We are not suffering from too much machinery, but from too little. For let there be enough iron servants and more of us shall be able to sit on the tops of mountains and stare into the blue sky and waste valuable hours, imagining the things that ought to be.
The Old Testament used to call such people prophets. They raised strange cities of their hearts’ delight, which should be based exclusively upon righteousness and piety. But the greatest of all their prophets the Jews killed to make a Roman holiday. The Greeks knew such wise men as philosophers. They allowed them great freedom and rejoiced in the mathematical precision with which their intellectual leaders mapped out those theoretical roads which were to lead mankind from chaos to an ordered state of society.
The Middle Ages insisted with narrow persistence upon the Kingdom of Heaven as the only possible standard for a decent Christian Utopia.
They crushed all those who dared to question the positive existence of such a future state of glory and content. They built it of stone and precious metals, but neglected the spiritual fundament. And so it perished.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries fought many bitter wars to decide the exact nature of a whitewashed Paradise, erected upon the crumbling ruins of the medieval church.
The eighteenth century saw the Promised Land lying just across the terrible bulwark of stupidity and superstition, which a thousand years of clerical selfishness had erected for its own protection and safety.
There followed a mighty battle to crush the infamy of ignorance and bring about an era of well-balanced reason.
Unfortunately, a few enthusiasts carried the matter a trifle too far.
Napoleon, realist-in-chief of all time, brought the world back to the common ground of solid facts.
Our own generation drew the logical conclusion of the Napoleonic premises.
Behold the map of Europe and see how well we have wrought. For alas! this world needs Utopias as it needs fairy stories. It does not matter so much where we are going, as long as we are making consciously for some definite goal. And a Utopia, however strange or fanciful, is the only possible beacon upon the uncharted seas of the distant future.
It encourages us in our efforts. Sometimes the light is hidden by the clouds and for a moment we may lose our way. Then the faint light once more breaks through the darkness and we press forward with new courage.
And when life is dull and meaningless (the main curse of all existence) we find consolation in the fact that a hundred years from now, our children shall reach the shore for which we were bound when we ourselves left the bridge and were lowered to the peaceful bottom of the ocean.
And now the sun has gone down and a chill wind blows from Kebnekaise, where the wild geese of little Nils Holgersson live amidst the endless silence of the eternal snow. Soon the top shall be hidden in the mist and I shall have to find my way back by the noise of the steam shovels, plying their elephantine trade at the foot of the first terrace.
The mountain of my fairy story once more will be the profitable investment of a Company of Ironmongers.
But that does not matter.
Lewis Mumford, for whom I am writing this, will understand what I mean.
And I shall be content.
Acknowledgments
The first outline of this book dates back ten years; and since then I have woven it and rewoven it in my mind. The actual work of composition was started by a suggestion from Mr. Van Wyck Brooks; and without Mr. Brooks’ encouragement I should perhaps never have begun or carried through the task. The general background of ideas has been heavily colored by my contacts with Professor Patrick Geddes, through his books and by correspondence; and I owe a debt to him I have not always been able to acknowledge in direct reference or in quotation marks. I take the opportunity here to express the hearty gratitude which might otherwise have been conveyed in the more archaic form of a dedication.
In the revision of the MS. I have been blessed with the generous advice and criticism of a number of friends; in particular, Mr. Clarence Britten, Mr. Herbert Feis, Mr. Geroid Robinson, and Miss Sophia Wittenberg, each of whom performed a unique service. To Messrs. Victor Branford and Alexander Farquharson of the Sociological Society of Great Britain I am indebted for many pertinent suggestions. My thanks are also due to the editors of The Freeman for permission to use extracts from two articles: “Towards a Humanist Synthesis” and “Beauty and the Picturesque.” Finally, Mr. Hendrik van Loon’s friendly interest calls for a departing beam of gratitude.
The Story of Utopias
Ideal Commonwealths and Social Myths
I
How the will-to-utopia causes men to live in two worlds, and how, therefore, we reread the Story of Utopias—the other half of the Story of Mankind.
I
Utopia has long been another name for the unreal and the impossible. We have set utopia over against the world. As a matter of fact, it is our utopias that make the world tolerable to us: the cities and mansions that people dream of are those in which they finally live. The more that men react upon their environment and make it over after a human pattern, the more continuously do they live in utopia; but when there is a breach between the world of affairs and the overworld of utopia, we become conscious of the part that the will-to-utopia has played in our lives, and we see our utopia as a separate reality.
It is the separate reality of utopia that we are
