the existence of our blond bare-footed friend was evidence enough that in a modern utopia a man will be free to be just as idle or uselessly busy as it pleases him, after he has earned the minimum wage. he must do that, of course, to pay for his keep, to pay his assurance tax against ill-health or old age, and any charge or debt paternity may have brought upon him. the world state of the modern utopist is no state of moral compulsions. if, for example, under the restricted utopian scheme of inheritance, a man inherited sufficient money to release him from the need to toil, he would be free to go where he pleased and do what he liked. a certain proportion of men at ease is good for the world; work as a moral obligation is the morality of slaves, and so long as no one is overworked there is no need to worry because some few are underworked. utopia does not exist as a solace for envy. from leisure, in a good moral and intellectual atmosphere, come experiments, come philosophy and the new departures.
in any modern utopia there must be many leisurely people. we are all too obsessed in the real world by the strenuous ideal, by the idea that the vehement incessant fool is the only righteous man. nothing done in a hurry, nothing done under strain, is really well done. a state where all are working hard, where none go to and fro, easily and freely, loses touch with the purpose of freedom.
but inherited independence will be the rarest and least permanent of utopian facts, for the most part that wider freedom will have to be earned, and the inducements to men and women to raise their personal value far above the minimum wage will be very great indeed. thereby will come privacies, more space in which to live, liberty to go everywhere and do no end of things, the power and freedom to initiate interesting enterprises and assist and co-operate with interesting people, and indeed all the best things of life. the modern utopia will give a universal security indeed, and exercise the minimum of compulsions to toil, but it will offer some acutely desirable prizes. the aim of all these devices, the minimum wage, the standard of life, provision for all the feeble and unemployed and so forth, is not to rob life of incentives but to change their nature, to make life not less energetic, but less panic-stricken and violent and base, to shift the incidence of the struggle for existence from our lower to our higher emotions, so to anticipate and neutralise the motives of the cowardly and bestial, that the ambitious and energetic imagination which is man’s finest quality may become the incentive and determining factor in survival.
