THE QUEST FOR UTOPIA

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 263, 2 August 1919, Page 3

THE QUEST FOR UTOPIA

♦SOME HISTORIC IDEAS

PLATO, MORE, AND OTHERS

[The efforts of ■ tho Bolshevists, I.W.W.'s, and other'anarchical groups of that kidney, to oreato by drastic methods Utopias suitabio to their class desires, together with the milder, more intelligible, and quite sane labours of- : various reformers to make the old world a little better place to live in without making it altogether unrecognisable, attach more than, casual interest to Mr. Diehard Le Galliene's review, in "Munsay's Magazine," of the attempts of certain historio idealists to achieve the same end. in much earlier times.]

Plato's "Republic." 'Plato's "Republic" was tho earliest attempt at putting on paper a pattern commonwealth. The 6Chome was an exceedingly arbitrary one, and, like most subsequent Utopias-, it began by not merely leaving out, but discountenancing tho individualism of human nature. Yet the sterner and most inhuman of its conditions had already been successfully embodied in the military 6tate of Sparta, and its communism—not merely of land and goods, but also of women and children—was to be tried out in a great many subsequent social experiments. The' State—or rather the city, for Plato v>us thinking in terms of a small community—was to be the unit, the individual man or woman merely a contributory fraction of that unit, and Christ's, counsel to "love thy neighbour as thykM" was to be put in. daily praotice by the citizens of Plato's republic, "That city, then," he. says, "is best conducted in which tho largest proportion of citizens- apply the words 'mine' and 'not rams' similarly ( to the same objects; or, in other words,' that city which comes nearest to the condition of an individual num. ' Then will not our citizens bo remarkable for sharing in the same interest, whioh they will oall 'mine'; and having this common interest, will they not thereby possess in a remarkable degree a community in pleasure and pain?" But Plato's republic was essentially aristocratic. The aim of its citizens was to be the attainment of wisdom. Hard and disagreeable work was. to be done by slaves, nor did the citizens soil their fingers by trade.- That was left to "strangers." No one could own money or precious metals, and none but the guardians, or magistrates, and the auxiliaries or soldiers, might possess land, and that only collectively. These auxiliaries, however, came nearest to being a privileged class, and there is one quaint provision—which would seem to have been generously revived for the benefit of our recent heroes—that the distinguished soldier should have the right to "kiss and be kissed by all"—"no one whom he has a mind to kiss shall be permitted to refuse him the satisfaction." '

Sir Thomas More's "Utopia." While Plato's "Republio" has exercised an influence on all subsequent political and social dreamers, the book whioh fixed the type, and has, given a generic name to all such ideal reconstructions of Eooiety was the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas ■ More (H7B-1535), the famous English scholar and statesman, ohancellor, friend and victim of Henry VIII. More was a leading figure among the remarkable group of "humanists" whioh first embodied in England the influences of the "new learning" of the Italian renaissanoe.' He wa? a young man when the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci and Columbus were stirring the imaginations of his seagoing countrymen. The hero of his romance, one Ralph Hythloday, purports to have sailed with Vespucoi, but, having been eeparated from him by the chances of the sea, had found refuge in a hitherto undiscovered island of the western ocean named Utopia. The island was inhabited by 60 happy a people, living under so perfect a system, of government, that Hythloday, .on his return, is moved to desoribe their state for the benefit of his less happy fellows. , The book was written in Latin, under the editorship of More's bosom friend, Erasmus, and was published in Ixmvain in 1516. It attracted much attention, and during the'next few "years'it was translated into Italian,. Dutch, and German; but no English version of it appeared until after More's death. Under tho semblance of a fanciful narrative, it was *?i pointed jan arraignment of English , y .cial conditions to have pleased the King '.j -at least in the vulgar tongue. Henry t .'III, who was a good Latinist himself, i'eems to have tolerated it in the obscurity of a language whero it was safo from the common people, and both Eras-If.-j v and More were favourites of his, till More Tefused to recognise him as head of . the English Church—a refusal which cost him the King's friendship and his own life. The word Utopia is made up of two Greek words meaning "nowhere." Rabelais was soon to adopt it intohis fantastic • geography in the 6ame sense, and such recent ntopias as William Morris's "News from Nowhere" and Butler's "Erewhon". (an anagram for "nowhere"), merely' translate it into English. There is good reason for its immediate influence on its time, and for the hold .which it has ever since retained as tho outstanding olassio of its kind;.for its fantastio notions were blended with much common sense and sound criticism of contemporary abuses, and it is vitalised throughout with a . warm and enlightened humanity. The astonishing modernity of many of-its attitudes make it as live a book to-day as when it was published, and tho ease of the poor against the oppressive rich has never been stated with more force and sympathy.

Profiteers of Three Centuries Ago. More wrote at a time when the great landowners of England were sowing the seeds of all subsequent agrarian unrest by unlawfully enclosing in their domain's vast tracts of land which had hitherto belonged to|the people in comjnon, those wide "commons"—hence the word—where the poorest cotter or artisan might pasture his cow or a few sheep, and thus eke out his other earnings. The rich even tore down homesteads for tho purpose of these enclosures, which they either turned into "chases" and hunting preserves, or into pastures for sheepraising, a business which they undertook on a large scale, and. in a manner identical witli the latter-day profiteer Suppose the sheep should inorease ever so much, this price is not likely to fall. As they are not pressed to sell them sooner than they have a mind to it, to they never do it till thov have raised the price as high as possible. The result of these iniquitous enclosures w«s that a flood of landless men was loosed upon tho country, and these, unable to find sufficient wofk, "destitute ' of service, either starve for hunger oi turn manfully thieves;'for what," More fearlessly adds, "would you havo them to do?" The punishment for the smallest theft in those days, and for centuries after, was usually death—a judicial orimo to which Mora is indignantly awake, though the general consciousness was to remain dead to the inhumanity till the nineteenth century: * There arc dreadful punishments enacted against thieves, but it were much better to make such good provisions by which every man might be nut in a method how to live, and so bo presorvod from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it. They managed such matters better in Utopia, he said. There was no private property, either fit land or of goods, nor was anyone idle there, but evoryone 'worked—a six-hour dav—for the common benefit, and all shared alike in the products, according to their needs.

More's Views on Labour, Here is a passage which in its fearless classification of the idlers of his own time, and in the distinction drawn between useful and useless labour, is characteristic of tho general thought of the nook, and explains the nrophotic hold it was "to"ilave on subsequent generations: First, women generally do little, who aj'e half of mankind; and if some few women are diligent, iheir husbands are 0w idle. Then consider the great company -,/of idlo priests, and of those that are (,called religious men; add to these all . ; iich men.' chiefly fhose that have estates . inland, who are called noblemen and "gentlemen, together with their families, mado up of idle persons that are kept more for show than use; add to these all those strong and lusty beggars that go about pretending seme disease in excuse for their begging; and upon the -whole account you will find that the number of those bv whose labours mankind'is supplied is much less than you perhaps imagined.

Then consider how few of thoso that work aro employed in labours that are of roal service) for we who measure all things by money give rise to many trades that are both yam and superfluous, and serve only to support riot and luxury. For if those who work were employed only in such things as the conveniences l of life require, there would be such an' abundance of them that the prices of them would sink that tradesmen could riot, be maintained by their-gains. If all those who labour about useless things were 6et to more profitable employment*, and if all they that languish out their lives in sloth and idleness, every.one of whom consumes as much as any two of the men that are at work, were forced to labour, you may easily imagine that a small proportion of time would serve for doing all that is either necessary, profitable, or pleasant to mankind, especially whilo pleasure is kept within its due hounds." "Pleasure kept within its due bounds" —not iustice or wisdom, as with Platowas our being's end and aim, according to the Utopians: "Thev reckon that all our actions and even all our virtues * terminate in pleasure, ns in our chief end and greatest happiness; and they call every motion or state, either of body or mind, in which Nature teaches us to delight, a pleasure." Health, according to More, was the best pleasure, gmi the basis of all others —"that which results from an undisturbed and vigorous , constitution of bodv when life and active spirits 6eem to actuate every part. This lively health, when entirely free from all mixture of pain, of itself gives an inward pleasure, independent of all external objects of delight." More evidently meant the same thing as his nineteenth oentury idiwiplo, William Morris. The reward of labour is" life. Is that not enough? Many things whioh usually "men miscall delight, were laughed at, or despised, in Utopia. Hunting, for example, was "turned over to the butchers," who by the way, were "slaves"—that is, men condemned to servitude for crimes. The Utopians "look on the desire of the bloodshed, even of beasts, as a mark of a mind that is already corrupted with cruelty, or that at least by the frequent returns of so brutal a pleasure must degenerate into it."

Some Strange Utopian Notions. That gold and silver should be robbed of their power to corrupt and divide, the Utopians used them only for the basest and humblest purposes, for homely household conveniences, and for the fetters of slaves. . Diamonds and other "precious stones were given to children to play with, and luxury in dress was regarded How should any value himself because his cloth is made of a finer thread? For how fine soever that thread: may be, it was once no better than the fleoee of a. sheep, and that sheep was a sheep still for all its wearing it. Thus, when an embassy from a foreign State, thinking to overawe the simple ntopians with its splendour, came in rich garments and decked with jewels, the very children, who had outgrown such playthings, called to .their mothers and cried out: •' , . "See" that great fool that, wears pearls and 'sms, as if ihe were yet a child. "Hold your pisaee," their mothers answered. 'This; 'I believe, is one of the ambassador's fools." There were no lawyers among the Utopians, "for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it iB to disguise matters, and to wrest the laws ; nor did they believe in war or standing armies, yet, for self-pro-tection, a certain military training was incumbent upon all, including the women, as with Plato.. But More will have none ;.' community of women. Marrr-. • ■-among_ the Utopians is a monogamo-; institution, as among Christians, but' genics were to some degree considere. in their quaint matchmaking. Euthanasia, also was suggested, but not enforced, for the incurably sick or wearily aged. The State would provide fern with painless suicide, if sn desired; the priests and magistrates exhorting'them as to. the painful use'essness of continued existence. Among lother anticipations of modernity we come' on incubators for chickens: '~ "They breed an infinite multitude of chickens in a very ourious manner; for the hens do not sit and hatch them, but a vast number of eggs is laid in a gentle and equal heat in order to be And the sum of it all is that in Utopia "there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity, and though no man has anything, yot thoy are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and cheerful life, free from anxieties, neither apprehending want himself, nor vexed with the endless complaints of his . „ . , As to the machinery of this happy State, it is simple and without novelty, being run by a system of elective magistracies, presided over by -a prince, also elected-"for life, unless he is removed upon suspicion of eome design to enslave the people." ;

Bacon's Paradise of Soience, Tho "New Atlantis" of Lord Bacon was the next famous attempt:— To build a shadowy' isle of bliss Midst the beating of the steely sea, Where tossed about all hearts of men must be. Tho legend of that lost continont from whioh the Atlantic Ocean takes its name not only haunted the dreams of antiquity, but has f° und supporters among modern geologists. There, it was fabled, were the Elysian Fields oi tho happy and lordly dead-one of the many paradises or habitats of tho golden age with which "mankind m>m time- immemorial has solaced its weary heart; such as the Welsh Avalon, fie Irish Toi-na-Og and St. Brendens Me, the Portuguese Isle of Seven Cities, and the Greek Isles of the Blest. Bacon's "Now Atlantis" has merely a literary and academic value. Its author had little or nothing of More* humanity, and, as with most other creators of ideal commonwealths, he created it in his own image. As Plato had constructed his republic for philosophers, Bacon constructed his tor men ,of science. "The end of our foundation, he says, "is the knowledge of causes, and'secret motions of things; and the enlarging of tho bounds of human empire, to tho effecting of all things possible." As with Goethe, "light, and more light," was to bo the desideratum of his dreamworld. • . , . "But thus you see we maintain a trade," ho says, "not for gold, silver, or jewels, not for silks nor for spices, nor for any commodity of matter, but only for God's first creation, light; to have light, 1 say, of the growth of all parts of the world " ..,,,, It was an ideal which the twentieth century will certainly not gainsay, and tho "Now Atlantis" concludes with a list of scientific "departments" which have a fascinating suggestiveness, and something of the prophetic quality which belongs always to a brain in advanco of its time. Thus, doubtless Mr,. Burbank has Ion" ago been interested in the department "to make divers now plants, differing from the vulgar, and to mako one tree or plant turn into another.

Robert Owen and New Harmony. It is to the credit of the famous Manchester man, Hobert Owen (1771-1858), that though born in an age peculiarly Utopian, after the fashion of John of Leyden, he was not troubled with, temperamental notions. His virtues and vices- were- those of his native city— that is, those of ono of the earliest, captains of industry. He was perhaps'., the first of those captains to disguise an industrial tyranny under the aspect of a uncial organisation. Had he lived now his workshops would be adorned with quotations from Rousseau and Helvetius, or their modern equivalents. As it was, those writers had inspired him to build up a capitalistic industry—the continuation of a famous thread manufactory, which ho was called upon to manage at twenty, and ended; of course, by owning. Owen had begun life as the sou of a village labourer, and continued it as a Utopian philosopher with ample means, whose work, like that of most such Utopians, consisted in seeing that 'others worked. This son of a village labourer —proletarian, as he 'would nowadays be called—had devised a system by; which ho could check idleness in his mill with a glance of his eye: Over each loom there hangs a 6quare of wood, each side of which is painted a different colour, black, blue, yellow and

white. If the workman lias misconducted himself on the preceding day. tho colour which is exposed to view is "black; if ho has conducted higiself well it is white. Owen, by walking through tho workshop, sees nt a glance upon the telegrnph the condition of each of his employees. This was Eobert Owen's idea of a utopia —for himself, however, it seemed to his workmen. The idea is not unfamiliar today, but it was novel enough between 1771 and 1858 to have encouraged him to finance his expensive "New Harmony" experiment in Indiana, the failure of which, with a loss'of 200,000 dollars, did nothing to enlighten him. Owen's ideas, running parallel with •those of Fourier, the help of Morelly, were to send Cabet (1788-185G), on his "Voyage en Icaric." America was the country chosen for trying out these Anglo-French dreams. Since America made a success of its isolated self, it has been hard for Europe to leave it alone. Everv sort of experiment, religious and political, has been tried upon it. It has indeed seemod virgin soil to every form of half-baked idealism and cynical quackery. No more significant evidence of tho robustness of its constitution is to bo found than its survival after the application of almost every known philosophic nostrum-

Fourier and His Phalansteries. Probably the most methodically crackbrained of ail 'Utopians' was Charles Fourier of Besancon (1772-1837). A brilliant scholar, he seems to have been possessed 'by a positive disease of "order" and "harmony, a mania for mathematical patterns, numbers, measurements, classifications, and so forth. The rhythmic precision of niusio and the punctual ordering and inter-relation of the stare, the' grouping of natural species in flowers and animals, obsessed him to such a degree -that he came to conceive of human beings as naturally falling into classes according to their correspondences or "passions," of which he considered twelve as fundamental: • Three "actuating" passions (the alternating, emulative, and composite) bring the five "sensitive passions (touch, taste, sight, hearing, and sluoll) into harmony with the four "affective" passions (lovo. friendship, ambition, and familism or paternity). Eighteen hundred persons were needed to constitute such a harmony, to which he gave tho name of "phalanx"; and though nowadays his ideas read like midsummer madness, they found men such as Charles A. Dana, George Eipley, William Bllery Channing, and Albert Brisbane to take them seriously. Brisbane was the most enthusiastic of the American disciples of Fourier, and no fewer than forty i phalansteries,' as the communal organisations of the Fourierites were called, were founded between 1840 and 1850. They all ended in bankruptcy and laughter. Even Mr. Morris Hillquit has confessed that these Fourier experiments, like the similar experiment of Cabct's Icarians in Texas (1848), were failures. The Oneida Community, founded by John Humphrey Noyes in 1848,- proved the most longlived of any of them, its cohesion boing perhaps accounted for by its religions enthusiasm. For thirty years jt flourished as a Perfectionist organisation, and it still survives, though it has suffered a sea change into a merely commercial company for the manufacture of silverware. The Brook Farm Experiment, The most famous American experiment of this sort was that refreshingly innocent enterprise, Brook Farm, which Hawthorne has somewhat too condescendingly immortalised in "The Blithedalo Eomance," and over which, from time to time, Emerson 6pread his benedictory smile. The Brook Farm Institute, of Agriculture and Education was organised on September 29, 1841, with George Eipley, Minor Pratt and Charles A. Dana as its leading and responsible spirits. Emerson, with that hold which, for all his transcendentalism, he always kept on reality—on real estate, in this case—and with his characteristic gentle badinage, had answered Ripley's invitation to become a Brook farmer by saying 'that "investments' in Concord were securer than they were likely to be at Brook Farm." It is well to remember, in reading Emerson, that he was a very typical son of New England. For that reason, perhaps, his philosophy grows every day more potent and authoritative, so strangely combining common sense with Platonic and Brahmanistic moonshine; for when Emerson hitched bis wagon to a star, he did not forget the wagon. The failure of all Utopias whatsoever has come, and will come, of the simple, fact that they are dealing with humanity, and that humanity invincibly resists being crushed into a formula. The best thing about humanity is its constant surprise, its accident of doing something unexpectedly ideal in its. large, freo way. It has an oceanic maimer of dealing with, those, who would control its great tides. It realises, among other things, that when certain millions of individuals are asked altruistically to give up their personal prepossessions for the common good, to subscribe to some doctrine of "the one for nil," should they support the demand, they would only be ministering to the egoism of a few individuals masquerading as the State. Such men—men like Eobert Owen or Charles Fourier—ask nothing but ,10 rule over their fellows-, to gratify not so much an unselfish dream of social amelioration, but an old-fashioned determination for the sceptro and the whip hand. Human egoism is still the controlling factor in human affairs, and king and capitalist no more obstruct the realisation of Utopian dreams and hopes than the Labour leader who, for the momont, seems to be taking the universe too arrogantly in hand. Perhaps the conclusion of the whole matter will prove, as Campanula said at the end of his "City of the Sun": "Ah, well, God gives all in His good time. They astrologise too much."