crown and flower of
all actual aristocracies; it has all the oligarchical virtues as well as
all the defects. It is casual, it is kind, it is courageous in obvious
matters; but it has one great merit that overlaps even these. The great
and very obvious merit of the English aristocracy is that nobody could
possibly take it seriously.

In short, I had spelled out slowly, as usual, the need for an equal law
in Utopia; and, as usual, I found that Christianity had been there
before me. The whole history of my Utopia has the same amusing sadness.
I was always rushing out of my architectural study with plans for a new
turret only to find it sitting up there in the sunlight, shining, and a
thousand years old. For me, in the ancient and partly in the modern
sense, God answered the prayer, "Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings."
Without vanity, I really think there was a moment when I could have
invented the marriage vow (as an institution) out of my own head; but I
discovered, with a sigh, that it had been invented already. But, since
it would be too long a business to show how, fact by fact and inch by
inch, my own conception of Utopia was only answered in the New
Jerusalem, I will take this one case of the matter of marriage as
indicating the converging drift, I may say the converging crash of all
the rest.

When the ordinary opponents of Socialism talk about impossibilities and
alterations in human nature they always miss an important distinction.
In modern ideal conceptions of society there are some desires that are
possibly not attainable: but there are some desires that are not
desirable. That all men should live in equally beautiful houses is a
dream that may or may not be attained. But that all men should live in
the same beautiful house is not a dream at all; it is a nightmare. That
a man should love all old women is an ideal that may not be attainable.
But that a man should regard all old women exactly as he regards his
mother is not only an unattainable ideal, but an ideal which ought not
to be attained. I do not know if the reader agrees with me in these
examples; but I will add the example which has always affected me most.
I could never conceive or tolerate any Utopia which did not leave to me
the liberty for which I chiefly care, the liberty to bind myself.
Complete anarchy would not merely make it impossible to have any
discipline or fidelity; it would also make it impossible to have any
fun. To take an obviou