The Discourses of Raphael Hythloday, of the Best State of a Commonwealth

BOOK ONE

[] When the most invincible King Henry VIII, a prince blessed with all the virtues suitable for a great monarch, had a dispute over important matters with Charles, the most serene Prince of Castile, he sent me as his ambassador into Flanders to discuss and settle matters between them. I was colleague and companion to that remarkable man Cuthbert Tunstall, whom the King, to universal applause, recently made Master of the Rolls. But I’ll say nothing about him — not because I’m afraid people will question the testimony of a friend, but because his learning and virtues are so great I can’t do them justice, and they’re so well known that they don’t need my commendations. As the proverb goes, I’d just be “Showing the sun with a lantern.”

[] Those people the prince appointed to negotiate with us met us at Bruges, according to agreement; they were all worthy men. The Margrave of Bruges was their leader, and the chief man among them. But the one considered the wisest, who spoke for the rest, was Georges de Themsecke, the Provost of Cassel. Both nature and nurture had worked together to make him eloquent. He was very learned in the law and, as he had a great talent, after long practice in diplomacy he was very able to use them. After we met a few times without coming to an agreement, they went to Brussels for a few days, to find out what the prince wanted.

[] Since I had some time, I went to Antwerp. While I was there, among the many people who visited me, there was one I liked more than any other — Peter Giles, born at Antwerp, a man of great honor and of a good rank in his town, though less than he deserves. I don’t know if you can find a more learned or better bred young man anywhere, because he’s very worthy and very knowing. He’s so polite to everyone, so particularly kind to his friends, and so full of candor and affection, that you one find more than one or two people anywhere who are better friends. He’s extraordinarily modest, there’s no trickery in him, and yet no man has more of a prudent simplicity. His conversation was so pleasant, so innocently cheerful, that his company relieved my longing to go back to my country, to my wife and children — after four months I felt it very much.

[] One day, as I was returning home from mass at St. Mary’s (the chief church, and the most attended church in Antwerp), I happened to see him talking with a stranger, who seemed past his prime. 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 sailor. As soon as Peter saw me, he came and greeted me. As I was responding in kind he took me aside and, pointing to the man he had been speaking with, he said, “Do you see that man? I was just thinking to bring him to you.”

[] I answered, “He’d be very welcome for your sake.”

[] “And on his own too,” replied he, “if you knew the man, for no one alive can give so copious an account of unknown lands and countries as he can. I know you like that.”

[] “Then,” said I, “I guessed right, because at first sight I took him for a sailor.”

[] “No, you’re wrong,” he said. “He hasn’t sailed as a seaman but as a traveler — or, rather, a philosopher.

[] This man, Raphael, with the family name Hythloday, knows some Latin, but he’s extremely learned in Greek, having studied Greek more than Latin, because he was so devoted to philosophy — he knew the Romans have left us no useful philosophy except what we find in Seneca and Cicero. He’s a Portuguese by birth, and wanted to see the world so much that he divided his estate among his brothers, ran the same risk as Americus Vesputius, and was an investor in three of his four voyages that are now published. But he didn’t return with him in his last voyage, but got his permission, almost by force, to be one of those twenty-four who were left at the farthest place they reached in their last voyage to New Castile. Leaving him that way was pleasing to someone who preferred traveling to returning home to be buried in his own country. 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.??? But this way of thinking would have cost him dearly, if God hadn’t been very gracious to him. After he and five Castalians??? had traveled over many countries, at last, by strange good fortune, he got to Ceylon, and from there to Calicut, where he luckily found some Portuguese ships — and, though no one expected it, he returned to his native country.”

[] When Peter told me this, I thanked him for his kindness in wanting to introduce me to a man whose conversation he knew I’d like so much, and on that Raphael and I embraced each other. After the usual civilities when strangers meet, we all went to my house and, entering the garden, sat down on a green bank and entertained one another in conversation. He told us that when Vesputius had sailed away, he and his companions that stayed behind in New Castile managed, bit by bit, to earn the affection of the people of that country, meeting often with them and treating them gently. At last they not only lived among them safely, but spoke familiarly with them, and got so far into the heart of a prince (whose name and country I can’t remember) that he gave them everything they needed and all the conveniences of traveling, both boats when they went by water, and wagons when they traveled over land. He sent with them a faithful guide, who was to introduce and introduce them to any other princes they wanted to see. And after many days’ journey, they came to towns, and cities, and to countries that were both well governed and fully populated. 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, everything looked dismal, and all places were either entirely uninhabited or filled with wild beasts and serpents, and a few men who were just as wild and cruel as the beasts. But, as they went farther, a new scene opened: everything grew milder, the air became less burning, the became soil more fertile, and even the beasts became less wild.

[] At last there were nations, towns, and cities that not only did business among themselves and their neighbors, but traded by sea and land with faraway countries. There they found the conveniences of seeing many countries on all hands,??? for no ship made any voyage into where he and his companions weren’t very welcome. The first ships that they saw were flat-bottomed, with sails made of reeds and wicker woven close together, though some were of leather. Later they found ships with round keels and canvas sails, just like our ships, and the sailors understood both astronomy and navigation. They became fond him when he showed them the compass, which they didn’t know about at all. They used to sail cautiously, and only in the summer, but now they treat all seasons the same way, trusting wholly to the magnet, in which they may be “secure” rather than “safe.” There’s reason to fear that this discovery, which they thought would be only an advantage, may, if they’re unwise, do them a lot of harm. But it would take too long to dwell on everything he told us he saw everywhere, and it would take us too far from our present purpose. Maybe on some other occasion we can discuss whatever needs to be said about those wise and prudent institutions he saw among civilized nations. We asked him many questions concerning all these things, which he answered willingly. We didn’t ask about monsters, which is the usual thing to do; you can hear of ravenous dogs, wolves, cruel cannibals anywhere. It’s not so easy to find states that are well and wisely governed.

[] As he told us of many things that were wrong in those newly discovered countries, he made a list of things that might serve as models for us to correct the mistakes of the countries we live in. Again, I may give that, as I’ve promised, at another time. For now, I want to recount the specific things he told us about the manners and laws of the Utopians. But I’ll begin with the occasion that led us to speak of that commonwealth. After Raphael discussed the many errors that were both among us and these nations, after he discussed the wise institutions both here and there, and after he spoke as clearly about the customs and government of every nation he had passed through as if he had spent his whole life in it, Peter, struck with amazement, said, “Raphael, I wonder — how is that you’re in no king’s service? I’m sure there are no kings who wouldn’t want you. Your learning and knowledge of both men and things is so great that you wouldn’t merely entertain them, but you’d be useful, too, by the examples and the advice you could give them. This way you’d serve your own interest and be of great use to all your friends.”

[] “As for my friends,” he answered, “I don’t need to be very concerned, having already done for them all that I had to do. When I was young and in good health, I gave away to my family and friends the thing other people don’t give away part until they’re old and sick, and then unwillingly give what they can enjoy no longer themselves. I think my friends should be content with this, and not to expect that, for their sakes, I’d enslave myself to any king.”

[] “Soft and fair!” said Peter. “I don’t mean that you should be a slave to any king, but only that you should assist them and be useful to them.”

[] “Changing one word,” he said, “doesn’t change the meaning.”

[] “But — call it whatever you want,” replied Peter. “I don’t see any other way 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 I find so horrible to my character? Now I live the way I want to, which few courtiers, I think, can claim to do. So many people seek the favor of great men that there will be no great loss if they don’t have to bother with me or with others like me.”

[] On hearing this I said, “Raphael, I see that you want neither wealth nor power. I value and admire such a man much more than I do any of the world’s great men. But I still think you would do something suitable to your generous and philosophical soul if you’d apply your time and thoughts to public affairs, even though you may happen to find it a little uneasy to yourself. The most effective way to do this is to be taken into the council of some great prince, and putting him on noble and worthy actions — I know you’d do that if you were in such a post. The springs both of good and evil flow from the prince over a whole nation, as if from a lasting fountain. Your learning, even without experience in statecraft or any other learning, would make you a perfect counselor to any king.”

[] “You’re doubly wrong,” he said, “Mr. More, both in your opinion of me and in the judgment you make of things. I don’t have your imagination, but if I had it, the public wouldn’t be the least bit better off if I had sacrificed my peace of mind to it. For most princes are more concerned with affairs of war than with the useful skills of peace, and I don’t know anything about these — nor do I want to. Princes are usually more concerned with acquiring new kingdoms, rightly or wrongly, than on governing the ones they possess properly. And, among the advisers of princes, no one is so wise that they need no assistance — at least, that don’t think themselves so wise that they imagine they need none. And if they’re ambitious to want any, it’s only those for whom the prince likes, whom they want to attach to their own interests by fawning and flatteries. Nature has so made us so that we all love to be flattered and to please ourselves with our own notions: the old crow loves his young, and the ape loves her babies. Now if in such a court, made up of people who envy everyone else and only admire themselves, a person should propose anything that he read in history or observed in his travels, the rest would think that their reputation for wisdom would sink, and that their interests would be depressed if they couldn’t run it down. And if everything else failed, then they’d fly to this — that ‘Such-and-such pleased our ancestors, and we should aspire to be like them.’ They’d set up their rest??? on such an answer, as a sufficient refutation of everything that could be said — as if it were so terrible if someone was wiser than his ancestors. But though they willingly abandon all the good things from former ages, still, if someone proposes better things, they insist on using the excuse of respect for the olden days. I’ve met with these proud, morose, and absurd judgments in many places, particularly once in England.”

[] “Were you ever there?” I asked.

[] “Yes, I was,” he answered, “and stayed there a few months, 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 great clergyman John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal, and Chancellor of England; a man,” he said, “Peter (for Mr. More knows well what he was), who was no less praiseworthy for his wisdom and virtues than for his high character. He was of average height, not broken with age; his looks produced reverence, not fear; his conversation was easy, but serious and grave. He sometimes took pleasure to test the force of those that to do business with him by speaking sharply (though decently) to them — that way he found out their spirit and their presence of mind. He was much delighted with it when it did not grow up to impudence, because that was his own temper, and he looked on such people as the fittest men for business. 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 which nature had given 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 practiced in statecraft; and, having passed through many reversals of fortune, he had, at great cost, acquired a vast stock of wisdom, which isn’t soon lost when it’s purchased so expensively.

[] “One day, when I was having dinner with him, one of the English lawyers happened to be at the table. He took occasion to praise the severe execution of justice on thieves, ‘who,’ as he said, ‘were then hanged so fast that there were sometimes twenty people hanged on one platform!’ And, on that, he said, ‘I can’t wonder enough how it came to pass that, since so few escaped, there are still so many thieves left, who are still robbing all over the place.’

[] “When I heard this, I (who took the boldness to speak freely before the Cardinal) said, ‘There’s no reason to wonder about it. This way of punishing thieves is neither just in itself nor good for the public. As the severity was too great, so the remedy was not effectual — simple theft not being such a terrible crime that it should cost a man his life. No punishment, however severe, can restrain people from robbing when they can find no other livelihood. In this,’ I said, ‘not only you in England, but a great part of the world, are like bad teachers, who would rather beat their students than teach them. Dreadful punishments are enacted against thieves, but it would be much better to make such good provisions by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so be protected from having to steal and then dying for it.’

[] “‘There has been care enough taken for that,’ he said; ‘there are many trades, and there’s farming, by which they may try to earn a living, unless they’d rather follow bad examples.’ ‘That won’t work,’ I said, ‘because many lose limbs in civil or foreign wars — such as in the recent Cornish rebellion, and a while ago in the wars with France — and these people, mutilated in the service of their king and country, can’t follow their old trades anymore, and are too old to learn new ones.

[] “‘But wars are only accidental things, and there are breaks between them, so let’s consider things that happen every day. Many noblemen among you are as idle as drones, who live on other men’s labor, on the labor of their tenants, whom, to raise their revenues, they pare to the quick.??? Of course this is the only way in which they’re frugal, since in everything else they spend freely, even at the risk of becoming beggars themselves. But, besides, they bring with them many idle people who learned a skill to earn a living; and these, as soon as either their lord dies, or they fall sick themselves, are kicked out of the house; for your lords would rather feed idle people than take care of sick people. Often heir can’t keep together a family as great as his predecessor did. Now, when the stomachs of those who are kicked out of the house become keen, they rob just as keenly. What else can they do? For when, by wandering about, they’ve worn out both their health and their clothes — when they’re tattered and look ghastly — men of high social rank won’t entertain them, and poor men don’t dare to do it, knowing that one who has been bred up in idleness and pleasure, and who was used to walk about with his sword and buckler, despising all the neighborhood with an insolent scorn as far below him, isn’t fit to use a spade and an axe. 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, ‘Men like this should be particularly cherished, for they make up the armies we need; since their birth inspires them with a nobler sense of honor than is to be found among tradesmen or farmers.’

[] “‘You may as well say,’ replied I, ‘that you must cherish thieves on the account of wars. You’ll never go without the one as long as you have the other; and as robbers sometimes turn out to be gallant soldiers, so soldiers often turn out to be brave robbers, their two kinds of life are so similar. But this bad custom of keeping many servants, so common among you, isn’t specific to this country. In France there’s an even more pestiferous??? sort of people: the whole country is full of soldiers, still kept up in time of peace (if this state of the nation can be called “peace”). They’re kept in pay on the same account that you plead for those idle retainers about noblemen: this being a maxim of those supposed statesmen, that it’s necessary for the public safety to have a lot of veteran soldiers always in readiness. They think raw men can’t be depended on, and they sometimes look for opportunities to make war, so they can train up their soldiers in the art of cutting throats — or, as Sallust put it, “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 these beasts. The fate of the Romans, Carthaginians, and Syrians, and many other nations and cities, which were both overturned and completely ruined by those standing armies, should make others wiser. The foolishness of this maxim of the French appears clearly even from this: trained soldiers often find the “raw men” turn out to be too tough for them. I won’t say much of this, in case you think I flatter the English. Every day’s experience shows that the manual laborers in the towns or the country bumpkins aren’t afraid of fighting with those idle gentlemen, as long as they’re not disabled by some misfortune in their body or dispirited by extreme poverty. You don’t need to 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 never need have, except 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 don’t think that this necessity of stealing arises only from here; there’s another cause of it, more peculiar to England.’

[] “‘What’s that?’ said the Cardinal.

[] “‘The increase of pasture land,’ I said, ‘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 whole towns. Wherever someone discovers the sheep on some plot of soil give softer and richer wool than is usual, 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 business of agriculture, destroying houses and towns, protecting only the churches, and they enclose grounds in order to put 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 and tenants are kicked off their land by trick or by force, or, being wearied out by bad treatment, they’re forced to sell them. This way 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 homes, not knowing where to go. They must sell, almost for nothing, their household goods, which couldn’t bring them much money, even though they could wait for a buyer. When that little money runs out (and it will be soon spent), what can they do except steal be hanged (God knows how justly!), or go around and beg? And if they do this they’re thrown in jail for being idle vagabonds, even though they’d willingly work, but can’t find anyone to hire them.

[] “‘There’s no more need for country labor, which they were raised to do, when there’s no arable ground left. A single shepherd can look after a flock, which will stock an extent of ground that would require many hands if it were to be plowed and harvested. This, likewise, in many places raises the price of grain. The price of wool has also gone up so much that the poor people, who used to make cloth, can’t even buy it anymore; and this, likewise, makes many of them idle. For since they increased the amount of pasture, God has punished the owners’ greed by a disease among the sheep, which has destroyed vast numbers of them — to us it might have seemed fairer if it fell on the owners themselves.

[] “‘But suppose the sheep should increase ever so much — their price isn’t likely to fall since, though they’re not really a monopoly (because they’re not limited to one person), still they’re in so few hands, and these are so rich, that, as they’re not pressed to sell them sooner than they want, so they never do it till they’ve raised the price as high as possible. For the same reason cattle are so expensive — because, with so many villages being pulled down, and all the country labor being neglected, there’s no one left to make it their business to breed them. The rich don’t breed cattle the way they breed sheep. Instead they just buy them lean and at low prices; and, after they’ve fattened them on their lands, sell them again at high prices. And I don’t think people have noticed all the problems this will produce. Since they sell cattle at expensive prices, if they’re eaten faster than they can be bred, then the stock has to decrease, and this has to end in great scarcity. By these means this, your island, which seemed in this respect the happiest in the world, will suffer much by the cursed greed of a few people. Besides this, the rising??? of grain makes everyone reduce their families as much as they can. And what can the people who are dismissed do except beg or rob? And great minds are more drawn to robbing than to begging. Luxury sneaks in to direct you to poverty and misery.

[] “‘There’s too much vanity in clothing, and too much money spent on food — not only in noblemen’s families, but even among tradesmen, among the farmers themselves, and among all ranks of people. You have also many houses of sin, and, besides the ones that are known, the bars and alehouses are no better. Add in dice, cards, tables,??? football, tennis, and quoits, which makes money run away fast. The ones who get involved in them must finally end up robbery. Get rid of these plagues, and give orders that the ones who’ve dispeopled so much soil can either rebuild the villages they’ve pulled down, or rent their land to people who’ll do it. Restrain those engrossings??? of the rich, that are as bad almost as monopolies. Give fewer opportunities for people to be idle. Let agriculture be set up again, and regulate the manufacture of wool, so we can find work for the people forced by poverty to be thieves — if not, the ones who are now idle vagabonds or useless servants will certainly become thieves at last. If you don’t find a remedy to these evils it’s pointless to boast that you punish theft severely. It may have the appearance of justice, but it’s neither just nor convenient. If you let your people be poorly educated, and let their manners be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes their education set them up for, what else can you conclude except you first make thieves and then punish them?’

[] “While I was talking this way, the counsellor who was present prepared an answer, and decided to resume??? all I said, with all the formality of a debate, where things are usually repeated more faithfully than they’re answered, as if the most important trial was of people’s memories. ‘You’ve talked prettily, for a stranger,’ he said. ‘You’ve heard a lot of things about us that you haven’t been able to think through. But I’ll make everything clear to you, and will first repeat in order everything you’ve said. Then I’ll show how your ignorance of our affairs has misled you. Last, I’ll answer all your arguments. And, so I can begin where I promised, there were four things——’

[] “‘Be quiet!’ said the Cardinal. ‘This will take too long. Therefore we will, for now, save you the trouble of answering, and reserve it for our next meeting, which will be tomorrow, if Raphael’s affairs and yours can admit of it. But, Raphael,’ he said to me, ‘I’d like to know why you think theft shouldn’t be punished by death. Would you just give in to it? — or can you suggest some other punishment that will be more useful to the public? Since even death doesn’t discourage theft, if men thought their lives would be safe, what fear or force could discourage evil men? On the contrary, they’d look on the reduction of the punishment as an invitation to commit more crimes.’

[] “I answered, ‘It seems to me very unjust 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 someone says that he suffers not for the money but for breaking the law, I’d have to answer, extreme justice is an extreme injury. We shouldn’t approve of those terrible laws that turn the smallest offenses into death-penalty cases, nor of the Stoic philosophers’ opinion that all crimes are equal — as if there were no difference between the killing a man and taking his wallet: if we think about it fairly, they’re completely different. God has commanded us not to kill, so should we kill so easily for a little money? But if someone says that, by that law, we’re only forbidden to kill except when the laws of the land allow of it, on the same grounds, laws could be made to permit adultery and perjury. Since God took from us the right to decide the fate of either of our own or of other people’s lives, if it’s pretended that the mutual consent of men in making laws can authorize manslaughter in cases in which God has given us no example, that it frees people from divine law, and so makes murder legal — what is this, but to put human laws ahead of God’s laws? — and, if we admit this once, then in every case we can put any restrictions we like on God’s laws. If, by the law of Moses — even though it was rough and severe, as being imposed on a stubborn and servile nation — men were only fined, and not put to death for theft, we can’t imagine that in this new law of mercy, where God treats us with a father’s tenderness, He has given us more freedom to be cruel than He gave the Jews. Therefore I think putting thieves to death isn’t lawful. It’s obviously absurd, and will hurt the society, if a thief and a murderer should be punished the same way. If a robber sees that his danger is the same if he’s convicted of theft as if he were guilty of murder, of course he'll want to kill the person he would otherwise only have robbed. If the punishment is the same, there’s more safety and less risk of being caught when the person who can identify him is out of the way. So I conclude that terrifying thieves too much just makes them more cruel.

[] “But as to the question, ‘What better punishment can be found?’ I think it’s easier to discover that than to invent anything that’s worse. Why should we doubt the way that was so long used by the ancient Romans, who understood so well the arts of government, was very proper for their punishment? They condemned everyone 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 the one I saw in my travels in Persia, among the Polylerits, a considerable and well-governed people. They pay a yearly tribute to the King of Persia, but in all other respects they’re a free nation, and governed by their own laws. They lie far from the sea, and are surrounded by hills. Since they’re content with what their own fruitful country produces, they have little trade with any other nation, and since they, in keeping with their national character, aren’t interested in expanding their borders, their mountains and the payments to the Persian king keep them safe from invasions.

[] “‘So they have no wars; they live conveniently, not splendidly, and it’s more accurate to call their nation ‘happy’ rather than ‘eminent’ or ‘famous.’ I don’t think that they’re known, even by name, to anyone but their closest neighbors. Anyone found guilty of theft among them is bound to make restitution to the owner — and not, as it is in other places, to the prince — because they believe the prince has no more right to the stolen goods than the thief. But if they decide that what was stolen doesn’t exist anymore, then they estimate how much the thieves are worth, and make restitution out of that; they give what’s left over to their wives and children, and they themselves are condemned to serve in the public works. But they’re not imprisoned or chained unless there happens to be some unusual circumstance in their crimes. They go about loose and free, working for the public: if they’re idle, or refuse to work, they’re whipped; but if they work hard they’re treated well, without any mark of shame — only the lists of their names are read every night, and then they’re shut up. They allow no other uneasiness but this of constant labor; for, as they work for the public, so they’re well supported out of the public funds, 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 unreliable, the people are so inclined to be merciful that they’ve got more than enough. But in other places public funds are set aside for them, or there’s a constant tax or poll-money raised to support them. In some places they’re set to no public work, but every private man that has occasion to hire workmen goes to the marketplaces and hires them of the public, for a little less money than he’d pay a free man. If they go lazily about their task he might quicken them with the whip.

[] “‘This way there’s always some piece of work or other to be done by them; and, besides their livelihood, they still earn something for the public. They all wear a specific kind of clothes, of one particular color, and their hair is cropped a little above their ears, and a piece of one of their ears is cut off. Their friends are allowed to give them food, drink, or clothes, as long as they’re of their proper color. But it’s death, both to the giver and taker, if they give them money. It’s just as illegal for any free man to take money from them for any reason at all. And it’s also death for any of these slaves (so they’re called) to handle weapons. Those of every division of the country are distinguished by a particular mark, which it’s a capital crime for them to lay aside, to go out of their bounds, or to talk with a slave of another jurisdiction; and even attempt to escape is as illegal as an actual escape. It’s death for any other slave to be accessory to it, and if a free man engages in it, he’s condemned to slavery. Anyone who discovers it is rewarded — if a free man, rewarded in money; and if a slave, rewarded with freedom, together with a pardon for being accessory to it, so that they see more advantage in repenting of their scheme rather than in persisting in it.

[] “These are their laws and rules in relation to robbery, and it’s obvious that they’re as beneficial as they’re mild and gentle. Not only is vice only destroyed and people’s lives preserved; but they’re treated in a way that makes them see the necessity to be honest and to spend the rest of their lives repairing the injuries they did to society. Nor is there any risk of their falling back to their old habits. And travelers fear mischief from them so little that they usually use them as guides to get from one jurisdiction to another — there’s nothing left them by which they can rob or be the better for it, since, as they’re disarmed, simply having money is proof of guilt. And because they’re certainly punished if discovered, they can’t hope to escape; because their clothing is so different in every way from what’s commonly worn, that they can’t flee without going naked — and even then their cropped ear would give them away. The only thing to fear from them is conspiring against the government — but those from one district or neighborhood couldn’t do anything unless there were a general conspiracy were among all the slaves of the various jurisdictions, which can’t be done because they can’t meet or talk together. Nor will anyone try a scheme where it would be so difficult to hide and so profitable to reveal. None of them have entirely given up hope of recovering their freedom, since by obedience and patience, and by making people believe they’ll change their life for the future, they can expect to get their freedom at last. And every year a few are restored to freedom on the basis of a good character that’s 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, ‘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, ‘It’s not easy to form a judgment of its success, since it was a method that never yet had been tried; but if,’ he said, ‘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 people at last; and I don’t see,’ he added, ‘why it would be either unjust, ineffective, or the least bit dangerous to put up with such a delay. In my opinion we should treat vagabonds the same way — even though we’ve made many laws against them, we haven’t succeeded in our goals.’ 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 don’t know whether it would be worthwhile to tell what followed — it was all so ridiculous. But I’ll try, because it’s not unrelated to this subject, and there might be some good in it. There was a jester standing nearby, someone who played the fool so naturally that he really seemed to be one. The jokes he told were so cold and dull that we laughed at him more than at them, but sometimes he said, as if by chance, things that were not unpleasant, justifying the old proverb, ‘He who throws the dice often, will sometimes have a lucky hit.’ When someone in the group said I had taken care of the thieves and the Cardinal taken care of the vagabonds, so that nothing was left except for someone to make plans to support sick and old people who couldn’t work, the jester said, ‘Leave it to me! I’ll take care of them. There’s no kind of people I hate more. I’ve been bothered by them and their sad complaints so many times. But however sadly they told their story, they could never get even a single penny from me; for either I didn’t want to give them anything, or, if I wanted to, I didn’t have any money to give them. Now they know me so well that they won’t lose their labor, but let me pass without giving me any trouble, because they hope for nothing — no more, really, than if I were a priest. But I’d make a law 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 actually liked it. There was a priest there; he was a grave, morose man, but he was so pleased with this reflection on the priests and the monks that he began to play with the jester, and said to him, ‘This won’t deliver you from all beggars, unless you take care of us friars.’

[] “‘Already done!’ answered the Fool. ‘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 received by the whole group, who looked at the Cardinal and saw he was happy with it; only the friar himself was upset, as you can imagine, and became so angry he couldn’t stop criticizing the jester, and calling him ‘rogue,’ ‘slanderer,’ ‘backbiter,’ and ‘son of perdition,’ and then cited some dreadful threats out of the Scriptures against him.

[] “Now the jester thought he was in his element, and laid about him??? freely. ‘Good Friar,’ he said, ‘don’t be angry, for it is written, “In patience possess your soul.”’

[] “The Friar answered — I’ll give you his own words — ‘I’m not angry, you hangman; at least, I don’t sin in it, for the Psalmist says, “Be ye angry and sin not.”’

[] “At this point the Cardinal gently criticized him, and advised him to control his emotions.

[] “‘No, my lord,’ he said, ‘I speak only out of a good zeal, which I should have, for holy men have had a good zeal, as it is said, “The zeal of your house has 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 may do this with good intentions,’ the Cardinal said, ‘but, in my opinion, it would be wiser, and maybe better, not to engage in so ridiculous a contest with a jester.’

[] “‘No, my lord,’ he answered, ‘that would not be wise, for Solomon, the wisest of men, said, “Answer a Fool according to his foolishness,” which I now do, and show him the ditch into which he will fall, if he’s not aware of it. 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 papal bull that excommunicates everyone who jeers at us.’ When the Cardinal saw that there was no end of this matter he made a sign to the jester to withdraw, turned the discourse another way, and soon after rose from the table, and, dismissing us, went to hear cases.

[] “And so, Mr. More, I’ve told a tedious story, and I’d be ashamed of how long it is if, as you earnestly begged me, I hadn’t noticed you listening to it as if you didn’t want to miss a word. I might have condensed it, but I decided to give it to you at full length, so you could see how the people who hated my suggestion noticed the cardinal didn’t dislike it, and immediately approved of it — they fawned so on him and flattered him so much that they seriously applauded things he only liked in jest. And from this you can understand how little courtiers would value either me or my advice.”

[] To this I answered, “You’ve been very kind to tell me this. You’ve said everything so wisely and so pleasantly that you’ve made me imagine I was in my own country and grown young again, by remembering that good Cardinal, in whose family I was bred from my childhood. And though you’re very dear to me for other reasons, you’re even dearer because you honor his memory so much. But, after all this, I can’t change my mind. I still think that, if you could get over your dislike for the courts of princes, you could do a lot of good to mankind through the advice you’re able to give. And this is the most important plan that every good person should live by. Your friend Plato thinks that nations will be happy when either philosophers become kings or kings become philosophers. It’s no wonder we’re so far from that happiness while philosophers won’t think it their duty to assist kings with their counsels.”

[] “They’re not so base-minded,” he said, “but that they’d willingly do it. Many of them have already done it by their books, if those that are in power would only listen to their good advice. But Plato was right: unless 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.

[] “Don’t you think that, if I were around a king, proposing good laws to him, and trying to root out all the cursed seeds of evil that I found in him, I’d either be kicked out of his court, or, at least, be laughed at for my trouble? For instance, what could I say if I were around the king of France, called into his cabinet council, where several wise men, in his hearing, were making many suggestions — such as how to keep Milan, and how to recover Naples, which over and over slipped out of their hands — how to subdue the Venetians, and then the rest of Italy — how he might add Flanders, Brabant, all of Burgundy, and some other kingdoms which he has swallowed already in his designs to his empire? One suggests an alliance with the Venetians, to be kept as long as he finds his account in it, and that he should communicate counsels with them, and give them some share of the profits till his success makes him need or fear them less, and then it will be easily taken out of their hands; another suggests hiring the Germans and the securing the Swiss by pensions; another suggests winning over the Emperor with money, which has complete control over him; another suggests a peace with the king of Arragon, and, in order to cement it, giving up the king of Navarre’s claims; another thinks the prince of Castile should be worked on by the hope of an alliance, and that pensions would win over some of his courtiers for the French faction. The hardest point of all is what to do with England. A peace treaty is to be started, and if we can’t depend on their alliance, it should still be as firm as possible. We should call them friends, but suspect them as enemies. The Scots, therefore, should be kept readiness to be let loose on England on every occasion. And we should secretly support some banished nobleman (because the alliance can’t do it openly) who has a claim to the crown, by which means that suspected prince may be kept in awe. Now when things are in so great a state of confusion, and so many brave men are joining counsels how to carry on the war, if a lowly man like me should stand up and tell 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 shouldn’t think of adding others to it; and if, after all this, I’d suggest the resolutions of the Achorians, a people that lie on the southeast of Utopia, who long ago engaged in war in order to add to the dominions of their prince another kingdom, to which he had some claims by an ancient alliance: this they conquered, but found that it was as hard to keep as it was to conquer; 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 spilled for the king’s glory without the people’s gaining the smallest advantage, who didn’t get the smallest benefit from it, even in peacetime; and that, because their manners were corrupted by a long war, robbery and murders everywhere abounded, and their laws fell into contempt; while their king, distracted by trying to rule two kingdoms, was 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 a humble address to their king, asking him to choose which of the two kingdoms he most wanted to keep, since he couldn’t hold both; for they were too great a people to be governed by a divided king, since no man would willingly share a groom with another man. With all of this, the good prince was forced to leave his new kingdom to one of his friends (who was not long after dethroned), and to be contented with his old one. I’d add that, after all those warlike attempts, the confusion, and the spending of both treasure and people that must follow them, maybe on some misfortune they might be forced to throw up all at last; therefore it seemed much more eligible that the king should improve his original kingdom as much as he could, and make it flourish as much as possible; that he should love his people, and be loved by them; that he should live among them, govern them gently, and leave other kingdoms alone, since his share was already big enough, if not too big, for him: — tell me, how do you think would a speech like this would be heard?”

[] “I admit,” I said, “not very well.”

[] “But,” he said, “what if I should spend time with another kind of ministers, whose most important plans and advice were about how the prince can get richer? One suggests raising the value of coins when the king’s debts are large, and lowering it when his revenues come in, so he could both pay much with a little, and in a little receive a great deal. Another suggests pretending to start a war to raise money, and then settling on peace as soon as that was done — doing this with enough appearance of religion to work on the people, and make them say it’s because the prince is pious and loves his subjects. A third offers some old forgotten laws that haven’t been used in ages (and which, since they’d been forgotten by all the subjects, they’d also been broken by them), and suggests collecting the fines for breaking these laws — since it would bring in a lot of money, there’d be a good excuse for it, because it would look like executing the law and carrying out justice. A fourth proposes prohibiting many things under severe penalties, especially such as were against the interest of the people, and then the dispensing with these prohibitions, on great compositions,??? to those who might find their advantage in breaking them. This would serve two ends, both of them acceptable to many: those whose greed made them break the law would be fined severely, and the sale of expensive licenses would make it seem the prince cared about his people, and wouldn’t give away anything that might be against the public good. Another suggests that the judges must be made always to rule in favor of the prince’s power, that they should often be sent for to court, so that the king could hear them argue those points in which he’s concerned; since, however unjust his schemes may be, still at least one judge, either to spite the others or just to be different, would find an excuse to rule for the king. If the judges just differ in opinion, the clearest thing in the world becomes worthy of dispute, and once truth is made questionable, the king can take advantage and use the law for his own profit. Meanwhile the judges that stand out will be brought over, either through fear or modesty. Once they’re won over this way, all of them may be sent to the Bench??? to make their rulings as boldly as the king would have it; for fair pretenses??? will never be lacking when sentence is to be given in the prince’s favor. Some might say that he’s got the fair argument; some that the text of the statute will be found sounding??? that way, or some forced sense will be put on them. When everything else fails, the king will assert his authority as above the law, something a religious judge should bear in mind. And so everyone agrees with the Crassus’s saying, that a prince can never have enough money, since he has to use it to maintain his armies; that a king can never do anything unjust, even if he wanted to; that all property is in him,??? including the very people??? of his subjects; and that no man has any other property but what the king, out of his goodness, is willing to give him. And they think it’s 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’d rise up and assert that such counsels were both unbecoming a king and mischievous to him; and that not only his honor, but his safety, consisted more in his people’s wealth than in his own; if I’d show that they choose a king for their own sake, and not for his; that, by his care and endeavors, they may be both easy and safe; and that, therefore, a prince should 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’s also certain that they’re 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 couldn’t 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 jailer and not a king.’ He’s an unskillful 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 on what belongs to him without wronging others, and accommodate his expense to his revenue. Let him punish crimes, and, by his wise conduct, let him endeavor to prevent them, rather than be severe when he has allowed them to be too common. Let him not rashly revive laws that are abrogated by disuse, especially if they’ve been long forgotten and never wanted. And let him never take any penalty for the breach of them to which a judge wouldn’t 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’d 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 enough 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 similar 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 won’t be entertained. Discourses so much out of the road couldn’t avail anything, nor have any effect on men whose minds were prepossessed with different sentiments. This philosophical way of speculation is pleasant among friends in a free conversation; but there’s no room for it in the courts of princes, where great affairs are carried on by authority.”

[] “That’s what I was saying,” replied he, “that there’s 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’s another philosophy that’s 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 one of Plautus’s comedies is being performed, and a company of servants are acting their parts, and you should come out dressed as a philosopher, and repeat a discourse of Seneca’s to Nero from Octavia, 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’s in hand when you mix with it things of an opposite nature, even though they’re much better. Therefore go through with the play that’s acting the best you can, and don’t confound it because another that’s pleasanter comes into your thoughts. It’s 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 shouldn’t forsake the ship in a storm because you cannot command the winds. You aren’t 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 on them: you ought rather to cast about and to manage things with all the dexterity in your power, so that, if you aren’t 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’s a blessing that I don’t 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 endeavored to cure the madness of others; for, if I speak truth, I must repeat what I’ve said to you; and as for lying, whether a philosopher can do it or not I cannot tell: I’m sure I cannot do it. But though these discourses may be uneasy and ungrateful to them, I don’t 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 practice in theirs, though they might seem better, as certainly they are, yet they’re so different from our establishment, which is founded on property (there being no such thing among them), that I couldn’t 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’s 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 has 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 wouldn’t 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’ll signify nothing; or, if I agree with them, I’ll then only help forward their madness. I don’t understand 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 won’t 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 foolishness, to take care to preserve himself.’

[] “Though, to speak my mind, I must freely admit that, as long as there’s any property, and as long as 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 aren’t 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 has its due reward, and yet there’s 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 don’t have the power either to obtain or preserve it, or even to enable men certainly to distinguish what’s their own from what’s another’s, of which the many lawsuits that every day break out, and are eternally depending, give too plain a demonstration — when, I say, I balance all these things in my thoughts, I grow more favorable to Plato, and don’t wonder that he resolved not to make any laws for such as wouldn’t submit to a community of all things; for so wise a man couldn’t but foresee that the setting all on the same level was the only way to make a nation happy; which cannot be obtained so long as there’s property, for when every man draws to himself all that he can compass, by one title or another, it has to follow that, however rich 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 where I’m 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’s 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’ll provoke another, and what removes the one ill symptom produces others, while the strengthening one part of the body weakens the rest.”

[] “On the contrary,” answered I, “it seems to me that men cannot live conveniently where all things are common. How can there be any plenty where every man will excuse himself from labor? for as the hope of gain doesn’t excite him, so the confidence that he has in other men’s industry may make him slothful. If people come to be pinched with poverty, and yet cannot dispose of anything as their own, what can follow 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 don’t wonder,” he said, “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 won’t easily persuade me,” said Peter, “that any nation in that new world is better governed than those among us; for as our understandings aren’t 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,” he said, “you cannot pass a true judgment of it unless you had read their histories; for, if they’re 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 don’t 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 couldn’t fully explain, so happily did they improve that accident of having some of our people cast on their shore. But if such an accident has at any time brought any from there into Europe, we have been so far from improving it that we do not so much as remember it, as, in aftertimes maybe, 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.” At this point I said to him, “I earnestly beg you would describe that island very particularly to us; don’t be 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 so far ignorant.”

[] “I’ll do it very willingly,” he said, “for I’ve digested the whole matter carefully, but it will take up some time.”

[] “Let’s go, then,” said I, “first and dine, and then we’ll have enough themselves.” 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 on it he paused a little to recollect himself, and began this way.

BOOK TWO

[] “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 like 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’s no great current; the whole coast is, as it were, one continued harbor, which gives all that live in the island great convenience for mutual commerce. But the entry into the bay, occasioned by rocks on the one hand and shallows on the other, is very dangerous. In the middle of it there’s one single rock which appears above water, and may, therefore, easily be avoided; and on the top of it there’s 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 couldn’t 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, however great it were, would be certainly lost. On the other side of the island there are likewise many harbors; and the coast is so fortified, both by nature and art, that a small number of men can hinder the descent of a great army. But they report (and there 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 uncivilized inhabitants into such a good government, and to that measure of politeness, that they now far excel all the rest of mankind. Having soon subdued them, he designed to separate them from the continent, and to bring the sea quite round them. To accomplish this he ordered a deep channel to be dug, fifteen miles long; and that the natives might not think he treated them like slaves, he not only forced the inhabitants, but also his own soldiers, to labor in carrying it on. As he set a vast number of men to work, he, beyond all men’s expectations, brought it to a speedy conclusion. And his neighbors, who at first laughed at the foolishness 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’re 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 aren’t so far distant but that a man can go on foot in one day from it to what lies next to it. Every city sends three of their wisest senators once a year to Amaurot, to consult about their common concerns; for that’s the chief town of the island, being situated near the center of it, so that it’s 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’ve built, over all the country, farmhouses for husbandmen, which are well contrived, and furnished with all things necessary for country labor. Inhabitants are sent, by turns, from the cities to dwell in them; no country family has fewer than forty men and women in it, besides two slaves. There’s a master and a mistress set over every family, and over thirty families there’s a magistrate. Every year twenty of this family come back to the town after they’ve 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 farmers to prevent anyone being forced against their will to follow that hard course of life too long, yet many among them take such pleasure in it that they desire permission 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 don’t 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’re 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 don’t 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’re not subject to so many diseases, so they’re kept upon a less charge and with less trouble. And even when they’re so worn out that they’re no more fit for labor, they’re good meat at last. They plant no grain except what will be their bread; for they drink either wine, cider or perry, and often water, sometimes boiled with honey or licorice, with which they abound; and though they know exactly how much corn will serve every town and all that tract of country which belongs to it, yet they sow much more and breed more cattle than are necessary for their consumption, and they give that overplus of which they make no use to their neighbors. When they want anything in the country which it doesn’t 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’ll 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’re so like one another, except where the situation makes some difference. I’ll 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’s 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’s 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’s grown half a mile broad; but, it still grows larger and larger, till, after sixty miles’ course below it, it’s 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’s 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’s quite fresh; and when the tide ebbs, it continues fresh all along to the sea. There’s 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’s 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 there it’s carried in clay pipes to the streets below. 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 makes up for the lack 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’re easily opened, so they shut of their own accord; and, there being no property among them, every man may freely enter into any house at all. 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 humor of ordering their gardens so well is kept up not only 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’s 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 stories 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’s 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’s 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’s 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’ll choose him whom they think most fit for the office: they give him their voices secretly, so that it’s not known for whom every one gives his suffrage. The Prince is for life, unless he’s 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 happens only rarely. There are always two Syphogrants called into the council chamber, and these are changed every day. It’s 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’s 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’s sent to the Syphogrants, who, after they’ve 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’s first proposed; for that’s 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 lacked 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 so universally understood among them that no person, either man or woman, is ignorant of it. They’re 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’s no sort of trade they admire more. Throughout the island they wear the same sort of clothes, without any other distinction except what’s necessary to distinguish the two sexes and the married and unmarried. The fashion never alters, and as it’s neither disagreeable nor uneasy, so it’s 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 anyone’s talents lie elsewhere, they’re adopted into a family that deals in the trade to which he’s 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 what he likes best, unless the public has more occasion for the other.

[] The most important — almost the only — business of the Syphogrants is to take care that no one may live without working, but that everyone follows his trade diligently. But they don’t wear themselves out, working nonstop from morning to night like beasts of burden — since that’s a heavy slavery, it’s the common course of life among all manual workers everywhere except the Utopians. But they, by dividing the day and night into twenty-four hours, devote six of these to work, three before dinner and three after; they then have dinner, 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 individual’s discretion. But they’re not supposed to abuse that time to luxury and idleness, but must employ it in some proper exercise, whatever best suits them, which is, for the most part, reading. It’s ordinary to have public lectures every morning before daybreak, where no one is required to appear except 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, who aren’t cut out for a life of the mind, prefer to spend their time in their trades, as many of them do, no one stops them; instead they’re praised for taking care to serve their country. After dinner they spend an hour in some entertainment — 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 don’t even know about dice or other foolish and troublesome games. They have, however, two sorts of games, something like 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 pleasantly 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 labor is to be narrowly examined, otherwise you may imagine that since there are only six hours appointed for work, they may fall under a scarcity of necessary provisions: but it’s not the case that there’s not enough time to give them all sorts of things, either necessary or convenient; instead, they have too much time. You’ll easily understand this if you think about how many people in other nations are entirely idle. First, women — half of humankind — usually do little. And if a few women are diligent, then their husbands are idle. Then consider the huge number of idle priests and those called religious men. Add to these all the rich men, especially those with large estates, called “noblemen” and “gentlemen,” together with their families, made up of idle people, who are kept for show rather than use. Add to these all those strong and lusty??? beggars who go around pretending to be sick so they can beg for a living. When you add them up, you’ll see that humankind is supported by far fewer people than you imagined. Then think of how few of those that work are employed in really useful labors — since we measure everything by money, we’ve given rise to many trades that are both pointless and unnecessary, and just support riot??? and luxury. If people worked only on things that the conveniences of life actually require, there would be such an abundance of them that the prices of them would sink, and tradesmen couldn’t be supported by their profits. If all those who do useless labor were given more profitable jobs, and if everyone who languishes out their lives in laziness and idleness (every one of whom consumes as much as any two of the workers) were forced to work, you can easily imagine that a small proportion of time would be enough to do everything that’s necessary, profitable, or pleasant to humankind (especially if “pleasure” is kept within its appropriate limits). This appears very clearly in Utopia; for there, in a great city, and in all the territory that lies round it, you can barely find five hundred people, either men or women, who are of the right age and have the strength to work, but who aren’t engaged in labor. Even the Syphogrants, though they’re excused by the law, don’t excuse themselves — they work, so that their examples make the rest of the people industrious. The same exemption is allowed to those who, being recommended to the people by the priests, are, by the secret recommendations of the Syphogrants, privileged from labor, so they can devote themselves wholly to study, And if any of these fall short of those hopes that they seemed at first to give, they have to go back to work. And sometimes a manual laborer who uses his leisure time 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, once called their ‘Barzenes,’ now called their ‘Ademus.’

[] “And this way, from the huge numbers of people who aren’t allowed to be idle or to work in fruitless jobs, you can easily estimate how much can be done in the few hours in which they have to work. But, besides everything that’s already been said, consider that the necessary skills among them are managed with less labor than anywhere else.

[] “Among us, building or repairing houses requires many hands, because often a wasteful heir allows a house his father built to fall into decay, so that his successor has to spend a lot of money for repairs when he could have maintained the place at a small charge. It often happens that a house one person built at a vast expense is neglected by another person, who thinks he has a more delicate sense of the beauties of architecture, and so he lets it to fall to ruin and builds another at no less charge. Among the Utopians, though, everything is regulated so that people very rarely build on a new plot of land, and they’re not only very quick to repair their houses, but they show their foresight in allowing them to decay. In this way their buildings are preserved for a long time with only a little labor, and the builders, who have to do the maintenance, are often unemployed, except when they’re hewing timber and squaring stones, so that the materials may be ready for raising a building quickly when there’s the need for it.

[] “As to their clothes, notice how little work they spend on them. When they’re working they wear leather and skins, cut carelessly about them, which will last seven years. When they appear in public they put on an upper garment which hides the other. These are all of one color, and that’s the natural color of the wool. Because they need less woolen cloth than is used anywhere else, what they use is much cheaper; they use linen cloth more, but that requires less labor, and they value cloth only by the whiteness of the linen or the cleanness of the wool, without caring about the fineness of the thread. In other places, four or five upper garments of woolen cloth of different colors, and as many vests of silk, are hardly enough for one man, and while particular people think even ten aren’t enough, every man there is content with one, which very often lasts him two years. And nothing can tempt a man to desire more. If he had them, he wouldn’t be any warmer, and he wouldn’t look any better at all. Therefore, since they’re all employed in some useful labor, and since they’re content with fewer things, there’s a great abundance of all things among them. Often large numbers of people, because there’s no other work to do, are sent out to repair the highways. But when no public project has to be performed, they reduce the number of working hours. The magistrates never involve the people in unnecessary labor, since the whole point of the constitution is to regulate labor by the needs of the public, and to allow the people all they time they need to improve their minds — this, they think, is what it means to be happy in life.

Of Their Commerce

[] “But it’s now time to explain to you the way these people interact, their commerce, and the rules by which 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 mind — in that case, the next oldest takes his place. But to prevent any city from becoming either too crowded or too empty through an accident, there are plans to prevent any city from having more than six thousand families, besides those of the country around it. No family may have fewer than ten or more than sixteen people in it, but there’s no fixed number of underage children. They follow this rule simply by moving some of the children of a fruitful couple to another family that doesn’t have as many. By the same rule they supply cities that don’t increase so fast from others that breed faster. If there’s any increase over the whole island, then they take a number of their citizens out of the towns and send them over to the neighboring continent, where, if they learn that the inhabitants have more soil than they can well cultivate, they plant a colony. They take the inhabitants into their society if they’re willing to live with them; and where they do that willingly, they quickly follow their mode of life and follow their rules, and this brings happiness to both nations; for, because of the way they behave, they take so much care of the soil that it becomes fruitful enough for both, though it might be otherwise too barren for either of them. But if the natives refuse to obey their laws, they drive them out of the bounds they mark out for themselves, and they use force if they resist, for they consider 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 allowed to lie idle and uncultivated, because the law of nature gives every person the right to as much unused land as he needs to stay alive.

[] “If an accident has reduced the number of the inhabitants of any town so much that they can’t make it up from the other towns of the island without diminishing them too much — they say this happened only twice since they were first a people, when great numbers were carried off by the plague — then they make up the loss by recalling the necessary number of people from their colonies. They’ll abandon these rather than allow the towns in the island to sink too low.

[] “But to return to how they live in society. The oldest man of every family, as I’ve said, is in charge. 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 city there’s a marketplace. What’s brought there and manufactured by the families is carried from there to buildings set aside for that purpose, where all things of the same kind are laid by themselves; and every father goes there, and takes whatever he or his family need, without either paying for it or leaving anything in exchange. There’s no reason for denying any person, since there’s such plenty of everything among them. And there’s no danger that someone will ask for more than they need. They have no incentives to do this, because they know they’ll always have enough. It’s fear of poverty that makes the whole race of animals greedy or ravenous; but, besides fear, there is in humanity a pride that makes him imagine it’s a kind of glory to excel others in pomp and excess. There’s no room for this under the laws of the Utopians. Near these markets there are others for all sorts of supplies — vegetables, fruits, and bread, but also fish, poultry, and cattle. There are also, outside their towns, places set up near running water for killing their livestock and for washing away the filth, which is done by their slaves. They don’t let their citizens kill the cattle, because they think that pity and good nature, which are among the best affections we’re born with, are seriously harmed by butchering animals. Nor do they allow anything that’s disgusting or unclean to be brought inside their towns, in case the air should be infected by bad smells, which might harm their health.

[] “In every street there are great halls, all equally spaced from each other, distinguished by particular names. The Syphogrants live in the ones that are set over thirty families, fifteen lying on one side of it, and the same number on the other. In these halls they all meet and eat their meals. The stewards of every one of them come to the marketplace at an appointed hour, and they take back the right amount of provisions for the number of people who live in their hall.

[] “But they take more care of their sick than of any others; these are lodged and provided for in public hospitals. Every town has four hospitals, built outside their walls, and they’re so large that they could almost pass for little towns. This way, even if they had a large number of sick people, they could still lodge them conveniently, and far enough away that those with infectious diseases are kept away to prevent contagion. The hospitals are stocked and stored with all everything that promotes the ease and recovery of the sick, and the people who are put in them are looked after with such tender and watchful care, and are so constantly attended by their skillful physicians, that (since no one is sent to them against their will), virtually everyone in the whole town would rather go there than lie sick at home.

[] “After the steward of the hospitals has gathered all the supplies the physician calls for, then the best things that are left in the market are distributed equally among the halls in proportion to their numbers — only they first serve the Prince, the Chief Priest, the Tranibors, the Ambassadors, and strangers, if there are any (which happens rarely), and for whom there are well-supplied houses prepared for their reception when they come among them. At lunch and dinner, when the whole Syphogranty is called together by sound of trumpet, they meet and eat together, except only the ones who are in the hospital or sick at home. Yet, after the halls are served, no man is stopped from carrying provisions home from the marketplace, because they know that anyone who does that has a good reason. Although anyone who wants to can eat at home, no one does it willingly — it’s ridiculous and foolish for anyone to go to the trouble of preparing a bad dinner at home when there’s a much more plentiful one made ready for them so near hand.

[] “All the difficult and unpleasant jobs around these halls are performed by their slaves. Preparing and cooking the food, though, and ordering their tables, are the responsibility only of 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, so that if anyone should suddenly get sick (which sometimes happens to pregnant women), she can get up without disturbing the rest, and go to the nurses’ room (who are there with the nursing children), where there’s always clean water at hand and cradles, where they can lay the young children if necessary, and a fire, so they can change and dress them in front of it. Every child is nursed by its own mother (if death or sickness doesn’t intervene); if it does, the Syphogrants’ wives quickly find a nurse, which isn’t difficult, since anyone who can do it offers herself cheerfully. They’re willing to do that mercy, and the children they nurse think of the nurses as their mothers. All children under five sit with the nurses; the rest of the younger sort of both sexes, till they’re fit for marriage, either serve the people who sit at the table, or, if they’re not strong enough for that, they stand by them in silence and eat what they’re given. And they have no other formality of dining. In the middle of the head table, which stands across the upper end of the hall, sit the Syphogrant and his wife, for that’s the best and most conspicuous place. Next to him sit two of the elders, because people always go to meals in groups of four. If there’s a temple within the Syphogranty, the priest and his wife sit with the Syphogrant above all the rest. Next to them there’s a mixture of old and young, who are placed so that, as the young are set near others, so they’re mixed with the more ancient; which, they say, was decided for this reason: that the seriousness of the elders, and the reverence that’s due to them, might restrain the younger ones from indecent words and gestures. Dishes aren’t 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 interesting food that happens to be set before them, if there’s not such an abundance of them that the whole company may be served alike.

[] “Old men are especially honored with respect, but everyone else is treated just as well. Both lunch and dinner start with someone reading a lecture about morality, but it’s short, not boring or hard to listen to. From here the old men take the opportunity to entertain the people near them with useful and pleasant stories, but they don’t dominate the discussion so much that the younger people can’t engage. No, they get them to talk so they can, in open conversation, see the force of every one’s spirit and observe his character. They finish their lunches quickly, but sit long at dinner, because they go to work after the one, and go to sleep after the other, during which they think the stomach digests more vigorously. They never have lunch without music, and there’s always fruit served after the meal. While they’re at the table, some burn perfumes and sprinkle fragrant ointments and sweet waters — they have everything they need to boost their spirits. They give themselves a lot of leeway, and indulge themselves in all harmless pleasures. That’s how people in the towns live together. In the country, where they live far apart, every one eats at home, and no family lacks any necessary supplies, because they’re the ones who bring the supplies into the towns.

Of the Traveling of the Utopians

[] If anyone has any interest in visiting friends who live in some other town, or wants to travel and see the rest of the country, he gets permission very easily from the Syphogrant and Tranibors, as long as there’s no special reason for him to be at home. People who travel carry with them a passport from the prince, which both certifies that they’re allowed to travel and limits the time of their return. They’re given a wagon and a slave, who drives the oxen and looks after them — but, unless there are women in the company, the wagon is sent back at the end of the journey as a unnecessary burden. While they’re on the road they carry no supplies, but they have all they need, and everywhere they’re treated the same as if they were at home. If they stay anywhere longer than one night, everyone keeps doing us usual job, and is treated very well by people of his own trade. But if anyone goes out of their city without permission, and is found wandering without a passport, he’s treated harshly — punished as a fugitive and sent home in disgrace. If commits the same crime again, he’s condemned to slavery. If anyone wants to travel within his own city, they’re free do it, with their father’s permission and his wife’s consent; but when they come into any of the country houses, if they expect to be entertained there, they have to work with them and follow their rules; and if they do this, they can go freely around the whole precinct, being then as useful to their city as if they were still in it. So you see there are no idle people among them, nor excuses for not working. There are no taverns, no ale-houses, no brothels among them, no other opportunities to corrupt each other, to get into corners,??? or form themselves into parties. Everyone lives in full view, so that they’re all obliged to perform their usual tasks and to use their free time well. Any people organized this way must have a great abundance of everything, and since they’re equally distributed among the people, no one can be poor or forced to beg.

[] “In their great council at Amaurot — every town sends three people there once a year — they look into which towns are oversupplied and which ones have less, so the one may be furnished from the other. They do this freely and without any sort of exchange; they just supply each other and are supplied by each other depending on whether they have plenty or scarcity — this way the whole island is one family. When they’ve taken care of their whole country this way, and laid up stores for two years (to guard against a bad season), they order an exportation of the surplus — grain, honey, wool, flax, wood, wax, tallow, leather, and cattle — and they send it out in great quantities to other nations. They order one-seventh of all these goods to be freely given to the poor of the countries to which they send them, and they sell the rest at moderate price. By this exchange they not only bring back those few things that they need at home (since they hardly need anything but iron), but also a lot of gold and silver; and by their driving this trade so long, you can hardly imagine how vast a treasure they’ve got. Now they don’t much care whether they sell off their merchandise for cash in hand or on credit. A big part of their treasure is now in bonds, but in their contracts no private person 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;??? They’d rather leave most of it in the hands of people who benefit from it than call for it themselves. But if they see that any of their neighbors need it more, then they call it in and lend it to them. When they’re at war, the only time when their treasure can be usefully put to work, they use it themselves. In great emergencies or sudden accidents they use it to hire foreign troops, because they’re more willing to expose them to danger than their own people. They pay them well, knowing that this will work even on their enemies; that it will make them betray or desert their own side; and that it’s the best way to make their enemies jealous of one another. This is why they have an incredible treasure. But they don’t keep it as a treasure, but in a way I’m almost afraid to describe, for fear you’ll think it so outrageous that it must be a lie. I have a good reason to believe this — if I hadn’t seen it myself, it would be hard to persuade me to believe anyone else who said it.

[] “We find it harder to believe things the more they’re different from our own way of doing things. But any reasonable person should realize that, because their constitution??? is so different from ours, they should value gold and silver by a very different standard. Since they have no use for money among themselves, but keep it only in case of rare events, which are usually far apart in time, they value gold and silver only as much as it deserves — in other words, they value it for its usefulness. So they clearly must prefer iron either to gold or silver, for people can’t live without iron just as they can’t live without fire or water. Nature, though, has shown us no use for other metals. People’s foolishness has made gold and silver valuable because they’re rare, but the Utopians believe that Nature, like an indulgent??? parent, has given them all the good things in abundance, like water and earth, and has hidden the things that are pointless and useless.

[] “If these metals were stored in any tower in the kingdom it would create jealousy among the Prince and the Senate, and create the foolish mistrust so many people give in to — a jealousy that comes from wanting to put their private advantage ahead of the public interest. If they should turn the metal into cups or any sorts of dishes, they worry that people might grow too fond of it, and then they wouldn’t want the dishes to be melted down if war made it necessary, so they could pay their soldiers. So, to prevent all these problems, they’ve settled on a plan that — since it fits so well with their policies, and is so different from ours — it’s hard for us to believe, since we value gold so much and store it so carefully. They eat and drink out of dishes made of clay or glass, which are attractive, though they’re made of brittle materials, and they make their chamber pots and toilet bowls out of gold and silver — not only in their public buildings but in their private houses too. They use the same metals to make chains and fetters for their slaves — on some of them they hang a golden earring as an added badge of shame, and they make others wear a chain or a crown of the same metal. This way they work to ensure no one prizes gold or silver. Other countries hate giving up their gold and silver, as if someone were tearing out their intestines, but Utopians think of giving away gold and silver — if there’s any use for them — as giving away something of no value, just as we’d feel about losing a penny. They find pearls on their beaches, and diamonds and garnets on their rocks — they don’t look for them, but if they happen to find them, then they polish them use them to dress their children, who are delighted and love them in their childhood. But when the children grow up, and they see that only children wear trinkets like that, they set them aside of their own free will, without being urged by their parents. They’d be as ashamed to wear them in adulthood as our own children are of puppets and toys once they grow up.

[] “I never saw a clearer case of how different customs make for different impressions than what I saw in the ambassadors of the Anemolians, who visited Amaurot when I was there. Because they came to handle affairs of great importance, the deputies from several towns met to await their arrival. The ambassadors of the nations close to Utopia, knowing their customs and knowing that they don’t admire fine clothes, that they despise silk, and that gold is a badge of shame, showed up dressed very modestly. But the Anemolians, who were from farther away and had less experience with them, knowing the Utopians were all dressed the same way in cheap clothes, assumed that they didn’t have the fine things that they didn’t use. Since they were proud instead of wise, they decided to dress so grandly that they’d look like gods, and impress the Utopians with their splendor. So three ambassadors entered with a hundred attendants, all dressed in clothes of various colors, and most of them in silk. The ambassadors, the country’s nobility, wore cloth made of gold along with heavy chains, earrings, and golden rings. Their caps were covered with bracelets??? set full of pearls and other gems. They showed up wearing all the things that the Utopians considered either marks of slavery, signs of shame, or the playthings of children. It was amusing to see, on the one hand, how they looked grand in their fancy clothes compared to the plainly dressed Utopians, who came out in big crowds to watch them make their entry; and, on the other, to observe how badly they were mistaken in hoping this grandeur would impress the Utopians. The show was so ridiculous to those who always lived in Utopian, and hadn’t seen foreign customs, that they gave respect to the ones who were poorly dressed, when the saw the ambassadors wearing their gold and their chains, they assumed they were slaves, and treated them badly. You could have seen the children who were now grown up — they disliked their old toys, and they threw away their jewels — now called their mothers, nudged them, and said, ‘Look at that idiot, who wears pearls and gems like a kid!’ Their mothers innocently replied, ‘Quiet! I think this is one of the ambassadors’ court jesters.’ Others criticized the fashion of their chains, and noted, ‘They’re of no use, for they’re too slight to bind their slaves, who could easily break them — besides, they hang on them so loosely that they’d find it easy to get away and escape.’ But after the ambassadors had stayed with them for a day, and saw so much gold in their houses (which the Utopians hated as much as other nations adored), 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 can’t understand how anyone should be so impressed with the glaring doubtful??? luster of a jewel or stone, that can look up to a star or the sun; or how anyone should be proud that his cloth is made of finer thread that others’; However fine the thread may be, it was once just the fleece of a sheep, and the sheep was a sheep still, for all its wearing it. They’re amazed to hear that gold — which is so useless in its own right — is valued so highly everywhere that even humans, for whom it was made and who give it value, should be thought of as being less valuable than this metal; that a person of lead???, with no more sense than a log and who’s as wicked as they’re stupid, should have many wise and good people to serve them, just because they have a big pile of that metal; and that, if by some accident or legal trick (which can be as bad as chance itself) the master should lose all his wealth to the lowest servant in the family, he’d quickly become one of those servants! — as if he belonged to his money, and therefore had to follow its fortune! But they’re even more amazed, and they marvel at the stupidity of people who see a rich man, and — even though they don’t owe him anything, even though they don’t depend on his generosity — still, just because he’s rich, they treat him almost like a god, even though they know he’s so greedy and base-minded??? that, in spite of all his money, he wouldn’t give them a penny as long as he lives.

[] “The people have drunk in these and similar ideas, partly from their education, living in a country whose customs and laws are opposite to all such foolish maxims, and partly from their learning and studies — only a few people in any town are entirely excused from work so they can study, just the people who show from childhood that they’re well suited to education. Still, their children and many others, both men and women, are taught to spend their free time in reading. They do this their whole lives. They have all their learning in their own language, a pleasant language well stocked with words, in which anyone can express their thoughts. It’s spoken across many countries, but it’s not equally pure everywhere.

[] “They’d never even heard the names of the philosophers who are so famous in our part of the world until we traveled among them, but they still managed to make the same discoveries as the Greeks in music, logic, arithmetic, and geometry. But as they’re equal to the ancient philosophers in almost everything, they’re far better than our modern logicians, because they’ve never been concerned with the trivia that our children have to learn in our schools. They’re so far from minding chimeras??? and fantastical images made in the mind that none of them could understand what we meant when we told 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. Still, for all this ignorance of these empty ideas, they knew astronomy, and perfectly understood the motions of the planets. They have many well-designed instruments they use to calculate the course and positions of the sun, moon, and stars. But as for the cheat of telling the future by the stars, by their oppositions or conjunctions — it hasn’t even entered their minds. They’re especially knowledgeable about forecasting the weather, which they’ve learned through a lot of observation. They know when to expect rain, wind, or atmospheric events. But as to the philosophy of these things — why the sea is salty, why it ebbs and flows, the origins and nature of the heavens and the earth — they argue about them partly as our ancient philosophers have done, and partly upon some new hypothesis, in which, as they disagree with the ancients, so they don’t agree among themselves about everything.

[] “As to moral philosophy, they have the same arguments that we have here. They consider what’s good for both body and mind; they ask whether any outward thing??? can be called truly good, or if that term is only for spiritual??? endowments of the soul???. They also ask about the nature of virtue and pleasure. But their most important subject of discussion is what makes a person happy — whether it’s one thing or many. They’re inclined to say that — not all, but the most important part of a person’s happiness consists of pleasure. Even more strangely, they even make religious arguments, despite its severity and roughness???, to support the opinion that favors pleasure. They never argue about happiness without bringing in some arguments from religion and from natural reason, since without religion they believe all our questions about happiness have to be speculative and therefore defective.

[] “Here are their religious principles: — That a person’s soul is immortal, and that God of His goodness has created the soul so that it should be happy; and that He has, therefore, created rewards for good and virtuous behavior and punishments for sins, which will happen after this life. Though these principles of religion are transmitted by tradition, they think that reason alone would make someone believe and acknowledge them. They willingly admit that if these were taken away, no one would be so stupid as to stop seeking pleasure by all possible means, lawful or unlawful, using only this caution — that a lesser pleasure shouldn’t get in the way of a greater one, and that we shouldn’t follow any pleasure that will create a lot of pain after it. They think it the craziest thing in the world to ‘pursue virtue,’ a sour and difficult thing,??? and not only to renounce all of life’s pleasures, but also to take on pain and trouble willingly if there’s no chance of a reward. And what reward can there be for someone who passed his whole life, not only without pleasure but in pain, if we can’t expect anything after death? But they don’t place happiness in all sorts of pleasures, only in those that are good and honest by nature. One group of them says happiness is in bare virtue???; others think virtue leads our natures to happiness, the chief good of humankind. Here’s how they define virtue: it means living according to Nature. They think God made us for that purpose. They believe people follow Nature’s rules when they follow reason and pursue or avoid things. They say that the first rule of reason is to kindle in us a love and reverence for the Divine Majesty, to whom we owe everything we have and all we can ever hope for. Next, reason tells us to free our minds from emotion and to be as cheerful as we can, and that we should think of ourselves as bound by good nature and humanity??? to do everything we can to help others to be happy. After all, there’s never been anyone so morose???, so severe in his pursuit of virtue, such an enemy to pleasure, that — even though he says everyone has to endure pain, many watchings,??? and other rigors — didn’t also tell people to do everything they can to relieve and ease the miserable, and who did not consider gentleness and good-nature as amiable dispositions.??? From that they conclude that, if we should promote the well-being and comfort of the rest of mankind (since there’s no better human virtue than to ease other people’s suffering, to free them from trouble and anxiety by giving them the comforts of life, in which pleasure consists???), then Nature much more vigorously leads them to do all this for themselves. A life of pleasure is either a real evil — in that case, we shouldn’t help others find pleasure, and instead keep them from pleasure because it’s so harmful — or, if it’s a good thing, and we not only can but should help others find pleasure, then why shouldn’t we start with ourselves? No one can be required to be more concerned with another person’s wellbeing than with their own. Nature can’t tell us to be good and kind to others, and at the same time unmerciful and cruel to ourselves. So, as they define virtue as living according to Nature, they also believe Nature leads everyone to seek pleasure as the goal of everything they do. They also observe that, to help us support life’s pleasures, Nature makes us want to be part of a society; for no one is raised so high above the rest of humanity that they’re the only favorite of Nature, who, on the contrary, seems to have placed everyone of the same species on the same level. They conclude, then, that no one should seek his own conveniences so eagerly as to prejudice??? others; and therefore they not only think that all contracts between people should be enforced, but they should also enforce all the laws the prince has properly published, or that people consented to (when they’re not oppressed by tyranny tricked by fraud), to give out those conveniences of life which make all our pleasures.

[] “They think it’s evidence of true wisdom for someone to pursue their own advantage, as long as it’s legal. They consider putting the public good ahead of private concerns is piety, but they think it’s wrong to seek pleasure by taking someone else’s pleasures from them. On the contrary, they think it’s a sign of a gentle and good soul for someone to set aside their own advantage for the good of others, and that by this means a good person gains as much pleasure one way as they give up another. People can expect the same treatment from others when they happen to need it, so, if that should fail him,??? still 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 also believe that God will make up for losing small pleasures with a tremendous and endless joy, and religion easily convinces a good soul of this.

[] “So, after considering the whole matter, they think that all our actions, even all our virtues, lead to pleasure, since it’s our most important goal and greatest happiness. And so they call every motion or state, either of body or mind, in which Nature teaches us to delight,??? a pleasure. They carefully limit pleasure to just those desires Nature leads us toward; they say that Nature leads us toward just the pleasures that reason and sense carry us to, by which we don’t injure anyone else or forfeit even greater pleasures, and pleasures that don’t cause troubles. But they look on the delights that people foolishly (but commonly) call pleasure, as if changing the name changes the thing itself, as obstructions to real happiness, not helps, because they take over people’s minds completely, giving them a false idea of pleasure that leaves no room for true and pure pleasures.

[] “Many things in themselves aren’t at all truly delightful; they have a lot of bitterness in them. And yet, because we desire what we’re not allowed to have, we not only consider them pleasures, but we turn them into the greatest goals in life. The people who chase corrupted pleasures this way are the ones I mentioned before, who think they’re really better because they have fancy clothes. They’re twice mistaken, first in their opinion of the clothes, second in their opinion of themselves. Think about how we use clothes: why do we think fine thread is better than coarse thread? But still these people, as if they were actually better than others instead of just mistaken, look big,??? think they’re more valuable, and imagine they’re owed respect because of fine clothes (they wouldn’t think that way if they had simpler clothes), and they’re insulted if you don’t give them respect. It’s also stupid to be impressed by other people showing you respect, which doesn’t really mean anything. What real or true pleasure can one person take from someone else standing bare??? or making legs??? to him? Will the bending another man’s knees give ease to yours? ??? Will someone else’s bare head make your head less crazy? But it’s amazing to see how this fake idea of pleasure bewitches??? many who proudly imagine themselves noble, and are pleased with the thought — that their were rich for a long time, that they have a lot of wealth. This is all that “nobility” means these days. But they don’t think themselves any the less noble, even though their own parents left them none of this wealth, or though they themselves have wasted it all. The Utopians don’t think any better of people who are impressed by gems and precious stones, and who achieve an almost religious ecstasy if they can buy a remarkable one, especially if it’s the kind of stone that’s most fashionable — because different gems are worth more or less at different times, and people won’t buy them unless they’re dismounted and taken out of the gold. The jeweler then has to give good security, and has to swear solemnly that the stone is true — so that, by being extremely cautious, they don’t buy a fake one instead of a real one — though, if you were to examine it, you couldn’t see any difference between the real one and the counterfeit. They’re all the same to you, just as if you were blind. Does anyone really think that people who pile up wealth not for any practical purpose, but just to think about how rich they are, actually get any true pleasure from it? It’s just a false shadow of joy. And just as bad are those who, unlike the ones I just mentioned, hide all their wealth because they’re afraid of losing it. What else can you say about hiding gems underground — putting them back underground, really — when it’s impossible for it to be useful to the owner or anyone else? Still the owner, after hiding it carefully, is glad, because he thinks it’s secure. If someone should steal it, the owner could live maybe ten years after the theft and know nothing about it, and there’d be no difference between having it or losing it — they’re equally useless to him.

[] “They also think people who love to hunt, fowling??? or gambling are also foolishly chasing pleasures. They’ve only heard about these crazy people, because Utopians don’t behave that way. But they’ve asked us, ‘What kind pleasure do people find in throwing dice?’ (If there were any pleasure in it, they think doing it so often would produce an excess of it.) ‘And what pleasure can you find in hearing barking and howling dogs, which are awful sounds, not pleasant ones?’ Nor can they understand the pleasure of seeing dogs run after a rabbit, any more than they understand seeing one dog run after another. If watching them run is what gives you pleasure, you have the same entertainment to the eye in both of these cases, since it’s the same in both. But if you take pleasure in seeing the rabbit killed, torn to pieces by dogs — this should stir pity instead, that a weak, harmless, and fearful rabbit should be devoured by strong, fierce, and cruel dogs. So the Utopians turn all this hunting business over to their butchers (and their butchers, remember, are all slaves), and they think of hunting as one of the worst parts of a butcher’s job. They consider it profitable and more decent to kill animals that are necessary and useful to humanity, whereas killing and tearing a small, miserable animal just gives the hunter a false show of pleasure, from which he gets only a small advantage. They consider the desire for bloodshed, even of animals, a sign of a mind already corrupted with cruelty, or one that will degenerate into cruelty because of all the returns??? to such a brutal??? pleasure.

[] “So, even though most people look on these and similar things as pleasures, the Utopians — seeing there’s nothing in actually pleasant in them — conclude they shouldn’t be considered pleasures. Yes, these things might create some tickling in the senses (which seems to be a true notion of pleasure) — but they believe that, if this doesn’t come from the activity itself but from some corrupt custom, something that can damage someone’s taste so much that bitter things taste sweet (the way pregnant women sometimes think tar or tallow??? taste sweeter than honey), a person’s sense, when it's corrupted by disease or bad habits, doesn’t change the nature of other things, so it can’t change the nature of pleasure either.???

[] “They have a list of several sorts of pleasures that they call true. Some of them relate to the body, others to the mind. The pleasures of the mind consist in knowledge, and in the delight of contemplating the truth, and they add the happy reflection on a life well spent and the promise of future happiness. They divide bodily pleasures into two sorts — one gives our senses real delight, and happens when Nature feeds the internal heat of life by eating and drinking, or when Nature is eased of some oppressive burden, such as reliving sudden pain, or relieving the desire Nature gave us to encourage the propagation of the species. A second kind of pleasure comes neither from receiving what the body requires, nor its being relieved when overcharged, but still, by some invisible power, affects the senses, raises the emotions, and strikes the mind with generous??? impressions — this is, the pleasure we get from music. Another kind of bodily pleasure results from an undisturbed and vigorous constitution of body,??? when life and active spirits seem to actuate??? every part. This lively health, when it’s entirely unmixed with pain, gives an inward pleasure by itself, unconnected to anything outside ourselves; and even though this pleasure doesn’t affect us quite as powerfully, or act as strongly on the senses as some of the others, still we consider it the greatest of all pleasures. Almost all the Utopians consider it the basis of all of life’s other joys, since only it can make life easy and desirable. Without this, people can feel no other pleasure. They consider freedom from pain, if it doesn’t rise from perfect health, to be a state of stupidity rather than 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’s 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 isn’t really pain, but that it only carries pain along with it, they look on that as a fetch??? of subtlety that doesn’t much alter the matter. It’s 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 this way: ‘What’s the pleasure of eating if not that a man’s health, which had been weakened, drives away hunger with the assistance of food, and so recruiting itself,??? regains the vigor it once had? And once it's refreshed, it finds pleasure in that conflict; and if the conflict is pleasure, the victory leads to even more pleasure, except we imagine it becomes stupid as soon as it gets what it wants, and doesn’t know or enjoy in its own wellbeing.’ If someone says health can’t be felt, they absolutely deny it, because is anyone healthy who doesn’t notice it whenever they’re awake? Is anyone so dull, so stupid, as not to realize they feel delight in health? And what’s delight but another name for pleasure?

[] “But they consider the pleasures of the mind the most valuable of all pleasures. The most important ones come from true virtue and the testimony of a good conscience. They consider health the greatest bodily pleasure, and they think that the pleasures of eating and drinking, and other sensual pleasures, are desirable only when they contribute to health. But, considered on their own, they’re pleasant only when they resist the impressions our natural infirmities make on us. As an intelligent person would rather avoid diseases than take medicine, to be freed from pain than have pain eased by a treatment, so it’s better not to need this kind of pleasure than to have to indulge it. If anyone imagines there’s real happiness in these enjoyments, they have to admit they’d be the happiest person if they were always hungry, thirsty, and itchy, and therefore always eating, drinking, and scratching. Anyone can see that would be not just a base,??? but a miserable way to live. These are the lowest pleasures, the least pure, because we can enjoy them only when they’re mixed with pain. The pain of hunger gives us the pleasure of eating, and the pain outweighs the pleasure. And just as the pain is more intense, so it also lasts longer; as it begins before the pleasure, so it ends only with the pleasure that extinguishes it, and both expire together. They think, therefore, none of those pleasures should be valued any more than strictly necessary. But still they rejoice in them, and gratefully acknowledge the tenderness??? of the great Author of Nature, who has given us desires, by which the things necessary for our preservation are pleasant. How miserable life would be if the only treatment for our daily diseases of hunger and thirst were the kinds of bitter drugs we use for less common diseases! And so these pleasant and proper gifts of Nature keep up the strength and sprightliness??? of our bodies.

[] “They also entertain themselves with the other delights let in at their eyes, their ears, and their noses as the pleasant relishes??? and seasoning of life, which Nature seems to have set aside especially for humanity — no other animals think about the form and beauty of the universe, or take pleasure in smells any further than they can distinguish different kinds of food, or understand how sounds can be harmonious or discordant. But they’re always certain that lesser pleasures don’t interfere with a greater one, and that pleasure never breeds pain — they think pain always follows dishonest pleasures. But they think it would be crazy for someone to wear out the attractiveness of their face or their natural strength, to corrupt the sprightliness??? of their body by sloth and laziness, or to waste it by fasting. They think it’s madness to weaken the strength of their constitution and reject life’s other delights, unless giving up their own satisfaction is a way of serving the public or promoting others’ happiness — and then they expect a greater reward from God. The Utopians look on that sort of life as a sign of a mind that’s both cruel to itself and ungrateful to the Author of Nature, as if we wouldn’t be beholden to Him for His favors, and therefore rejects all His blessings; as one who takes on pain just for the shadow of virtue, or for no better reason than to be able to bear misfortunes that may never happen.

[] “This is their notion of virtue and of pleasure: they think that no one’s reason can bring a truer idea of them unless some discovery from heaven inspires them with sublimer ideas. I don’t have the time to explore whether they’re right wrong in this matter, and I don’t think it’s necessary, because I’m only trying to give you an account of their constitution, not defend everything they believe. I’m sure that, whatever people say about their ideas, there’s no better people or better government in the whole world. Their bodies are healthy and vigorous; and though they’re only medium height, and don’t have the most fruitful soil or the purest air, by being moderate they protect themselves against unhealthy air, and by working hard they cultivate the soil so well, that nowhere in the world has seen bigger increases of grain and cattle, and nowhere has healthier people with fewer diseases. You can see in practice every technique the farmer uses in cultivating the soil, but also whole forests plucked up by the roots??? and other ones planted anew where there were none before. Their main reason for this is ease of shipping, so they can have timber near their towns or on the banks of the sea or rivers, and they can float the timber to them. It’s much harder to carry lumber over long distances than grain.

[] “The people are hard-working, ready to learn, cheerful, and pleasant. No one can work harder when they have to, but when it’s not, they love relaxation. They never quit in their pursuit of knowledge. When we gave them some hints about the learning and discipline of the ancient Greeks — we told them only about the Greeks, because we knew that, of the Romans, they’d like only the historians and poets — it was amazing how eagerly they were set on learning Greek. We began to read a little Greek to them, mostly because they begged us rather than because we thought they’d gain a lot from it. But, after just a little time, they came so far that that we realized our labor was likely to be more successful than we could have predicted. They learned to write the Greek alphabet and to pronounce their language so precisely, they learned so quickly, they remembered it so accurately, and were so ready to use it, that it would have looked like a miracle if most of those we taught had been the right age and temperament for learning. They were, for the most part, picked from among their scholars by their chief council, though some studied it on their own. In three years they mastered the whole language and were able to read the best Greek authors very exactly???. I believe they learned the language the so easily because it was somewhat related to their own. I think they were a colony of the Greeks — though their language is closer to Persian, they have a lot of names of towns and magistrates that come from Greek. I happened to carry a lot of books with me, rather than merchandise, on my fourth voyage. I thought I wouldn’t come back soon, if ever, so I gave them all my books, including many of Plato’s and some of Aristotle’s works. I had also Theophrastus’s On Plants, which, I’m sorry to say, was incomplete — while we were at sea I had set it aside and a monkey grabbed it and tore out many of the pages.

[] “They have no grammar books but Lascares, for I did not carry Theodorus with me. They have no dictionaries but Hesichius and Dioscerides. They admire Plutarch, and they were impressed by Lucian’s wit and his pleasant style. As for the poets, they have Aristophanes, Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles in the Aldine editions; and for historians they have Thucydides, Herodotus, and Herodian. One of my companions, Thricius Apinatus, happened to have some of Hippocrates’s works and Galen’s Microtechne, which they really admire — though no nation needs medicine less than they do, still no one respects it as much as they do. They consider medical knowledge one of the most pleasant and useful parts of philosophy. Searching into Nature’s secrets for them not only is pleasant, but, they think, is acceptable to Nature’s creator. They believe He, like human inventors, has exposed the great machine of the universe to the only creatures who are capable of thinking about it. A careful observer who admires His workmanship is much more acceptable to Him than one of the herd, who, like an irrational animal, looks on this glorious scene with the eyes of a dull and uninterested 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. They learned two things from us: how to make paper and how to print books. But even with these things, a lot of the invention was their own. We showed them some books printed by Aldus Manutius, and explained how paper was made and the mysteries of how books were printed. But we’d never done these things ourselves, so we explained them crudely and superficially. They picked up on our hints and, while they weren’t perfect right away, after some trials they discovered all their errors and overcame every difficulty. Before this they only wrote on parchment, on reeds, or on the barks of trees. Now they have paper-making operations and printing presses, and if only they had a decent number of Greek authors, they’d soon have many copies. For now, though they have only the ones I’ve mentioned, they’ve made many thousands of copies. If anyone with a remarkable talent goes among them, or anyone who’s traveled the world and seen many customs, they’d welcome them, because they want to know about the whole world. Few people travel among them because of what they buy and sell — what can you bring them but iron, gold, or silver? And merchants would rather bring those in than sell them out of their country. And they prefer to manage their exports themselves, rather than leaving it to foreign visitors, because they understand the nearby countries better, and so they keep up their knowledge of navigation, since the only way to be good at it is by a lot of practice.

Of Their Slaves, and of Their Marriages

[] “They don’t make slaves out of their prisoners of war, except the ones who are taken in battle. Nor do they make slaves out of the children of their slaves, or those of other countries. Their slaves are only people who have been condemned to that status because they committed a crime, or (more often) people their merchants found sentenced to death in other countries, and they bought them off at a low price, or even got them for free. They’re always made to work, and are always chained up, but they treat their own natives much worse than those from other places. The natives are considered worse than the rest because they had all the advantages of a Utopian education, and still they couldn’t follow the law, so they should be treated more harshly. The poor from nearby countries are another sort of slaves. They offer themselves willingly, and come to serve the Utopians. The Utopians treat these slaves better, as well as their own countrymen, except for making them work more — which isn’t difficult for those who’ve been used to it. And if any of these want to go back to their own country — which happens only rarely — since they’re not forced to stay, they don’t go away empty-handed.

[] “I’ve already told you how carefully they tend to the sick, and how they do everything they can to keep them comfortable and healthy. When someone comes down with an incurable disease, they do everything they can to cherish them and to make their lives as comfortable as possible. They visit them often, and work hard to make their time pass easily. But if anyone comes down with intense and lingering pain, the kind where there’s no hope of recovery or even of comfort, the priests and magistrates come to them and say, since they’re now unable to go on with the business of life, they’ve become a burden to themselves and to everyone around them, and they’ve lived too long. They shouldn’t nourish such a rooted distemper??? any longer, but instead they should choose to die, because they can’t live anymore without misery. They’re promised that, if they release themselves from torture, or let others do it for them, then they’ll happy after death — this way they lose none of life’s pleasures, but only the troubles, and they think this is not only reasonable but in keeping with their religion and their faith. They follow the advice of their priests, who explain God’s will. The people who are persuaded by this argument either starve themselves of their own accord, or they take opium, and so they die painlessly. But no one is forced to take their own life. If they can’t be persuaded, this doesn’t mean people take less care of them. But while they believe a voluntary death is honorable, at least when it’s on the authority of the priesthood and government, if anyone takes their own life without their permission, they don’t get a decent funeral, and the people just toss their body in a ditch.

[] “Their women don’t get married until their eighteen, and their men until they’re twenty-two. If any of them have sex before marriage they’re punished severely, and they’re not allowed to marry unless the prince gives them a special warrant. Things like this make the master mistress of the family look bad, because they seem to have failed in their duty. Their punishments are severe because they think that, if they’re not strictly forbidden to satisfy immoral desires, almost no one would choose to settle into lifelong contentment by being limited to one person, with all the inconveniences that brings.

[] “They choose their wives in a way that seems ridiculous to us, but they do it constantly, and they consider it wise. Before marriage some respectable older woman presents the bride, naked — whether she’s a virgin or a widow — to the groom, and then that some respectable man presents the groom, naked, to the bride. Of course we both laughed at this, and condemned it as indecent. But they were amazed at the foolishness of the men of other nations — if they’re going to buy a cheap horse, they’re careful to see every part of him, take off the saddle and the rest of the tackle to be sure nothing is hidden — but in picking a wife, the decision that will make him happy or miserable for the rest of his life, he should go on trust? — and see just a few inches of the face? — everything else is covered, and what’s underneath might be contagious or horrible. Not every man is wise enough to pick a woman just for her good qualities, and even wise men know the body adds a good deal to the mind. There certainly can be some deformity covered with clothes that can make a man dislike his wife when it’s too late to do anything about it. If he discovers it after marriage there’s nothing to do but wait it out. The Utopians therefore think it’s reasonable to prevent that sort of mischievous fraud.

[] “They had even more reason to make rules about this, because they’re the only nation in this part of the world that doesn’t allow polygamy or divorce, except in cases of adultery or insufferable perverseness,???; in those cases the Senate dissolves the marriage and lets the innocent party marry again, but the guilty are disgraced, and never allowed the privilege of a second marriage. None are allowed to put away their wives against their wills, from any great calamity that may have fallen on their people, for they look on it as the height of cruelty and treachery to abandon either of the married people 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’s a disease of itself. But often, when a married couple can’t agree, they separate by mutual consent and find other people they hope to live with more happily. But this is done only with the permission of the Senate, which allows of a divorce only after a strict inquiry made, both by the senators and their wives, into the grounds on which it’s requested. And even when they’re satisfied about the reasons for it they still proceed slowly, for they imagine that granting permission for new marriages too easily would badly disturb the kindness of married people. They severely punish those who defile the marriage bed. If both adulterers are married, then they’re divorced, and the injured people may marry one another (or whoever they please), but the adulterer and the adulteress are condemned to slavery. If either of the injured people still can’t shake off the love of the married person, they may still live with them in that state, but they must follow them to the work slaves are condemned to. Sometimes it happens that the condemned person repents, and the innocent and injured person remains kind, and manages to convince the Prince that he should revoke the sentence. Anyone who relapses after they’re once pardoned is punished with death.

[] “Their law doesn’t determine the punishment for other crimes, but that’s left to the Senate, to moderate it as the facts warrant. Husbands have the power to correct their wives, and parents can chastise their children — unless the violation is so severe that they need a public punishment to strike terror into others. Slavery is the punishment for most crimes, even the worst ones, because it’s just as bad as death to the criminals, so the Utopians think keeping them in a state of servitude promotes the public interest better than killing them: their labor is a greater benefit to the public than their death could be, and seeing their misery creates more lasting terror in other people than their death would. If their slaves rebel, refuse to bear their yoke or do the work that’s ordered, they’re treated as wild animals that can’t be tamed, neither by prison nor by chains, and at last they’re put to death. But people who bear their punishment patiently and, and bear up against their punishment so well that it seems they’re really more troubled for the crimes they’ve committed than for the miseries they suffer, still have hope — that, in the end, either the Prince by his authority or the people by their petitioning will give them their liberty again, or at least make their slavery more bearable. Any man who tempts a married woman to adultery is punished just as severely as the one who commits it, for they believe that a deliberate plan to commit a crime is just as bad as committing it, since the fact that it didn’t happen doesn’t make the one who attempted it any less guilty.

[] “They’re very fond of simpletons. It’s considered low and improper to treat them badly, so they don’t think there’s anything wrong with be amused by their antics. As they see it, this helps the simpletons themselves. If anyone is so serious and severe that they can’t laugh at ridiculous behavior and foolish sayings, then they’re not permitted to take care of them, fearing they won’t treat them kindly. The one thing these simpletons can do is give amusement.

[] “If anyone criticizes someone else for being deformed or disabled in their body, they’d see it not as a comment on the person criticized — it would be scandalous in whoever criticized someone for something they can’t help. They think it’s a sign of a sluggish and sordid mind not to preserve one’s natural beauty; but they think it’s disgraceful to use makeup. They all see that no beauty makes a wife appealing to her husband as much as her virtue and obedience; for as a few are caught and held only by beauty, all are attracted by the other excellences which charm all the world.

[] “They use punishments to frighten men off from committing crimes, and they use public honors to encourage them to love virtue. They erect statues to the memories of worthy people who deserved well of their country, and they put these in their marketplaces, both to keep their memory alive and to encourage future ages to follow their example.

[] “If anyone campaigns for a public position they’re certain not to get it. The people all live together easily, because their magistrates aren’t cruel or overbearing. They like to call them ‘fathers,’ and they really deserve the name. The people respect them because they’re not forced to do so. The Prince doesn’t wear distinctive clothes or a crown; he’s distinguished only by a sheaf of grain carried before him, just as the High Priest is known by the person who carries a candle before him.

[] “They have only a few laws, and they’re brought up so that they don’t need many. They criticize other countries, whose laws and commentaries fill volume after volume. They think it unjust to make people follow laws that are so extensive and so obscure that they can’t be read and understood by everyone.

[] “They have no lawyers — they think lawyers’ job is to hide the meaning of the laws and try to get around them. They think it’s better for each person to plead their own case and trust the judge, the way in other countries a client trusts their lawyer. This way they speed things up and find it easier to discover the truth. After both parties explain their case, with none of those tricks that lawyers love to use, the judge considers the whole matter and backs the simple and well-meaning people, who would otherwise be cheated by lawyers. This way they avoid the problems that the vast load of laws causes in almost every other nation. Everyone in Utopia is knowledgeable in the law — it doesn’t take time to learn, and the simplest possible meaning of the words is always the meaning of their laws. This is how they approach it: laws are created to teach people their duty; therefore, we should give words their simplest most obvious meanings. It’s hard to understand more complicated interpretations, and that just makes the laws useless to most people, especially to the ones who need them most. You might as well have no law at all if you’re going to write it so that it can be understood only by profound intelligence and extensive study. Most people, after all, are fairly simple, and are so busy with their own jobs that they don’t have the time or the ability to study law that way.

[] JTL “Some of their neighbors, who are masters of their own liberties (having long ago, by the assistance of the Utopians, shaken off the yoke of tyranny, and being much taken with those virtues which they observe among them), have come to desire that they’d send magistrates to govern them, some changing them every year, and others every five years; at the end of their government they bring them back to Utopia, with great expressions of honor and respect, and carry away others to govern in their place. In this they seem to have come up with 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 couldn’t 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, aren’t engaged in any of their heats or animosities; and it’s certain that when public judicatories are swayed, either by avarice or partial affections, there must follow a dissolution of justice, the chief sinew of society.

[] “The Utopians call those nations that come and ask magistrates from them “Neighbors,” but they call those to whom they’ve been of more particular service “Friends.” As all other nations are constantly either making treaties or breaking them, they never enter into an alliance with any state. They think alliances are useless, and they believe that if the common ties of humanity don’t knit men together, the faith of promises will have no great effect; and they’re the more confirmed in this by what they see among the nations round about them, who are no strict observers of alliances and treaties. We know how strictly they’re observed in Europe, more particularly in Christian countries, where they’re 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’re the most religious observers of their own promises, so they exhort all other princes to perform theirs, and, when fainter methods don’t 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’ shouldn’t religiously keep the faith of their treaties. But in that new-found world, which isn’t more distant from us in situation than the people are in their manners and course of life, there’s no trusting to leagues, even though they were made with all the pomp of the most sacred ceremonies; on the contrary, they’re on this account the sooner broken, some slight excuse 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’ll always find some loophole to escape at, and so they break both their alliances and their faith; and this is done with such impudence, that those same men who value themselves on having suggested these expedients to their princes would, with a haughty scorn, declaim against such craft; or, to put it more simply, such fraud and deceit, if they found private men use it in their bargains, and would readily say that they deserved to be hanged.

[] “In this way 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’s more majestic than what becomes the rabble, so takes a freer compass, and so 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. Maybe they’d change their mind if they lived among us. But yet, though treaties were more religiously observed, they’d 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 maybe by a mountain or a river, and that all were born in a state of hostility, and so might lawfully do all that mischief to their neighbors against which there is no provision made by treaties; and that when treaties are made they don’t cut off the enmity or restrain the license of preying upon each other, if, by the unskillfulness of wording them, there aren’t effectual provisos made against them; they, on the other hand, judge that we should consider no one our enemy if he hasn’t 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 and think it very brutal, and which, to the reproach of human nature, is more practiced by men than by any sort of beasts. Unlike almost every other nation, they think that there’s nothing less glorious than that the glory of war. Therefore, though they’re used to daily military exercises and the discipline of war — in which not only their men but their women are trained, so that, if necessary, they may not be quite useless — still they don’t rashly engage in war, except to defend themselves or their friends from any unjust aggressors, or, out of good nature or in compassion, help an oppressed nation in shaking off the yoke of tyranny. They help their friends not only in defensive but also in offensive wars; but they never do that unless they had been consulted before the breach was made, and, being satisfied with the grounds on which they went, they had found that all demands of reparation were rejected, so that a war was unavoidable. This they think to be not only just when one neighbor makes an inroad on another by public order, and carries away the spoils, but when the merchants of one country are oppressed in another, either under pretense of some unjust laws, or by the perverse wresting of good ones. This they count a juster cause of war than the other, because those injuries are done under some color of laws. This was the only ground of that war in which they engaged with the Nephelogetes against the Aleopolitanes, a little before our time; for the merchants of the former having, as they thought, met with great injustice among the latter, which (whether it was in itself right or wrong) drew on a terrible war, in which many of their neighbors were engaged; and their keenness in carrying it on being supported by their strength in maintaining it, it not only shook some very flourishing states and very much afflicted others, but, after a series of much mischief ended in the entire conquest and slavery of the Aleopolitanes, who, though before the war they were in all respects much superior to the Nephelogetes, were yet subdued; but, though the Utopians had assisted them in the war, yet they pretended to no share of the spoil.

[] “But, though they so vigorously assist their friends in obtaining reparation for the injuries they’ve received in affairs of this nature, yet, if any such frauds were committed against themselves, provided no violence was done to their people, they’d only, on their being refused satisfaction, forbear trading with such a people. This isn’t because they consider their neighbors more than their own citizens; but, since their neighbors 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 doesn’t 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 people; 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 people may be delivered up to them, and if that’s denied, they declare war; but if it be complied with, the offenders are condemned either to death or slavery.

[] “They’d 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 what’s gained by dexterity and good conduct without bloodshed. In such cases they appoint public triumphs, and erect trophies to the honor of those who have succeeded; for then do they reckon that a man acts suitably to his nature, when he conquers his enemy in such a way as that no other creature but a man could be capable of, and that’s 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’re 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’s visible that the appetite of fame or vainglory doesn’t 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 will kill the prince, and lesser in proportion to such as will kill any other people 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, will take him alive, and put him in their hands. They offer not only indemnity, but rewards, to such of the people themselves that are so marked, if they’ll 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’ve trusted most; for the rewards that the Utopians offer are so immeasurably great, that there’s 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’re kind even to their enemies, and pity them no less than their own people, as knowing that the greater part of them don’t engage in the war of their own accord, but are driven into it by the passions of their prince.

[] “If this method doesn’t succeed with them, then they sow seeds of contention among their enemies, and animate the prince’s brother, or some of the nobility, to aspire to the crown. If they cannot disunite them by domestic broils, then they engage their neighbors against them, and make them set on foot some old pretensions, which are never lacking to princes when they have occasion for them. These they plentifully supply with money, though but very sparingly with any auxiliary troops; for they’re so tender of their own people that they wouldn’t 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’re a rude, wild, and fierce nation, who delight in the woods and rocks, among which they were born and bred up. They’re hardened both against heat, cold, and labor, and know nothing of the delicacies of life. They don’t 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 won’t 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 happens 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’re easily persuaded 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 this way with their blood they quickly waste on luxury, which among them is 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 aren’t 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’re 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 so 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 anone is pressed that lacks courage, he won’t 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’re 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 so 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 don’t 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’s 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’s 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’ll much sooner die than give ground; for the certainty that their children will be well looked after when they’re dead frees them from all that anxiety concerning them which often masters men of great courage; and so they’re animated by a noble and invincible resolution. Their skill in military affairs increases their courage: and the wise sentiments which, according to the laws of their country, are instilled into them in their education, give additional vigor to their minds: for as they don’t undervalue life so as prodigally to throw it away, they’re 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 rarely fail at last to kill or to take him prisoner. When they’ve 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’ve been forced to engage the last of their battalions before they could gain the day, they’ll 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’s hard to tell whether they’re 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’s very hard to find out their design. If they see they’re 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’s 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’s 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’s hardly believable. Their armor is very strong for defense, and yet isn’t so heavy as to make them uneasy in their marches; they can even swim with it. All that are trained up to war practice swimming. Both horse and foot make great use of arrows, and are very expert. They have no swords, but fight with a pole-axe that’s both sharp and heavy, by which they thrust or strike down an enemy. They’re very good at finding out warlike machines, and disguise them so well that the enemy doesn’t perceive them till he feels the use of them; so that he cannot prepare such a defense 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 strictly that nothing 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 don’t know but that they may have use for it themselves. They don’t hurt any disarmed man, unless he’s 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 kill only the ones who resist giving it up, and make the rest of the garrison slaves — they don’t hurt any of the other inhabitants. 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 don’t 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 happens only very rarely, should oblige them to call for it all. It’s 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 don’t willingly allow any war to break in upon their island; and if that should happen, they’d only defend themselves by their own people; but wouldn’t call for auxiliary troops to their assistance.

Of the Religions of the Utopians

[] “There are several sorts of religions, not only in different parts of the island, but even in every town; some worshipping the sun, others the moon or one of the planets. Some worship such men as have been eminent in former times for virtue or glory, not only as ordinary deities, but as the supreme god. Yet the greater and wiser sort of them worship none of these, but adore one eternal, invisible, infinite, and incomprehensible Deity; as a Being that is far above all our apprehensions, that is spread over the whole universe, not by His bulk, but by His power and virtue; Him they call the Father of All, and acknowledge that the beginnings, the increase, the progress, the vicissitudes, and the end of all things come only from Him; nor do they offer divine honors to any but to Him alone. And, indeed, though they differ concerning other things, yet all agree in this: that they think there’s 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’s also that great essence to whose glory and majesty all honors are ascribed by the consent of all nations.

[] “By degrees they fall off from the various superstitions that are among them, and grow up to that one religion that’s the best and most in request; and there’s 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’s not to be imagined how inclined they were to receive it. I’ll not determine whether this proceeded from any secret inspiration of God, or whether it was because it seemed so favorable to that community of goods, which is an opinion so particular as well as so dear to them; since they perceived that Christ and His followers lived by that rule, and that it was still kept up in some communities among the sincerest sort of Christians. From whichever 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 couldn’t partake of the other sacraments, that can only be administered by priests, but they’re instructed concerning them and long most vehemently for them. They’ve had great disputes among themselves, whether one chosen by them to be a priest wouldn’t 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 haven’t received our religion don’t fright any from it, and use none ill that goes over to it, so that all the while I was there one man was only punished on this occasion. He being newly baptized did, notwithstanding all that we could say to the contrary, dispute publicly concerning the Christian religion, with more zeal than discretion, and with so much heat, that he not only preferred our worship to theirs, but condemned all their rites as profane, and cried out against all that adhered to them as impious and sacrilegious people, that were to be damned to everlasting burnings. Upon his having frequently preached this way 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 should be punished for his religion. At the first constitution of their government, Utopus having understood that before his coming among them the old inhabitants had been engaged in great quarrels concerning religion, by which they were so divided among themselves, that he found it an easy thing to conquer them, since, instead of uniting their forces against him, every different party in religion fought by themselves. After he had subdued them he made a law that every man might be of what religion he pleased, and might endeavor to draw others to it by the force of argument and by amicable and modest ways, but without bitterness against those of other opinions; but that he should 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 anyone to threaten and terrify another to make them believe what did not appear 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 hardly worthy of being called men, since they degrade so noble a being as the soul, and reckon it no better than a beast’s: so they’re 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’s no doubt to be made, that a man who is afraid of nothing but the law, and fears nothing after death, won’t hesitate to break through all the laws of his country, either by fraud or force, when by this means he may satisfy his appetites. They never raise any that hold these maxims, either to honors or offices, nor employ them in any public trust, but despise them, as men of base and sordid minds. Yet they don’t 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 aren’t 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 defense of these opinions, especially before the common people: but they allow, and even encourage them to dispute concerning them in private with their priest, and other grave men, being confident that they’ll 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’s 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’re almost all of them very firmly persuaded that good men will be infinitely happy in another state: so that though they’re 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, doesn’t go out cheerfully, but is backward and unwilling, and is as it were dragged to it. They’re struck with horror when they see any die this way, 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 don’t 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 honor of the deceased. When they come from the funeral, they discourse of his good life, and worthy actions, but speak of nothing oftener and with more pleasure than of his serenity at the hour of death. They think such respect paid to the memory of good men is both the greatest incitement to engage others to follow their example, and the most acceptable worship that can be offered them; for they believe that though by the imperfection of human sight they’re invisible to us, yet they’re 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 don’t 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’re persuaded that good men, after death, have these affections; and all other good dispositions increased rather than diminished, and therefore conclude that they’re still among the living, and observe all they say or do. From here 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’ve 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 chop 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’s anywhere a rough, hard, and sordid piece of work to be done, from which many are frightened by the labor and loathsomeness of it, if not the despair of accomplishing it, they cheerfully, and of their own accord, take that to their share; and by that means, as they ease others very much, so they afflict themselves, and spend their whole life in hard labor: and yet they don’t value themselves upon this, nor lessen other people’s credit to raise their own; but by their stooping to such servile employments they’re so far from being despised, that they’re so much the more admired by the whole nation.

[] “Of these there are two sorts: some live unmarried and chaste, and abstain from eating any sort of flesh; and so 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’re the more cheerful and earnest in their endeavors after it. Another sort of them is less willing to put themselves to much toil, and therefore prefer a married state to a single one; and as they don’t 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 doesn’t hinder labor; and therefore eat flesh so much the more willingly, as they find that by this means they’re the more able to work: the Utopians look upon these as the wiser sect, but they consider the others as the most holy. They’d certainly laugh at anyone who, from the principles of reason, would prefer an unmarried state to a married, or a life of labor to an easy life: but they reverence and admire such as do it from the motives of religion. There’s nothing in which they’re 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’re 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’s one set over the rest. They’re chosen by the people as the other magistrates are, by suffrages given in secret, for preventing of factions: and when they’re chosen, they’re 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’s 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’s 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’s 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 don’t very quickly satisfy the priests of the truth of their repentance, they’re seized on by the Senate, and punished for their impiety. The education of youth belongs to the priests, yet they don’t 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 happens only rarely, nor are any but ancient widows chosen into that order.

[] “None of the magistrates have greater honor paid them than is paid the priests; and if they should happen to commit any crime, they wouldn’t be questioned for it; their punishment is left to God, and to their own consciences; for they consider it illegal to lay hands on anyone, however wicked they are, who has been particularly 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 considered 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’s paid them, nothing of great consequence to the public can proceed from the indemnity that the priests enjoy.

[] “They have, indeed, very few of them, lest greater numbers sharing in the same honor might make the dignity of that order, which they admire so much, 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’re among their neighboring nations, as you may imagine by what I think gives occasion for it.

[] “When the Utopians engage in battle, the priests who accompany them to the war, dressed in their sacred garments, 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’re 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’s upon this account that all the nations round about consider them so much, and treat them with such reverence, that they’ve 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 people 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 aren’t only nobly built, but extremely spacious, which is the more necessary as they have so few of them; they’re 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, however various, agree in the main point, which is the worshipping the Divine Essence; and, therefore, there’s 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, whatever 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 what 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’ve either erred or failed in their duty, and beg pardon for it. So all the 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 at all; 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 should 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 odors, and have a great number of wax lights during their worship, not out of any imagination that such oblations can add anything to the divine nature (which even prayers cannot do), but as it’s a harmless and pure way of worshipping God; so they think those sweet savors and lights, together with some other ceremonies, by a secret and unaccountable virtue, elevate men’s souls, and inflame them with greater energy and cheerfulness during the divine worship.

[] “All the people appear in the temples in white garments; but the priest’s vestments are parti-colored, and both the work and colors are wonderful. They’re made of no rich materials, for they’re 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’re as hieroglyphics, putting them in mind of the blessing that they’ve received from God, and of their duties, both to Him and to their neighbors. As soon as the priest appears in those ornaments, they all fall prostrate on the ground, with so much reverence and so deep a silence, that such as look on cannot but be struck with it, as if it were the effect of the appearance of a deity. After they’ve been for some time in this posture, they all stand up, upon a sign given by the priest, and sing hymns to the honor of God, some musical instruments playing all the while. These are quite of another form than those used among us; but, as many of them are much sweeter than ours, so others are made use of by us. Yet in one thing they very much exceed us: all their music, both vocal and instrumental, is adapted to imitate and express the passions, and is so happily suited to every occasion, that, whether the subject of the hymn be cheerful, or formed to soothe or trouble the mind, or to express grief or remorse, the music takes the impression of whatever is represented, affects and kindles the passions, and works the sentiments deep into the hearts of the hearers. When this is done, both priests and people offer up very solemn prayers to God in a set form of words; and these are so composed, that whatever 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’re 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’re mistaken, and if there’s 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 wherever 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’s 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.

[] “So I’ve described to you, as precisely as I could, the constitution of that commonwealth, which I don’t only think the best in the world, but indeed the only commonwealth that truly deserves that name. In all other places it’s 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’s no wonder to see men act so differently, for in other commonwealths every man knows that, unless he provides for himself, however flourishing 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 lack anything; for among them there’s no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity, and though no man has anything, yet they’re all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and cheerful life, free from anxieties; neither fearing poverty himself, nor worried by the endless complaints of his wife? He’s 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 imagine, will all live both plentifully and happily; since, among them, there’s no less care taken of those who were once engaged in labor, but grow afterwards unable to follow it, than there is, elsewhere, of these that continue still employed. I’d gladly hear anyone compare their justice with that of all other nations; among whom, I swear on my life, if I see anything that looks either like justice or equity; for what justice is there in this: that a nobleman, a goldsmith, a banker, or any other man, that either does nothing at all, or, at best, is employed in things that are of no use to the public, should live in great luxury and splendor upon what’s so ill acquired, and a mean man, a carter, a smith, or a ploughman, that works harder even than the beasts themselves, and is employed in labors so necessary, that no commonwealth could hold out a year without them, can only earn so poor a livelihood and must lead so miserable a life, that the condition of the beasts is much better than theirs? For as the beasts don’t work so constantly, so they feed almost as well, and with more pleasure, and have no anxiety about what’s to come, whilst these men are depressed by a barren and fruitless employment, and tormented with the apprehensions of poverty in their old age; since what they get by their daily labor does but maintain them at present, and is consumed as fast as it comes in, there’s no overplus left to lay up for old age.

[] “Isn’t that government both unjust and ungrateful, that’s so prodigal of its favors to those that are called gentlemen, or goldsmiths, or such others who are idle, or live either by flattery or by contriving the arts of vain pleasure, and, on the other hand, takes no care of those of a meaner sort, such as ploughmen, colliers, and smiths, without whom it couldn’t subsist? But after the public has reaped all the advantage of their service, and they come to be oppressed with age, sickness, and poverty, all their labors and the good they’ve done is forgotten, and all the recompense given them is that they’re left to die in great misery. The richer sort are often endeavoring to bring the hire of laborers lower, not only by their fraudulent practices, but by the laws which they procure to be made to that effect, so that though it is a thing most unjust in itself to give such small rewards to those who deserve so well of the public, yet they’ve given those hardships the name and color of justice, by procuring laws to be made for regulating them.

[] “Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they’re a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretense of managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all that they have so ill-acquired, and then, that they may engage the poor to toil and labor for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they please; and if they can but prevail to get these contrivances established by the show of public authority, which is considered as the representative of the whole people, then they’re 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’s 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 doesn’t 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, anxieties, cares, labors, and watchings would all die at the same time with the value of money; even poverty itself, for the relief of which money seems most necessary, would fall. But, in order to understand this properly, 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 died 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 don’t doubt but rich men are sensible of this, and that they well know how much a greater happiness it is to need 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 doesn’t measure happiness so much by its own conveniences, as by the miseries of others; and wouldn’t 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 people; 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’m glad that the Utopians have settled on this form of government, in which I wish that all the world could be wise enough 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’s 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’s 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 neighboring princes, who have often, though in vain, attempted their ruin, will never be able to put their state into any commotion or disorder.”

[] When Raphael finished speaking, many things occurred to me, both concerning the manners and laws of that people, that seemed very absurd, as well in their way of making war, as in their notions of religion and divine matters — together with several other particulars, but chiefly what seemed the foundation of all the rest, their living in common, without the use of money, by which all nobility, magnificence, splendor, and majesty, which, according to the common opinion, are the true ornaments of a nation, would be quite taken away — yet, because I saw Raphael was weary, unsure whether he could easily bear contradiction, remembering that he had taken notice of some, who seemed to think they were bound in honor to support the credit of their own wisdom, by finding out something to censure in all other men’s inventions, besides their own, I only commended their Constitution, and the account he had given of it in general; and so, taking him by the hand, carried him to dinner, and told him I’d find out some other time for examining this subject more particularly, and for discoursing more copiously upon it. And I’ll be glad to take the opportunity to do it. Meanwhile, though I have to admit he’s very learned and has obtained great knowledge of the world, I can’t completely agree with everything he said. But there are many things in Utopia that I wish, though not really hope, to see our government follow.