r Thomas More, which has long afforded to the
conservatives of church and state a term of contempt applicable to all
reformatory schemes and innovations, is one of a series of fabulous
writings, in which the authors, living in evil times and unable to
actualize their plans for the well-being of society, have resorted to
fiction as a safe means of conveying forbidden truths to the popular
mind. Plato's "Timaeus," the first of the series, was written after the
death of Socrates and the enslavement of the author's country. In this
are described the institutions of the Island of Atlantis,--the writer's
ideal of a perfect commonwealth. Xenophon, in his "Cyropaedia," has also
depicted an imaginary political society by overlaying with fiction
historical traditions. At a later period we have the "New Atlantis" of
Lord Bacon, and that dream of the "City of the Sun" with which Campanella
solaced himself in his long imprisonment.

The "Utopia" of More is perhaps the best of its class. It is the work of
a profound thinker, the suggestive speculations and theories of one who
could

"Forerun his age and race, and let
His feet millenniums hence be set
In midst of knowledge dreamed not yet."

Much of what he wrote as fiction is now fact, a part of the frame-work of
European governments, and the political truths of his imaginary state are
now practically recognized in our own democratic system. As might be
expected, in view of the times in which the author wrote, and the
exceedingly limited amount of materials which he found ready to his hands
for the construction of his social and political edifice, there is a want
of proportion and symmetry in the structure. Many of his theories are no
doubt impracticable and unsound. But, as a whole, the work is an
admirable one, striding in advance of the author's age, and prefiguring a
government of religious toleration and political freedom. The following
extract from it was doubtless regarded in his day as something worse than
folly or the dream of a visionary enthusiast:--

"He judged it wrong to lay down anything rashly, and seemed to doubt
whether these different forms of religion might not all come from God,
who might inspire men in a different manner, and be pleased with the
variety. He therefore thought it to be indecent and foolish for any man
to threaten and terrify another, to make him believe what did not strike
him as true."