"It was no ill simile by which Plato set forth the unreasonableness
of a philosopher's meddling with government. 'If a man,' says he,
'were to see a great company run out every day into the rain and
take delight in being wet--if he knew that it would be to no
purpose for him to go and persuade them to return to their houses
in order to avoid the storm, and that all that could be expected by
his going to speak to them would be that he himself should be as
wet as they, it would be best for him to keep within doors, and,
since he had not influence enough to correct other people's folly,
to take care to preserve himself.'

"Though, to speak plainly my real sentiments, I must freely own
that as long as there is any property, and while money is the
standard of all other things, I cannot think that a nation can be
governed either justly or happily: not justly, because the best
things will fall to the share of the worst men; nor happily,
because all things will be divided among a few (and even these are
not in all respects happy), the rest being left to be absolutely
miserable. Therefore, when I reflect on the wise and good
constitution of the Utopians, among whom all things are so well
governed and with so few laws, where virtue hath its due reward,
and yet there is such an equality that every man lives in plenty--
when I compare with them so many other nations that are still
making new laws, and yet can never bring their constitution to a
right regulation; where, notwithstanding every one has his
property, yet all the laws that they can invent have not the power
either to obtain or preserve it, or even to enable men certainly to
distinguish what is their own from what is another's, of which the
many lawsuits that every day break out, and are eternally
depending, give too plain a demonstration--when, I say, I balance
all these things in my thoughts, I grow more favourable to Plato,
and do not wonder that he resolved not to make any laws for such as
would not submit to a community of all things; for so wise a man
could not but foresee that the setting all upon a level was the
only way to make a nation happy; which cannot be obtained so long
as there is property, for when every man draws to himself all that
he can compass, by one title or another, it must needs follow that,
how plentiful soever a nation may be, yet a few dividing the wealth
of it among themselves, the rest must fall into indigence. So that
there will be two sorts of people among them, who deserve that
their fortunes should be interchanged--the former useless, but
wicked and ravenous; and the latter, who by their constant industry
serve the public more than themselves, sincere and modest men--from
whence I am persuaded that till property is taken away, there can
be no equitable or just distribution of things, nor can the world
be happily governed; for as long as that is maintained, the
greatest and the far best part of mankind, will be still oppressed
with a load of cares and anxieties. I confess, without taking it
quite away, those pressures that lie on a great part of mankind may
be made lighter, but they can never be quite removed; for if laws
were made to determine at how great an extent in soil, and at how
much money, every man must stop--to limit the prince, that he might
not grow too great; and to restrain the people, that they might not
become too insolent--and that none might factiously aspire to
public employments, which ought neither to be sold nor made
burdensome by a great expense, since otherwise those that serve in
them would be tempted to reimburse themselves by cheats and
violence, and it would become necessary to find out rich men for
undergoing those employments, which ought rather to be trusted to
the wise. These laws, I say, might have such effect as good diet
and care might have on a sick man whose recovery is desperate; they
might allay and mitigate the disease, but it could never be quite
healed, nor the body politic be brought again to a good habit as
long as property remains; and it will fall out, as in a
complication of diseases, that by applying a remedy to one sore you
will provoke another, and that which removes the one ill symptom
produces others, while the strengthening one part of the body
weakens the rest." "On the contrary," answered I, "it seems to me
that men cannot live conveniently where all things are common. How
can there be any plenty where every man will excuse himself from
labour? for as the hope of gain doth not excite him, so the
confidence that he has in other men's industry may make him
slothful. If people come to be pinched with want, and yet cannot
dispose of anything as their own, what can follow upon this but
perpetual sedition and bloodshed, especially when the reverence and
authority due to magistrates falls to the ground? for I cannot
imagine how that can be kept up among those that are in all things
equal to one another." "I do not wonder," said he, "that it
appears so to you, since you have no notion, or at least no right
one, of such a constitution; but if you had been in Utopia with me,
and had seen their laws and rules, as I did, for the space of five
years, in which I lived among them, and during which time I was so
delighted with them that indeed I should never have left them if it
had not been to make the discovery of that new world to the
Europeans, you would then confess that you had never seen a people
so well constituted as they." "You will not easily persuade me,"
said Peter, "that any nation in that new world is better governed
than those among us; for as our understandings are not worse than
theirs, so our government (if I mistake not) being more ancient, a
long practice has helped us to find out many conveniences of life,
and some happy chances have discovered other things to us which no
man's understanding could ever have invented." "As for the
antiquity either of their government or of ours," said he, "you
cannot pass a true judgment of it unless you had read their
histories; for, if they are to be believed, they had towns among
them before these parts were so much as inhabited; and as for those
discoveries that have been either hit on by chance or made by
ingenious men, these might have happened there as well as here. I
do not deny but we are more ingenious than they are, but they
exceed us much in industry and application. They knew little
concerning us before our arrival among them. They call us all by a
general name of 'The nations that lie beyond the equinoctial line;'
for their chronicle mentions a shipwreck that was made on their
coast twelve hundred years ago, and that some Romans and Egyptians
that were in the ship, getting safe ashore, spent the rest of their
days amongst them; and such was their ingenuity that from this
single opportunity they drew the advantage of learning from those
unlooked-for guests, and acquired all the useful arts that were
then among the Romans, and which were known to these shipwrecked
men; and by the hints that they gave them they themselves found out
even some of those arts which they could not fully explain, so
happily did they improve that accident of having some of our people
cast upon their shore. But if such an accident has at any time
brought any from thence into Europe, we have been so far from
improving it that we do not so much as remember it, as, in
aftertimes perhaps, it will be forgot by our people that I was ever
there; for though they, from one such accident, made themselves
masters of all the good inventions that were among us, yet I
believe it would be long before we should learn or put in practice
any of the good institutions that are among them. And this is the
true cause of their being better governed and living happier than
we, though we come not short of them in point of understanding or
outward advantages." Upon this I said to him, "I earnestly beg you
would describe that island very particularly to us; be not too
short, but set out in order all things relating to their soil,
their rivers, their towns, their people, their manners,
constitution, laws, and, in a word, all that you imagine we desire
to know; and you may well imagine that we desire to know everything
concerning them of which we are hitherto ignorant." "I will do it
very willingly," said he, "for I have digested the whole matter
carefully, but it will take up some time." "Let us go, then," said
I, "first and dine, and then we shall have leisure enough." He
consented; we went in and dined, and after dinner came back and sat
down in the same place. I ordered my servants to take care that
none might come and interrupt us, and both Peter and I desired
Raphael to be as good as his word. When he saw that we were very
intent upon it he paused a little to recollect himself, and began
in this manner:-

Book II:  Long excerpt

"The island of Utopia is in the middle two hundred miles broad, and
holds almost at the same breadth over a great part of it, but it
grows narrower towards both ends. Its figure is not unlike a
crescent. Between its horns the sea comes in eleven miles broad,
and spreads itself into a great bay, which is environed with land
to the compass of about five hundred miles, and is well secured
from winds. In this bay there is no great current; the whole coast
is, as it were, one continued harbour, which gives all that live in
the island great convenience for mutual commerce. But the entry
into the bay, occasioned by rocks on the one hand and shallows on
the other, is very dangerous. In the middle of it there is one
single rock which appears above water, and may, therefore, easily
be avoided; and on the top of it there is a tower, in which a
garrison is kept; the other rocks lie under water, and are very
dangerous. The channel is known only to the natives; so that if
any stranger should enter into the bay without one of their pilots
he would run great danger of shipwreck. For even they themselves
could not pass it safe if some marks that are on the coast did not
direct their way; and if these should be but a little shifted, any
fleet that might come against them, how great soever it were, would
be certainly lost. On the other side of the island there are
likewise many harbours; and the coast is so fortified, both by
nature and art, that a small number of men can hinder the descent
of a great army. But they report (and there remains good marks of
it to make it credible) that this was no island at first, but a
part of the continent. Utopus, that conquered it (whose name it
still carries, for Abraxa was its first name), brought the rude and
uncivilised inhabitants into such a good government, and to that
measure of politeness, that they now far excel all the rest of
mankind. Having soon subdued them, he designed to separate them
from the continent, and to bring the sea quite round them. To
accomplish this he ordered a deep channel to be dug, fifteen miles
long; and that the natives might not think he treated them like
slaves, he not only forced the inhabitants, but also his own
soldiers, to labour in carrying it on. As he set a vast number of
men to work, he, beyond all men's expectations, brought it to a
speedy conclusion. And his neighbours, who at first laughed at the
folly of the undertaking, no sooner saw it brought to perfection
than they were struck with admiration and terror.

"There are fifty-four cities in the island, all large and well
built, the manners, customs, and laws of which are the same, and
they are all contrived as near in the same manner as the ground on
which they stand will allow. The nearest lie at least twenty-four
miles' distance from one another, and the most remote are not so
far distant but that a man can go on foot in one day from it to
that which lies next it. Every city sends three of their wisest
senators once a year to Amaurot, to consult about their common
concerns; for that is the chief town of the island, being situated
near the centre of it, so that it is the most convenient place for
their assemblies. The jurisdiction of every city extends at least
twenty miles, and, where the towns lie wider, they have much more
ground. No town desires to enlarge its bounds, for the people
consider themselves rather as tenants than landlords. They have
built, over all the country, farmhouses for husbandmen, which are
well contrived, and furnished with all things necessary for country
labour. Inhabitants are sent, by turns, from the cities to dwell
in them; no country family has fewer than forty men and women in
it, besides two slaves. There is a master and a mistress set over
every family, and over thirty families there is a magistrate.
Every year twenty of this family come back to the town after they
have stayed two years in the country, and in their room there are
other twenty sent from the town, that they may learn country work
from those that have been already one year in the country, as they
must teach those that come to them the next from the town. By this
means such as dwell in those country farms are never ignorant of
agriculture, and so commit no errors which might otherwise be fatal
and bring them under a scarcity of corn. But though there is every
year such a shifting of the husbandmen to prevent any man being
forced against his will to follow that hard course of life too
long, yet many among them take such pleasure in it that they desire
leave to continue in it many years. These husbandmen till the
ground, breed cattle, hew wood, and convey it to the towns either
by land or water, as is most convenient. They breed an infinite
multitude of chickens in a very curious manner; for the hens do not
sit and hatch them, but a vast number of eggs are laid in a gentle
and equal heat in order to be hatched, and they are no sooner out
of the shell, and able to stir about, but they seem to consider
those that feed them as their mothers, and follow them as other
chickens do the hen that hatched them. They breed very few horses,
but those they have are full of mettle, and are kept only for
exercising their youth in the art of sitting and riding them; for
they do not put them to any work, either of ploughing or carriage,
in which they employ oxen. For though their horses are stronger,
yet they find oxen can hold out longer; and as they are not subject
to so many diseases, so they are kept upon a less charge and with
less trouble. And even when they are so worn out that they are no
more fit for labour, they are good meat at last. They sow no corn
but that which is to be their bread; for they drink either wine,
cider or perry, and often water, sometimes boiled with honey or
liquorice, with which they abound; and though they know exactly how
much corn will serve every town and all that tract of country which
belongs to it, yet they sow much more and breed more cattle than
are necessary for their consumption, and they give that overplus of
which they make no use to their neighbours. When they want
anything in the country which it does not produce, they fetch that
from the town, without carrying anything in exchange for it. And
the magistrates of the town take care to see it given them; for
they meet generally in the town once a month, upon a festival day.
When the time of harvest comes, the magistrates in the country send
to those in the towns and let them know how many hands they will
need for reaping the harvest; and the number they call for being
sent to them, they commonly despatch it all in one day.


OF THEIR TOWNS, PARTICULARLY OF AMAUROT


"He that knows one of their towns knows them all--they are so like
one another, except where the situation makes some difference. I
shall therefore describe one of them, and none is so proper as
Amaurot; for as none is more eminent (all the rest yielding in
precedence to this, because it is the seat of their supreme
council), so there was none of them better known to me, I having
lived five years all together in it.

"It lies upon the side of a hill, or, rather, a rising ground. Its
figure is almost square, for from the one side of it, which shoots
up almost to the top of the hill, it runs down, in a descent for
two miles, to the river Anider; but it is a little broader the
other way that runs along by the bank of that river. The Anider
rises about eighty miles above Amaurot, in a small spring at first.
But other brooks falling into it, of which two are more
considerable than the rest, as it runs by Amaurot it is grown half
a mile broad; but, it still grows larger and larger, till, after
sixty miles' course below it, it is lost in the ocean. Between the
town and the sea, and for some miles above the town, it ebbs and
flows every six hours with a strong current. The tide comes up
about thirty miles so full that there is nothing but salt water in
the river, the fresh water being driven back with its force; and
above that, for some miles, the water is brackish; but a little
higher, as it runs by the town, it is quite fresh; and when the
tide ebbs, it continues fresh all along to the sea. There is a
bridge cast over the river, not of timber, but of fair stone,
consisting of many stately arches; it lies at that part of the town
which is farthest from the sea, so that the ships, without any
hindrance, lie all along the side of the town. There is, likewise,
another river that runs by it, which, though it is not great, yet
it runs pleasantly, for it rises out of the same hill on which the
town stands, and so runs down through it and falls into the Anider.
The inhabitants have fortified the fountain-head of this river,
which springs a little without the towns; that so, if they should
happen to be besieged, the enemy might not be able to stop or
divert the course of the water, nor poison it; from thence it is
carried, in earthen pipes, to the lower streets. And for those
places of the town to which the water of that small river cannot be
conveyed, they have great cisterns for receiving the rain-water,
which supplies the want of the other. The town is compassed with a
high and thick wall, in which there are many towers and forts;
there is also a broad and deep dry ditch, set thick with thorns,
cast round three sides of the town, and the river is instead of a
ditch on the fourth side. The streets are very convenient for all
carriage, and are well sheltered from the winds. Their buildings
are good, and are so uniform that a whole side of a street looks
like one house. The streets are twenty feet broad; there lie
gardens behind all their houses. These are large, but enclosed
with buildings, that on all hands face the streets, so that every
house has both a door to the street and a back door to the garden.
Their doors have all two leaves, which, as they are easily opened,
so they shut of their own accord; and, there being no property
among them, every man may freely enter into any house whatsoever.
At every ten years' end they shift their houses by lots. They
cultivate their gardens with great care, so that they have both
vines, fruits, herbs, and flowers in them; and all is so well
ordered and so finely kept that I never saw gardens anywhere that
were both so fruitful and so beautiful as theirs. And this humour
of ordering their gardens so well is not only kept up by the
pleasure they find in it, but also by an emulation between the
inhabitants of the several streets, who vie with each other. And
there is, indeed, nothing belonging to the whole town that is both
more useful and more pleasant. So that he who founded the town
seems to have taken care of nothing more than of their gardens; for
they say the whole scheme of the town was designed at first by
Utopus, but he left all that belonged to the ornament and
improvement of it to be added by those that should come after him,
that being too much for one man to bring to perfection. Their
records, that contain the history of their town and State, are
preserved with an exact care, and run backwards seventeen hundred
and sixty years. From these it appears that their houses were at
first low and mean, like cottages, made of any sort of timber, and
were built with mud walls and thatched with straw. But now their
houses are three storeys high, the fronts of them are faced either
with stone, plastering, or brick, and between the facings of their
walls they throw in their rubbish. Their roofs are flat, and on
them they lay a sort of plaster, which costs very little, and yet
is so tempered that it is not apt to take fire, and yet resists the
weather more than lead. They have great quantities of glass among
them, with which they glaze their windows; they use also in their
windows a thin linen cloth, that is so oiled or gummed that it both
keeps out the wind and gives free admission to the light.


OF THEIR MAGISTRATES


"Thirty families choose every year a magistrate, who was anciently
called the Syphogrant, but is now called the Philarch; and over
every ten Syphogrants, with the families subject to them, there is
another magistrate, who was anciently called the Tranibore, but of
late the Archphilarch. All the Syphogrants, who are in number two
hundred, choose the Prince out of a list of four who are named by
the people of the four divisions of the city; but they take an
oath, before they proceed to an election, that they will choose him
whom they think most fit for the office: they give him their
voices secretly, so that it is not known for whom every one gives
his suffrage. The Prince is for life, unless he is removed upon
suspicion of some design to enslave the people. The Tranibors are
new chosen every year, but yet they are, for the most part,
continued; all their other magistrates are only annual. The
Tranibors meet every third day, and oftener if necessary, and
consult with the Prince either concerning the affairs of the State
in general, or such private differences as may arise sometimes
among the people, though that falls out but seldom. There are
always two Syphogrants called into the council chamber, and these
are changed every day. It is a fundamental rule of their
government, that no conclusion can be made in anything that relates
to the public till it has been first debated three several days in
their council. It is death for any to meet and consult concerning
the State, unless it be either in their ordinary council, or in the
assembly of the whole body of the people.

"These things have been so provided among them that the Prince and
the Tranibors may not conspire together to change the government
and enslave the people; and therefore when anything of great
importance is set on foot, it is sent to the Syphogrants, who,
after they have communicated it to the families that belong to
their divisions, and have considered it among themselves, make
report to the senate; and, upon great occasions, the matter is
referred to the council of the whole island. One rule observed in
their council is, never to debate a thing on the same day in which
it is first proposed; for that is always referred to the next
meeting, that so men may not rashly and in the heat of discourse
engage themselves too soon, which might bias them so much that,
instead of consulting the good of the public, they might rather
study to support their first opinions, and by a perverse and
preposterous sort of shame hazard their country rather than
endanger their own reputation, or venture the being suspected to
have wanted foresight in the expedients that they at first
proposed; and therefore, to prevent this, they take care that they
may rather be deliberate than sudden in their motions.


OF THEIR TRADES, AND MANNER OF LIFE


"Agriculture is that which is so universally understood among them
that no person, either man or woman, is ignorant of it; they are
instructed in it from their childhood, partly by what they learn at
school, and partly by practice, they being led out often into the
fields about the town, where they not only see others at work but
are likewise exercised in it themselves. Besides agriculture,
which is so common to them all, every man has some peculiar trade
to which he applies himself; such as the manufacture of wool or
flax, masonry, smith's work, or carpenter's work; for there is no
sort of trade that is in great esteem among them. Throughout the
island they wear the same sort of clothes, without any other
distinction except what is necessary to distinguish the two sexes
and the married and unmarried. The fashion never alters, and as it
is neither disagreeable nor uneasy, so it is suited to the climate,
and calculated both for their summers and winters. Every family
makes their own clothes; but all among them, women as well as men,
learn one or other of the trades formerly mentioned. Women, for
the most part, deal in wool and flax, which suit best with their
weakness, leaving the ruder trades to the men. The same trade
generally passes down from father to son, inclinations often
following descent: but if any man's genius lies another way he is,
by adoption, translated into a family that deals in the trade to
which he is inclined; and when that is to be done, care is taken,
not only by his father, but by the magistrate, that he may be put
to a discreet and good man: and if, after a person has learned one
trade, he desires to acquire another, that is also allowed, and is
managed in the same manner as the former. When he has learned
both, he follows that which he likes best, unless the public has
more occasion for the other.

The chief, and almost the only, business of the Syphogrants is to
take care that no man may live idle, but that every one may follow
his trade diligently; yet they do not wear themselves out with
perpetual toil from morning to night, as if they were beasts of
burden, which as it is indeed a heavy slavery, so it is everywhere
the common course of life amongst all mechanics except the
Utopians: but they, dividing the day and night into twenty-four
hours, appoint six of these for work, three of which are before
dinner and three after; they then sup, and at eight o'clock,
counting from noon, go to bed and sleep eight hours: the rest of
their time, besides that taken up in work, eating, and sleeping, is
left to every man's discretion; yet they are not to abuse that
interval to luxury and idleness, but must employ it in some proper
exercise, according to their various inclinations, which is, for
the most part, reading. It is ordinary to have public lectures
every morning before daybreak, at which none are obliged to appear
but those who are marked out for literature; yet a great many, both
men and women, of all ranks, go to hear lectures of one sort or
other, according to their inclinations: but if others that are not
made for contemplation, choose rather to employ themselves at that
time in their trades, as many of them do, they are not hindered,
but are rather commended, as men that take care to serve their
country. After supper they spend an hour in some diversion, in
summer in their gardens, and in winter in the halls where they eat,
where they entertain each other either with music or discourse.
They do not so much as know dice, or any such foolish and
mischievous games. They have, however, two sorts of games not
unlike our chess; the one is between several numbers, in which one
number, as it were, consumes another; the other resembles a battle
between the virtues and the vices, in which the enmity in the vices
among themselves, and their agreement against virtue, is not
unpleasantly represented; together with the special opposition
between the particular virtues and vices; as also the methods by
which vice either openly assaults or secretly undermines virtue;
and virtue, on the other hand, resists it. But the time appointed
for labour is to be narrowly examined, otherwise you may imagine
that since there are only six hours appointed for work, they may
fall under a scarcity of necessary provisions: but it is so far
from being true that this time is not sufficient for supplying them
with plenty of all things, either necessary or convenient, that it
is rather too much; and this you will easily apprehend if you
consider how great a part of all other nations is quite idle.
First, women generally do little, who are the half of mankind; and
if some few women are diligent, their husbands are idle: then
consider the great company of idle priests, and of those that are
called religious men; add to these all rich men, chiefly those that
have estates in land, who are called noblemen and gentlemen,
together with their families, made up of idle persons, that are
kept more for show than use; add to these all those strong and
lusty beggars that go about pretending some disease in excuse for
their begging; and upon the whole account you will find that the
number of those by whose labours mankind is supplied is much less
than you perhaps imagined: then consider how few of those that
work are employed in labours that are of real service, for we, who
measure all things by money, give rise to many trades that are both
vain and superfluous, and serve only to support riot and luxury:
for if those who work were employed only in such things as the
conveniences of life require, there would be such an abundance of
them that the prices of them would so sink that tradesmen could not
be maintained by their gains; if all those who labour about useless
things were set to more profitable employments, and if all they
that languish out their lives in sloth and idleness (every one of
whom consumes as much as any two of the men that are at work) were
forced to labour, you may easily imagine that a small proportion of
time would serve for doing all that is either necessary,
profitable, or pleasant to mankind, especially while pleasure is
kept within its due bounds: this appears very plainly in Utopia;
for there, in a great city, and in all the territory that lies
round it, you can scarce find five hundred, either men or women, by
their age and strength capable of labour, that are not engaged in
it. Even the Syphogrants, though excused by the law, yet do not
excuse themselves, but work, that by their examples they may excite
the industry of the rest of the people; the like exemption is
allowed to those who, being recommended to the people by the
priests, are, by the secret suffrages of the Syphogrants,
privileged from labour, that they may apply themselves wholly to
study; and if any of these fall short of those hopes that they
seemed at first to give, they are obliged to return to work; and
sometimes a mechanic that so employs his leisure hours as to make a
considerable advancement in learning is eased from being a
tradesman and ranked among their learned men. Out of these they
choose their ambassadors, their priests, their Tranibors, and the
Prince himself, anciently called their Barzenes, but is called of
late their Ademus.

"And thus from the great numbers among them that are neither
suffered to be idle nor to be employed in any fruitless labour, you
may easily make the estimate how much may be done in those few
hours in which they are obliged to labour. But, besides all that
has been already said, it is to be considered that the needful arts
among them are managed with less labour than anywhere else. The
building or the repairing of houses among us employ many hands,
because often a thriftless heir suffers a house that his father
built to fall into decay, so that his successor must, at a great
cost, repair that which he might have kept up with a small charge;
it frequently happens that the same house which one person built at
a vast expense is neglected by another, who thinks he has a more
delicate sense of the beauties of architecture, and he, suffering
it to fall to ruin, builds another at no less charge. But among
the Utopians all things are so regulated that men very seldom build
upon a new piece of ground, and are not only very quick in
repairing their houses, but show their foresight in preventing
their decay, so that their buildings are preserved very long with
but very little labour, and thus the builders, to whom that care
belongs, are often without employment, except the hewing of timber
and the squaring of stones, that the materials may be in readiness
for raising a building very suddenly when there is any occasion for
it. As to their clothes, observe how little work is spent in them;
while they are at labour they are clothed with leather and skins,
cut carelessly about them, which will last seven years, and when
they appear in public they put on an upper garment which hides the
other; and these are all of one colour, and that is the natural
colour of the wool. As they need less woollen cloth than is used
anywhere else, so that which they make use of is much less costly;
they use linen cloth more, but that is prepared with less labour,
and they value cloth only by the whiteness of the linen or the
cleanness of the wool, without much regard to the fineness of the
thread. While in other places four or five upper garments of
woollen cloth of different colours, and as many vests of silk, will
scarce serve one man, and while those that are nicer think ten too
few, every man there is content with one, which very often serves
him two years; nor is there anything that can tempt a man to desire
more, for if he had them he would neither be the, warmer nor would
he make one jot the better appearance for it. And thus, since they
are all employed in some useful labour, and since they content
themselves with fewer things, it falls out that there is a great
abundance of all things among them; so that it frequently happens
that, for want of other work, vast numbers are sent out to mend the
highways; but when no public undertaking is to be performed, the
hours of working are lessened. The magistrates never engage the
people in unnecessary labour, since the chief end of the
constitution is to regulate labour by the necessities of the
public, and to allow the people as much time as is necessary for
the improvement of their minds, in which they think the happiness
of life consists.


OF THEIR TRAFFIC


"But it is now time to explain to you the mutual intercourse of
this people, their commerce, and the rules by which all things are
distributed among them.

"As their cities are composed of families, so their families are
made up of those that are nearly related to one another. Their
women, when they grow up, are married out, but all the males, both
children and grandchildren, live still in the same house, in great
obedience to their common parent, unless age has weakened his
understanding, and in that case he that is next to him in age comes
in his room; but lest any city should become either too great, or
by any accident be dispeopled, provision is made that none of their
cities may contain above six thousand families, besides those of
the country around it. No family may have less than ten and more
than sixteen persons in it, but there can be no determined number
for the children under age; this rule is easily observed by
removing some of the children of a more fruitful couple to any
other family that does not abound so much in them. By the same
rule they supply cities that do not increase so fast from others
that breed faster; and if there is any increase over the whole
island, then they draw out a number of their citizens out of the
several towns and send them over to the neighbouring continent,
where, if they find that the inhabitants have more soil than they
can well cultivate, they fix a colony, taking the inhabitants into
their society if they are willing to live with them; and where they
do that of their own accord, they quickly enter into their method
of life and conform to their rules, and this proves a happiness to
both nations; for, according to their constitution, such care is
taken of the soil that it becomes fruitful enough for both, though
it might be otherwise too narrow and barren for any one of them.
But if the natives refuse to conform themselves to their laws they
drive them out of those bounds which they mark out for themselves,
and use force if they resist, for they account it a very just cause
of war for a nation to hinder others from possessing a part of that
soil of which they make no use, but which is suffered to lie idle
and uncultivated, since every man has, by the law of nature, a
right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his
subsistence. If an accident has so lessened the number of the
inhabitants of any of their towns that it cannot be made up from
the other towns of the island without diminishing them too much
(which is said to have fallen out but twice since they were first a
people, when great numbers were carried off by the plague), the
loss is then supplied by recalling as many as are wanted from their
colonies, for they will abandon these rather than suffer the towns
in the island to sink too low.

"But to return to their manner of living in society: the oldest
man of every family, as has been already said, is its governor;
wives serve their husbands, and children their parents, and always
the younger serves the elder. Every city is divided into four
equal parts, and in the middle of each there is a market-place.
What is brought thither, and manufactured by the several families,
is carried from thence to houses appointed for that purpose, in
which all things of a sort are laid by themselves; and thither
every father goes, and takes whatsoever he or his family stand in
need of, without either paying for it or leaving anything in
exchange. There is no reason for giving a denial to any person,
since there is such plenty of everything among them; and there is
no danger of a man's asking for more than he needs; they have no
inducements to do this, since they are sure they shall always be
supplied: it is the fear of want that makes any of the whole race
of animals either greedy or ravenous; but, besides fear, there is
in man a pride that makes him fancy it a particular glory to excel
others in pomp and excess; but by the laws of the Utopians, there
is no room for this. Near these markets there are others for all
sorts of provisions, where there are not only herbs, fruits, and
bread, but also fish, fowl, and cattle. There are also, without
their towns, places appointed near some running water for killing
their beasts and for washing away their filth, which is done by
their slaves; for they suffer none of their citizens to kill their
cattle, because they think that pity and good-nature, which are
among the best of those affections that are born with us, are much
impaired by the butchering of animals; nor do they suffer anything
that is foul or unclean to be brought within their towns, lest the
air should be infected by ill-smells, which might prejudice their
health. In every street there are great halls, that lie at an
equal distance from each other, distinguished by particular names.
The Syphogrants dwell in those that are set over thirty families,
fifteen lying on one side of it, and as many on the other. In
these halls they all meet and have their repasts; the stewards of
every one of them come to the market-place at an appointed hour,
and according to the number of those that belong to the hall they
carry home provisions. But they take more care of their sick than
of any others; these are lodged and provided for in public
hospitals. They have belonging to every town four hospitals, that
are built without their walls, and are so large that they may pass
for little towns; by this means, if they had ever such a number of
sick persons, they could lodge them conveniently, and at such a
distance that such of them as are sick of infectious diseases may
be kept so far from the rest that there can be no danger of
contagion. The hospitals are furnished and stored with all things
that are convenient for the ease and recovery of the sick; and
those that are put in them are looked after with such tender and
watchful care, and are so constantly attended by their skilful
physicians, that as none is sent to them against their will, so
there is scarce one in a whole town that, if he should fall ill,
would not choose rather to go thither than lie sick at home.

"After the steward of the hospitals has taken for the sick
whatsoever the physician prescribes, then the best things that are
left in the market are distributed equally among the halls in
proportion to their numbers; only, in the first place, they serve
the Prince, the Chief Priest, the Tranibors, the Ambassadors, and
strangers, if there are any, which, indeed, falls out but seldom,
and for whom there are houses, well furnished, particularly
appointed for their reception when they come among them. At the
hours of dinner and supper the whole Syphogranty being called
together by sound of trumpet, they meet and eat together, except
only such as are in the hospitals or lie sick at home. Yet, after
the halls are served, no man is hindered to carry provisions home
from the marketplace, for they know that none does that but for
some good reason; for though any that will may eat at home, yet
none does it willingly, since it is both ridiculous and foolish for
any to give themselves the trouble to make ready an ill dinner at
home when there is a much more plentiful one made ready for him so
near hand. All the uneasy and sordid services about these halls
are performed by their slaves; but the dressing and cooking their
meat, and the ordering their tables, belong only to the women, all
those of every family taking it by turns. They sit at three or
more tables, according to their number; the men sit towards the
wall, and the women sit on the other side, that if any of them
should be taken suddenly ill, which is no uncommon case amongst
women with child, she may, without disturbing the rest, rise and go
to the nurses' room (who are there with the sucking children),
where there is always clean water at hand and cradles, in which
they may lay the young children if there is occasion for it, and a
fire, that they may shift and dress them before it. Every child is
nursed by its own mother if death or sickness does not intervene;
and in that case the Syphogrants' wives find out a nurse quickly,
which is no hard matter, for any one that can do it offers herself
cheerfully; for as they are much inclined to that piece of mercy,
so the child whom they nurse considers the nurse as its mother.
All the children under five years old sit among the nurses; the
rest of the younger sort of both sexes, till they are fit for
marriage, either serve those that sit at table, or, if they are not
strong enough for that, stand by them in great silence and eat what
is given them; nor have they any other formality of dining. In the
middle of the first table, which stands across the upper end of the
hall, sit the Syphogrant and his wife, for that is the chief and
most conspicuous place; next to him sit two of the most ancient,
for there go always four to a mess. If there is a temple within
the Syphogranty, the Priest and his wife sit with the Syphogrant
above all the rest; next them there is a mixture of old and young,
who are so placed that as the young are set near others, so they
are mixed with the more ancient; which, they say, was appointed on
this account: that the gravity of the old people, and the
reverence that is due to them, might restrain the younger from all
indecent words and gestures. Dishes are not served up to the whole
table at first, but the best are first set before the old, whose
seats are distinguished from the young, and, after them, all the
rest are served alike. The old men distribute to the younger any
curious meats that happen to be set before them, if there is not
such an abundance of them that the whole company may be served
alike.

"Thus old men are honoured with a particular respect, yet all the
rest fare as well as they. Both dinner and supper are begun with
some lecture of morality that is read to them; but it is so short
that it is not tedious nor uneasy to them to hear it. From hence
the old men take occasion to entertain those about them with some
useful and pleasant enlargements; but they do not engross the whole
discourse so to themselves during their meals that the younger may
not put in for a share; on the contrary, they engage them to talk,
that so they may, in that free way of conversation, find out the
force of every one's spirit and observe his temper. They despatch
their dinners quickly, but sit long at supper, because they go to
work after the one, and are to sleep after the other, during which
they think the stomach carries on the concoction more vigorously.
They never sup without music, and there is always fruit served up
after meat; while they are at table some burn perfumes and sprinkle
about fragrant ointments and sweet waters--in short, they want
nothing that may cheer up their spirits; they give themselves a
large allowance that way, and indulge themselves in all such
pleasures as are attended with no inconvenience. Thus do those
that are in the towns live together; but in the country, where they
live at a great distance, every one eats at home, and no family
wants any necessary sort of provision, for it is from them that
provisions are sent unto those that live in the towns.


OF THE TRAVELLING OF THE UTOPIANS


If any man has a mind to visit his friends that live in some other
town, or desires to travel and see the rest of the country, he
obtains leave very easily from the Syphogrant and Tranibors, when
there is no particular occasion for him at home. Such as travel
carry with them a passport from the Prince, which both certifies
the licence that is granted for travelling, and limits the time of
their return. They are furnished with a waggon and a slave, who
drives the oxen and looks after them; but, unless there are women
in the company, the waggon is sent back at the end of the journey
as a needless encumbrance. While they are on the road they carry
no provisions with them, yet they want for nothing, but are
everywhere treated as if they were at home. If they stay in any
place longer than a night, every one follows his proper occupation,
and is very well used by those of his own trade; but if any man
goes out of the city to which he belongs without leave, and is
found rambling without a passport, he is severely treated, he is
punished as a fugitive, and sent home disgracefully; and, if he
falls again into the like fault, is condemned to slavery. If any
man has a mind to travel only over the precinct of his own city, he
may freely do it, with his father's permission and his wife's
consent; but when he comes into any of the country houses, if he
expects to be entertained by them, he must labour with them and
conform to their rules; and if he does this, he may freely go over
the whole precinct, being then as useful to the city to which he
belongs as if he were still within it. Thus you see that there are
no idle persons among them, nor pretences of excusing any from
labour. There are no taverns, no alehouses, nor stews among them,
nor any other occasions of corrupting each other, of getting into
corners, or forming themselves into parties; all men live in full
view, so that all are obliged both to perform their ordinary task
and to employ themselves well in their spare hours; and it is
certain that a people thus ordered must live in great abundance of
all things, and these being equally distributed among them, no man
can want or be obliged to beg.

"In their great council at Amaurot, to which there are three sent
from every town once a year, they examine what towns abound in
provisions and what are under any scarcity, that so the one may be
furnished from the other; and this is done freely, without any sort
of exchange; for, according to their plenty or scarcity, they
supply or are supplied from one another, so that indeed the whole
island is, as it were, one family. When they have thus taken care
of their whole country, and laid up stores for two years (which
they do to prevent the ill consequences of an unfavourable season),
they order an exportation of the overplus, both of corn, honey,
wool, flax, wood, wax, tallow, leather, and cattle, which they send
out, commonly in great quantities, to other nations. They order a
seventh part of all these goods to be freely given to the poor of
the countries to which they send them, and sell the rest at
moderate rates; and by this exchange they not only bring back those
few things that they need at home (for, indeed, they scarce need
anything but iron), but likewise a great deal of gold and silver;
and by their driving this trade so long, it is not to be imagined
how vast a treasure they have got among them, so that now they do
not much care whether they sell off their merchandise for money in
hand or upon trust. A great part of their treasure is now in
bonds; but in all their contracts no private man stands bound, but
the writing runs in the name of the town; and the towns that owe
them money raise it from those private hands that owe it to them,
lay it up in their public chamber, or enjoy the profit of it till
the Utopians call for it; and they choose rather to let the
greatest part of it lie in their hands, who make advantage by it,
than to call for it themselves; but if they see that any of their
other neighbours stand more in need of it, then they call it in and
lend it to them. Whenever they are engaged in war, which is the
only occasion in which their treasure can be usefully employed,
they make use of it themselves; in great extremities or sudden
accidents they employ it in hiring foreign troops, whom they more
willingly expose to danger than their own people; they give them
great pay, knowing well that this will work even on their enemies;
that it will engage them either to betray their own side, or, at
least, to desert it; and that it is the best means of raising
mutual jealousies among them. For this end they have an incredible
treasure; but they do not keep it as a treasure, but in such a
manner as I am almost afraid to tell, lest you think it so
extravagant as to be hardly credible. This I have the more reason
to apprehend because, if I had not seen it myself, I could not have
been easily persuaded to have believed it upon any man's report.

"It is certain that all things appear incredible to us in
proportion as they differ from known customs; but one who can judge
aright will not wonder to find that, since their constitution
differs so much from ours, their value of gold and silver should be
measured by a very different standard; for since they have no use
for money among themselves, but keep it as a provision against
events which seldom happen, and between which there are generally
long intervening intervals, they value it no farther than it
deserves--that is, in proportion to its use. So that it is plain
they must prefer iron either to gold or silver, for men can no more
live without iron than without fire or water; but Nature has marked
out no use for the other metals so essential as not easily to be
dispensed with. The folly of men has enhanced the value of gold
and silver because of their scarcity; whereas, on the contrary, it
is their opinion that Nature, as an indulgent parent, has freely
given us all the best things in great abundance, such as water and
earth, but has laid up and hid from us the things that are vain and
useless.

"If these metals were laid up in any tower in the kingdom it would
raise a jealousy of the Prince and Senate, and give birth to that
foolish mistrust into which the people are apt to fall--a jealousy
of their intending to sacrifice the interest of the public to their
own private advantage. If they should work it into vessels, or any
sort of plate, they fear that the people might grow too fond of it,
and so be unwilling to let the plate be run down, if a war made it
necessary, to employ it in paying their soldiers. To prevent all
these inconveniences they have fallen upon an expedient which, as
it agrees with their other policy, so is it very different from
ours, and will scarce gain belief among us who value gold so much,
and lay it up so carefully. They eat and drink out of vessels of
earth or glass, which make an agreeable appearance, though formed
of brittle materials; while they make their chamber-pots and close-
stools of gold and silver, and that not only in their public halls
but in their private houses. Of the same metals they likewise make
chains and fetters for their slaves, to some of which, as a badge
of infamy, they hang an earring of gold, and make others wear a
chain or a coronet of the same metal; and thus they take care by
all possible means to render gold and silver of no esteem; and from
hence it is that while other nations part with their gold and
silver as unwillingly as if one tore out their bowels, those of
Utopia would look on their giving in all they possess of those
metals (when there were any use for them) but as the parting with a
trifle, or as we would esteem the loss of a penny! They find
pearls on their coasts, and diamonds and carbuncles on their rocks;
they do not look after them, but, if they find them by chance, they
polish them, and with them they adorn their children, who are
delighted with them, and glory in them during their childhood; but
when they grow to years, and see that none but children use such
baubles, they of their own accord, without being bid by their
parents, lay them aside, and would be as much ashamed to use them
afterwards as children among us, when they come to years, are of
their puppets and other toys.

"I never saw a clearer instance of the opposite impressions that
different customs make on people than I observed in the ambassadors
of the Anemolians, who came to Amaurot when I was there. As they
came to treat of affairs of great consequence, the deputies from
several towns met together to wait for their coming. The
ambassadors of the nations that lie near Utopia, knowing their
customs, and that fine clothes are in no esteem among them, that
silk is despised, and gold is a badge of infamy, used to come very
modestly clothed; but the Anemolians, lying more remote, and having
had little commerce with them, understanding that they were
coarsely clothed, and all in the same manner, took it for granted
that they had none of those fine things among them of which they
made no use; and they, being a vainglorious rather than a wise
people, resolved to set themselves out with so much pomp that they
should look like gods, and strike the eyes of the poor Utopians
with their splendour. Thus three ambassadors made their entry with
a hundred attendants, all clad in garments of different colours,
and the greater part in silk; the ambassadors themselves, who were
of the nobility of their country, were in cloth-of-gold, and
adorned with massy chains, earrings and rings of gold; their caps
were covered with bracelets set full of pearls and other gems--in a
word, they were set out with all those things that among the
Utopians were either the badges of slavery, the marks of infamy, or
the playthings of children. It was not unpleasant to see, on the
one side, how they looked big, when they compared their rich habits
with the plain clothes of the Utopians, who were come out in great
numbers to see them make their entry; and, on the other, to observe
how much they were mistaken in the impression which they hoped this
pomp would have made on them. It appeared so ridiculous a show to
all that had never stirred out of their country, and had not seen
the customs of other nations, that though they paid some reverence
to those that were the most meanly clad, as if they had been the
ambassadors, yet when they saw the ambassadors themselves so full
of gold and chains, they looked upon them as slaves, and forbore to
treat them with reverence. You might have seen the children who
were grown big enough to despise their playthings, and who had
thrown away their jewels, call to their mothers, push them gently,
and cry out, 'See that great fool, that wears pearls and gems as if
he were yet a child!' while their mothers very innocently replied,
'Hold your peace! this, I believe, is one of the ambassadors'
fools.' Others censured the fashion of their chains, and observed,
'That they were of no use, for they were too slight to bind their
slaves, who could easily break them; and, besides, hung so loose
about them that they thought it easy to throw their away, and so
get from them." But after the ambassadors had stayed a day among
them, and saw so vast a quantity of gold in their houses (which was
as much despised by them as it was esteemed in other nations), and
beheld more gold and silver in the chains and fetters of one slave
than all their ornaments amounted to, their plumes fell, and they
were ashamed of all that glory for which they had formed valued
themselves, and accordingly laid it aside--a resolution that they
immediately took when, on their engaging in some free discourse
with the Utopians, they discovered their sense of such things and
their other customs. The Utopians wonder how any man should be so
much taken with the glaring doubtful lustre of a jewel or a stone,
that can look up to a star or to the sun himself; or how any should
value himself because his cloth is made of a finer thread; for, how
fine soever that thread may be, it was once no better than the
fleece of a sheep, and that sheep, was a sheep still, for all its
wearing it. They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is
so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed that even
man, for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet
be thought of less value than this metal; that a man of lead, who
has no more sense than a log of wood, and is as bad as he is
foolish, should have many wise and good men to serve him, only
because he has a great heap of that metal; and that if it should
happen that by some accident or trick of law (which, sometimes
produces as great changes as chance itself) all this wealth should
pass from the master to the meanest varlet of his whole family, he
himself would very soon become one of his servants, as if he were a
thing that belonged to his wealth, and so were bound to follow its
fortune! But they much more admire and detest the folly of those
who, when they see a rich man, though they neither owe him
anything, nor are in any sort dependent on his bounty, yet, merely
because he is rich, give him little less than divine honours, even
though they know him to be so covetous and base-minded that,
notwithstanding all his wealth, he will not part with one farthing
of it to them as long as he lives!

"These and such like notions have that people imbibed, partly from
their education, being bred in a country whose customs and laws are
opposite to all such foolish maxims, and partly from their learning
and studies--for though there are but few in any town that are so
wholly excused from labour as to give themselves entirely up to
their studies (these being only such persons as discover from their
childhood an extraordinary capacity and disposition for letters),
yet their children and a great part of the nation, both men and
women, are taught to spend those hours in which they are not
obliged to work in reading; and this they do through the whole
progress of life. They have all their learning in their own
tongue, which is both a copious and pleasant language, and in which
a man can fully express his mind; it runs over a great tract of
many countries, but it is not equally pure in all places. They had
never so much as heard of the names of any of those philosophers
that are so famous in these parts of the world, before we went
among them; and yet they had made the same discoveries as the
Greeks, both in music, logic, arithmetic, and geometry. But as
they are almost in everything equal to the ancient philosophers, so
they far exceed our modern logicians for they have never yet fallen
upon the barbarous niceties that our youth are forced to learn in
those trifling logical schools that are among us. They are so far
from minding chimeras and fantastical images made in the mind that
none of them could comprehend what we meant when we talked to them
of a man in the abstract as common to all men in particular (so
that though we spoke of him as a thing that we could point at with
our fingers, yet none of them could perceive him) and yet distinct
from every one, as if he were some monstrous Colossus or giant;
yet, for all this ignorance of these empty notions, they knew
astronomy, and were perfectly acquainted with the motions of the
heavenly bodies; and have many instruments, well contrived and
divided, by which they very accurately compute the course and
positions of the sun, moon, and stars. But for the cheat of
divining by the stars, by their oppositions or conjunctions, it has
not so much as entered into their thoughts. They have a particular
sagacity, founded upon much observation, in judging of the weather,
by which they know when they may look for rain, wind, or other
alterations in the air; but as to the philosophy of these things,
the cause of the saltness of the sea, of its ebbing and flowing,
and of the original and nature both of the heavens and the earth,
they dispute of them partly as our ancient philosophers have done,
and partly upon some new hypothesis, in which, as they differ from
them, so they do not in all things agree among themselves.

"As to moral philosophy, they have the same disputes among them as
we have here. They examine what are properly good, both for the
body and the mind; and whether any outward thing can be called
truly GOOD, or if that term belong only to the endowments of the
soul. They inquire, likewise, into the nature of virtue and
pleasure. But their chief dispute is concerning the happiness of a
man, and wherein it consists--whether in some one thing or in a
great many. They seem, indeed, more inclinable to that opinion
that places, if not the whole, yet the chief part, of a man's
happiness in pleasure; and, what may seem more strange, they make
use of arguments even from religion, notwithstanding its severity
and roughness, for the support of that opinion so indulgent to
pleasure; for they never dispute concerning happiness without
fetching some arguments from the principles of religion as well as
from natural reason, since without the former they reckon that all
our inquiries after happiness must be but conjectural and
defective.

"These are their religious principles:- That the soul of man is
immortal, and that God of His goodness has designed that it should
be happy; and that He has, therefore, appointed rewards for good
and virtuous actions, and punishments for vice, to be distributed
after this life. Though these principles of religion are conveyed
down among them by tradition, they think that even reason itself
determines a man to believe and acknowledge them; and freely
confess that if these were taken away, no man would be so
insensible as not to seek after pleasure by all possible means,
lawful or unlawful, using only this caution--that a lesser pleasure
might not stand in the way of a greater, and that no pleasure ought
to be pursued that should draw a great deal of pain after it; for
they think it the maddest thing in the world to pursue virtue, that
is a sour and difficult thing, and not only to renounce the
pleasures of life, but willingly to undergo much pain and trouble,
if a man has no prospect of a reward. And what reward can there be
for one that has passed his whole life, not only without pleasure,
but in pain, if there is nothing to be expected after death? Yet
they do not place happiness in all sorts of pleasures, but only in
those that in themselves are good and honest. There is a party
among them who place happiness in bare virtue; others think that
our natures are conducted by virtue to happiness, as that which is
the chief good of man. They define virtue thus--that it is a
living according to Nature, and think that we are made by God for
that end; they believe that a man then follows the dictates of
Nature when he pursues or avoids things according to the direction
of reason. They say that the first dictate of reason is the
kindling in us a love and reverence for the Divine Majesty, to whom
we owe both all that we have and, all that we can ever hope for.
In the next place, reason directs us to keep our minds as free from
passion and as cheerful as we can, and that we should consider
ourselves as bound by the ties of good-nature and humanity to use
our utmost endeavours to help forward the happiness of all other
persons; for there never was any man such a morose and severe
pursuer of virtue, such an enemy to pleasure, that though he set
hard rules for men to undergo, much pain, many watchings, and other
rigors, yet did not at the same time advise them to do all they
could in order to relieve and ease the miserable, and who did not
represent gentleness and good-nature as amiable dispositions. And
from thence they infer that if a man ought to advance the welfare
and comfort of the rest of mankind (there being no virtue more
proper and peculiar to our nature than to ease the miseries of
others, to free from trouble and anxiety, in furnishing them with
the comforts of life, in which pleasure consists) Nature much more
vigorously leads them to do all this for himself. A life of
pleasure is either a real evil, and in that case we ought not to
assist others in their pursuit of it, but, on the contrary, to keep
them from it all we can, as from that which is most hurtful and
deadly; or if it is a good thing, so that we not only may but ought
to help others to it, why, then, ought not a man to begin with
himself? since no man can be more bound to look after the good of
another than after his own; for Nature cannot direct us to be good
and kind to others, and yet at the same time to be unmerciful and
cruel to ourselves. Thus as they define virtue to be living
according to Nature, so they imagine that Nature prompts all people
on to seek after pleasure as the end of all they do. They also
observe that in order to our supporting the pleasures of life,
Nature inclines us to enter into society; for there is no man so
much raised above the rest of mankind as to be the only favourite
of Nature, who, on the contrary, seems to have placed on a level
all those that belong to the same species. Upon this they infer
that no man ought to seek his own conveniences so eagerly as to
prejudice others; and therefore they think that not only all
agreements between private persons ought to be observed, but
likewise that all those laws ought to be kept which either a good
prince has published in due form, or to which a people that is
neither oppressed with tyranny nor circumvented by fraud has
consented, for distributing those conveniences of life which afford
us all our pleasures.

"They think it is an evidence of true wisdom for a man to pursue
his own advantage as far as the laws allow it, they account it
piety to prefer the public good to one's private concerns, but they
think it unjust for a man to seek for pleasure by snatching another
man's pleasures from him; and, on the contrary, they think it a
sign of a gentle and good soul for a man to dispense with his own
advantage for the good of others, and that by this means a good man
finds as much pleasure one way as he parts with another; for as he
may expect the like from others when he may come to need it, so, if
that should fail him, yet the sense of a good action, and the
reflections that he makes on the love and gratitude of those whom
he has so obliged, gives the mind more pleasure than the body could
have found in that from which it had restrained itself. They are
also persuaded that God will make up the loss of those small
pleasures with a vast and endless joy, of which religion easily
convinces a good soul.

"Thus, upon an inquiry into the whole matter, they reckon that all
our actions, and even all our virtues, terminate in pleasure, as in
our chief end and greatest happiness; and they call every motion or
state, either of body or mind, in which Nature teaches us to
delight, a pleasure. Thus they cautiously limit pleasure only to
those appetites to which Nature leads us; for they say that Nature
leads us only to those delights to which reason, as well as sense,
carries us, and by which we neither injure any other person nor
lose the possession of greater pleasures, and of such as draw no
troubles after them. But they look upon those delights which men
by a foolish, though common, mistake call pleasure, as if they
could change as easily the nature of things as the use of words, as
things that greatly obstruct their real happiness, instead of
advancing it, because they so entirely possess the minds of those
that are once captivated by them with a false notion of pleasure
that there is no room left for pleasures of a truer or purer kind.

"There are many things that in themselves have nothing that is
truly delightful; on the contrary, they have a good deal of
bitterness in them; and yet, from our perverse appetites after
forbidden objects, are not only ranked among the pleasures, but are
made even the greatest designs, of life. Among those who pursue
these sophisticated pleasures they reckon such as I mentioned
before, who think themselves really the better for having fine
clothes; in which they think they are doubly mistaken, both in the
opinion they have of their clothes, and in that they have of
themselves. For if you consider the use of clothes, why should a
fine thread be thought better than a coarse one? And yet these
men, as if they had some real advantages beyond others, and did not
owe them wholly to their mistakes, look big, seem to fancy
themselves to be more valuable, and imagine that a respect is due
to them for the sake of a rich garment, to which they would not
have pretended if they had been more meanly clothed, and even
resent it as an affront if that respect is not paid them. It is
also a great folly to be taken with outward marks of respect, which
signify nothing; for what true or real pleasure can one man find in
another's standing bare or making legs to him? Will the bending
another man's knees give ease to yours? and will the head's being
bare cure the madness of yours? And yet it is wonderful to see how
this false notion of pleasure bewitches many who delight themselves
with the fancy of their nobility, and are pleased with this
conceit--that they are descended from ancestors who have been held
for some successions rich, and who have had great possessions; for
this is all that makes nobility at present. Yet they do not think
themselves a whit the less noble, though their immediate parents
have left none of this wealth to them, or though they themselves
have squandered it away. The Utopians have no better opinion of
those who are much taken with gems and precious stones, and who
account it a degree of happiness next to a divine one if they can
purchase one that is very extraordinary, especially if it be of
that sort of stones that is then in greatest request, for the same
sort is not at all times universally of the same value, nor will
men buy it unless it be dismounted and taken out of the gold. The
jeweller is then made to give good security, and required solemnly
to swear that the stone is true, that, by such an exact caution, a
false one might not be bought instead of a true; though, if you
were to examine it, your eye could find no difference between the
counterfeit and that which is true; so that they are all one to
you, as much as if you were blind. Or can it be thought that they
who heap up a useless mass of wealth, not for any use that it is to
bring them, but merely to please themselves with the contemplation
of it, enjoy any true pleasure in it? The delight they find is
only a false shadow of joy. Those are no better whose error is
somewhat different from the former, and who hide it out of their
fear of losing it; for what other name can fit the hiding it in the
earth, or, rather, the restoring it to it again, it being thus cut
off from being useful either to its owner or to the rest of
mankind? And yet the owner, having hid it carefully, is glad,
because he thinks he is now sure of it. If it should be stole, the
owner, though he might live perhaps ten years after the theft, of
which he knew nothing, would find no difference between his having
or losing it, for both ways it was equally useless to him.

"Among those foolish pursuers of pleasure they reckon all that
delight in hunting, in fowling, or gaming, of whose madness they
have only heard, for they have no such things among them. But they
have asked us, 'What sort of pleasure is it that men can find in
throwing the dice?' (for if there were any pleasure in it, they
think the doing it so often should give one a surfeit of it); 'and
what pleasure can one find in hearing the barking and howling of
dogs, which seem rather odious than pleasant sounds?' Nor can they
comprehend the pleasure of seeing dogs run after a hare, more than
of seeing one dog run after another; for if the seeing them run is
that which gives the pleasure, you have the same entertainment to
the eye on both these occasions, since that is the same in both
cases. But if the pleasure lies in seeing the hare killed and torn
by the dogs, this ought rather to stir pity, that a weak, harmless,
and fearful hare should be devoured by strong, fierce, and cruel
dogs. Therefore all this business of hunting is, among the
Utopians, turned over to their butchers, and those, as has been
already said, are all slaves, and they look on hunting as one of
the basest parts of a butcher's work, for they account it both more
profitable and more decent to kill those beasts that are more
necessary and useful to mankind, whereas the killing and tearing of
so small and miserable an animal can only attract the huntsman with
a false show of pleasure, from which he can reap but small
advantage. They look on the desire of the bloodshed, even of
beasts, as a mark of a mind that is already corrupted with cruelty,
or that at least, by too frequent returns of so brutal a pleasure,
must degenerate into it.

"Thus though the rabble of mankind look upon these, and on
innumerable other things of the same nature, as pleasures, the
Utopians, on the contrary, observing that there is nothing in them
truly pleasant, conclude that they are not to be reckoned among
pleasures; for though these things may create some tickling in the
senses (which seems to be a true notion of pleasure), yet they
imagine that this does not arise from the thing itself, but from a
depraved custom, which may so vitiate a man's taste that bitter
things may pass for sweet, as women with child think pitch or
tallow taste sweeter than honey; but as a man's sense, when
corrupted either by a disease or some ill habit., does not change
the nature of other things, so neither can it change the nature of
pleasure.

"They reckon up several sorts of pleasures, which they call true
ones; some belong to the body, and others to the mind. The
pleasures of the mind lie in knowledge, and in that delight which
the contemplation of truth carries with it; to which they add the
joyful reflections on a well-spent life, and the assured hopes of a
future happiness. They divide the pleasures of the body into two
sorts--the one is that which gives our senses some real delight,
and is performed either by recruiting Nature and supplying those
parts which feed the internal heat of life by eating and drinking,
or when Nature is eased of any surcharge that oppresses it, when we
are relieved from sudden pain, or that which arises from satisfying
the appetite which Nature has wisely given to lead us to the
propagation of the species. There is another kind of pleasure that
arises neither from our receiving what the body requires, nor its
being relieved when overcharged, and yet, by a secret unseen
virtue, affects the senses, raises the passions, and strikes the
mind with generous impressions--this is, the pleasure that arises
from music. Another kind of bodily pleasure is that which results
from an undisturbed and vigorous constitution of body, when life
and active spirits seem to actuate every part. This lively health,
when entirely free from all mixture of pain, of itself gives an
inward pleasure, independent of all external objects of delight;
and though this pleasure does not so powerfully affect us, nor act
so strongly on the senses as some of the others, yet it may be
esteemed as the greatest of all pleasures; and almost all the
Utopians reckon it the foundation and basis of all the other joys
of life, since this alone makes the state of life easy and
desirable, and when this is wanting, a man is really capable of no
other pleasure. They look upon freedom from pain, if it does not
rise from perfect health, to be a state of stupidity rather than of
pleasure. This subject has been very narrowly canvassed among
them, and it has been debated whether a firm and entire health
could be called a pleasure or not. Some have thought that there
was no pleasure but what was 'excited' by some sensible motion in
the body. But this opinion has been long ago excluded from among
them; so that now they almost universally agree that health is the
greatest of all bodily pleasures; and that as there is a pain in
sickness which is as opposite in its nature to pleasure as sickness
itself is to health, so they hold that health is accompanied with
pleasure. And if any should say that sickness is not really pain,
but that it only carries pain along with it, they look upon that as
a fetch of subtlety that does not much alter the matter. It is all
one, in their opinion, whether it be said that health is in itself
a pleasure, or that it begets a pleasure, as fire gives heat, so it
be granted that all those whose health is entire have a true
pleasure in the enjoyment of it. And they reason thus:- 'What is
the pleasure of eating, but that a man's health, which had been
weakened, does, with the assistance of food, drive away hunger, and
so recruiting itself, recovers its former vigour? And being thus
refreshed it finds a pleasure in that conflict; and if the conflict
is pleasure, the victory must yet breed a greater pleasure, except
we fancy that it becomes stupid as soon as it has obtained that
which it pursued, and so neither knows nor rejoices in its own
welfare.' If it is said that health cannot be felt, they
absolutely deny it; for what man is in health, that does not
perceive it when he is awake? Is there any man that is so dull and
stupid as not to acknowledge that he feels a delight in health?
And what is delight but another name for pleasure?

"But, of all pleasures, they esteem those to be most valuable that
lie in the mind, the chief of which arise out of true virtue and
the witness of a good conscience. They account health the chief
pleasure that belongs to the body; for they think that the pleasure
of eating and drinking, and all the other delights of sense, are
only so far desirable as they give or maintain health; but they are
not pleasant in themselves otherwise than as they resist those
impressions that our natural infirmities are still making upon us.
For as a wise man desires rather to avoid diseases than to take
physic, and to be freed from pain rather than to find ease by
remedies, so it is more desirable not to need this sort of pleasure
than to be obliged to indulge it. If any man imagines that there
is a real happiness in these enjoyments, he must then confess that
he would be the happiest of all men if he were to lead his life in
perpetual hunger, thirst, and itching, and, by consequence, in
perpetual eating, drinking, and scratching himself; which any one
may easily see would be not only a base, but a miserable, state of
a life. These are, indeed, the lowest of pleasures, and the least
pure, for we can never relish them but when they are mixed with the
contrary pains. The pain of hunger must give us the pleasure of
eating, and here the pain out-balances the pleasure. And as the
pain is more vehement, so it lasts much longer; for as it begins
before the pleasure, so it does not cease but with the pleasure
that extinguishes it, and both expire together. They think,
therefore, none of those pleasures are to be valued any further
than as they are necessary; yet they rejoice in them, and with due
gratitude acknowledge the tenderness of the great Author of Nature,
who has planted in us appetites, by which those things that are
necessary for our preservation are likewise made pleasant to us.
For how miserable a thing would life be if those daily diseases of
hunger and thirst were to be carried off by such bitter drugs as we
must use for those diseases that return seldomer upon us! And thus
these pleasant, as well as proper, gifts of Nature maintain the
strength and the sprightliness of our bodies.

"They also entertain themselves with the other delights let in at
their eyes, their ears, and their nostrils as the pleasant relishes
and seasoning of life, which Nature seems to have marked out
peculiarly for man, since no other sort of animals contemplates the
figure and beauty of the universe, nor is delighted with smells any
further than as they distinguish meats by them; nor do they
apprehend the concords or discords of sound. Yet, in all pleasures
whatsoever, they take care that a lesser joy does not hinder a
greater, and that pleasure may never breed pain, which they think
always follows dishonest pleasures. But they think it madness for
a man to wear out the beauty of his face or the force of his
natural strength, to corrupt the sprightliness of his body by sloth
and laziness, or to waste it by fasting; that it is madness to
weaken the strength of his constitution and reject the other
delights of life, unless by renouncing his own satisfaction he can
either serve the public or promote the happiness of others, for
which he expects a greater recompense from God. So that they look
on such a course of life as the mark of a mind that is both cruel
to itself and ungrateful to the Author of Nature, as if we would
not be beholden to Him for His favours, and therefore rejects all
His blessings; as one who should afflict himself for the empty
shadow of virtue, or for no better end than to render himself
capable of bearing those misfortunes which possibly will never
happen.

"This is their notion of virtue and of pleasure: they think that
no man's reason can carry him to a truer idea of them unless some
discovery from heaven should inspire him with sublimer notions. I
have not now the leisure to examine whether they think right or
wrong in this matter; nor do I judge it necessary, for I have only
undertaken to give you an account of their constitution, but not to
defend all their principles. I am sure that whatever may be said
of their notions, there is not in the whole world either a better
people or a happier government. Their bodies are vigorous and
lively; and though they are but of a middle stature, and have
neither the fruitfullest soil nor the purest air in the world; yet
they fortify themselves so well, by their temperate course of life,
against the unhealthiness of their air, and by their industry they
so cultivate their soil, that there is nowhere to be seen a greater
increase, both of corn and cattle, nor are there anywhere healthier
men and freer from diseases; for one may there see reduced to
practice not only all the art that the husbandman employs in
manuring and improving an ill soil, but whole woods plucked up by
the roots, and in other places new ones planted, where there were
none before. Their principal motive for this is the convenience of
carriage, that their timber may be either near their towns or
growing on the banks of the sea, or of some rivers, so as to be
floated to them; for it is a harder work to carry wood at any
distance over land than corn. The people are industrious, apt to
learn, as well as cheerful and pleasant, and none can endure more
labour when it is necessary; but, except in that case, they love
their ease. They are unwearied pursuers of knowledge; for when we
had given them some hints of the learning and discipline of the
Greeks, concerning whom we only instructed them (for we know that
there was nothing among the Romans, except their historians and
their poets, that they would value much), it was strange to see how
eagerly they were set on learning that language: we began to read
a little of it to them, rather in compliance with their importunity
than out of any hopes of their reaping from it any great advantage:
but, after a very short trial, we found they made such progress,
that we saw our labour was like to be more successful than we could
have expected: they learned to write their characters and to
pronounce their language so exactly, had so quick an apprehension,
they remembered it so faithfully, and became so ready and correct
in the use of it, that it would have looked like a miracle if the
greater part of those whom we taught had not been men both of
extraordinary capacity and of a fit age for instruction: they
were, for the greatest part, chosen from among their learned men by
their chief council, though some studied it of their own accord.
In three years' time they became masters of the whole language, so
that they read the best of the Greek authors very exactly. I am,
indeed, apt to think that they learned that language the more
easily from its having some relation to their own. I believe that
they were a colony of the Greeks; for though their language comes
nearer the Persian, yet they retain many names, both for their
towns and magistrates, that are of Greek derivation. I happened to
carry a great many books with me, instead of merchandise, when I
sailed my fourth voyage; for I was so far from thinking of soon
coming back, that I rather thought never to have returned at all,
and I gave them all my books, among which were many of Plato's and
some of Aristotle's works: I had also Theophrastus on Plants,
which, to my great regret, was imperfect; for having laid it
carelessly by, while we were at sea, a monkey had seized upon it,
and in many places torn out the leaves. They have no books of
grammar but Lascares, for I did not carry Theodorus with me; nor
have they any dictionaries but Hesichius and Dioscerides. They
esteem Plutarch highly, and were much taken with Lucian's wit and
with his pleasant way of writing. As for the poets, they have
Aristophanes, Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles of Aldus's edition;
and for historians, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Herodian. One of my
companions, Thricius Apinatus, happened to carry with him some of
Hippocrates's works and Galen's Microtechne, which they hold in
great estimation; for though there is no nation in the world that
needs physic so little as they do, yet there is not any that
honours it so much; they reckon the knowledge of it one of the
pleasantest and most profitable parts of philosophy, by which, as
they search into the secrets of nature, so they not only find this
study highly agreeable, but think that such inquiries are very
acceptable to the Author of nature; and imagine, that as He, like
the inventors of curious engines amongst mankind, has exposed this
great machine of the universe to the view of the only creatures
capable of contemplating it, so an exact and curious observer, who
admires His workmanship, is much more acceptable to Him than one of
the herd, who, like a beast incapable of reason, looks on this
glorious scene with the eyes of a dull and unconcerned spectator.

"The minds of the Utopians, when fenced with a love for learning,
are very ingenious in discovering all such arts as are necessary to
carry it to perfection. Two things they owe to us, the manufacture
of paper and the art of printing; yet they are not so entirely
indebted to us for these discoveries but that a great part of the
invention was their own. We showed them some books printed by
Aldus, we explained to them the way of making paper and the mystery
of printing; but, as we had never practised these arts, we
described them in a crude and superficial manner. They seized the
hints we gave them; and though at first they could not arrive at
perfection, yet by making many essays they at last found out and
corrected all their errors and conquered every difficulty. Before
this they only wrote on parchment, on reeds, or on the barks of
trees; but now they have established the manufactures of paper and
set up printing presses, so that, if they had but a good number of
Greek authors, they would be quickly supplied with many copies of
them: at present, though they have no more than those I have
mentioned, yet, by several impressions, they have multiplied them
into many thousands. If any man was to go among them that had some
extraordinary talent, or that by much travelling had observed the
customs of many nations (which made us to be so well received), he
would receive a hearty welcome, for they are very desirous to know
the state of the whole world. Very few go among them on the
account of traffic; for what can a man carry to them but iron, or
gold, or silver? which merchants desire rather to export than
import to a strange country: and as for their exportation, they
think it better to manage that themselves than to leave it to
foreigners, for by this means, as they understand the state of the
neighbouring countries better, so they keep up the art of
navigation which cannot be maintained but by much practice.


OF THEIR SLAVES, AND OF THEIR MARRIAGES


"They do not make slaves of prisoners of war, except those that are
taken in battle, nor of the sons of their slaves, nor of those of
other nations: the slaves among them are only such as are
condemned to that state of life for the commission of some crime,
or, which is more common, such as their merchants find condemned to
die in those parts to which they trade, whom they sometimes redeem
at low rates, and in other places have them for nothing. They are
kept at perpetual labour, and are always chained, but with this
difference, that their own natives are treated much worse than
others: they are considered as more profligate than the rest, and
since they could not be restrained by the advantages of so
excellent an education, are judged worthy of harder usage. Another
sort of slaves are the poor of the neighbouring countries, who
offer of their own accord to come and serve them: they treat these
better, and use them in all other respects as well as their own
countrymen, except their imposing more labour upon them, which is
no hard task to those that have been accustomed to it; and if any
of these have a mind to go back to their own country, which,
indeed, falls out but seldom, as they do not force them to stay, so
they do not send them away empty-handed.

"I have already told you with what care they look after their sick,
so that nothing is left undone that can contribute either to their
case or health; and for those who are taken with fixed and
incurable diseases, they use all possible ways to cherish them and
to make their lives as comfortable as possible. They visit them
often and take great pains to make their time pass off easily; but
when any is taken with a torturing and lingering pain, so that
there is no hope either of recovery or ease, the priests and
magistrates come and exhort them, that, since they are now unable
to go on with the business of life, are become a burden to
themselves and to all about them, and they have really out-lived
themselves, they should no longer nourish such a rooted distemper,
but choose rather to die since they cannot live but in much misery;
being assured that if they thus deliver themselves from torture, or
are willing that others should do it, they shall be happy after
death: since, by their acting thus, they lose none of the
pleasures, but only the troubles of life, they think they behave
not only reasonably but in a manner consistent with religion and
piety; because they follow the advice given them by their priests,
who are the expounders of the will of God. Such as are wrought on
by these persuasions either starve themselves of their own accord,
or take opium, and by that means die without pain. But no man is
forced on this way of ending his life; and if they cannot be
persuaded to it, this does not induce them to fail in their
attendance and care of them: but as they believe that a voluntary
death, when it is chosen upon such an authority, is very
honourable, so if any man takes away his own life without the
approbation of the priests and the senate, they give him none of
the honours of a decent funeral, but throw his body into a ditch.

"Their women are not married before eighteen nor their men before
two-and-twenty, and if any of them run into forbidden embraces
before marriage they are severely punished, and the privilege of
marriage is denied them unless they can obtain a special warrant
from the Prince. Such disorders cast a great reproach upon the
master and mistress of the family in which they happen, for it is
supposed that they have failed in their duty. The reason of
punishing this so severely is, because they think that if they were
not strictly restrained from all vagrant appetites, very few would
engage in a state in which they venture the quiet of their whole
lives, by being confined to one person, and are obliged to endure
all the inconveniences with which it is accompanied. In choosing
their wives they use a method that would appear to us very absurd
and ridiculous, but it is constantly observed among them, and is
accounted perfectly consistent with wisdom. Before marriage some
grave matron presents the bride, naked, whether she is a virgin or
a widow, to the bridegroom, and after that some grave man presents
the bridegroom, naked, to the bride. We, indeed, both laughed at
this, and condemned it as very indecent. But they, on the other
hand, wondered at the folly of the men of all other nations, who,
if they are but to buy a horse of a small value, are so cautious
that they will see every part of him, and take off both his saddle
and all his other tackle, that there may be no secret ulcer hid
under any of them, and that yet in the choice of a wife, on which
depends the happiness or unhappiness of the rest of his life, a man
should venture upon trust, and only see about a handsbreadth of the
face, all the rest of the body being covered, under which may lie
hid what may be contagious as well as loathsome. All men are not
so wise as to choose a woman only for her good qualities, and even
wise men consider the body as that which adds not a little to the
mind, and it is certain there may be some such deformity covered
with clothes as may totally alienate a man from his wife, when it
is too late to part with her; if such a thing is discovered after
marriage a man has no remedy but patience; they, therefore, think
it is reasonable that there should be good provision made against
such mischievous frauds.

"There was so much the more reason for them to make a regulation in
this matter, because they are the only people of those parts that
neither allow of polygamy nor of divorces, except in the case of
adultery or insufferable perverseness, for in these cases the
Senate dissolves the marriage and grants the injured person leave
to marry again; but the guilty are made infamous and are never
allowed the privilege of a second marriage. None are suffered to
put away their wives against their wills, from any great calamity
that may have fallen on their persons, for they look on it as the
height of cruelty and treachery to abandon either of the married
persons when they need most the tender care of their consort, and
that chiefly in the case of old age, which, as it carries many
diseases along with it, so it is a disease of itself. But it
frequently falls out that when a married couple do not well agree,
they, by mutual consent, separate, and find out other persons with
whom they hope they may live more happily; yet this is not done
without obtaining leave of the Senate, which never admits of a
divorce but upon a strict inquiry made, both by the senators and
their wives, into the grounds upon which it is desired, and even
when they are satisfied concerning the reasons of it they go on but
slowly, for they imagine that too great easiness in granting leave
for new marriages would very much shake the kindness of married
people. They punish severely those that defile the marriage bed;
if both parties are married they are divorced, and the injured
persons may marry one another, or whom they please, but the
adulterer and the adulteress are condemned to slavery, yet if
either of the injured persons cannot shake off the love of the
married person they may live with them still in that state, but
they must follow them to that labour to which the slaves are
condemned, and sometimes the repentance of the condemned, together
with the unshaken kindness of the innocent and injured person, has
prevailed so far with the Prince that he has taken off the
sentence; but those that relapse after they are once pardoned are
punished with death.

"Their law does not determine the punishment for other crimes, but
that is left to the Senate, to temper it according to the
circumstances of the fact. Husbands have power to correct their
wives and parents to chastise their children, unless the fault is
so great that a public punishment is thought necessary for striking
terror into others. For the most part slavery is the punishment
even of the greatest crimes, for as that is no less terrible to the
criminals themselves than death, so they think the preserving them
in a state of servitude is more for the interest of the
commonwealth than killing them, since, as their labour is a greater
benefit to the public than their death could be, so the sight of
their misery is a more lasting terror to other men than that which
would be given by their death. If their slaves rebel, and will not
bear their yoke and submit to the labour that is enjoined them,
they are treated as wild beasts that cannot be kept in order,
neither by a prison nor by their chains, and are at last put to
death. But those who bear their punishment patiently, and are so
much wrought on by that pressure that lies so hard on them, that it
appears they are really more troubled for the crimes they have
committed than for the miseries they suffer, are not out of hope,
but that, at last, either the Prince will, by his prerogative, or
the people, by their intercession, restore them again to their
liberty, or, at least, very much mitigate their slavery. He that
tempts a married woman to adultery is no less severely punished
than he that commits it, for they believe that a deliberate design
to commit a crime is equal to the fact itself, since its not taking
effect does not make the person that miscarried in his attempt at
all the less guilty.

"They take great pleasure in fools, and as it is thought a base and
unbecoming thing to use them ill, so they do not think it amiss for
people to divert themselves with their folly; and, in their
opinion, this is a great advantage to the fools themselves; for if
men were so sullen and severe as not at all to please themselves
with their ridiculous behaviour and foolish sayings, which is all
that they can do to recommend themselves to others, it could not be
expected that they would be so well provided for nor so tenderly
used as they must otherwise be. If any man should reproach another
for his being misshaped or imperfect in any part of his body, it
would not at all be thought a reflection on the person so treated,
but it would be accounted scandalous in him that had upbraided
another with what he could not help. It is thought a sign of a
sluggish and sordid mind not to preserve carefully one's natural
beauty; but it is likewise infamous among them to use paint. They
all see that no beauty recommends a wife so much to her husband as
the probity of her life and her obedience; for as some few are
caught and held only by beauty, so all are attracted by the other
excellences which charm all the world.

"As they fright men from committing crimes by punishments, so they
invite them to the love of virtue by public honours; therefore they
erect statues to the memories of such worthy men as have deserved
well of their country, and set these in their market-places, both
to perpetuate the remembrance of their actions and to be an
incitement to their posterity to follow their example.

"If any man aspires to any office he is sure never to compass it.
They all live easily together, for none of the magistrates are
either insolent or cruel to the people; they affect rather to be
called fathers, and, by being really so, they well deserve the
name; and the people pay them all the marks of honour the more
freely because none are exacted from them. The Prince himself has
no distinction, either of garments or of a crown; but is only
distinguished by a sheaf of corn carried before him; as the High
Priest is also known by his being preceded by a person carrying a
wax light.

"They have but few laws, and such is their constitution that they
need not many. They very much condemn other nations whose laws,
together with the commentaries on them, swell up to so many
volumes; for they think it an unreasonable thing to oblige men to
obey a body of laws that are both of such a bulk, and so dark as
not to be read and understood by every one of the subjects.

"They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort
of people whose profession it is to disguise matters and to wrest
the laws, and, therefore, they think it is much better that every
man should plead his own cause, and trust it to the judge, as in
other places the client trusts it to a counsellor; by this means
they both cut off many delays and find out truth more certainly;
for after the parties have laid open the merits of the cause,
without those artifices which lawyers are apt to suggest, the judge
examines the whole matter, and supports the simplicity of such
well-meaning persons, whom otherwise crafty men would be sure to
run down; and thus they avoid those evils which appear very
remarkably among all those nations that labour under a vast load of
laws. Every one of them is skilled in their law; for, as it is a
very short study, so the plainest meaning of which words are
capable is always the sense of their laws; and they argue thus:
all laws are promulgated for this end, that every man may know his
duty; and, therefore, the plainest and most obvious sense of the
words is that which ought to be put upon them, since a more refined
exposition cannot be easily comprehended, and would only serve to
make the laws become useless to the greater part of mankind, and
especially to those who need most the direction of them; for it is
all one not to make a law at all or to couch it in such terms that,
without a quick apprehension and much study, a man cannot find out
the true meaning of it, since the generality of mankind are both so
dull, and so much employed in their several trades, that they have
neither the leisure nor the capacity requisite for such an inquiry.

"Some of their neighbours, who are masters of their own liberties
(having long ago, by the assistance of the Utopians, shaken off the
yoke of tyranny, and being much taken with those virtues which they
observe among them), have come to desire that they would send
magistrates to govern them, some changing them every year, and
others every five years; at the end of their government they bring
them back to Utopia, with great expressions of honour and esteem,
and carry away others to govern in their stead. In this they seem
to have fallen upon a very good expedient for their own happiness
and safety; for since the good or ill condition of a nation depends
so much upon their magistrates, they could not have made a better
choice than by pitching on men whom no advantages can bias; for
wealth is of no use to them, since they must so soon go back to
their own country, and they, being strangers among them, are not
engaged in any of their heats or animosities; and it is certain
that when public judicatories are swayed, either by avarice or
partial affections, there must follow a dissolution of justice, the
chief sinew of society.

"The Utopians call those nations that come and ask magistrates from
them Neighbours; but those to whom they have been of more
particular service, Friends; and as all other nations are
perpetually either making leagues or breaking them, they never
enter into an alliance with any state. They think leagues are
useless things, and believe that if the common ties of humanity do
not knit men together, the faith of promises will have no great
effect; and they are the more confirmed in this by what they see
among the nations round about them, who are no strict observers of
leagues and treaties. We know how religiously they are observed in
Europe, more particularly where the Christian doctrine is received,
among whom they are sacred and inviolable! which is partly owing to
the justice and goodness of the princes themselves, and partly to
the reverence they pay to the popes, who, as they are the most
religious observers of their own promises, so they exhort all other
princes to perform theirs, and, when fainter methods do not
prevail, they compel them to it by the severity of the pastoral
censure, and think that it would be the most indecent thing
possible if men who are particularly distinguished by the title of
'The Faithful' should not religiously keep the faith of their
treaties. But in that new-found world, which is not more distant
from us in situation than the people are in their manners and
course of life, there is no trusting to leagues, even though they
were made with all the pomp of the most sacred ceremonies; on the
contrary, they are on this account the sooner broken, some slight
pretence being found in the words of the treaties, which are
purposely couched in such ambiguous terms that they can never be so
strictly bound but they will always find some loophole to escape
at, and thus they break both their leagues and their faith; and
this is done with such impudence, that those very men who value
themselves on having suggested these expedients to their princes
would, with a haughty scorn, declaim against such craft; or, to
speak plainer, such fraud and deceit, if they found private men
make use of it in their bargains, and would readily say that they
deserved to be hanged.

"By this means it is that all sort of justice passes in the world
for a low-spirited and vulgar virtue, far below the dignity of
royal greatness--or at least there are set up two sorts of justice;
the one is mean and creeps on the ground, and, therefore, becomes
none but the lower part of mankind, and so must be kept in severely
by many restraints, that it may not break out beyond the bounds
that are set to it; the other is the peculiar virtue of princes,
which, as it is more majestic than that which becomes the rabble,
so takes a freer compass, and thus lawful and unlawful are only
measured by pleasure and interest. These practices of the princes
that lie about Utopia, who make so little account of their faith,
seem to be the reasons that determine them to engage in no
confederacy. Perhaps they would change their mind if they lived
among us; but yet, though treaties were more religiously observed,
they would still dislike the custom of making them, since the world
has taken up a false maxim upon it, as if there were no tie of
nature uniting one nation to another, only separated perhaps by a
mountain or a river, and that all were born in a state of
hostility, and so might lawfully do all that mischief to their
neighbours against which there is no provision made by treaties;
and that when treaties are made they do not cut off the enmity or
restrain the licence of preying upon each other, if, by the
unskilfulness of wording them, there are not effectual provisoes
made against them; they, on the other hand, judge that no man is to
be esteemed our enemy that has never injured us, and that the
partnership of human nature is instead of a league; and that
kindness and good nature unite men more effectually and with
greater strength than any agreements whatsoever, since thereby the
engagements of men's hearts become stronger than the bond and
obligation of words.

This page developed and maintained by James Hunter
Edgewood College, Madison, WI
Comments and suggestions: hunter@edgewood.edu
Last updated: 09/11/2007

Image credits for top banner:  
Left panel:  Lunar Excursion Module Simulator, NASA (Langley)
Right panel:  3-D Protein Structure, U.S. Department of Energy Human Genome Program, http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis
Middle panel background:  Blurred version of portion of Wired Cell, U.S. Department of Energy Genomes to Life Program, http://doegenomestolife.org