slaughtering the inquiring visitor a simple, sufficient rule. But
the whole trend of modern thought is against the permanence of any
such enclosures. We are acutely aware nowadays that, however subtly
contrived a State may be, outside your boundary lines the epidemic,
the breeding barbarian or the economic power, will gather its
strength to overcome you. The swift march of invention is all for
the invader. Now, perhaps you might still guard a rocky coast or a
narrow pass; but what of that near to-morrow when the flying machine
soars overhead, free to descend at this point or that? A state
powerful enough to keep isolated under modern conditions would be
powerful enough to rule the world, would be, indeed, if not actively
ruling, yet passively acquiescent in all other human organisations,
and so responsible for them altogether. World-state, therefore, it
must be.

That leaves no room for a modern Utopia in Central Africa, or in
South America, or round about the pole, those last refuges of
ideality. The floating isle of La Cite Morellyste no longer avails.
We need a planet. Lord Erskine, the author of a Utopia ("Armata")
that might have been inspired by Mr. Hewins, was the first of all
Utopists to perceive this--he joined his twin planets pole to pole
by a sort of umbilical cord. But the modern imagination, obsessed
by physics, must travel further than that.

Out beyond Sirius, far in the deeps of space, beyond the flight of a
cannon-ball flying for a billion years, beyond the range of unaided
vision, blazes the star that is _our_ Utopia's sun. To those who
know where to look, with a good opera-glass aiding good eyes, it
and three fellows that seem in a cluster with it--though they are
incredible billions of miles nearer--make just the faintest speck