V
Finally, be convinced about the reality of utopia. All that has happened in what we call human history—unless it has left a building or a book or some other record of itself—is just as remote and in a sense just as mythical as the mysterious island which Raphael Hythloday, scholar and sailor, described to Sir Thomas More. A good part of human history is even more insubstantial: the Icarians who lived only in the mind of Étienne Cabet, or the Freelanders who dwelt within the imagination of a dry little Austrian economist, have had more influence upon the lives of our contemporaries than the Etruscan people who once dwelt in Italy, although the Etruscans belong to what we call the real world, and the Freelanders and Icarians inhabited—Nowhere.
Nowhere may be an imaginary country, but News from Nowhere is real news. The world of ideas, beliefs, fantasies, projections, is (I must emphasize again) just as real whilst it is acted upon as the post which Dr. Johnson kicked in order to demonstrate that it was solid. The man who wholly respects the rights of property is kept out of his neighbor’s field perhaps even more effectively than the man who is merely forbidden entrance by a no-trespass sign. In sum, we cannot ignore our utopias. They exist in the same way that north and south exist; if we are not familiar with their classical statements we at least know them as they spring to life each day in our own minds. We can never reach the points of the compass; and so no doubt we shall never live in utopia; but without the magnetic needle we should not be able to travel intelligently at all. It is absurd to dispose of utopia by saying that it exists only on paper. The answer to this is: precisely the same thing may be said of the architect’s plans for a house, and houses are none the worse for it.
We must lose our sense of remoteness and severity in setting out on this exploration of ideal commonwealths, as some of the fine minds of the past have pictured them. Our ideals are not something that we can set apart from the main facts of our existence, as our grandmothers sometimes set the cold, bleak, and usually moldy parlor apart from the living rooms of the house: on the contrary, the things we dream of tend consciously or unconsciously to work themselves out in the pattern of our daily lives. Our utopias are just as human and warm and jolly as the world out of which they are born. Looking out from the top of a high tenement, over the housetops of Manhattan, I can see a pale tower with its golden pinnacle gleaming through the soft morning haze; and for a moment all the harsh and ugly lines in the landscape have disappeared. So in looking at our utopias. We need not abandon the real world in order to enter these realizable worlds; for it is out of the first that the second are always coming.
Finally, an anticipation and a warning. In our journey through the utopias of the past we shall not rest content when we have traversed the whole territory between Plato and the latest modern writer. If the story of utopia throws any light upon the story of mankind it is this: our utopias have been pitifully weak and inadequate; and if they have not exercised enough practical influence upon the course of affairs, it is because, as Viola Paget says in Gospels of Anarchy, they were simply not good enough. We travel through utopia only in order to get beyond utopia: if we leave the domains of history when we enter the gates of Plato’s Republic, we do so in order to reenter more effectively the dusty midday traffic of the contemporary world. So our study of the classic utopias will be followed by an examination of certain social myths and partial utopias that have played an important part in the affairs of the Western World during the last few centuries. In the end, I promise, I shall make no attempt to present another utopia; it will be enough to survey the foundations upon which others may build.
In the meanwhile, our ship is about to set sail; and we shall not heave anchor again until we reach the coasts of Utopia.