The Republic — Plato

ligion. ' In the public services " no prayers be used, but such as every man may boldly pronounce without giving offence to any sect. He says significantly (p. 143), "There be that give worship to a man that was once of excellent virtue or of famous glory, not only as God, but also the chiefest and highest God.

But the most and the wisest part, rejecting all these, believe that there is a certain godly power unknown, far above the capacity and reach of man's wit, dispersed throughout all the world, not in bigness, but in virtue and power. Him they call the Father of All. To him alone they attribute the beginnings, the increasings, the proceedings, the changes, and the ends of all things. Neither give they any divine honors to any other than him.

So far was More from sharing the popular beliefs of his time. Yet at the end he reminds us that he does not in all respects agree with the customs and opinions of the Utopians which he describes. And we should let him have the benefit of this saving clause, and not rudely withdraw the veil behind which he has been pleased to conceal himself. Nor is he less in advance of popular opinion in his political and moral speculations.

He would like to bring military glory into contempt ; he would set all sorts of idle people to profitable occupation, including in the same class, priests, women, noblemen, gentlemen, and " sturdy and valiant beggars," that the labor of all may be reduced to six hours a day.

His dislike of capital punishment, and plans for the reformation of offenders ; his detestation of priests and lawyers ; ^ his remark that " although everyone may hear of ravenous dogs and wolves and cruel man-eaters, it is not easy to find States that are well and wisely governed," are curiously at variance with the notions of his age and, indeed, with his own life.

There are many points in which he shows a modern feeling and a prophetic insight like Plato. He is a sanitary reformer ; he maintains that civilized States have a right to the ' " One of our company in my presence was sharply punished.

He, as soon as he was baptized, began against our wills, with more earnest affection than wisdom to reason of Christ's religion, and began to wax so hot in this matter, that he did not only prefer our religion before all other, but also did despise and condemn all other, callingthem profane, and the followers of them wicked and devilish, and the children of the everlasting damnation.

When he had thus long reasoned the matter, they laid hold on him, accused him, and condemned him into exile, not as a despiser of religion, but as a seditious person and a raiser up of dissension among the people " (p. 145). " Compare his satirical observation : " They (the Utopians) have priests of exceeding holiness, and therefore very few " (p. 150).

soil of waste countries ; he is inclined to the opinion which places happiness in virtuous pleasures, but herein, as he thinks, not disagreeing from those other philosophers who define virtue to be a life according to nature. He extends the idea of happiness so as to include the happiness of others ; and he argues ingeniously, " All men agree that we ought to make others happy ; but if others, how much more ourselves !

" And still he thinks that there may be a more excellent way, but to this no man's reason can attain unless heaven should inspire him with a higher truth. His ceremonies before marriage; his humane proposal that war should be carried on by assassinating the leaders of the enemy, may be compared to some of the paradoxes of Plato.

He has a charming fancy, like the affinities of Greeks and barbarians in the " Timseus," that the Utopians learned the language of the Greeks with the more readiness because they were originally of the same race with them. He is penetrated with the spirit of Plato, and quotes or adapts many thoughts both from the " Republic " and from the " Timaeus. He prefers public duties to private, and is somewhat impatient of the importunity of relations.

His citizens have no silver or gold of their own, but are ready enough to pay them to their mercenaries (cp. " Rep." iv. 422, 423). There is nothing of which he is more contemptuous than the love of money. Gold is used for fetters of criminals, and diamonds and pearls for children's necklaces.^ Like Plato he is full of satirical reflections on governments and princes; on the state of the world and of knowledge.

The hero of his discourse (Hythloday) is very unwiUing to becomes a minister of state, considering that he would lose his independence, and his advice would never be heeded.^ He ridicules the new logic of his time ; the Utopians could never be made to understand the doctrine of Second Intentions.* He ' When the ambassadors came arrayed in gold and peacocks' feathers, " to the eyes of all the Utopians except very few, which had been in other countries for some reasonable cause, all that gorgeousness of apparel seemed shameful and reproachful.

In so much that they most reverently saluted the vilest and most abject of them for lords— passing over the ambassadors themselves without any honor, judgmg them by their wearing of golden chains to be bondmen.

You should have seen children also, that have cast away their pearls and precious stones, when they saw the like sticking upon the ambassador's caps, dig and push their mothers under the sides, saying thus to theni— ' Look, mother, how great a lubber doth yet wear pearls and precious stones, as though he were a little child still.

But the mother; yea and that also in good earnest: Peace, son, saith she, ' I think he be some of the ambassadors' fools '" (p. 102). • . •• ^ Cp. an exqnisite passage at p. 3.S. of which the conclusion is as follows: And venly it is n:iturally given . . . suppressed and ended." ,.e • j ' '■ For they have not devised one of all those rules of restrictions, amplifications, and

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION Ixxxix is very severe on the sports of the gentry ; the Utopians count " hunting the lowest, the vilest, and the most abject part of butchery.

He quotes the words of the " Republic " in which the philosopher is described " standing out of the way under a wall until the driving storm of sleet and rain be overpast," whicli admit of a singular application to More's own fate; although,. writing twenty years before (about the year 15 14), he can hardly be supposed to have foreseen this.

There is no touch of satire which strikes deeper than his quiet remark that the greater part of the precepts of Christ are more at variance with the lives of ordinary Christians than the discourse of Utopia.^ The " New Atlantis " is only a fragment, and far inferior in merit to the " Utopia. The work is full of ingenuity, but wanting in creative fancy, and by no means impresses the reader with a sense of credibility.

In some places Lord Bacon is characteristically dififerent from Sir Thomas More, as, for example, in the external state which he attributes to the governor of Salomon's House, whose dress he minutely describes, while to Sir Thomas More such trappings appear simply ridiculous. Yet, after this program of dress. Bacon adds the beautiful trait, " that he had a look as though he pitied men.

Several things are borrowed by him from the " Timasus " ; but he has injured the unity of style by adding thoughts and passages which are taken from the Hebrew Scriptures. The " City of the Sun," written by Campanella (i 568-1639), a Dominican friar, several years after the " New Atlantis " of Bacon, has many resemblances to the " Republic " of Plato.

The citizens have wives and children in common ; their marriages are of the same temporary sort, and are arranged by the magistrates from time to time. They do not, however, adopt his system of lots, but bring together the best natures, male and female, " according to philosophical rules. The suppositions, very wittily invented in the small logicals, which here our children in every place do learn.

Furthermore, they were never yet able to find out the second intentions ; insomuch that none of them all could ever see man himself in common, as they call him, though he be (as you know) bigger than was ever any giant, yea, and pointed to us even with our finger " (p. 105). ' " And yet the most part of them is more dissident from the manners of the world nowadays than my communication was.

But preachers, sly and wily men, following your counsel (as I suppose) because they saw men evil-willing to frame their manners to Christ's rule, they have wrested and wried his doctrine, and, like a rule of lead, have applied it to men's manners, that by some means at the least way, they might agree together " (p. 66).