Three Early Modern Utopias: Thomas More: Utopia / Francis Bacon: New Atlantis / Henry Neville: The Isle of Pines

by Thomas More

  When the battle is hottest and in all places most fierce and fervent, a band of chosen and picked young men, which be sworn to live and die together, take upon them to destroy their adversaries’ captain, whom they invade, now with privy wiles, now by open strength. At him they strike both near and far off. He is assailed with a long and a continual assault, fresh men still coming in the wearied men’s places. And seldom it chanceth (unless he save himself by flying) that he is not either slain, or else taken prisoner and yielded to his enemies alive. If they win the field they persecute not their enemies with the violent rage of slaughter. For they had rather take them alive than kill them. Neither they do so follow the chase and pursuit of their enemies, but they leave behind them one part of their host in battle array under their standards. Insomuch that if all their whole army be discomfited and overcome, saving the rearward, and that they therewith achieve the victory, then they had rather let all their enemies escape than to follow them out of array. For they remember it hath chanced unto themselves more than once, the whole power and strength of their host vanquished and put to flight, whiles their enemies rejoicing in the victory have persecuted them, flying some one way and some another, a small company of their men lying in an ambush, there ready at all occasions, have suddenly risen upon them thus dispersed and scattered out of array and through presumption of safety unadvisedly pursuing the chase, and have incontinent changed the fortune of the whole battle, and spite of their teeth* wresting out of their hands the sure and undoubted victory, being a little before conquered, have for their part conquered the conquerors. It is hard to say whether they be craftier in laying an ambush, or wittier in avoiding the same. You would think they intend to fly when they mean nothing less. And contrariwise, when they go about that purpose you would believe it were the least part of their thought. For if they perceive themselves either overmatched in number or closed in too narrow a place, then they remove their camp; either in the night season with silence or by some policy they deceive their enemies, or in the daytime they retire back so softly, that it is no less jeopardy to meddle with them when they give back than when they press on. They fence and fortify their camp surely with a deep and a broad trench. The earth thereof is cast inward. Nor they do not set drudges and slaves awork about it. It is done by the hands of the soldiers themselves. All the whole army worketh upon it, except them that keep watch and ward in harness before the trench for sudden adventures.* Therefore, by the labour of so many a large trench closing in a great compass of ground is made in less time than any man would believe.

  The captain is chiefly to be pursued to the intent that the battle may the sooner be ended.

  Their armour or harness which they wear is sure and strong to receive strokes, and handsome for all movings and gestures of the body, insomuch that it is not unwieldy to swim in. For in the discipline of their warfare among other feats they learn to swim in harness. Their weapons be arrows aloof, which they shoot both strongly and surely, not only footmen, but also horsemen. At hand strokes they use not swords but pole-axes, which be mortal as well in sharpness as in weight, both for foins and downstrokes. Engines for war they devise and invent wondrous wittily. Which when they be made they keep very secret, lest, if they should be known before need require, they should be but laughed at and serve to no purpose. But in making them, hereunto they have chief respect, that they be both easy to be carried and handsome to be moved and turned about. Truce taken with their enemies for a short time they do so firmly and faithfully keep, that they will not break it, no, not though they be thereunto provoked. They do not waste nor destroy their enemies’ land with foragings, nor they burn not up their corn. Yea, they save it as much as may be from being overrun and trodden down either with men or horses, thinking that it groweth for their own use and profit.

  Their armour.

  Of truces.

  They hurt no man that is unarmed, unless he be an espial. All cities that be yielded unto them they defend. And such as they win by force of assault they neither despoil nor sack, but them that withstood and dissuaded the yielding up of the same they put to death; the other soldiers they punish with bondage. All the weak multitude they leave untouched. If they know that any citizens counselled to yield and render up the city, to them they give part of the condemned men’s goods. The residue they distribute and give freely among them whose help they had in the same war. For none of themselves taketh any portion of the prey. But when the battle is finished and ended, they put their friends to never a penny cost of all the charges that they were at, but lay it upon their necks that be conquered.* Them they burden with the whole charge of their expenses, which they demand of them partly in money to be kept for like use of battle, and partly in lands of great revenues to be paid unto them yearly for ever. Such revenues they have now in many countries. Which, by little and little rising of divers and sundry causes, be increased above seven hundred thousand ducats by the year. Thither they send forth some of their citizens as lieutenants, to live there sumptuously like men of honour and renown. And yet, this notwithstanding, much money is saved which cometh to the common treasury, unless it so chance that they had rather trust the country with the money. Which many times they do so long until they have need to occupy it. And it seldom happeneth that they demand all. Of these lands they assign part unto them which at their request and exhortation put themselves in such jeopardies as I spake of before. If any prince stir up war against them, intending to invade their land, they meet him incontinent out of their own borders with great power and strength. For they never lightly make war in their own country. Nor they be never brought into so extreme necessity as to take help out of foreign lands into their own island.

  OF THE RELIGIONS IN UTOPIA

  There be divers kinds of religion not only in sundry parts of the island, but also in divers places of every city. Some worship for God the sun, some the moon, some some other of the planets. There be that give worship to a man that was once of excellent virtue or of famous glory, not only as God, but also as the chiefest and highest God. But the most and the wisest part (rejecting all these,) believe that there is a certain Godly power unknown, everlasting, incomprehensible, inexplicable, 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 they give any divine honours to any other than to him. Yea, all the other also, though they be in divers opinions, yet in this point they agree all together with the wisest sort in believing that there is one chief and principal God, the maker and ruler of the whole world, whom they all commonly in their country language call Mithra.* But in this they disagree, that among some he is counted one, and among some another. For every one of them, whatsoever that is which he taketh for the chief God, thinketh it to be the very same nature to whose only divine might and majesty the sum and sovereignty of all things by the consent of all people is attributed and given. Howbeit, they all begin by little and little to forsake and fall from this variety of superstitions, and to agree together in that religion which seemeth by reason to pass and excel the residue. And it is not to be doubted but all the other would long ago have been abolished, but that whatsoever unprosperous thing happened to any of them, as he was minded to change his religion, the fearfulness of people did take it, not as a thing coming by chance, but as sent from GOD out of heaven, as though the God whose honour he was forsaking would revenge that wicked purpose against him. But after they heard us speak of the name of Christ, of his doctrine, laws, miracles, and of the no less wonderful constancy of so many martyrs, whose blood willingly shed brought a great number of nations throughout all parts of the world into their sect, you will not believe with how glad minds they agreed unto the same, whether it were by the secret inspiration of GOD, or else for that they thought it nighest unto that opinion which among them is counted the chiefest. Howbeit, I think t
his was no small help and furtherance in the matter, that they heard us say that Christ instituted among his all things common, and that the same community doth yet remain amongst the rightest Christian communities.* Verily, howsoever it came to pass, many of them consented together in our religion and were washed in the holy water of baptism. But because among us four (for no more of us was left alive, two of our company being dead) there was no priest, which I am right sorry for, they being entered and instructed in all other points of our religion, lack only those sacraments which here none but priests do minister. Howbeit, they understand and perceive them and be very desirous of the same. Yea, they reason and dispute the matter earnestly among themselves, whether, without the sending of a Christian bishop, one chosen out of their own people may receive the order of priesthood. And truly they were minded to choose one, but at my departure from them they had chosen none.

  Religious houses.

  They also which do not agree to Christ’s religion fear no man from it nor speak against any man that hath received it. Saving that 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 his matter, that he did not only prefer our religion before all other, but also did utterly despise and condemn all other, calling them profane, and the followers of them wicked and devilish and the children of 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. For this is one of the ancientest laws among them, that no man shall be blamed for reasoning in the maintenance of his own religion. For King Utopus, even at the first beginning hearing that the inhabitants of the land were before his coming thither at continual dissension and strife among themselves for their religions, perceiving also that this common dissension (whiles every several sect took several parts in fighting for their country) was the only occasion of his conquest over them all, as soon as he had gotten the victory: first of all he made a decree that it should be lawful for every man to favour and follow what religion he would, and that he might do the best he could to bring other to his opinion, so that he did it peaceably, gently, quietly, and soberly, without hasty and contentious rebuking and inveighing against other. If he could not by fair and gentle speech induce them unto his opinion, yet he should use no kind of violence, and refrain from displeasant and seditious words. To him that would vehemently and fervently in this cause strive and contend was decreed banishment or bondage.

  Seditious reasoners punished.

  This law did King Utopus make, not only for the maintenance of peace, which he saw through continual contention and mortal hatred utterly extinguished, but also because he thought this decree should make for the furtherance of religion. Whereof he durst define and determine nothing unadvisedly, as doubting whether God, desiring manifold and diverse sorts of honour, would inspire sundry men with sundry kinds of religion. And this surely he thought a very unmeet and foolish thing, and a point of arrogant presumption, to compel all other by violence and threatenings to agree to the same that thou believest to be true. Furthermore, though there be one religion which alone is true, and all other vain and superstitious, yet did he well foresee (so that the matter were handled with reason and sober modesty) that the truth of the own power would at the last issue out and come to light. But if contention and debate in that behalf should continually be used, as the worst men be most obstinate and stubborn and in their evil opinion most constant, he perceived that then the best and holiest religion would be trodden underfoot and destroyed by most vain superstitions, even as good corn is by thorns and weeds overgrown and choked.

  Therefore all this matter he left undiscussed, and gave to every man free liberty and choice to believe what he would. Saving that he earnestly and straitly charged them that no man should conceive so vile and base an opinion of the dignity of man’s nature as to think that the souls do die and perish with the body, or that the world runneth at all adventures, governed by no divine providence. And therefore they believe that after this life vices be extremely punished and virtues bountifully rewarded. Him that is of a contrary opinion they count not in the number of men, as one that hath avaled the high nature of his soul to the vileness of brute beasts’ bodies, much less in the number of their citizens whose laws and ordinances, if it were not for fear, he would nothing at all esteem. For you may be sure that he will study either with craft privily to mock, or else violently to break the common laws of his country, in whom remaineth no further fear than of the laws nor no further hope than of the body. Wherefore he that is thus minded is deprived of all honours, excluded from all offices, and reject from all common administrations in the weal-public. And thus he is of all sorts despised as of an unprofitable and of a base and vile nature. Howbeit, they put him to no punishment, because they be persuaded that it is in no man’s power to believe what he list. No nor they constrain him not with threatenings to dissemble his mind and show countenance contrary to his thought; for deceit and falsehood and all manners of lies, as next unto fraud, they do marvellously detest and abhor. But they suffer him not to dispute in his opinion, and that only among the common people.* For else, apart among the priests and men of gravity they do not only suffer, but also exhort him to dispute and argue, hoping that at the last that madness will give place to reason.

  No vile opinion to be conceived of man’s worthy nature.

  Irreligious people secluded from all honours.

  A very strange saying.

  Deceit and falsehood detested.

  There be also other, and of them no small number, which be not forbidden to speak their minds, as grounding their opinion upon some reason, being in their living neither evil nor vicious. Their heresy is much contrary to the other; for they believe that the souls of brute beasts be immortal and everlasting. But nothing to be compared with ours in dignity, neither ordained nor predestinate to like felicity. For all they believe certainly and surely that man’s bliss shall be so great, that they do mourn and lament every man’s sickness, but no man’s death, unless it be one whom they see depart from his life carefully and against his will. For this they take for a very evil token, as though the soul, being in despair and vexed in conscience through some privy and secret forefeeling of the punishment now at hand, were afeard to depart. And they think he shall not be welcome to God, which, when he is called, runneth not to him gladly but is drawn by force and sore against his will. They, therefore, that see this kind of death do abhor it, and them that so die they bury with sorrow and silence. And when they have prayed God to be merciful to the soul and mercifully to pardon the infirmities thereof, they cover the dead corpse with earth. Contrariwise, all that depart merrily and full of good hope, for them no man mourneth, but followeth the hearse with joyful singing, commending the souls to God with great affection. And at the last, not with mourning sorrow, but with a great reverence, they burn the bodies. And in the same place they set up a pillar of stone with the dead man’s titles therein graved. When they be come home they rehearse his virtuous manners and his good deeds. But no part of his life is so oft or gladly talked of as his merry death.

  A marvellous strange opinion touching the souls of brute beasts.

  To die unwillingly an evil token.

  A willing and a merry death not to be lamented.

  They think that this remembrance of the virtue and goodness of the dead doth vehemently provoke and enforce the living to virtue. And that nothing can be more pleasant and acceptable to the dead. Whom they suppose to be present among them when they talk of them, though to the dull and feeble eyesight of mortal men they be invisible. For it were an inconvenient thing that the blessed should not be at liberty to go whither they would. And it were a point of great unkindness in them to have utterly cast away the desire of visiting and seeing their friends to whom they we
re in their lifetime joined by mutual love and amity. Which in good men after their death they count to be rather increased than diminished. They believe, therefore, that the dead be presently conversant among the quick* as beholders and witnesses of all their words and deeds. Therefore they go more courageously to their business, as having a trust and affiance in such overseers. And this same belief of the present conversation of their forefathers and ancestors among them feareth them from all secret dishonesty.