An Unknown Land

Abstract

IT is no difficult task for a philosopher with some knowledge of science and some ideas for the regeneration of the human race to paint a picture of Utopia. What is difficult is to portray a Utopia in which the ordinary man or woman would care to live. Possibly W. S. Gilbert's gentle irony has all but achieved that feat, and suggestive as are many of the passages in this entertaining book, with one reservation, it is not the fascinating picture of scientific advance and social and intellectual development that remains most clearly in the memory after reading this book, but rather those passages in which, describing three of the States of the “Small Heads” who have separated in schism from the Utopia of the “Big Heads”, Lord Samuel gently satirizes Russia, Germany and Great Britain. A competent journalist with real knowledge of science might have given as suggestive an account of the scientific advances of the Bensals, their achievements in agriculture, in industry, in fishery, in atomic energy, but in this long chapter on the Islands there is humour and humanity, and the philosophy which is the distinctive feature of Lord Samuel's essay in Utopia is warm as well as prescient. An Unknown Land By Viscount Samuel. Pp. 222. (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1942.) 12s. 6d. net.