In short, I had spelled out slowly, as usual, the need for an equal law in Utopia; and, as usual, I found that Christianity had been there before me.  The whole history of my Utopia has the same amusing sadness.  I was always rushing out of my architectural study with plans for a new turret only to find it sitting up there in the sunlight, shining, and a thousand years old.  For me, in the ancient and partly in the modern sense, God answered the prayer, “Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings.”  Without vanity, I really think there was a moment when I could have invented the marriage vow (as an institution) out of my own head; but I discovered, with a sigh, that it had been invented already.  But, since it would be too long a business to show how, fact by fact and inch by inch, my own conception of Utopia was only answered in the New Jerusalem, I will take this one case of the matter of marriage as indicating the converging drift, I may say the converging crash of all the rest.

When the ordinary opponents of Socialism talk about impossibilities and alterations in human nature they always miss an important distinction.  In modern ideal conceptions of society there are some desires that are possibly not attainable:  but there are some desires that are not desirable.  That all men should live in equally beautiful houses is a dream that may or may not be attained.  But that all men should live in the same beautiful house is not a dream at all; it is a nightmare.  That a man should love all old women is an ideal that may not be attainable.  But that a man should regard all old women exactly as he regards his mother is not only an unattainable ideal, but an ideal which ought not to be attained.  I do not know if the reader agrees with me in these examples; but I will add the example which has always affected me most.  I could never conceive or tolerate any Utopia which did not leave to me the liberty for which I chiefly care, the liberty to bind myself.  Complete anarchy would not merely make it impossible to have any discipline or fidelity; it would also make it impossible to have any fun.  To take an obvious instance, it would not be worth while to bet if a bet were not binding.  The dissolution of all contracts would not only ruin morality but spoil sport.  Now betting and such sports are only the stunted and twisted shapes of the original instinct of man for adventure and romance, of which much has been said in these pages.  And the perils, rewards, punishments, and fulfilments of an adventure must be real, or the adventure is only a shifting and heartless nightmare.  If I bet I must be made to pay, or there is no poetry in betting.  If I challenge I must be made to fight, or there is no poetry in challenging.  If I vow to be faithful I must be cursed when I am unfaithful, or there is no fun in vowing.  You could not even make a fairy tale from the experiences of a man who, when he was swallowed by a whale, might find himself