f the same race with them. He is
penetrated with the spirit of Plato, and quotes or adapts many thoughts
both from the Republic and from the Timaeus. He prefers public duties to
private, and is somewhat impatient of the importunity of relations. His
citizens have no silver or gold of their own, but are ready enough to
pay them to their mercenaries. There is nothing of which he is more
contemptuous than the love of money. Gold is used for fetters of
criminals, and diamonds and pearls for children's necklaces (When the
ambassadors came arrayed in gold and peacocks' feathers 'to the eyes of
all the Utopians except very few, which had been in other countries for
some reasonable cause, all that gorgeousness of apparel seemed shameful
and reproachful. In so much that they most reverently saluted the
vilest and most abject of them for lords--passing over the ambassadors
themselves without any honour, judging them by their wearing of golden
chains to be bondmen. You should have seen children also, that had cast
away their pearls and precious stones, when they saw the like sticking
upon the ambassadors' caps, dig and push their mothers under the sides,
saying thus to them--"Look, though he were a little child still." But
the mother; yea and that also in good earnest: "Peace, son," saith she,
"I think he be some of the ambassadors' fools."')

Like Plato he is full of satirical reflections on governments and
princes; on the state of the world and of knowledge. The hero of his
discourse (Hythloday) is very unwilling to become a minister of state,
considering that he would lose his independence and his advice would
never be heeded (Compare an exquisite passage, of which the conclusion
is as follows: 'And verily it is naturally given...suppressed and
ended.') He ridicules the new logic of his time; the Utopians could
never be made to understand the doctrine of Second Intentions ('For they
have not devised one of all those rules of restrictions, amplifications,
and suppositions, very wittily invented in the small Logicals, which
here our children in every place do learn. Furthermore, they were never
yet able to find out the second intentions; insomuch that none of them
all could ever see man himself in common, as they call him, though he be
(as you know) bigger than was ever any giant, yea, and pointed to of us
even with our finger.') He is very severe on the sports of the gentry;
the Utopians count 'hunting the lowest, the vilest, and