III. THE " UTOPIA " AS A FIRST-FRUIT

OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND

As the Utopia is to a great extent the outgrowth
of the classical studies that More began at Oxford, it
may be considered as a first-fruit of the Renaissance
in England. The interest in, and the intelligent study
of, the literary masterpieces of classical antiquity was

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one of the effects of the changed attitude towards man,
this world, the life here and the life hereafter, that
during the fifteenth century brought " the Middle Ages "
to a close and revolutionized European civilization.
To date the beginning of the Renaissance, or even of
the study of Greek literature in western Europe, from
the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453,
as is too frequently done, is a great error. Over half
a century earlier a professorship of Greek was estab-
lished in the University of Florence, and by the
middle of the fifteenth century not only were all the
more important Greek writers known and studied in
Italy, but throughout the peninsula the intellectual
life was informed by the spirit of antiquity. The fall
of Constantinople did, however, do much to increase
the already awakened interest in Greek life, literature,
and thought. Many Byzantine scholars were practi-
cally forced into exile by it, and ivith their precious
'manuscripts made their way to Italy, where they found
an eager welcome.

The most famous of these was probably the learned
Chalcondylas, who settled at Florence, already re-
nowned as a centre of " the New Learning." His lec-
tures were attended by scholars from all parts of Eu-
rope, who on their return to their homes taught what

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they had learned and thus in turn became apostles of
culture. Though the study of Greek was introduced
into the University of Oxford by Cornelio Vitelli, an
Italian exile, it was William Grocyn, an Englishman,
who after studying under Vitelli enlarged his knowl-
edge of Greek by listening to the lectures of Chalcon-
dylas, that first made it a subject of importance.
" The Greek lectures which he delivered in Oxford,"
writes Green, " mark the opening of a new period in
our history." Associated with him were Thomas Lin-
acre, who had received the degree of Doctor of Medi-
cine from the University of Padua after studying at
Bologna, Florence, and Rome ; and J ohn Colet, who util-
ized in lectures on the Epistles of St. Paul the Greek
scholarship that he had acquired in Florence. Thanks
to these able teachers, Oxford soon rivalled Florence
itself as a centre for humanistic study and attracted
many Continental scholars who lacked the means to
make the trip to Italy. It was to study Greek that
Erasmus first came to England, and so well satisfied
was he that he wrote : " I have found in Oxford so
much polish and learning that now I hardly care about
going to Italy at all, save for the sake of having been
there. When I listen to my friend Colet it seems like
listening to Plato himself. Who does not wonder at

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the wide range of Grocyn's knowledge? What can
be more searching, deep, and refined than the judgment
of Linacre ? When did Nature mould a temper more
gentle, endearing, and happy than the temper of
Thomas More ? "

Much younger than those with whom he is thus as-
sociated, More differed from them in that he neither
studied in Italy nor taught at Oxford. The pupil of
Grocyn and Linacre, he was essentially a home prod-
uct. He differed from this group of scholars also in
the nature of much of his literary work. His lectures
on St. Augustine's City of God may have been compar-
able to those of Colet on St. Paul's epistles and his
translations of Lucian with those of Galen by Linacre ;
but his most famous work, the Utopia, was without
a parallel among those of the older men. Though
inspired by a masterpiece of Greek thought and
thoroughly impregnated by the spirit of the classics,
it is an original work that shows decided independence
of even the greatest teachers.

In making Hythloday say that the Utopians prac-
tise in their commonwealth the principles that Plato set
forth as those of an ideal state (75 : 9), More indicates
the chief source of his inspiration, the Republic, in which
Plato makes Socrates, in an endeavor to ascertain the

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meaning of " justice," sketch what it seemed to him
should be the principal features of an ideal common-
wealth. It should be, in his judgment, an aristocracy,
in which there should be two classes, the guardians
and the producers. Of the latter class, the husband-
men and handicraftsmen, Plato has but little to say :
his interest is almost entirely in the guardians ; and to
the natural endowments to be possessed by them and the
education, training, and discipline that will most fully
develop those endowments, full consideration is given.
They should be philosophical, high-spirited, swift-
footed, and strong; and every means possible should
be taken to intensify these characteristics. They
should live in a camp in simple dwellings into which
any one should be at liberty to enter ; should eat in
common messes ; and, being supported by the pro-
ducers, should possess no private property if it can
possibly be avoided. In particular, they should handle
no gold nor silver, " because the world's coinage has
been the cause of countless impieties." The women
who are to be the mates of this class should be simi-
larly endowed ; should be given the same education,
discipline, and training ; and should have the same
duties and be eligible to the same offices. Their al-
liances should be strictly regulated by law, and the

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resulting offspring should be taken charge of by the
state and reared for its service. Should any child born
of guardians show little or no aptitude for their work,
he or she should be degraded to the class of producers,
even as a child born of producers that has the char-
acteristics of the guardian class should be trained
and educated for it. This higher class should again
be divided into two, the auxiliaries, or protectors, and
the guardians proper, or rulers. The latter should be
selected from the oldest and best of the auxiliaries;
that is, from those who are " remarkable above others
for the zeal with which, through their whole life, they
have done what they thought advantageous to the
state, and inflexibly refused to do what they thought
the reverse."

It is evident that, while More embodied most of
this in his Utopia, he by no means slavishly followed
Plato. In several particulars he made changes that
are noteworthy. Utopia is a democracy rather than
an aristocracy, and class distinctions are practically
unknown. The higher officials, to be sure, are elected
from a small class of scholars, but this class is closed
to no one ; any ambitious handicraftsman who devotes
his abundant leisure to study may enter it. Com-
munism is a fundamental principle of the whole polity

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instead of being characteristic only of a higher, sup-
ported class ; and the state relies for its protection on
the strength, ability, and patriotism of the whole
people. In a word, such was More's faith in "the
common people " that in the ideal state of which he
gives an account all are guardians and are given prac-
tically the education and training that Plato prescribed
for the upper class in his republic.

In one respect, More is less thoroughgoing than
Plato. There are indications (109 : 9-16) that in
Utopia the children belong primarily to the state and
that parental affection must give way to the exigencies
of the commonwealth ; but so far as possible family life
is conserved, and it is made the basis of the state.
Plato, on the other hand, evidently thought com-
munism incompatible with domestic affection and
family life, and therefore in his republic every pos-
sible means were to be taken to destroy them ; among
his guardian class "the parent shall not know his
child, nor the child his parent."

But while the Republic is the main source of the
Utopia, it is by no means the only classical work from
which More derived hints and details. As the notes
point out, Plutarch's account of the life of the Lacede-
monians in his Life of Lycurgus contributed much;

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the disquisition on the notions that the Utopians have
concerning pleasure is almost a cento from Cicero's
De Finibus ; and Lucian, Thucydides, and Tacitus
were laid under contribution. Even such a triviality
as the account of the artificial incubation practised in
Utopia has its origin in Pliny's statement that this
was a practice among the Egyptians.

The student should be on his guard, however,
against thinking that in all the cases of similarity of
thought pointed out in the notes More consciously
quoted or paraphrased. On the contrary, what he had
read had in many cases become so thoroughly a part
of his own thought that he would probably have been
surprised to learn that he had derived it from an-
other : —

" For, indeed, is *t so easy to know
Just how much we from others have taken,
And how much our own natural flow ? "

He was the heir of the past ; and the Utopia is a fruit
that resulted from his cultivation of that heritage.
" It tells us more of the curiosity the New Learning
had awakened in Englishmen concerning all the prob-
lems of life, society, government, and religion than
any other book of the time. It is the representative

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book of that short but well-defined period which we
may call English Renaissance before the Reforma-
tion."