The embassy to the Netherlands sealed More’s fate, by forcing him into political life. It is also intimately associated with the one great original literary work produced in England in the first half of the sixteenth century: a work which established the fame of its author as a political thinker of the highest rank, in spite of the intentionally fantastic form in which it was cast.
IV
THE UTOPIA
Throughout More’s life, revolutionary forces had been at work in the political, the intellectual, and the religious world; but as yet they had not concentrated in any volcanic explosion. At present, More’s most intimate associates stood in the very forefront of the most advanced school, and his “Utopia” was to make his position beside them as conspicuous to the world as it was assured in fact. He had taken to Greek, in spite of his anxious parent, like a duck to water: his affinity to the Platonic Socrates is obvious. John Colet was his guide, philosopher and friend; and the downright reactionaries, like the Bishop of London, had vain hankerings to suppress Colet as a dangerous heretic. He was the chosen intellectual mate of Erasmus, who had done or was doing more than any man living, to rid men’s minds of the shackles of the old scholastic formalism. The grosser popular superstitions, the worship of the letter and neglect of the spirit, the pursuit of worldly advancement by the successors of the apostles, were constant subjects for pulpit castigations by the one friend, and the lively and scathing mockery of the other. The mediæval theory that war is a pastime for the ambitions of princes was vigorously denounced by both. In all these things More was with them heart and soul; and he had already given audacious indication of his belief that the function of government is to seek the good not of the governors but of the governed, when he incurred the displeasure of Henry VII. in 1504. This progressive attitude of mind found its complete expression in the fantasy of Utopia.
The notion of constructing an imaginary Commonwealth under ideal conditions on ideal lines was of course derived straight from Plato’s Republic. That any existing State could be reformed into the semblance of such a Commonwealth by the fiat of legislators, neither Plato nor More ever dreamed. Neither the Republic nor the Utopia is in the nature of one of those paper Constitutions whose devisers would fain impose them in all their logical perfection upon recalcitrant nations. They aim at setting forth those fundamental principles which must indeed lie at the root of all healthy forms of government, but must also inevitably materialise into different shapes under differing conditions. The reproach that such schemes are not practical, which is damning to a paper Constitution, is here wholly irrelevant. They were never meant to be practical. Sir Galahad is not a practical model for the British citizen, who would take warning from the career of the Knight of La Mancha. Yet the conception of Sir Galahad is worthy of serious contemplation by the British citizen, who may therefrom derive not a little practical direction in the conduct of his life. To condemn the presentation of avowed ideals as unpractical, is merely to display a complete misapprehension of the meaning and use of ideals.
More, however, did not derive his method from Plato. The Athenian started by looking for the logical principles on which a State should be constructed, and built it, storey by storey. The Englishman imagined his State already complete and expounded the finished structure; taking example by other myths than the Republic. With happy ingenuity, he made use of a suggestion from the records of the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci to locate his dream-city in realms which some of that eminent traveller’s company might have visited, alone of Europeans. In similarly happy vein, he utilised his embassy to the Netherlands to provide an introduction, the form of which was doubtless suggested by Platonic precedent, though it is in no sense an imitation. The characterisation of the persons whose conversation is reported is not unworthy of the master.
The work is in two parts: the account of Utopia itself, and this preliminary book, which introduces the traveller Hythloday, with his criticisms on European politics in general, and the state of England in particular. This, More would have us believe, is the way in which a foreign Odysseus having “viewed the cities and marked the ways of many a People” would judge the institutions on which the Englishman prided himself. The suggestion that he wished to make himself safe by attributing those criticisms to some one else is hardly tenable. It does not appear that any one ever suspected Hythloday of having had a more material existence than Lemuel Gulliver after him. The intention is simply to dispose the reader’s mind so as to accept the verisimilitude of what he knows to be a fiction; the intention of every dramatic artist. Reason tells you that you are sitting in a theatre and watching actors behind the footlights. Imagination tells you that real events are going on before your eyes. If imagination fails, tragedy becomes burlesque, and comedy silliness. The description of Utopia appeals with tenfold force when your imagination accepts it as a place which a real human traveller has seen; and the illusion is only possible when the real human traveller has been convincingly presented. Raphael Hythloday is as real as Robinson Crusoe. But there is no reason to suppose that More wanted any one to think that Hythloday had an address in Antwerp—as Peter Giles says, “Some ... for that his minde and affection was altogether set and fixed upon Utopia, say that he hathe taken his voyage thetherwards agayne.” “No-where land” is the unsubstantial resting-place of the non-material but convincing traveller.
Similarly, by putting his criticisms on English affairs into the mouth of a foreign observer, from whose lips they come with a perfect fitness, the artist procures for them an attention and consideration which would be refused if they were being thought of as the criticisms of an Englishman vilifying his own country. Again, the illusion is needed only till the required effect is produced, namely, recognition of the validity of the criticism.
The illusion is created with subtle skill. More relates how he was sent on the Netherlands embassy, with various references to his associates, and the actual facts of that episode in his career, and tells how his (real) friend, Peter Giles of Antwerp, introduced the traveller Hythloday—an interesting person who had voyaged to those lands of which Europeans as yet knew exceedingly little and imagined an infinite deal. More draws him out, and extracts from him his impression of England, where he had visited Cardinal Morton, of the state of Europe in general, and finally, by way of contrast, of that remote and unknown State of Utopia, which has opened his eyes to what lies at the root of so much that is unsatisfactory in the realms of Christendom. Thus More is enabled to win interested attention to his own criticism of the social and political conditions prevalent, and his own political philosophy. Whatever the latter may be, the former is as practical as possible.
The picture given of the world in which men were actually living and moving, and pursuing their business or their pleasure, is vivid and impressive. Moreover, its truth is borne out by all other evidence. It is the work of a keen and humorous observer; and the analysis of the causes of the pervading evils is unerring. It was no doubt wise of More to antedate the description by a score or so of years, referring it to Cardinal Morton’s days; but in 1515, every evil depicted had become even more marked—and, it may be said, continued to increase progressively until the reign of Elizabeth, the same causes continuing to operate, with the addition of others which intensified the effects. Every rising in the reigns of Henry VIII., of Edward VI., and of Mary, whatever its ostensible ground, bears unmistakeable signs that the agricultural depression with its attendant evils was a secondary, if not the primary cause.
It would be too much to expect that the remedies More recommended should have been equally above criticism. Economic science was in its earliest infancy; in spite of experience, no one had begun to suspect the inefficacy of legislation in certain directions, and there are plenty of people who still believe that natural forces can be regulated by statute. In no single respect was any thinker of his times in advance of Sir Thomas More in these matters. But in many respects he was in advance not only of the foremost of his contemporaries, but even of current opinion and practice three hundred years later.