A Modern Utopia: The Future World State of Authority

Abstract

1. G. Well's A Modern Utopia is the only utopia which has made some contribution to the Utopian thought & technique, although it is indebted to the utopias of the past. Lewis Mumford calls it "the quintessential utopia, as it is written with a free & critical gesture & with a sufficient similarity towards the more important books that come before it."

It has the strict regard for the present realities & is altogether a fine & lucid product of the imagination. A Modern Utopia may be distinguished from all other preceding ideal Commonwealths in many respects. First, it breaks with the Utopian tradition by refusing to describe a perfect society. H. G. Wells says that in this novel there will indeed by no perfection & there must also be friction, conflict & waste, but the waste will be enormously less that in this world. Wells's A Modern Utopia begins with the following words: "The Utopia of a modern dreamer must need differ in one fundamental aspect from the No-here & Utopias men planned before Darwin quickened the thought of the world. Those were all perfect & static states, a balance of happiness won for ever against the forces of unrest & disorder that inhere in things. One behold a healthy & simple generation enjoying the fruits of the earth in an atmosphere of virtue & happiness..... But the Modern Utopia must not be static but kinetic."

This aspect about Well's Utopia suggests that the imaginary state will be possible & more desirable that the world in which we live. But it will be indeed "Most distinctly impracticable by every scale that reaches only between today & tomorrow."