A Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells (i have read the book txt) 📖
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power of the world resides.”
“Ah!” said I, “and now we come to the thing that interests me most.
For it is quite clear, in my mind, that these samurai form the real
body of the State. All this time that I have spent going to and fro
in this planet, it has been growing upon me that this order of men
and women, wearing such a uniform as you wear, and with faces
strengthened by discipline and touched with devotion, is the
Utopian reality; but that for them, the whole fabric of these fair
appearances would crumble and tarnish, shrink and shrivel, until at
last, back I should be amidst the grime and disorders of the life
of earth. Tell me about these samurai, who remind me of Plato’s
guardians, who look like Knights Templars, who bear a name that
recalls the swordsmen of Japan … and whose uniform you yourself are
wearing. What are they? Are they an hereditary caste, a specially
educated order, an elected class? For, certainly, this world turns
upon them as a door upon its hinges.”
Section 4
“I follow the Common Rule, as many men do,” said my double,
answering my allusion to his uniform almost apologetically. “But my
own work is, in its nature, poietic; there is much dissatisfaction
with our isolation of criminals upon islands, and I am analysing the
psychology of prison officials and criminals in general with a view
to some better scheme. I am supposed to be ingenious with expedients
in this direction. Typically, the samurai are engaged in
administrative work. Practically the whole of the responsible rule
of the world is in their hands; all our head teachers and
disciplinary heads of colleges, our judges, barristers, employers of
labour beyond a certain limit, practising medical men, legislators,
must be samurai, and all the executive committees, and so forth,
that play so large a part in our affairs are drawn by lot
exclusively from them. The order is not hereditary—we know just
enough of biology and the uncertainties of inheritance to know how
silly that would be—and it does not require an early consecration
or novitiate or ceremonies and initiations of that sort. The samurai
are, in fact, volunteers. Any intelligent adult in a reasonably
healthy and efficient state may, at any age after five-and-twenty,
become one of the samurai, and take a hand in the universal
control.”
“Provided he follows the Rule.”
“Precisely—provided he follows the Rule.”
“I have heard the phrase, ‘voluntary nobility.’”
“That was the idea of our Founders. They made a noble and privileged
order—open to the whole world. No one could complain of an unjust
exclusion, for the only thing that could exclude from the order was
unwillingness or inability to follow the Rule.”
“But the Rule might easily have been made exclusive of special
lineages and races.”
“That wasn’t their intention. The Rule was planned to exclude the
dull, to be unattractive to the base, and to direct and co-ordinate
all sound citizens of good intent.”
“And it has succeeded?”
“As well as anything finite can. Life is still imperfect, still a
thick felt of dissatisfactions and perplexing problems, but most
certainly the quality of all its problems has been raised, and there
has been no war, no grinding poverty, not half the disease, and an
enormous increase of the order, beauty, and resources of life since
the samurai, who began as a private aggressive cult, won their way
to the rule of the world.”
“I would like to have that history,” I said. “I expect there was
fighting?” He nodded. “But first—tell me about the Rule.”
“The Rule aims to exclude the dull and base altogether, to
discipline the impulses and emotions, to develop a moral habit and
sustain a man in periods of stress, fatigue, and temptation, to
produce the maximum co-operation of all men of good intent, and, in
fact, to keep all the samurai in a state of moral and bodily health
and efficiency. It does as much of this as well as it can, but, of
course, like all general propositions, it does not do it in any case
with absolute precision. On the whole, it is so good that most men
who, like myself, are doing poietic work, and who would be just as
well off without obedience, find a satisfaction in adhesion. At
first, in the militant days, it was a trifle hard and uncompromising;
it had rather too strong an appeal to the moral prig and harshly
righteous man, but it has undergone, and still undergoes, revision
and expansion, and every year it becomes a little better adapted to
the need of a general rule of life that all men may try to follow.
We have now a whole literature, with many very fine things in it,
written about the Rule.”
He glanced at a little book on his desk, took it up as if to show it
me, then put it down again.
“The Rule consists of three parts; there is the list of things that
qualify, the list of things that must not be done, and the list of
things that must be done. Qualification exacts a little exertion, as
evidence of good faith, and it is designed to weed out the duller
dull and many of the base. Our schooling period ends now about
fourteen, and a small number of boys and girls—about three per
cent.—are set aside then as unteachable, as, in fact, nearly
idiotic; the rest go on to a college or upper school.”
“All your population?”
“With that exception.”
“Free?”
“Of course. And they pass out of college at eighteen. There are
several different college courses, but one or other must be followed
and a satisfactory examination passed at the end—perhaps ten per
cent. fail—and the Rule requires that the candidate for the samurai
must have passed.”
“But a very good man is sometimes an idle schoolboy.”
“We admit that. And so anyone who has failed to pass the college
leaving examination may at any time in later life sit for it
again—and again and again. Certain carefully specified things
excuse it altogether.”
“That makes it fair. But aren’t there people who cannot pass
examinations?”
“People of nervous instability–-”
“But they may be people of great though irregular poietic
gifts.”
“Exactly. That is quite possible. But we don’t want that sort of
people among our samurai. Passing an examination is a proof of a
certain steadiness of purpose, a certain self-control and
submission–-”
“Of a certain ‘ordinariness.’”
“Exactly what is wanted.”
“Of course, those others can follow other careers.”
“Yes. That’s what we want them to do. And, besides these two
educational qualifications, there are two others of a similar kind
of more debateable value. One is practically not in operation now.
Our Founders put it that a candidate for the samurai must possess
what they called a Technique, and, as it operated in the beginning,
he had to hold the qualification for a doctor, for a lawyer, for a
military officer, or an engineer, or teacher, or have painted
acceptable pictures, or written a book, or something of the sort. He
had, in fact, as people say, to ‘be something,’ or to have ‘done
something.’ It was a regulation of vague intention even in the
beginning, and it became catholic to the pitch of absurdity. To play
a violin skilfully has been accepted as sufficient for this
qualification. There may have been a reason in the past for this
provision; in those days there were many daughters of prosperous
parents—and even some sons—who did nothing whatever but idle
uninterestingly in the world, and the organisation might have
suffered by their invasion, but that reason has gone now, and the
requirement remains a merely ceremonial requirement. But, on the
other hand, another has developed. Our Founders made a collection of
several volumes, which they called, collectively, the Book of the
Samurai, a compilation of articles and extracts, poems and prose
pieces, which were supposed to embody the idea of the order. It was
to play the part for the samurai that the Bible did for the ancient
Hebrews. To tell you the truth, the stuff was of very unequal merit;
there was a lot of very second-rate rhetoric, and some nearly
namby-pamby verse. There was also included some very obscure verse
and prose that had the trick of seeming wise. But for all such
defects, much of the Book, from the very beginning, was splendid and
inspiring matter. From that time to this, the Book of the Samurai
has been under revision, much has been added, much rejected, and
some deliberately rewritten. Now, there is hardly anything in it
that is not beautiful and perfect in form. The whole range of noble
emotions finds expression there, and all the guiding ideas of our
Modern State. We have recently admitted some terse criticism of its
contents by a man named Henley.”
“Old Henley!”
“A man who died a little time ago.”
“I knew that man on earth. And he was in Utopia, too! He was a great
red-faced man, with fiery hair, a noisy, intolerant maker of
enemies, with a tender heart—and he was one of the samurai?”
“He defied the Rules.”
“He was a great man with wine. He wrote like wine; in our world he
wrote wine; red wine with the light shining through.”
“He was on the Committee that revised our Canon. For the revising
and bracing of our Canon is work for poietic as well as kinetic men.
You knew him in your world?”
“I wish I had. But I have seen him. On earth he wrote a thing … it
would run—
“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever Gods may be,
For my unconquerable soul….”
“We have that here. All good earthly things are in Utopia also. We
put that in the Canon almost as soon as he died,” said my
double.
Section 5
“We have now a double Canon, a very fine First Canon, and a Second
Canon of work by living men and work of inferior quality, and a
satisfactory knowledge of both of these is the fourth intellectual
qualification for the samurai.”
“It must keep a sort of uniformity in your tone of thought.”
“The Canon pervades our whole world. As a matter of fact, very much
of it is read and learnt in the schools…. Next to the intellectual
qualification comes the physical, the man must be in sound health,
free from certain foul, avoidable, and demoralising diseases, and in
good training. We reject men who are fat, or thin and flabby, or
whose nerves are shaky—we refer them back to training. And finally
the man or woman must be fully adult.”
“Twenty-one? But you said twenty-five!”
“The age has varied. At first it was twenty-five or over; then the
minimum became twenty-five for men and twenty-one for women. Now
there is a feeling that it ought to be raised. We don’t want to take
advantage of mere boy and girl emotions—men of my way of thinking,
at any rate, don’t—we want to get our samurai with experiences,
with a settled mature conviction. Our hygiene and regimen are
rapidly pushing back old age and death, and keeping men hale and
hearty to eighty and more. There’s no need to hurry the young. Let
them have a chance of wine, love, and song; let them feel the bite
of full-bodied desire, and know what devils they have to reckon
with.”
“But there is a certain fine sort of youth that knows the
desirability of the better things at nineteen.”
“They may
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