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 “Timæus,” 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 “Timæus.” 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.[1]
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 unwilling to become a minister of state, considering that he would lose his independence, and his advice would never be heeded.[2] He ridicules the new logic of his time; the Utopians could never be made to understand the doctrine of Second Intentions.[3] 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, judging 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 them—‘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 exquisite passage at p. 35, of which the conclusion is as follows: “And verily it is naturally given… suppressed and ended.”
- ↑ “For they have not devised one of all those rules of restrictions, amplifications, and
