A Modern Utopia: H. G. Wells' Collector's Edition

Mr. Wells's "Utopia" is aptly and accurately characterized in his title. It is distinctively modern. Utopias hitherto have been in considerable measure variants of the Apocalypse. Each has been its author's idea of what the New Jerusalem should be. And some have been extremely material in their plan and scope, quite given over to the mechanical indeed. Mr. Wells's book is rather a study in sociology, and sociology is itself so late a science that it is hardly to be called a science at all. "A Modern Utopia" quite postdates the classic Utopia at all events. It is a sociological study in that it is a criticism of current social conditions under the guise of the description of an imaginary commonwealth, and in that this commonwealth is not purely an ideal one, fixed, absolute, and fanciful, but one which illustrates the present world in a further stage of development. It is in the directions given to this development that Mr. Wells's utopianism consists. The book is not his prophesy of the future such as it would in his estimation be both advisable and feasible for the present finally to become. His future, in fact, is itself a phase, an evolutionary stage, and he suggests rather than excludes the notion of still greater perfection in the more distant future that will stretch indefinitely before it. The book is full of ideas, even conceits. No book by Mr. Wells can be without them. His readers do not need to be assured that here as in his other works his imagination and ingenuity are given full play. But what distinguishes this work, both from others by the same author and from preceding Utopias, is that his imagination and ingenuity are employed very strictly in the service of science.