Los Angeles daily herald., 1889-07-05
se,iamy ana the Modern Utopia.

their successors and the lawyers.
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BeiIamy and the Modern Utopia.
1t was an unfortunate thing for Sir
Thomas More that he did not fabricate
his scheme of Utopia in these modern
days. A far inferior man Of the present
day, named Bellamy, with far inferior
scheme. has made a success which must
make Sir Thomas turn in his grave with
envy. The old time visionaries built
their Utopiss in the face of solid, iron
facts. Sir Thomas himself, the best OF
the entire lot, although he had been
Chancellor of England, and for time
the favorite ofthe capricious Henry VIII,
had to submit to the headsman, as the
summary of his devotion to human
nature and to mis- sovereign.
In the summary of Utopia projects, in.
Guiding the Brook Farm ideal of the
visionaries of the United States, every
thing was either present or prospective.
Bellamy has achieved tremendous ad-
vance in making his programme retro
spective.
When we deal with retrospections we
can make our programme to suit our
selves. We can date the evangel of our
progress from the year A. D. 1000, in
stead of 1000, and we are naturally to be
pardoned in correcting all facts of date
and design in the ordinary, orthodox
scheme of human life. Instead of COR
recting things from the point of view OF
a hundred years or SO hence, we may
fitly start in to correct them from a
standpoint three or four thousand years
back, compromising the Hebrsic with the
Christian calendars.
With the license accorded to us in the
past, which Bellamy claims in the future,
we might reconstruct many problems
both OF cosmogony and morality. For
instance, according to modern standards,
Moses might have told the truth to the
Egyptians when he borrowed their ves-
sells Of gold and silver, instead of telling
lying story about their return. In the
very opening chapters of the Pentateuch,
according to the convenient style Of
making things to suit themselves in
the future, which characterizes the
Bellamy tribe, where the Serpent
intruded itself into the Garden Of Eden,
to vile the Imagination of the weak Eve,
there ought to have been some interpret
lation of that divine grace, to prevent
the Fall of Mankind, which is supposed
to be SO operative in Redemption, to pre-
serve it after the FALL
Once conceded the license, in recon-
structing the past, which Bellamy and
his followers claim in modelling the
future, all the mistakes of history could
be avoided. Pontius Plate would have
rebuked the Jews and released Christ.
Julius Cesar, instead OF being hypo.
critic, a dissembler and despot, would
have honestly repulsed Marx Antony
when, thrice upon the Lupercal, that
mad partisan rendered him the Kingly
crown. And SO on, to the end of chap
ter which might be indefinitely pro-
longed.
To save ourselves the lorg recapitula-
ton which the license taken by Bellamy
with the future would give us in the past,
and coming down to late day, the pig
headed George the Third would never
have precipitated the American Revolu-
ton; nor would Napoleon the First have
forgotten that he, like Alexander,
Ge1ghes Khan and Tamerlane was
merely mortal. In fact, with the liberties
claimed by Bellamy with the future, We
could easily rectify all the crimes and
blunders of the past.
Yet, notwithstanding Bellamy's cheap
theories of benefcient development, ell
the signs multiply that system far more
potential than the brutal forces of the
Middle Ages, is gathering for the subju.
CATION of the masses. Its progress will
be interrupted only by n1atured, consti.
tutional ideas, and by that ccrrelative ad.
vance Of intelligence and chemical
science which will admit of oppressed
men destroying their oppressors in great
masses. The next great cy-
clonic development in the in
terest of mankind will probably
take place in Russia. 1t will replace one
form of force by another, and it will leave
the masses as thoroughly without remedy
as the French Revolution left the poorer
classes of Frenchmen. Utopias are Just
as impossible today as they were in the
days of Sir Thomas More, and perhaps
even more 30, because the forms of
oppression as to the great bulk of man.
kind are 30 infinitely more subtle now
ihan then.
Irn1I IA L