The Story of Utopias

opposed to utopianism, that it tends to slight these general interests, and either bring them into the service of the “ism” or urge that they be neglected in devotion to the “cause.” The first method has been used by the apostles of nationalism. The National State, recognizing that art and culture and science could not be altogether engrossed in the strategy of political warfare, promptly put these goods in the pigeon hole labelled national resources. The partisans of the State talked about American science as opposed to German science, of Italian art as opposed to French art; and thus emphasized the things which men in America had with other Americans in order to mark off more clearly the things they had apart from men of similar interests in other countries. The same thing happened in the Russian communist state, with its attempt to set aside the common cultural heritage of mankind at large and define a purely proletarian culture. The results in every case are, I believe, incurably mischievous; and those who would promote the good life must cease this infantile practice of asserting vainly that “my father knows more than your father,” “my mother is more beautiful than your mother”⁠—and so on.

For the most part the second method has been indefatigably used. In the political state the partisans make a great show of the gulf which separates the political party in power from that which is outside, and every other interest in life is supposed to be secondary to this abysmal cleavage. In relatively crude communities, like the United States and Ireland, these differences seem to be taken by the great mass of people at their face value; whereas in England, which at least has the virtues of disillusion, it is the great tradition of Parliament that all the animosities of the floor are ignored in the bar of the House of Commons, while all the congenialities and convivialities that bind men together are emphasized. Lest I be accused of prejudice where none exists, let me add that in the most substantial reconstruction movement that Ireland possesses⁠—I refer to agricultural cooperation as promoted by Sir Horace Plunkett and Æ⁠—the horizontal interests which bind men together as farmers and members of a local community are successfully emphasized to the exclusion of irrelevant vertical differences, at least in matters touching the organization and conduct of the Irish Agricultural Organization Society; and that, as far as I can see, this single organization has done more to promote the good life in Ireland than any other institution, with the possible exception of the equally nonpartisan literary association which grew up in Dublin under the leadership of Æ, William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, and the rest of that fine and glorious crew.

Obviously, it is not altogether for nothing that men have joined together in vertical organizations which are as broad as a continent, let us say, or the European world. There is a sense in which the Christians of Jerusalem have more in common with the Christians of Rome than they have with the Jews and Mohammedans of their local region. In the same way, I find myself more deeply drawn to certain friends of mine in Bombay and London than I am towards my next door neighbor, with whom the only recognizable bond is our common animus against a rapacious landlord. So long as the vertical affiliation with people of the same views in politics or religion or philosophy is a spiritual affiliation a great deal of good may come out of it. When, however, the things that draw people together as members of a vertical group are used as a means of inflicting similar opinions or practices upon the local community, without respect to its regional qualities, the results are little less than disastrous. The rain falls on the just and the unjust; more than that, the food that we grow, the houses that we build, the roads that we lay down, the thoughts that we think, belong to us as members of the human species who have inherited the earth and the fullness thereof; and it is absurd to let differences in our idola prevent us from participating equally in this common heritage.

At long last, the things that unite human beings as human beings, the social inheritance that enables them to realize their stature as human beings, are more important than any particular element that the partisan may lay hold of. Whether our partisanism consists in being first and foremost an American or first and foremost a Theosophist, it tends to limit the world with which we may have commerce and so impoverishes the personality. The person who insists upon being a hundred percent American has by that very emphasis become something less than half a man. By fastening attention upon a segment of the world, the partisan creates a segment of a personality. It is these segments or sects that any movement which aims at a general good in the community must contend against. So long as work for the common welfare meets with irrelevant partisanisms, so long will we lack the means of creating whole men and women; and so long will the main concerns of civilization be sidetracked.

VI

What a vision these partisan utopias present! They are like the scattered bones that the prophet saw in the terrible valley, and one doubts whether even the breath of the Lord could knit them together again into real bodies.⁠ ⁠…

One of these partisan utopias issues from a bundle of red-tape; everything is filed and ticketed and labelled there; and anything in life that cannot be treated in this fashion does not exist. Another is a mechanical contraption; somehow it seems to litter little mechanical contraptions; and its aim is, it would seem, to do away with vegetation and reproduction, so that everything under the sun might be performed with the sterile accuracy of the machine. A third utopia of the partisan calls human beings, with all their color