Utapia
made of papyrus-reeds and wicker, occasionally of leather. Farther
on they found ships with pointed keels and canvas sails, in every
respect like our own. The seamen were skilled in managing wind
and water; but they were most grateful to him, Raphael said, for
showing them the use of the compass, of which they had been ignorant.
For that reason they had formerly sailed with great timidity,
and only in summer. Now they have such trust in the compass that
they no longer fear winter at all, and tend to be rash rather than cautious.
There is some danger that through their imprudence this discovery,
which they thought would be so advantageous to them, may
become the cause of much mischief.
It would take too long to repeat all that Raphael told us he had
observed in various places, nor would it altogether serve our present
purpose. Perhaps on another occasion we shall tell more about the
things that are most profitable, especially the wise and sensible institutions
that he observed among the civilised nations. We asked him
many eager questions about such things, and he answered us willingly
enough. We made no inquiries, howevcer, about monsters,
which are the routine of travellers’ tales. Scyllas, ravenous Celaenos,
man-eating Lestrygonians'? and that sort of monstrosity you
can hardly avoid, but to find governments wisely established and
sensibly ruled is not so easy. While he told us of many ill-considered
usages in these new-found nations, he also described quite a few
other customs from which our own cities, nations, races and kingdoms
might take lessons in arder to carrect their errors. These 1
shall discuss in another place, as I said. Now [ intend to relate only
what he told us about the manners and instdtutions of the Utopians,'®
first explaining the occasion that led him to speak of that
commonwealth. Raphael had been discoursing very thoughtfully on
the many errors and also the wiser institutions found both in that
12 8cylla, a six-headed sea monster, appears in both the Odyssay {x1.73-100, 234-59) and
the Aeneid (n1.420~32}. Celaeno, one of the Harpies (hirds with women’s faces),
appears in the Aeneid {11.200-58). The Lestrygonians were gigantic cannibals in the
Odyssey (x.76-132).
13 At this point the dialogue suddenly goes off on a different tack The account of Ctopia
is postponed; and the ensuing conversation includes, among other things, precisely
those marters that More has just said he won't relate: Hythloday's descriptions of the
practices of other new-found nations. As J. I1. Hexter argues (Mores ‘Litopia’: The
EBiography of an ldea, pp. 18—21; CW, v, xviii—xy), it was almost certainly here that More
opened a seam in the first version of Litopia to insert the additons that constitute the
remainder of Book 1. Sec Introduction, pp. xvi—xvii.
Book 1
hemisphere and in this (as many of both sorts in one place as in the
other), speaking as shrewdly about the manners and governments of
each place he had briefly visited as if he had lived there all his life.
Peter was amazed.
‘My dear Raphael,’ he said, ‘I'm surprised that you don’t enter
somec king's service; for I don’t know of a single prince who
wouldn’t be glad to have you. Your learning and vour knowledge of
various countries and men would entertain him while your advice
and supply of examples would be helpful at the counsel board. Thus
you might advance your own interest agreeably and be of great use at
the same time to all your relatives and friends.’
‘About my relatives and friends,” he replied, ‘I'm not much concerned,
because I consider I've already done my duty by them.
While still young and healthy, I distributed among my relatives and
friends the possessions that most men do not part with till they’re old
and sick {and then only reluctantly, when they can no longer keep
thern). [ think they should be content with this gift of mine, and not
expect, far less insist, that for their sake I should enslave myself to
any king whatever.’
“Well said,’ Peter replied; ‘but I do not mean that you should be in
servitude to any king, only in his service.’
“The differencce is only a matter of one syllable,” Raphael replied.
*All right.” said Peter, ‘but whatever you call it, I do not see any
other way in which you can be so useful to vour friends or to the
general public, in additon to making yourself happier.’
‘Happier indeed!” exclaimed Raphael. “Would a way of life so
absolutely repellent to my spirit make my life happier? As it is now, [
live as I please,'* and I fancy very few courtiers, however splendid,
can say that, As a matter of fact, there are so0 many men soliciting
favours from the great that it will be no great loss if they have to do
without me and a couple of others like me.’
Then I said, ‘It is clear, my dear Raphacl, that you seek neither
wealth nor power, and indeed I prize and revere a man of your disposition
no less than I do the greatest persons in the world. Yet |
think if you would devote your fime and energy to public affairs, you
would be doing something worthy of a gencrous and truly philo'
Hythloday paraphrases Cicero’s definition of liberty, which occurs in a context similar
to the present one (OnMeral Obligation 1.xx.60-70}.
3
Utopia
sophical nature, even if you did not much like it. You could best perform
such a service by joining the council of some great prince,
whom you would incite to just and noble actions. I'm sure you would
do this if you held such an office, and your influence would be felt,
because a people’s welfare or misery flows in a stream from their
prince as from a never-failing spring. Your learning is so full, even
if it weren’t combined with experience, and your experience is so
great, even apart from your learning, that you would be an extraordinary
counsellor to amy king in the world.’
“You are twice mistaken, my dear More,’ he replied, *first in me
and then in the situation itself. I don’t have the capacity you ascribe
to me, and if I had it in the highest degree, the public would not be
any better off if T bartered my peace of mind for some ruler’s convenience.
In the first place, most princes apply themselves to the arts of
war, in which I have neither interest nor ability, instead of to the
good arts of peace. They arc generally more set on acquiring new
kingdoms by hook or crouk than on governing well those they
already have. Moreover, the counsellors of kings are so wise already
that they don’t need advice from anyone else — or at least they have
that opinion of themselves. At the same time they endorse and flatter
the most absurd statements of the prince’s special favourites,
through whose influence they hope to stand well with the prince. [€'s
only natural, of course, thar each man should think his own
opinions best: the old crow loves his fledgling and the ape his cub.
‘Now in a court composed of people who envy everyone else and
admire only themselves, if a man should suggest something he had
read of in other ages or seen in practice elsewhere, the other counsellors
would think their reputation for wisdom was endangercd,
and henceforth they would look like simpletons, unless they could
find fault with his praposal. If all else failed, they would take refuge
in some remark like this: “The way we’re doing it is the way we've
always done it, this custom was good encugh for our fathers, and 1
only hope we’re as wise as they were.” And with this deep thought
they would take their seats, as though they had said the last word on
the subject — implying, forsooth, that it would be a very dangerous
matter if a man were found to be wiser on any point than his forefathers
were. As amatter of fact, we quietly neglect the best examnples
they have left us; but if something better is proposed, we seize the
excuse of reverence for times past and cling to it desperately, Such
14
Book 1
proud, obstinate, ridiculous judgements I have encountered many
times, and once even in England.’
‘What!’ [ asked, “Were you everin England?” N
‘Yes,” he answered, ‘I spent several months there. It was not long
after the revolt of the Cornishmen against the King had been put
down with great slaughter of the poor folk involved.!®> During my
stay I was deeply beholden to the reverend prelate John Cardinal
Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and also at that time Lord
Chancellor of England.'® He was a man, my dear Peter {for More
knows about him and can tell what I'm going to say), as much
respected for his wisdom and virtue as for his anthority. He was of
medium height, not bent over despite his age; his looks inspired
respect, not fear, In conversation, he was not forbidding, though
serious and grave. When petitioners came to him on business, he
liked to test their spirit and presence of mind by speaking to them
sharply, though not rudely. He liked to uncover these qualities,
which were those of his own nature, as long as they were not carried
to the point of effrontery; and he thoughtsuch men were best qualified
to carry on business. His speech was polished and pointed, his
knowledge of the law was great, he had a vast understanding and a
prodigious memory, for he had improved excellent natural abilities
by constant study and practice. At the time when I was in England,
the King depended greatly on his advice, and he seemed the mainspring
of all public affairs. He had left school for the court when
scarcely more than a boy, had devoted all his life to important business,
and had acquired from many changes of fortune and at great
cost a supply of wisdom, which is not soon lostwhen so purchased.
‘It happened one day when I was dining with him there was present
3 layman, learned in the laws of your country, who for some
reason took occasion to praise the rigid execution of justice then
being practsed on thieves. They were being executed everywhere,
he said, with as many as twenty at a time being hanged on a single
gallows.!” And then he declared he could not understand how so
1% Angered by Henry VII's rapacious taxation, an army of Cornishmen marched on Lon'
don in1497. They were defeated atthe Battle of Blackheath and savagely slaughtered.
More had deeply admired Morton (1420~1500) since serving as a page in his houseB
hold. There is asimilar portrait of him in The History of King RichardT (Ci¥, 11, go—1),
‘ Holinshed the chronicler reports that, in the reign of Henry VIIT alone, 72,000 thieves
were hanged (Holinshed's Chronicles foff England, Scotland, and Ireland, 6 vols. (London,
1807; rpt, New York, 1965), 1, 314).
5
Cfunfust laws
Haw to reduce the
number of thieves
Utopia
many thieves sprang up everywhere when so few of them escaped
hanging. I ventured to speak freely before the Cardinal, and said,
“There is no need to wonder: this way of punishing thieves goes
beyond the call of justice, and is not in any case for the public good.
The penalty is too harsh in itself, yet it isn’t an effective deterrent.
Simple theft is not so great a crime that it ought to cost a man his
head, yet no punishment however severe can restrain men from robbery
when they have no other way to eat. In this matter not only you
in England but a good part of the world seem to imitate bad schoolmasters,
who would rather whip their pupils than teach them.
Severe and terrible punishments are enacted for theft, when it
would be much better to enable every man to earn his own living,
instead of being driven to the awful necessity of stealing and then
dyingforit.”
¢“(Oh, we've taken care of all that”, said the fellow. “There are
the trades and there is farming by which men may make a living,
unless they choose deliberately todo evil.”
“““Oh no, you don’t,” I said, “you won’t get out of it that way. We
may overlook the cripples who come home from foreign and civil
wars, as lately from the Cornish battle and before that from your
wars with France.® These men, who have lost limbs in the service
of king and country, are too shattered to follow their old trades and
too old to learn new ones. But since wars occur only from tme to
time, let us, I say, overlook these men and see what happens every
day. There are a great many noblemen who live idly like drones off
the 1abour of others,'? their tenants whom they bleed white by constantly
raising their rents. {This is the only instance of their tightfistedness,
because they are prodigal in everything else, ready to
18 Gince the dramatic date of the conversation is 1497 or shortly thereafter, Hythloday
may refer to the relatively small number ofcasualties suffered by the English during
the sporadic hostilities in France in 148g—g2. But More is probably thinking of the heavier
casualties of Henry VIII’s French excursions of 1512-13.
Y9 In the Republic, Socrates uses the same metaphor to describe the kind of monied individual
who contributes nothing to society: ‘Though he may have appeared 10 belong
to the ruling class, surely in fact he was neither ruling, nor serving society inany other
way; he was merely a consumer of goods ... Don’t you think we can fairly call him a
drone?’ (viiL528~C). In general, Plato’s characterisation of oligarchy seems to have
provided More with a framework for organising his observations on the condition of
England. An oligarchy is ‘a society where it is wealth that counts, ... and in which
palitical power is in the hands of the rich and the poor have no share of it” (vii.z50C).
The ‘worst defect’ of such a society is that it generates functionless people (5524).
16
Book
spend their way to the poorhouse.) What’s more, these gentry drag
around with them a great train of idle servants, who have never
learned any trade by which they could make a living.?® As soon as
their master dies, or they themselves fall ill, they are promptly
turned out of doors, for lords would rather support idlers than invalids,
and the son is often unable to maintain as big a household as
his father had, at least at first. Those who are turned out scon set
about starving, unless they set about stealing. What else can they do?
Then when a wandering life has taken the edge off their health and
the ploss off their clothes, when their faces look pinched and their
garments tattered, men of rank will not want to engage them. And
country folk dare not do so, for they don’t have to be told that one
who has been raised softly to idle pleasures, who has been used to
swaggering about like 2 bully with sword and buckler, is likely to
look down on the whole neighbourhood and despise everybody clse
as beneath him. Such a man can’tbe put to work with spade and mattock;
he will not serve a poor man laboriously for scant wages and
sparse diet.”
‘““We ought to encourage these men’in particular”, said the lawyer.
“In case of war the stoength of our army depends on them
because they have a bolder and nobler spirit than workmen and
farmers have,”
*“You may as well say that thieves should be encouraged for the
sake of wars,” I answered, “since vou will never lack for thieves as
long as you have men like these. Just as some thieves are notbad soldiers,
some soldiers turn out to be pretty good robbers, so nearly are
these two ways of life related.*! But the custom of keeping too many
retainers, though frequent here, is not yours alone, it is common to
almost all nations. France suffers from an even more grievous
Plague. Even in peacetime, if you can call it peace, the whole country
is crowded with foreign mercenaries, imported on the same principle
that you've given for your noblemen keeping idle servants.”>
) .
Some of these retziners were household servants; others constituted the remnants of
I:he private a.l'lI}iBS which, in a feudal society, followed every lord. In the reign of Henry
V1L the latter kind of reraining was sharply curtailed. ’
21 . "
The close kinship between the professions of soldier and robber is a frequent theme of
ifi;fi;fi;{ifiher humanists. See, for example, Erasmus’ Complaint of Peace (CWE,
22 In
the early sixteenth century, French infantry forces were mainly Swiss and German
[ErCEenaries.
The mischiefof
standing armies
U'topia
Wisc fools?® have a saying that the public safety depends on having
ready a strong army, preferably of veteran soldiers. They think
inexperienced men are not reliable, and they sometimes hunt Ul,lt
pretexts for war, just so they may have trained soldiers; hem?c men’s
throats are cut for no reason — lest, as Sallust neatly puts it, ‘hand
and spirit grow dull through lack of practice’.* But France has
learned to her cost how pernicious it is to feed such beasts. The
examples of the Romans, the Carthaginians, the Syrians and many
other peaples show the same thing; for not only their governments
but their fields and even their citics were ruined more than once
by their own standing armies.” Besides, this preparedness is unnecessary:
not even the French soldiers, practised in arms from
their cra'dlcs, can boast of having often got the best of your raw
recruits.2® I shall say no more on this point, lest I seem to flatter
present company, At any rate, neither your town workmen nor your
rough farm labourers, as long as they're not weakened by some accident
or cowed by extreme poverty, scem to be much afraid of those
idle retainers. So you need not fear that retainers, once strong and
vigorous (for that’s the only sort the gentry deign to corrupt), but
now soft and flabby because of their idle, effeminate life, would be
weakened if they were taught practical crafts to carn their living and
trained to manly labour. Anyway, 1 cannot think it’s in the public
interest to maintain for the emergency of war such a vast multitude
of people who trouble and disturb the peace: you never have war
unless you choose it, and peace is always more to be considered r_ha.n
war. Yet this is not the only force driving men to thievery. There is
another that, as I see it, applies specially to you Englishmen.”
““Whatis that?>’ asked the Cardinal.
““Your shecp,” I replied, “that commonly are so meck and eat so
little; now, as I hear, they have become so greedy and fierce that they
3 Morosophi (transliterated from Greek). The modern word ‘sophomore’ is the same
combination reversed.
24 Paraphrased from Catiline Xv13. .
25 The Romans fought full-scale wars against runaway gladiators, and :he_Canfia—
ginians against mutinous mercenaries; the ‘Syrians’ are perhaps .'I‘urks _am:‘: I:g_ypuans
who enrolled captured Christians in their armies under the title of janizaries and
mamelukes. » N ] .
2 Past English victories over the French included Crécy {1346), Poiters {1350) an
Henry Vs triumph at Agincourt (1415).
8
Book 1
devour men themselves.”” They devastate and depopulate ficlds,
houses and towns. For in whatever parts of the land sheep vield the
fincst and thus the most expensive wool, there the nobility and gentry,
ves, and even some abbots though otherwise holy men, are not
content with the old rents that the land yielded to their predecessors.
Living in idleness and luxury without doing society any good no
longer satisfies them; they have to do positive cvil. For they leave no
land free for the plough: they enclose every acre for pasture; they
destroy houses and abolish towns, keeping only the churches — and
those for sheep-barns. And as if enough of your land were not
already wasted on forests and game-preserves, these worthy men
turn all human habitations and cultivated fields back to wilderness.
Thus one greedy, insatiable glutton, a frightful plague to his native
country, may enclose many thousands of acres within a single
hedge. The tcnants are dismisscd and compelled, by trickery or
brute force or constant harassment, to sell their belongings. Onc
way or another, these wretched people — men, women, husbands,
wives, orphans, widows, parcnts with little children and entirc
families (poor but numerous, since farfning requires many hands) are
forced to move out. They leave the only homes familiar to them,
and can find no place to go. Since they must leave at once without
waiting far a proper buyer, they sell for a pittance all their househeld
goods, which would not bring much in any case. When that linde
moncy is gone (and it’s soon spent in wandering from place to
place), what remains for them but to steal, and so be hanged — justly,
you'd say! — or to wander and beg? And yet if they go tramping, they
are jailed as idle vagrants. They would be glad to work, but they can
find no one who will hire them. There is no need for farm labour, in
which they have been trained, when there is no land left to be
ploughed. Onc herdsman or shepherd can look after a flock of
beasts large enough to stock an area that would require many hands
ifitwere to be ploughed and sowed.
*“This enclosing has led to sharply rising food prices in many
districts. Also, the price of raw wool has risen so much that poor
¥ This vivid image capsulises the social dislacation brought about by enclosure — the
practice of private landlords in buying up and fencing in commen lands which from
time immemorial had been shared by everybody. Making more money out of wool was
the landlords’ major motive; a social consequence was the removal of peasants and
yeomen from the land they had cultivated. They were pauperised or, drifting into the
cities, proletarianised.
19
Utopia
people who used to make cloth can no longer afford it, and so great
numbers are forced from work to idleness. One reason is that after
so much new pasture-land was enclosed, rot killed a great many of
the sheep — as though God were punishing greed by sending on the
beasts a murrain that rightly should have fallen on the owners! But
even if the number of sheep should increase greatly, their price will
not fall 2 penny, because the wool trade, though it can’t be called a
monopoly because it isn’t in the hands of a single person, is concentrated
in so few hands (an oligopoly, you might say}, and these so
rich, that the owners are never pressed to sell until they have a mind
to, and thatis only when they can get their price.
‘“For the same reason other kinds of livestock arc also priced
exorbitantly, the more so because, with cottages being torn down
and farming in decay, nobody is left to breed the cattle. These rich
men will not breed calves as they do lambs, but buy them lean and
cheap, fatten them in their pastures, and then sell them dear. I don't
think the full impact of this bad system has yet been felt. We know
these dealers hurt consumers where the fattened cattle are sold, But
when, over a periad of time, they keep buying beasts from other
localities faster than they can be bred, a gradually diminishing supply
where they are bought will incvitably lead to shortages. So yvour
island, which seemed specially fortunate in this matter, will be
ruined by the crass avarice of a few. For the high cost of living causes
the rich man to dismiss as many retainers as he can from his household;
and what, I ask, can these men do but rob or beg? And a man of
courage is more likely to steal than to cringe.
““Tp make this hideous poverty worse, it exists side by side with
wanton luxury.?® The servants of noblemen, tradespcople, even
some farmers —people of every social rank — are given to ostentatious
dress and gluttonous eating. Look at the cook-shops, the bawdy
houses and those other places just as bad, the wine-bars and beerhalls.
Look at all the crooked games of chance like dice, cards, backgammon,
tennis, bowling and queits, in which money slips away so
fast. Don’t all these pastimes lead their addicts straight to robbery?
2 Fxtravagant display was not in fact characteristic of the reign of the parsimonious
Henry VII (the period in which Hythloday is supposed to be addressing Cardinal Morton).
More seems to be projecting on 1o the carlier period the taste for display associated
with the reign of Henry VLI Of course to an ascetic like More, all courts would
appear overindulgent.
20
Book 1
Banish these blights, make those who have ruined farmbouses and
villages restore them or rent them to someone who will rebuild. Restrict
the right of the rich to buy up anything and everything, and
then to exercise z kind of monopoly.?? Let fewer peaple be brought
up in idleness. Let agriculturc be restored, and the wool-manufacture
revived, so there will be useful work for those now idle, whether
those whom poverty has alrcady made thieves or those who are only
vagabonds and layabouts now, but are bound to become thieves in
the future,
““If you don’t try to cure these evils, it is futile to boast of your
scverity in punishing theft. Your policy may look superficially like
justice, but in reality it is neither just nor practical. If you allow
young folk to be abominably brought up and their characters corrupted,
little by littie, from childhood; and if then you punish them
as grownups for committing the crimes to which their training has
inclined them, what clse is this, I ask, but first making them thieves
and then punishing them forit?”
‘As I was speaking thus, the lawyer had prepared his answer,
choosing the solemn stylc of disputants who are better at summing
up than at replying, and who like to show off their memory. So he
said to me, “You have talked very well for a stranger, but you have
heard more than you’ve been able to understand correctly. I will
make the matter clear to vou in a few words. First, I will summarise
what you said; then I will show how you have been misled by ignorance
of our customs; finally, I will demolish all your arguments and
dissolve them. And so to begin where I promised, on four points you
scemed tome —"
‘“Hold your tongue,” said the Cardinal, “for you won’t be finished
in a few words if this is the way you start. We will spare you the
trouble of answering now, and reserve the pleasure of your reply till
our next meeting, which will be tomorrow if your affairs and
Raphael’s permit it. Meanwhilc, my dear Raphael, I'd be glad to
hear why you think theft should not be punished with death, or what
other punishment you think would be more suitable. For I'm surc
cven you don’t think it should go unpunished cntirely, Even as it is,
fear of death does not restrain the malefactors; once they were sure
2 . : ;Anumber of laws to contral gambling and ale-houses, restrict monopalies and provide
for the rebuilding of towns and the restaration of pastures to tillage were in fact passed,
with small result, in the reigns ofboth Henry VIl and Henry VIIL
pra |
flustrates the
Cardinal’s may of
Irierrupling@
habbler
Manlian edicts
from Livy
Utopia
of their lives, as you propose, what force or fear could withhold
them? They would look on a lighter penalty as an invitation to commit
more crimes, almost areward.”
<[t seerns to me, most kind and reverend father,” I said, “thatit’s
altogether unjust that a man should lose his life for the loss of
someone’s money. Nothing in the world that fortune can bestow is
equal in value to a man’s lifc. [f they say the thief suffers, not for the
money, but for violation of justice and transgression of laws, then
this extreme justice should properly be called exireme injury.’ We
ought not to approve of these fierce Manlian edicts that invoke the
sword for the smallest violations.* Nor should we accept the Stoic
view that all crimes are equal,’® as if there were no difference
between killing a man and taking a coin from him. If equity means
anything, there is no proportion or relation ar all between these two
crimes. God has said, “Thou shalt not kill’; shall we kill so readily
for the theft of a bit of small change? Perhaps it will be argued that
God’s law against killing docs not apply where human laws allow it.
But what then prevents men from making other laws in the same
way, perhaps legalising rape, adultery and perjury’ If mutual consent
to human laws entitles men by special decree to exempt their
agents from divine law and allows them to kill where he has given us
no example, what is this but preferring the law of man to the law of
GGod? The result will be that in every situation men will decide for
themselves how far it suits them to observe the laws of God. The law
of Mascs is harsh and severe, as for an enslaved and stubborn people,
but it punishes theft with a fine, not death.”* Let us not think
that in his new law of mercy, where he rules us as a father rules his
children, God has given us greater license to be cruel to one another.
““These are the reasons why 1 think it wrong to put thieves to
death. But everybody knows how absurd and even dangerous itis to
punish theft and murder alike. If he sees that theft carries the same
HI'he phrase echues the adage summum fus, summa tniuria (quoted by Cicero, OnMoral
Obligation 1.x.33), which hasa long history in discussions of equity.
31 According to Livy, the Roman general Manlius (fourth century C) executed his own
son for violating one of his ordinances (From the Founding of the City VilLyiii—22).
Manlian edicts’ was therefore proverbial for inexorable decrecs,
32 (Cicero ridicules this Stoic paradox (O the Supreme Good and Euil 1v.ix.21-3, oovilj5—
savitlg7)
33 The Masaic law on theftis spelled out in the first verses of Fxodus 22. It provides various
penalties for theft, but nowhere death. This law is conrrasted with the ‘new law’ of
Christ, under which England is supposed tobe operating.
22
Book1
penalty as murder, the thief will be encouraged to kill the victim
whotn otherwise he would only have robbed. When the punishment
is the same, murder is safer, since one conceals both crimes by killing
the witness. ‘Thus while we try to terrify thicves with extreme
cruelty, we really urge them to kill the innocent,
*“Now since you ask what more suitable punishment can be
found, in my judgement it would be far easier to find a better one
than a worse, Why should we question the value of the punishments
long used by the ancient Romans, who were most cxpert in the arts of
government? They condemned those convicted of heinous crimes
to work in shackles for the rest of their lives in stone quarries and
mines, But of all the alternatives, I prefer the method I observed in
my Persian travels among the people commeonly called the Polylerites.”*
They are a sizeable nation, not badly governed, free arld
subject only to their own laws, except that they pay annual tribute to
the Persian Shah. Living far from the sea, they are nearly surrounded
by mountains; and as they are content with the products of
their own land (it is by no means unfruitful), they have little to do
with other nations, and arc not much visited. By ancicnt tradition,
they make no effort to enlarge their boundaries, and easily protect
themsclves behind their mountains by paying tribute to their overlord.
Thus they fight no wars, and live in a comfortable rather than a
glorious manner, more contented than ambitious or famous. Indeed,
I think they are hardly known by name to anyone but their
next-door neighbours,
‘“In their land, whoever is found guilty of theft must make resttution
to the owner, not (as elsewhere) to the prince;” they think the
prince has no more right to the stolen goods than the thief. If the stolen
property has disappeared, its value is estimated, and restoration
is made from the thief’s belongings. All the restis handed over to his
wife and children, while the thief himself is sentenced to hard
labour.
““Unless their crimes were compounded with atrocities, thieves
are neither imprisoned nor shackled, but go freely and unguarded
about their work on public projects. If they shirk and do their jobs
¥ More's coinage from pefus (‘much’) plus feros (fnonsense’): *the People of Much Non-
sensc’,
35 .
Erasmus also condemns this common European practice, in 7 he Education of a Christian
Prince (CHE, 300vIL, 270).
23
The Polylerite
society near the
Peisians
To be noted by us,
wha do othermise
Siteand shape of
Litopia the mew
it fearned
Befng naturally
saf?, the entry is
defendedby a
stnglefort
Therrickof
shifting
landmarks
Utopia
THE DISCOURSE OF RAPHAEL ITYTHLODAY
ON THE BEST STATE OF A COMMONWEALTH,
BOOK TWO: AS RECOUNTED BY THOMAS MORE,
CITIZEN AND SHERIFF OF LONDON
The island of Utopia is two hundred miles across in the middle part
where it is widest, and nowhere much narrower than this except
towards the two ends, where it gradually tapers. These ends, curved
round as if completing a circle five hundred miles in circumference,
make the island crescent-shaped, like a new moon.! Between the
horns of the crescent, which are about eleven milcs apart, the sea
enters and spreads into 4 broad bay. Being sheltered from the wind
by the surrounding land, the bay is not rough, bur placid and
smooth instead, like a big lake. Thus, nearly the whole inner coast is
onc great harbour, across which ships pass in every direction, to the
great advantage of the people. What with shallows on one side, and
rocks on the other, entrance into the bay is very dangerous. Near
mid-channel, there is one rock that rises above the water, and so
presents no danger in itself; a tower has been built on top of it, and a
garrison is kept there. Since the other rocks lie under the water, they
are very dangerous to navigation. The channels are known only to
the Utopians, so hardly any strangers enter the bay without one of
their pilots; and even they themselves could not enter safely if they
did not direct their course by some landmarks on the coast. Should
these landmarks be shifted about, the Utopians could lure to
destruction an enemy fleet coming against them, however big it was.
Ltopia is similar to England in size, though not at all in shape. For a detailed account
of its geography, and the inconsistencies thereof, see Brian R, Goodey, ‘Mapping
“Utopia™ A Comment on the Geography of Sir Thomas More’, The Geographical
Revtem, 60 (1970, 15-30.
The main topics and the order of Hythloday's account may owe something to Aristotle’s
treatment of the ideal commonwealth in Polétics vii—~vin. Aristotle’s discussion of
the optimal ‘human material” and territory for a polis is followed by a checldist of the six
‘services’ that must be provided for: food; arts and crafts; arms; “a certain supply of
property, alike for demestic use and for military purposes®; public worship; and a
deliberative and judicial system (viLiv—viii).
42
[o
Book
On the outer side of the island, occasional harbours are to be
found; but the coast is rugged by nature, and so well fortified thata
few defenders could beat off the attack of a strong force. They say
{(and the appearance of the place confirms this) that their land was
not always an island. Bur Utopus, who conquered the country and
gave it his name (for it had previously been called Abraxa),? and
who brought its rude, uncouth inhabitants to such a high level of
culture and humanity that they now excel in that regard almost every
other people, alse changed its geography. After subduing the
natives, at his first landing, he promptly cut a channel fifteen mites
wide where their land joined the continent, and thus caused the
sea to flow around the country. He put not only the natives to work at
this task, but all his own soldiers too, so that the vanguished would
not think the labour a disgrace.* With the work divided among sa
many hands, the project was finished quickly, and the neighbouring
pecples, whe at first had laughed at his folly, were struck with
wonder and terror athis success,
There are fifty-four cities’ on the island, all spacious and magnificent,
identical in language, customs, institutions and laws. So
The Greek Gnostic Basilides {sccond century) postulated 365 heavens, and gave the
name ‘Abraxas’ to the highestof them. The Greek letters that constitute the term have
numerical equivalents summing to 365, but what ‘Abraxas’ actually means nobody
knows.
The Isthmus of Corinth joins the Peloponnesian peninsula to the rest of Greece. The
failure of various attempts to cxcavate a canal across it made this difficulbt task prover-
bial.
This is the first of several passages in {tapia stressing the dignity of labour. Frank and
Fritzie Manuel observe that “More's rehabilitation of the idea of physical labor was a
milestone in the history of utopian thought, and was incorporated into all socialist systemns’
(Ltopian Thought in the Western World, p. 127). "I'he principal sources of this
attirude are Christian; in particular, the monastic orders constituted a paradigm of a
society in which all are workers. Monasticism is the one European institution that the
LNtopians are said to admire (p. g6). By contrast, in classical polideal theory and practice
manual labour was normally assigned to members of the lower orders {including
especially slaves), and to women,
Although the primary reference here is to the cites themselves, the word More uses —
ctvitas — is the Latin equivalent of the Greek polts, ‘city-state’. In fact each of the fiftyfour
Utopian evdtates is, like the Greek polis, constituted ofa central city and its surrounding
countryside. Though federated, they alsa resemble the Greek city-states in
functioning as Jargely independent political units. Throughout Book u, the concentration
on the ovitas is the most striking indication of More’s debt to Greek political
theory. 1n number, the Utopian cities match the number of counties in England and
Wales — given as fifty-three in William Harrison’s 1587 Description of England (ed.
Georges Edelen (Ithaca, 1568), p. 86)—plus London.
13
Ultopia named for
King Utopus
Thiz mac u bigger
Jobthan digeing
across the
Fethmus®
Muny hands meke
Lighs work
The towns af”
Litopia
Likeness breeds
concord
A middling
distance between
tinens
Diseribution of
{and
Bur raday thisis
theose of @ll
cONRETTe
Fanningis the
prome socuparion
Farmersjobs
A natablewayof
haiching eggs
o=
Utopia
far as the location permits, all of them are built on the same plan and
have the same appearance. The nearest are at least twenty-four
miles apart, and the farthest are not so remote that a man cannot go
on foot from one to the other in a day.
Once a year each city sends three of its old and experienced citizens
to Amaurot® to consider affairs of common interest to the
island. Amaurot lies at the navel of the land, so to speak, and
convenient to every other district, so it acts as a capital. Every city has
enough ground assigned to it so that at least twelve miles of farm
land are available in every direction, though where the cities are
farther apart, their territories are more extensive. No city wants to
enlarge its boundaries, for the inhabitants consider themselves
good cultivators rather than landlords. At proper intervals all over
the countryside they have built houses and furnished them with
farm equipment. These houses are inhabited by citizens who come
to the country by turns to occupy them. No rural household has
fewer than forty men and women in it, besides two slaves bound to
the land. A master and mistress, serious and mature persons, are in
charge of each household, and over every thirty households is
placed a single phylarch.® Each year twenty persons from each
rural household move back to the city after completing a two-year
stint in the country. In their place, twenty others are sent out from
town, to learn farm work from those who have already been in the
country for a year, and who are better skilled in farming. They, in
turn, will teach thosc who come the following vear. If all were
equally untrained in farm work and new to it, they might harm the
crops out of ignorance. This custom of alternating farm workers is
solemnly established so that no one will have to perform such heavy
labour for more than two years; but many of them who take a natural
pleasure in farm life are allowed to stay longer.
The farm workers tll the soil, feed the animals, hew wood and
take their produce to the city by land or water, as is convenient. They
breed an enormous number of chickens by a most marvellous
method. Men, not hens, hatch the eggs by keeping them in a warm
From amauvoton, ‘made dark or dim”,
Although U'topia exists in the present, the glosses repeatedly refer to it as if it belonged
tothe distant past, like classical Greece and Rome.
Greek phylarchos, ‘head nfa wibe’.
=
Book 1
place at an even temperature.’ As soon as they come out of the
shell, the chicks recognise the men, follow them around, and are
devoted to them instead of to their real mothers.
They raise very few horses, and these full of mettle, which they
keep only to exercise the young men in the art of horsemanship. For
the heavy work of ploughing and hauling they use oxen, which they
agree are inferior to horses over the short haul, but which can hold
out longer under heavy burdens, are less subject to disease (as they
suppose), and besides can be kept with less cost and rouble. Moreover,
when oxen are too old for work, they can be used for meat,
Grain they use only to make bread.’”® They drink wine made of
grapes, apple or pear cider, or simple water, which they sometimes
mix with honey or liquorice, of which they have plenty. Although
they know very well, down to the last detail, how much food each city
and its surrounding district will consume, they produce much more
grain and cattle than they need for themselves, and share the surplus
with their neighbours. Whatever goods the folk in the country need
which cannot be produced there, they request of the town magistrates,
and since there is nothing to be paid or exchanged, they get
what they want at once without any haggling. They generally go to
town once a month in any case, to observe the holy days. When harvest
time approaches, the phylarchs in the country notify the town
magistrates how many hands will be needed. Crews of harvesters
come just when they’re wanted, and in just about one day of good
weather they can get in the whole crop.
THEIR CITIES, ESPECIALLY AMAUROT
If you know one of their cities, you know them all, for they’re exactly
alike, except where geography itself makes a difference. So Fll
describe one of them, and no matter which. But what one rather
than Amaurot, the most worthy of all? — since its eminence is acknowledged
by the other cites that send representatives to the
annual meeting there; besides which, I know it best because I lived
there for five full years.
Well, then, Amaurot lies up against a gently sloping hill; the town
Though artificial incubation is mentioned in Pliny's Naturel History (x ooviagg), it was
notpractsed in More'stime.
197 ¢., they don’t, like the English, use it to make beerand ale.
45
Lises of the horse
Uses ofoxen
Faad and drink
Planned plaming
Thevalueof
collective labour
Descriptivn of
Amauros, first ciny
aof Utapia
The rtver Anyder
Fust like the
Thames in
England
Heretgo Londom s
Just bike Amausrnt
Asonrceof
drinking waler
City walls
Streets, of whai
sart
11
Utopia
is almost square in shape. From a little below the crest of the hill, it
runs down about two miles to the river Anyder,'! and then spreads
out along the river bank for a somewhat greater distance. The
Anyder rises from a small spring eighty miles above Amaurot, but
other streams flow into it, two of them being pretty big, so that as it
runs by Amaurot the river has grown to a width of about half a mile.
It continues to grow even larger until at last, sixty miles farther
along, it is lostin the ocean. In all this stretch between the sea and the
city, and also for some miles above the city, the river is tidal, ebbing
and flowing every six hours with 2 swift current. When the tide
comes in, it fills the whole Anyder with salt water for about thirty
miles, driving the fresh water back. Even above that, for several
miles farther, the water is brackish; but a little higher up, as it runs
past the city, the water is always fresh, and when the tide ebbs, the
river runs fresh and clean nearly all the way to the sea,
The two banks of the river at Amaurot are linked by a2 bridge, built
not on wooden piles but on massive stone arches. It is placed at the
upper end of the city farthest removed from the sea, so that ships can
sail along the entire length of the city quays without obstruction.'
There is also anather stream, not particularly large but very gentle
and pleasant, that rises out of the hill, flows down through the centre
of town, and into the Anyder.!® The inhabitants have walled
around the source of this river, which is a spring somewhat outside
the city, and joined it to the town proper, so that if they should be
attacked, the enemy would not be able to cut off and divert the
stream, or poison it. Water from the stream is carried by tile piping
into various sections of the lower town. Where the terrain makes this
impractical, they collect rain water in cisterns, which serve just as
well.
The town is surrounded by a thick, high wall, with many towers
and battlements. On three sides it is also surrounded by a dry ditch,
broad and deep and filled with thorn hedges; on its fourth side the
river itself serves as a moat. The streets are conveniently laid out for
use by vehicles and for protection from the wind. Their buildings
From anydres, ‘waterless’. The description of the Anyder and the situation of Amaurot
correspond in detail to the Thames and London, except that the Thames rises about
twice as far above London as the Anyder above Amaurot.
'2“his is an improvement on the situation of L.ondon Bridge, which was in the lower part
of town.
L Except in pleasantness, this second stream resembles .ondon’s Fleet.
46
Book 11
are by no means paltry; the unbroken rows of houses facing one
another across the streets through each ward make a fine sight. The
streets arc twenty feet wide.!* Large gardens, which extend the full
length of the street behind each row of houses, form the centre of the
blocks. ‘
Every house has a front door to the street and a back door to the
garden. The doors, which are made with two leaves, open easily and
swing shut automatically — and so there is nothing private or exclusive.'>
Every ten years they exchange the houses themselves by lot.
The Utopians are very fond of these gardens of theirs.'® They raise
vines, fruits, herbs and flowers, so thrifty and flourishing that | have
never seen any gardens more productive or elegant than theirs.
They keep interested in gardening, partly because they delight in it,
and zlso because of the competiion between different neighbourhoods,
which challenge one another to produce the best gardens.
Certainly you will find nothing else in the whole city more useful or
more pleasant to the citizens. And from thar fact it appears that the
city’s founder must have made gardens the primary object of his
consideration.
They say that in the beginning the whole city was planned by
King Utopus himself, but that he left to posterity matters of adornment
and improvement such as could not be perfected in one man’s
lifeime. Their records began 1,760 years ago'® with the conquest of
" Lavish, by sixteenth-century standards. Goodey observes that the structure of
Amaurot is reminiscent of Roman urban planning: *Twenty feet was the average width
of Roman city streets, which, again like Amaurotum, were bordered by fairly highdensity
housing blocks that surrounded large courtyards used for recreation. As in
Amaurotum, the rectangular block pattern was the most evident feature of the Raman
urban plan. In the Roman city this pattern was broken anly by the insertion of major
p public buildings, again a feature of the Utopian city’ ((Mapping “Utopia™ ', p. 2¢).
Cf. Plato, Republic v.416D: the Guardians ‘shall have no private property beyend the
barest essentials . .. none of them shall possess a dwelling-house or other property 1o
which all have not the right of entry.”
16 Apart from its obvious practical advantages, the Utopians’ fondness for gardens may
hint at the connection of their way of life with Epicureanism. Early in life, Epicurus
retired to 2 house and garden given him by his disciples; and his school was called the
CGrzrden,
7 Inthe Ceorgics (Tv.116—48).
'¥ Counting from 1516, this takes us back 1o 244 BE, when Agis IV became King of Sparta:
he was put to death for proposing egalitarian reforms. See Plutarch's ‘Agis’; and R, J.
Scheeck, ‘More, Plutarch, and King Agis: Spartan History and the Meaning of Liepia’,
Philological Quarterly, 35 (1956), 366—75; tpt Essentiul Articles for the Study of Thomas
More.
47
Building
Gurdens next to
the houses
This smacks af
Plata's
conmunLy
Virgil also wrote
mpraise of
b
Utopia
the island, were diligenty compiled, and are carefully preserved in
writing. From these records it appears that the first houses were low,
like cabins or peasant huts, built slapdash out of any sort of lumber,
with mud-plastered walls and steep roofs, ridged and thatched with
straw. But now their houses are all three storeys high and handsomely
constructed; the fronts are faced with stone, stucco, or brick,
over rubble construction.!® The roofs are flat and are covered with
a kind of plaster that is cheap but fireproof, and morc weatherresistant
even than lead.?® Glass (of which they have 2 good supply)
Windows ofglass 18 used in windows to keep out the weather; and they also use thin
oroifedlinen Jinon cloth treated with clear oil or gum so that it lets in more light
and keeps out more wind.
THEIR OFFICIALS
Once a year, every group of thirty houscholds elects an official,
IntheUtapian called the syphogrant in their ancient language,”’ but now known
ronge ""’"fb‘;." as the phylarch. Over every group of ten syphogrants with their
m:fimf’ households there is another official, once called the tranibor but
'* The housing of modern Amaurot is considerably more impressive than that of early
sixteenth-century London, where dwellings were normally of timber and of at most
Wi stoTEYs.
20 The Utopians’ reof-covering may be the plaster of Paris spoken of in Harrson’s
Description of England, which was made of ‘fine alabaster burned, ... whereof in some
places we have great plenty and that very profitable against the rage of fire’ {p. 196).
Glass windows were uncommon in England. Qiled linen, sheets of horn, and lattices
of wicker or wood were used instead.
2L «gyphogrant’ appears 1o be constructed from Greek saphos (‘wise’) — or perhaps sypheos
{*of the sty") — plus gerontes (‘old men’). For ‘tranibor’, the obvicus etymology is traneis
or franes {"clear’, ‘plain’, ‘distinct’) plus bores (‘devouring’, “glurtonous’). Although
Hythladay says that these terms have been displaced by the more unambiguously respectful
‘phylarch’ and ‘protophylarch’ (ranslated as ‘head phylarch’), in the remainder
of his account he invariably uses the ‘older’ terms. ‘Phylarch’ occurs twice before
this passage, but never again; ‘protophylarch’ occurs only this once.
The Utopian form of government is republican: syphogrants are clected by the
households, and the syphogrants of each city elect — and can remove — the prince
(below), as well as the class of scholars, from which all high officials are chosen {p. 53).
On the revival of classical republican sentiment in the Renaissance, see Hans Baron,
The Crisis of the Early ftalian Renaissance, rev. one-vol. edn (Princeton, 1966);1. G. A.
Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Flarentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican
Tradition (Princeton, 1g75); and Quentin Skinner, The Foundarions ofModern Political
Thought.
48
Book 11
now known as the head phylarch. All the syphogrants, two hundred
in number,” are brought together to elect the prince. They take an
oath to choose the man they think best qualified; and then by secret
ballot they elect the prince from among four men nominated by the
people of the four sections of the city.?* The prince holds office for
life, unless he is suspected of aiming at a tyranny. Though the tranibors
are elected annually, they are not changed for light or casual
reasons. All their other officials hold office for asingle year only.
The tranibors meet to consult with the prince every other day,
more often if necessary: they discuss affairs of state and settle disputes
between private parties (if there are any, and there arc very
few}, acting as quickly as possible. The tranibors always invite two
syphogrants to the senate chamber, different ones every day. There
is a rule that no decision can be made on a2 matter of public business
unless it has been discussed in the senate on three separate days. Itis
a capital offence to consult together on public business outside of the
senate or the popular assembly. The purpose of these rules, they say,
is to prevent prince and tranibors from conspiring together to alter
the government and enslave the people.** Therefore all matters
which are considered important are first laid before the assembly of
syphogrants, They talk the matter over with the households they
represent, debate it with one another, then report their recommendation
to the senate. Sometimes 2 question is brought before the
general council of the whole island,
The senate also has a standing rule never to debate a matter on the
same day thatitis first introduced; all new business is deferred to the
next meeting. This they do so that a man will not blurt out the first
thought that occurs to him, and then devote all his energies to
defending his own prestige, instead of impartially considering the
commeon mterest. They know that some men have such a perverse
and preposterous sense of shame that they would rather jeopardise
the general welfare than admit to having been heedless and short;j
Because there are 6,000 families in each city (p. 55), with thirty families persyphogrant.
While each city has a prince, there is no prince over the whole island, so that when the
" na}ional council meets at Amaurot {p. 44) there’s nobody for it to advise — o executive.
It ig not clear why the prevention of conspiracies requires that all informal discussion
of politics be punishable by death. R. W. Chambers asks whether ‘any State, at any
time, [has] carried terrorism quite so far?” (Thomas More, p. 137). ’
49
A motable may of
electing officials
Tyranwy kateful i
the well-ordered
commuonmwealth
Aguick ending o
disputes, which
now are endlessly
anddeliberately
prolanged
Mo abrupt
dectstony
WWouid that the
same rules
prevailed in our
modern councils
This és thenld
saying, Doyour
thinking
overnight'
Agriaudtureis
everyone’s
business, though
Utopia
sighted. They should have had cnough foresight at the beginning to
speak with prudence rather than haste.
THEIR OCCUPATIONS
Farming is the one job at which evervone works, men and women
alike, with no exception.”® They are trained in it from childhood,
nowweputitof partly in the schools, where they learn theory, partly through field
on a despised fem trips to nearby farms, which make something like a game of practical
instruction. On these trips they not only watch the work being done,
but frequently pitch in and get a workout by doing the jobs them-
selves.
Besides farm work (which, as I said, everybody performs), each
person is taught a particular trade of his own, such as wool-working,
Trades taught to linen-making, masonry, metal-work, or carpentry. There is no; ! i 26satisf necd, ™" other craft that is practised by any considerable number of them.g"?f
Their clothing — which is the same cverywhere throughout the
Aunifirmdress island, and has always been the same, except for the distinction
codde
Na citizen mithone
a breede
between the sexes and between married and unmarried persons —
which is by no means unattractive, does not hinder bodily movement
and serves for warm as well as cold weather — this clothing, I say,
each family makes for itsclf.
Every person (and this includes women as well as men) learns one
of the trades I mentioned. As the weaker sex, women practise the
lighter crafts, such as working in wool or linen; the heavier jobs are
assigned to the men. Ordinarily, the son is trained to his father’s
Eveyonesolearn craft, for which most feel a natural inclination. But if anyone is
the tradefor which
it naturefits him
attracted to another occupation, he is transferred by adoption into a
family practising the trade he prefers. When anyone makes such a
change, both his father and the authorities take care that he is
assigned to a grave and responsible householder. After a man has
mastered one trade, if he wants to learn another, he gets the same
%5 Agriculture gets the same heavy emphasis in Utpia as it did in sixteenth-cenmury
Europe, where most of the populace had to work at providing a subsistence. A great
deal of this work was hard, monotonous and unappealing — and thus required carefu)
apportioningin an egalitarian society.
26 One would have thought that considerable numbers would also have heen employed
making such things as pottery, harmess, bread and books, or in mining or the merchant
maring, Presumably all professionals — doctors, for example — are drawn from the class
of schalars (p.53).
50
Book 11
permission. When he has learned both, he pursues the one he likes
better, unless the city needs one more than the other.?’
The chief and almost the only business of the syphogrants is to
manage matters so that ne one sits around in idleness, and to make
sure that evervone works hard at his trade. Butno onc has to exhaust
himself with cndless toil from carly morning to late at night, as if he
were a beast of burden. Such wretchedness, really worse than slavery,
is the common lot of workmen almost everywhere except in
Utopia.? Of the day’s twenty-four hours, the Utopians devote only
six to work. They work threc hours before noon, when they go to
lunch. After lunch, they rest for a couple of hours, then go to work
for another three hours. Then they have supper, and about eight
o’clock {counting the first hour after noon as one) they go to bed,
and sleep eight hours.
The other hours of the day, when they are not working, eating, or
sleeping, are left to each man’s individual discretion, provided he
does not waste his free time in roistering or sloth but uses it properly
in some occupation that pleases him. Generally these periods are
devoted to intellectual actvity. For they have an established custom
of giving public lectures before daybreak;?? attendance at thesc lectures
is required only of those who have been specially chosen to
devote themselves to learning, but a great many other people of all
kinds, both men and women,*® choose voluntarily to attend.
Depending on their interests, some go to one lecture, some to
another. But if anyone would rather devote his spare time to his
trade, as many do who don’t care for the intellectual life, this is not
discouraged; in fact, such persons are commended as speciatly useful
to the commonwealth.
¥ The fact that all Utopians have at ieast two occupations (agriculture and one of the
craits), and in some cases three, brings them into implicit cenflict with Plato, who
strongly insists that in a well-ordered commonwealth each individual would have one
and only one profession (Republic 11.3570A-C; Laws viiL.846D-E),
* In England, for example, an ‘Act concerning Artificers & Labourers’, 1514-15, made
exorbitant demands upon the time of workmen: daybreak to nightfall from mid-September
to mid-March; before 5 am to between 7 and 8 pm from mid-March 1o midSeptember
(The Statutes of the Realm, 1 (London, 1822), 124-6).
? In the universities of More’s time, lectures normally began between ;and 7am.
I Humanists were pioneers in forwarding the education of women. Celibate Erasmus
was greatly impressed by the erudite daughters of his married fellow humanists,
including Margaret More., See “The Abbot and the Leamed Lady’ in Erasmus’ Cofla-
i,
51
Theidlz are
expelled from
soetety
Workmen not to be
avertusked
Thestudy ofletters
Diversion afier
Supper
But nuw gambling
i the sport of Fings
Theirgames are
uscfil too
Kinds of idlers
Noblemen'’s
bodyguards
A very shremd
abservation
Utopia
After supper, they devote an hour to recreation, in their gardens
when the weather is fine, or during winter weather in the commeon
halls where they have their meals. There they either play music or
amuse themselves with conversation. They know nothing about
gambling with dice or other such foolish and ruinous games. They
do play two games not unlike our own chess. One is a battle of
numbers, in which one number captures another. The other is a
game in which the vices fight a battle against the virtues. The game is
ingeniously set up to show how the vices oppose one another, vet
readily combine against the virtues; then, what vices oppose what
virtues, how they try to assault them openly or undermine them
indirectly; how thc virtues can break the strength of the vices or
elude their plots; and finally, by what means onc side or the other
gains the victory.
But in all this, you may get a wrong impression if we don’t go back
and consider one point more carefully. Because they allot only six
hours to work, you might think the necessities of life would be in
scant supply. This is far from the case. Their working hours are
ample to provide not only enough but more than enough of the
necessities and even the conveniences oflife. You will easily appreciate
this if you consider how large a part of the population in other
countries exists without doing any work at all. In the first place,
hardly any of the women, who are a full half of the population,
work;3! or, if they do, then as a rule their husbands lic snoring in
bed. Then there is a great lazy gang of priests and so-called
religious men. Add to them all the rich, especially the landlords,
who are commonly called gentlemen and nobility. Include with
them their retainers, that mob of swaggering bullies. Finally, reckon
in with these the sturdy and lusty beggars who go about feigning
some discase as an excuse for their idleness. You will certainly find
that the things which satisfy our needs are produced by far fewer
hands than you had supposed.
And now consider how few of those who do work are doing really
essential things. For where money is the measure of everything,
A strange statement, in view of the fact that women had the same, or heavier, domestic
duties in the sixteenth century as in the twenteth. In Utopia, they are responsible for
some at least of these duties — cooking, childcare — in addition to practising a craft and
taking their turn at farm work. Small problems, such as who does the laundry, who
cleans the house, who tends the garden, are solved by the simple expedient of not mentioning
them.
52
Book 1
many vain, superfluous trades are bound to be carried on simply to
satisfy lwaury and licentiousness. Suppose the multitude of those
who now work were limited to a few trades and set to producing just
those -commodities that naturc really requires.*” They would be
bound to produce s0 much that prices would drop and the workmen
would be unable to make a living. But suppose again that all the
workers in useless trades were put to useful ones, and that the whole
crowd of idlers (each of whom guzzles as much as any two of the
workmen who create what they consume) were assigned to productive
tasks — well, you can easily sce how litte time each man
would have to spend working, in order to produce all the goods that
human needs and conveniences call for — yes, and human pleasure
too, as long as it’s true and natural pleasure.
The experience of Utopia makes this perfectly apparent. In each
city and its surrounding countryside barely five hundred of those
men and women whose age and strength make them fit for work are
exempted from it.*> Among these are the syphogrants, who by law
are free not to work; yet they don’t take adyantage of the privilege,
preferring to set a good example to their fellow citizens. Some others
are permanently exempted from work so that they may devote themselves
to study, but only on the recommendation of the priests® and
through a secret vote of the syphogrants. [f any of these scholars disappoints
their hopes, he becomes a workman again, On the other
hand, it happens from time to time that a craftsman devotes his leisure
so earnestly to study, and makes such progress as a result, that
he is relieved of manual labour and promoted to the order of learned
men. From this class of scholars are chosen ambassadors, priests,
tranibors and the prince himself, who used to be called Barzanes,
but in their modern tongue is known as Ademos.*® Since almost all
2 The notion that a well-ordered commonwealth would not countenance trades other
than those that supply legitimate human needs is traceable to Plato (Repedfic m.3720—
3730). Plutarch says that Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta, ‘banished the unnecessary
and superfluous arts’ {*Lycurgus’ ix.3}.
33 Two hundred of these are syphogrants; presumably the prince, the twenty tranibors
and the thirteen priests (p. 101} are also exempt. The rest must be scholars, and the
ambassadors drawn from their ranks.
** The priestsare in charge of the education of children (p. 102).
* ‘Barzanes’: probably Hebrew bar, ‘son of', plus Zanes, Doric poetic form of the genitive
of Zeus. A potent Chaldean magician named Mithrobarzanes figures in Lucian’s
*Menippus’, which More had translated. ‘Ademos’: Greek o-privative plus dentos,
‘people’ hence ‘Peopleless.”
53
Mot even officials
dodge work
Only the learmed
hold public office
Utopia
the rest of the populace is neither idle nor engaged in useless trades,
it is easy to see why they produce so much in such a short working
day.
Apart from all this, in several of the necessary crafts their way of
life requires less total labour than does that of people elsewhere. In
Avoidingexpense Other countries, building and repairing houses demands the conint
building
stant labour of many men, because what a father has built, his thriftless
heir lets fall into ruin; and then his successor has to reconstruct,
at great expense, what could easily have been kept up at a very small
charge. Again, when a man has built a splendid house at vast cost,
someone else may think he has better taste, let the first house fall to
ruin, and then build another one somewhere else for just as much
money. But among the Utopians, where everything has been wellordered
and the commonwealth properly established, building a
new home on a new site 1s a rare event. They are not only quick to
repair deterioration, but foresighted in preventing it. The result is
that their buildings last for a very long time with minimum repairs;
and the carpenters and masons sometimes have so little to do that
they are set to squaring dmber and cutting stone for prompt use in
case of future need.
Consider, too, how little labour their clothing requires. Their
Auoidingexpense work clothcs are loose garments made of Icather or pelts, which last
i clothing
as long as seven years. When they go out in public, they cover these
rough work clothes with a cloak. Throughout the entire island, they
all wear cloaks of the same colour, which is that of natural wool.?®
As a result, they not only need less wool than people in other countries,
but what they do need is less expensive. They use linen cloth
most because it requires least labour. They like linen cloth to be
white and wool cloth to be clean; but they do not value fineness of
texture. Elsewhere a man may not be satisfied with four or five woollen
cloaks of different colours and as many silk shirts — orif he’s a bit
of a fop, even ten of each are not encugh. But a Utopian is content
with a single cloak, and generally wears it for two years. There is no
3* More's letter to Erasmus of ¢. 4 December 1516 — in which he reports a daydream of
being King of Utopia — identifies this garment as a Franciscan cowl {(Selected Letters, p.
85). The Carthusians, with whom More lived for some vears (Inroduction, p. xiv),
wore garments of undved wool. The biographical sketch of More that Erasmus
included in a letter to Ulrich von Hutten says that ‘Simple clothes please ... [Morg]
best, and he never wears silk or scarlet ora gold chain, except when itis not open to him
talay itaside’ (CWE, v, 18).
54
Bookn
reason why he should want any more garments, for if he had them,
he would not be better protected against the cold, nor would he
appearin any way better dressed.
When there is an abundance of everything as a result of everyvone
working atuseful trades and nobody consuming to excess, they sometirnes
assemble great numbers of people to work on the roads, if any
need repairs, And when there is no need even for this sort of public
work, then the officials very often proclaim a shorter work day, since
they never force their citizens to perform useless labour. The chief
aim of their constitution is that, as far as public needs permit, all citizens
should be free to withdraw as much time as possible from the
service of the body and devote themselves to the freedom and culture
of the mind. For that, they think, is the real happiness oflife.
SOCIAL AND BUSINESS RELATIONS
Now [ must explain the social relations of these folk, how the citizens
behave towards one another, and how they distribute goods within
the society.
Each city, then, consists of households, the households consisting
generally of blood-relations. When the women grow up and are
married, they move into their husbands’ households. On the other
hand, male children and their offspring remain in the family, and
are subject to the oldest member, unless his mind has started to fail,
inwhich case the next oldest takes his place. To keep the cities from
becoming too sparse or too crowded, they have decreed that there
shall be six thousand households in each (exclusive of the surrounding
countryside}, with each houschold containing between
ten and sixteen adults. They do not, of course, try to regulate the
number of minor children in a family.3? The limit on adults is casily
observed by transferring individuals from a household with too
many into a household with not enough. Likewise if a city has too
* If an average househcld includes thirteen adults, then there are approximately 78,000
adulis per city. Those on two-year tours of agricultural duty may or may not he
inciuded. Allowing for children and slaves, the population of each Utopian city must
be in excess ¢f 100,000, making them larger than all but the greatest Evropean cities of
the time.
The closest parallel to the Utopian arrangements is found in Plato’s Lams (v.7404—
7414}, where the ideal figure of 5,040 households for the polis is maintained by relocating
children, manipulating the birthrate and esrablishing colonies.
55
Thenumberof
cibizens