The Making of More
Thomas More's father was a successful lawyer and a distinguished judge. After his early schooling at St. Anthony's School in London, Thomas served in the household of Archbishop Morton and, with his help, grew into an upright, devout man faithful to the principles of the Catholic faith. It is said that Morton remarked of him, "The boy who waits here ... will prove a marvellous man." At fifteen Thomas went to Oxford and so gave himself to classical literature that his father, fearing his son would become a penniless scholar, called him back from Oxford and sent him to London to study law. Oxford and Cambridge still trained students for service in the Church, while the Inns of Court, New Inn and Lincoln's Inn, trained men who were now taking England's government out of clerical hands. Only eight members of the House of Commons in the Reformation Parliament (1529–1537) were university men; most were lawyers and merchants.
In 1499 More, a young man of twenty-one, met Erasmus and fell in love with humanism. Their acquaintance grew into a simple friendship. Both were cheerful men who blended their writings with pleasant satire. Both disliked scholastic philosophy, whose subtlety and hair-splitting More compared to milking a he-goat into a sieve. Both wanted to reform the Church from within without harming its unity and historical continuity. In learning, tolerance and freedom of thought More did not equal Erasmus, and his stubbornness and even bigotry sometimes kept him from kindness and forbearance. Now and then, like almost all his contemporaries, he fell into harsh and ruthless abuse; but in courage, self-respect and devotion to a cause he was Erasmus's superior. The letters they wrote one another are models of purity and courtesy in an impure age. One of More's letters to Erasmus ends, "Farewell, my dear Erasmus, dearer to me than my own eyes!"
More was one of the most devout men of his time, and his contentment and piety shamed worldly Church leaders such as Wolsey. At twenty-three, though he had spent some years studying law, he thought of becoming a priest. That year (1501) he lectured on St. Augustine's City of God, and aged scholars of religion such as Grocyn gathered to hear him. Although he condemned monks for breaking their vows, he praised the pure monastic life and sometimes regretted that he had not taken it up. For some years he wore a shirt of horsehair under his clothes, spotted with the blood from his skin. He believed in miracles, the healing relics of saints, holy images and pilgrimage. He wrote in medieval style works in which he compared life to a prison and called the final purpose of religion and philosophy preparing man for death. He married twice and, in the Christian way, raised children who were bright, merry and affectionate toward their elders, and also devout. In 1523 he moved to Manor House in Chelsea, which had a famous library and museum and wide gardens reaching down to the Thames.
Public Career
At twenty-six (1504) Thomas More was elected to Parliament from his birthplace and opposed one of Henry VII's bills so skillfully that the king for a time put his father in prison and fined him heavily to teach the eloquent young son to keep in tune with the powers that be. After this term he turned to private practice and prospered at the bar. In 1509 he took the post of the government's representative in executive and judicial matters in the City, the old part of London north of the Thames. In this office, by temperament, he shunned rashness and adventure and did his duty with moderation and fairness, becoming known for justice and impartiality; by refusing offerings from the accused he defied a custom that lasted until Francis Bacon's day. He was soon elected to Parliament again, and in 1505 (the book's date) became Speaker of the Commons.
In a famous letter to Ulrich von Hutten (23 July 1517) Erasmus described More as of middle height, pale, fair-haired, indifferent to dress and ceremony, abstemious in food and clothing, smiling and witty, and said that he kept at home a fool, a monkey and many pets. "All the birds of Chelsea come to his house for their food." He was a faithful husband, a loving father, a gifted speaker, a just counselor and a helpful, kindly man. Erasmus ended his letter, "What has nature made gentler, sweeter and happier than the genius of Thomas More?"
The History of Richard III and the Utopia
More left books. His first was the History of Richard III; but since it condemned tyranny, and England was then in a tyrant's grip, More refused to publish it. It was printed and issued after the author's death. Shakespeare made a play from it, perhaps reflecting the nature and character of Richard. In 1516 More wrote in Latin one of the most famous books in the world. The book coined a word, became the emblem of modern ideal societies, foresaw a kind of semi-socialist order for human communities, and criticized England's economic, social and political organization so sharply that More dared not publish it in England itself, even in Latin, until it had appeared six times abroad. Thomas claimed he wrote the book merely for amusement and did not mean to put it before the public, yet he thanks Erasmus, who oversaw its printing at Louvain. The book was translated into German, Italian and French before it appeared in English sixteen years after the author's death (1551). By 1520 the book's story was on every tongue in Europe.
More had called the book Nusquama (Nowhere), and it is not known who rendered the name into its Greek equivalent, Utopia, at printing. The scenes are so skillfully staged that some readers took the contents for historical fact, and it is said that a religious missionary resolved to go to Utopia and convert its people to Christianity. Henry VIII had sent More as ambassador to Bruges (1515), and from there, with a letter from Erasmus, he went to Peter Giles, town clerk of Antwerp. In the preface Giles introduces More to a bearded Portuguese sailor, weary of wind and storm, named Raphael Hythloday, who in 1504 (the book says "six years before Magellan's voyage"), with Amerigo Vespucci, had circled the world and in the New World had come on an island whose happy people had overcome many of the troubles of the Europeans of that day. The Louvain edition of the Utopia, with a woodcut map of the island and a sample of its people's language, made the book's fictional story believable. Only one slip betrays the invention: Hythloday praises Archbishop Morton in terms more natural for More's thanks than for the report of a sailor's experience.
The Island Without Money
The imaginary traveler (the book here calls him "Magellan," meaning Hythloday) describes the communal order of the island's people thus: among the Utopians everything is held in common, and all live in comfort and ease. We compare them with nations whose individuals count their possessions as private property. He agrees with Plato that all men should share the goods of the world equally, since where each man amasses what he can for himself, wealth is in the hands of a few and the rest suffer poverty and want.
The Utopians gather the fruit of their labor in a common storehouse and draw from it as they need. No one wants more than he needs, since security leaves no reason for greed. People eat together, but each is free to eat at home. There is no money in Utopia, and no trade, seduction, theft or quarrel over property. Gold, instead of being coined, is used to make useful objects such as household vessels. The people fear neither famine nor economic crisis, for the common storehouse meets need in emergencies. Men and women work side by side in fields and workshops. To produce what is needed every adult works six hours a day, and the choice of occupation follows society's needs. Utopians do not fear the future or hunger, but may not live on the fruit of others' labor. The laws and rules of Utopia are few and simple. Each man settles his own quarrels with others and needs neither court nor advocate.
Lawbreakers are sentenced to bondage to society and sometimes given heavy tasks. But when their term ends they regain complete freedom and equality. Those who offend gravely and repeatedly are put to death. The number of slaves has grown through the purchase of condemned prisoners from other lands.
The unit of society in Utopia is the family, with the father at its head. "Wives serve their husbands and children their parents." No man may live with more than one wife. So that betrothed persons learn in good time of any bodily defect in their future spouses, it is suggested that before marriage they look over one another's bodies unclothed (I soften the wording); and if one has an incurable bodily defect, the betrothal is broken. After marriage the wife lives with her husband in her father-in-law's house. Divorce is allowed only for adultery or mutual consent, provided the council of the community also agrees. Every thirty families choose a head each year, and every ten heads choose a chief for the administration of three hundred families; two hundred heads form the national council, which chooses the king or prince of the community for life.
The heads' most basic duty is to secure public health by providing clean drinking water, promoting hygiene, and founding clinics and hospitals; for sickness is held a great evil. The rulers provide means for the education of children and the old, promote vocational training, and encourage people to study science and turn from astrology and superstition. When the good of the community requires, they may declare war on other nations. "War is justified to them only when a people leave unused and barren a plot of land which by the law of nature ought to be cultivated and fruitful, and keep other nations from taking it." (Was this an argument justifying the colonization of America?) Even so, the Utopians are not warlike; "they regard war as an expression of savagery ... and, unlike their neighbors, count the glory won in war as contemptible and shameful."
Religion in Utopia
The Utopians enjoy religious freedom, though not without limit. All beliefs are respected and safe from attack except atheism and denial of the survival of the soul. Anyone may worship moon or sun. But if anyone attacks one of the established religions he is arrested and punished, because the law forbids religious disputes. Those who deny the soul's survival are not punished but are barred from public office and may not share their thinking with anyone except priests and "wise men." Otherwise "everyone has the right to follow the religion he likes ... and to bring others to his view ... provided he spreads his beliefs calmly and peaceably, without quarrel or insult to the beliefs of others." Various religions flourish in Utopia, "but the most and the wisest ... believe in a divine power scattered throughout the world, eternal, incomprehensible, indescribable, and beyond the reach of human understanding."
Monasticism is free, provided monks busy themselves with charity and public works, such as repairing roads, clearing streams and drains, felling trees, or services that belong to servants and even slaves. Monks may marry if they wish. Utopian priests also marry. The government declares the first and last days of every month and year religious holidays, but while people perform their rites on these days, "no image of any god is seen in the churches" and "no prayer is said except one that does not conflict with the beliefs of other faiths." On each of these holidays wives and children fall down before husbands or parents and ask forgiveness for a wrong they have done or a duty left undone; and no one goes to church before he has made peace with his enemy. The influence of Christianity shows in this passage, but the humanism of More's youth also was not without the Greek view of suicide: he writes that if anyone suffers a painful, incurable illness, he should be allowed and urged to end his own life. Otherwise More counts suicide a sign of cowardice and weakness, saying that anyone who takes his life for other reasons should have his body "thrown into a pit." It is not known how far this comes from More's own reflection, from Erasmus's thought, or from playful imagination.
Socialism and Its Critic
It is certain that the young statesman carefully recoils from the Utopians' socialism, saying in one place to Hythloday, "I believe that where all things are common, people will lack wealth ... for where the motive of personal gain does not drive people to work, and the hope of living on others' labor makes them lazy and idle ... how can plenty be achieved ... Until all men are reformed there is no hope of reforming the world's affairs, and I think the reform of men will take years." Yet love of freedom must have led More to paint so full and attractive a picture of a communal society. In other pages of the Utopia More rages at the rich who exploit the poor. He sharply condemns the English nobles who have enclosed the common lands and taken them for themselves. Hythloday tells More that the foolish greed of a few has brought his island to complete ruin. "Do not let these rich men by hoarding and monopoly bring the market to a state that suits their interests. When I think of the commonwealth that is now arising everywhere, I find nothing but a conspiracy of the rich to further their own profit under the name and title of commonwealth. To plunder the toil of the poor for as little pay as possible and sink them in misery they resort to various tricks ... and then call these tricks law."
These words recall the voice of Karl Marx, which shook the pillars of the world. The Utopia is certainly one of the first and most penetrating documents drawn up in modern Europe against the existing economic order before the twentieth century; and so far as the creation of a prosperous society and a planned economy is concerned, the Utopia belongs to our time.