Again: living himself in Bucklersbury, in the midst of all the dirt and filth of London’s narrow streets; surrounded by the unclean, ill-ventilated houses of the poor, whose floors of clay and rushes, never cleansed, were pointed out by Erasmus as breeding pestilence, and inviting the ravages of the sweating sickness; himself a commissioner of sewers, and having thus some practical knowledge of London’s sanitary arrangements; More described the towns of Utopia as well and regularly built, with wide streets, waterworks, hospitals, and numerous common halls; all the houses well protected from the weather, as nearly as might be fireproof, three stories high, with plenty of windows, and doors both back and front, the back door always opening into a well-kept garden.[563] All this was Utopian doubtless, and the result in Utopia of the still more Utopian abolition of private property; but the gist and point of it consisted in the contrast it presented with what he saw around him in Europe, and especially in England, and men could hardly fail to draw the lesson he intended to teach.
It will not be necessary here to dwell further upon the details of the social arrangements of More’s ideal commonwealth,[564] or to enter at length upon the philosophical opinions of the Utopians; but a word or two will be needful to point out the connection of the latter with the views of that little band of friends whose joint history I am here trying to trace.
Faith in both science and religion.
One of the points most important and characteristic is the fearless faith in the laws of nature combined with a profound faith in religion, which runs through the whole work, and which may, I think, be traced also in every chapter of the history of the Oxford Reformers. Their scientific knowledge was imperfect, as it needs must have been, before the days of Copernicus and Newton; but they had their eyes fearlessly open in every direction, with no foolish misgivings lest science and Christianity might be found to clash. They remembered (what is not always remembered in this nineteenth century), that if there be any truth in Christianity, Nature and her laws on the one hand and Christianity and her laws on the other, being framed and fixed by the same Founder, must be in harmony, and that therefore for Christians to act contrary to the laws of Nature, or to shut their eyes to facts, on the ground that they are opposed to Christianity, is—to speak plainly—to fight against one portion of the Almighty’s laws under the supposed sanction of another; to fight, therefore, without the least chance of success, and with every prospect of doing harm instead of good.
Theory of morals both Utilitarian and Christian.
Hence the moral philosophy of the Utopians was both Utilitarian and Christian. Its distinctive features, according to More, were—1st, that they placed pleasure (in the sense of ‘utility’) as the chief object of life; and 2ndly, that they drew their arguments in support of this as well from the principles of religion as from natural reason.[565]
They defined ‘pleasure’ as ‘every emotion or state of body or mind in which nature leads us to take delight.’ And from reason they deduced, as modern utilitarians do, that not merely the pleasure of the moment must be regarded as the object of life, but what will produce the greatest amount and highest kind of pleasure in the long run; that, e.g. a greater pleasure must not be sacrificed to a lesser one, or a pleasure pursued which will be followed by pain. And from reason they also deduced that, nature having bound men together by the ties of Society, and no one in particular being a special favourite of nature, men are bound, in the pursuit of pleasure, to regard the pleasures of others as well as their own—to act, in fact, in the spirit of the golden rule; which course of action, though it may involve some immediate sacrifice, they saw clearly never costs so much as it brings back, both in the interchange of mutual benefits, and in the mental pleasure of conferring kindnesses on others. And thus they arrived at the same result as modern utilitarians, that, while ‘nature enjoins pleasure as the end of all men’s efforts,’ she enjoins such a reasonable and far-sighted pursuit of it that ‘to live by this rule is “virtue.”’
In other words, in Utopian philosophy, ‘utility’ was recognised as a criterion of right and wrong; and from experience of what, under the laws of Nature, is man’s real far-sighted interest, was derived a sanction to the golden rule. And thus, instead of setting themselves against the doctrine of utility, as some would do, on the ground of a supposed opposition to Christianity, they recognised the identity between the two standards. They recognised, as Mr. Mill urges, that Christians ought to do now, ‘in the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, the complete spirit of the ethics of utility.’[566]
The Utopians had no hesitation in defining ‘virtue’ as ‘living according to nature;’ for, they said, ‘to this end we have been created by God.’ Their religion itself taught them that ‘God in his goodness created men for happiness;’ and therefore there was nothing unnatural in his rewarding, with the promise of endless happiness hereafter, that ‘virtue’ which is living according to those very laws of nature which He Himself established to promote the happiness of men on earth.
Nor was this, in More’s hands, a merely philosophical theory. He made the right practical use of it, in correcting those false notions of religion and piety which had poisoned the morality of the middle ages, and soured the devotion even of those mediæval mystics whose mission it was to uphold the true religion of the heart. Who does not see that the deep devotion even of a Tauler, or of a Thomas à Kempis, would have been deepened had it recognised the truth that the religion of Christ was intended to add heartiness and happiness to daily life, and not to draw men out of it; that the highest ideal of virtue is, not to stamp out those feelings and instincts which, under the rule of selfishness, make a hell of earth, but so, as it were, to tune them into harmony, that, under the guidance of a heart of love, they may add to the charm and the perfectness of life? The ascetic himself who, seeing the vileness and the misery which spring out of selfish riot in pleasure, condemns natural pleasure as almost in itself a sin, fills the heaven of his dreams with white robes, golden crowns, harps, music and angelic songs. Even his highest ideal of perfect existence is the unalloyed enjoyment of pleasure. He is a Utilitarian in his dreams of heaven.