People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 March 1896 — THE UTOPIA OF SIR THOS. MORE. [ARTICLE]

THE UTOPIA OF SIR THOS. MORE.

BY B. O. FLOWER.

Part 11. In viewing the religious toleration of Sir Thomas More at the time he wrote “Utopia” we are impressed with the noble and grandly humane spirit evinced by this prophet of a lofty civilization, when on the summit—when the God *within swayed his soul and cast out fear. But, turning from these pages, glowing with a tolerance so far in advance of his time, to the story of the life of Sir Thomas More in after years, while lord chancellor of the realm, and there noting his intolerence, we are painfully reminded of the frailty of human nature and the liability of sensitive or impressionable minds to be swayed by human thought when strong prejudices are aroused. The noblest natures are not impregnable if they for a moment lose sight of that basic principle of civilization which we call the Golden Rule. ,\k • Regarding Utopia we are informed: There be divers kinds of religion in sundry parts of the Island and divers parts of every city. Some worship for God, the Sun, some, the moon, some, some other of the planets. There be those that give worship to a man that was once of excellent virtue or of famous glory. But the most and the wisest part 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 Father of all. To Him alone they attribute the beginnings, the increasings, the proceedings, the changes, and the ends of all things. The enlightened views of the founder of this Commonwealth and his aversion to violence and the spirit of hatred always liable to arise among men where dogmatic theology prevails is thus set forth: For King Utopus, even at the first beginning, hearing that the inhabitants of the land were before his coming thither at continual dissensions and strife among themselves because of their religion, made a decree that it should be lawful for every man to favor and follow what religion he would, and that he might do the best he could to bring others to his opinion so that he did it peaceably, gently, quietly, and soberly, without haste and contentions, rebuking and inveighing against others. If he could not by fair and gentle speech induce them into his opinion, yet he should use no kind of violence and refrain from unpleasant and seditious words. The ideas of King Utopus on religion were far broader than the popular opinions or current views throughout Christian Europe at the time when More wrote, as will be seen from the following: Whereof he durst define and determine nothing unadvisedly, as doubting whether God desiring manifold and divers sorts of honor would inspire sundry men with sundry kinds of religion, and this surely be thought a point of arrogant presumption to compel all others by violence and threatening to agree to the same as thou believest to be true. Furthermore, though there be one religion which alone is true and others vain and superstitious, yet did he well foresee that the truth of its own power would at the last issue out and come to the light. But if contentions and debates be con- * Manually indulged in, as the worst men be most obstinate and stubborn, he perceived that then the best and holiest religion would be trodden underf dot and destroyed by most vain superstitions. Therefore all this matter left undiscussed and gave to evpry man free liberty to choose and believe what he I would. I It is sad indeed that the illustrious author did I not cling to these wise precepts when he rose to I the first place under the throne of England.

Once indeed we see the spirit of intolerance flash forth m Sir Thomas More’s description of religi ous views prevalent throughout Utopia; once we see his lack of faith in the power of truth; once his loyalty to freedom in thbught, justice, and wisdom is found limping on a crutch, and that is in the following passage relating to atheists: He (King Utopus) earnestly 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 body, or that the world is not governed by divine Providence. Him that be of contrary opinion they count not in the number of men, as one that has abased the high nature of the soul to the vileness of brute bodies. . . . Wherefore he that is thus minded is deprived of all honors, excluded from all offices, and rejected from all common administrations in the public weal, and thus he is of all sorts depised 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 lists, nor do they constrain him with threatenings to dissemble his mind and show countenance contrary to his beliefs. For deceit and falsehood and all manner of lies as next unto fraud they do detest and abhor. But they suffer him not to dispute in his opinions, and that only among the common people. For many men of gravity and the priests they encourage to exhort him, to dispute and argue, hoping that at the last his madness will give place to reason.

The spirit evinced in this passage, though displaying a sad lack of faith in the power of truth and the wholesomeness of free thought, was far above the savage, intolerant, and unreasoning spirit which prevailed through Europe during the sixteenth century, and in the expression, “They be persuaded that it be in no man’s power to believe what he lists,” we see that this ardent Catholic in this age of religious fanatacism caught a glimpse of a great truth, the wilful refusal to recognize which has led to untold suffering and persecution. Many of the noblest prophets of progress and disciples of science and truth have been slain because they saw larger truths than the coventionalists of their age regarded as orthodox, and because they were too noble and highminded to lie and go to the grave mantled in hypocrisy. Very apt is the way Sir Thomas More satirizes the tendency of dogmatic religion to make its adherents intolerant and persecuting by narrowing the intellectual vision of those who fall under the proselyting influence of the apostles of creedal and dogmatic religions. The Christian visitors to Utopia, finding the wider latitude given to religious, make haste to promulgate the conventional Christian theology of the sixteenth century. As soon as one of the Utopians was proselyted he became infected with that intolerance which has ostracized where it has been unable to destroy the advance guard of civilization and progress in all ages. But I will let the author of Utopia tell the story:

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 others, calling them profane and the followers of them wicked and devilish and the children of everlasting damnation. The Utopians, we are told, believed “that the dead be present among them, though to the dull and feeble eyesight of man they be invisible.” They reason that the spirits of the loved ones not only enjoy the liberty of coming back and becoming in a way guardian angels, but that the love of those who leave us is intensified as their vision is broadened, “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 in such guardians.” This, it will be seeD, is curiously enough- the central claim of modern spiritualism. And it is the hope of arriving at a scientific solution of the momentous problem that has inspired the tireless labors of earnest thinkers and scientific bodies which during recent years have engaged in the critical investigation of physical phenomena. The prophet when upon the mountain of exaltation not infrequently catches luminous glimpses of great truths which are not scientifically established by the slower methods of reasoning, resulting from the vast accumulation of authoritative data, until centuries later. And may not the author of “Utopia” in one of these moments have caught a glimpse of a truth which science will some day establish to the satisfaction of those who desire the truth, but who are only influenced through cold facts resting on unchallenged data?

The religion described as prevailing among the Utopians reflects many ideas accepted in More’s day, but we here also find much which was far in advance of his age, much of it being based on common sense rather than being the offspring of dogmatism. Thus we are told that “They believe that felicity after death is obtained by busy labors and good deeds in life.” It is a point with them to seek to “mitigate and assuage the grief of others” and to “take from them sorrow and heaviness of life.” They de-

fine virtue “To be life ordered according to nature, and that he doth follow the course of nature which in desiring ard refusing things is rulad by his reason.” They hold “That the soul is immortal and ordained by God to felicity; that our virtuous and good deeds be rewarded and our evil deeds be punished.” In other words, the Utopians believed that as a man sowed so should he reap, and that no suffering of the innocent could wipe away the consequences of sins which sear, crush, and deform the soul; but as we have seen, they believed in the ultimate felicity of the spirit—a belief which alone can make creation other than a collossal mistake, a measureless crime. The Utopians favor pleasures which do not debase or cause injury to others. They are represented as being far more humane than the Christians of contemporary Europe. This was very noticeable in the treatment of criminals. While England was hanging thieves by the score, the Utopians were striving to reform their erring ones and resorting to the death penalty only in extreme cases. Women, though by no means exercising the rights they enjoy with us, were treated with far more consideration than they received in the Europe of the sixteenth century. Among other privileges accorded them, they were admitted to the order of the priesthood, and in the marriage relation they received a consideration which England for many generations after “Utopia” was written refused to yield them. One thing in regard to the divorces in Utopia is surprising when we remember that Sir Thomas More was a most devoted Roman Catholic. In the altrurian island, we are informed that “Now and then it chanceth whereas a man and a woman cannot agree between themselves, both of them finding other with whom they hope to live more quietly and merrily, and they hy full consent of them both be divorced asunder and married again to others. But that not withou the sanction of the council” after the petition has been diligently considered. In the present transition stage of our society peculiar interest attaches to Utopia’s social and economic conditions, as here we find much that is suggestive, and which will prove helpful if we keep in view the fact that while the altruistic spirit of Utopia is the spirit which must prevail in the society of the future if man is to progress, nevertheless, the methods suggested by Sir Thomas More, though they were enlightened and intelligent as the civilization of his time could comprehend, are not the methods which enlightened civilization in the present age would employ, as they are too arbitrary and artificial. We are now beginning to perceive that the evils of society are to be remedied by (1) education—a wise foresight, which never loses sight of the civilization of to-morrow, and (2) the establishing of conditions favoring justice and freedom and fraternity, wh\ch are only possible by the abolition of all class privileges, speculation, and legislation and the recognizing of the great fundamental economic truth that the land belongs to the people. Moreover, the fetich of gold-worship must be overthrown, because it. more than war. pestilence, or famine, destroys the happiness of millions, while it corrupts the few.

Sir Thomas More appreciated the fact that gold madness was enslaving millions and destroying the happiness and ‘comfort of the masses. Thus, among the Utopians, he tells us: They marvel that gold, which of its own nature is a thing so unprofitable, is now among all people in bo high estimation that man himself, by whose yea and for whose use it is so much set by, is in much less estimation than the gold itself. Inasmuch as a lumpish blockhead churl and which hath no more art than an ass, shall have, nevertheless, many wise and good men in subjection and bondage, only for this —because he hath a great heap of gold. . . . They marvel at and detest the madness of them which to those rich men in whose debt and danger they be not, do give honor for no other consideration but because they be rich. In Utopia the spectres of want and starvation which haunt our poor and fill all thought of old age with frightful forebodings are unknown, but they were very much in evidence in European life during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was during the century of Sir Thomas More that there “arose for the first time in England a true proletariat divorced from the soil and dependent entirely upon wages, with no resources against old age, sickness, or lack of employment. The misery of the masses was perhaps never greater.” The author of “Utopia” points out that while in other countries the laborers know they will struve when age comes unless they can scrape some money together, no matter how much the commonwealth in which they live may flourish, in Utopia things are very different, for there “There is no less provision for them that were once laborers, but who are now weak impotent, than for those who do labor.” A comparison is next made by Sir Thomas More in which the justice and wisdom of the Utopians in

providing for an insurance or pension for the aged laborers, are set over against the murderous, selfish, and shortsighted system which was then in practice and which unhappily has been intensified rather than weakened with the flight of centuries.

For what justice is this, that a rich goldsmith or a usurer, or in short any of them which do nothing at all, or if they do anything, it is of a kind not Ueoessary for the commonwealth, should have pleasant and wealthy lives, oither by idiedess or by unnecessary business, when in the meantime poor laborers, carters, ironsmiths, carpenters, and ploughmen by so great and continual toil be scarcely able to live through their work by necessary toil, without which no commonwealth could endure, and yet they have so hard and poor a living and live so wretched and miserable a life that the state and conditions of the laboring beasts be much better. Moreover, these poor wretches be persistently tormented with barren and unfruitful labor and the thought of their poor, indigent, and beggarly old age killeth them. For their daily wages be so little thatit will notsuflicefor the same day, much less it yieldeth - any overplus that may be laid up for the relief of old age. More than three centuries have passed, and yet this vivid picture of unjust and unequal social conditions is a graphic characterization of present-day society throughout the Christian world.

Is it not an unjust and unkind public weal [continues the author of “Utopia”] which gives great fees and rewards to gentlemen as they call them, toauch as be either idle persons, flatterers, or devisers of vain pleasures, while it makes no provision for poor ploughmen, colliers, laborers, carters, ironsmiths, and carpenters, without whom no commonwealth can continue? But after it hath abused the laborers of their lußty flowering age, at the last when they be oppressed with old age and sickness, forgets their labor and leaveth them most unkindly with miserable death.

After this vivid and painfully true picture of the essential injustice of governments manipulated by caste and gold, or the fiction of birth and the cunning of capital. Sir Thomas More makes a scorching arraignment of the soulless capitalism of his time, which is even more applicable to our age of trusts, monopolies, syndicates and multimillionaires: The rich men not only by private fraud, but also by common laws do every day pluck away from the poor some part of their daily living. Therefore, when I considrr all these commonwealths which nowadays do flourish, I can perceive nothing but ascertain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth. They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely without fear of losing that which they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labor of the poor for as little money as may be. These most wicked and vicious men by their insatiable covetousness divide among themselves those things which would have sufficed for all men. Again, he compares the murderous merciless reign of the titled and capitalistic classes, who had become well-nigh all-powerful through special privileges, with the operation of different conditions in the land he is describing: How far be they from the wealth and felicity of the Utopian commonwealth, where all the desire for money with the use thereof is banished. How great the occasion of wretchedness and mischief is plucked up by the roots, for who knoweth not that fraud, theft, rapine, brawling, quarreling, strife, treason, and murder, which by daily punishments are rather revenged than restrained, do die when money dieth. And also that fear, care, labor, and watching do perish when money perisheth. Sir Thomas More further emphasizes the wisdom of the Utopian provisions by calling attention to the fact that after failure of crops in England it was no uncommon thing for thousands to starve for food while the rich possessed abundant stores of food to have afforded plenty

for all, and by a just distribution of wealth, whereby the wealth producers m.ight have had their own, no industrious man; woman, or child need have died by starvation or the plague which not infrequently accompanied the famine. Prom the foregoing we see how high an altitude Sir Thomas More had reached, even in his savage and self-absorbed age. From his emir nence he caught luminous glimpses which came only to prophet souls. There can be no doubt that the author of “Utopia” derived much inspiration from Plato, even as such prophets of our time as Edward Bellamy, William Morris, Joaquin Miller, and William Dean Howells have derived consciously and directly or unconsciously and indirectly much inspiration from Sir Thomas More. All these and many other earnest lovers of the race have reflected in a more or less true and helpful way the persistent dream of the wisest and noblest spirits of all time—a dream which has haunted the aspiring soul since the first man faced the heavens with a question and a prayer.

Sir Thomas More failed in the detail* of his plan, but the soul of “Utopia” was purely altruistic and in alignment with the law of eVOlntiett'ary growth, hence his work was in deed and truth a voice of dawn crying in the night—a prophet voice proclaiming the coming day. Ag Maurice Adams well says: Sir Thomas More found the true commonwealth nowhere. But in so far as the social order he advocated is based on reason and justice, the nowhere must at length become somewhere, nay, everywhere. Some of the reforms which h® perceived to be necessary have already been realized, others are being striven for to-day May we not hope many more will at length be attained? Surely never before was ther® such a wide spread revolt against social wrong and injustice, such a firm resolve to remove the preventable evils of life. v or such a worldwide aspiration for a recognition of society on a juster basis. It cannot be that the promise of better things is forever to remain unfulfilled! Prom the summit of the hills of thought may we not catch the first faint streaks of the dawn of a nobler day? Can we not trace the dim outline o# a real society 6lowly forming amongst us in which none shall be disinherited or trodden underfoot in a senseless or reckless race for wealth, but where ail shall be truly free to develop the full capacity of their nature in cooperation with their fellows for a common good.