The chief use of the classic utopias that we have surveyed is to suggest that the same methods which are used by the utopian thinkers to project an ideal community on paper may be employed, in a practical way, to develop a better community on earth. The weakness of the utopian thinkers consisted in the assumption that the dreams and projects of any single man might be realized in society at large. From the bitter frustration of Fourier, Cabet, Hertzka, and even John Ruskin those who are in search of the beloved community may well take a warning. Where the critics of the utopian method were, I believe, wrong was in holding that the business of projecting prouder worlds was a futile and footling pastime. These anti-utopian critics overlooked the fact that one of the main factors that condition any future are the attitudes and beliefs which people have in relation to that future--that, as Mr. John Dewey would say, in any judgment of practise one’s belief in a hypothesis is one of the things that affect its realization. When we have projected the pattern of an ideal community and tend to warp our conduct in conformity with that pattern, we overcome the momentum of actual institutions. In feeling free to project new patterns, in holding that human beings can will a change in their institutions and habits of life, the utopians were, I believe, on solid ground; and the utopian philosophies were a great improvement over the more nebulous religious and ethical systems of the past in that they saw the necessity for giving their ideals form and life. In fact, it has been in the pictures of ideal commonwealths such as Plato’s that the “ideal” and the “actual” have met. It is true that the pure utopians have overlooked the fact that every institution has a momentum of its own: its speed may be quickened or reduced, it may be switched on another track, as the Roman Church during the Reformation was switched from the main line of civilization to a subsidiary route; and at times, in the catastrophe of war or revolution, an institution may jump the track altogether and be wrecked. The critical problem for the eutopian, the problem of the transition from one set of institutions to another, from one way of life to another, was overlooked. Plato’s Republic, for example, was a fairly attractive place; but one wonders in what Greek city in the Fourth Century B.C. the transition could have taken place. A transition implies not merely a goal but a starting point: if we are to move the world, as Archimedes threatened to with his lever, we must have some ground to stand on. It is only by paying attention to the limitations of each region, and by allowing for the driving force of history, that we can make the earth come to terms with man’s idola. This is perhaps the most difficult lesson that the eutopian must learn. 11