in his hand ...") and
the "botanist," a foil and a stimulator to the other expositor. "The
image of a cinematograph entertainment is the one to grasp," writes Mr
Wells in his preliminary explanation. "There will be an effect of
these two people going to and fro in front of the circle of a rather
defective lantern, which sometimes jams and sometimes gets out of
focus, but which does occasionally succeed in displaying on a screen a
momentary moving picture of Utopian conditions."

I think Mr Wells tried very valiantly to avoid the all too obvious
mistake made by other Utopian builders, both romantic and practical.
He began, I feel sure, with the admirable intention of depicting the
people of the early twentieth century in new conditions, changed only
in so far as they were influenced by the presentation of finer ideals
and by more beautiful circumstance. He even introduced a contemporary
critic of Utopian conditions in the shape of the talkative person, "a
conscious Ishmaelite in the world of wit, and in some subtly
inexplicable way a most consummate ass." But once we begin to
postulate our Utopian villains, the reader's thought is distracted
from the contemplation of the heroic which is the cement that binds
every stone in the visionary city. In order to change conditions it is
necessary to change much in the present cast of human nature. In a
fiction of Utopia there is no place for a Napoleon, a Rockefeller, or
an ambition-swelled Imperialist. So Mr Wells is driven with various
hesitations and resentments to assume that the interactions of cause
and effect have indeed tended to produce a sweeter-tempered, more
generous race of men and women; that the spirit which moves us now to
seek a larger liberty and a greater tolerance has been encouraged and
increased by the exercise of its own tendencies and the sight of its
own triumphs; and that those who set their minds to the building gain
an added grace in the labour. It is a perfectly fair and consistent
assumption, but Mr Wells has been warned by his predecessors, from
Robert Owen back to Plato and forward to Edward Bellamy, that the
designs for Utopia have always been flawed by an altered conception of
the humanity that walks within the city; and he has begun by trying to
avoid a fallacy and ended by begging a question that he might very
well have convincingly argued.

By many people _A Modern Utopia_ is definitely labelled as the
"Samurai" book. That conception of a na