A Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells (i have read the book txt) 📖

CHAPTER THE SECOND

Concerning Freedoms

 

Section 1

 

Now what sort of question would first occur to two men descending

upon the planet of a Modern Utopia? Probably grave solicitude about

their personal freedom. Towards the Stranger, as I have already

remarked, the Utopias of the past displayed their least amiable

aspect. Would this new sort of Utopian State, spread to the

dimensions of a world, be any less forbidding?

 

We should take comfort in the thought that universal Toleration is

certainly a modern idea, and it is upon modern ideas that this World

State rests. But even suppose we are tolerated and admitted to this

unavoidable citizenship, there will still remain a wide range of

possibility…. I think we should try to work the problem out from

an inquiry into first principles, and that we should follow the

trend of our time and kind by taking up the question as one of “Man

versus the State,” and discussing the compromise of Liberty.

 

The idea of individual liberty is one that has grown in importance

and grows with every development of modern thought. To the classical

Utopists freedom was relatively trivial. Clearly they considered

virtue and happiness as entirely separable from liberty, and as

being altogether more important things. But the modern view, with

its deepening insistence upon individuality and upon the

significance of its uniqueness, steadily intensifies the value of

freedom, until at last we begin to see liberty as the very substance

of life, that indeed it is life, and that only the dead things, the

choiceless things, live in absolute obedience to law. To have free

play for one’s individuality is, in the modern view, the subjective

triumph of existence, as survival in creative work and offspring is

its objective triumph. But for all men, since man is a social

creature, the play of will must fall short of absolute freedom.

Perfect human liberty is possible only to a despot who is absolutely

and universally obeyed. Then to will would be to command and

achieve, and within the limits of natural law we could at any moment

do exactly as it pleased us to do. All other liberty is a compromise

between our own freedom of will and the wills of those with whom we

come in contact. In an organised state each one of us has a more or

less elaborate code of what he may do to others and to himself, and

what others may do to him. He limits others by his rights, and is

limited by the rights of others, and by considerations affecting the

welfare of the community as a whole.

 

Individual liberty in a community is not, as mathematicians would

say, always of the same sign. To ignore this is the essential

fallacy of the cult called Individualism. But in truth, a general

prohibition in a state may increase the sum of liberty, and a

general permission may diminish it. It does not follow, as these

people would have us believe, that a man is more free where there is

least law and more restricted where there is most law. A socialism

or a communism is not necessarily a slavery, and there is no freedom

under Anarchy. Consider how much liberty we gain by the loss of the

common liberty to kill. Thereby one may go to and fro in all the

ordered parts of the earth, unencumbered by arms or armour, free of

the fear of playful poison, whimsical barbers, or hotel trap-doors.

Indeed, it means freedom from a thousand fears and precautions.

Suppose there existed even the limited freedom to kill in

vendetta, and think what would happen in our suburbs. Consider the

inconvenience of two households in a modern suburb estranged and

provided with modern weapons of precision, the inconvenience not

only to each other, but to the neutral pedestrian, the practical

loss of freedoms all about them. The butcher, if he came at all,

would have to come round in an armoured cart….

 

It follows, therefore, in a modern Utopia, which finds the

final hope of the world in the evolving interplay of unique

individualities, that the State will have effectually chipped away

just all those spendthrift liberties that waste liberty, and not

one liberty more, and so have attained the maximum general freedom.

 

There are two distinct and contrasting methods of limiting liberty;

the first is Prohibition, “thou shalt not,” and the second Command,

“thou shalt.” There is, however, a sort of prohibition that takes

the form of a conditional command, and this one needs to bear in

mind. It says if you do so-and-so, you must also do so-and-so; if,

for example, you go to sea with men you employ, you must go in a

seaworthy vessel. But the pure command is unconditional; it says,

whatever you have done or are doing or want to do, you are to

do this, as when the social system, working through the base

necessities of base parents and bad laws, sends a child of thirteen

into a factory. Prohibition takes one definite thing from the

indefinite liberty of a man, but it still leaves him an unbounded

choice of actions. He remains free, and you have merely taken a

bucketful from the sea of his freedom. But compulsion destroys

freedom altogether. In this Utopia of ours there may be many

prohibitions, but no indirect compulsions—if one may so contrive

it—and few or no commands. As far as I see it now, in this present

discussion, I think, indeed, there should be no positive compulsions

at all in Utopia, at any rate for the adult Utopian—unless they

fall upon him as penalties incurred.

 

Section 2

 

What prohibitions should we be under, we two Uitlanders in this

Utopian world? We should certainly not be free to kill, assault, or

threaten anyone we met, and in that we earth-trained men would not

be likely to offend. And until we knew more exactly the Utopian

idea of property we should be very chary of touching anything that

might conceivably be appropriated. If it was not the property of

individuals it might be the property of the State. But beyond that

we might have our doubts. Are we right in wearing the strange

costumes we do, in choosing the path that pleases us athwart this

rock and turf, in coming striding with unfumigated rucksacks and

snow-wet hobnails into what is conceivably an extremely neat and

orderly world? We have passed our first Utopian now, with an

answered vague gesture, and have noted, with secret satisfaction,

there is no access of dismay; we have rounded a bend, and down the

valley in the distance we get a glimpse of what appears to be a

singularly well-kept road….

 

I submit that to the modern minded man it can be no sort of Utopia

worth desiring that does not give the utmost freedom of going to and

fro. Free movement is to many people one of the greatest of life’s

privileges—to go wherever the spirit moves them, to wander and

see—and though they have every comfort, every security, every

virtuous discipline, they will still be unhappy if that is denied

them. Short of damage to things cherished and made, the Utopians

will surely have this right, so we may expect no unclimbable walls

and fences, nor the discovery of any laws we may transgress in

coming down these mountain places.

 

And yet, just as civil liberty itself is a compromise defended by

prohibitions, so this particular sort of liberty must also have its

qualifications. Carried to the absolute pitch the right of free

movement ceases to be distinguishable from the right of free

intrusion. We have already, in a comment on More’s Utopia, hinted at

an agreement with Aristotle’s argument against communism, that it

flings people into an intolerable continuity of contact.

Schopenhauer carried out Aristotle in the vein of his own bitterness

and with the truest of images when he likened human society to

hedgehogs clustering for warmth, and unhappy when either too closely

packed or too widely separated. Empedocles found no significance in

life whatever except as an unsteady play of love and hate, of

attraction and repulsion, of assimilation and the assertion of

difference. So long as we ignore difference, so long as we ignore

individuality, and that I hold has been the common sin of all

Utopias hitherto, we can make absolute statements, prescribe

communisms or individualisms, and all sorts of hard theoretic

arrangements. But in the world of reality, which—to modernise

Heraclitus and Empedocles—is nothing more nor less than the world

of individuality, there are no absolute rights and wrongs, there are

no qualitative questions at all, but only quantitative adjustments.

Equally strong in the normal civilised man is the desire for freedom

of movement and the desire for a certain privacy, for a corner

definitely his, and we have to consider where the line of

reconciliation comes.

 

The desire for absolute personal privacy is perhaps never a very

strong or persistent craving. In the great majority of human beings,

the gregarious instinct is sufficiently powerful to render any but

the most temporary isolations not simply disagreeable, but painful.

The savage has all the privacy he needs within the compass of his

skull; like dogs and timid women, he prefers ill-treatment to

desertion, and it is only a scarce and complex modern type that

finds comfort and refreshment in quite lonely places and quite

solitary occupations. Yet such there are, men who can neither sleep

well nor think well, nor attain to a full perception of beautiful

objects, who do not savour the best of existence until they are

securely alone, and for the sake of these even it would be

reasonable to draw some limits to the general right of free

movement. But their particular need is only a special and

exceptional aspect of an almost universal claim to privacy among

modern people, not so much for the sake of isolation as for

congenial companionship. We want to go apart from the great crowd,

not so much to be alone as to be with those who appeal to us

particularly and to whom we particularly appeal; we want to form

households and societies with them, to give our individualities play

in intercourse with them, and in the appointments and furnishings