One Can Always Hope
utopias are characterized by an avoidance of the fact that the State is made by man and in his own image, that if he were not constantly on the prowl for something-for-nothing he would never build such an institution.
Some indirect recognition of the fact that the State is the image of man, or vice versa, is found in those utopias that lay claim to scientific exactitude. Beginning with a theory that is nothing but an unproven hypothesis, they do pretty well in endowing the State with a socially beneficial character. The theory holds that man is not a reasoning animal, or even a thinking one, and is certainly without fixed or immutable instincts; his behavior consists entirely of reflex actions induced by environmental conditioning. From this premise (which its proponents accept as axiomatic) it follows that man will be what his environmental influences compel him to be, and that the "perfect" man will emerge from the "perfect" environment. It is the mold that makes the man. If, therefore, we would improve the condition of man we must apply ourselves to the improvement of the mold into which this bit of protoplasm is to be poured.
But how and by whom is this mold to be built? It is admittedly a colossal job, which only the State with its monopoly of power is capable of performing. But the State itself is a human institution, and the question arises as to the capacity of the nonthinking human to put the State on the job of producing the "perfect" environment. The "scientists" get themselves out of this logical quandary by simply putting their basic theory aside for the moment and admitting, at least tacitly, that some people are in fact capable of thinking. For an as-yet-unexplained reason, these "scientists" have been able to free themselves from their environmental influences and are actually capable of cerebration; for that reason they
