violent struggles, by the simple process of wisdom going to the poll in overwhelming force. This sounds more plausible than Plato's combination of royalty and philosophy, only because we have not yet learned to distinguish between the great sedative power of the suffrage and its small initiative force. Mr. Wells is wiser: he realises the passivity of the many as clearly as the impotence of the old Parliamentary hand or the raging propagandist, and works his great regenerative movement by means of a new class of educated and determined men such as he has already foreshadowed. They rose, he says, under more favourable conditions than any known to us; for in the Utopian planet the seeds sown by the prophets and founders of great religions had fallen upon more fertile soil; wars had swept aside obstructions and centres of decay; prejudices had been tempered to an ordered criticism, and hatreds merged in tolerant reactions. They rose in the course of social and political troubles and ⚫ complications analogous to those of our own time on earth,' but they had none of our hasty despair of specialisation for 'government,' or of that curious disregard of the fund of ' enthusiasm and self-sacrifice in men which is the funda'mental weakness of worldly economics.' They knew that man's desire is to serve as well as to eat, and instead of wasting this fund of impersonal energy' upon religious and political misunderstandings and conflicts, and, we may add, upon chaotic charitable enterprises, they deliberately organised a society which organised the World State of Utopia. This society was, of course, a revolutionary one: it began, perhaps, with research and discussion of a Fabian character, but as it gathered strength it must have 'assumed a more militant organisation. . . . Traces of that 'militancy would therefore pervade it still, and a cam'paigning quality . . still remain as its essential quality.' For such a body of men there was only one possible name: Mr. Wells has called them the Order of the "Samurai.”

When we have said that this outline of a process of world-reform is not completely incredible, we have said all that Mr. Wells can ask, and more than we could say of any other Utopian history. He comes even better out of a comparative inquiry into the permanent quality of different ideal States. Plato professed to believe that perfection once gained would be easily kept. If a State has once started well, it exhibits a kind of circular progress in its growth. Adherence to a good system of nurture and education 'creates good natures, and good natures, receiving the

'assistance of a good education, grow still better than they 'were.' Fortified by this amazing logic he demands from his Guardians, as their chief duty, a rigid conservatism, the principle, I mean, which forbids any innovation, in 'either gymnastic or music, upon the established order, ' requiring it, on the contrary, to be most strictly main'tained,' for fear lest any novelty should creep in even in amusements or manners: the territorial growth of the State must also be restricted. Adeimantus might well protest that the enforcing of this régime would not make the Guardians' particularly happy :' they could take no part in the ordinary pleasures or activities of men, but appear to be posted in the city precisely like mercenary troops, 'wholly occupied in garrison duties.' More's Commonwealth, too, was gifted with a lightly assumed immortality; for, seying the chief causes of ambition and sedition, with ' other vices, be plucked up by the rootes and abandoned at 'home, there can be no jeopardie of domisticall dissention,' and consequently no fear of foreign overthrow. Bacon's King Solamona, in order to give perpetuity to that which 'was in his own time so happily established,' thought it only necessary to ordain 'interdicts and prohibitions' of the nature of a drastic Aliens Bill.

The remaining Utopists seem to have thought little of the question, with the single exception of Harrington, upon whom it naturally forced itself as one of the problems of that balance' which was for him the solution of all difficulties. Rejecting anything like Plato's limitation of the size of his Republic, he says proudly of Oceana, 'A Govern'ment of this make is a Commonwealth for Increase. Of those for Preservation, the Inconveniencies and Frailties 'have been shewn: their roots are narrow, such as do not 'run, have no Fibers, their Tops weak and dangerously ex'posed to the weather; except you chance to find one, as Venice, planted in a Flower-pot: and if she grows she 'grows top-heavy, and falls too. But you cannot plant an Oak in a Flower-pot: she must have Earth for her Root ' and Heaven for her Branches. "Imperium Oceano, famam 666 quæ terminet astris." He therefore provides for possible expansion, and puts into the mouth of his Archon this statement of the general principle on which he relies: 'If there 'be a contradiction or inequality in your Commonwealth, it must fall: but if it has neither of them, it has no principle ' of mortality. Do not think me impudent: if this be truth 'I should commit a gross indiscretion in concealing it. Sure

'I am that Machiavel is for the immortality of a Common'wealth upon far weaker principles. "If a Commonwealth," 'says he, "were so happy as to be provided often with men, ""that when she is swerving from her Principles, should ""reduce her to her Institution, she would be immortal."" The chief contradictions or inequalities' feared by Harrington were political ones, and such as might arise from an inexpedient distribution of landed property: Mr. Wells's survey is not only wider but deeper. He sees the life-history of states as an alternation of unstable liberalism with efficient conservatism; an antagonism, more or less unintentional, between the poietic or creative type of man and the kinetic, vigorous, and expansive. The first builds, the second developes: the statesman is followed by the politician, the original genius by the scholar: as its organisation becomes settled and efficient the State loses its poietic activity, its power of adaptation lessens, until through revolution or defeat there comes a fresh release of poietic force. The problem is to avoid these alternate collapses, to carry on poietic activity without a break, as the most important element in human society; but since it is insusceptible of organisation, to carry it on in the form of free, individual developement. This is to be achieved partly by leaving to every citizen, over and above the time spent by him in direct education or in earning the minimum wage, 'a 'marginal free leisure with opportunities for developing 'idiosyncracies:' and partly by supplying incentiveshonours and privileges for poietic men and women who distinguish themselves in science, invention, literature or other pursuits. Progress will always be going on; but it will neither be a barren circular progress' nor a progress along a number of unrelated lines; under the imperceptible outside pressure of the governing class it will rather resemble a spiral in its persistent and yet rhythmical onward movement.

Mr. Wells has expended a great deal of scientific analysis upon this theory; so much that he sees not only the possibilities but the difficulties of his own scheme. It contains what Harrington would call 'a contradiction.' The governing classes, in whom is vested all political power, who are the only administrators, lawyers, doctors and public officials, who furnish from one-half to nine-tenths of the legislative assembly and the whole of the electoral body, are practically all 'efficients,' men of the kinetic type, employed in kinetic activities. If their perpetual function of directing,

stimulating, and possibly restraining the activities of their more poietic fellows is to be discharged without too much friction and with the good result which is to save the State from decay, they must have at their command an insight and an intelligent sympathy of which we have on earth little experience. They may be as practical, as scientific, and as efficient as an English House of Commons, but they must measure the arts by some other standard than that which only places the painter above the poet because he does, after all, produce something real. This is no small difficulty, for it arises precisely out of the fundamental nature of the types into which Mr. Wells has so acutely divided his citizens: his kinetic men will in this matter of the arts have, for all their good intentions, more affinity with those other terrible classes of his, the Base and the Dull. They will themselves be never base, and seldom, perhaps, dull; but will they not be a little concrete in their view of progress, a little moral in their view of plastic art, apt to value literature for its content rather than its form, and to find in music nothing that is not mechanical? Does not Mr. Wells betray an uneasy consciousness of this difficulty when he assures us that though typically the "Samurai" are engaged in administrative 'work,' his own double, who is of course one of them, selects work which is in its nature poietic '? Mr. Wells of Utopia is employed in analysing the psychology of prison officials and criminals, in the interest of the latter, most of whom, it is to be feared, were born artists rather than legislators. He is, in fact, trying to run with the hare while professionally hunting with the hounds; and his remedy for the trouble we have suggested is that a hare who does not like being hunted can always become a hound. Any intelligent and efficient 'adult may become one of the "Samurai" and take a hand ' in the universal control.' We fear that there are but few among the really poietic who possess the completely ambidexterous nature exemplified by Mr. Wells of Utopia.

Let us consider for a moment what it is to become one of the 'Samurai.' We know all about them, for their creator, realising that they form the real body of the State,' that by them his world was built, and with them must stand or fall, has spent much care upon the statutes of the Order. The 'Rule consists of three parts: there is the list of things that qualify, the list of things that must not be done, and the list of things that must be done.' The candidate for the 'Samurai' must have passed a satisfactory examination at the end of his college course, to show not only his intelli

gence but his self-control and steadiness of purpose. He must nominally possess a 'Technique'—the qualification for some profession; and he must have a satisfactory knowledge of the two 'Canons' which form the Book of the "Samurai." He must be at least twenty-five years old and in sound health and good training. His past is not inquired into; but for any breach of the Rule after once joining it the penalty is irrevocable expulsion. He may not lend money at interest, keep a hotel, sell drugs, act, sing, or recite (though he may 'lecture authoritatively"), he may not be a servant or keep one; he must shave, dress, and tend himself and no one else; he may not bet, gamble, play games in public or watch them being played; he must abjure wine and tobacco, and be chaste, though not celibate. A man under the Rule who 'loves a woman who does not follow it must either leave the "Samurai" to marry her, or induce her to accept what is 'called the Woman's Rule, which, while it excepts her from the severer qualifications and disciplines, brings her regimen of life into a working harmony with his.' (The Rule is never fussy,' but it insists on sumptuary laws for dress.) On the other hand, a woman 'Samurai' may marry outside the Rule, and a wife may join it without the husband doing so. This concession is valued, as we should expect, by men ' of great poietic distinction.' The children of these marriages tend to become 'Samurai' themselves, and so to form something of a hereditary class; but it is not a caste, for it is not exclusive, and constantly increases relatively to the total population. It may some day be co-extensive with mankind.

Lastly, the religion of the 'Samurai' is explained: the 'will and motives at the centre that made men and women 'ready to undergo . . . to renounce .. to keep in the key ' of effort.' They start, somewhat unnecessarily, by repudiating the doctrine of Original Sin. They go on, reasonably enough, to assert that 'man, on the whole, is good.' He has pride and conscience, remorse and sorrow; he is inevitably religious. But the 'Samurai' allow no 'slovenly indulgence in religious inclinations'-a phrase which is fortunately explained as condemning failure to think hard and dis'criminate as fairly as possible in religious matters,' but unfortunately followed by a comparison of organ music and incense to the love of painted women or the consolations of 'brandy,' and of all creeds and formula to the early gratifi'cations of young men, experiences to establish renunciation.' A little personal feeling has crept in here which has nothing to do with the Samurai.' They are essentially tolerant,