A Dissertation on Utopia

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 196, 15 May 1926, Page 15

A Dissertation on Utopia

The Real Reward for the Right Kind of Work

“Dancing is a thing I have a weakness for. Unfortunately I am too old to dance myself, but I am very fond of watching other people dance, and I can never forget that the parable of the prodigal son ends up with music and dancing, though I doubt if it was a fox-trot they danced on that occasion.” —Principal L. P. Jacks.

HIS was one of Principal Jacks’ reflections at the annual meet.-ig H of the Mary Ward Settlement, when he laid great stress on the I value of the work done in helping the working people of that 1 populous neighbourhood—<St. Pancras —to make the best and happiest use of their leisure hours,” says the “‘Manchester

Guardian.” , “One of the best ways of employing leisure was in doing something so happily and beautifully that it made people looking on rather envious and made them wish they did their own job as well. ‘You never feel like it,’ he said, ‘When you see people wasting their leisure or playing the fool or spending it in a way that makes trouble for other people.’ “Mr. Bertrand Russell had calculated that all the work of the world could be done in a four hours’ working day. That suggested the tremendous problem, if people only worked four hours, what on earth would they do with the rest of the time? Such a scheme could only work out if everyone spent the leisure in adding to the value of other people’s time. “‘My dream of Utopia,’ he said, ‘is of a state of things where people would work even harder than they do to-day but where everyone’s work would be a kind of beautiful and noble leisure and where everybody’s leisure would be a kind of beautiful and noble work. The happiness of mankind w'ould come chiefly from the daily w'ork of the world. Everyone would be glad when the day’s work began and sorry when it was time for knocking off, as every true artist is. The drcam is not practical yet but that is no reason for not believing in it.’

“The great trouble with the work of the world to-day was that so much of it brought the worker no reward but his wages. It was so monotonous that he had no joy in doing it. The great trouble with the play of the world to-day was that so many people spent their leisure time in fooling, not in music or in dancing, but just fooling, and thereby they made trouble for other people.” “The fortunes of our civilisation hinged upon getting the work of the world done with all the thoroughness, skill, and beauty that could be put into it,” says the “Times” report of Principal Jacks’ speech. “The man or woman who went to his or her daily work with a few verses of beautiful poetry ringing in his brain, with the strains of some beautiful music

lingering in his mind, with some noble example he had heard of in his memoir, and with the fragrance of some great ideal floating in his consciousness would find his day’s work less burdensome to him and would avoid many of the errors in spending his leisure time which others were only too liable to make. “When Principal L. P. Jacks revealed his ideas of, Utopia to a gathering in London the other day he was helping to preserve the continuity of a great thought,” says the “Liverpool Post,” commenting on the utterance of Principal Jacks.

“It is astonishing how easily the word ‘Utopian covers the various conceptions. Human imagination being somewhat limited. (or it would not be human), all visions, good or bad, tend to conform to type. “And it is doubtful if a new word will ever be sought for, although it was not until Sir Thomas More came that the name he gave to the fictitious island of his 400 years old romance began to be applied to the ideal state. “William Morris was merely using its English equivalent when he brought his news from ‘Nowhere’ {outopos means ‘not a place), and Samuel Butlers ‘Erewhon’ is simply ‘Nowhere’ spelt backward. Incidentally, the word has become for some people a term of contempt. They apply the poet Shelley s definition to it; this ‘sighing for what is not’ is merely futility. “When any novel proposal is made which these people cannot immediately grasp, they dismiss it in their bewilderment as impossibilism, Utopianism. And their attitude has often proved such a clog on progress that Ruskin was moved to denounce the word itself. ‘Utopianism,’ he thundered: That is another of the 1 devil’s pet words.

“ ‘Whenever you hear a man dissuading you from attempting to do well, on the ground that perfection is “Utopian,” beware of that man. Cast the word out of your dictionary altogether.’ But since Ruskin s time the word has gone deep into men's minds as well as remained in their vocabulary. “Professor Santayana has defined Utopianism, this vision of ‘a city set upon a hill,’ as a consistent moral attitude to life in all its phases. So understood it represents no mere vision of the dreamer, but the goal of a powerful and passionate force in the poet and the orator. ‘lt is the voice of his love or hate, of his hope or sorrow, idealising, challenging, or condemning the world.’”