The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Utopia

UTOPIA (Gr. οὐ, not, and τόπος, a place), the title of a political romance by Sir Thomas More, and the name that he gave to an imaginary island, which he represents to have been discovered by a companion of Amerigo Vespucci, and in which existed a perfect society. He pictured a community where all the property belonged to the government, to which every one contributed by his labor, receiving therefrom a supply of his wants; where the citizen rose through all the gradations of his existence from form to form, as if in a vast public school; where gold was contemned, and all the members of the society, unswerved by passion, were fixed each in his proper place. “Utopia” was published in Latin in 1516, and translated into English by Bishop Burnet.