So far the apparent tendency of the Utopia seems to agree tolerably well with what we know of that "righteous and holy judge" who was its author. But we are not going to escape so easily. Of all the features of the Utopian commonwealth the most notable is the community of ownership. Yet we possess a most emphatic contradiction of the very principle of communism from the pen of More himself. In the Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, written during his imprisonment in the Tower, in expectancy of martyrdom, at a moment when he was opening his heart wholly to God, More wrote:

But, cousin, men of substance must there be, for else shall you have more beggars, pardie, than there be, and no man left able to relieve another. For this I think in my mind a very sure conclusion, that if all the money that is in this country, were to-morrow next brought together out of every man's hand, and laid all upon one heap, and then divided out unto every man alike, it would be on the morrow after worse than it was the day before. For I suppose when it were all equally thus divided among all, the best should be left little better then, than almost a beggar is now. And yet he that was a beggar before, all that he shall be the richer for that he should thereby receive, shall not make him much above a beggar still, but many one of the rich men, if their riches stood but in moveable substance, shall be safe enough from riches for all their life after.

Men cannot, you wot well, live here in this world, but if that some one man provide a mean of living for some other many. Every man cannot have a ship of his own, nor every man be a merchant withouta stock; and these things, you wot well, must needs be had; nor every man cannot have a plough by himself. And who might live by the tailor's craft, if no man were able to put a gown to make? Who by the masonry or who could live a carpenter, if no man were able to build neither church, nor house? Who should be makers of any manner cloth, if there lacked men of substance to set sundry sorts a work? Some man that hath but two ducats in his house, were better forbear them both and leave himself not a farthing, but utterly lose all his own, than that some rich man, by whom he is weekly set a work should of his money lose the one half; for then were himself like to lack work. For surely the rich man's substance is the wellspring of the poor man's living. And therefore here would it fare by the poor man, as it fared by the woman in one of Æsop's fables, which had an hen that laid her every day a golden egg; till on a day she thought she would have a great many eggs at once, and therefore she killed her hen, and found but one or twain in her belly, so that for covetise of those few, she lost many.

In the course of nearly twenty years that had passed between the writing of Utopia and the Dialogue of Comfort More might have changed his mind, as [Karl] Kautsky believed. For a long time that was the accepted view. And in fact, even in his life-time he was charged with inconsistency by [William] Tyndale. The accusation didnot concern communism, it is true, but it presents the same problem. Twitting him with the Encomium Moriae, written in his house and dedicated to him by his "darling" Erasmus, Tyndale wants to show that More did not always look with any great reverence upon the images and relics of the saints. More answered the charge. After quoting Tyndale's words he writes:

If this be true, then the more cause have I to thank God for amendment. But surely this is untrue. For, God be thanked! I never had that mind in my life to have holy saints' images or their holy relics out of reverence. Nor, if there were any such thing in Moria, that thing could not yet make any man see that I were myself of that mind, the book being made by another man, though he were my darling never so dear. Howbeit, that book of Moria doth indeed but jest upon the abuses of such things, after the manner of the disour's part in a play.

The Utopia was not written by another man, but the praises of communism were certainly laid in another man's mouth. Was Raphael Hythloday playing the Jester's part in the comedy of Utopia?

How important is the question of interpretation we may gather from the continuation. "In these days", More goes on to say,

in which men by their own default, misconstrue, and take harm of the very scripture of God, until men better amend, if any man would now translate Moria into English, or some works either that I have myself written ere this, albeit there be none harm therein, folk yet being (as they are) given to take harm of that that is good, I would not only my darling's books but mine own also, help to burn them both with mine own hands, rather than folk should (though through their own fault) take any harm of them, seeing that I see them likely in these days so to do.

More does not repudiate Utopia, but times have changed, and he seems to fear lest it should be misinterpreted.

In his Apology, published in 1533, when after his resignation he stood alone and in need of making his position clear beyond doubt, there is an interesting passage concerning private ownership, which takes us back at any rate two years nearer the publication of Utopia. Refuting the "Pacifyer" who had suggested the confiscation of the superfluous property of the Church, More answers with passion: "But by what right men may take away from any man, spiritual or temporal, against his will, the land that is already lawfully his own, that thing this pacifyer telleth us not yet." Then More goes on to relate the amusing experiences he has had inmaking people imagine instances where a change of ownership might seem suitable. At first they had always been enthusiastic, but on second thoughts they had usually had to give up the attempt of introducing a better order of things.

Not for that we might not always find other enough content to enter into their possessions, though we could not always find other men enough content to enter into their religions, but for that in devising what way they should be better bestowed, such ways as at the first face seemed very good, and for the comfort and help of poor folk very charitable, appeared after upon reasoning, more likely within a while to make many beggars more than to relieve them that are already.

The argument is the same as in the Dialogue of Comfort, and for a more detailed statement of his views on the question of the confiscation of property More refers us to the lengthier argumentation of his own Supplication of Souls, which had been published as early as 1530.

More's arguments are chiefly two. One is that no improvement would result if one man's goods were taken away from him and given to other people. The second is that it would be against the law. Remembering with what determination, not to say ferocity even, the Utopians upheld the law, it may be worth while going back to the argumentation which introduces the description of communist Utopia in the first book.

Raphael takes up the question of a redistribution of property, limiting the share of each private citizen and each officer of the crown—even of the king himself, as Fortescue had indeed suggested—to a certain statutory amount. But, he says, this would not solve the problem, for people would start enriching themselves anew and "while you go about to do your cure of one part, you shall make bigger the sore of another part: so the help of one causeth another's harm, forasmuch as nothing can be given to any man, unless it be taken from another". As to the utility of such an attempt there seems to be complete agreement between the opinion voiced by Hythloday and More's own. And in point of law also, surprising as this may seem, there seems to be a considerable amount of unison. For Hythloday says that "here among us, every man hath his possessions several to himself", a statement of fact, comparable to More's phrase concerning "the land that is already lawfully his own", just quoted from the Apology. About the legality of this arrangement there is as little doubt in the mind of Hythloday as in More's own. Nor does Raphael even question the justice of it, unless we attribute to his words a meaning which they do not seem to contain. All that he denies is: "that justice is there executed where all things come into the hands of evil men"; and where all except very few are compelled to "live miserably, wretchedly, and beggarly". This is the real problem.

Reasoning in favor of communism, Raphael argues that "where every man under certain titles and pretences draweth and plucketh to himself as much as he can, and so a few divide among themselves all the riches that there is" (the problem in England at that time), "be there never so much abundance and store, there to the residue is left lack and poverty". And, as if he had said that private property is the cause of greed and covetousness, he concludes that "wheresoever possessions be private, where money beareth all the stroke, it is hard and almost impossible that there the weal public may justly be governed and prosperously flourish". He seems to blame the institution of private property for making men evil. More has met that argument in his Apology, and he could have contradicted it most emphatically in the Utopia, had he wanted to do so. For the sake of argument, however, he lets Hythloday score the point and confines his objections in the dialogue to the utility of communism.

But I am of a contrary opinion (quod I) for methinks that all men shall never there live wealthily where all things be common. For how can there be abundance of goods, or of anything, where every man withdraweth his hand from labour? whom the regard of his own gains driveth not to work, and the hope that he hath in other men's travails maketh him slothful. Then when they be pricked with poverty, and yet no man can by any law or right defend that for his own, which he hath gotten with the labour of his own hands, shall not there of necessity be continual sedition and bloodshed? specially the authority and reverence of magistrates being taken away; which what place it may have with such men, among whom is no difference, I cannot devise.

The objection that there would be no respect for authority if all were made equal, is particularly interesting, for More's battle in life was always in defence of authority against the anarchy that was threatening, a defence to which he stuck even on the scaffold. In the dialogue he argues also that the institution of private property may encourage people to virtue, whereas community of goods might lead them to indulge in the sin of slothfulness, thus meeting Hythloday on his own ground, and making the reader forget how he got there. Raphael, however, shows no surprise at these objections. His answer is ready: nobody who has not seen the Utopian commonwealth can know anything about communism, his views are prejudiced and of no validity. And so Raphael tells his story. Yet even at the end the More of the dialogue remains sceptical. "Many things", he says,

came to my mind which in the manners and laws of that people seemed to be instituted and founded of no good reason, … and chiefly, in that which is the principal foundation of all their ordinaces, that is to say, in the community of their life and living.

It must be admitted, I think, that More could not have argued more strongly against communism without destroying his own fiction. We accept it as a potential reality because More tricks us to accept it. Evincing a consummate skill in the manipulation of the dialogue he makes us first accept reason, and not human ability, as the standard by which to judge whether something may be realised or no. Secondly he deliberately deceives us into blaming institutions, instead of human nature, as the cause of abuses and injustice. In this way he persuades us that society can be cured of all the evils besetting it, if only the institutions were reasonable. Raphael Hythloday's argument in favour of "cure" is allowed to get the better of More's own, which is that we should so contrive that"what you cannot turn to good, so to order it that it be not very bad", and which is dismissed by Raphael as effecting at the best no more than a "mitigation" of evil. This is the manner in which More brings about his brilliant jeu d'esprit. Without this deception there would have been no Utopia, or if there had, it must have been taken to be More's own ideal.

It is possible to marshal even more arguments against the identification of Hythloday's Utopian fiction with More's practical suggestions for reform. When at the end he says that he must "needs confess and grant, that many things be in the Utopian weal public, which in our cities I may rather wish for than hope after", More uses a phrase (optarim verius quam sperarim) which in Humanist terminology means that it would be too good to be true. He expresses it very similarly earlier on when he says that "it is not possible for all things to be well, unless all men were good: which I think will not be yet this good many years". More's "twin spirit" Erasmus had used a similar locution in his Institutio principis Christiani, where he said that "it is too much even to hope that all men will be good". And the phrase returns in More's Apology: "Would God the world were such as every man were good … But sith that this is more easy to wish, than likely to look for" … the cure is not as simple as that, and does not lie in a change-over from one political system to another. As for communism it is instructive to glance for a moment at the opinions of other members of that group of humanists whose unison of thought is such that one can often use the words of one to express the ideas of another. In his criticism of the doctrines of the Anabaptists Vives, Erasmus' pupil and More's friend who so warmly recommended the Utopia, puts the argument against communism more strongly than either of them, when he protests against "the recent iniquitous wars" and the demand of the rebels for property to be held in common,

whereas you cannot by any promulgation transfer the virtue of man's mind, or his wisdom, judgment, memory, into common property. Or even if you limit the demand to material things, the taking of the student's books away from him for the use of the soldier will not be recompensed by the student's joint use of the implements of war.

Erasmus also, speaking on the same subject, says that the communism attempted in practice "was only possible when the Church was small, and then not among all Christians: as soon as the Gospel spread widely, it became quite impossible. The best way towardsagreement is that property should be in the hands of lawful owners, but that out of charity we should share one with another".

During the last years of More's life communism was no joking matter, as indicated in the Confutation, and when he tackles the problem of how to reconcile private property with Christianity in his Dialogue of Comfort, More reaches much the same conclusion as Erasmus though as always he evinces an appreciation of the practical difficulties which escaped his learned friend. And in reading this extract we must not forget that More was "the best friend the poor e'er had."

But now, cousin, to come to your doubt, how it may be that a man may with conscience keep riches with him, when he seeth so many poor men upon whom he may bestow it; verily that might he not with conscience do, if he must bestow it upon as many as he may. And so must of truth every rich man do, if all the poor folk that he seeth be so specially by God's commandment committed unto his charge alone, that because our Saviour saith, Omni petenti te, da, Give every man that asketh thee, therefore he be bounden to give out still to every beggar that will ask him, as long as any penny lasteth in his purse. But verily, cousin, that saying hath (as St. Austin saith other places in Scripture hath) need of interpretation. For as holy St. Austin saith: Though Christ say, Give every man that asketh thee, he saith not yet, give them all that they will ask thee. But surely all were one, if he meant to bind me by commandment, to give every man without exception somewhat; for so should I leave myself nothing.

Our Saviour in that place of the 6th chapter of St. Luke, speaketh both of the contempt that we should in heart have of these worldly things, and also of the manner that men should use toward their enemies. For there he biddeth us love our enemies, give good words for evil, and not only suffer injuries patiently, both by taking away of our good and harm done unto our body, but also to be ready to suffer the double, and over that to do them good again that do us the harm. And among these things, he biddeth us give every man that asketh, meaning, that in the thing that we may conveniently do a man good, we should not refuse it, what manner of man soever he be, though he were our mortal enemy, namely where we see, that but if we help him ourself, the person of the man should stand in peril of perishing. And therefore saith St. Paul, Si esurient inimicus tuus, da illi cibum,—If thine enemy be in hunger give him meat. But now, though I be bounden to give every manner man in some manner of his necessity, were he my friend or my foe, Christian man or heathen; yet am I not unto all men bounden alike, nor unto any manin every case alike. But, as I began to tell you, the differences of the circumstances make great change in the matter.

St. Paul saith, Qui non providet suis, est infideli deterior,—He that provideth not for those that are his, is worse than an infidel. Those are ours that are belonging to our charge, either by nature, or law, or any commandment of God.

In this passage we come extraordinarily near to the meaning of Utopia and may be able to judge better of that unique consistency which marks More's life and writings. Utopia was not a programme either for imperialist expansion, as Oncken would have it, nor for a communist revolution, as Kautsky thought. If it had been understood as a plea for a communist state, would not this have been held against him by his enemies when More stood friendless at his trial? What he actually says in his own person in the dialogue of the first book is that if you want to improve things and influence ministers of state "you must not labour to drive into their heads new and strange informations". You must accept what order you find established and go slow about improving on it, lest you should end by marring rather than mending. This Hythloday admits, inasmuch as he says: "If so be that I should speak those things that Plato feigneth in his weal public, or thatthe Utopians do in theirs; these things though they were (as they be in deed) better, yet they might seem spoken out of place." Even Hythloday does not conceive of communism as a practical programme of reform, but what he has so far pleaded for, is that the greed and luxury of the rich should be restrained, that work should be provided for the poor, that kings should obstain from wars and conquest and seek peace and the welfare of their subjects. These recommendations he wants to push home, and so illustrates them with examples from the history and practice of fictitious peoples like the Polylerites and the Achorians. To More and Peter Giles, however, he tells his story of the happy state of the Utopians, and, the reader's mind being sufficiently prepared to accept the fiction, More publishes Hythloday's story as something "whereby these our cities, nations, countries, and Kingdoms may take example". It was More's manner to teach by means of examples, and like a modern Aesop he tells his fables about men instead of animals, but we must not forget that examples may be of various kinds and different application. They may encourage imitation, but they may warn us against it also. Even in the second book of Utopia More does not always point the way of the ascent to heaven, but that of the descent also into that hell whose glare flickers over its pages. And so he chose that double manner of praise and parody, making some things good in his ideal commonwealth and some things"very absurd", leaving it to the good sense of his readers to decide where he was in earnest and where he was speaking "in sport".

Returning now to the parallels that it is possible to draw between Utopia and Europe, we find that in the self-abnegating and austere communism of Utopia there lies concealed more than a vague likeness to the Christian monasteries, already threatened by the onslaught of a new age with "new and strange informations". Even more than in the common land agriculture, communism existed in the monasteries of Europe, and so the Utopian example becomes in this light a defence of the monasteries. Where it existed More did not want to see communism abolished, but he did not believe it was possible everywhere in this wretched state of the world. More did not believe in "cure", as did his own Raphael Hythloday, but he regarded it as the duty of all to try and "mitigate" the ills of this world. Nor has he left us in ignorance of the manner in which it should be undertaken….

The Utopian commonwealth is ingeniously built up from suggestions in the narratives of Vespucci and Peter Martyr, combined with hints from Plato's Republic and Laws, the Germania of Tacitus, and other sources which describe the workings of a primitive society, if byprimitive is meant a society living according to the law of nature. All Utopian institutions are founded on reason, and on reason alone. More has been careful never to exceed this self-imposed limitation. The Utopians have learned everything that the ancient philosophers can teach us, and even in their religion there is nothing for which there was no precedent in classical antiquity. Like their institutions, their philosophy and religion also are founded on reason. Their virtue consists in living according to nature, and the law of nature regulates their private and public life, their actions in peace as well as in war. As a synthesis of the best pagan customs and philosophical systems, of the political and religious thought of the pagan world, Utopia is an achievement of no small significance, a tour de force which delighted the humanists of the Renaissance and gained for its author a position among the foremost men of learning in Europe, excelling in wit, erudition, and style. To the learned it was not least for its scholarship that Utopia became an object of admiration. With a consistency that must impress minds trained in the school of the Platonic Academy of Florence and stimulated by the constructions of Pico and Reuchlin, More assigned to the Utopians a definite place in the order of the universe and in the history of mankind. To the common reader no such complexities need detract from his enjoyment of the book as a production of humanist wit, a jeu d'esprit of an uncommonly accessible nature.

Against the background of Europe ruled by Folly, as described by Erasmus in the Moriae Encomium or by More himself in the first book, Utopia is described as ruled by Reason. It is a picture that must stimulate even the most unthinking to some searching of heart. As the late R. W. Chambers put it, "the virtues of heathen Utopia show up by contrast the vices of Christian Europe". It is as a plea for Reason that the Utopia must strike the reader most forcibly. Against the background of insane tyranny and senseless war, Utopia enjoys both peace and freedom. Instead of lawlessness and anarchy in Europe, law and order in Utopia. It is an order based on respect for the dignity of man and the freedom of conscience, trampled under foot in contemporary Europe. Instead of the selfishness and greed of a few rich men depriving the European masses of their means of livelihood, collaboration for the common good providing plenty for all Utopian citizens. Instead of concentrating on material gains, the Utopians prefer the pleasures of the mind. Learning is there the property of all, whereas in Europe ignorance in the cloak of priesthood was persistently trying to stop the expansion of the mind. In Utopia there is no such contradiction, and, in words strongly reminiscent of Pico, More sets out the Utopian conviction of the agreement between the conclusions of anenquiring reason and the truths of a divinely inspired religion.

For whilst they by the help of this Philosophy search out the secret mysteries of nature, they think that they not only receive thereby wonderful great pleasure, but also obtain great thanks and favour of the author and maker thereof. Whom they think, according to the fashion of other artificers, to have set forth the marvellous and gorgeous frame of the world for man to behold; whom only he hath made of wit and capacity to consider and understand the excellency of so great a work. And therefore, say they, doth he bear more good will and love to the curious and diligent beholder and viewer of his work, and marvellor at the same, than he doth to him, which like a very beast without wit and reason, or as one without sense or moving, hath no regard to so great and so wonderful a spectacle.

Lest, however, we should be misled by the parallel to disapprove of the religious orders as such, More has given Utopia her monks also, who prefer hard manual labour to the contemplation of nature. For even the Utopians recognize that reason is not sufficient for the understanding of all mysteries in nature, and so in their philosophy they call on religion for the confirmation of the fundamental truths of the existence of God and man'simmortality, postulated by reason. While from the nature of his sources he had to make his Utopians embrace an Epicurean doctrine of pleasure which might seem to conflict with the mediaeval ideal of asceticism, More with his supreme intellectual facility dissolves the difficulty by making them recognize the insufficiency of reason to decide in what the felicity of man consists and so they come naturally to found morality on religion.

They reason of virtue and pleasure. But the chief and principal question is in what thing, be it one or more, the felicity of man consisteth. But in this point they seem almost too much given and inclined to the opinion of them which defend pleasure; wherein they determine either all or the chiefest part of man's felicity to rest. And (which is more to be marvelled at) the defence of this so dainty and delicate an opinion they fetch even from their grave, sharp, bitter, and rigorous religion. For they never dispute of felicity or blessedness, but they join to the reasons of Philosophy certain principles taken out of religion; without the which, to the investigation of true felicity, they think reason of itself weak and unperfect.

It is in the spirit that inspires the Utopian commonwealth that we must seek the key to the interpretation of its meaning. This is to be found neither in its laws nor in its institutions. Utopia is not a country where everybody acts reasonably from choice only, but under a compulsion intolerable to modern minds. Utopian law is indeed a law as "ungentle and sharp" as it is inexorable. To Europe, however, God has given "the new law of clemency and mercy, under the which he ruleth us with fatherly gentleness, as his dear children". In our appreciation of Utopia we must consequently understand that her citizens labour under the handicap of that "ungentle and sharp law" which reflects their "grave, sharp, bitter, and rigorous religion," whereas to us Christians God has given not only reason to guide us, but he has also revealed to us his own law, which is love, and peace, and justice.

"Reason is servant to Faith and not enemy", said More, and so faith rises on the foundations of reason, like the pinnacles and spires from the roof of a cathedral. But reason alone can never arrive at the "fruition of the sight of God's glorious majesty face to face". To a disciple of St. Thomas Aquinas, Pico, and Colet, the most elevated pagan philosophy and religion could only be a preparation for the revelation of Christianity, and the first rungs on Jacob's ladder. The law of reason, which governs Utopia, is subservient to the Divine law, which ought to rule the behaviour of all Christians. Raphael Hythloday consequently tells us that we mustnot "wink at the most part of all those things which Christ taught us and so straitly forbade them to be winked at, that those things also which he whispered in the ears of his disciples, he commanded to be proclaimed openly on the house-tops". However ideal it might appear by contrast with the contemporary Europe, Utopia does not represent More's ultimate ideal. It is a state founded only upon reason and ruled by the "ungentle and sharp" law of nature. It does not embody the religion of Christ with its "new law of clemency and mercy". It is a state where slavery is permitted, although in a milder form than in classical antiquity, but it is not a state where all are brethren, as Christ would have it. It is a community where grievous offences against the law are punished with death, but "God commandeth us that we shall not kill".

Reason by itself is "weak and unperfect". Only God's guidance can bring man to the perfection for which He created him. Hence pagan behaviour cannot be a model for Christians to imitate, or as Erasmus put it in his Institutio principis Christiani: "Whenever you think of yourself as a prince, remember that you are a Christian prince! You should be as different from even the noble pagan princes as a Christian is from a pagan." Providence had not granted to the Utopians the privilege of Revelation, and so their manners cannot serve as models for those who have received revealedreligion, even if the Utopian welcome extended to the Christians in Hythloday's party seems to indicate that they have not much farther to travel on the road of preparation for the reception of the mystery. So far they remain on the level of pagan philosophy, and the ultimate ideal is very much higher. Speaking of the great princes of antiquity, Erasmus says: "As it would be most disgraceful to be surpassed by them in any honorable deed of theirs, so it would be the last degree of madness for a Christian prince to wish to imitate them without change. The disgrace of being surpassed by the heathen was keenly felt by Vives in comparing the Legenda Aurea with the classical masterpieces of literature, relating not the lives of saints but of cruel soldiers and generals. Yet how much greater shame must not we feel, seeing that whereas we live at constant enmity one against the other, the Utopians have achieved a state of law and order. In spite of their hard laws they have surpassed us, not only in the perfection of their institutions, but in their mutual help and generosity and unreserved collaboration. Even in the instance of punishments they seem to have surpassed us, for whereas the Utopians inflict capital punishment only on hardened sinners, Europeans punish the loss of a little money with "the loss of man's life." In this manner of interpretation Raphael's arguments in the first book of Utopia derive the strongest possible support from the institutions of the Utopians, not in the likeness but in the differences between a Christian and a pagan state. Whereas the pagan Utopians may employ serfs to meet the needs of labour, the disgrace to Europe is almost inconceivable inasmuch as servitude in Utopia should be found preferable to so called "freedom" elsewhere. In attempting to understand More's meaning we must always remember this, that reason alone supports the Utopian laws and institutions, but reason has a claim on Europe also. It is not enemy to Faith, but servant. In the likeness of Utopia More shows how certain institutions in Europe, threatened by destruction, are founded on reason and so worth preserving, because where there is reason there is hope of religion. But for Christians to try and imitate Utopian institutions without change "would be the last degree of madness".

When therefore sociologists are concerned to show to what extent the Utopian ideal has been realised in modern society and to what degree it still remains unfulfilled, they are merely breaking up the Coloseum in order to build the Farnese Palace. They have seen only the stones and forgotten the vision. It was not the constitution of commonwealths that More desired to reform, but the spirit. The Utopian institutions can be nothing except "very absurd" without the spirit that informs them. They must not be copied, but surpassed by Christian institutions. The community of goods that reason recommends to the Utopians, must be excelled in the spiritual community of all Christians. It was the Christian monasteries that provided the pattern for the Utopian republic, and in More's mind it was they that represented the mundane revelation of the ultimate ideal.

It might be exemplified in concrete instances how far short of the Christian standard the Utopians actually fall. When the priests in Utopia are allowed to marry, this must not be understood as More's scheme for the reformation of the Church; it is merely that God has not granted them that personal intimacy which has only been made possible through the Incarnation. Utopian religious customs are no more models for the Christian Church than are the political institutions of that commonwealth, and so must not be taken literally. The fact that in Utopia God is worshipped under different names, is certainly not served up by More for imitation by the Catholic Church, to which in More's view God had alone revealed himself. The Utopians with reason as their sole guide can only convince themselves of the existence of God; about his nature they can know nothing. Hence toleration is natural to them. Yet I cannot agree with those who would have it not apply where Christianity is concerned, being a revealed religion and so admitting of no doubt as to the truth of its doctrine. The Divinelaw is a law "of clemency and mercy", and the Utopian toleration requires its counterpart in Christian charity. Whatever ideas he may have entertained concerning the reformation of the Church, and it would carry us too far to go into the question of its details, More left it to the Church itself. Even in the first part of Utopia where he so sharply criticizes European conditions, not sparing ecclesiastics any more than laymen, it is the abuses he condemns, not the institutions. What he is asking for, is that in the same way as reason was allowed to regulate life in Utopia, so reason illuminated by Divine revelation should be given a hearing in European affairs. Just as the Utopians live in strict obedience to the law of nature, so must we be ruled by the law of Christ. Temporal justice is "the strongest and surest bond of a commonwealth", says More, and he does not want us to set it aside, but man-made law must be tempered by the law of Christ which is itself the highest justice.

Such has long been the Roman Catholic interpretation of Utopia, and it has been convincingly restated dur ing recent years. It has been maintained with characteristic vigour and eloquence by the late R. W. Chambers in his great biography of More. This was also the way in which his contemporaries understood More's intention, as plainly appears from Budé's remark that if only the three principles of Utopia, which he accurately defined as equality, love of peace, and contempt of gold, could be "fixed in the minds of all men, … We should soon see pride, covetousness, insane competition, and almost all other deadly weapons of our adversary the devil, fall powerless." By showing how far short of the Utopians contemporary Europe fell in the practice of the four cardinal virtues of wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice, More wanted to stimulate us not only in the exercise of mundane virtue but of the Christian virtues also of faith, hope, and charity. In St. Augustine's terminology we may say that in Utopia More gives us such a description of a vita socialis, based only on the four pagan virtues, as must most forcibly remind us of our duty by means of an ardent exercise of the three Christian virtues to prepare for the Civitas Dei. Self-love, according to St. Augustine, is the opposite to the love of God, and so it is the love of self in all its utterances from mere vanity to cruel tyranny that More attacks most violently in the first book of Utopia, showing us in the second how the noble Utopians have eschewed self from all their dealings and find their greatest pleasure in working for the good of all and in actively helping their fellows. We cling to our worldly treasure, but the Utopians gladly give up their houses every ten years. More does not want us to imitate this custom, which no doubt he would have described as "very absurd", but he did want us to feel that onehouse is "as nigh heaven" as another. More did not want us to give everything away, but he did want us to use our wealth in such a way that it should not be said that in our states "money beareth all the stroke"; not for the increase of our own luxury, but for the relief of poverty, so that the prosperity of our society might rival that of Utopia itself. The love of power, which in the guise of the new Machiavellian statecraft was ruining Europe, was in More's view but another outcome of the love of self. In Utopia, however, aggressors are so cruelly punished that they are not likely to disturb the peace a second time.

Religion must reinforce the arguments of reason and Christian society surpass the pagan. It is not our institutions that we must destroy, but those evil passions which are at the root of the abuses. More's programme of reform was one of personal amelioration. "There is nothing better", John Colet, his teacher and confessor, had written to Erasmus, "than that we should lead a pure and holy life, which in my judgment will never be attained but by the ardent love and imitation of Jesus". Had not St. Matthew told us also, that "the disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord". More had not forgotten the lesson, and his own passion bears witness to his pious striving to imitate his Master.

In his Apology More did not omit pointing to the personal responsibility of each individual for the good of all. Speaking of the "faults, enormities, and errors" that beset both state and church, he says these he would wish to have amended, "and every man specially labour to mend himself'. This is the advice also that Raphael Hythloday would have wished to give his king—to "let him rather amend his own life, renounce unhonest pleasures, and forsake pride". And in the next instance More asks all to work together to eliminate the faults of society, "observed in the doing evermore such order and fashion as may stand and agree with reason and justice, the king's laws of the realm, the Scripture of God, and the laws of Christ's Church, ever keeping love and concord…. This has been hitherto the whole sum of my writing." Neither did More neglect to rub in the lesson, "for I think every man's duty toward God is so great, that very few folk serve him as they should do".

If, then, one should want to sum up the Utopia in a few inadequate words—for the subject is interminable—one may say that:

In the first book More analyses the evils that beset early sixteenth century English society—and to some extent these are the evils of all human society—and makes suggestions how they might bemitigated. The second book is a moral fable, intended to delight with its wit and ingenuity while it teaches a lesson in private and public morals by means of an example. It does not describe the ultimate ideal, but one that is practicable enough, which we are asked not slavishly to copy, but to surpass and excel. The Utopia does not attempt a final solution of the problems of human society—for More was too wise to attempt the impossible—but it contains an appeal addressed to all of us, which allows of no refusal, that we should try and do each one his share to mend our own selves and ease the burden of our fellow-men, to improve mankind and prepare for the life to come. In this lies its enduring power, that however high we may fix the ideal, to whatever perfection we may attain, More points higher still, from matter to the spirit, and from man to God.