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Utopia; or, the happy republic
by Sir Thomas More (Saint)
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Excerpt:
eealed from view. He absorbs the whole mind of those who gain his intimacy. There is a glory about his ideas, as about the heads of the apostles, which appears to be brightly reflected from our own fancy as we read, and to transform us into something like his resemblance. We feel ourselves in presence of the beautiful; it descends around us like a shower, but ashower that warms and fructifies, and clothes even the most barren and stony places of the soul with verdure. Hence the power and the charm of Plato. He possesses art in perfection, but possesses along with it something which transcends all art, and operates like an eternal source ef energy upon whomsoever approaches him. These qualities, which characterize all his genuine remains, are nowhere more visible than in the "Republic," which, as I have already remarked, excited in Sir Thomas More the wish to frame in imitation of it an ideal state, perfect in laws and manners, and more adapted to the notions and wants of the age in which he lived. Properly to comprehend the modern work, therefore, it will be necessary to form something like a just conception of the ancient one, which has served as the antitype not merely of the Utopia, but of the "Panchaia" of Euhemeros, the " City of the Sun" of Campanella, the " New Atlantis" of Lord Bacon, the " Gaudentio di Lucca," attributed to Bishop Berkeley, the " Oceana" of Harrington,1 and a host of similar productions less renowned.
1 Gcettling, Pref. ad. Aristot. Polit. p. xii attributes to Harris the Oceana of Harrington, which, therefore, he had never read
But the reader must by no means expect a complete analysis of the "Republic," which would greatly transcend the limits of an introduction. All I can here attempt is a description of the artificial structure of the work, with an explanation, necessarily brief and imperfect, of the principles according to which Plato builds up the frame of civil society. Much doubt has existed as to the object sought to be attained in this voluminous dialogue, some contending that it was simply to ascertain and illustrate the nature of justice, in order to which it was necessary to exhibit it in operation, not in an imperfect individual, but in a perfect community. This is the hypothesis of Schleiermacher and Morgenstern, who, though differing on minor points, agree upon the whole, and maintain their notions with great subtilty and force of argument. "If," says the former, " we are to start upon the supposition that the representation of the state is the proper grand object, it would be hardly possible to conceive why the appearance of the contrary is pointedly produced.2 And even if it could be explained why Plato combined the investigation concerning justice with this grand
In his countryman Buhle's " History of Modern Philosophy," t. iv. pp. 424—448, he might, however, have discovered not only the real author of the work, but a very full and able analysis of its contents.
4 This is merely begging the question, and begging it, too, in that impudent way which implies that no one, save the writer, could see what the grand object of Plato might be. Gcettling has a good remark on this point. "In qua republica," says he, "qui imprimis de justitia ocere voluisse Platonem,
Morgenstern, whose arguments are abridged and represented with much ingenuity by Stallbaum, arrives, after a lengthened discussion, at the conclusion, that Plato's design was to develope the nature of justice and of virtue in general, first in the abstract, and secondly in their operation on human happiness.4 And this question, which has afforded so many opportunities of disputation to the learned of Germany, had already, as we learn from Proclus, exercised for ages the abilities of the ancients themselves.5 Muretus, too, who has left behind him a commentary on the first and second books of the Republic, enters at the very outset into the
atque earn ob causam non irepi iroXirft'ag, sed irepi SiKaioixvvtjg librum suum inscripsisse arbitratl sunt, ii eodem jure Aristotelem, quum de politicis scriberet, non politicam, sed ethicam docere voluisse dicerent."—Pre/, ad Arist. Pol. p. xi.
