section 1
at times during that memorable afternoon and evening it seemed to mr. barnstaple that he was involved in nothing more remarkable than an extraordinary dialogue about government and history, a dialogue that had in some inexplicable way become spectacular; it was as if all this was happening only in his mind; and then the absolute reality of his adventure would return to him with overwhelming power and his intellectual interest fade to inattention in the astounding strangeness of his position. in these latter phases he would find his gaze wandering from face to face of the utopians who surrounded him, resting for a time on some exquisite detail of the architecture of the building and then coming back to these divinely graceful forms.
then incredulously he would revert to his fellow earthlings.
not one of these utopian faces but was as candid, earnest and beautiful as the angelic faces of an italian painting. one woman was strangely like michael angelo’s delphic sibyl. they sat in easy attitudes, men and women together, for the most part concentrated on the discussion, but every now and then mr. barnstaple would meet the direct scrutiny of a pair of friendly eyes or find some utopian face intent upon the costume of lady stella or the eye-glass of mr. mush.
mr. barnstaple’s first impression of the utopians had been that they were all young people; now he perceived that many of these faces had a quality of vigorous maturity. none showed any of the distinctive marks of age as this world notes them, but both urthred and lion had lines of experience about eyes and lips and brow.
the effect of these people upon mr. barnstaple mingled stupefaction with familiarity in the strangest way. he had a feeling that he had always known that such a race could exist and that this knowledge had supplied the implicit standard of a thousand judgments upon human affairs, and at the same time he was astonished to the pitch of incredulity to find himself in the same world with them. they were at once normal and wonderful in comparison with himself and his companions who were, on their part, at the same time queer and perfectly matter-of-fact.
and together with a strong desire to become friendly and intimate with these fine and gracious persons, to give himself to them and to associate them with himself by service and reciprocal acts, there was an awe and fear of them that made him shrink from contact with them and quiver at their touch. he desired their personal recognition of himself as a fellow and companion so greatly that his sense of his own ungraciousness and unworthiness overwhelmed him. he wanted to bow down before them. beneath all the light and loveliness of things about him lurked the intolerable premonition of his ultimate rejection from this new world.
so great was the impression made by the utopians upon mr. barnstaple, so entirely did he yield himself up to his joyful acceptance of their grace and physical splendour, that for a time he had no attention left over to note how different from his own were the reactions of several of his earthling companions. the aloofness of the utopians from the queerness, grotesqueness and cruelty of normal earthly life made him ready for the most uncritical approval of their institutions and ways of life.
it was the behaviour of father amerton which first awakened him to the fact that it was possible to disapprove of these wonderful people very highly and to display a very considerable hostility to them. at first father amerton had kept a round-faced, round-eyed wonder above his round collar; he had shown a disposition to give the lead to anyone who chose to take it, and he had said not a word until the naked beauty of dead greenlake had surprised him into an expression of unclerical appreciation. but during the journey to the lakeside and the meal and the opening arrangements of the conference there was a reaction, and this first naive and deferential astonishment gave place to an attitude of resistance and hostility. it was as if this new world which had begun by being a spectacle had taken on the quality of a proposition which he felt he had either to accept or confute. perhaps it was that the habit of mind of a public censor was too strong for him and that he could not feel normal again until he began to condemn. perhaps he was really shocked and distressed by the virtual nudity of these lovely bodies about him. but he began presently to make queer grunts and coughs, to mutter to himself, and to betray an increasing incapacity to keep still.
he broke out first into an interruption when the question of population was raised. for a little while his intelligence prevailed over this emotional stir when the prophet of the wheel was discussed, but then his gathering preoccupations resumed their sway.
“i must speak out,” mr. barnstaple heard him mutter. “i must speak out.”
“now suddenly he began to ask questions. there are some things i want to have clear,” he said. “i want to know what moral state this so-called utopia is in. excuse me!”
he got up. he stood with wavering hands, unable for a moment to begin. then he went to the end of the row of seats and placed himself so that his hands could rest on the back of a seat. he passed his fingers through his hair and he seemed to be inhaling deeply. an unwonted animation came into his face, which reddened and began to shine. a horrible suspicion crossed the mind of mr. barnstaple that so it was he must stand when he began those weekly sermons of his, those fearless denunciations of almost everything, in the church of st. barnabas in the west. the suspicion deepened to a still more horrible certainty.
“friends, brothers of this new world — i have certain things to say to you that i cannot delay saying. i want to ask you some soul-searching questions. i want to deal plainly with you about some plain and simple but very fundamental matters. i want to put things to you frankly and as man to man, not being mealy-mouthed about urgent if delicate things. let me come without parley to what i have to say. i want to ask you if, in this so-called state of utopia, you still have and respect and honour the most sacred thing in social life. do you still respect the marriage bond?”
he paused, and in the pause the utopian reply came through to mr. barnstaple: “in utopia there are no bonds.”
but father amerton was not asking questions with any desire for answers; he was asking questions pulpit-fashion.
“i want to know,” he was booming out, “if that holy union revealed to our first parents in the garden of eden holds good here, if that sanctified life-long association of one man and one woman, in good fortune and ill fortune, excluding every other sort of intimacy, is the rule of your lives. i want to know —”
“but he doesn’t want to know,” came a utopian intervention.
“— if that shielded and guarded dual purity —”
mr. burleigh raised a long white hand. “father amerton,” he protested, “please.”
the hand of mr. burleigh was a potent hand that might still wave towards preferment. few things under heaven could stop father amerton when he was once launched upon one of his soul storms, but the hand of mr. burleigh was among such things.
“— has followed another still more precious gift and been cast aside here and utterly rejected of men? what is it, mr. burleigh?”
“i wish you would not press this matter further just at present, father amerton. until we have learnt a little more. institutions are, manifestly, very different here. even the institution of marriage may be different.”
the preacher’s face lowered. “mr. burleigh,” he said, “i must. if my suspicions are right, i want to strip this world forthwith of its hectic pretence to a sort of health and virtue.”
“not much stripping required,” said mr. burleigh’s chauffeur, in a very audible aside.
a certain testiness became evident in mr. burleigh’s voice.
“then ask questions,” he said. “ask questions. don’t orate, please. they don’t want us to orate.”
“i’ve asked my question,” said father amerton sulkily with a rhetorical glare at urthred, and remained standing.
the answer came clear and explicit. in utopia there was no compulsion for men and women to go about in indissoluble pairs. for most utopians that would be inconvenient. very often men and women, whose work brought them closely together, were lovers and kept very much together, as arden and greenlake had done. but they were not obliged to do that.
there had not always been this freedom. in the old crowded days of conflict, and especially among the agricultural workers and employed people of utopia, men and women who had been lovers were bound together under severe penalties for life. they lived together in a small home which the woman kept in order for the man, she was his servant and bore him as many children as possible, while he got food for them. the children were desired because they were soon helpful on the land or as wage-earners. but the necessities that had subjugated women to that sort of pairing had passed away.
people paired indeed with their chosen mates, but they did so by an inner necessity and not by any outward compulsion.
father amerton had listened with ill-concealed impatience. now he jumped with: “then i was right, and you have abolished the family?” his finger pointed at urthred made it almost a personal accusation.
no. utopia had not abolished the family. it had enlarged and glorified the family until it embraced the whole world. long ago that prophet of the wheel, whom father amerton seemed to respect, had preached that very enlargement of the ancient narrowness of home. they had told him while he preached that his mother and his brethren stood without and claimed his attention. but he would not go to them. he had turned to the crowd that listened to his words: “behold my mother and my brethren!”
father amerton slapped the seat-back in front of him loudly and startlingly. “a quibble,” he cried, “a quibble! satan too can quote the scriptures.”
it was clear to mr. barnstaple that father amerton was not in complete control of himself. he was frightened by what he was doing and yet impelled to do it. he was too excited to think clearly or control his voice properly, so that he shouted and boomed in the wildest way. he was “letting himself go” and trusting to the habits of the pulpit of st. barnabas to bring him through.
“i perceive now how you stand. only too well do i perceive how you stand. from the outset i guessed how things were with you. i waited — i waited to be perfectly sure, before i bore my testimony. but it speaks for itself — the shamelessness of your costume, the licentious freedom of your manners! young men and women, smiling, joining hands, near to caressing, when averted eyes, averted eyes, are the least tribute you could pay to modesty! and this vile talk — of lovers loving — without bonds or blessings, without rules or restraint. what does it mean? whither does it lead? do not imagine because i am a priest, a man pure and virginal in spite of great temptations, do not imagine that i do not understand! have i no vision of the secret places of the heart? do not the wounded sinners, the broken potsherds, creep to me with their pitiful confessions? and i will tell you plainly whither you go and how you stand? this so-called freedom of yours is nothing but licence. your so-called utopia, i see plainly, is nothing but a hell of unbridled indulgence! unbridled indulgence!”
mr. burleigh held up a protesting hand, but father amerton’s eloquence soared over the obstruction.
he beat upon the back of the seat before him. “i will bear my witness,” he shouted. “i will bear my witness. i will make no bones about it. i refuse to mince matters i tell you. you are all living — in promiscuity! that is the word for it. in animal promiscuity! in bestial promiscuity!”
mr. burleigh had sprung to his feet. he was holding up his two hands and motioning the london boanerges to sit down. “no, no!” he cried. “you must stop, mr. amerton. really, you must stop. you are being insulting. you do not understand. sit down, please. i insist.”
“sit down and hold your peace,” said a very clear voice. “or you will be taken away.”
something made father amerton aware of a still figure at his elbow. he met the eyes of a lithe young man who was scrutinizing his build as a portrait painter might scrutinize a new sitter. there was no threat in his bearing, he stood quite still, and yet his appearance threw an extraordinary quality of evanescence about father amerton. the great preacher’s voice died in his throat.
mr. burleigh’s bland voice was lifted to avert a conflict. “mr. serpentine, sir, i appeal to you and apologize. he is not fully responsible. we others regret the interruption — the incident. i pray you, please do not take him away, whatever taking away may mean. i will answer personally for his good behaviour. . . . do sit down, mr. amerton, please; now; or i shall wash my hands of the whole business.”
father amerton hesitated.
“my time will come,” he said and looked the young man in the eyes for a moment and then went back to his seat.
urthred spoke quietly and clearly. “you earthlings are difficult guests to entertain. this is not all. . . . manifestly this man’s mind is very unclean. his sexual imagination is evidently inflamed and diseased. he is angry and anxious to insult and wound. and his noises are terrific. to-morrow he must be examined and dealt with.”
“how?” said father amerton, his round face suddenly grey. “how do you mean — dealt with?”
“please do not talk,” said mr. burleigh. “please do not talk any more. you have done quite enough mischief. . . . ”
for the time the incident seemed at an end, but it had left a queer little twinge of fear in mr. barnstaple’s heart. these utopians were very gentle-mannered and gracious people indeed, but just for a moment the hand of power had seemed to hover over the earthling party. sunlight and beauty were all about the visitors, nevertheless they were strangers and quite helpless strangers in an unknown world. the utopian faces were kindly and their eyes curious and in a manner friendly, but much more observant than friendly. it was as if they looked across some impassable gulf of difference.
and then mr. barnstaple in the midst of his distress met the brown eyes of lychnis, and they were kindlier than the eyes of the other utopians. she, at least, understood the fear that had come to him, he felt, and she was willing to reassure him and be his friend. mr. barnstaple looked at her, feeling for the moment much as a stray dog might do who approaches a doubtfully amiable group and gets a friendly glance and a greeting.
section 2
another mind that was also in active resistance to utopia was that of mr. freddy mush. he had no quarrel indeed with the religion or morals or social organization of utopia. he had long since learnt that no gentleman of serious aesthetic pretensions betrays any interest whatever in such matters. his perceptions were by hypothesis too fine for them. but presently he made it clear that there had been something very ancient and beautiful called the “balance of nature” which the scientific methods of utopia had destroyed. what this balance of nature of his was, and how it worked on earth, neither the utopians nor mr. barnstaple were able to understand very clearly. under cross-examination mr. mush grew pink and restive and his eye-glass flashed defensively. “i hold by the swallows,” he repeated. “if you can’t see my point about that i don’t know what else i can say.”
he began with the fact and reverted to the fact that there were no swallows to be seen in utopia, and there were no swallows to be seen in utopia because there were no gnats nor midges. there had been an enormous deliberate reduction of insect life in utopia, and that had seriously affected every sort of creature that was directly or indirectly dependent upon insect life. so soon as the new state of affairs was securely established in utopia and the educational state working, the attention of the utopian community had been given to the long-cherished idea of a systematic extermination of tiresome and mischievous species. a careful inquiry was made into the harmfulness and the possibility of eliminating the house-fly for example, wasps and hornets, various species of mice and rats, rabbits, stinging nettles. ten thousand species, from disease-germ to rhinoceros and hyena, were put upon their trial. every species found was given an advocate. of each it was asked: what good is it? what harm does it do? how can it be extirpated? what else may go with it if it goes? is it worth while wiping it out of existence? or can it be mitigated and retained? and even when the verdict was death final and complete, utopia set about the business of extermination with great caution. a reserve would be kept and was in many cases still being kept, in some secure isolation, of every species condemned.
most infectious and contagious fevers had been completely stamped out; some had gone very easily; some had only been driven out of human life by proclaiming a war and subjecting the whole population to discipline. many internal and external parasites of man and animals had also been got rid of completely. and further, there had been a great cleansing of the world from noxious insects, from weeds and vermin and hostile beasts. the mosquito had gone, the house-fly, the blow-fly, and indeed a great multitude of flies had gone; they had been driven out of life by campaigns involving an immense effort and extending over many generations. it had been infinitely more easy to get rid of such big annoyances as the hyena and the wolf than to abolish these smaller pests. the attack upon the flies had involved the virtual rebuilding of a large proportion of utopian houses and a minute cleansing of them all throughout the planet.
the question of what else would go if a certain species went was one of the most subtle that utopia had to face. certain insects, for example, were destructive and offensive grubs in the opening stage of their lives, were evil as caterpillar or pupa and then became either beautiful in themselves or necessary to the fertilization of some useful or exquisite flowers. others offensive in themselves were a necessary irreplaceable food to pleasant and desirable creatures. it was not true that swallows had gone from utopia, but they had become extremely rare; and rare too were a number of little insectivorous birds, the fly-catcher for example, that harlequin of the air. but they had not died out altogether; the extermination of insects had not gone to that length; sufficient species had remained to make some districts still habitable for these delightful birds.
many otherwise obnoxious plants were a convenient source of chemically complex substances that were still costly or tedious to make synthetically, and so had kept a restricted place in life. plants and flowers, always simpler and more plastic in the hands of the breeder and hybridizer than animals, had been enormously changed in utopia. our earthlings were to find a hundred sorts of foliage and of graceful and scented blossoms that were altogether strange to them. plants, mr. barnstaple learnt, had been trained and bred to make new and unprecedented secretions, waxes, gums, essential oils and the like, of the most desirable quality.
there had been much befriending and taming of big animals; the larger carnivora, combed and cleaned, reduced to a milk dietary, emasculated in spirit and altogether be-catted, were pets and ornaments in utopia. the almost extinct elephant had increased again and utopia had saved her giraffes. the brown bear had always been disposed to sweets and vegetarianism and had greatly improved in intelligence. the dog had given up barking and was comparatively rare. sporting dogs were not used nor small pet animals.
horses mr. barnstaple did not see, but as he was a very modern urban type he did not miss them very much and he did not ask any questions about them while he was actually in utopia. he never found out whether they had or had not become extinct.
as he heard on his first afternoon in that world of this revision and editing, this weeding and cultivation of the kingdoms of nature by mankind, it seemed to him to be the most natural and necessary phase in human history. “after all,” he said to himself, “it was a good invention to say that man was created a gardener.”
and now man was weeding and cultivating his own strain. . . .
the utopians told of eugenic beginnings, of a new and surer decision in the choice of parents, of an increasing certainty in the science of heredity; and as mr. barnstaple contrasted the firm clear beauty of face and limb that every utopian displayed with the carelessly assembled features and bodily disproportions of his earthly associates, he realized that already, with but three thousand years or so of advantage, these utopians were passing beyond man towards a nobler humanity. they were becoming different in kind.
section 3
they were different in kind.
as the questions and explanations and exchanges of that afternoon went on, it became more and more evident to mr. barnstaple that the difference of their bodies was as nothing to the differences of their minds. innately better to begin with, the minds of these children of light had grown up uninjured by any such tremendous frictions, concealments, ambiguities and ignorances as cripple the growing mind of an earthling. they were clear and frank and direct. they had never developed that defensive suspicion of the teacher, that resistance to instruction, which is the natural response to teaching that is half aggression. they were beautifully unwary in their communications. the ironies, concealments, insincerities, vanities and pretensions of earthly conversation seemed unknown to them. mr. barnstaple found this mental nakedness of theirs as sweet and refreshing as the mountain air he was breathing. it amazed him that they could be so patient and lucid with beings so underbred.
underbred was the word he used in his mind. himself, he felt the most underbred of all; he was afraid of these utopians; snobbish and abject before them, he was like a mannerless earthy lout in a drawing-room, and he was bitterly ashamed of his own abjection. all the other earthlings except mr. burleigh and lady stella betrayed the defensive spite of consciously inferior creatures struggling against that consciousness.
like father amerton, mr. burleigh’s chauffeur was evidently greatly shocked and disturbed by the unclothed condition of the utopians; his feelings expressed themselves by gestures, grimaces and an occasional sarcastic comment such as “i don’t think!” or “what o!” these he addressed for the most part to mr. barnstaple, for whom, as the owner of a very little old car, he evidently mingled feelings of profound contempt and social fellowship. he would also direct mr. barnstaple’s attention to anything that he considered remarkable in bearing or gesture, by means of a peculiar stare and grimace combined with raised eyebrows. he had a way of pointing with his mouth and nose that mr. barnstaple under more normal circumstances might have found entertaining.
lady stella, who had impressed mr. barnstaple at first as a very great lady of the modern type, he was now beginning to feel was on her defence and becoming rather too ladylike. mr. burleigh however retained a certain aristocratic sublimity. he had been a great man on earth for all his life and it was evident that he saw no reason why he should not be accepted as a great man in utopia. on earth he had done little and had been intelligently receptive with the happiest results. that alert, questioning mind of his, free of all persuasions, convictions or revolutionary desires, fell with the utmost ease into the pose of a distinguished person inspecting, in a sympathetic but entirely non-committal manner, the institutions of an alien state. “tell me,” that engaging phrase, laced his conversation.
the evening was drawing on; the clear utopian sky was glowing with the gold of sunset and a towering mass of cloud above the lake was fading from pink to a dark purple, when mr. rupert catskill imposed himself upon mr. barnstaple’s attention. he was fretting in his place. “i have something to say,” he said. “i have something to say.”
presently he jumped up and walked to the centre of the semicircle from which mr. burleigh had spoken earlier in the afternoon. “mr. serpentine,” he said. “mr. burleigh. there are a few things i should be glad to say — if you can give me this opportunity of saying them.”
section 4
he took off his grey top hat, went back and placed it on his seat and returned to the centre of the apse. he put back his coat tails, rested his hands on his hips, thrust his head forward, regarded his audience for a moment with an expression half cunning, half defiant, muttered something inaudible and began.
his opening was not prepossessing. there was some slight impediment in his speech, the little brother of a lisp, against which his voice beat gutturally. his first few sentences had an effect of being jerked out by unsteady efforts. then it became evident to mr. barnstaple that mr. catskill was expressing a very definite point of view, he was offering a reasoned and intelligible view of utopia. mr. barnstaple disagreed with that criticism, indeed he disagreed with it violently, but he had to recognize that it expressed an understandable attitude of mind.
mr. catskill began with a sweeping admission of the beauty and order of utopia. he praised the “glowing health” he saw “on every cheek,” the wealth, tranquillity and comfort of utopian life. they had “tamed the forces of nature and subjugated them altogether to one sole end, to the material comfort of the race.”
“but arden and greenlake?” murmured mr. barnstaple.
mr. catskill did not hear or heed the interruption. “the first effect, mr. speaker — mr. serpentine, i should say — the first effect upon an earthly mind is overwhelming. is it any wonder”— he glanced at mr. burleigh and mr. barnstaple —“is it any wonder that admiration has carried some of us off our feet? is it any wonder that for a time your almost magic beauty has charmed us into forgetting much that is in our own natures — into forgetting deep and mysterious impulses, cravings, necessities, so that we have been ready to say, ‘here at last is lotus land. here let us abide, let us adapt ourselves to this planned and ordered splendour and live our lives out here and die.’ i, too, mr. — mr. serpentine, succumbed to that magic for a time. but only for a time. already, sir, i find myself full of questionings.” . . .
his bright, headlong mind had seized upon the fact that every phase in the weeding and cleansing of utopia from pests and parasites and diseases had been accompanied by the possibility of collateral limitations and losses; or perhaps it would be juster to say that that fact had seized upon his mind. he ignored the deliberation and precautions that had accompanied every step in the process of making a world securely healthy and wholesome for human activity. he assumed there had been losses with every gain, he went on to exaggerate these losses and ran on glibly to the inevitable metaphor of throwing away the baby with its bath — inevitable, that is, for a british parliamentarian. the utopians, he declared, were living lives of extraordinary ease, safety and “may i say so — indulgence” (“they work,” said mr. barnstaple), but with a thousand annoyances and disagreeables gone had not something else greater and more precious gone also? life on earth was, he admitted, insecure, full of pains and anxieties, full indeed of miseries and distresses and anguish, but also, and indeed by reason of these very things, it had moments of intensity, hopes, joyful surprises, escapes, attainments, such as the ordered life of utopia could not possibly afford. “you have been getting away from conflicts and distresses. have you not also been getting away from the living and quivering realities of life?”
he launched out upon a eulogy of earthly life. he extolled the vitality of life upon earth as though there were no signs of vitality in the high splendour about him. he spoke of the “thunder of our crowded cities,” of the “urge of our teeming millions,” of the “broad tides of commerce and industrial effort and warfare,” that “swayed and came and went in the hives and harbours of our race.”
he had the knack of the plausible phrase and that imaginative touch which makes for eloquence. mr. barnstaple forgot that slight impediment and the thickness of the voice that said these things. mr. catskill boldly admitted all the earthly evils and dangers that mr. burleigh had retailed. everything that mr. burleigh had said was true. all that he had said fell indeed far short of the truth. famine we knew, and pestilence. we suffered from a thousand diseases that utopia had eliminated. we were afflicted by a thousand afflictions that were known to utopia now only by ancient tradition. “the rats gnaw and the summer flies persecute and madden. at times life reeks and stinks. i admit it, sir, i admit it. we go down far below your extremest experiences into discomforts and miseries, anxieties and anguish of soul and body, into bitterness, terror and despair. yea. but do we not also go higher? i challenge you with that. what can you know in this immense safety of the intensity, the frantic, terror-driven intensity, of many of our efforts? what can you know of reprieves and interludes and escapes? think of our many happinesses beyond your ken! what do you know here of the sweet early days of convalescence? of going for a holiday out of disagreeable surroundings? of taking some great risk to body or fortune and bringing it off? of winning a bet against enormous odds? of coming out of prison? and, sir, it has been said that there are those in our world who have found a fascination even in pain itself. because our life is dreadfuller, sir, it has, and it must have, moments that are infinitely brighter than yours. it is titanic, sir, where this is merely tidy. and we are inured to it and hardened by it. we are tempered to a finer edge. that is the point to which i am coming. ask us to give up our earthly disorder, our miseries and distresses, our high death-rates and our hideous diseases, and at the first question every man and woman in the world would say, ‘yes! willingly, yes!’ at the first question, sir!”
mr. catskill held his audience for a moment on his extended finger.
“and then we should begin to take thought. we should ask, as you say your naturalists asked about your flies and suchlike offensive small game, we should ask, ‘what goes with it? what is the price?’ and when we learnt that the price was to surrender that intensity of life, that tormented energy, that pickled and experienced toughness, that rat-like, wolf-like toughness our perpetual struggle engenders, we should hesitate. we should hesitate. in the end, sir, i believe, i hope and believe, indeed i pray and believe, we should say, ‘no!’ we should say, ‘no!’”
mr. catskill was now in a state of great cerebral exaltation. he was making short thrusting gestures with his clenched fist. his voice rose and fell and boomed; he swayed and turned about, glanced for the approval of his fellow earthlings, flung stray smiles at mr. burleigh.
this idea that our poor wrangling, nerveless, chance-driven world was really a fierce and close-knit system of powerful reactions in contrast with the evening serenities of a made and finished utopia, had taken complete possession of his mind. “never before, sir, have i realized, as i realize now, the high, the terrible and adventurous destinies of our earthly race. i look upon this golden lotus land of yours, this divine perfected land from which all conflict has been banished —”
mr. barnstaple caught a faint smile on the face of the woman who had reminded him of the delphic sibyl.
“— and i admit and admire its order and beauty as some dusty and resolute pilgrim might pause, on his exalted and mysterious quest, and admit and admire the order and beauty of the pleasant gardens of some prosperous sybarite. and like that pilgrim i may beg leave, sir, to question the wisdom of your way of living. for i take it, sir, that it is now a proven thing that life and all the energy and beauty of life are begotten by struggle and competition and conflict; we were moulded and wrought in hardship, and so, sir, were you. and yet you dream here that you have eliminated conflict for ever. your economic state, i gather, is some form of socialism; you have abolished competition in all the businesses of peace. your political state is one universal unity; you have altogether cut out the bracing and ennobling threat and the purging and terrifying experience of war. everything is ordered and provided for. everything is secure. everything is secure, sir, except for one thing. . . .
“i grieve to trouble your tranquillity, sir, but i must breathe the name of that one forgotten thing — degeneration! what is there here to prevent degeneration? are you preventing degeneration?
“what penalties are there any longer for indolence? what rewards for exceptional energy and effort? what is there to keep men industrious, what watchful, when there is no personal danger and no personal loss but only some remote danger or injury to the community? for a time by a sort of inertia you may keep going. you may seem to be making a success of things. i admit it, you do seem to be making a success of things. autumnal glory! sunset splendour! while about you in universes parallel to yours, parallel races still toil, still suffer, still compete and eliminate and gather strength and energy!”
mr. catskill flourished his hand at the utopians in rhetorical triumph.
“i would not have you think, sir, that these criticisms of your world are offered in a hostile spirit. they are offered in the most amiable and helpful spirit. i am the skeleton, but the most friendly and apologetic skeleton, at your feast. i ask my searching and disagreeable question because i must. is it indeed the wise way that you have chosen? you have sweetness and light — and leisure. granted. but if there is all this multitude of universes, of which you have told us, mr. serpentine, so clearly and illuminatingly, and if one may suddenly open into another as ours has done into yours, i would ask you most earnestly how safe is your sweetness, your light and your leisure? we talk here, separated by we know not how flimsy a partition from innumerable worlds. and at that thought, sir, it seems to me that as i stand here in the great golden calm of this place i can almost hear the trampling of hungry myriads as fierce and persistent as rats or wolves, the snarling voices of races inured to every pain and cruelty, the threat of terrible heroisms and pitiless aggressions. . . . ”
he brought his discourse to an abrupt end. he smiled faintly; it seemed to mr. barnstaple that he triumphed over utopia. he stood with hands on his hips and, as if he bent his body by that method, bowed stiffly. “sir,” he said with that ghost of a lisp of his, his eye on mr. burleigh, “i have said my say.”
he turned about and regarded mr. barnstaple for a moment with his face screwed up almost to the appearance of a wink. he nodded his head, as if he tapped a nail with a hammer, jerked himself into activity, and returned to his proper place.
section 5
urthred did not so much answer mr. catskill as sit, elbow on knee and chin on hand, thinking audibly about him.
“the gnawing vigour of the rat,” he mused, “the craving pursuit of the wolf, the mechanical persistence of wasp and fly and disease germ, have gone out of our world. that is true. we have obliterated that much of life’s devouring forces. and lost nothing worth having. pain, filth, indignity for ourselves — or any creatures; they have gone or they go. but it is not true that competition has gone from our world. why does he say it has? everyone here works to his or her utmost — for service and distinction. none may cheat himself out of toil or duty as men did in the age of confusion, when the mean and acquisitive lived and bred in luxury upon the heedlessness of more generous types. why does he say we degenerate? he has been told better already. the indolent and inferior do not procreate here. and why should he threaten us with fancies of irruptions from other, fiercer, more barbaric worlds? it is we who can open the doors into such other universes or close them as we choose. because we know. we can go to them — when we know enough we shall — but they cannot come to us. there is no way but knowledge out of the cages of life. . . . what is the matter with the mind of this man?
“these earthlings are only in the beginnings of science. they are still for all practical ends in that phase of fear and taboos that came also in the development of utopia before confidence and understanding. out of which phase our own world struggled during the last age of confusion. the minds of these earthlings are full of fears and prohibitions, and though it has dawned upon them that they may possibly control their universe, the thought is too terrible yet for them to face. they avert their minds from it. they still want to go on thinking, as their fathers did before them, that the universe is being managed for them better than they can control it for themselves. because if that is so, they are free to obey their own violent little individual motives. leave things to god, they cry, or leave them to competition.”
“evolution was our blessed word,” said mr. barnstaple, deeply interested.
“it is all the same thing — god, or evolution, or what you will — so long as you mean a power beyond your own which excuses you from your duty. utopia says, ‘do not leave things at all. take hold.’ but these earthlings still lack the habit of looking at reality — undraped. this man with the white linen fetter round his neck is afraid even to look upon men and women as they are. he is disgustingly excited by the common human body. this man with the glass lens before his left eye struggles to believe that there is a wise old mother nature behind the appearances of things, keeping a balance. it was fantastic to hear about his balance of nature. cannot he with two eyes and a lens see better than that? this last man who spoke so impressively, thinks that this old beldame nature is a limitless source of will and energy if only we submit to her freaks and cruelties and imitate her most savage moods, if only we sufficiently thrust and kill and rob and ravish one another. . . . he too preaches the old fatalism and believes it is the teaching of science. . . .
“these earthlings do not yet dare to see what our mother nature is. at the back of their minds is still the desire to abandon themselves to her. they do not see that except for our eyes and wills, she is purposeless and blind. she is not awful, she is horrible. she takes no heed to our standards, nor to any standards of excellence. she made us by accident; all her children are bastards — undesired; she will cherish or expose them, pet or starve or torment without rhyme or reason. she does not heed, she does not care. she will lift us up to power and intelligence, or debase us to the mean feebleness of the rabbit or the slimy white filthiness of a thousand of her parasitic inventions. there must be good in her because she made all that is good in us — but also there is endless evil. do not you earthlings see the dirt of her, the cruelty, the insane indignity of much of her work?”
“phew! worse than ‘nature red in tooth and claw,’” murmured mr. freddy mush.
“these things are plain,” mused urthred. “if they dared to see.
“half the species of life in our planet also, half and more than half of all the things alive, were ugly or obnoxious, inane, miserable, wretched, with elaborate diseases, helplessly ill-adjusted to nature’s continually fluctuating conditions, when first we took this old hag, our mother, in hand. we have, after centuries of struggle, suppressed her nastier fancies, and washed her and combed her and taught her to respect and heed the last child of her wantonings — man. with man came logos, the word and the will into our universe, to watch it and fear it, to learn it and cease to fear it, to know it and comprehend it and master it. so that we of utopia are no longer the beaten and starved children of nature, but her free and adolescent sons. we have taken over the old lady’s estate. every day we learn a little better how to master this little planet. every day our thoughts go out more surely to our inheritance, the stars. and the deeps beyond and beneath the stars.”
“you have reached the stars?” cried mr. barnstaple.
“not yet. not even the other planets. but very plainly the time draws near when those great distances will cease to restrain us. . . . ”
he paused. “many of us will have to go out into the deeps of space. . . . and never return. . . . giving their lives. . . .
“and into these new spaces — countless brave men. . . . ”
urthred turned towards mr. catskill. “we find your frankly expressed thoughts particularly interesting today. you help us to understand the past of our own world. you help us to deal with an urgent problem that we will presently explain to you. there are thoughts and ideas like yours in our ancient literature of two or three thousand years ago, the same preaching of selfish violence as though it was a virtue. even then intelligent men knew better, and you yourself might know better if you were not wilfully set in wrong opinions. but it is plain to see from your manner and bearing that you are very wilful indeed in your opinions.
“you are not, you must realize, a very beautiful person, and probably you are not very beautiful in your pleasures and proceedings. but you have superabundant energy, and so it is natural for you to turn to the excitements of risk and escape, to think that the best thing in life is the sensation of conflict and winning. also in the economic confusion of such a world as yours there is an intolerable amount of toil that must be done, toil so disagreeable that it makes everyone of spirit anxious to thrust away as much of it as possible and to claim exemption from it on account of nobility, gallantry or good fortune. people in your world no doubt persuade themselves very easily that they are justifiably exempted, and you are under that persuasion. you live in a world of classes. your badly trained mind has been under no necessity to invent its own excuses; the class into which you were born had all its excuses ready for you. so it is you take the best of everything without scruple and you adventure with life, chiefly at the expense of other people, with a mind trained by all its circumstances to resist the idea that there is any possible way of human living that can be steadfast and disciplined and at the same time vigorous and happy. you have argued against that persuasion all your life as though it were your personal enemy. it is your personal enemy; it condemns your way of life altogether, it damns you utterly for your adventures.
“confronted now with an ordered and achieved beauty of living you still resist; you resist to escape dismay; you argue that this world of ours is unromantic, wanting in intensity, decadent, feeble. now — in the matter of physical strength, grip hands with that young man who sits beside you.”
mr. catskill glanced at the extended hand and shook his head knowingly. “you go on talking,” he said.
“yet when i tell you that neither our wills nor our bodies are as feeble as yours, your mind resists obstinately. you will not believe it. if for a moment your mind admits it, afterwards it recoils to the system of persuasions that protect your self-esteem. only one of you accepts our world at all, and he does so rather because he is weary of yours than willing for ours. so i suppose it has to be. yours are age of confusion minds, trained to conflict, trained to insecurity and secret self-seeking. in that fashion nature and your state have taught you to live and so you must needs live until you die. such lessons are to be unlearnt only in ten thousand generations, by the slow education of three thousand years.
“and we are puzzled by the question, what are we to do with you? we will try our utmost to deal fairly and friendly with you if you will respect our laws and ways.
“but it will be very difficult, we know, for you. you do not realize yet how difficult your habits and preconceptions will make it for you. your party so far has behaved very reasonably and properly, in act if not in thought. but we have had another experience of earthling ways today of a much more tragic kind. your talk of fiercer, barbaric worlds breaking in upon us has had its grotesque parallel in reality today. it is true; there is something fierce and ratlike and dangerous about earthly men. you are not the only earthlings who came into utopia through this gate that swung open for a moment today. there are others —”
“of course!” said mr. barnstaple. “i should have guessed it! that third lot!”
“there is yet another of these queer locomotive machines of yours in utopia.”
“the grey car!” said mr. barnstaple to mr. burleigh. “it wasn’t a hundred yards ahead of you.”
“raced us from hounslow,” said mr. burleigh’s driver. “real hot stuff.”
mr. burleigh turned to mr. freddy mush. “i think you said you recognized someone?”
“lord barralonga, sir, almost to a certainty, and i think miss greeta grey.”
“there were two other men,” said mr. barnstaple.
“they will complicate things,” said mr. burleigh.
“they do complicate things,” said urthred. “they have killed a man.”
“a utopian?”
“these other people — there are five of them — whose names you seem to know, came into utopia just in front of your two vehicles. instead of stopping as you did when they found themselves on a new strange road, they seem to have quickened their pace very considerably. they passed some men and women and they made extraordinary gestures to them and abominable noises produced by an instrument specially designed for that purpose. further on they encountered a silver cheetah and charged at it and ran right over it, breaking its back. they do not seem to have paused to see what became of it. a young man named gold came out into the road to ask them to stop. but their machine is made in the most fantastic way, very complex and very foolish. it is quite unable to stop short suddenly. it is not driven by a single engine that is completely controlled. it has a complicated internal conflict. it has a sort of engine that drives it forward by a complex cogged gear on the axle of the hind wheels and it has various clumsy stopping contrivances by means of friction at certain points. you can apparently drive the engine at the utmost speed and at the same time jam the wheels to prevent them going round. when this young man stepped forward in front of them, they were quite unable to stop. they may have tried to do so. they say they did. their machine swerved dangerously and struck him with its side.”
“and killed him?”
“and killed him instantly. his body was horribly injured. . . . but they did not stop even for that. they slowed down and had a hasty consultation, and then seeing that people were coming they set their machine in motion again and made off. they seem to have been seized with a panic fear of restraint and punishment. their motives are very difficult to understand. at any rate they went on. they rode on and on into our country for some hours. an aeroplane was presently set to follow them and another to clear the road in front of them. it was very difficult to clear the road because neither our people nor our animals understand such vehicles as theirs — nor such behaviour. in the afternoon they got among mountains and evidently found our roads much too smooth and difficult for their machine. it made extraordinary noises as though it was gritting its teeth, and emitted a blue vapour with an offensive smell. at one corner where it should have stopped short, it skated about and slid suddenly sideways and rolled over a cliff and fell for perhaps twice the height of a man into a torrent.”
“and they were killed?” asked mr. burleigh, with, as it seemed to mr. barnstaple, a touch of eagerness in his voice.
“not one of them.”
“oh!” said mr. burleigh, “then what happened?”
“one of them has a broken arm and another is badly cut about the face. the other two men and the woman are uninjured except for fright and shock. when our people came up to them the four men held their hands above their heads. apparently they feared they would be killed at once and did this as an appeal for mercy.”
“and what are you doing with them?”
“we are bringing them here. it is better, we think, to keep all you earthlings together. at present we cannot imagine what must be done to you. we want to learn from you and we want to be friendly with you if it is possible. it has been suggested that you should be returned to your world. in the end that may be the best thing to do. but at present we do not know enough to do this certainly. arden and greenlake, when they made the attempt to rotate a part of our matter through the f dimension, believed that they would rotate it in empty space in that dimension. the fact that you were there and were caught into our universe, is the most unexpected thing that has happened in utopia for a thousand years.”
