?"

　　"We should make an inquiry into his mental and moral health."

　　"The mind doctor takes the place of the policeman," said Mr.Burleigh.

　　"I should prefer the policeman," said Mr. Rupert Catskill.

　　"You _would_, Rupert," said Mr. Burleigh as who should say:"_Got_ you that time."

　　"Then do you mean to say," he continued, addressing the Utopianswith an expression of great intelligence, "that your affairs areall managed by special bodies or organizations--one scarcely knowswhat to call them--without any co-ordination of their activities?"

　　"The activities of our world," said Urthred, "are all co-ordinatedto secure the general freedom. We have a number of intelligencesdirected to the general psychology of the race and to theinteraction of one collective function upon another."

　　"Well, isn't that group of intelligences a governing class?" saidMr. Burleigh.

　　"Not in the sense that they exercise any arbitrary will," saidUrthred. "They deal with general relations, that is all. But theyrank no higher, they have no more precedence on that account thana philosopher has over a scientific specialist."

　　"This is a republic indeed!" said Mr. Burleigh. "But how it worksand how it came about I cannot imagine. Your state is probably ahighly socialistic one?"

　　"You live still in a world in which nearly everything except theair, the high roads, the high seas and the wilderness is privatelyowned?"

　　"We do," said Mr. Catskill. "Owned--and competed for."

　　"We have been through that stage. We found at last that privateproperty in all but very personal things was an intolerable nuisanceto mankind. We got rid of it. An artist or a scientific man hascomplete control of all the material he needs, we all own our toolsand appliances and have rooms and places of our own, but there isno property for trade or speculation. All this militant property,this property of manoeuvre, has been quite got rid of. But how wegot rid of it is a long story. It was not done in a few years.The exaggeration of private property was an entirely natural andnecessary stage in the development of human nature. It led at lastto monstrous results, but it was only through these monstrous andcatastrophic results that men learnt the need and nature of thelimitations of private property."

　　Mr. Burleigh had assumed an attitude which was obviously habitualto him. He sat very low in his chair with his long legs crossedin front of him and the thumb and fingers of one hand placed withmeticulous exactness against those of the other.

　　"I must confess," he said, "that I am most interested in thepeculiar form of Anarchism which seems to prevail here. Unless Imisunderstand you completely every man attends to his own businessas the servant of the state. I take it you have--you must correct meif I am wrong--a great number of people concerned in the productionand distribution and preparation of food; they inquire, I assume,into the needs of the world, they satisfy them and they are a lawunto themselves in their way of doing it. They conduct researches,they make experiments. Nobody compels, obliges, restrains orprevents them. ("People talk to them about it," said Urthred witha faint smile.) And again others produce and manufacture and studymetals for all mankind and are also a law unto themselves. Othersagain see to the habitability of your world, plan and arrange thesedelightful habitations, say who shall use them and how they shall beused. Others pursue pure science. Others experiment with sensory andimaginative possibilities and are artists. Others again teach."

　　"They are very important," said Lychnis.

　　"And they all do it in harmony--and due proportion. Without either acentral legislature or executive. I will admit that all this seemsadmirable--but impossible. Nothing of the sort has ever been evensuggested yet in the world from which we come."

　　"Something of the sort was suggested long ago by the GuildSocialists," said Mr. Barnstaple.

　　"Dear me!" said Mr. Burleigh. "I know very little about the GuildSocialists. Who were they? Tell me."

　　Mr. Barnstaple tacitly declined that task. "The idea is quitefamiliar to our younger people," he said. "Laski calls it thepluralistic state, as distinguished from the monistic state inwhich sovereignty is concentrated. Even the Chinese have it. APekin professor, Mr. S. C. Chang, has written a pamphlet on what hecalls 'Professionalism.' I read it only a few weeks ago. He sent itto the office of the Liberal. He points out how undesirable it isand how unnecessary for China to pass through a phase of democraticpolitics on the western model. He wants China to go right straighton to a collateral independence of functional classes, mandarins,industrials, agricultural workers and so forth, much as we seemto find it here. Though that of course involves an educationalrevolution. Decidedly the germ of what you call Anarchism here isalso in the air we come from."

　　"Dear me!" said Mr. Burleigh, looking more intelligent andappreciative than ever. "And is that so? I had _no_ idea--!"

　　Section 4

　　The conversation continued desultory in form and yet the exchangeof ideas was rapid and effective. Quite soon, as it seemed to Mr.Barnstaple, an outline of the history of Utopia from the Last Ageof Confusion onward shaped itself in his mind.

　　The more he learnt of that Last Age of Confusion the more it seemedto resemble the present time on earth. In those days the Utopianshad worn abundant clothing and lived in towns quite after theearthly fashion. A fortunate conspiracy of accidents rather thanany set design had opened for them some centuries of opportunityand expansion. Climatic phases and political chances had smiledupon the race after a long period of recurrent shortage, pestilenceand destructive warfare. For the first time the Utopians had beenable to explore the whole planet on which they lived, and theseexplorations had brought great virgin areas under the axe, the spadeand the plough. There had been an enormous increase in real wealthand in leisure and liberty. Many thousands of people were liftedout of the normal squalor of human life to positions in which theycould, if they chose, think and act with unprecedented freedom. Afew, a sufficient few, did. A vigorous development of scientificinquiry began and, trailing after it a multitude of ingeniousinventions, produced a great enlargement of practical human power.

　　There had been previous outbreaks of the scientific intelligencein Utopia, but none before had ever occurred in such favourablecircumstances or lasted long enough to come to abundant practicalfruition. Now in a couple of brief centuries the Utopians, who hadhitherto crawled about their planet like sluggish ants or travelledparasitically on larger and swifter animals, found themselves ableto fly rapidly or speak instantaneously to any other point on theplanet. They found themselves, too, in possession of mechanicalpower on a scale beyond all previous experience, and not simplyof mechanical power; physiological and then psychological sciencefollowed in the wake of physics and chemistry, and extraordinarypossibilities of control over his own body and over his social lifedawned upon the Utopian. But these things came, when at last theydid come, so rapidly and confusingly that it was only a smallminority of people who realized the possibilities, as distinguishedfrom the concrete achievements, of this tremendous expansionof knowledge. The rest took the novel inventions as they came,haphazard, with as little adjustment as possible of their thoughtsand ways of living to the new necessities these novelties implied.

　　The first response of the general population of Utopia to theprospect of power, leisure and freedom thus opened out to it wasproliferation. It behaved just as senselessly and mechanically asany other animal or vegetable species would have done. It bred untilit had completely swamped the ampler opportunity that had openedbefore it. It spent the great gifts of science as rapidly as it gotthem in a mere insensate multiplication of the common life. At onetime in the Last Age of Confusion the population of Utopia hadmounted to over two thousand million....

　　"But what is it now?" asked Mr. Burleigh.

　　About two hundred and fifty million, the Utopians told him. Thathad been the maximum population that could live a fully developedlife upon the surface of Utopia. But now with increasing resourcesthe population was being increased.

　　A gasp of horror came from Father Amerton. He had been dreading thisrealization for some time. It struck at his moral foundations. "Andyou dare to _regulate_ increase! You control it! Your women consentto bear children as they are needed--or refrain!"

　　"Of course," said Urthred. "Why not?"

　　"I feared as much," said Father Amerton, and leaning forward hecovered his face with his hands, murmuring, "I felt this in theatmosphere! The human stud farm! Refusing to create souls! The_wickedness_ of it! Oh, my God!"

　　Mr. Burleigh regarded the emotion of the reverend gentleman throughhis glasses with a slightly shocked expression. He detestedcatchwords. But Father Amerton stood for very valuable conservativeelements in the community. Mr. Burleigh turned to the Utopian again."That is extremely interesting," he said. "Even at present our earthcontrives to carry a population of at least five times that amount."

　　"But twenty millions or so will starve this winter, you told us alittle while ago--in a place called Russia. And only a very smallproportion of the rest are leading what even you would call fulland spacious lives?"

　　"Nevertheless the contrast is very striking," said Mr. Burleigh.

　　"It is terrible!" said Father Amerton.

　　The overcrowding of the planet in the Last Age of Confusion was,these Utopians insisted, the fundamental evil out of which allthe others that afflicted the race arose. An overwhelming floodof newcomers poured into the world and swamped every effort theintelligent minority could make to educate a sufficient proportionof them to meet the demands of the new and still rapidly changingconditions of life. And the intelligent minority was not itself inany position to control the racial destiny. These great masses ofpopulation that had been blundered into existence, swayed by damagedand decaying traditions and amenable to the crudest suggestions,were the natural prey and support of every adventurer with amind blatant enough and a conception of success coarse enough toappeal to them. The economic system, clumsily and convulsivelyreconstructed to meet the new conditions of mechanical productionand distribution, became more and more a cruel and impudentexploitation of the multitudinous congestion of the common man bythe predatory and acquisitive few. That all too common common manwas hustled through misery and subjection from his cradle to hisgrave; he was cajoled and lied to, he was bought, sold and dominatedby an impudent minority, bolder and no doubt more energetic, butin all other respects no more intelligent than himself. It wasdifficult, Urthred said, for a Utopian nowadays to convey themonstrous stupidity, wastefulness and vulgarity to which theserich and powerful men of the Last Age of Confusion attained.

　　("We will not trouble you," said Mr. Burleigh. "Unhappily--we know....We know. Only too well do we know.")

　　Upon this festering, excessive mass of population disastersdescended at last like wasps upon a heap of rotting fruit. It wasits natural, inevitable destiny. A war that affected nearly thewhole planet dislocated its flimsy financial system and most of itseconomic machinery beyond any possibility of repair. Civil warsand clumsily conceived attempts at social revolution continued thedisorganization. A series of years of bad weather accentuated thegeneral shortage. The exploiting adventurers, too stupid to realizewhat had happened, continued to cheat and hoodwink the commonaltyand burke any rally of honest men, as wasps will continue to eateven after their bodies have been cut away. The effort to makepassed out of Utopian life, triumphantly superseded by the effortto get. Production dwindled down towards the vanishing point.Accumulated wealth vanished. An overwhelming system of debt, a swarmof creditors, morally incapable of helpful renunciation, crushedout all fresh initiative.

　　The long diastole in Utopian affairs that had begun with the greatdiscoveries, passed into a phase of rapid systole. What plenty andpleasure was still possible in the world was filched all the moregreedily by the adventurers of finance and speculative business.Organized science had long since been commercialized, and was"applied" now chiefly to a hunt for profitable patents and theforestalling of necessary supplies. The neglected lamp of purescience waned, flickered and seemed likely to go out againaltogether, leaving Utopia in the beginning of a new series ofDark Ages like those before the age of discovery began....

　　"It is really _very_ like a gloomy diagnosis of our own outlook,"said Mr. Burleigh. "Extraordinarily like. How Dean Inge would haveenjoyed all this!"

　　"To an infidel of his stamp, no doubt, it would seem mostenjoyable," said Father Amerton a little incoherently.

　　These comments annoyed Mr. Barnstaple, who was urgent to hear more.

　　"And then," he said to Urthred, "what happened?"

　　Section 5

　　What happened, Mr. Barnstaple gathered, was a deliberate changein Utopian thought. A growing number of people were coming tounderstand that amidst the powerful and easily released forces thatscience and organization had brought within reach of man, the oldconception of social life in the state, as a limited and legalizedstruggle of men and women to get the better of one another, wasbecoming too dangerous to endure, just as the increased dreadfulnessof modern weapons was making the separate sovereignty of nations toodangerous to endure. There had to be new ideas and new conventionsof human association if history was not to end in disaster andcollapse.

　　All societies were based on the limitation by laws and taboos andtreaties of the primordial fierce combativeness of the ancestralman-ape; that ancient spirit of self-assertion had now to undergonew restrictions commensurate with the new powers and dangers ofthe race. The idea of competition to possess, as the ruling idea ofintercourse, was, like some ill-controlled furnace, threatening toconsume the machine it had formerly driven. The idea of creativeservice had to replace it. To that idea the human mind and will hadto be turned if social life was to be saved. Propositions that hadseemed, in former ages, to be inspired and exalted idealism begannow to be recognized not simply as sober psychological truth but aspractical and urgently necessary truth. In explaining this Urthredexpressed himself in a manner that recalled to Mr. Barnstaple's mindcertain very familiar phrases; he seemed to be saying that whosoeverwould save his life should lose it, and that whosoever would givehis life should thereby gain the whole world.

　　Father Amerton's thoughts, it seemed, were also responding in thesame manner. For he suddenly interrupted with: "But what you aresaying is a quotation!"

　　Urthred admitted that he had a quotation in mind, a passage from theteachings of a man of great poetic power who had lived long ago inthe days of spoken words.

　　He would have proceeded, but Father Amerton was too excited to lethim do so. "But who was this teacher?" he asked. "Where did he live?How was he born? How did he die?"

　　A picture was flashed upon Mr. Barnstaple's consciousness of asolitary-looking pale-faced figure, beaten and bleeding, surroundedby armoured guards, in the midst of a thrusting, jostling, sun-bitcrowd which filled a narrow, high-walled street. Behind, some hugeugly implement was borne along, dipping and swaying with the swayingof the multitude....

　　"Did he die upon the Cross in _this_ world also?" cried FatherAmerton. "Did he die upon the Cross?"

　　This prophet in Utopia they learnt had died very painfully, but notupon the Cross. He had been tortured in some way, but neither theUtopians nor these particular Earthlings had sufficient knowledge ofthe technicalities of torture to get any idea over about that, andthen apparently he had been fastened upon a slowly turning wheel andexposed until he died. It was the abominable punishment of a crueland conquering race, and it had been inflicted upon him because hisdoctrine of universal service had alarmed the rich and dominant whodid not serve. Mr. Barnstaple had a momentary vision of a twistedfigure upon that wheel of torture in the blazing sun. And,marvellous triumph over death! out of a world that could do sucha deed had come this great peace and universal beauty about him!

　　But Father Amerton was pressing his questions. "But did you notrealize who he was? Did not this world suspect?"

　　A great many people thought that this man was a God. But he had beenaccustomed to call himself merely a son of God or a son of Man.

　　Father Amerton stuck to his point. "But you worship him now?"

　　"We follow his teaching because it was wonderful and true," saidUrthred.

　　"But worship?"

　　"No."

　　"But does nobody worship? There _were_ those who worshipped him?"

　　There were those who worshipped him. There were those who quailedbefore the stern magnificence of his teaching and yet who had atormenting sense that he was right in some profound way. So theyplayed a trick upon their own uneasy consciences by treating him asa magical god instead of as a light to their souls. They interwovewith his execution ancient traditions of sacrificial kings. Insteadof receiving him frankly and clearly and making him a part of theirunderstandings and wills they pretended to eat him mystically andmake him a part of their bodies. They turned his wheel into amiraculous symbol, and they confused it with the equator and the sunand the ecliptic and indeed with anything else that was round. Incases of ill-luck, ill-health or bad weather it was believed to bevery helpful for the believer to describe a circle in the air withthe forefinger.

　　And since this teacher's memory was very dear to the ignorantmultitude because of his gentleness and charity, it was seized uponby cunning and aggressive types who constituted themselves championsand exponents of the wheel, who grew rich and powerful in its name,led people into great wars for its sake and used it as a cover andjustification for envy, hatred, tyranny and dark desires. Until atlast men said that had that ancient prophet come again to Utopia,his own triumphant wheel would have crushed and destroyed himafresh....

　　Father Amerton seemed inattentive to this communication. He wasseeing it from another angle. "But surely," he said, "there is aremnant of believers still! Despised perhaps--but a remnant?"

　　There was no remnant. The whole world followed that Teacher ofTeachers, but no one worshipped him. On some old treasured buildingsthe wheel was still to be seen carved, often with the most fantasticdecorative elaborations. And in museums and collections there weremultitudes of pictures, images, charms and the like.

　　"I don't understand this," said Father Amerton. "It is too terrible.I am at a loss. I do not understand."

　　Section 6

　　A fair and rather slender man with a delicately beautiful facewhose name, Mr. Barnstaple was to learn later, was Lion, presentlytook over from Urthred the burthen of explaining and answering thequestions of the Earthlings.

　　He was one of the educational co-ordinators in Utopia. He made itclear that the change over in Utopian affairs had been no suddenrevolution. No new system of laws and customs, no new method ofeconomic co-operation based on the idea of universal service tothe common good, had sprung abruptly into being complete andfinished. Throughout a long period, before and during the LastAge of Confusion, the foundations of the new state were laid by agrowing multitude of inquirers and workers, having no set plan orpreconceived method, but brought into unconscious co-operation bya common impulse to service and a common lucidity and veracity ofmind. It was only towards the climax of the Last Age of Confusion inUtopia that psychological science began to develop with any vigour,comparable to the vigour of the development of geographical andphysical science during the preceding centuries. And the socialand economic disorder which was checking experimental science andcrippling the organized work of the universities was stimulatinginquiry into the processes of human association and making itdesperate and fearless.

　　The impression given Mr. Barnstaple was not of one of those violentchanges which our world has learnt to call revolutions, but of anincrease of light, a dawn of new ideas, in which the things of theold order went on for a time with diminishing vigour until peoplebegan as a matter of common sense to do the new things in the placeof the old.

　　The beginnings of the new order were in discussions, books andpsychological laboratories; the soil in which it grew was foundin schools and colleges. The old order gave small rewards to theschoolmaster, but its dominant types were too busy with the strugglefor wealth and power to take much heed of teaching: it was left toany man or woman who would give thought and labour without much hopeof tangible rewards, to shape the world anew in the minds of theyoung. And they did so shape it. In a world ruled ostensibly byadventurer politicians, in a world where men came to power throughfloundering business enterprises and financial cunning, it waspresently being taught and understood that extensive privateproperty was socially a nuisance, and that the state could not doits work properly nor education produce its proper results, side byside with a class of irresponsible rich people. For, by their verynature, they assailed, they corrupted, they undermined every stateundertaking; their flaunting existences distorted and disguised allthe values of life. They had to go, for the good of the race.

　　"Didn't they fight?" asked Mr. Catskill pugnaciously.

　　They had fought irregularly but fiercely. The fight to delayor arrest the coming of the universal scientific state, theeducational state, in Utopia, had gone on as a conscious strugglefor nearly five centuries. The fight against it was the fight ofgreedy, passionate, prejudiced and self-seeking men against thecrystallization into concrete realities of this new idea ofassociation for service. It was fought wherever ideas were spread;it was fought with dismissals and threats and boycotts and stormsof violence, with lies and false accusations, with prosecutionsand imprisonments, with lynching-rope, tar and feathers, paraffin,bludgeon and rifle, bomb and gun.

　　But the service of the new idea that had been launched into theworld never failed; it seized upon the men and women it needed withcompelling power. Before the scientific state was established inUtopia more than a million martyrs had been killed for it, andthose who had suffered lesser wrongs were beyond all reckoning.Point after point was won in education, in social laws, in economicmethod. No date could be fixed for the change. A time came whenUtopia perceived that it was day and that a new order of thingshad replaced the old....

　　"So it must be," said Mr. Barnstaple, as though Utopia were notalready present about him. "So it must be."

　　A question was being answered. Every Utopian child is taught to thefull measure of its possibilities and directed to the work that isindicated by its desires and capacity. It is born well. It is bornof perfectly healthy parents; its mother has chosen to bear it afterdue thought and preparation. It grows up under perfectly healthyconditions; its natural impulses to play and learn are gratified bythe subtlest educational methods; hands, eyes and limbs are givenevery opportunity of training and growth; it learns to draw, write,express itself, use a great variety of symbols to assist and extendits thought. Kindness and civility become ingrained habits, forall about it are kind and civil. And in particular the growth ofits imagination is watched and encouraged. It learns the wonderfulhistory of its world and its race, how man has struggled and stillstruggles out of his earlier animal narrowness and egotism towardsan empire over being that is still but faintly apprehended throughdense veils of ignorance. All its desires are made fine; it learnsfrom poetry, from example and the love of those about it to loseits solicitude for itself in love; its sexual passions are turnedagainst its selfishness, its curiosity flowers into scientificpassion, its combativeness is set to fight disorder, its inherentpride and ambition are directed towards an honourable share inthe common achievement. It goes to the work that attracts it andchooses what it will do.

　　If the individual is indolent there is no great loss, there isplenty for all in Utopia, but then it will find no lovers, nor willit ever bear children, because no one in Utopia loves those who haveneither energy nor distinction. There is much pride of the mate inUtopian love. And there is no idle rich "society" in Utopia, norgames and shows for the mere looker-on. There is nothing for themere looker-on. It is a pleasant world indeed for holidays, but notfor those who would continuously do nothing.

　　For centuries now Utopian science has been able to discriminateamong births, and nearly every Utopian alive would have ranked as anenergetic creative spirit in former days. There are few dull and noreally defective people in Utopia; the idle strains, the people oflethargic dispositions or weak imaginations, have mostly died out;the melancholic type has taken its dismissal and gone; spiteful andmalignant characters are disappearing. The vast majority of Utopiansare active, sanguine, inventive, receptive and good-tempered.

　　"And you have not even a parliament?" asked Mr. Burleigh, stillincredulous.

　　Utopia has no parliament, no politics, no private wealth, nobusiness competition, no police nor prisons, no lunatics, nodefectives nor cripples, and it has none of these things because ithas schools and teachers who are all that schools and teachers canbe. Politics, trade and competition are the methods of adjustmentof a crude society. Such methods of adjustment have been laidaside in Utopia for more than a thousand years. There is no rulenor government needed by adult Utopians because all the rule andgovernment they need they have had in childhood and youth.

　　Said Lion: "Our education is our government."