One hundred years ago
AS IS natural in an age like this, when fervid minds will believe anything except Christianity, plans for creating Utopias are pretty common. Some Austrians are founding a community on Kilimanjaro, which is, we believe, to realise without crime the Anarchist idea of life without government. A great proprietor in the Basilicata proposes to restore the gold- en age by creating prosperous peasants, who will not read, and will forbid their children to learn; and seventy Aus- tralians, or at least settlers who have lived in Australia, have bought and set- tled on a vast estate in Paraguay, hoping to realise the ideas of Mr. Bellamy's book, "Looking Backwards." The latter have met with a misfortune already, twenty-seven having seceded because their brethren insisted on forcing them to keep the rule which forbids drinking alcohol. The more such experiments are tried, the better; but experience seems to show that, to succeed, two conditions are imperative. There must be strong supernatural faith of some kind, the faith in physical comfort not being a strong enough "religio" or binding, and there must be despotic power almost extending to life and death in the hands of some individual or Council. Other- wise, as individuals are no more alike than the trees are alike, they will demonstrate their separateness.
The Spectator 24 March 1894
Previous page
