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A Dream of England

My body lay asleep. My Spirit was free! Unconscious cerebration led it where it willed. Free as a bird, my winged soul made its way with no impediment. Without ears I heard, without eyes I saw, without hands I touched, without restraint I observed. My Spirit created images—it was an absolute monarch! Nothing denied its progress, no walls forbid entry, and nothing clouded its vision. More real, not less, than before, was every scene presented in the journeys of my Spirit. Is this real Life? Is this unreality Reality? It seemed so to be. Innumerable impressions on a long life become facts. The dream of sixty years was being realised every moment. What I saw and touched was tangible. Nothing was vague. It was a lifetime concentrated into a moment. “A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday, seeing they pass as a thief in the night.” Time was obliterated. Each of my senses was acute. I enjoyed beauty with a vivacity I had only dreamed of, the scent of flowers as I had not known before. I loathed the stenches of man’s making, for there was pain as well as pleasure to my acute sensibilities; in this state the Spirit is in a kind of Purgatory, half in, half out, of the world! half in Heaven, a bit in Hell. Dante tells it all. Virgil, Homer and Milton sang of it; the Golden Age lived it. Mankind has longed for it. To satisfy the longing man has created an Ideal existence the other side of the Grave. Not satisfied with that which is uncertain, we desire the Ideal life here, and as my Spirit gathers intimacy with what I see, hear and feel, the Ideal is dawning! “There is more in dreams than we wot of.” How can we tell that Truth is not the master of dreamland? “Hypnos” and “Somnos” may be brothers who conduct us into a land of accomplishment. Are they prophets? I hope so, when they lead where they lead me. Maybe such a dream as mine may come to be an abiding reality; that is why I tell it? England would be better and happier if it did. If there were no such place as Utopia, should we want to get there?

The money-grabbers have theirs, an unlimited supply of gold; the sensualists theirs, unlimited, unrestrained sensuality; the realist his, and what a tiresome place it would be; the idealist seeks his. Utopia is a real place, not in the clouds, but here, somewhere, if we choose to recognise it. If it were not so, the soul, created before the body, would not seek it. When we give a party we do so to please our friends, and doing so to gratify ourselves. The Idealist casts the seeds of live ideas. He knows they will fall on sterile as well as productive soil. The Idealist is an optimist. Having tested his ideal, probably through suffering, he believes in its efficacy. May be he believes in its general acceptance finally, because he is confident of the ultimate conquest of “the best!”