I put it to him that I came to Utopia with but very vague ideas of the method of government, biassed5, perhaps, a little in favour of certain electoral devices, but for the rest indeterminate, and that I have come to perceive more and more clearly that the large intricacy of Utopian organisation6 demands more powerful and efficient method of control than electoral methods can give. I have come to distinguish among the varied7 costumes and the innumerable types of personality Utopia presents, certain men and women of a distinctive8 costume and bearing, and I know now that these people constitute an order, the samurai, the “voluntary nobility,” which is essential in the scheme of the Utopian State. I know that this order is open to every physically9 and mentally healthy adult in the Utopian State who will observe its prescribed austere10 rule of living, that much of the responsible work of the State is reserved for it, and I am inclined now at the first onset11 of realisation to regard it as far more significant than it really is in the Utopian scheme, as being, indeed, in itself and completely the Utopian scheme. My predominant curiosity concerns the organisation of this order. As it has developed in my mind, it has reminded me more and more closely of that strange class of guardians12 which constitutes the essential substance of Plato’s Republic, and it is with an implicit13 reference to Plato’s profound intuitions that I and my double discuss this question.
To clarify our comparison he tells me something of the history of Utopia, and incidentally it becomes necessary to make a correction in the assumptions upon which I have based my enterprise. We are assuming a world identical in every respect with the real planet Earth, except for the profoundest differences in the mental content of life. This implies a different literature, a different philosophy, and a different history, and so soon as I come to talk to him I find that though it remains14 unavoidable that we should assume the correspondence of the two populations, man for man — unless we would face unthinkable complications — we must assume also that a great succession of persons of extraordinary character and mental gifts, who on earth died in childhood or at birth, or who never learnt to read, or who lived and died amidst savage15 or brutalising surroundings that gave their gifts no scope, did in Utopia encounter happier chances, and take up the development and application of social theory — from the time of the first Utopists in a steady onward16 progress down to the present hour. [Footnote: One might assume as an alternative to this that amidst the four-fifths of the Greek literature now lost to the world, there perished, neglected, some book of elementary significance, some earlier Novum Organum, that in Utopia survived to achieve the profoundest consequences.] The differences of condition, therefore, had widened with each successive year. Jesus Christ had been born into a liberal and progressive Roman Empire that spread from the Arctic Ocean to the Bight of Benin, and was to know no Decline and Fall, and Mahomet, instead of embodying17 the dense18 prejudices of Arab ignorance, opened his eyes upon an intellectual horizon already nearly as wide as the world.
And through this empire the flow of thought, the flow of intention, poured always more abundantly. There were wars, but they were conclusive19 wars that established new and more permanent relations, that swept aside obstructions20, and abolished centres of decay; there were prejudices tempered to an ordered criticism, and hatreds21 that merged22 at last in tolerant reactions. It was several hundred years ago that the great organisation of the samurai came into its present form. And it was this organisation’s widely sustained activities that had shaped and established the World State in Utopia.
This organisation of the samurai was a quite deliberate invention. It arose in the course of social and political troubles and complications, analogous23 to those of our own time on earth, and was, indeed, the last of a number of political and religious experiments dating back to the first dawn of philosophical24 state-craft in Greece. That hasty despair of specialisation for government that gave our poor world individualism, democratic liberalism, and anarchism, and that curious disregard of the fund of enthusiasm and self-sacrifice in men, which is the fundamental weakness of worldly economics, do not appear in the history of Utopian thought. All that history is pervaded26 with the recognition of the fact that self-seeking is no more the whole of human life than the satisfaction of hunger; that it is an essential of a man’s existence no doubt, and that under stress of evil circumstances it may as entirely27 obsess28 him as would the food hunt during famine, but that life may pass beyond to an illimitable world of emotions and effort. Every sane29 person consists of possibilities beyond the unavoidable needs, is capable of disinterested30 feeling, even if it amounts only to enthusiasm for a sport or an industrial employment well done, for an art, or for a locality or class. In our world now, as in the Utopian past, this impersonal31 energy of a man goes out into religious emotion and work, into patriotic32 effort, into artistic33 enthusiasms, into games and amateur employments, and an enormous proportion of the whole world’s fund of effort wastes itself in religious and political misunderstandings and conflicts, and in unsatisfying amusements and unproductive occupations. In a modern Utopia there will, indeed, be no perfection; in Utopia there must also be friction34, conflicts and waste, but the waste will be enormously less than in our world. And the co-ordination of activities this relatively35 smaller waste will measure, will be the achieved end for which the order of the samurai was first devised.
Inevitably36 such an order must have first arisen among a clash of social forces and political systems as a revolutionary organisation. It must have set before itself the attainment37 of some such Utopian ideal as this modern Utopia does, in the key of mortal imperfection, realise. At first it may have directed itself to research and discussion, to the elaboration of its ideal, to the discussion of a plan of campaign, but at some stage it must have assumed a more militant38 organisation, and have prevailed against and assimilated the pre-existing political organisations, and to all intents and purposes have become this present synthesised World State. Traces of that militancy39 would, therefore, pervade25 it still, and a campaigning quality — no longer against specific disorders40, but against universal human weaknesses, and the inanimate forces that trouble man — still remain as its essential quality.
“Something of this kind,” I should tell my double, “had arisen in our thought”— I jerk my head back to indicate an infinitely41 distant planet —“just before I came upon these explorations. The idea had reached me, for example, of something to be called a New Republic, which was to be in fact an organisation for revolution something after the fashion of your samurai, as I understand them — only most of the organisation and the rule of life still remained to be invented. All sorts of people were thinking of something in that way about the time of my coming. The idea, as it reached me, was pretty crude in several respects. It ignored the high possibility of a synthesis of languages in the future; it came from a literary man, who wrote only English, and, as I read him — he was a little vague in his proposals — it was to be a purely42 English-speaking movement. And his ideas were coloured too much by the peculiar43 opportunism of his time; he seemed to have more than half an eye for a prince or a millionaire of genius; he seemed looking here and there for support and the structural44 elements of a party. Still, the idea of a comprehensive movement of disillusioned45 and illuminated46 men behind the shams47 and patriotisms, the spites and personalities48 of the ostensible49 world was there.”
I added some particulars.
“Our movement had something of that spirit in the beginning,” said my Utopian double. “But while your men seem to be thinking disconnectedly, and upon a very narrow and fragmentary basis of accumulated conclusions, ours had a fairly comprehensive science of human association, and a very careful analysis of the failures of preceding beginnings to draw upon. After all, your world must be as full as ours was of the wreckage50 and decay of previous attempts; churches, aristocracies, orders, cults51. . . . ”
“Only at present we seem to have lost heart altogether, and now there are no new religions, no new orders, no new cults — no beginnings any more.”
“But that’s only a resting phase, perhaps. You were saying ——”
“Oh! — let that distressful52 planet alone for a time! Tell me how you manage in Utopia.”
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1
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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broach
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| v.开瓶，提出(题目) | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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biassed
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| （统计试验中）结果偏倚的，有偏的 | |
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organisation
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| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
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7
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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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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9
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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onset
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| n.进攻，袭击，开始，突然开始 | |
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guardians
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| 监护人( guardian的名词复数 )； 保护者，维护者 | |
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implicit
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| a.暗示的，含蓄的，不明晰的，绝对的 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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embodying
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| v.表现( embody的现在分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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conclusive
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| adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的 | |
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obstructions
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| n.障碍物( obstruction的名词复数 )；阻碍物；阻碍；阻挠 | |
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hatreds
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| n.仇恨，憎恶( hatred的名词复数 )；厌恶的事 | |
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merged
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| （使）混合( merge的过去式和过去分词 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中 | |
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analogous
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| adj.相似的；类似的 | |
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philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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pervade
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| v.弥漫，遍及，充满，渗透，漫延 | |
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pervaded
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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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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obsess
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| vt.使着迷，使心神不定，（恶魔）困扰 | |
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sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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disinterested
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| adj.不关心的，不感兴趣的 | |
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impersonal
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| adj.无个人感情的，与个人无关的，非人称的 | |
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patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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friction
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| n.摩擦，摩擦力 | |
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relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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attainment
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| n.达到，到达；［常pl.］成就，造诣 | |
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militant
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| adj.激进的，好斗的；n.激进分子，斗士 | |
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militancy
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| n.warlike behavior or tendency | |
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disorders
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| n.混乱( disorder的名词复数 )；凌乱；骚乱；（身心、机能）失调 | |
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infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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structural
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| adj.构造的，组织的，建筑（用）的 | |
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45
disillusioned
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| a.不再抱幻想的，大失所望的，幻想破灭的 | |
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46
illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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47
shams
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| 假象( sham的名词复数 )； 假货； 虚假的行为（或感情、言语等）； 假装…的人 | |
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48
personalities
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| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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49
ostensible
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| adj.(指理由)表面的，假装的 | |
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50
wreckage
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| n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏 | |
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51
cults
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| n.迷信( cult的名词复数 )；狂热的崇拜；（有极端宗教信仰的）异教团体 | |
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52
distressful
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| adj.苦难重重的，不幸的，使苦恼的 | |
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