Utopia
by Thomas More
translated by Dominic Baker-Smith
(Penguin, 2012)
Debate and dialogue, the interplay of contrasting viewpoints, are key forms in the repertoire of humanism, and they are basic to More’s achievement as a write.
Page xi.
His most effective literary works take the form of dialogue, a drama of ideas.
Page xi.
More’s wit is never just a sense of play or bare mockery; it is always directed at someone or something in order to expose folly.
Page xii.
The most significant insight that he, and Erasmus, derive form Lucian is the recognition that society is founded on custom, on the unreflective adoption of received habits, whether these relate to modes of conduct or perception.
Page xiii.
We are products of our customs.
Page xiii.
It is no accident that Utopian life is essentially urban and centred around civic interests, even to the extent that there appears to be no overriding central authority to run the country.
Page xiv.
More used his protracted stay in the Netherlands to extend his literary contacts, and … Utopia and the prefatory letters are the most obvious outcome of these.
Page xvii.
While humanism was intimately bound up with the revival of classical learning and literature, at its centre was a sense of language as a social medium.
Page xvii.
The scholastic emphasis on language as a severely technical medium, deliberately stripped of subjective reference, set up a barrier between learning and everyday life. Although the medieval achievement in philosophy and theology was formidable, it increasingly failed to connect with ordinary experience. The humanist appeal to rhetoric, the classical art of persuasion, was based on its ambition to link study and reflection to practical action.
Page xvii.
What is the role of imagination, the faculty which liberates us from our immediate environment, in the practical issues of conventional life? How can we relate our disturbing ability to picture alternative worlds to the inherited world into which we have been born?
Page xix.
More approaches the serious topics playfully … . When Utopia appeared form the press of Thierry Martens it included several features designed to disconcert the literal-minded.
Page xix.
Although the book is set in Antwerp, and for the most part in the garden of More’s lodgings, we are scarcely aware of this since for much of the time we are whisked off on imaginary journeys.
Page xxi.
More’s real insight is the recognition of what some would describe as social sin, the awkward fat that to belong to society - to be formed by its customs and to be subjects to its dictates - is to be morally compromised.
Page xxiii.
A key issue is the relationship between wisdom or philosophy, and power. If wisdom is to reform society it needs the backing of power.
Page xxiii.
No polity can achieve perfection until, under divine providence, either philosophers take power or the powerful develop a passion for philosophy.
Page xxiii.
Like so many fictional societies Utopia is almost inaccessible to the outside world and in consequence its institutions and the attitudes they promote can operate without contamination.
Page xxvi.
For anyone who reached maturity at the opening of the sixteenth century two things might prompt reflection on contemporary society. One was the inherited corpus of classical literature, now foregrounded b the impact of humanism; the other was the information brought back by travellers about the natives of the New World. Both helped to stir an interest in primitivism.
Page xxvi.
The whole process by which natural law is subordinated to civil law and to private interests is what the \utopians have evaded, thanks to the intervention of Utopus. To the listeners in Antwwerp Utopia suggests an alternative social order which may at times seem tantalizingly within reach, but which is ultimately inaccessible.
Page xxvii.
The devotion to Greek studies which motivates More and Erasmus goes beyond the language itself; there is also the ambition to regain access to an alternative culture, whether this be to recover lost traditions of thought, or to establish a more authentic text of the New Testament.
Page xxvii.
The Utopians show a natural affinity for all tings Greek because of a common radicalism that places them on the margins of European experience.
Page xxvii.
It was from Augustine that More derived the idea of Rome as the civita terrena, the city of this world whose institutions perpetuate the transmission of injustice form generation to generation.
Page xxviii.
In all areas of life the promptings of nature indicate the course to be followed, and nature’s promptings are defined as the voice of reason, which, in its turn, is supplemented by ‘certain principles drawn from religion.’
Page xxviii.
When we picture Utopians we don’t seem to see any faces, just figures, in the same way as we encounter no Utopian names. The whole drift of life in a Utopian city, form the common meals to the pre-dawn lectures, is designed to meet authentic human aspirations in a manner that excludes no one; but in order to achieve this end both privacy and individualism have to be suppressed. The parallel is often drawn between a Utopian city and a monastery: the resemblance lies in the way both institutions subordinate personal concerns to a common goal, which entailed, as Plato recognized, the elimination of ownership.
Pages xxvii-xxix.
There are slaves in Utopia, though their status is never inherited but imposed as a penalty for crime.
Page xxix.
Generally, one could say, More’s real concern is to portray a penal system which benefits society and rehabilitates prisoners rather than providing a supplementary labour force.
Page xxix.
Should the population rise above the prescribed maximum, they establish colonies on the mainland wherever there is unused or neglected land.
Page xxix.
The basis of their policy is to promote the rule of reason, to preserve their own rational way of life and where appropriate to extend it to others.
Page xxix.
Utopia’s reputation as a work of political idealism has meant that all too often More’s analysis of what is wrong with the real world has been overlooked.
Page xxx.
While Utopia is a true commonwealth which provides security for all, regardless of their condition, Europe shows all the calamitous effects of divorcing conventional values from natural ones. Private ownership together with the subversive effects of a money economy combine to establish domination by the few and all the bogus values of an aristocratic culture driven by display and consumption.
Page xxx.
At the end the dialogue offer no clear-cut resolution, instead the issues are thrown out at us, the readers.
Page xxxi.
What the book proposes is a state of mind rather than any particular state of society.
Page xxxi.
It's certainly an obligation to make yourself as pleasant as you can to those whom nature, or chance, or our own choice have made the companions of your life, provided that you don't spoil them by over-familiarity or so indulge them that you turn servants into mater.
Page 12.
It didn't occur either to us to ask, or to him to say, in what part of that new world Utopia may be found.
Page 13.
As to the position of the island, which so troubles More, Raphael was not wholly silent on the matter, although he touched on it lightly and in passing, as if reserving it for another place. But then, goodness knows how, some evil chance struck us both. For while Raphael was actually speaking about it, one of More’s servants slipped in to whisper something in his ear; and although I listened all the more attentively, one of the party, who I suspect had caught a cold while at sea, coughed so loudly that some of the speaker’s words were drowned.
Page 17.
Were it not that I hold sacred the time-honoured memory of outstanding men, I could easily extract from each of them several notions which I might confidently propose for general condemnation.
Page 20.
I saw Peter talking with a stranger, a man verging on old age, sunburnt, with a shaggy beard and a cloak slung carelessly over his shoulder. It struck me from his face and attire that he was a ship’s captain.
Page 24.
There’s no man living today who can give you such an account of unknown peoples and lands.
Page 24.
(He happens to be Portuguese) attached himself to Amerigo Vespucci, and was his constant companion on the latter three of those four voyages.
Page 25.
We set off for my place, and there we began to talk, seated on a turf-covered bench in the garden.
Page 25.
It is clear that under the equator and on both sides of the line, as far as the sun’s orbit extends, there lie vast deserts scorched with perpetual heat: the entire region is harsh and desolate, untilled and savage, inhabited by wild beasts and serpents, as well as by men who are as wild as the beasts themselves and no less dangerous. But as you travel further the landscape gradually relents: the climate is less extreme, the earth supports plant life and the wild creatures are milder.
Page 26.
All those possessions that others won’t release until they are old and sick - and then only with reluctance when they can’t cling on to them any more - I distributed among my relatives and friends while still fit, lively and youthful.
Page 27.
Most princes devote themselves more willingly to the arts of war … than to the good arts of peace; most of their effort is expended on procuring new kingdoms, by fair means or foul, rather than governing properly those they have already.
Page 28.
It’s only natural … for people to have a soft spot for their own conceits.
Page 29.
Simple theft isn’t so great a crime that it merits death, and yet no other punishment is severe enough to keep form robbery those who have no alternative means of supporting themselves. … harsh and blood-chilling punishments are imposed for theft when it would make a lot more sense to ensure that people have the means to live, so that no one would face the dreadful necessity first of stealing and then of dying for it.
Page 30.
What makes this poverty and abject need so much worse is that it exists alongside unbridled luxury.
Page 35.
It’s futile to boast of the justice you display in punishing theft, since it’s more specious than equitable or effective. If you permit the young to be viciously brought up and their characters steadily corrupted from early years, and then at length punish them for doing as adults what they have been destined for since childhood, what else is this but turning people into thieves and then punishing them for being such?
Page 35.
To take away someone’s life for taking away money is wholly unjust.
Page 36.
It must be obvious to anyone just how absurd it is to punish theft and murder in the same way. Once the thief realizes that theft carries no less a penalty than if he were convicted of murder, then that thought alone will drive him to kill the victim, whom otherwise he might just have robbed. … While we try to scare thieves with our severity, we are actually encouraging the killing of the innocent.
Page 37.
The severity of the law is directed to destroy vices and save men, so treating them that they can’t help but be good, devoting the remainder of their days to reparation as once they gave themselves to crime.
Page 39.
Plato holds that commonwealths will only be happy when either philosophers rule or rulers philosophize: how r4emote happiness must appear when philosophers won’t even deign to share their thoughts with kings.
Page 43.
If a king is so despised and detested by his subjects that he can’t keep them in order unless he browbeats them with threats, extortion and confiscation, reducing them to beggary, then it would be better for him to abdicate than retain his throne by such means that even though he may retain the title he loses all the majesty of a king - ruling over beggars doesn’t befit the dignity of a king; he must have contented and prosperous subjects.
Page 48.
For some single person to indulge in pleasure and delights while surrounded by the weeping and lamentation of others is not to be the governor of a kingdom but of a gaol.
Page 48.
How can such an alien line of argument touch those whose minds are wholly taken over and possessed by the contrary opinion?
Page 49.
You shouldn’t force strange and startling ideas on those with whom you know they’ll carry no weight because their convictions run the other way. Instead, you must do your best to operate through an indirect approach, and try to handle everything tactfully, so that whatever you cannot turn to good will at least do the minimum of harm.
Page 50.
If all those things that the warped standards of mankind have rendered odd are to be dismissed, then we Christians will have to jettison the bulk of Christ’s teachings.
Pages 50-51.
When everyone is entitled to claw together as much as he can get for himself, then, no matter how great the resources available, a small number end up dividing the whole lot among themselves, and the remainder are stuck in poverty.
Page 52.
I am absolutely convinced that there can be no equitable or just distribution of goods, nor can the affairs of this world be conducted happily, unless private ownership is completely suppressed.
Page 52.
You can’t give something to one person without taking it away form someone else.
Page 53.
As their chronicles reveal, prior to our landing they had heard nothing about us Ultra-equatorials (for that’s what they call us), except that some twelve hundred years previously a ship was wrecked on their island, having been driven there by a storm. A number of Romans and Egyptians were cast ashore and never left the place.
Page 54.
From just one encounter they at once made their own whatever we had developed for the improvement of life, but I suspect that it will be a long time before we adopt any practice that they do better than us.
Page 54.
Utopus, who gave his name to the island by conquest (previously it had been known as Abraxa) and who raised its brutish and uncultivated inhabitants to such a level of civilization and humanity that they now outshine virtually all other nations, having gained victory at his very first landing, caused a channel fifteen miles wide to be excavated at the end of the peninsula joined to the mainland, so surrounding it with the sea.
Pages 57-58.
Amaurot … That particular city, placed as it were at the navel of the country and thus easily accessible to delegates form all parts, serves as the capital.
Page 58.
No city wants to extend its boundaries since the people regard themselves as cultivators of the soil rather than its exploiters.
Page 58.
They raise countless numbers of chicks by a remarkable method: rather than hens sitting on the eggs, they incubate a great number of them at a warm, steady temperature and so hatch them; the chicks, as soon as they emerge from the shells, fix on the humans and follow them rather than their mothers.
Page 59.
For all the work of cultivation and haulage they use oxen.
Page 59.
No place is ever private: indeed they exchanger the actual houses by lot every tenth year.
Page 61.
Agriculture is the one activity common to all, both men and women, and from which no one is exempt. They are instructed in it from childhood, partly in school where they learn the principles, and partly through expeditions to nearby farms where they learn as if through play, not simply looking on but joining in the work as an opportunity for exercise.
Page 63.
Out of the twenty-four equal hours into which they divide day and night they allow just six to work: three hours before noon when they go to lunch, after which they allow two hours of the afternoon to a siesta, then three further hours of work are concluded with supper.
Page 64.
When money is the measure of all things, futile and unnecessary trades are bound to be practised, just to meet the demands of luxury and indulgence.
Pages 65-66.
The whole aim of their social order is that all citizens should be free as far as public requirements allow, to turn form the servitude of the body and dedicate themselves to the freedom and cultivation of the mind.
Page 68.
If it should happen that the total population of the island expands beyond its projected quota, citizens are enrolled from any of the cities and they establish a colony subject to their own laws on the neighbouring mainland, wherever the native population has redundant and untilled land.
Page 68.
All those who refuse to live under their laws the Utopians drive out of the territory that they claim, making war on those who resist. For they view it as an entirely just cause for war when those who possess a territory leave it idle and unproductive.
Pages 68-69.
It is certain that among all living creatures greed and aggression are driven by the fear of want; only among mankind are they stirred by pride, which considers it glorious to outshine others by flaunting one’s possessions, a kind of vice that is wholly alien to the Utopian way of life.
Page 69.
They are rather inclined to the view that no kind of pleasure is forbidden, provided that no hard comes of it.
Page 72.
Should anyone wander outside his own district without leave and be caught without the governor’s pass, he’s regarded with contempt, brought back like a fugitive and severely punished. If he attempts it a second time he’s sentenced to slavery.
Page 73.
There is never any opportunity to waste time or be idle: no wine-bars, ale-houses or brothels; no chance for seduction, no dark corners or furtive encounters.
Page 73.
The whole island is like a single household.
Page 74.
They don’t use money themselves but hold it back against an emergency that may or may not ever happen.
Page 75.
Nature has allotted no function to gold or silver that we can’t do without; only human folly has rated them as precious because they are rare.
Page 75.
They contrive in every way to bring gold and silver into low esteem.
Page 76.
The Utopians are amazed that anyone can take delight in the transitory glitter of a tiny jewel or precious stone when he is free to gaze at a star, or even at the sun itself.
Page 78.
Virtue they define as living in accord with nature, God having created us to that end.
Page 80.
Nature herself prescribes for us a joyful life, that is to say one of pleasure, as the final end of all our actions.
Page 81.
To snatch away the pleasure of others in pursuit of your own is criminal. In contrast, to deprive yourself of some pleasure in order to give it to another is a humane and generous act that never fails to give greater returns than it costs.
Page 82.
The designate as pleasure every movement or condition of body or mind that gratifies a natural inclination.
Page 82.
“Right reason” = This term refers to the innate faculty of moral judgement or ‘common sense’ held by many to be planted in human nature. (Endnotes)
Page 82.
Nearly all Utopians agree that health is a primary ingredient of pleasure.
Page 86.
In all pleasures they have this rule, that a lesser enjoyment must not impede a greater one, and no pleasure should give rise to pain.
Page 87.
The people are easy-going, good humoured and intelligent, and enjoy their leisure. They accept physical labour willingly provided that it serves a useful purpose (otherwise they are not keen on it), but in matters of the mind they are tireless.
Page 88.
Two things they owe to us: printing and the manufacture of paper.
Page 90.
Their slaves are either their own people, who have been punished for some shameful act, or, most commonly, foreigner who, for some crime, have been condemned to death in their own cities.
Page 91.
They comfort those suffering form an incurable disease, sitting and talking with them, and doing all they can to alleviate their pain. If, however, the disease not only is untreatable but also involves intense and unrelieved suffering, then the priests and magistrates counsel the patient. They point out that since he’s unequal to the obligations of life and is a heavy burden to himself as well as to others, he has in effect outlived his own death. So, buoyed up with the hope for better things, he ought to release himself form this harsh life as from a prison or bed of thorns, or permit others to liberate him from it. This would be a sensible thing, to do, since death wouldn’t bring an end to pleasures but to suffering; what’s more, since he’d be following the counsel of the priests, the interpreters of God’s will, it would also be a devout and holy act.
Pages 91-92.
A woman does not marry before the age of eighteen, ore a man before he’s four years older than that. Anyone found guilty of illicit sexual relations prior to marriage is severely reprimanded and permanently banned form marriage, regardless of their sex. … They punish this offence so severely because they anticipate that unless people are strictly restrained form casual sex few would undertake marriage, with its lifelong commitment to a single partner and all the other irksome demands which that entails.
Page 92.
In choosing marriage partners, they solemnly adopt a practice which struck us as quite grotesque, for the woman - be she virgin or widow - is shown to the suitor by some reliable and trustworthy matron while stark naked; and in the same way, some appropriate man shows the suitor naked to the prospective bride.
Page 92.
Husbands discipline their wives, as parents do their children.
Page 94.
For the most pat, serious crimes are punished with servitude.
Page 94.
To mock the deformed or maimed is regarded as ugly and disfiguring, not to the individual mocked but to the one who mocks, because like an idiot he’s blaming the unfortunate victim for something he can do nothing about.
Page 95.
They regard the use of cosmetics as affected and even sleazy.
Page 95.
What they strongly deplore other nations is the way that their countless tomes of laws - and of commentaries on them - all prove inadequate. In their view it is a violation of justice that people should be bound by laws which are either too numerous to be read or too obscure to be understood.
Page 95.
Treaties, which other nations are forever validating, violating and renewing, they refuse to make with anyone. What’s the point of a treaty, they ask, if nature isn’t already a sufficient bond between man and man?
Page 97.
They consider that the practice of making treaties at all is regrettable, even when they are faithfully observed, since it implies that men are born as instinctive competitors and enemies who quite properly struggle to obliterate each other, unless treaties prevent it - just as if people separated form one another by some minor barrier like a hill or a stream didn’t share a common nature.
Page 98.
The Utopians hold that no one is an enemy if he has caused no actual harm, that the shared bonds of nature are every bit as strong as a treaty, and that men are more effectively drawn together by goodwill than by pacts, by hearts rather than by words.
Page 98.
In contrast to the customs of nearly all other nations, they regard as inglorious all glory won by means of war.
Page 98.
The devote themselves, women as well as men, to regular military training to ensure that they won’t be incapable of defending themselves when the need arises.
Pages 98-99.
They engage in hostilities with great reluctance. They do so only to safeguard their own frontiers, or to expel hostile forces form the territories of their friends, or, in the cause of humanity, to liberate an oppressed people from tyranny and servitude.
Page 99.
Their one aim in going to war is to obtain those objectives which would have prevented hostilities if they had been conceded in the first place.
Page 100.
They feel almost as much pity for the general mass of the enemy as they do for their own people, since they know that they don’t go to war of their own volition but are thrust into it by the madness of princes.
Page 101.
Those women who wish to accompany their husbands on campaign are not only not prevented but actively encouraged and even praised for doing so.
Page 104.
They certainly make every effort to avoid being engaged in combat themselves, so long as they can use mercenaries to resolve things on their behalf; but once they can no longer escape direct involvement they’re every bit as fearless in action as before they were wise in their efforts to postpone it for as long as possible.
Page 104.
If the victory is theirs there’s no slaughter for they would rather capture fugitives than kill them.
Page 105.
They include swimming in armour as part of their basic military training.
Page 106.
For close combat they don’t use swords but axes.
Page 106.
When a war is over they charge the cost to the conquered rather than to the allies for whose sake they undertook it.
Page 106.
They don’t like to wage hostilities on their own g round, nor could any crisis be grave enough to make them admit foreign auxiliaries onto their island.
Page 107.
The greatest number, and the wisest … believe in a single divinity, unknown, eternal, infinite, inexplicable, diffused throughout the universe not materially but by his power in a manner that is beyond human understanding. They address him as their parent. To him they attribute the origin, growth, progress, development and end of all things, and they reserve divine honours to him alone.
Page 107.
They call him Mithras in their native speech.
Page 107.
It is one of their most ancient tenets that no one should suffer harm flor his religion.
Page 109.
The Utopians hold that after this life punishments are decreed for vices and rewards granted for virtue. Anyone who denies this they regard as a renegade to humanity, since he’s reduced the aspiring nature of his own soul to the level of an animal carcass. … No one holding such views is accorded honours, entrusted with official functions or given public responsibility.
Page 110.
Nearly all Utopians are utterly convinced that human happiness after death will be beyond measure, and so while they feel sorrow for those who are sick they don’t extend this to anyone who dies, unless he was snatched from life reluctantly and in distress.
Page 110.
They also think that God is hardly likely to be pleased by the arrival of a person who, when summoned, doesn’t come willingly but is dragged off resisting.
Page 111.
When someone embraces death and dies full of hope they don’t mourn him but carry out the last rites with singing, commending his soul to God with deep affection.
Page 111.
They believe … that the dead move among the living, observing their sayings and their actions. … This belief in the presence of their ancestors from any secret acts of dishonesty.
Page 111.
They consider that contemplation of nature and the prayerful adoration that it inspires are a form of worship pleasing to God.
Page 112.
The wives of the priests are the most highly esteemed in the country - unless, of course, the priests happen to be women, for their sex is not excluded. But it’s unusual, and then only a widow of mature years is chosen.
Page 114.
When their forces are engaged in battle, the Utopian priests, clothed in their sacred garments, place themselves a little apart and, kneeling and with their hands raised to heaven, they pray in the first place for peace, and the net for the success of their own troops - but with the minimum of bloodshed on either side.
Page 114.
The Utopians observe as f east days the first and last days of each month, and also of the year.
Page 115.
No images of the gods are to be found in their temples so that everyone is left free to form a personal image of God in keeping with his belief.
Page 115.
They don’t slaughter any animals in their sacrifices since they can’t believe that a merciful God, who gave life to all living creatures so that they might live, is going to take delight in bloodshed or killing. They burn incense and other fragrant things of that kind, and in addition they offer great numbers of candles.
Pages 116-117.
Here, where all things are common to everyone, provided that the public warehouses remain full, nobody needs fear that he’ll be short of anything for his own use. Indeed, the distribution of resources is anything but stingy: there no one is poor or reduced to begging, and while nobody possesses anything everyone is rich.
Page 119.
Those who worked once but are now too weak to do so are no less cared for than those who are still at work.
Page 119.
The rich are forever fleecing the poor of some of their daily pittance, not only by private fraud but even by official legislation.
Page 120.
When I survey and assess all the different political systems flourishing today, nothing else presents itself - God help me - but a conspiracy of the rich who look after their own interests under then name and title of the commonwealth.
Page 120.
Once the use of money had been abolished and avarice along with it, what a mass of troubles was cut away what a harvest of crimes uprooted! … Even poverty itself, which seems to be just the lack of money, would instantly vanish if money was completely suppressed.
Pages 120-121.
It’s better to lack nothing we really require than to wallow in an excess of superfluous things.
Page 121.