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.
Thus, after describing the prevalence of thieving and robbery, he
points to idleness as its cause, but dwells emphatically on the
distinction between the idleness which is of choice and that which
is enforced by lack of employment. Half the thieves would be honest
labourers if they had the chance. The maintenance or development of
industries which provide employment would be an effective cure; but
instead of seeking a cure, the authorities fall back on punishment. But
the severity of the law, instead of checking the minor misdemeanours,
converts the pickpocket into a dangerous robber who--having no worse
penalty to fear for the graver offence--resorts to violence without
hesitation: so that the system regularly manufactures the worst
ruffianism.
The instability and disorganisation of industry produced by what
we now call “corners,” has its prototype in the “engrossing” and
“forestalling,” by which wealthy men make themselves monopolists. The
inevitable tendency of capital to flow in dividend-producing, not
philanthropic, channels, is foreshadowed by the steady conversion by
wealth-seeking landlords of arable land into sheep-runs; a process
which left much of the rural population without work, wages, food, or
home. Incidentally it may be noted that, while modern historians are
disposed rather to dwell on the substitution of greedy laymen for the
monasteries as landlords as one of the later causes of this particular
trouble, More expressly includes “certeyn abbottes, holy men no doubt,”
in his denunciation thereof. He may, however, mean no more than that
even the Church was not exempt from this reproach. In dealing with this
economic tendency for capital to seek the most lucrative channel, More
made the universal mistake of his day in believing that it could be
effectively restrained by Acts of Parliament.
In a vein no less practical, and no less opposed to the conventional
ideas of the time, and with a still more playful seriousness, the
traveller discourses of high politics and finance as they were debated
in the Cabinets of Europe, with the aggrandisement and enrichment of
monarchs as the one end in view. “‘This myne advyce, maister More,’
says he, ‘how think you it would be harde and taken?’ ‘So God helpe me,
not very thankefully’ quod I.’”
By this discussion, the way is prepared for Hythloday to favour his
company with an account of the remarkable polity which he found in
Utopia (a State as to the whereabouts of which More subsequently writes
in anxious inquiry to Peter Giles, who answers in the like vein of
pretended regret at being unable to answer the question). This account
occupies the second book, forming about two-thirds of the whole work.
In this fantasy, practicality vanishes at the outset. Such are the
defences, natural or artificial, of this most favoured island, that any
would-be invader is doomed to certain destruction, while the country
produces everything that man requires for comfort. It needs no army and
no navy, self-defence and self-assertion being equally superfluous: its
relations with foreign States are purely complimentary. The Utopians
make no foreign leagues. Where the bonds of goodwill are not sufficient
to maintain friendly relations, nations enter upon leagues, but only
to desert them at the first call of interest. Such is the strange
conviction of the Utopians, though they had not themselves experienced
the kaleidoscopic permutations and combinations of Ferdinand the
Catholic, Maximilian, Louis XII., Henry VII., Julius II., and the
Venetians. If by any chance they find it necessary to go to war, there
is a convenient breed of fighting men in a country not too far away,
who can always be hired for the purpose.
Being thus preserved from the creation of a military caste, while
universal education has prevented knowledge from being concentrated in
a priestly caste, it has been easy to prevent the development of any
sort of privileged class through the accumulation of private property,
which is prohibited. Hence, in Utopia, communism is practicable, and
the whole system is as a matter of course communistic, though the
principle is not extended to the relations between the sexes. Having
arrived at their religion not through the Christian Revelation, but
by Reason, any religious views are tolerated which are not manifestly
anti-social. It is a corollary of these conditions that government is
in the hands of elected magistrates, who have neither class interests
nor personal interests to deflect them from their proper function
of ruling with a single eye to the interests of the whole people.
The possibility that sectarian interests might have developed as a
disturbing factor does not seem to have presented itself; perhaps,
where no religious views might be aggressively expressed or repressed,
no strife of sects was to be feared.
In every direction, of course, the manners and customs of the Utopians
suggest that the manners and customs of the English are susceptible of
improvement. They take a philosophic view of the pleasures of life,
reckoning the gratification of animal appetites exceedingly low in
practice as well as in theory. They have no lust of gold and jewels.
They have no craving for display, for gambling, for the baser forms
of sport. On the other hand, they appreciate the value of sanitation.
There is no idleness, since every one is required to do his share of
work, but there is ample leisure for all; instead of one half of the
population having too much, and the other half too little, to do. Thus
they can enjoy in abundance those rational pleasures in which they take
a true delight, abiding in health and wealth.
V
MORE IN PUBLIC LIFE
It should be sufficiently clear that no one was more thoroughly aware
than Sir Thomas More himself that the Utopian conditions could not be
produced in a European State, and that Utopian institutions could only
exist under Utopian conditions. Of that fact he was destined to give
practical demonstration when called upon to discharge the functions of
a practical ruler.
In 1518 More became a Privy Councillor, and probably his influence
may be detected in the efforts, renewed about this time, to check
the conversion of arable land into pasture, and the evil practice of
enclosures. But Martin Luther’s activity was just beginning, and its
results were to make the contrast between Utopia and England even more
marked than previously. Before entering, however, on More’s attitude to
this new phase of the Reformation, we have to note some other points in
this stage of his career.
More stood in high favour. He had not climbed to a great position by
arduous effort; greatness, worthy of it as he was, had been thrust upon
him. His advancement was promoted by Wolsey, who was seldom vindictive
except towards rivals whose power might make them dangerous. In 1521
he was knighted. When Parliament was summoned in 1523 he was made
Speaker, by no means at his own desire, but chiefly at that of the
King and the Cardinal. The result was probably not quite what Wolsey
had anticipated. On his appointment, he had implied very clearly,
though in diplomatic terms, that he meant to uphold freedom of speech
in the House. But the business on hand was the voting of money, and
Wolsey made the mistake of attempting to overawe the Commons by coming
down to the House himself. The Members declined to speak or vote in
his presence; the Cardinal’s demands were received with dead silence.
Wolsey turned on the Speaker. The Speaker made it perfectly clear that
the House could not give way on the question of privilege. When Wolsey
withdrew, Parliament demonstrated its loyalty by making a substantial
grant.
According to More’s son-in-law, this incident brought More into the
black books of the Cardinal, who with ill intent tried to get him sent
on an embassy to Spain, under colour of complimenting him. If Wolsey
really meant evil by him, his designs came to nothing, for there was no
sign of any diminution in the royal favour. Already, however, in 1525,
Wolsey’s position was becoming precarious, though to all appearance
he was as dominant as ever. More’s next advancement was to the
Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1526; and from this time
Henry’s personal demands on his time and his society became exceedingly
pressing. A year later, the whole of the king’s real interest was
absorbed in the divorce question, which was to seal Wolsey’s fate
directly, and More’s indirectly. Henry consulted him about it, and More
then as always told his master honest truth--he did not see how the
marriage with Katharine could lawfully be voided. From that position
he never swerved. The king could respect conscientious scruples on the
part of a favourite, and did so as long as More remained a favourite.
More, however, had no illusions about the king’s constancy. “If my
head,” he told Roper, “would win him a castle in France, it should not
fail to go.” But when Henry decided that Wolsey could no longer serve
his turn, it was More whom he selected to fill the office of Lord
Chancellor, in spite of his views of the divorce.
During these years, the uprising of Luther had developed into a
widespread religious revolt. Henry, having no quarrel with Pope Leo,
and proud of his own attainments as a theologian, chose to enter the
lists for the demolition of Luther; producing an apologia for the
Papacy which earned him the title of “Defender of the Faith.” Before
publishing this work he showed it to More, who warned him, with shrewd
foresight, that, if ever he did come to have a quarrel with the Pope,
he would find it very difficult to get over his own argument, which
proved too much in support of Papal authority. Henry, however, would
not modify the view then expressed, and succeeded in satisfying his
counsellor that it was sound. In due course the prophecy came true:
Henry repudiated the position he had formerly defended. Unhappily for
More, however, the king had finally convinced him, and he declined to
surrender his conviction: with fatal consequences.
Viewed even exclusively as a religious movement, Luther’s revolt
would not have attracted More’s sympathies. He had never doubted any
of the dogmas of the Church, though he had a plentiful contempt for
many prevailing corruptions which were recognised as such by men to
whom heresy was never imputed by their bitterest enemy. He believed
with conviction a great deal that Erasmus accepted merely _pro forma_.
Luther not only propounded views on specific dogmas which More regarded
as heretical, he challenged the whole authority of Rome; and More
believed in the authority of Rome. But beyond all this the Lutheran
revolt was very soon followed by the German Peasant revolt, which
deluged half Europe with blood. The Peasants’ War was completely
misapprehended in England, where the agricultural troubles, bad as
they were, could bear no comparison with the oppression from which the
German peasants suffered; but its leadership fell, naturally enough,
into the hands of men as fanatical in their zeal for religious as for
social reform. The overthrow of all authority and the universal triumph
of sheer anarchy appeared to be their goal; and the world believed,
or was taught to believe, that it was Luther who had started the
conflagration. The heretical pamphlets which issued from Germany and
Switzerland--lumped together, by those who did not know the facts, as
Lutheran--gave colour to this belief by the virulence of their attacks
on the Papacy and the clergy; and it is small wonder that many of the
most liberal-minded men could anticipate nothing but stark ruin, the
coming of chaos, unless the torrent were stayed. The threatening crash
of all reverence, of all authority save such as could be enforced
by push of pike, seemed to be brought measurably closer, when, in
1527, the Imperial armies sacked Rome in emulation of Alaric, and the
representative of St. Peter was held a prisoner by the representative
of Caesar Augustus.
In the abstract, and under Utopian conditions, More was singularly
alive to the beauty of the principle of practically universal
toleration. But Europe and England were presenting a problem which
could never have arisen in Utopia at all. Even in Utopia, it was
recognised that certain negations were directly anti-social, and that
the propagation of them must be repressed. Here in Europe, it seemed
as if every negation of a received dogma was to be turned into an
anti-social engine. Under the conditions, the toleration of any heresy,
certainly of all such as palpably involved an attack on authority,
tended to anarchy. The conclusion that what was good unreservedly in
Utopia would not be good in England is obvious. We can all see now,
of course, that More misinterpreted the facts. The anarchism was an
accident of the religious movement, which it shed of itself, not an
inherent part of it: the Church lost as much ground by the action of
her own zealots as by the attacks of her most fanatical opponents. But
for a man who interpreted the facts as More did, there was nothing
inconsistent in declaring for toleration in Utopia, but in England
repression.
There is another point, too, which is generally unnoticed. The Utopians
arrived at their religion by reason; they had no way of ascertaining
truth except through reason; hence, for one man to condemn another for
holding a different “doxy” would be in itself irrational. Christendom,
in More’s view, was in a different position. It had received Truth by
direct Revelation, and an Exponent of Truth by Divine appointment.
What the Church had definitely pronounced to be heterodox was to be
regarded finally and conclusively as false. To permit the preaching
of doctrine known to be false was quite different from permitting the
discussion or inculcation of divergent opinions on which there was no
authority qualified to pronounce absolutely. Even at the moment when
More was describing the religion of Utopia, before he had ever heard
the name of Luther, he might with perfect consistency have held that
heresy ought to be repressed in Christian countries. The argument, of
course, has nothing to do with the wisdom or unwisdom of a repressive
policy; it is concerned merely with the “inconsistency” of More’s
Utopian theory and his Catholic practice. Those who found the Divine
Revelation not in the voice of the Church but in the text of Scripture,
were equally convinced that deviation from indisputable Truth should be
punished by the strong hand.
Broadly, the suggestion here put forward is that the Utopian religions
are philosophies: that all philosophies are matter of argument; that
intolerance of opinions which are matter of argument is irrational. On
the other hand (to More), Catholic Christianity is not a philosophy,
but is revealed truth; not therefore matter of argument, except so
far as details have not been defined; that suppression of doctrines
subversive of Catholic truth is certainly legitimate, and may be
necessary.
However that may be, it is undeniable that More appears in the least
favourable light as a Catholic controversialist; losing balance and
tone, he writes _currente calamo_, without restraint, with lapse of
dignity, and with only an occasional redeeming turn of humour. That is
to say, he drops to the normal level of contemporary controversialists
on both sides, instead of abiding in that serene atmosphere which
otherwise distinguishes him. The aggressive bellicosity of princes
grieved him, and the king’s divorce business vexed him: but the spread
of heresy was the one thing which upset his equanimity. “I pray God,”
said he to Roper, “that some of us, as heigh as we seeme to sitt upon
the mountaines, treadinge heretickes under our feete like annts, live
not the day that we gladly would wish to be at leagge and composition
with them, to let them have their Churches quietly to themselves; soe
that they would be content to lett us have ours quietly to our selves.”
Similarly, the one and only ground of reproach against his conduct in
any public matter is that as Chancellor he may have sanctioned putting
heretics to the torture, and did during the last six months of his
office--not before--send certain heretics to the stake. It is true that
the only men in England, in those days, who, having the opportunity,
did not send a single heretic to the fire, were the much-abused
Protector Somerset and the still more abused Wolsey. But we would fain
have had Thomas More an exception. Still, it can at least be affirmed
positively that the penalty was only inflicted when all hope was over
of persuading the “heretics” to recognise their error, and save their
bodies as well as their souls; and that every effort was made to give
them the opportunity of doing so. Given More’s premises, the conclusion
that their death would tend to the salvation of other souls was
irresistible.