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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Utopia, by Thomas More
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Utopia
+
+Author: Thomas More
+
+Editor: Henry Morley
+
+Release Date: April, 2000 [eBook #2130]
+[Most recently updated: April 7, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David Price
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UTOPIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Utopia
+
+by Thomas More
+
+
+Contents
+
+ INTRODUCTION
+ DISCOURSES OF RAPHAEL HYTHLODAY, OF THE BEST STATE OF A COMMONWEALTH
+ OF THEIR TOWNS, PARTICULARLY OF AMAUROT
+ OF THEIR MAGISTRATES
+ OF THEIR TRADES, AND MANNER OF LIFE
+ OF THEIR TRAFFIC
+ OF THE TRAVELLING OF THE UTOPIANS
+ OF THEIR SLAVES, AND OF THEIR MARRIAGES
+ OF THEIR MILITARY DISCIPLINE
+ OF THE RELIGIONS OF THE UTOPIANS
+
+
+
+
+UTOPIA
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Sir Thomas More, son of Sir John More, a justice of the King’s Bench,
+was born in 1478, in Milk Street, in the city of London. After his
+earlier education at St. Anthony’s School, in Threadneedle Street, he
+was placed, as a boy, in the household of Cardinal John Morton,
+Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. It was not unusual for
+persons of wealth or influence and sons of good families to be so
+established together in a relation of patron and client. The youth wore
+his patron’s livery, and added to his state. The patron used,
+afterwards, his wealth or influence in helping his young client forward
+in the world. Cardinal Morton had been in earlier days that Bishop of
+Ely whom Richard III. sent to the Tower; was busy afterwards in
+hostility to Richard; and was a chief adviser of Henry VII., who in
+1486 made him Archbishop of Canterbury, and nine months afterwards Lord
+Chancellor. Cardinal Morton—of talk at whose table there are
+recollections in “Utopia”—delighted in the quick wit of young Thomas
+More. He once said, “Whoever shall live to try it, shall see this child
+here waiting at table prove a notable and rare man.”
+
+At the age of about nineteen, Thomas More was sent to Canterbury
+College, Oxford, by his patron, where he learnt Greek of the first men
+who brought Greek studies from Italy to England—William Grocyn and
+Thomas Linacre. Linacre, a physician, who afterwards took orders, was
+also the founder of the College of Physicians. In 1499, More left
+Oxford to study law in London, at Lincoln’s Inn, and in the next year
+Archbishop Morton died.
+
+More’s earnest character caused him while studying law to aim at the
+subduing of the flesh, by wearing a hair shirt, taking a log for a
+pillow, and whipping himself on Fridays. At the age of twenty-one he
+entered Parliament, and soon after he had been called to the bar he was
+made Under-Sheriff of London. In 1503 he opposed in the House of
+Commons Henry VII.’s proposal for a subsidy on account of the marriage
+portion of his daughter Margaret; and he opposed with so much energy
+that the House refused to grant it. One went and told the king that a
+beardless boy had disappointed all his expectations. During the last
+years, therefore, of Henry VII. More was under the displeasure of the
+king, and had thoughts of leaving the country.
+
+Henry VII. died in April, 1509, when More’s age was a little over
+thirty. In the first years of the reign of Henry VIII. he rose to large
+practice in the law courts, where it is said he refused to plead in
+cases which he thought unjust, and took no fees from widows, orphans,
+or the poor. He would have preferred marrying the second daughter of
+John Colt, of New Hall, in Essex, but chose her elder sister, that he
+might not subject her to the discredit of being passed over.
+
+In 1513 Thomas More, still Under-Sheriff of London, is said to have
+written his “History of the Life and Death of King Edward V., and of
+the Usurpation of Richard III.” The book, which seems to contain the
+knowledge and opinions of More’s patron, Morton, was not printed until
+1557, when its writer had been twenty-two years dead. It was then
+printed from a MS. in More’s handwriting.
+
+In the year 1515 Wolsey, Archbishop of York, was made Cardinal by Leo
+X.; Henry VIII. made him Lord Chancellor, and from that year until 1523
+the King and the Cardinal ruled England with absolute authority, and
+called no parliament. In May of the year 1515 Thomas More—not knighted
+yet—was joined in a commission to the Low Countries with Cuthbert
+Tunstal and others to confer with the ambassadors of Charles V., then
+only Archduke of Austria, upon a renewal of alliance. On that embassy
+More, aged about thirty-seven, was absent from England for six months,
+and while at Antwerp he established friendship with Peter Giles
+(Latinised Ægidius), a scholarly and courteous young man, who was
+secretary to the municipality of Antwerp.
+
+Cuthbert Tunstal was a rising churchman, chancellor to the Archbishop
+of Canterbury, who in that year (1515) was made Archdeacon of Chester,
+and in May of the next year (1516) Master of the Rolls. In 1516 he was
+sent again to the Low Countries, and More then went with him to
+Brussels, where they were in close companionship with Erasmus.
+
+More’s “Utopia” was written in Latin, and is in two parts, of which the
+second, describing the place ([Greek text]—or Nusquama, as he called it
+sometimes in his letters—“Nowhere”), was probably written towards the
+close of 1515; the first part, introductory, early in 1516. The book
+was first printed at Louvain, late in 1516, under the editorship of
+Erasmus, Peter Giles, and other of More’s friends in Flanders. It was
+then revised by More, and printed by Frobenius at Basle in November,
+1518. It was reprinted at Paris and Vienna, but was not printed in
+England during More’s lifetime. Its first publication in this country
+was in the English translation, made in Edward’s VI.’s reign (1551) by
+Ralph Robinson. It was translated with more literary skill by Gilbert
+Burnet, in 1684, soon after he had conducted the defence of his friend
+Lord William Russell, attended his execution, vindicated his memory,
+and been spitefully deprived by James II. of his lectureship at St.
+Clement’s. Burnet was drawn to the translation of “Utopia” by the same
+sense of unreason in high places that caused More to write the book.
+Burnet’s is the translation given in this volume.
+
+The name of the book has given an adjective to our language—we call an
+impracticable scheme Utopian. Yet, under the veil of a playful fiction,
+the talk is intensely earnest, and abounds in practical suggestion. It
+is the work of a scholarly and witty Englishman, who attacks in his own
+way the chief political and social evils of his time. Beginning with
+fact, More tells how he was sent into Flanders with Cuthbert Tunstal,
+“whom the king’s majesty of late, to the great rejoicing of all men,
+did prefer to the office of Master of the Rolls;” how the commissioners
+of Charles met them at Bruges, and presently returned to Brussels for
+instructions; and how More then went to Antwerp, where he found a
+pleasure in the society of Peter Giles which soothed his desire to see
+again his wife and children, from whom he had been four months away.
+Then fact slides into fiction with the finding of Raphael Hythloday
+(whose name, made of two Greek words [Greek text] and [Greek text],
+means “knowing in trifles”), a man who had been with Amerigo Vespucci
+in the three last of the voyages to the new world lately discovered, of
+which the account had been first printed in 1507, only nine years
+before Utopia was written.
+
+Designedly fantastic in suggestion of details, “Utopia” is the work of
+a scholar who had read Plato’s “Republic,” and had his fancy quickened
+after reading Plutarch’s account of Spartan life under Lycurgus.
+Beneath the veil of an ideal communism, into which there has been
+worked some witty extravagance, there lies a noble English argument.
+Sometimes More puts the case as of France when he means England.
+Sometimes there is ironical praise of the good faith of Christian
+kings, saving the book from censure as a political attack on the policy
+of Henry VIII. Erasmus wrote to a friend in 1517 that he should send
+for More’s “Utopia,” if he had not read it, and “wished to see the true
+source of all political evils.” And to More Erasmus wrote of his book,
+“A burgomaster of Antwerp is so pleased with it that he knows it all by
+heart.”
+
+H. M.
+
+
+
+
+DISCOURSES OF RAPHAEL HYTHLODAY, OF THE BEST STATE OF A COMMONWEALTH
+
+
+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 companion 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 lantern.” 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 honour, 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 candour and affection,
+that there is not, perhaps, above one or two anywhere to be found, that
+is 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 Vesputius, 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 heavens 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 Castalians, 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 past 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 Vesputius 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 waggons 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 neighbours, but traded, both by sea and land, to very
+remote countries. There they found the conveniencies 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, afterwards, 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 favour 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 civilised
+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; we made no inquiries after monsters, than
+which nothing is more common; for everywhere one may hear of ravenous
+dogs and wolves, and cruel men-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 new-discovered
+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
+past, 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, is 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
+sakes 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 favour 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 council 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 favour,
+whom by their fawning and flatteries they endeavour 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 interests 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 grave; he 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 labour, on the labour 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 neighbourhood 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 honour 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 into 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 trick or by main force, or, being wearied
+out by 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 labour, 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 likely 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 labour 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
+ale-houses are no better; add to these dice, cards, tables, football,
+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 be 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 those 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 men in making laws can authorise
+man-slaughter 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 licence 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 much 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 Persian, secure them from all
+invasions. Thus they have no wars among them; they live rather
+conveniently than with splendour, 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 neighbours. 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 happens to be some extraordinary circumstance
+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 labour; 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 or 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, besides their livelihood, they earn somewhat still to the public.
+They all wear a peculiar habit, of one certain colour, 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 colour; 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 are
+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 had 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 neighbourhood can do nothing
+to any purpose unless a general conspiracy were laid amongst 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 sentence of death were 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 labour,
+‘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 labour, 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 the 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 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
+honour 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 counsels.” “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 counsels 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 endeavouring 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 I 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 has so often 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 counsels
+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 that 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 counsels
+how to carry on the war, if so mean a man as I should stand up and wish
+them to change all their counsels—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 south-east 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
+interest of either. When they saw this, and that there would be no end
+to these evils, they by joint counsels 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 also been 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 licences 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 favour 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 colour 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 through
+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 favour. It will either be said that equity lies of 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 willing to submit to a cruel
+and unjust government. Whereas necessity and poverty blunts them, makes
+them patient, beats them down, and breaks 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 counsels
+were both unbecoming a king and mischievous to him; and that not only
+his honour, 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 endeavours, 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, having 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 ill usage, 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 make 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 be 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
+endeavour 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 began to reign,
+is tied by an oath, confirmed by solemn sacrifices, never to have at
+once above a thousand 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
+moderate sum might be sufficient for any accident, if either the king
+had occasion for it against the 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 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’ 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
+as 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 argument,” answered he, “all that I could
+be able to do would be to preserve myself from being mad while I
+endeavoured 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, leave 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 housetops 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 seem 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, ‘were 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 every one 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 favourable 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 effect 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 labour? 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 falls 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 twelve hundred years
+ago, and that some Romans and Egyptians that were in the ship, getting
+safe ashore, spent the rest of their days amongst 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 aftertimes
+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:—
+
+“The island of Utopia is in the middle two hundred miles broad, and
+holds almost at the same breadth over a great part of it, but it grows
+narrower towards 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 five hundred miles, and is well secured from winds. In this bay
+there is no great current; the whole coast is, as it were, one
+continued harbour, 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, easily be 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
+harbours; 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 remains 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 uncivilised 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 labour 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 neighbours, 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 their 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 furnished with all things necessary for country labour.
+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 a vast number 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 labour, 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
+liquorice, 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 neighbours. 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 where 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 all together 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 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 the ships, without any
+hindrance, 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 towns; that so, 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 small river cannot be conveyed, they have great
+cisterns for receiving the rain-water, which supplies the want of the
+other. The town is compassed 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 both 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 humour 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 backwards
+seventeen hundred and sixty 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 storeys high, the fronts of them are faced
+either 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 Tranibore, but of late the
+Archphilarch. All the Syphogrants, who are in number two hundred,
+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 him their voices secretly, so that it is
+not known for whom every one 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 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
+amongst 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 or 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 opposition 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 labour 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 labours
+mankind is supplied is much less than you perhaps imagined: then
+consider how few of those that work are employed in labours 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 labour 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
+labour, 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 five hundred,
+either men or women, by their age and strength capable of labour, 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
+labour, 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 labour, you may easily
+make the estimate how much may be done in those few hours in which they
+are obliged to labour. But, besides all that has been already said, it
+is to be considered that the needful arts among them are managed with
+less labour 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 buildings are preserved very long with but very
+little labour, 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
+labour they are clothed with leather and skins, cut 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
+colour, and that is the natural colour 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 labour, 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 colours, and as many vests of silk, will
+scarce serve one man, and while those that are nicer think ten 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 labour, 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 labour, since the
+chief end of the constitution is to regulate labour by the necessities
+of the public, and to allow 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
+grand-children, 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 six
+thousand families, besides those of the country around 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 neighbouring 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 market-place. 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 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 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 towards 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 amongst 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 any one that can do it offers
+herself cheerfully; for as they are much inclined to that piece of
+mercy, so the child whom they 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 the Syphogranty, the Priest
+and his wife sit with the Syphogrant above 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 honoured 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 every one’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 a great distance, every one 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 licence that is
+granted for travelling, and limits the time of their return. They are
+furnished with a waggon and a slave, who drives the oxen and looks
+after them; but, unless there are women in the company, the waggon 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
+for nothing, but are everywhere treated as if they were at home. If
+they stay in any place longer than a night, every one 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 labour with them and conform to their rules; and if he
+does this, he may freely go over the whole precinct, being then 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 labour. There are no taverns, no ale-houses, 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
+task 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 unfavourable season), they order an exportation of the overplus,
+both 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 neighbours 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 them 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 known 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 earring of gold, and make others wear a
+chain or a 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 were
+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 coasts, 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 afterwards 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 splendour. Thus three ambassadors made their entry with a hundred
+attendants, all clad in garments of different colours, 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,
+earrings 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 either 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 ambassadors’ 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 their 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 formed 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 man, 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 honours, 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 have 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 labour 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, both 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 a 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 every one, 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 cause of the
+saltness of the sea, of its ebbing and flowing, and of the original 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 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 endeavours 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 favourite 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 advantage 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 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 stole, 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 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 too frequent returns of so
+brutal a pleasure, must degenerate into it.
+
+“Thus though the rabble 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 taste 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 subtlety 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 vigour? 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 arise out of true virtue and the
+witness 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 any one may easily see would be not only a base, but a miserable,
+state of a 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 are to be valued any further than as they are 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
+seasoning 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 favours, and therefore rejects 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 whatever 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 art 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 labour 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 labour 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 Dioscerides. 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 honours 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
+amongst 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 barks of trees; but now they have established the
+manufactures of paper and set up printing presses, 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 neighbouring 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 labour, 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 neighbouring
+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 labour 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
+out-lived 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 honourable, so if any man takes away his own life
+without the approbation of the priests and the senate, they give him
+none of the honours 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 handsbreadth of the face, all the rest of the body
+being covered, under which 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 clothes as may totally alienate a man from his
+wife, when it is too late to part with 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 consort, 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 labour
+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
+labour 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 labour 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 behaviour 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 honours; 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 honour 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
+labour 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 neighbours, 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 honour 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 Neighbours; 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 the 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 new-found
+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 sort 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 confederacy. 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
+neighbours 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 licence of preying upon each other, if, by the unskilfulness of
+wording them, there are not effectual provisoes 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 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
+neighbour makes an inroad on another by public order, and carries 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 colour 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 neighbours 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 neighbours more than their own
+citizens; but, since their neighbours trade every one 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 no thing 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 are 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 honour 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 there 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
+immeasurably 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 their 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 neighbours 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
+convenience 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 five
+hundred 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 labour, 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 man 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 all 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 parent, 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
+vigour 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, wresting 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 day-time, 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 is finished in so short a time that it
+is scarce credible. Their armour 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 practise 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 oppose 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 honours 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 honours 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 accidents, 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 it seemed so favourable
+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 priests’
+orders, we, therefore, could only baptise 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
+baptised 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 endeavour to draw others to it by the 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 man 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 honours 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 priest, 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 loath to part
+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 behaviour 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 honour 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
+stone. 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 labour 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 labour: 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 endeavours 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 labour;
+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 labour 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 employments 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 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 ill opinions. 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 have greater honour paid them 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 honour 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 neighbouring 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 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 every one may represent Him to
+his thoughts according to the way of his religion; nor do they call
+this one God by any other name but 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
+the 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 their blood. They burn incense and other sweet
+odours, 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 savours 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-coloured, and both the work and colours
+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 blessing that they have received from God, and of
+their duties, both to Him and to their neighbours. 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 honour 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 His 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
+grand-children, 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 labour, but grow afterwards
+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 splendour 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 labours 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 labour 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 favours 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 labours 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 endeavouring to bring
+the hire of labourers 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 colour 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 labour 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,
+labours, 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
+commotions 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
+neighbouring 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, splendour, 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 honour
+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 OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UTOPIA ***
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