In Utopia I think they will fly with stronger pinions2, it will not be in the superficialities of life merely that movement will be wide and free, they will mount higher and swoop4 more steeply than he in his cage can believe. What will their range be, their prohibitions5? what jars to our preconceptions will he and I receive here?
My mind flows with the free, thin flow that it has at the end of an eventful day, and as we walk along in silence towards our inn I rove from issue to issue, I find myself ranging amidst the fundamental things of the individual life and all the perplexity of desires and passions. I turn my questionings to the most difficult of all sets of compromises, those mitigations of spontaneous freedom that constitute the marriage laws, the mystery of balancing justice against the good of the future, amidst these violent and elusive6 passions. Where falls the balance of freedoms here? I pass for a time from Utopianising altogether, to ask the question that, after all, Schopenhauer failed completely to answer, why sometimes in the case of hurtful, pointless, and destructive things we want so vehemently7. . . .
I come back from this unavailing glance into the deeps to the general question of freedoms in this new relation. I find myself far adrift from the case of the Frognal botanist9, and asking how far a modern Utopia will deal with personal morals.
As Plato demonstrated long ago, the principles of the relation of State control to personal morals may be best discussed in the case of intoxication10, the most isolated11 and least complicated of all this group of problems. But Plato’s treatment of this issue as a question of who may or may not have the use of wine, though suitable enough in considering a small State in which everybody was the effectual inspector12 of everybody, is entirely13 beside the mark under modern conditions, in which we are to have an extraordinarily14 higher standard of individual privacy and an amplitude15 and quantity of migration16 inconceivable to the Academic imagination. We may accept his principle and put this particular freedom (of the use of wine) among the distinctive17 privileges of maturity18, and still find all that a modern would think of as the Drink Question untouched.
That question in Utopia will differ perhaps in the proportion of its factors, but in no other respect, from what it is upon earth. The same desirable ends will be sought, the maintenance of public order and decency19, the reduction of inducements to form this bad and wasteful20 habit to their lowest possible minimum, and the complete protection of the immature21. But the modern Utopians, having systematised their sociology, will have given some attention to the psychology22 of minor23 officials, a matter altogether too much neglected by the social reformer on earth. They will not put into the hands of a common policeman powers direct and indirect that would be dangerous to the public in the hands of a judge. And they will have avoided the immeasurable error of making their control of the drink traffic a source of public revenue. Privacies they will not invade, but they will certainly restrict the public consumption of intoxicants to specified25 licensed26 places and the sale of them to unmistakable adults, and they will make the temptation of the young a grave offence. In so migratory27 a population as the Modern Utopian, the licensing28 of inns and bars would be under the same control as the railways and high roads. Inns exist for the stranger and not for the locality, and we shall meet with nothing there to correspond with our terrestrial absurdity29 of Local Option.
The Utopians will certainly control this trade, and as certainly punish personal excesses. Public drunkenness (as distinguished30 from the mere3 elation8 that follows a generous but controlled use of wine) will be an offence against public decency, and will be dealt with in some very drastic manner. It will, of course, be an aggravation31 of, and not an excuse for, crime.
But I doubt whether the State will go beyond that. Whether an adult shall use wine or beer or spirits, or not, seems to me entirely a matter for his doctor and his own private conscience. I doubt if we explorers shall meet any drunken men, and I doubt not we shall meet many who have never availed themselves of their adult freedom in this respect. The conditions of physical happiness will be better understood in Utopia, it will be worth while to be well there, and the intelligent citizen will watch himself closely. Half and more of the drunkenness of earth is an attempt to lighten dull days and hopelessly sordid32 and disagreeable lives, and in Utopia they do not suffer these things. Assuredly Utopia will be temperate33, not only drinking, but eating with the soundest discretion34. Yet I do not think wine and good ale will be altogether wanting there, nor good, mellow35 whisky, nor, upon occasion, the engaging various liqueur. I do not think so. My botanist, who abstains36 altogether, is of another opinion. We differ here and leave the question to the earnest reader. I have the utmost respect for all Teetotalers, Prohibitionists, and Haters and Persecutors of Innkeepers, their energy of reform awakens37 responsive notes in me, and to their species I look for a large part of the urgent repair of our earth; yet for all that ——
There is Burgundy, for example, a bottle of soft and kindly38 Burgundy, taken to make a sunshine on one’s lunch when four strenuous39 hours of toil40 have left one on the further side of appetite. Or ale, a foaming41 tankard of ale, ten miles of sturdy tramping in the sleet42 and slush as a prelude43, and then good bread and good butter and a ripe hollow Stilton and celery and ale — ale with a certain quantitative44 freedom. Or, again, where is the sin in a glass of tawny45 port three or four times, or it may be five, a year, when the walnuts46 come round in their season? If you drink no port, then what are walnuts for? Such things I hold for the reward of vast intervals47 of abstinence; they justify48 your wide, immaculate margin49, which is else a mere unmeaning blankness on the page of palate God has given you! I write of these things as a fleshly man, confessedly and knowingly fleshly, and more than usually aware of my liability to err24; I know myself for a gross creature more given to sedentary world-mending than to brisk activities, and not one-tenth as active as the dullest newspaper boy in London. Yet still I have my uses, uses that vanish in monotony, and still I must ask why should we bury the talent of these bright sensations altogether? Under no circumstances can I think of my Utopians maintaining their fine order of life on ginger50 ale and lemonade and the ale that is Kops’. Those terrible Temperance Drinks, solutions of qualified51 sugar mixed with vast volumes of gas, as, for example, soda52, seltzer, lemonade, and fire-extincteurs hand grenades — minerals, they call such stuff in England — fill a man with wind and self-righteousness. Indeed they do! Coffee destroys brain and kidney, a fact now universally recognised and advertised throughout America; and tea, except for a kind of green tea best used with discretion in punch, tans the entrails and turns honest stomachs into leather bags. Rather would I be Metchnikoffed [Footnote: See The Nature of Man, by Professor Elie Metchnikoff.] at once and have a clean, good stomach of German silver. No! If we are to have no ale in Utopia, give me the one clean temperance drink that is worthy53 to set beside wine, and that is simple water. Best it is when not quite pure and with a trace of organic matter, for then it tastes and sparkles. . . .
My botanist would still argue.
Thank Heaven this is my book, and that the ultimate decision rests with me. It is open to him to write his own Utopia and arrange that everybody shall do nothing except by the consent of the savants of the Republic, either in his eating, drinking, dressing54 or lodging55, even as Cabet proposed. It is open to him to try a News from Nowhere Utopia with the wine left out. I have my short way with him here quite effectually. I turn in the entrance of our inn to the civil but by no means obsequious56 landlord, and with a careful ambiguity57 of manner for the thing may be considered an outrage58, and I try to make it possible the idea is a jest — put my test demand. . . .
“You see, my dear Teetotaler? — he sets before me tray and glass and . . . ” Here follows the necessary experiment and a deep sigh. . . . “Yes, a bottle of quite excellent light beer! So there are also cakes and ale in Utopia! Let us in this saner59 and more beautiful world drink perdition to all earthly excesses. Let us drink more particularly to the coming of the day when men beyond there will learn to distinguish between qualitative60 and quantitative questions, to temper good intentions with good intelligence, and righteousness with wisdom. One of the darkest evils of our world is surely the unteachable wildness of the Good.”
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1
locomotion
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| n.运动，移动 | |
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pinions
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| v.抓住[捆住]（双臂）( pinion的第三人称单数 ) | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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swoop
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| n.俯冲，攫取；v.抓取，突然袭击 | |
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prohibitions
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| 禁令，禁律( prohibition的名词复数 )； 禁酒； 禁例 | |
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elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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vehemently
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| adv. 热烈地 | |
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elation
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| n.兴高采烈，洋洋得意 | |
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botanist
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| n.植物学家 | |
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intoxication
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| n.wild excitement;drunkenness；poisoning | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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amplitude
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| n.广大；充足；振幅 | |
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migration
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| n.迁移，移居，（鸟类等的）迁徙 | |
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distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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maturity
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| n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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wasteful
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| adj.（造成）浪费的，挥霍的 | |
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immature
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| adj.未成熟的，发育未全的，未充分发展的 | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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err
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| vi.犯错误，出差错 | |
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specified
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| adj.特定的 | |
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licensed
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| adj.得到许可的v.许可，颁发执照(license的过去式和过去分词) | |
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migratory
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| n.候鸟，迁移 | |
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licensing
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| v.批准，许可，颁发执照( license的现在分词 ) | |
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absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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aggravation
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| n.烦恼，恼火 | |
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sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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mellow
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| adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟 | |
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abstains
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| 戒（尤指酒），戒除( abstain的第三人称单数 )； 弃权（不投票） | |
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awakens
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的第三人称单数 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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strenuous
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| adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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41
foaming
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| adj.布满泡沫的；发泡 | |
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42
sleet
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| n.雨雪；v.下雨雪，下冰雹 | |
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43
prelude
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| n.序言，前兆，序曲 | |
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44
quantitative
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| adj.数量的，定量的 | |
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45
tawny
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| adj.茶色的，黄褐色的；n.黄褐色 | |
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46
walnuts
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| 胡桃（树）( walnut的名词复数 )； 胡桃木 | |
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47
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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48
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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49
margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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50
ginger
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| n.姜，精力，淡赤黄色；adj.淡赤黄色的；vt.使活泼，使有生气 | |
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51
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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52
soda
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| n.苏打水；汽水 | |
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53
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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54
dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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lodging
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| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
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56
obsequious
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| adj.谄媚的，奉承的，顺从的 | |
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57
ambiguity
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| n.模棱两可；意义不明确 | |
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58
outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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59
saner
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| adj.心智健全的( sane的比较级 )；神志正常的；明智的；稳健的 | |
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60
qualitative
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| adj.性质上的，质的，定性的 | |
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