BOOK I
HENRY VIII, the unconquered King of England, a prince adorned
with all the virtues that become a great monarch, having some
differences of no small consequence with Charles, the most serene
Prince of Castile, sent me into Flanders, as his ambassador, for
treating and composing matters between them. I was colleague and
com- panion to that incomparable man Cuthbert Tonstal, whom the
King with such universal applause lately made Master of the Rolls,
but of whom I will say nothing; not because I fear that the testimony
of a friend will be suspected, but rather because his learning
and virtues are too great for me to do them justice, and so well
known that they need not my commendations unless I would, according
to the proverb, "Show the sun with a lanthorn." Those
that were appointed by the Prince to treat with us, met us at
Bruges, according to agreement; they were all worthy men. The
Margrave of Bruges was their head, and the chief man among them;
but he that was esteemed the wisest, and that spoke for the rest,
was George Temse, the Provost of Casselsee; both art and nature
had concurred to make him eloquent: he was very learned in the
law; and as he had a great capacity, so by a long practice in
affairs he was very dexterous at unravelling them.
After we had several times met without coming to an agreement,
they went to Brussels for some days to know the Prince's pleasure.
And since our business would admit it, I went to Antwerp. While
I was there, among many that visited me, there was one that was
more acceptable to me than any other, Peter Giles, born at Antwerp,
who is a man of great honor, and of a good rank in his town, though
less than he deserves; for I do not know if there be anywhere
to be found a more learned and a better bred young man: for as
he is both a very worthy and a very knowing person, so he is so
civil to all men, so particularly kind to his friends, and so
full of candor and affection, that there is not perhaps above
one or two anywhere to be found that are in all respects so perfect
a friend. He is extraordinarily modest, there is no artifice in
him; and yet no man has more of a prudent simplicity: his conversation
was so pleasant and so innocently cheerful, that his company in
a great measure lessened any longings to go back to my country,
and to my wife and children, which an absence of four months had
quickened very much. One day as I was returning home from mass
at St. Mary's, which is the chief church, and the most frequented
of any in Antwerp, I saw him by accident talking with a stranger,
who seemed past the flower of his age; his face was tanned, he
had a long beard, and his cloak was hanging carelessly about him,
so that by his looks and habit I concluded he was a seaman.
As soon as Peter saw me, he came and saluted me; and as I was
returning his civility, he took me aside, and pointing to him
with whom he had been discoursing, he said: "Do you see that
man? I was just thinking to bring him to you."
I answered, "He should have been very welcome on your account."
"And on his own too," replied he, "if you knew
the man, for there is none alive that can give so copious an account
of unknown nations and countries as he can do; which I know you
very much desire."
Then said I, "I did not guess amiss, for at first sight I
took him for a seaman."
"But you are much mistaken," said he, "for he has
not sailed as a seaman, but as a traveller, or rather a philosopher.
This Raphael, who from his family carries the name of Hythloday,
is not ignorant of the Latin tongue, but is eminently learned
in the Greek, having applied himself more particularly to that
than to the former, because he had given himself much to philosophy,
in which he knew that the Romans have left us nothing that is
valuable, except what is to be found in Seneca and Cicero. He
is a Portuguese by birth, and was so desirous of seeing the world
that he divided his estate among his brothers, ran the same hazard
as Americus Vespucius, and bore a share in three of his four voyages,
that are now published; only he did not return with him in his
last, but obtained leave of him almost by force, that he might
be one of those twenty- four who were left at the farthest place
at which they touched, in their last voyage to New Castile. The
leaving him thus did not a little gratify one that was more fond
of travelling than of returning home to be buried in his own country;
for he used often to say that the way to heaven was the same from
all places; and he that had no grave had the heaven still over
him. Yet this disposition of mind had cost him dear, if God had
not been very gracious to him; for after he, with five Castilians,
had travelled over many countries, at last, by strange good- fortune,
he got to Ceylon, and from thence to Calicut, where he very happily
found some Portuguese ships, and, beyond all men's expectations,
returned to his native country."
When Peter had said this to me, I thanked him for his kindness,
in intending to give me the acquaintance of a man whose conversation
he knew would be so acceptable; and upon that Raphael and I embraced
each other. After those civilities were passed which are usual
with strangers upon their first meeting, we all went to my house,
and entering into the garden, sat down on a green bank, and entertained
one another in discourse. He told us that when Vespucius had sailed
away, he and his companions that stayed behind in New Castile,
by degrees insinuated themselves into the affections of the people
of the country, meeting often with them, and treating them gently:
and at last they not only lived among them without danger, but
conversed familiarly with them; and got so far into the heart
of a prince, whose name and country I have forgot, that he both
furnished them plentifully with all things necessary, and also
with the conveniences of travelling; both boats when they went
by water, and wagons when they travelled over land: he sent with
them a very faithful guide, who was to introduce and recommend
them to such other princes as they had a mind to see: and after
many days' journey, they came to towns and cities, and to commonwealths,
that were both happily governed and well-peopled. Under the equator,
and as far on both sides of it as the sun moves, there lay vast
deserts that were parched with the perpetual heat of the sun;
the soil was withered, all things looked dismally, and all places
were either quite uninhabited, or abounded with wild beasts and
serpents, and some few men that were neither less wild nor less
cruel than the beasts themselves.
But as they went farther, a new scene opened, all things grew
milder, the air less burning, the soil more verdant, and even
the beasts were less wild: and at last there were nations, towns,
and cities, that had not only mutual commerce among themselves,
and with their neighbors, but traded both by sea and land, to
very remote countries. There they found the conveniences of seeing
many countries on all hands, for no ship went any voyage into
which he and his companions were not very welcome. The first vessels
that they saw were flat-bottomed, their sails were made of reeds
and wicker woven close together, only some were of leather; but
afterward they found ships made with round keels and canvas sails,
and in all respects like our ships; and the seamen understood
both astronomy and navigation. He got wonderfully into their favor,
by showing them the use of the needle, of which till then they
were utterly ignorant. They sailed before with great caution,
and only in summer-time, but now they count all seasons alike,
trusting wholly to the loadstone, in which they are perhaps more
secure than safe; so that there is reason to fear that this discovery,
which was thought would prove so much to their advantage, may
by their imprudence become an occasion of much mischief to them.
But it were too long to dwell on all that he told us he had observed
in every place, it would be too great a digression from our present
purpose: whatever is necessary to be told, concerning those wise
and prudent institutions which he observed among civilized nations,
may perhaps be related by us on a more proper occasion. We asked
him many questions concerning all these things, to which he answered
very willingly; only we made no inquiries after monsters, than
which nothing is more common; for everywhere one may hear of ravenous
dogs and wolves, and cruel man-eaters; but it is not so easy to
find States that are well and wisely governed.
As he told us of many things that were amiss in those newdiscovered
countries, so he reckoned up not a few things from which patterns
might be taken for correcting the errors of these nations among
whom we live; of which an account may be given, as I have already
promised, at some other time; for at present I intend only to
relate those particulars that he told us of the manners and laws
of the Utopians: but I will begin with the occasion that led us
to speak of that commonwealth. After Raphael had discoursed with
great judgment on the many errors that were both among us and
these nations; had treated of the wise institutions both here
and there, and had spoken as distinctly of the customs and government
of every nation through which he had passed, as if he had spent
his whole life in it, Peter, being struck with admiration, said:
"I wonder, Raphael, how it comes that you enter into no king's
service, for I am sure there are none to whom you would not be
very acceptable: for your learning and knowledge both of men and
things, are such that you would not only entertain them very pleasantly,
but be of great use to them, by the examples you could set before
them and the advices you could give them; and by this means you
would both serve your own interest and be of great use to all
your friends."
"As for my friends," answered he, "I need not be
much concerned, having already done for them all that was incumbent
on me; for when I was not only in good health, but fresh and young,
I distributed that among my kindred and friends which other people
do not part with till they are old and sick, when they then unwillingly
give that which they can enjoy no longer themselves. I think my
friends ought to rest contented with this, and not to expect that
for their sake I should enslave myself to any king whatsoever."
"Soft and fair," said Peter, "I do not mean that
you should be a slave to any king, but only that you should assist
them, and be useful to them."
"The change of the word," said he, "does not alter
the matter."
"But term it as you will," replied Peter, "I do
not see any other way in which you can be so useful, both in private
to your friends, and to the public, and by which you can make
your own condition happier."
"Happier!" answered Raphael; "is that to be compassed
in a way so abhorrent to my genius? Now I live as I will, to which
I believe few courtiers can pretend. And there are so many that
court the favor of great men, that there will be no great loss
if they are not troubled either with me or with others of my temper."
Upon this, said I: "I perceive, Raphael, that you neither
desire wealth nor greatness; and indeed I value and admire such
a man much more than I do any of the great men in the world. Yet
I think you would do what would well become so generous and philosophical
a soul as yours is, if you would apply your time and thoughts
to public affairs, even though you may happen to find it a little
uneasy to yourself: and this you can never do with so much advantage,
as by being taken into the counsel of some great prince, and putting
him on noble and worthy actions, which I know you would do if
you were in such a post; for the springs both of good and evil
flow from the prince, over a whole nation, as from a lasting fountain.
So much learning as you have, even without practice in affairs,
or so great a practice as you have had, without any other learning,
would render you a very fit counsellor to any king whatsoever."
"You are doubly mistaken," said he, "Mr. More,
both in your opinion of me, and in the judgment you make of things:
for as I have not that capacity that you fancy I have, so, if
I had it, the public would not be one jot the better, when I had
sacrificed my quiet to it. For most princes apply themselves more
to affairs of war than to the useful arts of peace; and in these
I neither have any knowledge, nor do I much desire it: they are
generally more set on acquiring new kingdoms, right or wrong,
than on governing well those they possess. And among the ministers
of princes, there are none that are not so wise as to need no
assistance, or at least that do not think themselves so wise that
they imagine they need none; and if they court any, it is only
those for whom the prince has much personal favor, whom by their
fawnings and flatteries they endeavor to fix to their own interests:
and indeed Nature has so made us that we all love to be flattered,
and to please ourselves with our own notions. The old crow loves
his young, and the ape her cubs. Now if in such a court, made
up of persons who envy all others, and only admire themselves,
a person should but propose anything that he had either read in
history or observed in his travels, the rest would think that
the reputation of their wisdom would sink, and that their interest
would be much depressed, if they could not run it down: and if
all other things failed, then they would fly to this, that such
or such things pleased our ancestors, and it were well for us
if we could but match them. They would set up their rest on such
an answer, as a sufficient confutation of all that could be said,
as if it were a great misfortune, that any should be found wiser
than his ancestors; but though they willingly let go all the good
things that were among those of former ages, yet if better things
are proposed they cover themselves obstinately with this excuse
of reverence to past times. I have met with these proud, morose,
and absurd judgments of things in many places, particularly once
in England."
"Were you ever there?" said I.
"Yes, I was," answered he, "and stayed some months
there not long after the rebellion in the west was suppressed
with a great slaughter of the poor people that were engaged in
it. I was then much obliged to that reverend prelate, John Morton,
Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal, and Chancellor of England:
a man," said he, "Peter (for Mr. More knows well what
he was), that was not less venerable for his wisdom and virtues
than for the high character he bore. He was of a middle stature,
not broken with age; his looks begot reverence rather than fear;
his conversation was easy, but serious and gravehe sometimes took
pleasure to try the force of those that came as suitors to him
upon business, by speaking sharply though decently to them, and
by that he discovered their spirit and presence of mind, with
which he was much delighted, when it did not grow up to impudence,
as bearing a great resemblance to his own temper; and he looked
on such persons as the fittest men for affairs. He spoke both
gracefully and weightily; he was eminently skilled in the law,
had a vast understanding and a prodigious memory; and those excellent
talents with which nature had furnished him were improved by study
and experience. When I was in England the King depended much on
his counsels, and the government seemed to be chiefly supported
by him; for from his youth he had been all along practised in
affairs; and having passed through many traverses of fortune,
he had with great cost acquired a vast stock of wisdom, which
is not soon lost when it is purchased so dear.
"One day when I was dining with him there happened to be
at table one of the English lawyers, who took occasion to run
out in a high commendation of the severe execution of justice
upon thieves, who, as he said, were then hanged so fast that there
were sometimes twenty on one gibbet; and upon that he said he
could not wonder enough how it came to pass, that since so few
escaped, there were yet so many thieves left who were still robbing
in all places. Upon this, I who took the boldness to speak freely
before the cardinal, said there was no reason to wonder at the
matter, since this way of punishing thieves was neither just in
itself nor good for the public; for as the severity was too great,
so the remedy was not effectual; simple theft not being so great
a crime that it ought to cost a man his life, no punishment how
severe soever being able to restrain those from robbing who can
find out no other way of livelihood. 'In this,' said I, 'not only
you in England, but a great part of the world imitate some ill
masters that are readier to chastise their scholars than to teach
them. There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves,
but it were much better to make such good provisions by which
every man might be put in a method how to live, and so be preserved
from the fatal necessity of stealing and of dying for it.'
"'There has been care enough taken for that,' said he, 'there
are many handicrafts, and there is husbandry, by which they may
make a shift to live unless they have a greater mind to follow
ill courses.'
"'That will not serve your turn,' said I, 'for many lose
their limbs in civil or foreign wars, as lately in the Cornish
rebellion, and some time ago in your wars with France, who being
thus mutilated in the service of their king and country, can no
more follow their old trades, and are too old to learn new ones:
but since wars are only accidental things, and have intervals,
let us consider those things that fall out every day. There is
a great number of noblemen among you, that are themselves as idle
as drones, that subsist on other men's labor, on the labor of
their tenants, whom, to raise their revenues, they pare to the
quick. This indeed is the only instance of their frugality, for
in all other things they are prodigal, even to the beggaring of
themselves: but besides this, they carry about with them a great
number of idle fellows, who never learned any art by which they
may gain their living; and these, as soon as either their lord
dies or they themselves fall sick, are turned out of doors; for
your lords are readier to feed idle people than to take care of
the sick; and often the heir is not able to keep together so great
a family as his predecessor did. Now when the stomachs of those
that are thus turned out of doors grow keen, they rob no less
keenly; and what else can they do? for when, by wandering about,
they have worn out both their health and their clothes, and are
tattered, and look ghastly, men of quality will not entertain
them, and poor men dare not do it, knowing that one who has been
bred up in idleness and pleasure, and who was used to walk about
with his sword and buckler, despising all the neighborhood with
an insolent scorn as far below him, is not fit for the spade and
mattock: nor will he serve a poor man for so small a hire, and
in so low a diet as he can afford to give him.'
"To this he answered: 'This sort of men ought to be particularly
cherished, for in them consists the force of the armies for which
we have occasion; since their birth inspires them with a nobler
sense of honor than is to be found among tradesmen or ploughmen.'
"'You may as well say,' replied I, 'that you must cherish
thieves on the account of wars, for you will never want the one
as long as you have the other; and as robbers prove sometimes
gallant soldiers, so soldiers often prove brave robbers; so near
an alliance there is between those two sorts of life. But this
bad custom, so common among you, of keeping many servants, is
not peculiar to this nation. In France there is yet a more pestiferous
sort of people, for the whole country is full of soldiers, still
kept up in time of peace, if such a state of a nation can be called
a peace: and these are kept in pay upon the same account that
you plead for those idle retainers about noblemen; this being
a maxim of those pretended statesmen that it is necessary for
the public safety to have a good body of veteran soldiers ever
in readiness. They think raw men are not to be depended on, and
they sometimes seek occasions for making war, that they may train
up their soldiers in the art of cutting throats; or as Sallust
observed, for keeping their hands in use, that they may not grow
dull by too long an intermission. But France has learned to its
cost how dangerous it is to feed such beasts.
"'The fate of the Romans, Carthaginians, and Syrians, and
many other nations and cities, which were both overturned and
quite ruined by those standing armies, should make others wiser:
and the folly of this maxim of the French appears plainly even
from this, that their trained soldiers often find your raw men
prove too hard for them; of which I will not say much, lest you
may think I flatter the English. Every day's experience shows
that the mechanics in the towns, or the clowns in the country,
are not afraid of fighting with those idle gentlemen, if they
are not disabled by some misfortune in their body, or dispirited
by extreme want, so that you need not fear that those well-shaped
and strong men (for it is only such that noblemen love to keep
about them, till they spoil them) who now grow feeble with ease,
and are softened with their effeminate manner of life, would be
less fit for action if they were well bred and well employed.
And it seems very unreasonable that for the prospect of a war,
which you need never have but when you please, you should maintain
so many idle men, as will always disturb you in time of peace,
which is ever to be more considered than war. But I do not think
that this necessity of stealing arises only from hence; there
is another cause of it more peculiar to England.'
"'What is that?' said the cardinal.
"'The increase of pasture,' said I, 'by which your sheep,
which are naturally mild, and easily kept in order, may be said
now to devour men, and unpeople, not only villages, but towns;
for wherever it is found that the sheep of any soil yield a softer
and richer wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry,
and even those holy men the abbots, not contented with the old
rents which their farms yielded, nor thinking it enough that they,
living at their ease, do no good to the public, resolve to do
it hurt instead of good. They stop the course of agriculture,
destroying houses and towns, reserving only the churches, and
enclose grounds that they may lodge their sheep in them. As if
forests and parks had swallowed up too little of the land, those
worthy countrymen turn the best inhabited places in solitudes,
for when an insatiable wretch, who is a plague to his country,
resolves to enclose many thousand acres of ground, the owners
as well as tenants are turned out of their possessions, by tricks,
or by main force, or being wearied out with ill-usage, they are
forced to sell them. By which means those miserable people, both
men and women, married and unmarried, old and young, with their
poor but numerous families (since country business requires many
hands), are all forced to change their seats, not knowing whither
to go; and they must sell almost for nothing their household stuff,
which could not bring them much money, even though they might
stay for a buyer. When that little money is at an end, for it
will be soon spent, what is left for them to do, but either to
steal and so to be hanged (God knows how justly), or to go about
and beg? And if they do this, they are put in prison as idle vagabonds;
while they would willingly work, but can find none that will hire
them; for there is no more occasion for country labor, to which
they have been bred, when there is no arable ground left. One
shepherd can look after a flock which will stock an extent of
ground that would require many hands if it were to be ploughed
and reaped. This likewise in many places raises the price of corn.
"'The price of wool is also so risen that the poor people
who were wont to make cloth are no more able to buy it; and this
likewise makes many of them idle. For since the increase of pasture,
God has punished the avarice of the owners by a rot among the
sheep, which has destroyed vast numbers of them; to us it might
have seemed more just had it fell on the owners themselves. But
suppose the sheep should increase ever so much, their price is
not like to fall; since though they cannot be called a monopoly,
because they are not engrossed by one person, yet they are in
so few hands, and these are so rich, that as they are not pressed
to sell them sooner than they have a mind to it, so they never
do it till they have raised the price as high as possible. And
on the same account it is, that the other kinds of cattle are
so dear, because many villages being pulled down, and all country
labor being much neglected, there are none who make it their business
to breed them. The rich do not breed cattle as they do sheep,
but buy them lean, and at low prices; and after they have fattened
them on their grounds sell them again at high rates. And I do
not think that all the inconveniences this will produce are yet
observed, for as they sell the cattle dear, so if they are consumed
faster than the breeding countries from which they are brought
can afford them, then the stock must decrease, and this must needs
end in great scarcity; and by these means this your island, which
seemed as to this particular the happiest in the world, will suffer
much by the cursed avarice of a few persons; besides this, the
rising of corn makes all people lessen their families as much
as they can; and what can those who are dismissed by them do,
but either beg or rob? And to this last, a man of a great mind
is much sooner drawn than to the former.
"'Luxury likewise breaks in apace upon you, to set forward
your poverty and misery; there is an excessive vanity in apparel,
and great cost in diet; and that not only in noblemen's families,
but even among tradesmen, among the farmers themselves, and among
all ranks of persons. You have also many infamous houses, and,
besides those that are known, the taverns and alehouses are no
better; add to these, dice, cards, tables, foot-ball, tennis,
and quoits, in which money runs fast away; and those that are
initiated into them, must in the conclusion betake themselves
to robbing for a supply. Banish these plagues, and give orders
that those who have dispeopled so much soil, may either rebuild
the villages they have pulled down, or let out their grounds to
such as will do it: restrain those engrossings of the rich, that
are as bad almost as monopolies; leave fewer occasions to idleness;
let agriculture be set up again, and the manufacture of the wool
be regulated, that so there may be work found for those companies
of idle people whom want forces to be thieves, or who, now being
idle vagabonds or useless servants, will certainly grow thieves
at last. If you do not find a remedy to these evils, it is a vain
thing to boast of your severity in punishing theft, which though
it may have the appearance of justice, yet in itself is neither
just nor convenient. For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated,
and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then
punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed
them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first
make thieves and then punish them ?'
"While I was talking thus, the counsellor who was present
had prepared an answer, and had resolved to resume all I had said,
according to the formality of a debate, in which things are generally
repeated more faithfully than they are answered; as if the chief
trial to be made were of men's memories.
"'You have talked prettily for a stranger,' said he, 'having
heard of many things among us which you have not been able to
consider well; but I will make the whole matter plain to you,
and will first repeat in order all that you have said, then I
will show how much your ignorance of our affairs has misled you,
and will in the last place answer all your arguments. And that
I may begin where I promised, there were four things --'
"'Hold your peace,' said the cardinal; 'this will take up
too much time; therefore we will at present ease you of the trouble
of answering, and reserve it to our next meeting, which shall
be to-morrow, if Raphael's affairs and yours can admit of it.
But, Raphael,' said he to me, 'I would gladly know upon what reason
it is that you think theft ought not to be punished by death?
Would you give way to it? Or do you propose any other punishment
that will be more useful to the public? For since death does not
restrain theft, if men thought their lives would be safe, what
fear or force could restrain ill men? On the contrary, they would
look on the mitigation of the punishment as an invitation to commit
more crimes.'
"I answered: 'It seems to me a very unjust thing to take
away a man's life for a little money; for nothing in the world
can be of equal value with a man's life: and if it is said that
it is not for the money that one suffers, but for his breaking
the law, I must say extreme justice is an extreme injury; for
we ought not to approve of these terrible laws that make the smallest
offences capital, nor of that opinion of the Stoics that makes
all crimes equal, as if there were no difference to be made between
the killing a man and the taking his purse, between which, if
we examine things impartially, there is no likeness nor proportion.
God has commanded us not to kill, and shall we kill so easily
for a little money? But if one shall say, that by that law we
are only forbid to kill any, except when the laws of the land
allow of it; upon the same grounds, laws may be made in some cases
to allow of adultery and perjury: for God having taken from us
the right of disposing, either of our own or of other people's
lives, if it is pretended that the mutual consent of man in making
laws can authorize manslaughter in cases in which God has given
us no example, that it frees people from the obligation of the
divine law, and so makes murder a lawful action; what is this,
but to give a preference to human laws before the divine?
"'And if this is once admitted, by the same rule men may
in all other things put what restrictions they please upon the
laws of God. If by the Mosaical law, though it was rough and severe,
as being a yoke laid on an obstinate and servile nation, men were
only fined and not put to death for theft, we cannot imagine that
in this new law of mercy, in which God treats us with the tenderness
of a father, he has given us a greater license to cruelty than
he did to the Jews. Upon these reasons it is that I think putting
thieves to death is not lawful; and it is plain and obvious that
it is absurd, and of ill-consequence to the commonwealth, that
a thief and a murderer should be equally punished; for if a robber
sees that his danger is the same, if he is convicted of theft
as if he were guilty of murder, this will naturally incite him
to kill the person whom otherwise he would only have robbed, since
if the punishment is the same, there is more security, and less
danger of discovery, when he that can best make it is put out
of the way; so that terrifying thieves too much, provokes them
to cruelty.
"But as to the question, What more convenient way of punishment
can be found? I think it is much more easier to find out that
than to invent anything that is worse; why should we doubt but
the way that was so long in use among the old Romans, who understood
so well the arts of government, was very proper for their punishment?
They condemned such as they found guilty of great crimes, to work
their whole lives in quarries, or to dig in mines with chains
about them. But the method that I liked best, was that which I
observed in my travels in Persia, among the Polylerits, who are
a considerable and well-governed people. They pay a yearly tribute
to the King of Persia; but in all other respects they are a free
nation, and governed by their own laws. They lie far from the
sea, and are environed with hills; and being contented with the
productions of their own country, which is very fruitful, they
have little commerce with any other nation; and as they, according
to the genius of their country, have no inclination to enlarge
their borders; so their mountains, and the pension they pay to
the Persians, secure them from all invasions.
"'Thus they have no wars among them; they live rather conveniently
than with splendor, and may be rather called a happy nation, than
either eminent or famous; for I do not think that they are known
so much as by name to any but their next neighbors. Those that
are found guilty of theft among them are bound to make restitution
to the owner, and not as it is in other places, to the prince,
for they reckon that the prince has no more right to the stolen
goods than the thief; but if that which was stolen is no more
in being, then the goods of the thieves are estimated, and restitution
being made out of them, the remainder is given to their wives
and children: and they themselves are condemned to serve in the
public works, but are neither imprisoned, nor chained, unless
there happened to be some extraordinary circumstances in their
crimes. They go about loose and free, working for the public.
If they are idle or backward to work, they are whipped; but if
they work hard, they are well used and treated without any mark
of reproach, only the lists of them are called always at night,
and then they are shut up. They suffer no other uneasiness, but
this of constant labor; for as they work for the public, so they
are well entertained out of the public stock, which is done differently
in different places. In some places, whatever is bestowed on them,
is raised by a charitable contribution; and though this way may
seem uncertain, yet so merciful are the inclinations of that people,
that they are plentifully supplied by it; but in other places,
public revenues are set aside for them; or there is a constant
tax of a poll-money raised for their maintenance. In some places
they are set to no public work, but every private man that has
occasion to hire workmen goes to the market-places and hires them
of the public, a little lower than he would do a freeman: if they
go lazily about their task, he may quicken them with the whip.
"'By this means there is always some piece of work or other
to be done by them; and beside their livelihood, they earn somewhat
still to the public. They all wear a peculiar habit, of one certain
color, and their hair is cropped a little above their ears, and
a piece of one of their ears is cut off. Their friends are allowed
to give them either meat, drink, or clothes so they are of their
proper color, but it is death, both to the giver and taker, if
they give them money; nor is it less penal for any freeman to
take money from them, upon any account whatsoever: and it is also
death for any of these slaves (so they are called) to handle arms.
Those of every division of the country are distinguished by a
peculiar mark; which it is capital for them to lay aside, to go
out of their bounds, or to talk with a slave of another jurisdiction;
and the very attempt of an escape is no less penal than an escape
itself; it is death for any other slave to be accessory to it;
and if a freeman engages in it he is condemned to slavery. Those
that discover it are rewarded -if freemen, in money; and if slaves,
with liberty, together with a pardon for being accessory to it;
that so they might find their account, rather in repenting of
their engaging in such a design, than in persisting in it.
"'These are their laws and rules in relation to robbery,
and it is obvious that they are as advantageous as they are mild
and gentle; since vice is not only destroyed, and men preserved,
but they treated in such a manner as to make them see the necessity
of being honest, and of employing the rest of their lives in repairing
the injuries they have formerly done to society. Nor is there
any hazard of their falling back to their old customs: and so
little do travellers apprehend mischief from them, that they generally
make use of them for guides, from one jurisdiction to another;
for there is nothing left them by which they can rob, or be the
better for it, since, as they are disarmed, so the very having
of money is a sufficient conviction: and as they are certainly
punished if discovered, so they cannot hope to escape; for their
habit being in all the parts of it different from what is commonly
worn, they cannot fly away, unless they would go naked, and even
then their cropped ear would betray them. The only danger to be
feared from them is their conspiring against the government: but
those of one division and neighborhood can do nothing to any purpose,
unless a general conspiracy were laid among all the slaves of
the several jurisdictions, which cannot be done, since they cannot
meet or talk together; nor will any venture on a design where
the concealment would be so dangerous and the discovery so profitable.
None are quite hopeless of recovering their freedom, since by
their obedience and patience, and by giving good grounds to believe
that they will change their manner of life for the future, they
may expect at last to obtain their liberty: and some are every
year restored to it, upon the good character that is given of
them.'
"When I had related all this, I added that I did not see
why such a method might not be followed with more advantage than
could ever be expected from that severe justice which the counsellor
magnified so much. To this he answered that it could never take
place in England without endangering the whole nation. As he said
this he shook his head, made some grimaces, and held his peace,
while all the company seemed of his opinion, except the cardinal,
who said that it was not easy to form a judgment of its success,
since it was a method that never yet had been tried.
"'But if,' said he, 'when the sentence of death was passed
upon a thief, the prince would reprieve him for a while, and make
the experiment upon him, denying him the privilege of a sanctuary;
and then if it had a good effect upon him, it might take place;
and if it did not succeed, the worst would be, to execute the
sentence on the condemned persons at last. And I do not see,'
added he, 'why it would be either unjust, inconvenient, or at
all dangerous, to admit of such a delay: in my opinion, the vagabonds
ought to be treated in the same manner; against whom, though we
have made many laws, yet we have not been able to gain our end.'
When the cardinal had done, they all commended the motion, though
they had despised it when it came from me; but more particularly
commended what related to the vagabonds, because it was his own
observation.
"I do not know whether it be worth while to tell what followed,
for it was very ridiculous; but I shall venture at it, for as
it is not foreign to this matter, so some good use may be made
of it. There was a jester standing by, that counterfeited the
fool so naturally that he seemed to be really one. The jests which
he offered were so cold and dull that we laughed more at him than
at them; yet sometimes he said, as it were by chance, things that
were not unpleasant; so as to justify the old proverb, 'That he
who throws the dice often, will sometimes have a lucky hit.' When
one of the company had said that I had taken care of the thieves,
and the cardinal had taken care of the vagabonds, so that there
remained nothing but that some public provision might be made
for the poor, whom sickness or old age had disabled from labor,
'Leave that to me,' said the fool, 'and I shall take care of them;
for there is no sort of people whose sight I abhor more, having
been so often vexed with them, and with their sad complaints;
but as dolefully soever as they have told their tale, they could
never prevail so far as to draw one penny from me: for either
I had no mind to give them anything, or when I had a mind to do
it I had nothing to give them: and they now know me so well that
they will not lose their labor, but let me pass without giving
me any trouble, because they hope for nothing, no more in faith
than if I were a priest: but I would have a law made, for sending
all these beggars to monasteries, the men to the Benedictines
to be made lay-brothers, and the women to be nuns.'
"The cardinal smiled, and approved of it in jest; but the
rest liked it in earnest. There was a divine present, who though
he was a grave, morose man, yet he was so pleased with this reflection
that was made on the priests and the monks, that he began to play
with the fool, and said to him, 'This will not deliver you from
all beggars, except you take care of us friars.'
"'That is done already,' answered the fool, 'for the cardinal
has provided for you, by what he proposed for restraining vagabonds,
and setting them to work, for I know no vagabonds like you.'
"This was well entertained by the whole company, who, looking
at the cardinal, perceived that he was not ill-pleased at it;
only the friar himself was vexed, as may be easily imagined, and
fell into such a passion that he could not forbear railing at
the fool, and calling him knave, slanderer, backbiter, and son
of perdition, and then cited some dreadful threatenings out of
the Scriptures against him. Now the jester thought he was in his
element, and laid about him freely.
"'Good friar,' said he, 'be not angry, for it is written,
"In patience possess your soul."'
"The friar answered (for I shall give you his own words),
'I am not angry, you hangman; at least I do not sin in it, for
the Psalmist says, "Be ye angry, and sin not."'
"Upon this the cardinal admonished him gently, and wished
him to govern his passions.
"'No, my lord,' said he, 'I speak not but from a good zeal,
which I ought to have; for holy men have had a good zeal, as it
is said, "The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up;" and
we sing in our church, that those, who mocked Elisha as he went
up to the house of God, felt the effects of his zeal; which that
mocker, that rogue, that scoundrel, will perhaps feel.'
"'You do this perhaps with a good intention,' said the cardinal;
'but in my opinion it were wiser in you, and perhaps better for
you, not to engage in so ridiculous a contest with a fool.'
"'No, my lord,' answered he, 'that were not wisely done;
for Solomon, the wisest of men, said, "Answer a fool according
to his folly;" which I now do, and show him the ditch into
which he will fall, if he is not aware of it; for if the many
mockers of Elisha, who was but one bald man, felt the effect of
his zeal, what will become of one mocker of so many friars, among
whom there are so many bald men? We have likewise a bull, by which
all that jeer us are excommunicated.'
"When the cardinal saw that there was no end of this matter,
he made a sign to the fool to withdraw, turned the discourse another
way, and soon after rose from the table, and, dismissing us, went
to hear causes.
"Thus, Mr. More, I have run out into a tedious story, of
the length of which I had been ashamed, if, as you earnestly begged
it of me, I had not observed you to hearken to it, as if you had
no mind to lose any part of it. I might have contracted it, but
I resolved to give it to you at large, that you might observe
how those that despised what I had proposed, no sooner perceived
that the cardinal did not dislike it, but presently approved of
it, fawned so on him, and flattered him to such a degree, that
they in good earnest applauded those things that he only liked
in jest. And from hence you may gather, how little courtiers would
value either me or my counsels."
To this I answered: "You have done me a great kindness in
this relation; for as everything has been related by you, both
wisely and pleasantly, so you have made me imagine that I was
in my own country, and grown young again, by recalling that good
cardinal to my thoughts, in whose family I was bred from my childhood:
and though you are upon other accounts very dear to me, yet you
are the dearer, because you honor his memory so much; but after
all this I cannot change my opinion, for I still think that if
you could overcome that aversion which you have to the courts
of princes, you might, by the advice which it is in your power
to give, do a great deal of good to mankind; and this is the chief
design that every good man ought to propose to himself in living;
for your friend Plato thinks that nations will be happy, when
either philosophers become kings or kings become philosophers,
it is no wonder if we are so far from that happiness, while philosophers
will not think it their duty to assist kings with their councils.
"'They are not so base-minded,' said he, 'but that they would
willingly do it: many of them have already done it by their books,
if those that are in power would but hearken to their good advice.'
But Plato judged right, that except kings themselves became philosophers,
they who from their childhood are corrupted with false notions
would never fall in entirely with the councils of philosophers,
and this he himself found to be true in the person of Dionysius.
"Do not you think that if I were about any king, proposing
good laws to him, and endeavoring to root out all the cursed seeds
of evil that I found in him, I should either be turned out of
his court or at least be laughed at for my pains? For instance,
what could it signify if I were about the King of France, and
were called into his Cabinet Council, where several wise men,
in his hearing, were proposing many expedients, as by what arts
and practices Milan may be kept, and Naples, that had so oft slipped
out of their hands, recovered; how the Venetians, and after them
the rest of Italy, may be subdued; and then how Flanders, Brabant,
and all Burgundy, and some other kingdoms which he has swallowed
already in his designs, may be added to his empire. One proposes
a league with the Venetians, to be kept as long as he finds his
account in it, and that he ought to communicate councils with
them, and give them some share of the spoil, till his success
makes him need or fear them less, and then it will be easily taken
out of their hands. Another proposes the hiring the Germans, and
the securing the Switzers by pensions. Another proposes the gaining
the Emperor by money, which is omnipotent with him. Another proposes
a peace with the King of Arragon, and, in order to cement it,
the yielding up the King of Navarre's pretensions. Another thinks
the Prince of Castile is to be wrought on, by the hope of an alliance;
and that some of his courtiers are to be gained to the French
faction by pensions. The hardest point of all is what to do with
England: a treaty of peace is to be set on foot, and if their
alliance is not to be depended on, yet it is to be made as firm
as possible; and they are to be called friends, but suspected
as enemies: therefore the Scots are to be kept in readiness, to
be let loose upon England on every occasion: and some banished
nobleman is to be supported underhand (for by the league it cannot
be done avowedly) who has a pretension to the crown, by which
means that suspected prince may be kept in awe.
"Now when things are in so great a fermentation, and so many
gallant men are joining councils, how to carry on the war, if
so mean a man as I should stand up, and wish them to change all
their councils, to let Italy alone, and stay at home, since the
Kingdom of France was indeed greater than could be well governed
by one man; that therefore he ought not to think of adding others
to it: and if after this, I should propose to them the resolutions
of the Achorians, a people that lie on the southeast of Utopia,
who long ago engaged in war, in order to add to the dominions
of their prince another kingdom, to which he had some pretensions
by an ancient alliance. This they conquered, but found that the
trouble of keeping it was equal to that by which it was gained;
that the conquered people were always either in rebellion or exposed
to foreign invasions, while they were obliged to be incessantly
at war, either for or against them, and consequently could never
disband their army; that in the meantime they were oppressed with
taxes, their money went out of the kingdom, their blood was spilt
for the glory of their King, without procuring the least advantage
to the people, who received not the smallest benefit from it even
in time of peace; and that their manners being corrupted by a
long war, robbery and murders everywhere abounded, and their laws
fell into contempt; while their King, distracted with the care
of two kingdoms, was the less able to apply his mind to the interests
of either.
"When they saw this, and that there would be no end to these
evils, they by joint councils made an humble address to their
King, desiring him to choose which of the two kingdoms he had
the greatest mind to keep, since he could not hold both; for they
were too great a people to be governed by a divided king, since
no man would willingly have a groom that should be in common between
him and another. Upon which the good prince was forced to quit
his new kingdom to one of his friends (who was not long after
dethroned), and to be contented with his old one. To this I would
add that after all those warlike attempts, the vast confusions,
and the consumption both of treasure and of people that must follow
them; perhaps upon some misfortune, they might be forced to throw
up all at last; therefore it seemed much more eligible that the
King should improve his ancient kingdom all he could, and make
it flourish as much as possible; that he should love his people,
and be beloved of them; that he should live among them, govern
them gently, and let other kingdoms alone, since that which had
fallen to his share was big enough, if not too big for him. Pray
how do you think would such a speech as this be heard?"
"I confess," said I, "I think not very well."
"But what," said he, "if I should sort with another
kind of ministers, whose chief contrivances and consultations
were, by what art the prince's treasures might be increased. Where
one proposes raising the value of specie when the King's debts
are large, and lowering it when his revenues were to come in,
that so he might both pay much with a little, and in a little
receive a great deal: another proposes a pretence of a war, that
money might be raised in order to carry it on, and that a peace
be concluded as soon as that was done; and this with such appearances
of religion as might work on the people, and make them impute
it to the piety of their prince, and to his tenderness for the
lives of his subjects. A third offers some old musty laws, that
have been antiquated by a long disuse; and which, as they had
been forgotten by all the subjects, so they had been also broken
by them; and proposes the levying the penalties of these laws,
that as it would bring in a vast treasure, so there might be a
very good pretence for it, since it would look like the executing
a law, and the doing of justice. A fourth proposes the prohibiting
of many things under severe penalties, especially such as were
against the interest of the people, and then the dispensing with
these prohibitions upon great compositions, to those who might
find their advantage in breaking them. This would serve two ends,
both of them acceptable to many; for as those whose avarice led
them to transgress would be severely fined, so the selling licenses
dear would look as if a prince were tender of his people, and
would not easily, or at low rates, dispense with anything that
might be against the public good.
"Another proposes that the judges must be made sure, that
they may declare always in favor of the prerogative, that they
must be often sent for to court, that the King may hear them argue
those points in which he is concerned; since how unjust soever
any of his pretensions may be, yet still some one or other of
them, either out of contradiction to others or the pride of singularity
or to make their court, would find out some pretence or other
to give the King a fair color to carry the point: for if the judges
but differ in opinion, the clearest thing in the world is made
by that means disputable, and truth being once brought in question,
the King may then take advantage to expound the law for his own
profit; while the judges that stand out will be brought over,
either out of fear or modesty; and they being thus gained, all
of them may be sent to the bench to give sentence boldly, as the
King would have it; for fair pretences will never be wanting when
sentence is to be given in the prince's favor. It will either
be said that equity lies on his side, or some words in the law
will be found sounding that way, or some forced sense will be
put on them; and when all other things fail, the King's undoubted
prerogative will be pretended, as that which is above all law;
and to which a religious judge ought to have a special regard.
"Thus all consent to that maxim of Crassus, that a prince
cannot have treasure enough, since he must maintain his armies
out of it: that a king, even though he would, can do nothing unjustly;
that all property is in him, not excepting the very persons of
his subjects: and that no man has any other property, but that
which the King out of his goodness thinks fit to leave him. And
they think it is the prince's interest, that there be as little
of this left as may be, as if it were his advantage that his people
should have neither riches nor liberty; since these things make
them less easy and less willing to submit to a cruel and unjust
government; whereas necessity and poverty blunt them, make them
patient, beat them down, and break that height of spirit, that
might otherwise dispose them to rebel. Now what if after all these
propositions were made, I should rise up and assert, that such
councils were both unbecoming a king, and mischievous to him:
and that not only his honor but his safety consisted more in his
people's wealth, than in his own; if I should show that they choose
a king for their own sake, and not for his; that by his care and
endeavors they may be both easy and safe; and that therefore a
prince ought to take more care of his people's happiness than
of his own, as a shepherd is to take more care of his flock than
of himself.
"It is also certain that they are much mistaken that think
the poverty of a nation is a means of the public safety. Who quarrel
more than beggars? Who does more earnestly long for a change,
than he that is uneasy in his present circumstances? And who run
to create confusions with so desperate a boldness, as those who
have nothing to lose hope to gain by them? If a king should fall
under such contempt or envy, that he could not keep his subjects
in their duty, but by oppression and illusage, and by rendering
them poor and miserable, it were certainly better for him to quit
his kingdom, than to retain it by such methods, as makes him while
he keeps the name of authority, lose the majesty due to it. Nor
is it so becoming the dignity of a king to reign over beggars,
as over rich and happy subjects. And therefore Fabricius, a man
of a noble and exalted temper, said, he would rather govern rich
men than be rich himself; since for one man to abound in wealth
and pleasure, when all about him are mourning and groaning, is
to a gaoler and not a king. He is an unskilful physician, that
cannot cure one disease without casting his patient into another:
so he that can find no other way for correcting the errors of
his people, but by taking from them the conveniences of life,
shows that he knows not what it is to govern a free nation. He
himself ought rather to shake off his sloth, or to lay down his
pride; for the contempt or hatred that his people have for him,
takes its rise from the vices in himself. Let him live upon what
belongs to him, without wronging others, and accommodate his expense
to his revenue. Let him punish crimes, and by his wise conduct
let him endeavor to prevent them, rather than be severe when he
has suffered them to be too common: let him not rashly revive
laws that are abrogated by disuse, especially if they have been
long forgotten, and never wanted; and let him never take any penalty
for the breach of them, to which a judge would not give way in
a private man, but would look on him as a crafty and unjust person
for pretending to it.
"To these things I would add that law among the Macarians,
a people that live not far from Utopia, by which their King, on
the day on which he begins to reign, is tied by an oath confirmed
by solemn sacrifices, never to have at once above 1,000 pounds
of gold in his treasures, or so much silver as is equal to that
in value. This law, they tell us, was made by an excellent king,
who had more regard to the riches of his country than to his own
wealth, and therefore provided against the heaping up of so much
treasure as might impoverish the people. He thought that a moderate
sum might be sufficient for any accident, if either the King had
occasion for it against rebels, or the kingdom against the invasion
of an enemy; but that it was not enough to encourage a prince
to invade other men's rights, a circumstance that was the chief
cause of his making that law. He also thought that it was a good
provision for that free circulation of money, so necessary for
the course of commerce and exchange: and when a king must distribute
all those extraordinary accessions that increase treasure beyond
the due pitch, it makes him less disposed to oppress his subjects.
Such a king as this will be the terror of ill men, and will be
beloved by all the good.
"If, I say, I should talk of these or such like things, to
men that had taken their bias another way, how deaf would they
be to all I could say?"
"No doubt, very deaf," answered I; "and no wonder,
for one is never to offer at propositions or advice that we are
certain will not be entertained. Discourses so much out of the
road could not avail anything, nor have any effect on men whose
minds were prepossessed with different sentiments. This philosophical
way of speculation is not unpleasant among friends in a free conversation,
but there is no room for it in the courts of princes where great
affairs are carried on by authority."
"That is what I was saying," replied he, "that
there is no room for philosophy in the courts of princes."
"Yes, there is," said I, "but not for this speculative
philosophy that makes everything to be alike fitting at all times:
but there is another philosophy that is more pliable, that knows
its proper scene, accommodates itself to it, and teaches a man
with propriety and decency to act that part which has fallen to
his share. If when one of Plautus's comedies is upon the stage
and a company of servants are acting their parts, you should come
out in the garb of a philosopher, and repeat out of 'Octavia,'
a discourse of Seneca's to Nero, would it not be better for you
to say nothing than by mixing things of such different natures
to make an impertinent tragi-comedy? For you spoil and corrupt
the play that is in hand when you mix with it things of an opposite
nature, even though they are much better. Therefore go through
with the play that is acting, the best you can, and do not confound
it because another that is pleasanter comes into your thoughts.
It is even so in a commonwealth and in the councils of princes;
if ill opinions cannot be quite rooted out, and you cannot cure
some received vice according to your wishes, you must not therefore
abandon the commonwealth; for the same reasons you should not
forsake the ship in a storm because you cannot command the winds.
You are not obliged to assault people with discourses that are
out of their road, when you see that their received notions must
prevent your making an impression upon them. You ought rather
to cast about and to manage things with all the dexterity in your
power, so that if you are not able to make them go well they may
be as little ill as possible; for except all men were good everything
cannot be right, and that is a blessing that I do not at present
hope to see."
"According to your arguments," answered he, "all
that I could be able to do would be to preserve myself from being
mad while I endeavored to cure the madness of others; for if I
speak truth, I must repeat what I have said to you; and as for
lying, whether a philosopher can do it or not, I cannot tell;
I am sure I cannot do it. But though these discourses may be uneasy
and ungrateful to them, I do not see why they should seem foolish
or extravagant: indeed if I should either propose such things
as Plato has contrived in his commonwealth, or as the Utopians
practise in theirs, though they might seem better, as certainly
they are, yet they are so different from our establishment, which
is founded on property, there being no such thing among them,
that I could not expect that it would have any effect on them;
but such discourses as mine, which only call past evils to mind
and give warning of what may follow, have nothing in them that
is so absurd that they may not be used at any time, for they can
only be unpleasant to those who are resolved to run headlong the
contrary way; and if we must let alone everything as absurd or
extravagant which by reason of the wicked lives of many may seem
uncouth, we must, even among Christians, give over pressing the
greatest part of those things that Christ hath taught us, though
He has commanded us not to conceal them, but to proclaim on the
house-tops that which he taught in secret.
"The greatest parts of his precepts are more opposite to
the lives of the men of this age than any part of my discourse
has been; but the preachers seemed to have learned that craft
to which you advise me, for they observing that the world would
not willingly suit their lives to the rules that Christ has given,
have fitted his doctrine as if it had been a leaden rule, to their
lives, that so some way or other they might agree with one another.
But I see no other effect of this compliance except it be that
men become more secure in their wickedness by it. And this is
all the success that I can have in a court, for I must always
differ from the rest, and then I shall signify nothing; or if
I agree with them, I shall then only help forward their madness.
I do not comprehend what you mean by your casting about, or by
the bending and handling things so dexterously, that if they go
not well they may go as little ill as may be; for in courts they
will not bear with a man's holding his peace or conniving at what
others do. A man must barefacedly approve of the worst counsels,
and consent to the blackest designs: so that he would pass for
a spy, or possibly for a traitor, that did but coldly approve
of such wicked practices: and therefore when a man is engaged
in such a society, he will be so far from being able to mend matters
by his casting about, as you call it, that he will find no occasions
of doing any good: the ill company will sooner corrupt him than
be the better for him: or if notwithstanding all their ill company,
he still remains steady and innocent, yet their follies and knavery
will be imputed to him; and by mixing counsels with them, he must
bear his share of all the blame that belongs wholly to others.
"It was no ill simile by which Plato set forth the unreasonableness
of a philosopher's meddling with government. If a man, says he,
was to see a great company run out every day into the rain, and
take delight in being wet; if he knew that it would be to no purpose
for him to go and persuade them to return to their houses, in
order to avoid the storm, and that all that could be expected
by his going to speak to them would be that he himself should
be as wet as they, it would be best for him to keep within doors;
and since he had not influence enough to correct other people's
folly, to take care to preserve himself.
"Though to speak plainly my real sentiments, I must freely
own that as long as there is any property, and while money is
the standard of all other things, I cannot think that a nation
can be governed either justly or happily: not justly, because
the best things will fall to the share of the worst men; nor happily,
because all things will be divided among a few (and even these
are not in all respects happy), the rest being left to be absolutely
miserable. Therefore when I reflect on the wise and good constitution
of the Utopians -among whom all things are so well governed, and
with so few laws; where virtue hath its due reward, and yet there
is such an equality, that every man lives in plenty -when I compare
with them so many other nations that are still making new laws,
and yet can never bring their constitution to a right regulation,
where notwithstanding everyone has his property; yet all the laws
that they can invent have not the power either to obtain or preserve
it, or even to enable men certainly to distinguish what is their
own from what is another's; of which the many lawsuits that every
day break out, and are eternally depending, give too plain a demonstration;
when, I say, I balance all these things in my thoughts, I grow
more favorable to Plato, and do not wonder that he resolved not
to make any laws for such as would not submit to a community of
all things: for so wise a man could not but foresee that the setting
all upon a level was the only way to make a nation happy, which
cannot be obtained so long as there is property: for when every
man draws to himself all that he can compass, by one title or
another, it must needs follow, that how plentiful soever a nation
may be, yet a few dividing the wealth of it among themselves,
the rest must fall into indigence.
"So that there will be two sorts of people among them, who
deserve that their fortunes should be interchanged; the former
useless, but wicked and ravenous; and the latter, who by their
constant industry serve the public more than themselves, sincere
and modest men. From whence I am persuaded, that till property
is taken away there can be no equitable or just distribution of
things, nor can the world be happily governed: for as long as
that is maintained, the greatest and the far best part of mankind
will be still oppressed with a load of cares and anxieties. I
confess without taking it quite away, those pressures that lie
on a great part of mankind may be made lighter; but they can never
be quite removed. For if laws were made to determine at how great
an extent in soil, and at how much money every man must stop,
to limit the prince that he might not grow too great, and to restrain
the people that they might not become too insolent, and that none
might factiously aspire to public employments; which ought neither
to be sold, nor made burdensome by a great expense; since otherwise
those that serve in them would be tempted to reimburse themselves
by cheats and violence, and it would become necessary to find
out rich men for undergoing those employments which ought rather
to be trusted to the wise -these laws, I say, might have such
effects, as good diet and care might have on a sick man, whose
recovery is desperate: they might allay and mitigate the disease,
but it could never be quite healed, nor the body politic be brought
again to a good habit, as long as property remains; and it will
fall out as in a complication of diseases, that by applying a
remedy to one sore, you will provoke another; and that which removes
the one ill symptom produces others, while the strengthening one
part of the body weakens the rest."
"On the contrary," answered I, "it seems to me
that men cannot live conveniently where all things are common:
how can there be any plenty, where every man will excuse himself
from labor? For as the hope of gain doth not excite him, so the
confidence that he has in other men's industry may make him slothful:
if people come to be pinched with want, and yet cannot dispose
of anything as their own; what can follow upon this but perpetual
sedition and bloodshed, especially when the reverence and authority
due to magistrates fall to the ground? For I cannot imagine how
that can be kept up among those that are in all things equal to
one another."
"I do not wonder," said he, "that it appears so
to you, since you have no notion, or at least no right one, of
such a constitution: but if you had been in Utopia with me, and
had seen their laws and rules, as I did, for the space of five
years, in which I lived among them; and during which time I was
so delighted with them, that indeed I should never have left them,
if it had not been to make the discovery of that new world to
the Europeans; you would then confess that you had never seen
a people so well constituted as they."
"You will not easily persuade me," said Peter, "that
any nation in that new world is better governed than those among
us. For as our understandings are not worse than theirs, so our
government, if I mistake not, being more ancient, a long practice
has helped us to find out many conveniences of life: and some
happy chances have discovered other things to us, which no man's
understanding could ever have invented."
"As for the antiquity, either of their government or of ours,"
said he, "you cannot pass a true judgment of it unless you
had read their histories; for if they are to be believed, they
had towns among them before these parts were so much as inhabited.
And as for those discoveries, that have been either hit on by
chance, or made by ingenious men, these might have happened there
as well as here. I do not deny but we are more ingenious than
they are, but they exceed us much in industry and application.
They knew little concerning us before our arrival among them;
they call us all by a general name of the nations that lie beyond
the equinoctial line; for their chronicle mentions a shipwreck
that was made on their coast 1,200 years ago; and that some Romans
and Egyptians that were in the ship, getting safe ashore, spent
the rest of their days among them; and such was their ingenuity,
that from this single opportunity they drew the advantage of learning
from those unlooked-for guests, and acquired all the useful arts
that were then among the Romans, and which were known to these
shipwrecked men: and by the hints that they gave them, they themselves
found out even some of those arts which they could not fully explain;
so happily did they improve that accident, of having some of our
people cast upon their shore.
"But if such an accident has at any time brought any from
thence into Europe, we have been so far from improving it, that
we do not so much as remember it; as in after-times perhaps it
will be forgot by our people that I was ever there. For though
they from one such accident made themselves masters of all the
good inventions that were among us; yet I believe it would be
long before we should learn or put in practice any of the good
institutions that are among them. And this is the true cause of
their being better governed, and living happier than we, though
we come not short of them in point of understanding or outward
advantages."
Upon this I said to him: "I earnestly beg you would describe
that island very particularly to us. Be not too short, but set
out in order all things relating to their soil, their rivers,
their towns, their people, their manners, constitution, laws,
and, in a word, all that you imagine we desire to know. And you
may well imagine that we desire to know everything concerning
them, of which we are hitherto ignorant."
"I will do it very willingly," said he, "for I
have digested the whole matter carefully; but it will take up
some time."
"Let us go then," said I, "first and dine, and
then we shall have leisure enough."
He consented. We went in and dined, and after dinner came back
and sat down in the same place. I ordered my servants to take
care that none might come and interrupt us. And both Peter and
I desired Raphael to be as good as his word. When he saw that
we were very intent upon it, he paused a little to recollect himself,
and began in this manner:
BOOK II
THE island of Utopia is in the middle 200 miles broad, and holds
almost at the same breadth over a great part of it; but it grows
narrower toward both ends. Its figure is not unlike a crescent:
between its horns, the sea comes in eleven miles broad, and spreads
itself into a great bay, which is environed with land to the compass
of about 500 miles, and is well secured from winds. In this bay
there is no great current; the whole coast is, as it were, one
continued harbor, which gives all that live in the island great
convenience for mutual commerce; but the entry into the bay, occasioned
by rocks on the one hand, and shallows on the other, is very dangerous.
In the middle of it there is one single rock which appears above
water, and may therefore be easily avoided, and on the top of
it there is a tower in which a garrison is kept; the other rocks
lie under water, and are very dangerous. The channel is known
only to the natives, so that if any stranger should enter into
the bay, without one of their pilots, he would run great danger
of shipwreck; for even they themselves could not pass it safe,
if some marks that are on the coast did not direct their way;
and if these should be but a little shifted, any fleet that might
come against them, how great soever it were, would be certainly
lost.
On the other side of the island there are likewise many harbors;
and the coast is so fortified, both by nature and art, that a
small number of men can hinder the descent of a great army. But
they report (and there remain good marks of it to make it credible)
that this was no island at first, but a part of the continent.
Utopus that conquered it (whose name it still carries, for Abraxa
was its first name) brought the rude and uncivilized inhabitants
into such a good government, and to that measure of politeness,
that they now far excel all the rest of mankind; having soon subdued
them, he designed to separate them from the continent, and to
bring the sea quite round them. To accomplish this, he ordered
a deep channel to be dug fifteen miles long; and that the natives
might not think he treated them like slaves, he not only forced
the inhabitants, but also his own soldiers, to labor in carrying
it on. As he set a vast number of men to work, he beyond all men's
expectations brought it to a speedy conclusion. And his neighbors
who at first laughed at the folly of the undertaking, no sooner
saw it brought to perfection than they were struck with admiration
and terror.
There are fifty-four cities in the island, all large and well
built: the manners, customs, and laws of which are the same, and
they are all contrived as near in the same manner as the ground
on which they stand will allow. The nearest lie at least twenty-four
miles distance from one another, and the most remote are not so
far distant but that a man can go on foot in one day from it to
that which lies next it. Every city sends three of its wisest
Senators once a year to Amaurot, to consult about their common
concerns; for that is the chief town of the island, being situated
near the centre of it, so that it is the most convenient place
for their assemblies. The jurisdiction of every city extends at
least twenty miles: and where the towns lie wider, they have much
more ground: no town desires to enlarge its bounds, for the people
consider themselves rather as tenants than landlords. They have
built over all the country, farmhouses for husbandmen, which are
well contrived, and are furnished with all things necessary for
country labor. Inhabitants are sent by turns from the cities to
dwell in them; no country family has fewer than forty men and
women in it, besides two slaves. There is a master and a mistress
set over every family; and over thirty families there is a magistrate.
Every year twenty of this family come back to the town, after
they have stayed two years in the country; and in their room there
are other twenty sent from the town, that they may learn country
work from those that have been already one year in the country,
as they must teach those that come to them the next from the town.
By this means such as dwell in those country farms are never ignorant
of agriculture, and so commit no errors, which might otherwise
be fatal, and bring them under a scarcity of corn. But though
there is every year such a shifting of the husbandmen, to prevent
any man being forced against his will to follow that hard course
of life too long, yet many among them take such pleasure in it
that they desire leave to continue in it many years. These husbandmen
till the ground, breed cattle, hew wood, and convey it to the
towns, either by land or water, as is most convenient. They breed
an infinite multitude of chickens in a very curious manner; for
the hens do not sit and hatch them, but vast numbers of eggs are
laid in a gentle and equal heat, in order to be hatched, and they
are no sooner out of the shell, and able to stir about, but they
seem to consider those that feed them as their mothers, and follow
them as other chickens do the hen that hatched them.
They breed very few horses, but those they have are full of mettle,
and are kept only for exercising their youth in the art of sitting
and riding them; for they do not put them to any work, either
of ploughing or carriage, in which they employ oxen; for though
their horses are stronger, yet they find oxen can hold out longer;
and as they are not subject to so many diseases, so they are kept
upon a less charge, and with less trouble; and even when they
are so worn out, that they are no more fit for labor, they are
good meat at last. They sow no corn, but that which is to be their
bread; for they drink either wine, cider, or perry, and often
water, sometimes boiled with honey or licorice, with which they
abound; and though they know exactly how much corn will serve
every town, and all that tract of country which belongs to it,
yet they sow much more, and breed more cattle than are necessary
for their consumption; and they give that overplus of which they
make no use to their neighbors. When they want anything in the
country which it does not produce, they fetch that from the town,
without carrying anything in exchange for it. And the magistrates
of the town take care to see it given them; for they meet generally
in the town once a month, upon a festival day. When the time of
harvest comes, the magistrates in the country send to those in
the towns, and let them know how many hands they will need for
reaping the harvest; and the number they call for being sent to
them, they commonly despatch it all in one day.
Of Their Towns, Particularly of Amaurot
HE that knows one of their towns knows them all, they are so like
one another, except w here the situation makes some difference.
I shall therefore describe one of them; and none is so proper
as Amaurot; for as none is more eminent, all the rest yielding
in precedence to this, because it is the seat of their Supreme
Council, so there was none of them better known to me, I having
lived five years altogether in it.
It lies upon the side of a hill, or rather a rising ground: its
figure is almost square, for from the one side of it, which shoots
up almost to the top of the hill, it runs down in a descent for
two miles to the river Anider; but it is a little broader the
other way that runs along by the bank of that river. The Anider
rises about eighty miles above Amaurot, in a small spring at first,
but other brooks falling into it, of which two are more considerable
than the rest. As it runs by Amaurot, it is grown half a mile
broad; but it still grows larger and larger, till after sixty
miles course below it, it is lost in the ocean, between the town
and the sea, and for some miles above the town, it ebbs and flows
every six hours, with a strong current. The tide comes up for
about thirty miles so full that there is nothing but salt water
in the river, the fresh water being driven back with its force;
and above that, for some miles, the water is brackish; but a little
higher, as it runs by the town, it is quite fresh; and when the
tide ebbs, it continues fresh all along to the sea. There is a
bridge cast over the river, not of timber, but of fair stone,
consisting of many stately arches; it lies at that part of the
town which is farthest from the sea, so that ships without any
hinderance lie all along the side of the town.
There is likewise another river that runs by it, which, though
it is not great, yet it runs pleasantly, for it rises out of the
same hill on which the town stands, and so runs down through it,
and falls into the Anider. The inhabitants have fortified the
fountain-head of this river, which springs a little without the
town; so that if they should happen to be besieged, the enemy
might not be able to stop or divert the course of the water, nor
poison it; from thence it is carried in earthen pipes to the lower
streets; and for those places of the town to which the water of
that shall river cannot be conveyed, they have great cisterns
for receiving the rain-water, which supplies the want of the other.
The town is cormpassed with a high and thick wall, in which there
are many towers and forts; there is also a broad and deep dry
ditch, set thick with thorns, cast round three sides of the town,
and the river is instead of a ditch on the fourth side. The streets
are very convenient for all carriage, and are well sheltered from
the winds. Their buildings are good, and are so uniform that a
whole side of a street looks like one house. The streets are twenty
feet broad; there lie gardens behind all their houses; these are
large but enclosed with buildings that on all hands face the streets;
so that every house has both a door to the street, and a back
door to the garden. Their doors have all two leaves, which, as
they are easily opened, so they shut of their own accord; and
there being no property among them, every man may freely enter
into any house whatsoever. At every ten years' end they shift
their houses by lots.
They cultivate their gardens with great care, so that they have
vines, fruits, herbs, and flowers in them; and all is so well
ordered, and so finely kept, that I never saw gardens anywhere
that were both so fruitful and so beautiful as theirs. And this
humor of ordering their gardens so well is not only kept up by
the pleasure they find in it, but also by an emulation between
the inhabitants of the several streets, who vie with each other;
and there is indeed nothing belonging to the whole town that is
both more useful and more pleasant. So that he who founded the
town seems to have taken care of nothing more than of their gardens;
for they say, the whole scheme of the town was designed at first
by Utopus, but he left all that belonged to the ornament and improvement
of it to be added by those that should come after him, that being
too much for one man to bring to perfection. Their records, that
contain the history of their town and State, are preserved with
an exact care, and run backward 1,760 years. From these it appears
that their houses were at first low and mean, like cottages, made
of any sort of timber, and were built with mud walls and thatched
with straw. But now their houses are three stories high: the fronts
of them are faced with stone, plastering, or brick; and between
the facings of their walls they throw in their rubbish. Their
roofs are flat, and on them they lay a sort of plaster, which
costs very little, and yet is so tempered that it is not apt to
take fire, and yet resists the weather more than lead. They have
great quantities of glass among them, with which they glaze their
windows. They use also in their windows a thin linen cloth, that
is so oiled or gummed that it both keeps out the wind and gives
free admission to the light.
Of Their Magistrates
THIRTY families choose every year a magistrate, who was anciently
called the syphogrant, but is now called the philarch; and over
every ten syphogrants, with the families subject to them, there
is another magistrate, who was anciently called the tranibor,
but of late the archphilarch. All the syphogrants, who are in
number 200, choose the Prince out of a list of four, who are named
by the people of the four divisions of the city; but they take
an oath before they proceed to an election, that they will choose
him whom they think most fit for the office. They give their voices
secretly, so that it is not known for whom everyone gives his
suffrage. The Prince is for life, unless he is removed upon suspicion
of some design to enslave the people. The tranibors are new-chosen
every year, but yet they are for the most part continued. All
their other magistrates are only annual. The tranibors meet every
third day, and oftener if necessary, and consult with the prince,
either concerning the affairs of the State in general or such
private differences as may arise sometimes among the people; though
that falls out but seldom. There are always two syphogrants called
into the council-chamber, and these are changed every day. It
is a fundamental rule of their government that no conclusion can
be made in anything that relates to the public till it has been
first debated three several days in their Council. It is death
for any to meet and consult concerning the State, unless it be
either in their ordinary Council, or in the assembly of the whole
body of the people.
These things have been so provided among them, that the prince
and the tranibors may not conspire together to change the government
and enslave the people; and therefore when anything of great importance
is set on foot, it is sent to the syphogrants; who after they
have communicated it to the families that belong to their divisions,
and have considered it among themselves, make report to the Senate;
and upon great occasions, the matter is referred to the Council
of the whole island. One rule observed in their Council, is, never
to debate a thing on the same day in which it is first proposed;
for that is always referred to the next meeting, that so men may
not rashly, and in the heat of discourse, engage themselves too
soon, which might bias them so much, that instead of consulting
the good of the public, they might rather study to support their
first opinions, and by a perverse and preposterous sort of shame,
hazard their country rather than endanger their own reputation,
or venture the being suspected to have wanted foresight in the
expedients that they at first proposed. And therefore to prevent
this, they take care that they may rather be deliberate than sudden
in their motions.
Of Their Trades, and Manner of Life
AGRICULTURE is that which is so universally understood among them
that no person, either man or woman, is ignorant of it; they are
instructed in it from their childhood, partly by what they learn
at school and partly by practice; they being led out often into
the fields, about the town, where they not only see others at
work, but are likewise exercised in it themselves. Besides agriculture,
which is so common to them all, every man has some peculiar trade
to which he applies himself, such as the manufacture of wool,
or flax, masonry, smith's work, or carpenter's work; for there
is no sort of trade that is not in great esteem among them. Throughout
the island they wear the same sort of clothes without any other
distinction, except what is necessary to distinguish the two sexes,
and the married and unmarried. The fashion never alters; and as
it is neither disagreeable nor uneasy, so it is suited to the
climate, and calculated both for their summers and winters. Every
family makes their own clothes; but all among them, women as well
as men, learn one or other of the trades formerly mentioned. Women,
for the most part, deal in wool and flax, which suit best with
their weakness, leaving the ruder trades to the men. The same
trade generally passes down from father to son, inclinations often
following descent; but if any man's genius lies another way, he
is by adoption translated into a family that deals in the trade
to which he is inclined: and when that is to be done, care is
taken not only by his father, but by the magistrate, that he may
be put to a discreet and good man. And if after a person has learned
one trade, he desires to acquire another, that is also allowed,
and is managed in the same manner as the former. When he has learned
both, he follows that which he likes best, unless the public has
more occasion for the other.
The chief, and almost the only business of the syphogrants, is
to take care that no man may live idle, but that every one may
follow his trade diligently: yet they do not wear themselves out
with perpetual toil, from morning to night, as if they were beasts
of burden, which, as it is indeed a heavy slavery, so it is everywhere
the common course of life among all mechanics except the Utopians;
but they dividing the day and night into twenty-four hours, appoint
six of these for work; three of which are before dinner, and three
after. They then sup, and at eight o'clock, counting from noon,
go to bed and sleep eight hours. The rest of their time besides
that taken up in work, eating and sleeping, is left to every man's
discretion; yet they are not to abuse that interval to luxury
and idleness, but must employ it in some proper exercise according
to their various inclinations, which is for the most part reading.
It is ordinary to have public lectures every morning before daybreak;
at which none are obliged to appear but those who are marked out
for literature; yet a great many, both men and women of all ranks,
go to hear lectures of one sort of other, according to their inclinations.
But if others, that are not made for contemplation, choose rather
to employ themselves at that time in their trades, as many of
them do, they are not hindered, but are rather commended, as men
that take care to serve their country. After supper, they spend
an hour in some diversion, in summer in their gardens, and in
winter in the halls where they eat; where they entertain each
other, either with music or discourse. They do not so much as
know dice, or any such foolish and mischievous games: they have,
however, two sorts of games not unlike our chess; the one is between
several numbers, in which one number, as it were, consumes another:
the other resembles a battle between the virtues and the vices,
in which the enmity in the vices among themselves, and their agreement
against virtue, is not unpleasantly represented; together with
the special oppositions between the particular virtues and vices;
as also the methods by which vice either openly assaults or secretly
undermines virtue, and virtue on the other hand resists it. But
the time appointed for labor is to be narrowly examined, otherwise
you may imagine, that since there are only six hours appointed
for work, they may fall under a scarcity of necessary provisions.
But it is so far from being true, that this time is not sufficient
for supplying them with plenty of all things, either necessary
or convenient, that it is rather too much; and this you will easily
apprehend, if you consider how great a part of all other nations
is quite idle.
First, women generally do little, who are the half of mankind;
and if some few women are diligent, their husbands are idle: then
consider the great company of idle priests, and of those that
are called religious men; add to these all rich men, chiefly those
that have estates in land, who are called noblemen and gentlemen,
together with their families, made up of idle persons, that are
kept more for show than use; add to these, all those strong and
lusty beggars, that go about pretending some disease, in excuse
for their begging; and upon the whole account you will find that
the number of those by whose labors mankind is supplied, is much
less than you perhaps imagined. Then consider how few of those
that work are employed in labors that are of real service; for
we who measure all things by money, give rise to many trades that
are both vain and superfluous, and serve only to support riot
and luxury. For if those who work were employed only in such things
as the conveniences of life require, there would be such an abundance
of them that the prices of them would so sink that tradesmen could
not be maintained by their gains; if all those who labor about
useless things were set to more profitable employments, and if
all they that languish out their lives in sloth and idleness,
every one of whom consumes as much as any two of the men that
are at work, were forced to labor, you may easily imagine that
a small proportion of time would serve for doing all that is either
necessary, profitable, or pleasant to mankind, especially while
pleasure is kept within its due bounds.
This appears very plainly in Utopia, for there, in a great city,
and in all the territory that lies round it, you can scarce find
500, either men or women, by their age and strength, are capable
of labor, that are not engaged in it; even the syphogrants, though
excused by the law, yet do not excuse themselves, but work, that
by their examples they may excite the industry of the rest of
the people. The like exemption is allowed to those who, being
recommended to the people by the priests, are by the secret suffrages
of the syphogrants privileged from labor, that they may apply
themselves wholly to study; and if any of these fall short of
those hopes that they seemed at first to give, they are obliged
to return to work. And sometimes a mechanic, that so employs his
leisure hours, as to make a considerable advancement in learning,
is eased from being a tradesman, and ranked among their learned
men. Out of these they choose their ambassadors, their priests,
their tranibors, and the prince himself, anciently called their
Barzenes, but is called of late their Ademus.
And thus from the great numbers among them that are neither suffered
to be idle, nor to be employed in any fruitless labor, you may
easily make the estimate how much may be done in those few hours
in which they are obliged to labor. But besides all that has been
already said, it is to be considered that the needful arts among
them are managed with less labor than anywhere else. The building
or the repairing of houses among us employ many hands, because
often a thriftless heir suffers a house that his father built
to fall into decay, so that his successor must, at a great cost,
repair that which he might have kept up with a small charge: it
frequently happens that the same house which one person built
at a vast expense is neglected by another, who thinks he has a
more delicate sense of the beauties of architecture; and he suffering
it to fall to ruin, builds another at no less charge. But among
the Utopians all things are so regulated that men very seldom
build upon a new piece of ground; and are not only very quick
in repairing their houses, but show their foresight in preventing
their decay: so that their buildlngs are preserved very long,
with but little labor, and thus the builders to whom that care
belongs are often without employment, except the hewing of timber
and the squaring of stones, that the materials may be in readiness
for raising a building very suddenly when there is any occasion
for it.
As to their clothes, observe how little work is spent in them:
while they are at labor, they are clothed with leather and skins.
cast carelessly about them, which will last seven years; and when
they appear in public they put on an upper garment, which hides
the other; and these are all of one color, and that is the natural
color of the wool. As they need less woollen cloth than is used
anywhere else, so that which they make use of is much less costly.
They use linen cloth more; but that is prepared with less labor,
and they value cloth only by the whiteness of the linen or the
cleanness of the wool, without much regard to the fineness of
the thread: while in other places, four or five upper garments
of woollen cloth, of different colors, and as many vests of silk,
will scarce serve one man; and while those that are nicer think
ten are too few, every man there is content with one, which very
often serves him two years. Nor is there anything that can tempt
a man to desire more; for if he had them, he would neither be
the warmer nor would he make one jot the better appearance for
it. And thus, since they are all employed in some useful labor,
and since they content themselves with fewer things, it falls
out that there is a great abundance of all things among them:
so that it frequently happens that, for want of other work, vast
numbers are sent out to mend the highways. But when no public
undertaking is to be performed, the hours of working are lessened.
The magistrates never engage the people in unnecessary labor,
since the chief end of the constitution is to regulate labor by
the necessities of the public, and to allow all the people as
much time as is necessary for the improvement of their minds,
in which they think the happiness of life consists.
Of Their Traffic
BUT it is now time to explain to you the mutual intercourse of
this people, their commerce, and the rules by which all things
are distributed among them.
As their cities are composed of families, so their families are
made up of those that are nearly related to one another. Their
women, when they grow up, are married out; but all the males,
both children and grandchildren, live still in the same house,
in great obedience to their common parent, unless age has weakened
his understanding: and in that case, he that is next to him in
age comes in his room. But lest any city should become either
too great, or by any accident be dispeopled, provision is made
that none of their cities may contain above 6,000 families, besides
those of the country round it. No family may have less than ten
and more than sixteen persons in it; but there can be no determined
number for the children under age. This rule is easily observed,
by removing some of the children of a more fruitful couple to
any other family that does not abound so much in them.
By the same rule, they supply cities that do not increase so fast,
from others that breed faster; and if there is any increase over
the whole island, then they draw out a number of their citizens
out of the several towns, and send them over to the neighboring
continent; where, if they find that the inhabitants have more
soil than they can well cultivate, they fix a colony, taking the
inhabitants into their society, if they are willing to live with
them; and where they do that of their own accord, they quickly
enter into their method of life, and conform to their rules, and
this proves a happiness to both nations; for according to their
constitution, such care is taken of the soil that it becomes fruitful
enough for both, though it might be otherwise too narrow and barren
for any one of them. But if the natives refuse to conform themselves
to their laws, they drive them out of those bounds which they
mark out for themselves, and use force if they resist. For they
account it a very just cause of war, for a nation to hinder others
from possessing a part of that soil of which they make no use,
but which is suffered to lie idle and uncultivated; since every
man has by the law of nature a right to such a waste portion of
the earth as is necessary for his subsistence. If an accident
has so lessened the number of the inhabitants of any of their
towns that it cannot be made up from the other towns of the island,
without diminishing them too much, which is said to have fallen
out but twice since they were first a people, when great numbers
were carried off by the plague, the loss is then supplied by recalling
as many as are wanted from their colonies; for they will abandon
these, rather than suffer the towns in the island to sink too
low.
But to return to their manner of living in society, the oldest
man of every family, as has been already said, is its governor.
Wives serve their husbands, and children their parents, and always
the younger serves the elder. Every city is divided into four
equal parts, and in the middle of each there is a marketplace:
what is brought thither, and manufactured by the several families,
is carried from thence to houses appointed for that purpose, in
which all things of a sort are laid by themselves; and thither
every father goes and takes whatsoever he or his family stand
in need of, without either paying for it or leaving anything in
exchange. There is no reason for giving a denial to any person,
since there is such plenty of everything among them; and there
is no danger of a man's asking for more than he needs; they have
no inducements to do this, since they are sure that they shall
always be supplied. It is the fear of want that makes any of the
whole race of animals either greedy or ravenous; but besides fear,
there is in man a pride that makes him fancy it a particular glory
to excel others in pomp and excess. But by the laws of the Utopians,
there is no room for this. Near these markets there are others
for all sorts of provisions, where there are not only herbs, fruits,
and bread, but also fish, fowl, and cattle.
There are also, without their towns, places appointed near some
running water, for killing their beasts, and for washing away
their filth, which is done by their slaves: for they suffer none
of their citizens to kill their cattle, because they think that
pity and good-nature, which are among the best of those affections
that are born with us, are much impaired by the butchering of
animals: nor do they suffer anything that is foul or unclean to
be brought within their towns, lest the air should be infected
by ill-smells which might prejudice their health. In every street
there are great halls that lie at an equal distance from each
other, distinguished by particular names. The syphogrants dwell
in those that are set over thirty families, fifteen lying on one
side of it, and as many on the other. In these halls they all
meet and have their repasts. The stewards of every one of them
come to the market-place at an appointed hour; and according to
the number of those that belong to the hall, they carry home provisions.
But they take more care of their sick than of any others: these
are lodged and provided for in public hospitals they have belonging
to every town four hospitals, that are built without their walls,
and are so large that they may pass for little towns: by this
means, if they had ever such a number of sick persons, they could
lodge them conveniently, and at such a distance, that such of
them as are sick of infectious diseases may be kept so far from
the rest that there can be no danger of contagion. The hospitals
are furnished and stored with all things that are convenient for
the ease and recovery of the sick; and those that are put in them
are looked after with such tender and watchful care, and are so
constantly attended by their skilful physicians, that as none
is sent to them against their will, so there is scarce one in
a whole town that, if he should fall ill, would not choose rather
to go thither than lie sick at home.
After the steward of the hospitals has taken for the sick whatsoever
the physician prescribes, then the best things that are left in
the market are distributed equally among the halls, in proportion
to their numbers, only, in the first place, they serve the Prince,
the chief priest, the tranibors, the ambassadors, and strangers,
if there are any, which indeed falls out but seldom, and for whom
there are houses well furnished, particularly appointed for their
reception when they come among them. At the hours of dinner and
supper, the whole syphogranty being called together by sound of
trumpet, they meet and eat together, except only such as are in
the hospitals or lie sick at home. Yet after the halls are served,
no man is hindered to carry provisions home from the market-place;
for they know that none does that but for some good reason; for
though any that will may eat at home, yet none does it willingly,
since it is both ridiculous and foolish for any to give themselves
the trouble to make ready an ill dinner at home, when there is
a much more plentiful one made ready for him so near at hand.
All the uneasy and sordid services about these halls are performed
by their slaves; but the dressing and cooking their meat, and
the ordering their tables, belong only to the women, all those
of every family taking it by turns. They sit at three or more
tables, according to their number; the men sit toward the wall,
and the women sit on the other side, that if any of them should
be taken suddenly ill, which is no uncommon case among women with
child, she may, without disturbing the rest, rise and go to the
nurses' room, who are there with the sucking children, where there
is always clean water at hand, and cradles in which they may lay
the young children, if there is occasion for it, and a fire that
they may shift and dress them before it.
Every child is nursed by its own mother, if death or sickness
does not intervene; and in that case the syphogrants' wives find
out a nurse quickly, which is no hard matter; for anyone that
can do it offers herself cheerfully; for as they are much inclined
to that piece of mercy, so the child whom the nurse considers
the nurse as its mother. All the children under five years old
sit among the nurses, the rest of the younger sort of both sexes,
till they are fit for marriage, either serve those that sit at
table or, if they are not strong enough for that, stand by them
in great silence, and eat what is given them; nor have they any
other formality of dining. In the middle of the first table, which
stands across the upper end of the hall, sit the syphogrant and
his wife; for that is the chief and most conspicuous place: next
to him sit two of the most ancient, for there go always four to
a mess. If there is a temple within that syphogranty, the priest
and his wife sit with the syphogrant ahove all the rest: next
them there is a mixture of old and young, who are so placed, that
as the young are set near others, so they are mixed with the more
ancient; which they say was appointed on this account, that the
gravity of the old people, and the reverence that is due to them,
might restrain the younger from all indecent words and gestures.
Dishes are not served up to the whole table at first, but the
best are first set before the old, whose seats are distinguished
from the young, and after them all the rest are served alike.
The old men distribute to the younger any curious meats that happen
to be set before them, if there is not such an abundance of them
that the whole company may be served alike.
Thus old men are honored with a particular respect; yet all the
rest fare as well as they. Both dinner and supper are begun with
some lecture of morality that is read to them; but it is so short,
that it is not tedious nor uneasy to them to hear it: from hence
the old men take occasion to entertain those about them with some
useful and pleasant enlargements; but they do not engross the
whole discourse so to themselves, during their meals, that the
younger may not put in for a share: on the contrary, they engage
them to talk, that so they may in that free way of conversation
find out the force of everyone's spirit and observe his temper.
They despatch their dinners quickly, but sit long at supper; because
they go to work after the one, and are to sleep after the other,
during which they think the stomach carries on the concoction
more vigorously. They never sup without music; and there is always
fruit served up after meat; while they are at table, some burn
perfumes and sprinkle about fragrant ointments and sweet waters:
in short, they want nothing that may cheer up their spirits: they
give themselves a large allowance that way, and indulge themselves
in all such pleasures as are attended with no inconvenience. Thus
do those that are in the towns live together; but in the country,
where they live at great distance, everyone eats at home, and
no family wants any necessary sort of provision, for it is from
them that provisions are sent unto those that live in the towns.
Of the Travelling of the Utopians
IF any man has a mind to visit his friends that live in some other
town, or desires to travel and see the rest of the country, he
obtains leave very easily from the syphogrant and tranibors when
there is no particular occasion for him at home: such as travel,
carry with them a passport from the Prince, which both certifies
the license that is granted for travelling, and limits the time
of their return. They are furnished with a wagon, and a slave
who drives the oxen and looks after them; but unless there are
women in the company, the wagon is sent back at the end of the
journey as a needless encumbrance. While they are on the road,
they carry no provisions with them; yet they want nothing, but
are everywhere treated as if they were at home. If they stay in
any place longer than a night, everyone follows his proper occupation,
and is very well used by those of his own trade; but if any man
goes out of the city to which he belongs, without leave, and is
found rambling without a passport, he is severely treated, he
is punished as a fugitive, and sent home disgracefully; and if
he falls again into the like fault, is condemned to slavery. If
any man has a mind to travel only over the precinct of his own
city, he may freely do it, with his father's permission and his
wife's consent; but when he comes into any of the country houses,
if he expects to be entertained by them, he must labor with them
and conform to their rules: and if he does this, he may freely
go over the whole precinct; being thus as useful to the city to
which he belongs, as if he were still within it. Thus you see
that there are no idle persons among them, nor pretences of excusing
any from labor. There are no taverns, no alehouses nor stews among
them; nor any other occasions of corrupting each other, of getting
into corners, or forming themselves into parties: all men live
in full view, so that all are obliged, both to perform their ordinary
tasks, and to employ themselves well in their spare hours. And
it is certain that a people thus ordered must live in great abundance
of all things; and these being equally distributed among them,
no man can want, or be obliged to beg.
In their great Council at Amaurot, to which there are three sent
from every town once a year, they examine what towns abound in
provisions and what are under any scarcity, that so the one may
be furnished from the other; and this is done freely, without
any sort of exchange; for according to their plenty or scarcity
they supply or are supplied from one another; so that indeed the
whole island is, as it were, one family. When they have thus taken
care of their whole country, and laid up stores for two years,
which they do to prevent the ill-consequences of an unfavorable
season, they order an exportation of the overplus, of corn, honey,
wool, flax, wood, wax, tallow, leather, and cattle; which they
send out commonly in great quantities to other nations. They order
a seventh part of all these goods to be freely given to the poor
of the countries to which they send them, and sell the rest at
moderate rates. And by this exchange, they not only bring back
those few things that they need at home (for indeed they scarce
need anything but iron), but likewise a great deal of gold and
silver; and by their driving this trade so long, it is not to
be imagined how vast a treasure they have got among them: so that
now they do not much care whether they sell off their merchandise
for money in hand, or upon trust.
A great part of their treasure is now in bonds; but in all their
contracts no private man stands bound, but the writing runs in
the name of the town; and the towns that owe them money raise
it from those private hands that owe it to them, lay it Up in
their public chamber, or enjoy the profit of it till the Utopians
call for it; and they choose rather to let the greatest part of
it lie in their hands who make advantage by it, than to call for
it themselves: but if they see that any of their other neighbors
stand more in need of it, then they call it in and lend it to
them: whenever they are engaged in war, which is the only occasion
in which their treasure can be usefully employed, they make use
of it themselves. In great extremities or sudden accidents they
employ it in hiring foreign troops, whom they more willingly expose
to danger than their own people: they give them great pay, knowing
well that this will work even on their enemies, that it will engage
thern either to betray their own side, or at least to desert it,
and that it is the best means of raising mutual jealousies among
them: for this end they have an incredible treasure; but they
do not keep it as a treasure, but in such a manner as I am almost
afraid to tell, lest you think it so extravagant, as to be hardly
credible. This I have the more reason to apprehend, because if
I had not seen it myself, I could not have been easily persuaded
to have believed it upon any man's report.
It is certain that all things appear incredible to us, in proportion
as they differ from our own customs. But one who can judge aright
will not wonder to find that, since their constitution differs
so much from ours, their value of gold and silver should be measured
by a very different standard; for since they have no use for money
among themselves, but keep it as a provision against events which
seldom happen, and between which there are generally long intervening
intervals, they value it no farther than it deserves, that is,
in proportion to its use. So that it is plain they must prefer
iron either to gold or silver; for men can no more live without
iron than without fire or water, but nature has marked out no
use for the other metals, so essential as not easily to be dispensed
with. The folly of men has enhanced the value of gold and silver,
because of their scarcity. Whereas, on the contrary, it is their
opinion that nature, as an indulgent parent, has freely given
us all the best things in great abundance, such as water and earth,
but has laid up and hid from us the things that are vain and useless.
If these metals were laid up in any tower in the kingdom, it would
raise a jealousy of the Prince and Senate, and give birth to that
foolish mistrust into which the people are apt to fall, a jealousy
of their intending to sacrifice the interest of the public to
their own private advantage. If they should work it into vessels
or any sort of plate, they fear that the people might grow too
fond of it, and so be unwilling to let the plate be run down if
a war made it necessary to employ it in paying their soldiers.
To prevent all these inconveniences, they have fallen upon an
expedient, which, as it agrees with their other policy, so is
it very different from ours, and will scarce gain belief among
us, who value gold so much and lay it up so carefully. They eat
and drink out of vessels of earth, or glass, which make an agreeable
appearance though formed of brittle materials: while they make
their chamber-pots and close-stools of gold and silver; and that
not only in their public halls, but in their private houses: of
the same metals they likewise make chains and fetters for their
slaves; to some of which, as a badge of infamy, they hang an ear-ring
of gold, and make others wear a chain or coronet of the same metal;
and thus they take care, by all possible means, to render gold
and silver of no esteem. And from hence it is that while other
nations part with their gold and silver as unwillingly as if one
tore out their bowels, those of Utopia would look on their giving
in all they possess of those (metals, when there was any use for
them) but as the parting with a trifle, or as we would esteem
the loss of a penny. They find pearls on their coast, and diamonds
and carbuncles on their rocks; they do not look after them, but,
if they find them by chance, they polish them, and with them they
adorn their children, who are delighted with them, and glory in
them during their childhood; but when they grow to years, and
see that none but children use such baubles, they of their own
accord, without being bid by their parents, lay them aside; and
would be as much ashamed to use them afterward as children among
us, when they come to years, are of their puppets and other toys.
I never saw a clearer instance of the opposite impressions that
different customs make on people, than I observed in the ambassadors
of the Anemolians, who came to Amaurot when I was there. As they
came to treat of affairs of great consequence, the deputies from
several towns met together to wait for their coming. The ambassadors
of the nations that lie near Utopia, knowing their customs, and
that fine clothes are in no esteem among them, that silk is despised,
and gold is a badge of infamy, used to come very modestly clothed;
but the Anemolians, lying more remote, and having had little commerce
with them, understanding that they were coarsely clothed, and
all in the same manner, took it for granted that they had none
of those fine things among them of which they made no use; and
they being a vainglorious rather than a wise people, resolved
to set themselves out with so much pomp, that they should look
like gods, and strike the eyes of the poor Utopians with their
splendor. Thus three ambassadors made their entry with 100 attendants,
all clad in garments of different colors, and the greater part
in silk; the ambassadors themselves, who were of the nobility
of their country, were in cloth-of-gold, and adorned with massy
chains, ear-rings, and rings of gold: their caps were covered
with bracelets set full of pearls and other gems: in a word, they
were set out with all those things that, among the Utopians, were
the badges of slavery, the marks of infamy, or the playthings
of children.
It was not unpleasant to see, on the one side, how they looked
big, when they compared their rich habits with the plain clothes
of the Utopians, who were come out in great numbers to see them
make their entry: and, on the other, to observe how much they
were mistaken in the impression which they hoped this pomp would
have made on them. It appeared so ridiculous a show to all that
had never stirred out of their country, and had not seen the customs
of other nations, that though they paid some reverence to those
that were the most meanly clad, as if they had been the ambassadors,
yet when they saw the ambassadors themselves, so full of gold
and chains, they looked upon them as slaves, and forbore to treat
them with reverence. You might have seen the children, who were
grown big enough to despise their playthings, and who had thrown
away their jewels, call to their mothers, push them gently, and
cry out, "See that great fool that wears pearls and gems,
as if he were yet a child." While their mothers very innocently
replied, "Hold your peace; this, I believe, is one of the
ambassador's fools." Others censured the fashion of their
chains, and observed that they were of no use; for they were too
slight to bind their slaves, who could easily break them; and
besides hung so loose about them that they thought it easy to
throw them away, and so get from them.
But after the ambassadors had stayed a day among them, and saw
so vast a quantity of gold in their houses, which was as much
despised by them as it was esteemed in other nations, and beheld
more gold and silver in the chains and fetters of one slave than
all their ornaments amounted to, their plumes fell, and they were
ashamed of all that glory for which they had formerly valued themselves,
and accordingly laid it aside; a resolution that they immediately
took, when on their engaging in some free discourse with the Utopians,
they discovered their sense of such things and their other customs.
The Utopians wonder how any man should be so much taken with the
glaring doubtful lustre of a jewel or a stone, that can look up
to a star or to the sun himself; or how any should value himself
because his cloth is made of a finer thread: for how fine soever
that thread may be, it was once no better than the fleece of a
sheep, and that sheep was a sheep still for all its wearing it.
They wonder much to hear that gold which in itself is so useless
a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men
for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet
be thought of less value than this metal. That a man of lead,
who has no more sense than a log of wood, and is as bad as he
is foolish, should have many wise and good men to serve him, only
because he has a great heap of that metal; and that if it should
happen that by some accident or trick of law (which sometimes
produces as great changes as chance itself) all this wealth should
pass from the master to the meanest varlet of his whole family,
he himself would very soon become one of his servants, as if he
were a thing that belonged to his wealth, and so were bound to
follow its fortune. But they much more admire and detest the folly
of those who, when they see a rich man, though they neither owe
him anything nor are in any sort dependent on his bounty, yet
merely because he is rich give him little less than divine honors,
even though they know him to be so covetous and base-minded that
notwithstanding all his wealth he will not part with one farthing
of it to them as long as he lives.
These and such like notions has that people imbibed, partly from
their education, being bred in a country whose customs and laws
are opposite to all such foolish maxims, and partly from their
learning and studies; for though there are but few in any town
that are so wholly excused from labor as to give themselves entirely
up to their studies, these being only such persons as discover
from their childhood an extraordinary capacity and disposition
for letters; yet their children, and a great part of the nation,
both men and women, are taught to spend those hours in which they
are not obliged to work, in reading: and this they do through
the whole progress of life. They have all their learning in their
own tongue, which is both a copious and pleasant language, and
in which a man can fully express his mind. It runs over a great
tract of many countries, but it is not equally pure in all places.
They had never so much as heard of the names of any of those philosophers
that are so famous in these parts of the world, before we went
among them; and yet they had made the same discoveries as the
Greeks, in music, logic, arithmetic, and geometry. But as they
are almost in everything equal to the ancient philosophers, so
they far exceed our modern logicians; for they have never yet
fallen upon the barbarous niceties that our youth are forced to
learn in those trifling logical schools that are among us; they
are so far from minding chimeras, and fantastical images made
in the mind, that none of them could comprehend what we meant
when we talked to them of man in the abstract, as common to all
men in particular (so that though we spoke of him as a thing that
we could point at with our fingers, yet none of them could perceive
him), and yet distinct from everyone, as if he were some monstrous
Colossus or giant.
Yet for all this ignorance of these empty notions, they knew astronomy,
and were perfectly acquainted with the motions of the heavenly
bodies, and have many instruments, well contrived and divided,
by which they very accurately compute the course and positions
of the sun, moon, and stars. But for the cheat, of divining by
the stars by their oppositions or conjunctions, it has not so
much as entered into their thoughts. They have a particular sagacity,
founded upon much observation, in judging of the weather, by which
they know when they may look for rain, wind, or other alterations
in the air; but as to the philosophy of these things, the causes
of the saltness of the sea, of its ebbing and flowing, and of
the origin and nature both of the heavens and the earth; they
dispute of them, partly as our ancient philosophers have done,
and partly upon some new hypothesis, in which, as they differ
from them, so they do not in all things agree among themselves.
As to moral philosophy, they have the same disputes among them
as we have here: they examine what are properly good both for
the body and the mind, and whether any outward thing can be called
truly good, or if that term belong only to the endowments of the
soul. They inquire likewise into the nature of virtue and pleasure;
but their chief dispute is concerning the happiness of a man,
and wherein it consists? Whether in some one thing, or in a great
many? They seem, indeed, more inclinable to that opinion that
places, if not the whole, yet the chief part of a man's happiness
in pleasure; and, what may seem more strange, they make use of
arguments even from religion, notwithstanding its severity and
roughness, for the support of that opinion so indulgent to pleasure;
for they never dispute concerning happiness without fetching some
arguments from the principles of religion, as well as from natural
reason, since without the former they reckon that all our inquiries
after happiness must be but conjectural and defective.
These are their religious principles, that the soul of man is
immortal, and that God of his goodness has designed that it should
be happy; and that he has therefore appointed rewards for good
and virtuous actions, and punishments for vice, to be distributed
after this life. Though these principles of religion are conveyed
down among them by tradition, they think that even reason itself
determines a man to believe and acknowledge them, and freely confess
that if these were taken away no man would be so insensible as
not to seek after pleasure by all possible means, lawful or unlawful;
using only this caution, that a lesser pleasure might not stand
in the way of a greater, and that no pleasure ought to be pursued
that should draw a great deal of pain after it; for they think
it the maddest thing in the world to pursue virtue, that is a
sour and difficult thing; and not only to renounce the pleasures
of life, but willingly to undergo much pain and trouble, if a
man has no prospect of a reward. And what reward can there be
for one that has passed his whole life, not only without pleasure,
but in pain, if there is nothing to be expected after death? Yet
they do not place happiness in all sorts of pleasures, but only
in those that in themselves are good and honest.
There is a party among them who place happiness in bare virtue;
others think that our natures are conducted by virtue to happiness,
as that which is the chief good of man. They define virtue thus,
that it is a living according to nature, and think that we are
made by God for that end; they believe that a man then follows
the dictates of nature when he pursues or avoids things according
to the direction of reason; they say that the first dictate of
reason is the kindling in us of a love and reverence for the Divine
Majesty, to whom we owe both all that we have and all that we
can ever hope for. In the next place, reason directs us to keep
our minds as free from passion and as cheerful as we can, and
that we should consider ourselves as bound by the ties of good-nature
and humanity to use our utmost endeavors to help forward the happiness
of all other persons; for there never was any man such a morose
and severe pursuer of virtue, such an enemy to pleasure, that
though he set hard rules for men to undergo much pain, many watchings,
and other rigors, yet did not at the same time advise them to
do all they could, in order to relieve and ease the miserable,
and who did not represent gentleness and good-nature as amiable
dispositions. And from thence they infer that if a man ought to
advance the welfare and comfort of the rest of mankind, there
being no virtue more proper and peculiar to our nature, than to
ease the miseries of others, to free from trouble and anxiety,
in furnishing them with the comforts of life, in which pleasure
consists, nature much more vigorously leads them to do all this
for himself.
A life of pleasure is either a real evil, and in that case we
ought not to assist others in their pursuit of it, but on the
contrary, to keep them from it all we can, as from that which
is most hurtful and deadly; or if it is a good thing, so that
we not only may, but ought to help others to it, why, then, ought
not a man to begin with himself? Since no man can be more bound
to look after the good of another than after his own; for nature
cannot direct us to be good and kind to others, and yet at the
same time to be unmerciful and cruel to ourselves. Thus, as they
define virtue to be living according to nature, so they imagine
that nature prompts all people on to seek after pleasure, as the
end of all they do. They also observe that in order to our supporting
the pleasures of life, nature inclines us to enter into society;
for there is no man so much raised above the rest of mankind as
to be the only favorite of nature who, on the contrary, seems
to have placed on a level all those that belong to the same species.
Upon this they infer that no man ought to seek his own conveniences
so eagerly as to prejudice others; and therefore they think that
not only all agreements between private persons ought to be observed,
but likewise that all those laws ought to be kept, which either
a good prince has published in due form, or to which a people
that is neither oppressed with tyranny nor circumvented by fraud,
has consented, for distributing those conveniences of life which
afford us all our pleasures.
They think it is an evidence of true wisdom for a man to pursue
his own advantages as far as the laws allow it. They account it
piety to prefer the public good to one's private concerns; but
they think it unjust for a man to seek for pleasure by snatching
another man's pleasures from him. And on the contrary, they think
it a sign of a gentle and good soul, for a man to dispense with
his own advantage for the good of others; and that by this means
a good man finds as much pleasure one way as he parts with another;
for as he may expect the like from others when he may come to
need it, so if that should fail him, yet the sense of a good action,
and the reflections that he makes on the love and gratitude of
those whom he has so obliged, gives the mind more pleasure than
the body could have found in that from which it had restrained
itself. They are also persuaded that God will make up the loss
of those small pleasures, with a vast and endless joy, of which
religion easily convinces a good soul.
Thus, upon an inquiry into the whole matter, they reckon that
all our actions, and even all our virtues, terminate in pleasure,
as in our chief end and greatest happiness; and they call every
motion or state, either of body or mind, in which nature teaches
us to delight, a pleasure. Thus they cautiously limit pleasure
only to those appetites to which nature leads us; for they say
that nature leads us only to those delights to which reason as
well as sense carries us, and by which we neither injure any other
person nor lose the possession of greater pleasures, and of such
as draw no troubles after them; but they look upon those delights
which men by a foolish though common mistake call pleasure, as
if they could change as easily the nature of things as the use
of words; as things that greatly obstruct their real happiness
instead of advancing it, because they so entirely possess the
minds of those that are once captivated by them with a false notion
of pleasure, that there is no room left for pleasures of a truer
or purer kind,
There are many things that in themselves have nothing that is
truly delightful; on the contrary, they have a good deal of bitterness
in them; and yet from our perverse appetites after forbidden objects,
are not only ranked among the pleasures, but are made even the
greatest designs of life. Among those who pursue these sophisticated
pleasures, they reckon such as I mentioned before, who think themselves
really the better for having fine clothes; in which they think
they are doubly mistaken, both in the opinion that they have of
their clothes, and in that they have of themselves; for if you
consider the use of clothes, why should a fine thread be thought
better than a coarse one? And yet these men, as if they had some
real advantages beyond others, and did not owe them wholly to
their mistakes, look big, seem to fancy themselves to be more
valuable, and imagine that a respect is due to them for the sake
of a rich garment, to which they would not have pretended if they
had been more meanly clothed; and even resent it as an affront,
if that respect is not paid them. It is also a great folly to
be taken with outward marks of respect, which signify nothing:
for what true or real pleasure can one man find in another's standing
bare, or making legs to him? Will the bending another man's knees
give ease to yours? And will the head's being bare cure the madness
of yours? And yet it is wonderful to see how this false notion
of pleasure bewitches many who delight themselves with the fancy
of their nobility, and are pleased with this conceit, that they
are descended from ancestors who have been held for some successions
rich, and who have had great possessions; for this is all that
makes nobility at present; yet they do not think themselves a
whit the less noble, though their immediate parents have left
none of this wealth to them, or though they themselves have squandered
it away.
The Utopians have no better opinion of those who are much taken
with gems and precious stones, and who account it a degree of
happiness, next to a divine one, if they can purchase one that
is very extraordinary; especially if it be of that sort of stones
that is then in greatest request; for the same sort is not at
all times universally of the same value; nor will men buy it unless
it be dismounted and taken out of the gold; the jeweller is then
made to give good security, and required solemnly to swear that
the stone is true, that by such an exact caution a false one might
not be bought instead of a true: though if you were to examine
it, your eye could find no difference between the counterfeit
and that which is true; so that they are all one to you as much
as if you were blind. Or can it be thought that they who heap
up a useless mass of wealth, not for any use that it is to bring
them, but merely to please themselves with the contemplation of
it, enjoy any true pleasure in it? The delight they find is only
a false shadow of joy. Those are no better whose error is somewhat
different from the former, and who hide it, out of their fear
of losing it; for what other name can fit the hiding it in the
earth, or rather the restoring it to it again, it being thus cut
off from being useful, either to its owner or to the rest of mankind?
And yet the owner having hid it carefully, is glad, because he
thinks he is now sure of it. If it should be stolen, the owner,
though he might live perhaps ten years after the theft, of which
he knew nothing, would find no difference between his having or
losing it; for both ways it was equally useless to him.
Among those foolish pursuers of pleasure they reckon all that
delight in hunting, in fowling, or gaming: of whose madness they
have only heard, for they have no such things among them. But
they have asked us, what sort of pleasure is it that men can find
in throwing the dice? For if there were any pleasure in it, they
think the doing of it so often should give one a surfeit of it:
and what pleasure can one find in hearing the barking and howling
of dogs, which seem rather odious than pleasant sounds? Nor can
they comprehend the pleasure of seeing dogs run after a hare,
more than of seeing one dog run after another; for if the seeing
them run is that which gives the pleasure, you have the same entertainment
to the eye on both these occasions, since that is the same in
both cases: but if the pleasure lies in seeing the hare killed
and torn by the dogs, this ought rather to stir pity, that a weak,
harmless and fearful hare should be devoured by strong, fierce,
and cruel dogs. Therefore all this business of hunting is, among
the Utopians, turned over to their butchers; and those, as has
been already said, are all slaves; and they look on hunting as
one of the basest parts of a butcher's work: for they account
it both more profitable and more decent to kill those beasts that
are more necessary and useful to mankind; whereas the killing
and tearing of so small and miserable an animal can only attract
the huntsman with a false show of pleasure, from which he can
reap but small advantage. They look on the desire of the bloodshed,
even of beasts, as a mark of a mind that is already corrupted
with cruelty, or that at least by the frequent returns of so brutal
a pleasure must degenerate into it.
Thus, though the rahble of mankind look upon these, and on innumerable
other things of the same nature, as pleasures, the Utopians, on
the contrary, observing that there is nothing in them truly pleasant,
conclude that they are not to be reckoned among pleasures: for
though these things may create some tickling in the senses (which
seems to be a true notion of pleasure), yet they imagine that
this does not arise from the thing itself, but from a depraved
custom, which may so vitiate a man's taste, that bitter things
may pass for sweet; as women with child think pitch or tallow
tastes sweeter than honey; but as a man's sense when corrupted,
either by a disease or some ill habit, does not change the nature
of other things, so neither can it change the nature of pleasure.
They reckon up several sorts of pleasures, which they call true
ones: some belong to the body and others to the mind. The pleasures
of the mind lie in knowledge, and in that delight which the contemplation
of truth carries with it; to which they add the joyful reflections
on a well-spent life, and the assured hopes of a future happiness.
They divide the pleasures of the body into two sorts; the one
is that which gives our senses some real delight, and is performed,
either by recruiting nature, and supplying those parts which feed
the internal heat of life by eating and drinking; or when nature
is eased of any surcharge that oppresses it; when we are relieved
from sudden pain, or that which arises from satisfying the appetite
which nature has wisely given to lead us to the propagation of
the species. There is another kind of pleasure that arises neither
from our receiving what the body requires nor its being relieved
when overcharged, and yet by a secret, unseen virtue affects the
senses, raises the passions, and strikes the mind with generous
impressions; this is the pleasure that arises from music. Another
kind of bodily pleasure is that which results from an undisturbed
and vigorous constitution of body, when life and active spirits
seem to actuate every part. This lively health, when entirely
free from all mixture of pain, of itself gives an inward pleasure,
independent of all external objects of delight; and though this
pleasure does not so powerfully affect us, nor act so strongly
on the senses as some of the others, yet it may be esteemed as
the greatest of all pleasures, and almost all the Utopians reckon
it the foundation and basis of all the other joys of life; since
this alone makes the state of life easy and desirable; and when
this is wanting, a man is really capable of no other pleasure.
They look upon freedom from pain, if it does not rise from perfect
health, to be a state of stupidity rather than of pleasure.
This subject has been very narrowly canvassed among them; and
it has been debated whether a firm and entire health could be
called a pleasure or not? Some have thought that there was no
pleasure but what was excited by some sensible motion in the body.
But this opinion has been long ago excluded from among them, so
that now they almost universally agree that health is the greatest
of all bodily pleasures; and that as there is a pain in sickness,
which is as opposite in its nature to pleasure as sickness itself
is to health, so they hold that health is accompanied with pleasure:
and if any should say that sickness is not really pain, but that
it only carries pain along with it, they look upon that as a fetch
of subtilty, that does not much alter the matter. It is all one,
in their opinion, whether it be said that health is in itself
a pleasure, or that it begets a pleasure, as fire gives heat;
so it be granted, that all those whose health is entire have a
true pleasure in the enjoyment of it: and they reason thus -what
is the pleasure of eating, but that a man's health which had been
weakened, does, with the assistance of food, drive away hunger,
and so recruiting itself recovers its former vigor? And being
thus refreshed, it finds a pleasure in that conflict; and if the
conflict is pleasure, the victory must yet breed a greater pleasure,
except we fancy that it becomes stupid as soon as it has obtained
that which it pursued, and so neither knows nor rejoices in its
own welfare. If it is said that health cannot be felt, they absolutely
deny it; for what man is in health that does not perceive it when
he is awake? Is there any man that is so dull and stupid as not
to acknowledge that he feels a delight in health? And what is
delight but another name for pleasure?
But of all pleasures, they esteem those to be most valuable that
lie in the mind, the chief of which arises out of true virtue,
and the witnesses of a good conscience. They account health the
chief pleasure that belongs to the body; for they think that the
pleasure of eating and drinking, and all the other delights of
sense, are only so far desirable as they give or maintain health.
But they are not pleasant in themselves, otherwise than as they
resist those impressions that our natural infirmities are still
making upon us: for as a wise man desires rather to avoid diseases
than to take physic, and to be freed from pain, rather than to
find ease by remedies; so it is more desirable not to need this
sort of pleasure, than to be obliged to indulge it. If any man
imagines that there is a real happiness in these enjoyments, he
must then confess that he would be the happiest of all men if
he were to lead his life in perpetual hunger, thirst, and itching,
and by consequence in perpetual eating, drinking, and scratching
himself; which anyone may easily see would be not only a base
but a miserable state of life. These are indeed the lowest of
pleasures, and the least pure; for we can never relish them, but
when they are mixed with the contrary pains. The pain of hunger
must give us the pleasure of eating; and here the pain out-balances
the pleasure; and as the pain is more vehement, so it lasts much
longer; for as it begins before the pleasure, so it does not cease
but with the pleasure that extinguishes it, and both expire together.
They think, therefore, none of those pleasures is to be valued
any further than as it is necessary; yet they rejoice in them,
and with due gratitude acknowledge the tenderness of the great
Author of nature, who has planted in us appetites, by which those
things that are necessary for our preservation are likewise made
pleasant to us. For how miserable a thing would life be, if those
daily diseases of hunger and thirst were to be carried off by
such bitter drugs as we must use for those diseases that return
seldomer upon us? And thus these pleasant as well as proper gifts
of nature maintain the strength and the sprightliness of our bodies.
They also entertain themselves with the other delights let in
at their eyes, their ears, and their nostrils, as the pleasant
relishes and seasonings of life, which nature seems to have marked
out peculiarly for man; since no other sort of animals contemplates
the figure and beauty of the universe; nor is delighted with smells,
any further than as they distinguish meats by them; nor do they
apprehend the concords or discords of sound; yet in all pleasures
whatsoever they take care that a lesser joy does not hinder a
greater, and that pleasure may never breed pain, which they think
always follows dishonest pleasures. But they think it madness
for a man to wear out the beauty of his face, or the force of
his natural strength; to corrupt the sprightliness of his body
by sloth and laziness, or to waste it by fasting; that it is madness
to weaken the strength of his constitution, and reject the other
delights of life; unless by renouncing his own satisfaction, he
can either serve the public or promote the happiness of others,
for which he expects a greater recompense from God. So that they
look on such a course of life as the mark of a mind that is both
cruel to itself, and ungrateful to the Author of nature, as if
we would not be beholden to Him for His favors, and therefore
reject all His blessings; as one who should afflict himself for
the empty shadow of virtue; or for no better end than to render
himself capable of bearing those misfortunes which possibly will
never happen.
This is their notion of virtue and of pleasure; they think that
no man's reason can carry him to a truer idea of them, unless
some discovery from heaven should inspire him with sublimer notions.
I have not now the leisure to examine whether they think right
or wrong in this matter: nor do I judge it necessary, for I have
only undertaken to give you an account of their constitution,
but not to defend all their principles. I am sure, that whatsoever
may be said of their notions, there is not in the whole world
either a better people or a happier government: their bodies are
vigorous and lively; and though they are but of a middle stature,
and have neither the fruitfullest soil nor the purest air in the
world, yet they fortify themselves so well by their temperate
course of life, against the unhealthiness of their air, and by
their industry they so cultivate their soil, that there is nowhere
to be seen a greater increase both of corn and cattle, nor are
there anywhere healthier men and freer from diseases: for one
may there see reduced to practice, not only all the arts that
the husbandman employs in manuring and improving an ill soil,
but whole woods plucked up by the roots, and in other places new
ones planted, where there were none before.
Their principal motive for this is the convenience of carriage,
that their timber may be either near their towns or growing on
the banks of the sea or of some rivers, so as to be floated to
them; for it is a harder work to carry wood at any distance over
land, than corn. The people are industrious, apt to learn, as
well as cheerful and pleasant; and none can endure more labor,
when it is necessary; but except in that case they love their
ease. They are unwearied pursuers of knowledge; for when we had
given them some hints of the learning and discipline of the Greeks,
concerning whom we only instructed them (for we know that there
was nothing among the Romans, except their historians and their
poets, that they would value much), it was strange to see how
eagerly they were set on learning that language. We began to read
a little of it to them, rather in compliance with their importunity,
than out of any hopes of their reaping from it any great advantage.
But after a very short trial, we found they made such progress,
that we saw our labor was like to be more successful than we could
have expected. They learned to write their characters and to pronounce
their language so exactly, had so quick an apprehension, they
remembered it so faithfully, and became so ready and correct in
the use of it, that it would have looked like a miracle if the
greater part of those whom we taught had not been men both of
extraordinary capacity and of a fit age for instruction. They
were for the greatest part chosen from among their learned men,
by their chief Council, though some studied it of their own accord.
In three years' time they became masters of the whole language,
so that they read the best of the Greek authors very exactly.
I am indeed apt to think that they learned that language the more
easily, from its having some relation to their own. I believe
that they were a colony of the Greeks; for though their language
comes nearer the Persian, yet they retain many names, both for
their towns and magistrates, that are of Greek derivation.
I happened to carry a great many books with me, instead of merchandise,
when I sailed my fourth voyage; for I was so far from thinking
of soon coming back, that I rather thought never to have returned
at all, and I gave them all my books, among which were many of
Plato's and some of Aristotle's works. I had also Theophrastus
"On Plants," which, to my great regret, was imperfect;
for having laid it carelessly by, while we were at sea, a monkey
had seized upon it, and in many places torn out the leaves. They
have no books of grammar but Lascares, for I did not carry Theodorus
with me; nor have they any dictionaries but Hesichius and Dioscorides.
They esteem Plutarch highly, and were much taken with Lucian's
wit and with his pleasant way of writing. As for the poets, they
have Aristophanes, Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles of Aldus's
edition; and for historians Thucydides, Herodotus, and Herodian.
One of my companions, Thricius Apinatus, happened to carry with
him some of Hippocrates's works, and Galen's "Microtechne,"
which they hold in great estimation; for though there is no nation
in the world that needs physic so little as they do, yet there
is not any that honors it so much: they reckon the knowledge of
it one of the pleasantest and most profitable parts of philosophy,
by which, as they search into the secrets of nature, so they not
only find this study highly agreeable, but think that such inquiries
are very acceptable to the Author of nature; and imagine that
as He, like the inventors of curious engines among mankind, has
exposed this great machine of the universe to the view of the
only creatures capable of contemplating it, so an exact and curious
observer, who admires His workmanship, is much more acceptable
to Him than one of the herd, who, like a beast incapable of reason,
looks on this glorious scene with the eyes of a dull and unconcerned
spectator.
The minds of the Utopians, when fenced with a love for learning,
are very ingenious in discovering all such arts as are necessary
to carry it to perfection. Two things they owe to us, the manufacture
of paper and the art of printing: yet they are not so entirely
indebted to us for these discoveries but that a great part of
the invention was their own. We showed them some books printed
by Aldus, we explained to them the way of making paper, and the
mystery of printing; but as we had never practised these arts,
we described them in a crude and superficial manner. They seized
the hints we gave them, and though at first they could not arrive
at perfection, yet by making many essays they at last found out
and corrected all their errors, and conquered every difficulty.
Before this they only wrote on parchment, on reeds, or on the
bark of trees; but now they have established the manufacture of
paper, and set up printingpresses, so that if they had but a good
number of Greek authors they would be quickly supplied with many
copies of them: at present, though they have no more than those
I have mentioned, yet by several impressions they have multiplied
them into many thousands .
If any man was to go among them that had some extraordinary talent,
or that by much travelling had observed the customs of many nations
(which made us to be so well received), he would receive a hearty
welcome; for they are very desirous to know the state of the whole
world. Very few go among them on the account of traffic, for what
can a man carry to them but iron or gold or silver, which merchants
desire rather to export than import to a strange country: and
as for their exportation, they think it better to manage that
themselves than to leave it to foreigners, for by this means,
as they understand the state of the neighboring countries better,
so they keep up the art of navigation, which cannot be maintained
but by much practice.
Of Their Slaves, and of Their Marriages
THEY do not make slaves of prisoners of war, except those that
are taken in battle; nor of the sons of their slaves, nor of those
of other nations: the slaves among them are only such as are condemned
to that state of life for the commission of some crime, or, which
is more common, such as their merchants find condemned to die
in those parts to which they trade, whom they sometimes redeem
at low rates; and in other places have them for nothing. They
are kept at perpetual labor, and are always chained, but with
this difference, that their own natives are treated much worse
than others; they are considered as more profligate than the rest,
and since they could not be restrained by the advantages of so
excellent an education, are judged worthy of harder usage. Another
sort of slaves are the poor of the neighboring countries, who
offer of their own accord to come and serve them; they treat these
better, and use them in all other respects as well as their own
countrymen, except their imposing more labor upon them, which
is no hard task to those that have been accustomed to it; and
if any of these have a mind to go back to their own country, which
indeed falls out but seldom, as they do not force them to stay,
so they do not send them away empty-handed.
I have already told you with what care they look after their sick,
so that nothing is left undone that can contribute either to their
ease or health: and for those who are taken with fixed and incurable
diseases, they use all possible ways to cherish them, and to make
their lives as comfortable as possible. They visit them often,
and take great pains to make their time pass off easily: but when
any is taken with a torturing and lingering pain, so that there
is no hope, either of recovery or ease, the priests and magistrates
come and exhort them, that since they are now unable to go on
with the business of life, are become a burden to themselves and
to all about them, and they have really outlived themselves, they
should no longer nourish such a rooted distemper, but choose rather
to die, since they cannot live but in much misery: being assured,
that if they thus deliver themselves from torture, or are willing
that others should do it, they shall be happy after death. Since
by their acting thus, they lose none of the pleasures but only
the troubles of life, they think they behave not only reasonably,
but in a manner consistent with religion and piety; because they
follow the advice given them by their priests, who are the expounders
of the will of God. Such as are wrought on by these persuasions,
either starve themselves of their own accord, or take opium, and
by that means die without pain. But no man is forced on this way
of ending his life; and if they cannot be persuaded to it, this
does not induce them to fail in their attendance and care of them;
but as they believe that a voluntary death, when it is chosen
upon such an authority, is very honorable, so if any man takes
away his own life without the approbation of the priests and the
Senate, they give him none of the honors of a decent funeral,
but throw his body into a ditch.
Their women are not married before eighteen, nor their men before
two-and-twenty, and if any of them run into forbidden embraces
before marriage they are severely punished, and the privilege
of marriage is denied them, unless they can obtain a special warrant
from the Prince. Such disorders cast a great reproach upon the
master and mistress of the family in which they happen, for it
is supposed that they have failed in their duty. The reason of
punishing this so severely is, because they think that if they
were not strictly restrained from all vagrant appetites, very
few would engage in a state in which they venture the quiet of
their whole lives, by being confined to one person, and are obliged
to endure all the inconveniences with which it is accompanied.
In choosing their wives they use a method that would appear to
us very absurd and ridiculous, but it is constantly observed among
them, and is accounted perfectly consistent with wisdom. Before
marriage some grave matron presents the bride naked, whether she
is a virgin or a widow, to the bridegroom; and after that some
grave man presents the bridegroom naked to the bride. We indeed
both laughed at this, and condemned it as very indecent. But they,
on the other hand, wondered at the folly of the men of all other
nations, who, if they are but to buy a horse of a small value,
are so cautious that they will see every part of him, and take
off both his saddle and all his other tackle, that there may be
no secret ulcer hid under any of them; and that yet in the choice
of a wife, on which depends the happiness or unhappiness of the
rest of his life, a man should venture upon trust, and only see
about a hand's-breadth of the face, all the rest of the body being
covered, under which there may lie hid what may be contagious
as well as loathsome. All men are not so wise as to choose a woman
only for her good qualities; and even wise men consider the body
as that which adds not a little to the mind: and it is certain
there may be some such deformity covered with the clothes as may
totally alienate a man from his wife when it is too late to part
from her. If such a thing is discovered after marriage, a man
has no remedy but patience. They therefore think it is reasonable
that there should be good provision made against such mischievous
frauds.
There was so much the more reason for them to make a regulation
in this matter, because they are the only people of those parts
that neither allow of polygamy nor of divorces, except in the
case of adultery or insufferable perverseness; for in these cases
the Senate dissolves the marriage, and grants the injured person
leave to marry again; but the guilty are made infamous, and are
never allowed the privilege of a second marriage. None are suffered
to put away their wives against their wills, from any great calamity
that may have fallen on their persons; for they look on it as
the height of cruelty and treachery to abandon either of the married
persons when they need most the tender care of their comfort,
and that chiefly in the case of old age, which as it carries many
diseases along with it, so it is a disease of itself. But it frequently
falls out that when a married couple do not well agree, they by
mutual consent separate, and find out other persons with whom
they hope they may live more happily. Yet this is not done without
obtaining leave of the Senate, which never admits of a divorce
but upon a strict inquiry made, both by the Senators and their
wives, into the grounds upon which it is desired; and even when
they are satisfied concerning the reasons of it, they go on but
slowly, for they imagine that too great easiness in granting leave
for new marriages would very much shake the kindness of married
people. They punish severely those that defile the marriage-bed.
If both parties are married they are divorced, and the injured
persons may marry one another, or whom they please; but the adulterer
and the adulteress are condemned to slavery. Yet if either of
the injured persons cannot shake off the love of the married person,
they may live with them still in that state, but they must follow
them to that labor to which the slaves are condemned; and sometimes
the repentance of the condemned, together with the unshaken kindness
of the innocent and injured person, has prevailed so far with
the Prince that he has taken off the sentence; but those that
relapse after they are once pardoned are punished with death.
Their law does not determine the punishment for other crimes;
but that is left to the Senate, to temper it according to the
circumstances of the fact. Husbands have power to correct their
wives, and parents to chastise their children, unless the fault
is so great that a public punishment is thought necessary for
striking terror into others. For the most part, slavery is the
punishment even of the greatest crimes; for as that is no less
terrible to the criminals themselves than death, so they think
the preserving them in a state of servitude is more for the interest
of the commonwealth than killing them; since as their labor is
a greater benefit to the public than their death could be, so
the sight of their misery is a more lasting terror to other men
than that which would be given by their death. If their slaves
rebel, and will not bear their yoke and submit to the labor that
is enjoined them, they are treated as wild beasts that cannot
be kept in order, neither by a prison nor by their chains, and
are at last put to death. But those who bear their punishment
patiently, and are so much wrought on by that pressure that lies
so hard on them that it appears they are really more troubled
for the crimes they have committed than for the miseries they
suffer, are not out of hope but that at last either the Prince
will, by his prerogative, or the people by their intercession,
restore them again to their liberty, or at least very much mitigate
their slavery. He that tempts a married woman to adultery is no
less severely punished than he that commits it; for they believe
that a deliberate design to commit a crime is equal to the fact
itself: since its not taking effect does not make the person that
miscarried in his attempt at all the less guilty.
They take great pleasure in fools, and as it is thought a base
and unbecoming thing to use them ill, so they do not think it
amiss for people to divert themselves with their folly: and, in
their opinion, this is a great advantage to the fools themselves:
for if men were so sullen and severe as not at all to please themselves
with their ridiculous behavior and foolish sayings, which is all
that they can do to recommend themselves to others, it could not
be expected that they would be so well provided for, nor so tenderly
used as they must otherwise be. If any man should reproach another
for his being misshaped or imperfect in any part of his body,
it would not at all be thought a reflection on the person so treated,
but it would be accounted scandalous in him that had upbraided
another with what he could not help. It is thought a sign of a
sluggish and sordid mind not to preserve carefully one's natural
beauty; but it is likewise infamous among them to use paint. They
all see that no beauty recommends a wife so much to her husband
as the probity of her life, and her obedience: for as some few
are caught and held only by beauty, so all are attracted by the
other excellences which charm all the world.
As they fright men from committing crimes by punishments, so they
invite them to the love of virtue by public honors: therefore
they erect statues to the memories of such worthy men as have
deserved well of their country, and set these in their market-places,
both to perpetuate the remembrance of their actions, and to be
an incitement to their posterity to follow their example.
If any man aspires to any office, he is sure never to compass
it: they all live easily together, for none of the magistrates
are either insolent or cruel to the people: they affect rather
to be called fathers, and by being really so, they well deserve
the name; and the people pay them all the marks of honor the more
freely, because none are exacted from them. The Prince himself
has no distinction, either of garments or of a crown; but is only
distinguished by a sheaf of corn carried before him; as the high-priest
is also known by his being preceded by a person carrying a wax
light.
They have but few laws, and such is their constitution that they
need not many. They very much condemn other nations, whose laws,
together with the commentaries on them, swell up to so many volumes;
for they think it an unreasonable thing to oblige men to obey
a body of laws that are both of such a bulk and so dark as not
to be read and understood by every one of the subjects.
They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort
of people whose profession it is to disguise matters and to wrest
the laws; and therefore they think it is much better that every
man should plead his own cause, and trust it to the judge, as
in other places the client trusts it to a counsellor. By this
means they both cut off many delays, and find out truth more certainly:
for after the parties have laid open the merits of the cause,
without those artifices which lawyers are apt to suggest, the
judge examines the whole matter, and supports the simplicity of
such well-meaning persons, whom otherwise crafty men would be
sure to run down: and thus they avoid those evils which appear
very remarkably among all those nations that labor under a vast
load of laws. Every one of them is skilled in their law, for as
it is a very short study, so the plainest meaning of which words
are capable is always the sense of their laws. And they argue
thus: all laws are promulgated for this end, that every man may
know his duty; and therefore the plainest and most obvious sense
of the words is that which ought to be put upon them; since a
more refined exposition cannot be easily comprehended, and would
only serve to make the laws become useless to the greater part
of mankind, and especially to those who need most the direction
of them: for it is all one, not to make a law at all, or to couch
it in such terms that without a quick apprehension, and much study,
a man cannot find out the true meaning of it; since the generality
of mankind are both so dull and so much employed in their several
trades that they have neither the leisure nor the capacity requisite
for such an inquiry.
Some of their neighbors, who are masters of their own liberties,
having long ago, by the assistance of the Utopians, shaken off
the yoke of tyranny, and being much taken with those virtues which
they observe among them, have come to desire that they would send
magistrates to govern them; some changing them every year, and
others every five years. At the end of their government they bring
them back to Utopia, with great expressions of honor and esteem,
and carry away others to govern in their stead. In this they seem
to have fallen upon a very good expedient for their own happiness
and safety; for since the good or ill condition of a nation depends
so much upon their magistrates, they could not have made a better
choice than by pitching on men whom no advantages can bias; for
wealth is of no use to them, since they must so soon go back to
their own country; and they being strangers among them, are not
engaged in any of their heats or animosities; and it is certain
that when public judicatories are swayed, either by avarice or
partial affections, there must follow a dissolution of justice,
the chief sinew of society.
The Utopians call those nations that come and ask magistrates
from them, neighbors; but those to whom they have been of more
particular service, friends. And as all other nations are perpetually
either making leagues or breaking them, they never enter into
an alliance with any State. They think leagues are useless things,
and believe that if the common ties of humanity do not knit men
together, the faith of promises will have no great effect; and
they are the more confirmed in this by what they see among the
nations round about them, who are no strict observers of leagues
and treaties. We know how religiously they are observed in Europe,
more particularly where the Christian doctrine is received, among
whom they are sacred and inviolable; which is partly owing to
the justice and goodness of the princes themselves, and partly
to the reverence they pay to the popes; who as they are most religious
observers of their own promises, so they exhort all other princes
to perform theirs; and when fainter methods do not prevail, they
compel them to it by the severity of the pastoral censure, and
think that it would be the most indecent thing possible if men
who are particularly distinguished by the title of the "faithful"
should not religiously keep the faith of their treaties. But in
that newfound world, which is not more distant from us in situation
than the people are in their manners and course of life, there
is no trusting to leagues, even though they were made with all
the pomp of the most sacred ceremonies; on the contrary, they
are on this account the sooner broken, some slight pretence being
found in the words of the treaties, which are purposely couched
in such ambiguous terms that they can never be so strictly bound
but they will always find some loophole to escape at; and thus
they break both their leagues and their faith. And this is done
with such impudence, that those very men who value themselves
on having suggested these expedients to their princes, would with
a haughty scorn declaim against such craft, or, to speak plainer,
such fraud and deceit, if they found private men make use of it
in their bargains, and would readily say that they deserved to
be hanged.
By this means it is, that all sorts of justice passes in the world
for a low-spirited and vulgar virtue, far below the dignity of
royal greatness. Or at least, there are set up two sorts of justice;
the one is mean, and creeps on the ground, and therefore becomes
none but the lower part of mankind, and so must be kept in severely
by many restraints that it may not break out beyond the bounds
that are set to it. The other is the peculiar virtue of princes,
which as it is more majestic than that which becomes the rabble,
so takes a freer compass; and thus lawful and unlawful are only
measured by pleasure and interest. These practices of the princes
that lie about Utopia, who make so little account of their faith,
seem to be the reasons that determine them to engage in no confederacies;
perhaps they would change their mind if they lived among us; but
yet though treaties were more religiously observed, they would
still dislike the custom of making them; since the world has taken
up a false maxim upon it, as if there were no tie of nature uniting
one nation to another, only separated perhaps by a mountain or
a river, and that all were born in a state of hostility, and so
might lawfully do all that mischief to their neighbors against
which there is no provision made by treaties; and that when treaties
are made, they do not cut off the enmity, or restrain the license
of preying upon each other, if by the unskilfulness of wording
them there are not effectual provisos made against them. They,
on the other hand, judge that no man is to be esteemed our enemy
that has never injured us; and that the partnership of the human
nature is instead of a league. And that kindness and good-nature
unite men more effectually and with greater strength than any
agreements whatsoever; since thereby the engagements of men's
hearts become stronger than the bond and obligation of words.
Of Their Military Discipline
THEY detest war as a very brutal thing; and which, to the reproach
of human nature, is more practised by men than by any sort of
beasts. They, in opposition to the sentiments of almost all other
nations, think that there is nothing more inglorious than that
glory that is gained by war. And therefore though they accustom
themselves daily to military exercises and the discipline of war
-in which not only their men but their women likewise are trained
up, that in cases of necessity they may not be quite useless -yet
they do not rashly engage in war, unless it be either to defend
themselves, or their friends, from any unjust aggressors; or out
of good-nature or in compassion assist an oppressed nation in
shaking off the yoke of tyranny. They indeed help their friends,
not only in defensive, but also in offensive wars; but they never
do that unless they had been consulted before the breach was made,
and being satisfied with the grounds on which they went, they
had found that all demands of reparation were rejected, so that
a war was unavoidable. This they think to be not only just, when
one neighbor makes an inroad on another, by public order, and
carry away the spoils; but when the merchants of one country are
oppressed in another, either under pretence of some unjust laws,
or by the perverse wresting of good ones. This they count a juster
cause of war than the other, because those injuries are done under
some color of laws.
This was the only ground of that war in which they engaged with
the Nephelogetes against the Aleopolitanes, a little before our
time; for the merchants of the former having, as they thought,
met with great injustice among the latter, which, whether it was
in itself right or wrong, drew on a terrible war, in which many
of their neighbors were engaged; and their keenness in carrying
it on being supported by their strength in maintaining it, it
not only shook some very flourishing States, and very much afflicted
others, but after a series of much mischief ended in the entire
conquest and slavery of the Aleopolitanes, who though before the
war they were in all respects much superior to the Nephelogetes,
were yet subdued; but though the Utopians had assisted them in
the war, yet they pretended to no share of the spoil.
But though they so vigorously assist their friends in obtaining
reparation for the injuries they have received in affairs of this
nature, yet if any such frauds were committed against themselves,
provided no violence was done to their persons, they would only
on their being refused satisfaction forbear trading with such
a people. This is not because they consider their neighbors more
than their own citizens; but since their neighbors trade everyone
upon his own stock, fraud is a more sensible injury to them than
it is to the Utopians, among whom the public in such a case only
suffers. As they expect nothing in return for the merchandise
they export but that in which they so much abound, and is of little
use to them, the loss does not much affect them; they think therefore
it would be too severe to revenge a loss attended with so little
inconvenience, either to their lives or their subsistence, with
the death of many persons; but if any of their people is either
killed or wounded wrongfully, whether it be done by public authority
or only by private men, as soon as they hear of it they send ambassadors,
and demand that the guilty persons may be delivered up to them;
and if that is denied, they declare war; but if it be complied
with, the offenders are condemned either to death or slavery.
They would be both troubled and ashamed of a bloody victory over
their enemies, and think it would be as foolish a purchase as
to buy the most valuable goods at too high a rate. And in no victory
do they glory so much as in that which is gained by dexterity
and good conduct, without bloodshed. In such cases they appoint
public triumphs, and erect trophies to the honor of those who
have succeeded; for then do they reckon that a man acts suitably
to his nature when he conquers his enemy in such a way as that
no other creature but a man could be capable of, and that is by
the strength of his understanding. Bears, lions, boars, wolves,
and dogs, and all other animals employ their bodily force one
against another, in which as many of them are superior to men,
both in strength and fierceness, so they are all subdued by his
reason and understanding.
The only design of the Utopians in war is to obtain that by force,
which if it had been granted them in time would have prevented
the war; or if that cannot be done, to take so severe a revenge
on those that have injured them that they may be terrified from
doing the like for the time to come. By these ends they measure
all their designs, and manage them so that it is visible that
the appetite of fame or vainglory does not work so much on them
as a just care of their own security.
As soon as they declare war, they take care to have a great many
schedules, that are sealed with their common seal, affixed in
the most conspicuous places of their enemies' country. This is
carried secretly, and done in many places all at once. In these
they promise great rewards to such as shall kill the prince, and
lesser in proportion to such as shall kill any other persons,
who are those on whom, next to the prince himself, they cast the
chief balance of the war. And they double the sum to him that,
instead of killing the person so marked out, shall take him alive
and put him in their hands. They offer not only indemnity, but
rewards, to such of the persons themselves that are so marked,
if they will act against their countrymen; by this means those
that are named in their schedules become not only distrustful
of their fellow-citizens but are jealous of one another, and are
much distracted by fear and danger; for it has often fallen out
that many of them, and even the Prince himself, have been betrayed
by those in whom they have trusted most; for the rewards that
the Utopians offer are so unmeasurably great, that there is no
sort of crime to which men cannot be drawn by them. They consider
the risk that those run who undertake such services, and offer
a recompense proportioned to the danger; not only a vast deal
of gold, but great revenues in lands, that lie among other nations
that are their friends, where they may go and enjoy them very
securely; and they observe the promises they make of this kind
most religiously.
They very much approve of this way of corrupting their enemies,
though it appears to others to be base and cruel; but they look
on it as a wise course, to make an end of what would be otherwise
a long war, without so much as hazarding one battle to decide
it. They think it likewise an act of mercy and love to mankind
to prevent the great slaughter of those that must otherwise be
killed in the progress of the war, both on their own side and
on that of their enemies, by the death of a few that are most
guilty; and that in so doing they are kind even to their enemies,
and pity them no less than their own people, as knowing that the
greater part of them do not engage in the, war of their own accord,
but are driven into it by the passions of their prince.
If this method does not succeed with them, then they sow seeds
of contention among their enemies, and animate the prince's brother,
or some of the nobility, to aspire to the crown. If they cannot
disunite them by domestic broils, then they engage their neighbors
against them, and make them set on foot some old pretensions,
which are never wanting to princes when they have occasion for
them. These they plentifully supply with money, though but very
sparingly with any auxiliary troops: for they are so tender of
their own people, that they would not willingly exchange one of
them, even with the prince of their enemies' country.
But as they keep their gold and silver only for such an occasion,
so when that offers itself they easily part with it, since it
would be no inconvenience to them though they should reserve nothing
of it to themselves. For besides the wealth that they have among
them at home, they have a vast treasure abroad, many nations round
about them being deep in their debt: so that they hire soldiers
from all places for carrying on their wars, but chiefly from the
Zapolets, who live 500 miles east of Utopia. They are a rude,
wild, and fierce nation, who delight in the woods and rocks, among
which they were born and bred up. They are hardened both against
heat, cold, and labor, and know nothing of the delicacies of life.
They do not apply themselves to agriculture, nor do they care
either for their houses or their clothes. Cattle is all that they
look after; and for the greatest part they live either by hunting,
or upon rapine; and are made, as it were, only for war. They watch
all opportunities of engaging in it, and very readily embrace
such as are offered them. Great numbers of them will frequently
go out, and offer themselves for a very low pay, to serve any
that will employ them: they know none of the arts of life, but
those that lead to the taking it away; they serve those that hire
them, both with much courage and great fidelity; but will not
engage to serve for any determined time, and agree upon such terms,
that the next day they may go over to the enemies of those whom
they serve, if they offer them a greater encouragement: and will
perhaps return to them the day after that, upon a higher advance
of their pay.
There are few wars in which they make not a considerable part
of the armies of both sides: so it often falls out that they who
are related, and were hired in the same country, and so have lived
long and familiarly together, forgetting both their relations
and former friendship, kill one another upon no other consideration
than that of being hired to it for a little money, by princes
of different interests; and such a regard have they for money,
that they are easily wrought on by the difference of one penny
a day to change sides. So entirely does their avarice influence
them; and yet this money, which they value so highly, is of little
use to them; for what they purchase thus with their blood, they
quickly waste on luxury, which among them is but of a poor and
miserable form.
This nation serves the Utopians against all people whatsoever,
for they pay higher than any other. The Utopians hold this for
a maxim, that as they seek out the best sort of men for their
own use at home, so they make use of this worst sort of men for
the consumption of war, and therefore they hire them with the
offers of vast rewards, to expose themselves to all sorts of hazards,
out of which the greater part never returns to claim their promises.
Yet they make them good most religiously to such as escape. This
animates them to adventure again, whenever there is occasion for
it; for the Utopians are not at all troubled how many of these
happen to be killed, and reckon it a service done to mankind if
they could be a means to deliver the world from such a lewd and
vicious sort of people; that seem to have run together as to the
drain of human nature. Next to these they are served in their
wars with those upon whose account they undertake them, and with
the auxiliary troops of their other friends, to whom they join
a few of their own people, and send some men of eminent and approved
virtue to command in chief. There are two sent with him, who during
his command are but private men, but the first is to succeed him
if he should happen to be either killed or taken; and in case
of the like misfortune to him, the third comes in his place; and
thus they provide against ill events, that such accidents as may
befall their generals may not endanger their armies.
When they draw out troops of their own people, they take such
out of every city as freely offer themselves, for none are forced
to go against their wills, since they think that if any man is
pressed that wants courage, he will not only act faintly, but
by his cowardice dishearten others. But if an invasion is made
on their country they make use of such men, if they have good
bodies, though they are not brave; and either put them aboard
their ships or place them on the walls of their towns, that being
so posted they may find no opportunity of flying away; and thus
either shame, the heat of action, or the impossibility of flying,
bears down their cowardice; they often make a virtue of necessity
and behave themselves well, because nothing else is left them.
But as they force no man to go into any foreign war against his
will, so they do not hinder those women who are willing to go
along with their husbands; on the contrary, they encourage and
praise them, and they stand often next their husbands in the front
of the army. They also place together those who are related, parents
and children, kindred, and those that are mutually allied, near
one another; that those whom nature has inspired with the greatest
zeal for assisting one another, may be the nearest and readiest
to do it; and it is matter of great reproach if husband or wife
survive one another, or if a child survives his parents, and therefore
when they come to be engaged in action they continue to fight
to the last man, if their enemies stand before them.
And as they use all prudent methods to avoid the endangering their
own men, and if it is possible let all the action and danger fall
upon the troops that they hire, so if it becomes necessary for
themselves to engage, they then charge with as much courage as
they avoided it before with prudence: nor is it a fierce charge
at first, but it increases by degrees; and as they continue in
action, they grow more obstinate and press harder upon the enemy,
insomuch that they will much sooner die than give ground; for
the certainty that their children will be well looked after when
they are dead, frees them from all that anxiety concerning them
which often masters men of great courage; and thus they are animated
by a noble and invincible resolution. Their skill in military
affairs increases their courage; and the wise sentiments which,
according to the laws of their country, are instilled into them
in their education, give additional vigor to their minds: for
as they do not undervalue life so as prodigally to throw it away,
they are not so indecently fond of it as to preserve it by base
and unbecoming methods. In the greatest heat of action, the bravest
of their youth, who have devoted themselves to that service, single
out the general of their enemies, set on him either openly or
by ambuscade, pursue him everywhere, and when spent and wearied
out, are relieved by others, who never give over the pursuit;
either attacking him with close weapons when they can get near
him, or with those which wound at a distance, when others get
in between them; so that unless he secures himself by flight,
they seldom fail at last to kill or to take him prisoner.
When they have obtained a victory, they kill as few as possible,
and are much more bent on taking many prisoners than on killing
those that fly before them; nor do they ever let their men so
loose in the pursuit of their enemies, as not to retain an entire
body still in order; so that if they have been forced to engage
the last of their battalions before they could gain the day, they
will rather let their enemies all escape than pursue them, when
their own army is in disorder; remembering well what has often
fallen out to themselves, that when the main body of their army
has been quite defeated and broken, when their enemies imagining
the victory obtained, have let themselves loose into an irregular
pursuit, a few of them that lay for a reserve, waiting a fit opportunity,
have fallen on them in their chase, and when straggling in disorder
and apprehensive of no danger, but counting the day their own,
have turned the whole action, and wrestling out of their hands
a victory that seemed certain and undoubted, while the vanquished
have suddenly become victorious.
It is hard to tell whether they are more dexterous in laying or
avoiding ambushes. They sometimes seem to fly when it is far from
their thoughts; and when they intend to give ground, they do it
so that it is very hard to find out their design. If they see
they are ill posted, or are like to be overpowered by numbers,
they then either march off in the night with great silence, or
by some stratagem delude their enemies: if they retire in the
daytime, they do it in such order, that it is no less dangerous
to fall upon them in a retreat than in a march. They fortify their
camps with a deep and large trench, and throw up the earth that
is dug out of it for a wall; nor do they employ only their slaves
in this, but the whole army works at it, except those that are
then upon the guard; so that when so many hands are at work, a
great line and a strong fortification are finished in so short
a time that it is scarce credible. Their armor is very strong
for defence, and yet is not so heavy as to make them uneasy in
their marches; they can even swim with it. All that are trained
up to war practice swimming. Both horse and foot make great use
of arrows, and are very expert. They have no swords, but fight
with a pole-axe that is both sharp and heavy, by which they thrust
or strike down an enemy. They are very good at finding out warlike
machines, and disguise them so well, that the enemy does not perceive
them till he feels the use of them; so that he cannot prepare
such a defence as would render them useless; the chief consideration
had in the making them is that they may be easily carried and
managed.
If they agree to a truce, they observe it so religiously that
no provocations will make them break it. They never lay their
enemies' country waste nor burn their corn, and even in their
marches they take all possible care that neither horse nor foot
may tread it down, for they do not know but that they may have
use for it-themselves. They hurt no man whom they find disarmed,
unless he is a spy. When a town is surrendered to them, they take
it into their protection; and when they carry a place by storm,
they never plunder it, but put those only to the sword that opposed
the rendering of it up, and make the rest of the garrison slaves,
but for the other inhabitants, they do them no hurt; and if any
of them had advised a surrender, they give them good rewards out
of the estates of those that they condemn, and distribute the
rest among their auxiliary troops, but they themselves take no
share of the spoil.
When a war is ended, they do not oblige their friends to reimburse
their expenses; but they obtain them of the conquered, either
in money, which they keep for the next occasion, or in lands,
out of which a constant revenue is to be paid them; by many increases,
the revenue which they draw out from several countries on such
occasions, is now risen to above 700,000 ducats a year. They send
some of their own people to receive these revenues, who have orders
to live magnificently, and like princes, by which means they consume
much of it upon the place; and either bring over the rest to Utopia,
or lend it to that nation in which it lies. This they most commonly
do, unless some great occasion, which falls out but very seldom,
should oblige them to call for it all. It is out of these lands
that they assign rewards to such as they encourage to adventure
on desperate attempts. If any prince that engages in war with
them is making preparations for invading their country, they prevent
him, and make his country the seat of the war; for they do not
willingly suffer any war to break in upon their island; and if
that should happen, they would only defend themselves by their
own people, but would not call for auxiliary troops to their assistance.
Of the Religions of the Utopians
THERE are several sorts of religions, not only in different parts
of the island, but even in every town; some worshipping the sun,
others the moon or one of the planets: some worship such men as
have been eminent in former times for virtue or glory, not only
as ordinary deities, but as the supreme God: yet the greater and
wiser sort of them worship none of these, but adore one eternal,
invisible, infinite, and incomprehensible Deity; as a being that
is far above all our apprehensions, that is spread over the whole
universe, not by His bulk, but by His power and virtue; Him they
call the Father of All, and acknowledge that the beginnings, the
increase, the progress, the vicissitudes, and the end of all things
come only from Him; nor do they offer divine honors to any but
to Him alone. And indeed, though they differ concerning other
things, yet all agree in this, that they think there is one Supreme
Being that made and governs the world, whom they call in the language
of their country Mithras. They differ in this, that one thinks
the god whom he worships is this Supreme Being, and another thinks
that his idol is that God; but they all agree in one principle,
that whoever is this Supreme Being, He is also that great Essence
to whose glory and majesty all honors are ascribed by the consent
of all nations.
By degrees, they fall off from the various superstitions that
are among them, and grow up to that one religion that is the best
and most in request; and there is no doubt to be made but that
all the others had vanished long ago, if some of those who advised
them to lay aside their superstitions had not met with some unhappy
accident, which being considered as inflicted by heaven, made
them afraid that the God whose worship had like to have been abandoned,
had interposed, and revenged themselves on those who despised
their authority. After they had heard from us an account of the
doctrine, the course of life, and the miracles of Christ, and
of the wonderful constancy of so many martyrs, whose blood, so
willingly offered up by them, was the chief occasion of spreading
their religion over a vast number of nations; it is not to be
imagined how inclined they were to receive it. I shall not determine
whether this proceeded from any secret inspiration of God, or
whether it was because t seemed so favorable to that community
of goods, which is an opinion so particular as well as so dear
to them; since they perceived that Christ and his followers lived
by that rule and that it was still kept up in some communities
among the sincerest sort of Christians. From whichsoever of these
motives it might be, true it is that many of them came over to
our religion, and were initiated into it by baptism. But as two
of our number were dead, so none of the four that survived were
in priest's orders; we therefore could only baptize them; so that
to our great regret they could not partake of the other sacraments,
that can only be administered by priests; but they are instructed
concerning them, and long most vehemently for them. They have
had great disputes among themselves, whether one chosen by them
to be a priest would not be thereby qualified to do all the things
that belong to that character, even though he had no authority
derived from the Pope; and they seemed to be resolved to choose
some for that employment, but they had not done it when I left
them.
Those among them that have not received our religion, do not fright
any from it, and use none ill that goes over to it; so that all
the while I was there, one man was only punished on this occasion.
He being newly baptized, did, notwithstanding all that we could
say to the contrary, dispute publicly concerning the Christian
religion with more zeal than discretion; and with so much heat,
that he not only preferred our worship to theirs, but condemned
all their rites as profane; and cried out against all that adhered
to them, as impious and sacrilegious persons, that were to be
damned to everlasting burnings. Upon his having frequently preached
in this manner, he was seized, and after trial he was condemned
to banishment, not for having disparaged their religion, but for
his inflaming the people to sedition: for this is one of their
most ancient laws, that no man ought to be punished for his religion.
At the first constitution of their government, Utopus having understood
that before his coming among them the old inhabitants had been
engaged in great quarrels concerning religion, by which they were
so divided among themselves, that he found it an easy thing to
conquer them, since instead of uniting their forces against him,
every different party in religion fought by themselves; after
he had subdued them, he made a law that every man might be of
what religion he pleased, and might endeavor to draw others to
it by force of argument, and by amicable and modest ways, but
without bitterness against those of other opinions; but that he
ought to use no other force but that of persuasion, and was neither
to mix with it reproaches nor violence; and such as did otherwise
were to be condemned to banishment or slavery.
This law was made by Utopus, not only for preserving the public
peace, which he saw suffered much by daily contentions and irreconcilable
heats, but because he thought the interest of religion itself
required it. He judged it not fit to determine anything rashly,
and seemed to doubt whether those different forms of religion
might not all come from God, who might inspire men in a different
manner, and be pleased with this variety; he therefore thought
it indecent and foolish for any man to threaten and terrify another
to make him believe what did not appear to him to be true. And
supposing that only one religion was really true, and the rest
false, he imagined that the native force of truth would at last
break forth and shine bright, if supported only by the strength
of argument, and attended to with a gentle and unprejudiced mind;
while, on the other hand, if such debates were carried on with
violence and tumults, as the most wicked are always the most obstinate,
so the best and most holy religion might be choked with superstition,
as corn is with briars and thorns.
He therefore left men wholly to their liberty, that they might
be free to believe as they should see cause; only he made a solemn
and severe law against such as should so far degenerate from the
dignity of human nature as to think that our souls died with our
bodies, or that the world was governed by chance, without a wise
overruling Providence: for they all formerly believed that there
was a state of rewards and punishments to the good and bad after
this life; and they now look on those that think otherwise as
scarce fit to be counted men, since they degrade so noble a being
as the soul, and reckon it no better than a beast's: thus they
are far from looking on such men as fit for human society, or
to be citizens of a well-ordered commonwealth; since a man of
such principles must needs, as oft as he dares do it, despise
all their laws and customs: for there is no doubt to be made that
a man who is afraid of nothing but the law, and apprehends nothing
after death, will not scruple to break through all the laws of
his country, either by fraud or force, when by this means he may
satisfy his appetites. They never raise any that hold these maxims,
either to honors or offices, nor employ them in any public trust,
but despise them, as men of base and sordid minds: yet they do
not punish them, because they lay this down as a maxim that a
man cannot make himself believe anything he pleases; nor do they
drive any to dissemble their thoughts by threatenings, so that
men are not tempted to lie or disguise their opinions; which being
a sort of fraud, is abhorred by the Utopians. They take care indeed
to prevent their disputing in defence of these opinions, especially
before the common people; but they suffer, and even encourage
them to dispute concerning them in private with their priests
and other grave men, being confident that they will be cured of
those mad opinions by having reason laid before them.
There are many among them that run far to the other extreme, though
it is neither thought an ill nor unreasonable opinion, and therefore
is not at all discouraged. They think that the souls of beasts
are immortal, though far inferior to the dignity of the human
soul, and not capable of so great a happiness. They are almost
all of them very firmly persuaded that good men will be infinitely
happy in another state; so that though they are compassionate
to all that are sick, yet they lament no man's death, except they
see him loth to depart with life; for they look on this as a very
ill presage, as if the soul, conscious to itself of guilt, and
quite hopeless, was afraid to leave the body, from some secret
hints of approaching misery. They think that such a man's appearance
before God cannot be acceptable to him, who being called on, does
not go out cheerfully, but is backward and unwilling, and is,
as it were, dragged to it. They are struck with horror when they
see any die in this manner, and carry them out in silence and
with sorrow, and praying God that he would be merciful to the
errors of the departed soul, they lay the body in the ground;
but when any die cheerfully, and full of hope, they do not mourn
for them, but sing hymns when they carry out their bodies, and
commending their souls very earnestly to God: their whole behavior
is then rather grave than sad, they burn the body, and set up
a pillar where the pile was made, with an inscription to the honor
of the deceased.
When they come from the funeral, they discourse of his good life
and worthy actions, but speak of nothing oftener and with more
pleasure than of his serenity at the hour of death. They think
such respect paid to the memory of good men is both the greatest
incitement to engage others to follow their example, and the most
acceptable worship that can be offered them; for they believe
that though by the imperfection of human sight they are invisible
to us, yet they are present among us, and hear those discourses
that pass concerning themselves. They believe it inconsistent
with the happiness of departed souls not to be at liberty to be
where they will, and do not imagine them capable of the ingratitude
of not desiring to see those friends with whom they lived on earth
in the strictest bonds of love and kindness: besides they are
persuaded that good men after death have these affections and
all other good dispositions increased rather than diminished,
and therefore conclude that they are still among the living, and
observe all they say or do. From hence they engage in all their
affairs with the greater confidence of success, as trusting to
their protection; while this opinion of the presence of their
ancestors is a restraint that prevents their engaging in ill designs.
They despise and laugh at auguries, and the other vain and superstitious
ways of divination, so much observed among other nations; but
have great reverence for such miracles as cannot flow from any
of the powers of nature, and look on them as effects and indications
of the presence of the Supreme Being, of which they say many instances
have occurred among them; and that sometimes their public prayers,
which upon great and dangerous occasions they have solemnly put
up to God, with assured confidence of being heard, have been answered
in a miraculous manner.
They think the contemplating God in His works, and the adoring
Him for them, is a very acceptable piece of worship to Him.
There are many among them, that upon a motive of religion neglect
learning, and apply themselves to no sort of study; nor do they
allow themselves any leisure time, but are perpetually employed.
believing that by the good things that a man does he secures to
himself that happiness that comes after death. Some of these visit
the sick; others mend highways, cleanse ditches, repair bridges,
or dig turf, gravel, or stones. Others fell and cleave timber,
and bring wood, corn, and other necessaries on carts into their
towns. Nor do these only serve the public, but they serve even
private men, more than the slaves themselves do; for if there
is anywhere a rough, hard, and sordid piece of work to be done,
from which many are frightened by the labor and loathsomeness
of it, if not the despair of accomplishing it, they cheerfully,
and of their own accord, take that to their share; and by that
means, as they ease others very much, so they afflict themselves,
and spend their whole life in hard labor; and yet they do not
value themselves upon this, nor lessen other people's credit to
raise their own; but by their stooping to such servile employments,
they are so far from being despised, that they are so much the
more esteemed by the whole nation
Of these there are two sorts; some live unmarried and chaste,
and abstain from eating any sort of flesh; and thus weaning themselves
from all the pleasures of the present life, which they account
hurtful, they pursue, even by the hardest and painfullest methods
possible, that blessedness which they hope for hereafter; and
the nearer they approach to it, they are the more cheerful and
earnest in their endeavors after it. Another sort of them is less
willing to put themselves to much toil, and therefore prefer a
married state to a single one; and as they do not deny themselves
the pleasure of it, so they think the begetting of children is
a debt which they owe to human nature and to their country; nor
do they avoid any pleasure that does not hinder labor, and therefore
eat flesh so much the more willingly, as they find that by this
means they are the more able to work; the Utopians look upon these
as the wiser sect, but they esteem the others as the most holy.
They would indeed laugh at any man, who from the principles of
reason would prefer an unmarried state to a married, or a life
of labor to an easy life; but they reverence and admire such as
do it from the motives of religion. There is nothing in which
they are more cautious than in giving their opinion positively
concerning any sort of religion. The men that lead those severe
lives are called in the language of their country Brutheskas,
which answers to those we call religious orders.
Their priests are men of eminent piety, and therefore they are
but few for there are only thirteen in every town, one for every
temple; but when they go to war, seven of these go out with their
forces, and seven others are chosen to supply their room in their
absence; but these enter again upon their employment when they
return; and those who served in their absence attend upon the
high-priest, till vacancies fall by death; for there is one set
over all the rest. They are chosen by the people as the other
magistrates are, by suffrages given in secret, for preventing
of factions; and when they are chosen they are consecrated by
the College of Priests. The care of all sacred things, the worship
of God, and an inspection into the manners of the people, are
committed to them. It is a reproach to a man to be sent for by
any of them, or for them to speak to him in secret, for that always
gives some suspicion. All that is incumbent on them is only to
exhort and admonish the people; for the power of correcting and
punishing ill men belongs wholly to the Prince and to the other
magistrates. The severest thing that the priest does is the excluding
those that are desperately wicked from joining in their worship.
There is not any sort of punishment more dreaded by them than
this, for as it loads them with infamy, so it fills them with
secret horrors, such is their reverence to their religion; nor
will their bodies be long exempted from their share of trouble;
for if they do not very quickly satisfy the priests of the truth
of their repentance, they are seized on by the Senate, and punished
for their impiety. The education of youth belongs to the priests,
yet they do not take so much care of instructing them in letters
as in forming their minds and manners aright; they use all possible
methods to infuse very early into the tender and flexible minds
of children such opinions as are both good in themselves and will
be useful to their country. For when deep impressions of these
things are made at that age, they follow men through the whole
course of their lives, and conduce much to preserve the peace
of the government, which suffers by nothing more than by vices
that rise out of illopinions. The wives of their priests are the
most extraordinary women of the whole country; sometimes the women
themselves are made priests, though that falls out but seldom,
nor are any but ancient widows chosen into that order.
None of the magistrates has greater honor paid him than is paid
the priests; and if they should happen to commit any crime, they
would not be questioned for it. Their punishment is left to God,
and to their own consciences; for they do not think it lawful
to lay hands on any man, how wicked soever he is, that has been
in a peculiar manner dedicated to God; nor do they find any great
inconvenience in this, both because they have so few priests,
and because these are chosen with much caution, so that it must
be a very unusual thing to find one who merely out of regard to
his virtue, and for his being esteemed a singularly good man,
was raised up to so great a dignity, degenerate into corruption
and vice. And if such a thing should fall out, for man is a changeable
creature, yet there being few priests, and these having no authority
but what rises out of the respect that is paid them, nothing of
great consequence to the public can proceed from the indemnity
that the priests enjoy.
They have indeed very few of them, lest greater numbers sharing
in the same honor might make the dignity of that order which they
esteem so highly to sink in its reputation. They also think it
difficult to find out many of such an exalted pitch of goodness,
as to be equal to that dignity which demands the exercise of more
than ordinary virtues. Nor are the priests in greater veneration
among them than they are among their neighboring nations, as you
may imagine by that which I think gives occasion for it.
When the Utopians engage in battle, the priests who accompany
them to the war, apparelled in their sacred vestments, kneel down
during the action, in a place not far from the field; and lifting
up their hands to heaven, pray, first for peace, and then for
victory to their own side, and particularly that it may be gained
without the effusion of much blood on either side; and when the
victory turns to their side, they run in among their own men to
restrain their fury; and if any of their enemies see them, or
call to them, they are preserved by that means; and such as can
come so near them as to touch their garments, have not only their
lives, but their fortunes secured to them; it is upon this account
that all the nations round about consider them so much, and treat
them with such reverence, that they have been often no less able
to preserve their own people from the fury of their enemies, than
to save their enemies from their rage; for it has sometimes fallen
out, that when their armies have been in disorder, and forced
to fly, so that their enemies were running upon the slaughter
and spoil, the priests by interposing have separated them from
one another, and stopped the effusion of more blood; so that by
their mediation a peace has been concluded on very reasonable
terms; nor is there any nation about them so fierce, cruel, or
barbarous as not to look upon their persons as sacred and inviolable.
The first and the last day of the month, and of the year, is a
festival. They measure their months by the course of the moon,
and their years by the course of the sun. The first days are called
in their language the Cynemernes, and the last the Trapemernes;
which answers in our language to the festival that begins, or
ends, the season.
They have magnificent temples, that are not only nobly built,
but extremely spacious; which is the more necessary, as they have
so few of them; they are a little dark within, which proceeds
not from any error in the architecture, but is done with design;
for their priests think that too much light dissipates the thoughts,
and that a more moderate degree of it both recollects the mind
and raises devotion. Though there are many different forms of
religion among them, yet all these, how various soever, agree
in the main point, which is the worshipping of the Divine Essence;
and therefore there is nothing to be seen or heard in their temples
in which the several persuasions among them may not agree; for
every sect performs those rites that are peculiar to it, in their
private houses, nor is there anything in the public worship that
contradicts the particular ways of those different sects. There
are no images for God in their temples, so that everyone may represent
Him to his thoughts, according to the way of his religion; nor
do they call this one God by any other name than that of Mithras,
which is the common name by which they all express the Divine
Essence, whatsoever otherwise they think it to be; nor are there
any prayers among them but such as every one of them may use without
prejudice to his own opinion.
They meet in their temples on the evening of the festival that
concludes a season: and not having yet broke their fast, they
thank God for their good success during that year or month, which
is then at an end; and the next day being that which begins the
new season, they meet early in their temples, to pray for the
happy progress of all their affairs during that period upon which
they then enter. In the festival which concludes the period, before
they go to the temple, both wives and children fall on their knees
before their husbands or parents, and confess everything in which
they have either erred or failed in their duty, and beg pardon
for it. Thus all little discontents in families are removed, that
they may offer up their devotions with a pure and serene mind;
for they hold it a great impiety to enter upon them with disturbed
thoughts, or with a consciousness of their bearing hatred or anger
in their hearts to any person whatsoever; and think that they
should become liable to severe punishments if they presumed to
offer sacrifices without cleansing their hearts, and reconciling
all their differences. In the temples, the two sexes are separated,
the men go to the right hand, and the women to the left; and the
males and females all place themselves before the head and master
or mistress of that family to which they belong; so that those
who have the government of them at home may see their deportment
in public; and they intermingle them so, that the younger and
the older may be set by one another; for if the younger sort were
all set together, they would perhaps trifle away that time too
much in which they ought to beget in themselves that religious
dread of the Supreme Being, which is the greatest and almost the
only incitement to virtue.
They offer up no living creature in sacrifice, nor do they think
it suitable to the Divine Being, from whose bounty it is that
these creatures have derived their lives, to take pleasure in
their deaths, or the offering up of their blood. They burn incense
and other sweet odors, and have a great number of wax lights during
their worship; not out of any imagination that such oblations
can add anything to the divine nature, which even prayers cannot
do; but as it is a harmless and pure way of worshipping God, so
they think those sweet savors and lights, together with some other
ceremonies, by a secret and unaccountable virtue, elevate men's
souls, and inflame them with greater energy and cheerfulness during
the divine worship.
All the people appear in the temples in white garments, but the
priest's vestments are parti-colored, and both the work and colors
are wonderful. They are made of no rich materials, for they are
neither embroidered nor set with precious stones, but are composed
of the plumes of several birds, laid together with so much art
and so neatly, that the true value of them is far beyond the costliest
materials. They say that in the ordering and placing those plumes
some dark mysteries are represented, which pass down among their
priests in a secret tradition concerning them; and that they are
as hieroglyphics, putting them in mind of the blessings that they
have received from God, and of their duties both to Him and to
their neighbors. As soon as the priest appears in those ornaments,
they all fall prostrate on the ground, with so much reverence
and so deep a silence that such as look on cannot but be struck
with it, as if it were the effect of the appearance of a deity.
After they have been for some time in this posture, they all stand
up, upon a sign given by the priest, and sing hymns to the honor
of God, some musical instruments playing all the while. These
are quite of another form than those used among us: but as many
of them are much sweeter than ours, so others are made use of
by us.
Yet in one thing they very much exceed us; all their music, both
vocal and instrumental, is adapted to imitate and express the
passions, and is so happily suited to every occasion, that whether
the subject of the hymn be cheerful or formed to soothe or trouble
the mind, or to express grief or remorse, the music takes the
impression of whatever is represented, affects and kindles the
passions, and works the sentiments deep into the hearts of the
hearers. When this is done, both priests and people offer up very
solemn prayers to God in a set form of words; and these are so
composed, that whatsoever is pronounced by the whole assembly
may be likewise applied by every man in particular to his own
condition; in these they acknowledge God to be the author and
governor of the world, and the fountain of all the good they receive,
and therefore offer up to Him their thanksgiving; and in particular
bless Him for His goodness in ordering it so that they are born
under the happiest government in the world, and are of a religion
which they hope is the truest of all others: but if they are mistaken,
and if there is either a better government or a religion more
acceptable to God, they implore Him goodness to let them know
it, vowing that they resolve to follow Him whithersoever He leads
them. But if their government is the best and their religion the
truest, then they pray that He may fortify them in it, and bring
all the world both to the same rules of life, and to the same
opinions concerning Himself; unless, according to the unsearchableness
of His mind, He is pleased with a variety of religions. Then they
pray that God may give them an easy passage at last to Himself;
not presuming to set limits to Him, how early or late it should
be; but if it may be wished for, without derogating from His supreme
authority, they desire to be quickly delivered, and to be taken
to Himself, though by the most terrible kind of death, rather
than to be detained long from seeing Him by the most prosperous
course of life. When this prayer is ended, they all fall down
again upon the ground, and after a little while they rise up,
go home to dinner, and spend the rest of the day in diversion
or military exercises.
Thus have I described to you, as particularly as I could, the
constitution of that commonwealth, which I do not only think the
best in the world, but indeed the only commonwealth that truly
deserves that name. In all other places it is visible, that while
people talk of a commonwealth, every man only seeks his own wealth;
but there, where no man has any property, all men zealously pursue
the good of the public: and, indeed, it is no wonder to see men
act so differently; for in other commonwealths, every man knows
that unless he provides for himself, how flourishing soever the
commonwealth may be, he must die of hunger; so that he sees the
necessity of preferring his own concerns to the public; but in
Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they all know
that if care is taken to keep the public stores full, no private
man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution,
so that no man is poor, none in necessity; and though no man has
anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich
as to lead a serene and cheerful life, free from anxieties; neither
apprehending want himself, nor vexed with the endless complaints
of his wife? He is not afraid of the misery of his children, nor
is he contriving how to raise a portion for his daughters, but
is secure in this, that both he and his wife, his children and
grandchildren, to as many generations as he can fancy, will all
live both plentifully and happily; since among them there is no
less care taken of those who were once engaged in labor, but grow
afterward unable to follow it, than there is elsewhere of these
that continue still employed.
I would gladly hear any man compare the justice that is among
them with that of all other nations; among whom, may I perish,
if I see anything that looks either like justice or equity: for
what justice is there in this, that a nobleman, a goldsmith, a
banker, or any other man, that either does nothing at all, or
at best is employed in things that are of no use to the public,
should live in great luxury and splendor, upon what is so ill
acquired; and a mean man, a carter, a smith, or a ploughman, that
works harder even than the beasts themselves, and is employed
in labors so necessary, that no commonwealth could hold out a
year without them, can only earn so poor a livelihood, and must
lead so miserable a life, that the condition of the beasts is
much better than theirs? For as the beasts do not work so constantly,
so they feed almost as well, and with more pleasure; and have
no anxiety about what is to come, whilst these men are depressed
by a barren and fruitless employment, and tormented with the apprehensions
of want in their old age; since that which they get by their daily
labor does but maintain them at present, and is consumed as fast
as it comes in, there is no overplus left to lay up for old age.
Is not that government both unjust and ungrateful, that is so
prodigal of its favors to those that are called gentlemen, or
goldsmiths, or such others who are idle, or live either by flattery,
or by contriving the arts of vain pleasure; and on the other hand,
takes no care of those of a meaner sort, such as ploughmen, colliers,
and smiths, without whom it could not subsist? But after the public
has reaped all the advantage of their service, and they come to
be oppressed with age, sickness, and want, all their labors and
the good they have done is forgotten; and all the recompense given
them is that they are left to die in great misery. The richer
sort are often endeavoring to bring the hire of laborers lower,
not only by their fraudulent practices, but by the laws which
they procure to be made to that effect; so that though it is a
thing most unjust in itself, to give such small rewards to those
who deserve so well of the public, yet they have given those hardships
the name and color of justice, by procuring laws to be made for
regulating them.
Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no
other notion of all the other governments that I see or know,
than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who on pretence of
managing the public only pursue their private ends, and devise
all the ways and arts they can find out; first, that they may,
without danger, preserve all that they have so ill acquired, and
then that they may engage the poor to toil and labor for them
at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they
please. And if they can but prevail to get these contrivances
established by the show of public authority, which is considered
as the representative of the whole people, then they are accounted
laws. Yet these wicked men after they have, by a most insatiable
covetousness, divided that among themselves with which all the
rest might have been well supplied, are far from that happiness
that is enjoyed among the Utopians: for the use as well as the
desire of money being extinguished, much anxiety and great occasions
of mischief is cut off with it. And who does not see that the
frauds, thefts, robberies, quarrels, tumults, contentions, seditions,
murders, treacheries, and witchcrafts, which are indeed rather
punished than restrained by the severities of law, would all fall
off, if money were not any more valued by the world? Men's fears,
solicitudes, cares, labors, and watchings, would all perish in
the same moment with the value of money: even poverty itself,
for the relief of which money seems most necessary, would fall.
But, in order to the apprehending this aright, take one instance.
Consider any year that has been so unfruitful that many thousands
have died of hunger; and yet if at the end of that year a survey
was made of the granaries of all the rich men that have hoarded
up the corn, it would be found that there was enough among them
to have prevented all that consumption of men that perished in
misery; and that if it had been distributed among them, none would
have felt the terrible effects of that scarcity; so easy a thing
would it be to supply all the necessities of life, if that blessed
thing called money, which is pretended to be invented for procuring
them, was not really the only thing that obstructed their being
procured!
I do not doubt but rich men are sensible of this, and that they
well know how much a greater happiness it is to want nothing necessary
than to abound in many superfluities, and to be rescued out of
so much misery than to abound with so much wealth; and I cannot
think but the sense of every man's interest, added to the authority
of Christ's commands, who as He was infinitely wise, knew what
was best, and was not less good in discovering it to us, would
have drawn all the world over to the laws of the Utopians, if
pride, that plague of human nature, that source of so much misery,
did not hinder it; for this vice does not measure happiness so
much by its own conveniences as by the miseries of others; and
would not be satisfied with being thought a goddess, if none were
left that were miserable, over whom she might insult. Pride thinks
its own happiness shines the brighter by comparing it with the
misfortunes of other persons; that by displaying its own wealth,
they may feel their poverty the more sensibly. This is that infernal
serpent that creeps into the breasts of mortals, and possesses
them too much to be easily drawn out; and therefore I am glad
that the Utopians have fallen upon this form of government, in
which I wish that all the world could be so wise as to imitate
them; for they have indeed laid down such a scheme and foundation
of policy, that as men live happily under it, so it is like to
be of great continuance; for they having rooted out of the minds
of their people all the seeds both of ambition and faction, there
is no danger of any commotion at home; which alone has been the
ruin of many States that seemed otherwise to be well secured;
but as long as they live in peace at home, and are governed by
such good laws, the envy of all their neighboring princes, who
have often though in vain attempted their ruin, will never be
able to put their State into any commotion or disorder.
When Raphael had thus made an end of speaking, though many things
occurred to me, both concerning the manners and laws of that people,
that seemed very absurd, as well in their way of making war, as
in their notions of religion and divine matters; together with
several other particulars, but chiefly what seemed the foundation
of all the rest, their living in common, without the use of money,
by which all nobility, magnificence, splendor, and majesty, which,
according to the common opinion, are the true ornaments of a nation,
would be quite taken away; -yet since I perceived that Raphael
was weary, and was not sure whether he could easily bear contradiction,
remembering that he had taken notice of some who seemed to think
they were bound in honor to support the credit of their own wisdom,
by finding out something to censure in all other men's inventions,
besides their own; I only commended their constitution, and the
account he had given of it in general; and so taking him by the
hand, carried him to supper, and told him I would find out some
other time for examining this subject more particularly, and for
discoursing more copiously upon it; and indeed I shall be glad
to embrace an opportunity of doing it. In the meanwhile, though
it must be confessed that he is both a very learned man, and a
person who has obtained a great knowledge of the world, I cannot
perfectly agree to everything he has related; however, there are
many things in the Commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish,
than hope, to see followed in our governments.
[End.]
Source:
The Internet Wiretap edition of UTOPIA, by SIR THOMAS MORE
(Written in 1516.)
From Ideal Commonwealths, P.F. Collier & Son, New York.
(c)1901 The Colonial Press, expired.
Prepared by Kirk Crady <kcrady@polaris.cv.nrao.edu> from
scanner output provided by Internet Wiretap.
HTML by Paul Halsall.
This book is in the public domain, released July 1993.
This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted
texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World
history.
Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the
document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying,
distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal
use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source.
No permission is granted for commercial use of the Sourcebook.
(c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997
