Chapter TWELVE (2)

The chief use of the classic utopias that we have surveyed is to suggest that the same methods which are used by the utopian thinkers to project an ideal community on paper may be employed, in a practical way, to develop a better community on earth. The weakness of the utopian thinkers consisted in the assumption that the dreams and projects of any single man might be realized in society at large. From the bitter frustration of Fourier, Cabet, Hertzka, and even John Ruskin those who are in search of the beloved community may well take a warning. Where the critics of the utopian method were, I believe, wrong was in holding that the business of projecting prouder worlds was a futile and footling pastime. These anti-utopian critics overlooked the fact that one of the main factors that condition any future are the attitudes and beliefs which people have in relation to that future--that, as Mr. John Dewey would say, in any judgment of practise one’s belief in a hypothesis is one of the things that affect its realization.

When we have projected the pattern of an ideal community and tend to warp our conduct in conformity with that pattern, we overcome the momentum of actual institutions. In feeling free to project new patterns, in holding that human beings can will a change in their institutions and habits of life, the utopians were, I believe, on solid ground; and the utopian philosophies were a great improvement over the more nebulous religious and ethical systems of the past in that they saw the necessity for giving their ideals form and life. In fact, it has been in the pictures of ideal commonwealths such as Plato’s that the “ideal” and the “actual” have met.

It is true that the pure utopians have overlooked the fact that every institution has a momentum of its own: its speed may be quickened or reduced, it may be switched on another track, as the Roman Church during the Reformation was switched from the main line of civilization to a subsidiary route; and at times, in the catastrophe of war or revolution, an institution may jump the track altogether and be wrecked. The critical problem for the eutopian, the problem of the transition from one set of institutions to another, from one way of life to another, was overlooked. Plato’s Republic, for example, was a fairly attractive place; but one wonders in what Greek city in the Fourth Century B.C. the transition could have taken place. A transition implies not merely a goal but a starting point: if we are to move the world, as Archimedes threatened to with his lever, we must have some ground to stand on. It is only by paying attention to the limitations of each region, and by allowing for the driving force of history, that we can make the earth come to terms with man’s idola. This is perhaps the most difficult lesson that the eutopian must learn.

11

What, then, is the first step out of the present disorder? The first step, it seems to me, is to ignore all the fake utopias and social myths that have proved either so sterile or so disastrous during the last few centuries. There is perhaps no logical reason why the myth of the national state should not be preserved; but it is a myth which has done very little, on the whole, to promote the good life, and has on the contrary done a great deal to make the good life impossible; and to continue to cling to it in the face of perpetual wars, pestilences, and spiritual devastations is the sort of fanaticism which will probably seem as blind and cruel to future generations as persecutions for Christian heresy do to the present one. On the same grounds, there are a number of other social myths, like the proletarian myth, which run so badly against the grain of reality that they cannot be preserved without ignoring a great many values which are essential to a humane existence; and on pragmatic grounds it would be fine and beneficial to drop them quickly into limbo. There is no reason to think that there will be a quick conversion from these myths: the holocaust of war has only intensified the myth of the National State; and our experience with religious myths suggests on the contrary that the forms at any rate will be preserved long after the last shred of reality has disappeared. But the sooner those who are capable of intellectual criticism abandon these particular myths, the sooner will these idola fall into the state which has been happily described as “innocuous desuetude.”

If our knowledge of human behavior counts for anything, however, we cannot put aside old myths without creating new ones. The eighteenth century agnostics very wisely realized that if they wished to maintain the values which had been created by Deism, they could not abandon God without inventing him all over again. In turning away from obsolete and disastrous social myths I do not suggest that we give up the habit of making myths; for that habit, for good or bad, seems to be ingrained in the human psyche. The nearest we can get to rationality is not to efface our myths but to attempt to infuse them with right reason, and to alter them or exchange them for other myths when they appear to work badly.

Here is where we reap the full benefit of the great utopian tradition. In turning away from the social myths that hamper us, we do not jump blindly into a blankness: we rather ally ourselves with a different order of social myth which has always been vivified and enriched by the arts and sciences.

The idolum of eutopia which we may seek to project in this or that region is not a _carte blanche_ which any one may fill in at his will and caprice; certain lines have already been fixed; certain spaces have already been filled. There is a consensus among all utopian writers, to begin with, that the land and natural resources belong undividedly to the community; and even when it is worked by separate people or associations, as in Utopia and Freeland the increment of the land--the economic rent--belongs to the community as a whole. There is also a pretty common notion among the Utopians that, as land is a common possession, so is work a common function; and no one is let off from some sort of labor of body or mind because of any inherited privileges or dignities that he can point to. Finally, there is the almost equally common notion, among the utopians, that the perpetuation of the species leaves plenty of room for improvement, and that, as far as human knowledge and foresight are worth anything, it should be applied to propagation; so that the most reckless and ill-bred shall not burden the community with the support of their offspring while those of finer capacity are neglected or overwhelmed in numbers.

Besides these general conditions for the good life which the utopians unite to emphasize, there are certain other points in the utopian tradition of which one writer or another has given the classic statement.

With Plato we see the enormous importance of birth and education; we recognize the part good breeding, in every sense of the word, must play in the good community. Sir Thomas More makes us aware of the fact that a community becomes a community to the extent that it has shared possessions, and he suggests that the local group might develop such a common life as the old colleges of Oxford have enjoyed. When we turn to Christianopolis, we are reminded that the daily life and work of the community must be infused with the spirit of science, and that an acute practical intelligence such as we find today among the engineers need not be divorced from the practice of the humanities. Even the nineteenth century utopias have a contribution to make. They remind us by their overemphasis that all the proud and mighty idealisms in the world are so many shadows unless they are supported by the whole economic fabric--so that “eutopia” is not merely a matter of spiritual conversion, as the ancient religions taught, but of economic and geotechnic reconstruction. Finally, from James Buckingham and Ebenezer Howard we can learn the importance of converting the idolum of eutopia into plans and layouts and detailed projections, such as a townplanner might utilize; and we may suspect that a eutopia which cannot be converted into such specific plans will continue, as the saying is, to remain up in the air.

Taken together, there is a powerful impulse towards creating a good environment for the good life in the classic utopias we have examined: from one or another utopia we may draw elements which will enrich every part of the community’s life. By following the utopian tradition we shall not merely escape from the fake utopias that have dominated us: we shall return to reality. More than that, we shall return upon reality and perhaps--who can tell?--we shall re-create it!

12

In discussing the foundations of Eutopia I am conscious of a certain abstractness in my method of argument; conscious that I have not been a good utopian in dealing with these proud idola that we may project in every region. Let us come down to earth now and realize what all this amounts to when we turn away from the library and mingle again on the highways that lead past our door.

First of all, I conceive that we shall not attempt to envisage a single utopia for a single unit called humanity; that is the sort of thin and tepid abstraction which the discipline of the Regional Survey will tend to kill off even in people who are now inured by education to dealing only in verbal things. All the human beings on the planet are a unity only for the sake of talking about them; and as far as that goes, there is very little profitable conversation that can apply to a Greenlander, a Parisian, and a Chinaman, except the mere observation that they are all on the same little boat of a planet and would probably be much happier if they minded their own business and were not too insistent about inflicting their institutions and their idola upon their neighbors.

We shall have to dismiss, as equally futile, the notion of a single stratification of mankind, such as the working class, serving as the foundation for our Eutopia: the notion that the working class consists simply of urban workers is a cockney imbecility, and as soon as one rectifies it and includes the agricultural population, we have “humanity” pretty much all over again. Finally, if we are to give eutopia a local habitation it will not be founded upon the National State, for the National State is a myth which sane people will no more sacrifice their lives to than they would hand their children into the furnace of some tribal Moloch; and a good idolum cannot be founded on the basis of a bad one.

As far as extent or character of territory goes, we will remember that the planet is not as smooth as a billiard ball, and that the limits of any genuine community rest within fairly ascertainable geographic regions in which a certain complex of soil, climate, industry, institutional life and historic heritage has prevailed. We shall not attempt to legislate for all these communities at one stroke; for we shall respect William Blake’s dictum that one law for the lion and the ox is tyranny. There are some 15,000,000 local communities in the world, the Postal Directory tells us; and our eutopia will necessarily take root in one of these real communities, and include within its co-operations as many other communities, as have similar interests and identities. It may be that our eutopia will embrace a population as great as that in the Metropolis of London or New York; but it is needless to say that the land which lies beyond the limits of the metropolis will no longer be regarded as a sort of subterranean factory for the production of agricultural goods. In sum, as Patrick Geddes has finely said, in the Kingdom of Eutopia--the world Eutopia--there will be many mansions.

The inhabitants of our eutopias will have a familiarity with their local environment and its resources, and a sense of historic continuity, which those who dwell within the paper world of Megalopolis and who touch their environment mainly through the newspaper and the printed book, have completely lost. The people of Newcastle will no longer go to London for coals, as the people in the provinces have in a sense been doing this last century and more: there will be a more direct utilization of local resources than would have seemed profitable or seemly to the metropolitan world which now has command of the market. In these varied eutopias, it is safe to say, there will be a new realization of the fact that a cultivated life is essentially a settled life: their citizens will have discovered that the great privilege of travelling from Brooklyn to Bermondsey, and from Bermondsey to Bombay is scarcely worth the trouble when the institutions of Brooklyn, Bermondsey, and Bombay, and every other purely industrial center, are identical--sanitary drinking devices and canned goods and moving pictures being the same wherever mechanical duplication of goods for a world market has taken the place of direct adaptation to local needs.

It should not surprise us therefore if the foundations of eutopia were established in ruined countries; that is, in countries where metropolitan civilization has collapsed and where all its paper prestige is no longer accepted at its paper value. There was the beginning of a genuine eutopian movement in Denmark after the war with Germany in the ’sixties: under the leadership of Bishop Gruntwig came a revival of folk traditions in literature and a renascence of education which has renewed the life of the Danish countryside and made an intelligent farmer and an educated man out of the boor. It would not be altogether without precedent if such a eutopian renascence took place in Germany, in Austria, in Russia; and perhaps on another scale in India and China and Palestine; for all these regions are now face to face with realities which the “prosperous” paperism of our metropolitan civilization has largely neglected.

If the inhabitants of our Eutopias will conduct their daily affairs in a possibly more limited environment than that of the great metropolitan centers, their mental environment will not be localized or nationalized. For the first time perhaps in the history of the planet our advance in science and invention has made it possible for every age and every community to contribute to the spiritual heritage of the local group; and the citizen of eutopia will not stultify himself by being, let us say, a hundred per cent Frenchman when Greece, China, England, Scandinavia and Russia can give sustenance to his spiritual life. Our eutopians will necessarily draw from this wider environment whatever can be assimilated by the local community; and they will thus add any elements that may be lacking in the natural situation.

The chief business of eutopians was summed up by Voltaire in the final injunction of Candide: Let us cultivate our garden. The aim of the real eutopian is the culture of his environment, most distinctly not the culture, and above all not the exploitation, of some other person’s environment. Hence the size of our Eutopia may be big or little; it may begin in a single village; it may embrace a whole region. A little leaven will leaven the whole loaf; and if a genuine pattern for the eutopian life plants itself in any particular locality it may ramify over a whole continent as easily as Coketown duplicated itself throughout the Western World. The notion that no effective change can be brought about in society until millions of people have deliberated upon it and willed it is one of the rationalizations which are dear to the lazy and the ineffectual. Since the first step towards eutopia is the reconstruction of our idola, the foundations for eutopia can be laid, wherever we are, without further ado.

Our most important task at the present moment is to build castles in the air. We need not fear, as Thoreau reminds us, that the work will be lost. If our eutopias spring out of the realities of our environment, it will be easy enough to place foundations under them. Without a common design, without a grand design, all our little bricks of reconstruction might just as well remain in the brickyard; for a disharmony between men’s minds betokens, in the end, the speedy dilapidation of whatever they may build. Our final word is a counsel of perfection. When that which is perfect has come, that which is imperfect will pass away.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

For the benefit of the reader who wishes to travel further along the trails opened up in this survey of utopias, I am giving a list of the principal books on the subject. This list includes all the important utopias that are accessible in English, as well as a few that are not; but it is not exhaustive, for the region of Utopia has its swamps and arid places as well as its fertile and cultivated land; and no one but a scholarly explorer need attempt to enter the more forbidding parts of the country.

Needless to say, in dealing with our historic utopias I had a rough criterion of selection. I set out to treat such plans for the improvement of the human community as had been embodied in complete pictures of an ideal commonwealth: this excluded important essays in politics like Hobbes’ Leviathan and Harrington’s Oceana; and it ruled out any treatment of abstract idealisms which, however important, did not exemplify the essential utopian method. Next, I resolved to deal at length only with those utopias which have exercised some influence on thought and life, particularly in the Western European world. Third, I sought to emphasize what was common in the methods and ends of the classic utopias; making plain their relations within the world of utopias and their relevance in the present day, rather than attempting to show in any detail the social milieu in which each utopian wrote. In dealing with the nineteenth century my criterion became a little shaky; and I frankly chose the nineteenth century utopias on the basis of their association with temporal movements like state socialism, the single tax, and syndicalism, rather than because of their conformity to standards which served to weed out irrelevant utopias in the earlier centuries. In devoting a little space to Fourier and Spence and giving short shrift to Owen I have tried to restore these interesting and significant figures to the place that they deserve. There will doubtless be disagreements over my selections and the amount of space I have allotted to various writers; but at least, where there has been madness there has also been method.

Certain parts of the argument are not covered by this list of utopias. The best introductions to utopian literature in general are in German; see R. Blueher’s excellent pamphlet on Moderne Utopien; Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sozialismus, Bonn: 1920. While Mr. Van Wyck Brooks put me independently on the trail of Rabelais’ Abbey of Theleme I must acknowledge, with as much grace as possible, that Herr Blueher anticipated me in grasping this clue to Renascence culture; and if any credit is due, he deserves it. The most exhaustive catalogue of pre-nineteenth century utopias is contained in Kautsky’s Vorläufer des Modernen Sozialismus. Max Beer’s History of British Socialism has an excellent discussion of the relation of the Utopians to socialism. See also Moritz Kaufmann’s Utopias; or Schemes of Social Improvement, from Sir Thomas More to Karl Marx, London: 1879. In the excellent History of Utopian Thought, by Dr. J. O. Hertzler (Macmillan: 1923), the phantasists are sympathetically treated.

The chapter on the Country House might well be prefaced by Mr. Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class, a satire which seems to me unique in scholarship and originality. The importance of our social myths and our collective representations has been noted by a whole school of French sociologists who follow Émile Durkheim; and the dynamic force of ideas has been treated by Alfred Fouillée. On both these topics there is a whole literature; and it would give a sense of false simplicity to single out any particular essay. There is a fairly popular discussion of the place of myths and ideals in the George Sorel’s Reflexions on Violence, and Benjamin Kidd’s Science of Power (especially Chapter V.).

As a loose illustration of the general method and outlook embodied in this book I refer to the Making of the Future Series, edited by Messrs. Patrick Geddes and Victor Branford and published by Williams & Norgate, London. There is an able exposition of the regionalist movement and of the fundamental realities upon which this movement is based in two books published in that series; namely, Professor Fleure’s Human Geography in Western Europe and C. B. Fawcett’s The Provinces of England. Two works by the editors, The Coming Polity and Our Social Inheritance are likewise suggestive. Professor Geddes is the outstanding exponent of the Eutopian method both in thought and in practical activity; and the reader should consult his City Development (1904) and his Town-Planning towards City Development: a Report to the Durbar of Indore, 2 vols. Indore, 1918. Both of these books are mines from which all sorts of precious thoughts can be quarried. Remaindered copies of the first can be obtained from John Grant, Bookseller, Edinburgh; while the second is sold by Botsford, High Holborn, London. Professor Geddes’ work exemplifies concretely a good part of what I have sought to explain and define in not altogether adequate prose.

UTOPIAS

PLATO (427 B.C.–347 B.C.). The Republic. Translated with notes
and essays by Benjamin Jowett. Oxford: 1894. See also Plato’s
Critias and Statesman in the same edition. The Laws, which
is a more detailed attempt to work out the details of a good
polity, is so lacking in Plato’s original inspiration that,
but for Aristotle’s allusion to it, one would promptly take
it for the work of another hand.

MORE, SIR THOMAS (1478–1535). Utopia. Published originally in
Latin in 1516. There are numerous modern editions. See Ideal
Commonwealths, edited by Henry Morley.

ANDREÆ, JOHANN VALENTIN (1586–1654). Christianopolis. Published
in 1619 and translated in 1916 by Felix Emil Held under the
title of Christianopolis: An Ideal State of the 17th Century.
Oxford University Press. Mr. Held’s introduction contains an
account of Andreæ’s life.

BACON, FRANCIS (1561–1626). The New Atlantis. Published in
1627. Bacon contemplated writing a second part which would
deal with the laws of his ideal commonwealth. See Ideal
Commonwealths.

CAMPANELLA, TOMASSO (1568–1639). The City of the Sun. Published
in 1637 as Civitas Solis Poetica: Idea Reipublicæ
Philosophiæ. See Ideal Commonwealths. ALLAIS, DENIS VAIRASSE
D’ (--). L’Histoire des Sevarambes. Written in 1672 and
translated into English as The History of the Sevarites,
written by one Captain Siden, London: 1675. In Kautsky’s
Vorläufer des Modernen Sozialismus this utopia is given
high praise and is ranked as the French parallel of More’s
Utopia; but I feel that this is a sad error in judgment which
perhaps arose out of the bare fact that the first law of
the great dictator Sevarias was to put all private property
in the hands of the state, to be disposed of absolutely by
its authority, and to do away with distinctions of rank
and hereditary dignity. There is little that is fresh or
imaginative in Vairasse’s treatment, however, and there
is nothing like More’s detailed effort to guard against
usurpation of power by the ruling classes. As simple fiction,
the History of the Sevarites is, however, readable. See
also L’Histoire des Galligènes, by Tiphaigne de la Roche;
likewise the excellent satire, Giphantia. The description of
Salentum, under Mentor, in Fénélon’s Telemachus should not be
neglected. The Abbé Morelly’s Basiliade is little more than a
definition of his Code de la Nature.

MERCIER, LOUIS SEBASTIEN (1740–1814). Memoirs of the Year 2500.
Published in French in 1772 and translated into English,
Liverpool: 1802.

SPENCE, THOMAS (1750–1814). Description of Spensonia.
Constitution of Spensonia. London: 1795. Privately printed at
the Courier Press; Leamington Spa: 1917.

FOURIER, CHARLES FRANÇOIS MARIE (1772–1837). Traité de
l’Association domestique agricole. 2 vols. 1822. Le Nouveau
Monde Industriel. 2 vols. 1829. See also Albert Brisbane in
his General Introduction to the Social Sciences (Fourier’s
“Social Destinies”), and Selections from the Works of
Fourier, translated by Julia Franklin, with an introduction
by Charles Gide, London: 1901.

CABET, ÉTIENNE (1788–1856). Voyage en Icarie. Published in 1845
and numerous editions followed during the next five years;
see that of the Bureau du Populaie, Paris: 1848.

BUCKINGHAM, JAMES SILK (1786–1855). National Evils and Practical
Remedies, with a plan for a model town. London: 1848.

BULWER-LYTTON, E. (1803–1873). The Coming Race; or the New
Utopia. London: 185--. A fantastic romance about a people who
live underground, possess detachable wings, and command a
potency known as “vril.” It is perhaps not altogether without
significance that this new hierarchy of industrial angels was
conceived by Lytton in the same decade that saw the building
of the Crystal Palace.

PEMBERTON, ROBERT (--). The Happy Colony. London: 1854. This is
an appeal to the working class, somewhat similar in temper
and method to Buckingham’s appeal to the middle class.
Pemberton had an individual system of psychology which he
desired to apply in education. This utopia has now only a
limited historical significance.

BELLAMY, EDWARD (1850–1898). Looking Backward; Boston: 1888.
Equality; Boston: 1897.

HERTZKA, THEODOR (1845–?). Freeland: A Social Anticipation.
First edition published in German, 1889; English translation
published by the British Freeland Association in 1891. A
Visit to Freeland, or the New Paradise Regained. Translation
published by the above Association, London: 1894. The first
work lays the foundations for the utopia; the second is the
ideal commonwealth in action.

MORRIS, WILLIAM (1834–1896). News from Nowhere. London: 1890.
There have been numerous editions.

HOWARD, EBENEZER (1850–?). Garden Cities of Tomorrow. London:
1902. First published as Tomorrow in 1898. Unique among
utopian books in that its eutopia has been partly realized.
See numerous descriptions of Letchworth, the first Garden
City.

HUDSON, W. H. (--). A Crystal Age. London: 1906.

THIRION, ÉMILE (1825–?). Neustria: Utopie Individualiste. Paris:
1901. This is one of the rare, deliberately individualistic
utopias, founded on work, liberty, and property. It assumes
that a colony of Girondists were able to establish themselves
in South America.

HERZL, THEODOR (1860–1904). Altneuland. Leipzig: 1903.

TARDE, GABRIEL (1843–1904). Underground Man. London: 1905. A deft
and well-conceived fantasy, full of excellent criticism.
Towards the past it is a utopia of reconstruction, towards
the future--but herein lies much of its charm!--it is one of
escape.

WELLS, H. G. (1866-?). A Modern Utopia. New York: 1905.

CRAM, RALPH ADAMS (1863–?). Walled Towns. Boston: 1919. Dr.
Cram does not classify this work as a utopia; but the
honest critic cannot help giving it that label. Dr. Cram
sees no basis for eutopia without the system of values and
the sanctions perpetuated by the Christian Church; since
this leaves the greater part of humanity in Darkness, I
cannot agree with him. Dr. Cram, however, is a fine scholar
and a stimulating critic; and if one could only grant his
assumptions his conclusions would be magnificent.

MORLEY, HENRY. Ideal Commonwealths; Plutarch’s Lycurgus, More’s
Utopia, Bacon’s New Atlantis, Campanella’s City of the Sun,
and a Fragment of Hall’s Mundus Alter et Idem, with an
introduction by Henry Morley. London: G. Routledge, 1886.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Chapter One did not indicate the beginning of section “5”. Transcriber added it by referencing an earlier edition of the book.

Text mostly uses “utopia” but sometimes uses “eutopia”. Both retained here.

Page 104: “the tale end” was printed that way.

Page 224: “perfunctory seal upon” was printed as “perfunctory real upon”; changed here.

Page 231: “advertized” was printed that way.

Page 294: “A. E.” was the pseudonym of George William Russell.