The Old Testament used to call such people prophets. They raised strange cities of their hearts’ delight, which should be based exclusively upon righteousness and piety. But the greatest of all their prophets the Jews killed to make a Roman holiday. The Greeks knew such wise men as philosophers. They allowed them great freedom and rejoiced in the mathematical precision with which their intellectual leaders mapped out those theoretical roads which were to lead mankind from chaos to an ordered state of society. The Middle Ages insisted with narrow persistence upon the Kingdom of Heaven as the only possible standard for a decent Christian Utopia. They crushed all those who dared to question the positive existence of such a future state of glory and content. They built it of stone and precious metals, but neglected the spiritual fundament. [Illustration] And so it perished. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries fought many bitter wars to decide the exact nature of a whitewashed Paradise, erected upon the crumbling ruins of the mediæval church. The eighteenth century saw the Promised Land lying just across the terrible bulwark of stupidity and superstition, which a thousand years of clerical selfishness had erected for its own protection and safety. There followed a mighty battle to crush the infamy of ignorance and bring about an era of well-balanced reason. Unfortunately, a few enthusiasts carried the matter a trifle too far. Napoleon, realist-in-chief of all time, brought the world back to the common ground of solid facts. Our own generation drew the logical conclusion of the Napoleonic premises. Behold the map of Europe and see how well we have wrought. For alas! this world needs Utopias as it needs fairy stories. It does not matter so much where we are going, as long as we are making consciously for some definite goal. And a Utopia, however strange or fanciful, is the only possible beacon upon the uncharted seas of the distant future. [Illustration] It encourages us in our efforts. Sometimes the light is hidden by the clouds and for a moment we may lose our way. Then the faint light once more breaks through the darkness and we press forward with new courage. And when life is dull and meaningless (the main curse of all existence) we find consolation in the fact that a hundred years from now, our children shall reach the shore for which we were bound when we ourselves left the bridge and were lowered to the peaceful bottom of the ocean. [Illustration] And now the sun has gone down and a chill wind blows from Kebnekajse, where the wild geese of little Nils Holgerson live amidst the endless silence of the eternal snow. Soon the top shall be hidden in the mist and I shall have to find my way back by the noise of the steam shovels, plying their elephantine trade at the foot of the first terrace. The mountain of my fairy story once more will be the profitable investment of a Company of Iron-mongers. But that does not matter.