No less than a planet will serve the purpose of a modern Utopia. Time was when a mountain valley or an island seemed to promise sufficient isolation¹ for a polity to maintain itself intact from outward force; the Republic of Plato stood armed ready for defensive² war, and the New Atlantis and the Utopia of More in theory, like China and Japan through many centuries of effectual practice, held themselves isolated³ from intruders. Such late instances as Butler’s satirical “Erewhon,” and Mr. Stead’s queendom of inverted⁴ sexual conditions in Central Africa, found the Tibetan method of slaughtering⁵ the inquiring visitor a simple, sufficient rule. But the whole trend of modern thought is against the permanence of any such enclosures. We are acutely aware nowadays that, however subtly contrived⁶ a State may be, outside your boundary lines the epidemic⁷, the breeding barbarian⁸ or the economic power, will gather its strength to overcome you. The swift march of invention is all for the invader⁹. Now, perhaps you might still guard a rocky coast or a narrow pass; but what of that near to-morrow when the flying machine soars overhead, free to descend¹⁰ at this point or that? A state powerful enough to keep isolated under modern conditions would be powerful enough to rule the world, would be, indeed, if not actively¹¹ ruling, yet passively

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