A MODERN UTOPIA
plant, and beast, also in that parallel planet beyond Sirius, but every man, woman, and child alive has a Utopian parallel. From now onward, of course, the fates of these two planets will diverge, men will die here whom wisdom will save there, and perhaps conversely here we shall save men; children will be born to them and not to us, to us and not to them; but this, this moment of reading, is the starting moment, and for the first and last occasion the populations of our planets are abreast.
We must in these days make some such supposition. The alternative is a Utopia of dolls in the likeness of angels—imaginary laws to fit incredible people, an unattractive undertaking.
For example, we must assume there is a man such as I might have been, better informed, better disciplined, better employed, thinner and more active—and I wonder what he is doing!—and you, Sir or Madam, are in duplicate also, and all the men and women that you know and I. I doubt if we shall meet our doubles, or if it would be pleasant for us to do so; but as we come down from these lonely mountains to the roads and houses and living places of the Utopian World State, we shall certainly find, here and there, faces that will remind us singularly of those who have lived under our eyes.
There are some you never wish to meet again, you say, and some, I gather, you do. "And One——— !"
It is strange, but this figure of the botanist will not keep in place. It sprang up between us, dear reader, as a passing illustrative invention. I do not know what put him into my head, and for the moment it
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