Writers on politics like
Machiavelli and Bodin treated the study of government as a science, based on
the study of human behaviour in history. Next to this empirical approach,
another way of thinking about the organisation of states was offered by the
genre of the utopia – the idealised perfect society. The Utopia, as a sustained
exercise in thought, is a product of the Renaissance, though some important
roots can be traced: first, the monastic tradition encouraged Christians to
think of human individuals and communities as perfectible, capable of living in
harmony and pursuing the common good. Secondly, the writings of antiquity,
particularly The Republic of Plato,
inspired humanists to consider society in ideal terms. This idealised society
is also portrayed in the various versions of the Golden Age in Renaissance
literature, though while these emphasise the perfect society as existing in the
past, the utopia is generically distinct in describing a society notionally
existing in the present or the future.
A third inducement to contemplation
of the utopian society was the explorations and discoveries of the early modern period, which
revealed that forms of society and modes of living were not universal but
contingent on location and history. There was, it seemed, nothing inevitable
about the social and political arrangements of the West, and humans were
evidently capable of organising themselves in societies in many different ways. These various influences are visible in the
most famous work in the genre, the Utopia
of Thomas More. About a century later, the
New World is once more the setting for the New Atlantis of Francis Bacon, which is
further informed by technological advances and the new scientific method. As
well as being interesting texts in their own right, these two books illustrate
important strands of thought in Renaissance thinking which are reflected in
many different kinds of writing.
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| Illustration to More, Utopia, 1516. Image:Wikipedia |
Thomas More (1478-1535) wrote his
Utopia in Latin, for an educated audience: its original title is De optimo reipublicae statu, deque nova
insula Utopia (On the best form of Republic, and the new island Utopia,
published 1516). In the kind of Latin wordplay relished by More, Erasmus and
their fellow humanists, More gave as the etymology of ‘utopia’ the Greek ou-topos, meaning ‘no place’, suggesting
such a state of affairs was impossible; but the title may also be a pun on eu-topos, or ‘happy place’. More started
by writing Book II, a description of the imaginary island of Utopia
Such is Utopia the ‘happy place’.
But it is also an impossible ‘no-place’, and More underlines this point by
adding a prefatory first book. Here he recounts how on a diplomatic trip (which
really took place) he was introduced to the traveller Ralph Hythloday, who had
visited Utopia and describes it to him (the recent voyages of Amerigo Vespucci
to America, made famous in Vespucci’s account published in 1507, are
mentioned). Hythloday’s name is another pun, constructed from Greek words
meaning ‘a skilled conveyor of nonsense’. By putting the description of Utopia
into the mouth of Hythloday, More achieves an ironical distancing effect,
dialogically voicing praise of the ideal commonwealth and scepticism of its
viability in the same work. (The choice of Latin creates another kind of
distance, keeping the work in the safe hands of readers who enjoy Greek puns
and are unlikely to be stirred to revolt by any of its sentiments.) In the
persona of Hythloday, More is also able in the Conclusion of the work to make
explicit criticisms of European society, and especially England
... But my chief
objection was to the basis of their whole system, that is, their communal living
and their moneyless economy. This one thing alone takes away all the nobility,
magnificence, splendour and majesty which (in the popular view) are the true
ornaments and glory of any commonwealth.
How is our interpretation of this
affected by the parenthetical ‘in the popular view’? This seems to imply that,
from the point of view of the learned narrator and his audience, admiration of
‘splendour’ is a vulgar concern. And what are we to make of the fact that More
was himself for many years tempted to forego public life and pursue the
‘communal living and ... moneyless economy’ of a monastic vocation? The ending
finely balances scepticism and admiration, idealism and realism:
Meanwhile, while
I can hardly agree with everything he said (though he is a man of
unquestionable learning and enormous experience of human affairs), yet I freely
confess that in the Utopian commonwealth there are many features that in our
own societies I would like rather than expect to see.
Like More’s Utopia, Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627) is set in the newly
discovered world. His Atlantis is an island called Bensalem in the North
Pacific, settled by Europeans. The elite
of the island are educated at a scientific academy, ‘the House of Salomon,
which is described to the traveller by one of its Fathers. The purpose of the
House of Salomon is succinctly explained: ‘The end of our foundation is the
knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the
bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible’. The discovery
of causes and first principles is here linked to the technical imperative of
man reinforcing his dominion over nature – ‘the enlarging of the bounds of
human empire’. The description of the House of Salomon is a clear and engaging
account of the conception of the new, experimental science. Much of its
activity is concerned with the study of natural phenomena and their artificial
reproduction: for example, meteorological effects, light and life itself are
all generated by human means. The division of labour among the Fellows of the
House embraces all stages of science: knowledge is gathered from travel, from
books and experiment; it is then tabulated and applied. ‘Lastly, we have those
that raise the former discoveries by experiments into greater observations,
axioms, and aphorism. These we call Interpreters of Nature’. This is what we
would call the establishment of first principles. Scientific knowledge is
gathered progressively and cumulatively and leads to greater and greater
technical dominance by man over his environment. In its emphasis on
fabrication, on using artificial means to imitate and improve on raw nature,
the New Atlantis looks back to Elizabethan aesthetics; at the same time, its pursuit
of knowledge through experiment and hypothesis describes the methodology that
would later be institutionalised by the Royal Society, founded in 1660.
The utopias of More and Bacon show
a continuing faith in the humanist model of man: properly educated, man can
exercise his reason to construct a just and reasonable world; by using his
knowledge, he can control his natural environment. The vision is implicitly
godless: by their own means, humans can control their own destiny, and need not
look to divine salvation to be freed from their limitations. The different
visions of More and Bacon are also political statements, in presenting a
contrast to real English society and institutions; at the same time, the genre
has a built-in scepticism: utopias present some ideal scheme, at the same time
reminding us that these exist ‘nowhere’. The possibilities of a brave new
world, perfectly organized, and the undermining of this vision by the
recognition of human fallibility, is explored dramatically by Shakespeare in The Tempest: here it is Prospero’s magic
rather than Baconian science which acts upon the external world, but its
motives and results are ambiguous, and the human vices leading to conflict are
not clearly reformed. The European vision of utopia is put in the mouth of the
counsellor Gonzalo and made to seem both intoxicating and impossible – a
theatrical version of the ironic distancing effects achieved by More:
GON: I’ the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things. For no kind of
traffic
Would I admit; no name of
magistrate;
Letters should not be known;
riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract,
succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth,
vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or
oil;
No occupation, all men idle, all;
And women too - but innocent and
pure;
No sovereignty -
SEB: Yet he would be king on’t.
ANT: The latter end of his
commonwealth forgets the beginning.
GON: All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavour. Treason,
felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of
any engine,
Would I not have; but nature should
bring forth,
Of its own kind all foison, all
abundance,
To feed my innocent people.
SEB: No marrying ‘mong his subjects?
ANT: None, man; all idle: whores and knaves. (II.i. 153-72)
The cross-currents of golden vision
and worldly scepticism return us to one of the central tensions in Renaissance
thought. Endowed with the faculty of reason and imagination, man can apprehend
perfection; yet fallen from grace into vice, humans are ‘whores and knaves’,
drawn towards dissension and destruction, their dreams of communist or
technical paradises existing only in the mind.
