It is good discipline for the Utopist to visit this world occasionally.
But from the front seat on the top of an omnibus on a sunny September afternoon, the Strand1, and Charing2 Cross corner, and Whitehall, and the great multitude of people, the great uproar3 of vehicles, streaming in all directions, is apt to look a world altogether too formidable. It has a glare, it has a tumult4 and vigour5 that shouts one down. It shouts one down, if shouting is to carry it. What good was it to trot6 along the pavement through this noise and tumult of life, pleading Utopia to that botanist7? What good would it be to recommend Utopia in this driver’s preoccupied8 ear?
There are moments in the life of every philosopher and dreamer when he feels himself the flimsiest of absurdities10, when the Thing in Being has its way with him, its triumphant11 way, when it asks in a roar, unanswerably, with a fine solid use of the current vernacular12, “What Good is all this — Rot about Utopias?”
One inspects the Thing in Being with something of the diffident speculation13 of primitive14 man, peering from behind a tree at an angry elephant.
(There is an omen9 in that image. On how many occasions must that ancestor of ours have had just the Utopist’s feeling of ambitious unreality, have decided15 that on the whole it was wiser to go very quietly home again, and leave the big beast alone? But, in the end, men rode upon the elephant’s head, and guided him this way or that. . . . The Thing in Being that roars so tremendously about Charing Cross corner seems a bigger antagonist16 than an elephant, but then we have better weapons than chipped flint blades. . . . )
After all, in a very little time everything that impresses me so mightily17 this September afternoon will have changed or passed away for ever, everything. These omnibuses, these great, stalwart, crowded, many-coloured things that jostle one another, and make so handsome a clatter18-clamour, will all have gone; they and their horses and drivers and organisation19; you will come here and you will not find them. Something else will be here, some different sort of vehicle, that is now perhaps the mere20 germ of an idea in some engineer student’s brain. And this road and pavement will have changed, and these impressive great buildings; other buildings will be here, buildings that are as yet more impalpable than this page you read, more formless and flimsy by far than anything that is reasoned here. Little plans sketched21 on paper, strokes of a pen or of a brush, will be the first materialisations of what will at last obliterate22 every detail and atom of these re-echoing actualities that overwhelm us now. And the clothing and gestures of these innumerable people, the character of their faces and bearing, these too will be recast in the spirit of what are now obscure and impalpable beginnings.
The new things will be indeed of the substance of the thing that is, but differing just in the measure of the will and imagination that goes to make them. They will be strong and fair as the will is sturdy and organised and the imagination comprehensive and bold; they will be ugly and smeared23 with wretchedness as the will is fluctuating and the imagination timid and mean.
Indeed Will is stronger than Fact, it can mould and overcome Fact. But this world has still to discover its will, it is a world that slumbers24 inertly25, and all this roar and pulsation26 of life is no more than its heavy breathing. . . . My mind runs on to the thought of an awakening27.
As my omnibus goes lumbering28 up Cockspur Street through the clatter rattle29 of the cabs and carriages, there comes another fancy in my mind. . . . Could one but realise an apocalyptic30 image and suppose an angel, such as was given to each of the seven churches of Asia, given for a space to the service of the Greater Rule. I see him as a towering figure of flame and colour, standing31 between earth and sky, with a trumpet32 in his hands, over there above the Haymarket, against the October glow; and when he sounds, all the samurai, all who are samurai in Utopia, will know themselves and one another. . . .
(Whup! says a motor brougham, and a policeman stays the traffic with his hand.)
All of us who partake of the samurai would know ourselves and one another!
For a moment I have a vision of this resurrection of the living, of a vague, magnificent answer, of countless33 myriads34 at attention, of all that is fine in humanity at attention, round the compass of the earth.
Then that philosophy of individual uniqueness resumes its sway over my thoughts, and my dream of a world’s awakening fades.
I had forgotten. . . .
Things do not happen like that. God is not simple, God is not theatrical35, the summons comes to each man in its due time for him, with an infinite subtlety36 of variety. . . .
If that is so, what of my Utopia?
This infinite world must needs be flattened37 to get it on one retina. The picture of a solid thing, although it is flattened and simplified, is not necessarily a lie. Surely, surely, in the end, by degrees, and steps, something of this sort, some such understanding, as this Utopia must come. First here, then there, single men and then groups of men will fall into line — not indeed with my poor faulty hesitating suggestions — but with a great and comprehensive plan wrought38 out by many minds and in many tongues. It is just because my plan is faulty, because it mis-states so much, and omits so much, that they do not now fall in. It will not be like my dream, the world that is coming. My dream is just my own poor dream, the thing sufficient for me. We fail in comprehension, we fail so variously and abundantly. We see as much as it is serviceable for us to see, and we see no further. But the fresh undaunted generations come to take on our work beyond our utmost effort, beyond the range of our ideas. They will learn with certainty things that to us are guesses and riddles39. . . .
There will be many Utopias. Each generation will have its new version of Utopia, a little more certain and complete and real, with its problems lying closer and closer to the problems of the Thing in Being. Until at last from dreams Utopias will have come to be working drawings, and the whole world will be shaping the final World State, the fair and great and fruitful World State, that will only not be a Utopia because it will be this world. So surely it must be ——
The policeman drops his hand. “Come up,” says the ‘bus driver, and the horses strain; “Clitter, clatter, cluck, clak,” the line of hurrying hansoms overtakes the omnibus going west. A dexterous40 lad on a bicycle with a bale of newspapers on his back dodges41 nimbly across the head of the column and vanishes up a side street.
The omnibus sways forward. Rapt and prophetic, his plump hands clasped round the handle of his umbrella, his billycock hat a trifle askew42, this irascible little man of the Voice, this impatient dreamer, this scolding Optimist43, who has argued so rudely and dogmatically about economics and philosophy and decoration, and indeed about everything under the sun, who has been so hard on the botanist and fashionable women, and so reluctant in the matter of beer, is carried onward44, dreaming dreams, dreams that with all the inevitable45 ironies46 of difference, may be realities when you and I are dreams.
He passes, and for a little space we are left with his egoisms and idiosyncrasies more or less in suspense47.
But why was he intruded48? you ask. Why could not a modern Utopia be discussed without this impersonation — impersonally49? It has confused the book, you say, made the argument hard to follow, and thrown a quality of insincerity over the whole. Are we but mocking at Utopias, you demand, using all these noble and generalised hopes as the backcloth against which two bickering50 personalities51 jar and squabble? Do I mean we are never to view the promised land again except through a foreground of fellow-travellers? There is a common notion that the reading of a Utopia should end with a swelling52 heart and clear resolves, with lists of names, formation of committees, and even the commencement of subscriptions53. But this Utopia began upon a philosophy of fragmentation, and ends, confusedly, amidst a gross tumult of immediate54 realities, in dust and doubt, with, at the best, one individual’s aspiration55. Utopias were once in good faith, projects for a fresh creation of the world and of a most unworldly completeness; this so-called Modern Utopia is a mere story of personal adventures among Utopian philosophies.
Indeed, that came about without the writer’s intention. So it was the summoned vision came. For I see about me a great multitude of little souls and groups of souls as darkened, as derivative56 as my own; with the passage of years I understand more and more clearly the quality of the motives58 that urge me and urge them to do whatever we do. . . . Yet that is not all I see, and I am not altogether bounded by my littleness. Ever and again, contrasting with this immediate vision, come glimpses of a comprehensive scheme, in which these personalities float, the scheme of a synthetic59 wider being, the great State, mankind, in which we all move and go, like blood corpuscles, like nerve cells, it may be at times like brain cells, in the body of a man. But the two visions are not seen consistently together, at least by me, and I do not surely know that they exist consistently together. The motives needed for those wider issues come not into the interplay of my vanities and wishes. That greater scheme lies about the men and women I know, as I have tried to make the vistas60 and spaces, the mountains, cities, laws, and order of Utopia lie about my talking couple, too great for their sustained comprehension. When one focuses upon these two that wide landscape becomes indistinct and distant, and when one regards that then the real persons one knows grow vague and unreal. Nevertheless, I cannot separate these two aspects of human life, each commenting on the other. In that incongruity61 between great and individual inheres the incompatibility62 I could not resolve, and which, therefore, I have had to present in this conflicting form. At times that great scheme does seem to me to enter certain men’s lives as a passion, as a real and living motive57; there are those who know it almost as if it was a thing of desire; even for me, upon occasion, the little lures63 of the immediate life are seen small and vain, and the soul goes out to that mighty64 Being, to apprehend65 it and serve it and possess. But this is an illumination that passes as it comes, a rare transitory lucidity66, leaving the soul’s desire suddenly turned to presumption67 and hypocrisy68 upon the lips. One grasps at the Universe and attains69 — Bathos. The hungers, the jealousies70, the prejudices and habits have us again, and we are forced back to think that it is so, and not otherwise, that we are meant to serve the mysteries; that in these blinkers it is we are driven to an end we cannot understand. And then, for measured moments in the night watches or as one walks alone or while one sits in thought and speech with a friend, the wider aspirations71 glow again with a sincere emotion, with the colours of attainable72 desire. . . .
That is my all about Utopia, and about the desire and need for Utopia, and how that planet lies to this planet that bears the daily lives of men.
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1 strand | |
vt.使(船)搁浅,使(某人)困于(某地) | |
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2 charing | |
n.炭化v.把…烧成炭,把…烧焦( char的现在分词 );烧成炭,烧焦;做杂役女佣 | |
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3 uproar | |
n.骚动,喧嚣,鼎沸 | |
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4 tumult | |
n.喧哗;激动,混乱;吵闹 | |
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5 vigour | |
(=vigor)n.智力,体力,精力 | |
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6 trot | |
n.疾走,慢跑;n.老太婆;现成译本;(复数)trots:腹泻(与the 连用);v.小跑,快步走,赶紧 | |
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7 botanist | |
n.植物学家 | |
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8 preoccupied | |
adj.全神贯注的,入神的;被抢先占有的;心事重重的v.占据(某人)思想,使对…全神贯注,使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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9 omen | |
n.征兆,预兆;vt.预示 | |
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10 absurdities | |
n.极端无理性( absurdity的名词复数 );荒谬;谬论;荒谬的行为 | |
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11 triumphant | |
adj.胜利的,成功的;狂欢的,喜悦的 | |
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12 vernacular | |
adj.地方的,用地方语写成的;n.白话;行话;本国语;动植物的俗名 | |
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13 speculation | |
n.思索,沉思;猜测;投机 | |
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14 primitive | |
adj.原始的;简单的;n.原(始)人,原始事物 | |
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15 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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16 antagonist | |
n.敌人,对抗者,对手 | |
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17 mightily | |
ad.强烈地;非常地 | |
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18 clatter | |
v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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19 organisation | |
n.组织,安排,团体,有机休 | |
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20 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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21 sketched | |
v.草拟(sketch的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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22 obliterate | |
v.擦去,涂抹,去掉...痕迹,消失,除去 | |
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23 smeared | |
弄脏; 玷污; 涂抹; 擦上 | |
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24 slumbers | |
睡眠,安眠( slumber的名词复数 ) | |
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25 inertly | |
adv.不活泼地,无生气地 | |
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26 pulsation | |
n.脉搏,悸动,脉动;搏动性 | |
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27 awakening | |
n.觉醒,醒悟 adj.觉醒中的;唤醒的 | |
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28 lumbering | |
n.采伐林木 | |
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29 rattle | |
v.飞奔,碰响;激怒;n.碰撞声;拨浪鼓 | |
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30 apocalyptic | |
adj.预示灾祸的,启示的 | |
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31 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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32 trumpet | |
n.喇叭,喇叭声;v.吹喇叭,吹嘘 | |
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33 countless | |
adj.无数的,多得不计其数的 | |
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34 myriads | |
n.无数,极大数量( myriad的名词复数 ) | |
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35 theatrical | |
adj.剧场的,演戏的;做戏似的,做作的 | |
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36 subtlety | |
n.微妙,敏锐,精巧;微妙之处,细微的区别 | |
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37 flattened | |
[医](水)平扁的,弄平的 | |
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38 wrought | |
v.引起;以…原料制作;运转;adj.制造的 | |
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39 riddles | |
n.谜(语)( riddle的名词复数 );猜不透的难题,难解之谜 | |
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40 dexterous | |
adj.灵敏的;灵巧的 | |
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41 dodges | |
n.闪躲( dodge的名词复数 );躲避;伎俩;妙计v.闪躲( dodge的第三人称单数 );回避 | |
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42 askew | |
adv.斜地;adj.歪斜的 | |
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43 optimist | |
n.乐观的人,乐观主义者 | |
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44 onward | |
adj.向前的,前进的;adv.向前,前进,在先 | |
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45 inevitable | |
adj.不可避免的,必然发生的 | |
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46 ironies | |
n.反语( irony的名词复数 );冷嘲;具有讽刺意味的事;嘲弄 | |
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47 suspense | |
n.(对可能发生的事)紧张感,担心,挂虑 | |
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48 intruded | |
n.侵入的,推进的v.侵入,侵扰,打扰( intrude的过去式和过去分词 );把…强加于 | |
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49 impersonally | |
ad.非人称地 | |
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50 bickering | |
v.争吵( bicker的现在分词 );口角;(水等)作潺潺声;闪烁 | |
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51 personalities | |
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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52 swelling | |
n.肿胀 | |
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53 subscriptions | |
n.(报刊等的)订阅费( subscription的名词复数 );捐款;(俱乐部的)会员费;捐助 | |
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54 immediate | |
adj.立即的;直接的,最接近的;紧靠的 | |
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55 aspiration | |
n.志向,志趣抱负;渴望;(语)送气音;吸出 | |
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56 derivative | |
n.派(衍)生物;adj.非独创性的,模仿他人的 | |
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57 motive | |
n.动机,目的;adv.发动的,运动的 | |
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58 motives | |
n.动机,目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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59 synthetic | |
adj.合成的,人工的;综合的;n.人工制品 | |
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60 vistas | |
长条形景色( vista的名词复数 ); 回顾; 展望; (未来可能发生的)一系列情景 | |
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61 incongruity | |
n.不协调,不一致 | |
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62 incompatibility | |
n.不兼容 | |
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63 lures | |
吸引力,魅力(lure的复数形式) | |
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64 mighty | |
adj.强有力的;巨大的 | |
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65 apprehend | |
vt.理解,领悟,逮捕,拘捕,忧虑 | |
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66 lucidity | |
n.明朗,清晰,透明 | |
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67 presumption | |
n.推测,可能性,冒昧,放肆,[法律]推定 | |
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68 hypocrisy | |
n.伪善,虚伪 | |
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69 attains | |
(通常经过努力)实现( attain的第三人称单数 ); 达到; 获得; 达到(某年龄、水平、状况) | |
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70 jealousies | |
n.妒忌( jealousy的名词复数 );妒羡 | |
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71 aspirations | |
强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 ); 志向; 发送气音; 发 h 音 | |
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72 attainable | |
a.可达到的,可获得的 | |
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