constellations down to the little Greek letters. I imagine his
exclamation. He would at first doubt his eyes. I should inquire the
cause of his consternation, and it would be hard to explain. He
would ask me with a certain singularity of manner for "Orion," and I
should not find him; for the Great Bear, and it would have vanished.
"Where?" I should ask, and "where?" seeking among that scattered
starriness, and slowly I should acquire the wonder that possessed
him.

Then, for the first time, perhaps, we should realise from
this unfamiliar heaven that not the world had changed, but
ourselves--that we had come into the uttermost deeps of space.


Section 5

We need suppose no linguistic impediments to intercourse. The whole
world will surely have a common language, that is quite elementarily
Utopian, and since we are free of the trammels of convincing
story-telling, we may suppose that language to be sufficiently our
own to understand. Indeed, should we be in Utopia at all, if we
could not talk to everyone? That accursed bar of language, that
hostile inscription in the foreigner's eyes, "deaf and dumb to you,
sir, and so--your enemy," is the very first of the defects and
complications one has fled the earth to escape.

But what sort of language would we have the world speak, if we were
told the miracle of Babel was presently to be reversed?

If I may take a daring image, a mediaeval liberty, I would suppose