New Atlantis and The City of the Sun: Two Classic Utopias

By Francis Bacon, Tomasso Campanella and Gregory Claeys

In keeping with the inquisitive spirit of their times, two 17th-century writers envisioned their own philosophical and intellectual utopias. Tomasso Campanella, a Calabrian monk, published The City of the Sun in 1623, and Francis Bacon's The New Atlantis appeared in 1627. Campanella was a student of logic and physics; Bacon focused on politics and philosophy. Despite differences in setting and treatment, both authors employed the latest methods of scientific experimentation to restructure the social order, and both works abound in imaginative thought and expression.
Campanella formulated the first scientifically based socialistic system — one that furnished a model for subsequent ideal communities. Bacon focused on the duty of the state toward science, and his projections for state-sponsored research anticipated many advances in medicine and surgery, meteorology, and machinery. Both of these classics mirror their period's idealism and its revolutionary trends in thought.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Jul 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9780486832661

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was an English philosopher, scientist, and statesman. Recognized for his intelligence from a young age, Bacon would develop the empirical basis for modern scientific inquiry—known today as the scientific method—by promoting skepticism and observational experimentation as essential for the discovery of truth and the growth of human knowledge. A central figure of the scientific revolution and the Renaissance, Bacon was recognized as Lord Verulam and Viscount St. Alban during his lifetime and was honored by both Queen Elizabeth I and King James VI for his contributions to society. Bacon was also an accomplished statesman, responsible for drafting early legal documents and charters for the British colonization of the Americas. His career was not without controversy, however, as accusations of bribery tarnished his reputation and barred him from government service toward the end of his life and career. Today, he is remembered as one of the founders of modern science whose theories and methods continue to form the basis of all scientific experimentation and inquiry.

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NEW ATLANTIS & THE CITY OF THE SUN

NEW ATLANTIS & THE CITY OF THE SUN

Two Classic Utopias

Francis Bacon & Tomasso Campanella

Foreword by

Gregory Claeys

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

MINEOLA, NEW YORK

DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

GENERAL EDITOR: SUSAN L. RATTINER

EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: LYNNE CANNON

Foreword Copyright © 2018 by Dover Publications, Inc.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover Thrift edition, first published in 2018, is an unabridged republication of New Atlantis by Francis Bacon and The City of the Sun by Tomasso Campanella, as originally published in Famous Utopias: Being the Complete Text of Rousseau's Social Contract, More's Utopia, Bacon's New Atlantis, [and] Campanella s City of the Sun by Tudor Publishing Co., New York, in 1901. The Foreword, prepared especially for this edition, was written by Gregory Claeys. The original 1901 Introduction, written by Charles M. Andrews, has been abridged and adapted for this Dover edition.

International Standard Book Number

ISBN-13: 978-0-486-82172-6

ISBN-10: 0-486-82172-2

Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

82172201 2018

www.doverpublications.com

CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

New Atlantis

The City of the Sun

FOREWORD

Utopianism is the imagining of much better worlds than our own, the effort to actually create them, and the results which follow, for good or ill, in actually-established utopias and dystopias. The better worlds themselves have generally been defined by greater order, stability, and harmony than the existing world usually manifests; and relationships between individuals, in particular, which are less competitive and more oriented towards friendship or a type of familial, extended kinship. Up to the beginning of the modern period, most utopian concepts were rooted in an ideal past stage of human development. For the ancient Greeks, a long-lost Golden Age provided an image of peace and plenty which might, philosophers like Plato surmised, be recaptured at least in part through careful social re-organization. Christianity envisioned an original paradisical state—the Garden of Eden, as well as a future heaven for the virtuous—and in monastic life, in pious pilgrimages to the Holy Land or to tombs of the saints, posited a halfway house where the vanity, greed, and vice of everyday life could be at least momentarily superseded and spiritual sanctity attained. If the ideal life lay only at the beginning and end of sacred history, something approaching a halfway state might be achievable in this life. The European Renaissance signalled a widespread effort to recapture this possibility of earthly governments of greater virtue and piety. One text came to embody this pursuit above all others. The publication of Thomas More's Utopia in 1516, with its purported discovery of an ideal island commonwealth in the South Seas, unveiled a myriad of possibilities for humanity's onward progress. Before More, most of the mainstream travel literature had been dominated by Sir John Mandeville's best-selling Travels (c. 1356), which looked backward to classical authors in its discovery of lands inhabited by monstrous beings with dogs' heads, and the like. Christopher Columbus sought, amongst other things, the long-lost earthly paradise in the Americas. Satire to one side, Thomas More hinted at the possibility that a model commonwealth might have long since been established by Europeans which, rediscovered, could serve as a stimulus for their degenerate successors. Most voyages of discovery had gold as their quest, but virtue, too, in a god-fearing age, glittered in the eyes of its beholders. Humanity's greatness might yet lie before it, and opulence, plenty, and order might yet be reconciled. The foundations of the eighteenth-century theory of progress, which would come to dominate modern social thought, were being established.

The two classic early seventeenth-century utopias presented here address these visions in very different ways. First written in Latin, The City of the Sun of the Dominican monk Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) appeared in Frankfurt in 1623. It describes a great city some seven miles in circumference located near the equator in the southern hemisphere. Its inhabitants, the Solarians, exhibit all the virtues we would expect a monk to promote, including sobriety, liberality, chastity, and the love of knowledge. The city is formed of seven concentric rings, whose well-defended walls are decorated with illustrations of its inhabitants' piety and love of nature, which are focussed on their worship of the sun, a great temple being located at the highest point of the city. Also portrayed on the walls are their alphabet, maps of the country, its laws, and the types of plants, fishes and animals, trades, occupations and inventions, even the weather. As for Thomas More, the Greek philosopher Plato is a key influence here, though the people are described as originating in India. The government is by an elected high priest, Hoh, who rules for life. He is assisted by three princes of equal authority, responsible for the domains of power, wisdom, and love, who confer with the general population through frequent councils of leaders. Some magistrates are elected on the basis of their capacity, but the majority are chosen by the four chiefs. Plato's guardian class were communists, holding their property and wives in common. In More's Utopia property is also common, but its ownership is now extended to the entire population. Campanella, like Plato, includes wives and children, and houses and food, too, though apparently only in the city, not elsewhere in the province (p. 50). Private property is regarded as the chief source of self-love; when it is removed there remains only love for the state, the result being that the inhabitants burn with so great a love for their fatherland as scarcely seems imaginable (pp. 50–1). Yet, while not dependent on a mutual exchange of benefits, friendships of many types are widely encouraged. Sexual intercourse, however, is strictly regulated by the prince in charge of Love, assisted by many lesser magistrates. Women who use makeup face the death penalty, and pride is generally held the most execrable vice (p. 61). Magistrates ensure the birth only of the most fit, with the time of conception being determined by astrologers. Children are reared in common, and are regarded as bred for the preservation of the species, and not for individual pleasure (p. 60). The workday is restricted to four hours, and diet and exercise are regulated to promote the well-being of the population, who are so healthy they usually live to the age of a hundred. There is some division of labour according to sex, the women doing all the clothes-making, the men all woodwork and arms manufacture. Social equality—the characteristic utopian theme—is upheld through a system of universal free education which includes the participation of all in agriculture. Men and women dress similarly in white, and all go barefoot. At meals the young wait on their elders, and also, with some unwillingness, on each other. Here magistrates get larger portions, though they distribute some of this to the more studious boys at their table. There are no servants or slaves (as there are in More's text), and everyone learns many trades, then practises the one they are best at. The government is theocratic, and Campanella hints that Spain is destined to impose God's plan on the world through just such a monarchy. There is a hint here, too, of the promise of scientific and technological discoveries, like ships which can travel without wind or sails. There is only one book, however, called Wisdom, which contains all the knowledge of the nation. War with the four impious neighbouring kingdoms on the island is unfortunately frequent, though all, fortuitously, are invariably defeated.

Scientific and technological advancement is the grand theme of New Atlantis. Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was amongst the leading statesmen of his day, serving not only as Lord Chancellor of England, but making a seminal contribution to knowledge through his cultivation of a scientific, empirically-based method for observing nature. Written by 1617, his unfinished New Atlantis (1626), which reached eleven editions by 1676, represents for us today a crucial, nodal point not only in the history of utopianism but in humanity's quest for mastery over nature generally. The plot of the novel, which invokes Plato's description of the original lost continent of Atlantis, is simple, and was replicated a hundred times subsequently: English mariners discover an island called Bensalem in the South Sea of the Pacific Ocean whose Christian inhabitants are vastly more virtuous and accomplished than their European contemporaries. Chaste and honest, righteous beyond comparison, they are singularly lacking in corruption, especially in politics. Amongst their leading institutions is an establishment, named Salomon's House, the noblest foundation ... that ever was upon the earth, where natural philosophy, as scientific endeavour was then termed, is freely explored with a view to improving society (p. 20). In his Instauratio Magna (1620) Bacon had suggested that experimental laboratories might be promoted by the state to advance scientific knowledge. New Atlantis described how investigators aimed to use knowledge of the causes, and secret motions of things to accomplish the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible (p. 31) to fulfill the promise of mankind's domination of nature first suggested in Genesis, where God grants dominion of the earth to Adam and Eve. They engage in voyages every twelve years to secure knowledge from all parts of the earth, and in deep caves and high towers produce artificial metals. Lakes, gardens, orchards, baths, parks, and enclosures are used for all manner of cultivation and experiment, the prolongation of life being of special interest. Instruments of war are also produced, and flying through the air and submarine travel have already been achieved. There is even a house of deceits of the senses where impostures and illusions are contrived, a veritable fake news factory. This is indeed a veritable scientists' paradise, and those who produce valuable inventions are rewarded liberally and have a statue erected, some of brass, some even of gold (p. 40). Some of their discoveries are hidden even from the state. We learn relatively little of the wider society, though different religions are tolerated. (There are Jews, but they are described as being far different from those elsewhere in their acceptance of Christianity.) The happy inhabitants of Bensalem do not permit polygamy, and reject Thomas More's proposal that engaged persons view one another naked before marriage, instead allowing their friends to do so. New Atlantis, unfortunately, remained unfinished. Bacon's vision was parodied in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), which imagined an institute on the island of Laputa devoted to such tasks as extracting sunshine from cucumbers. But Bacon's vision of scientific progress, and a boundless faith in technological innovation, would come to dominate western thought, and eventually that of the world.

What do we gain by reading these works, now some five hundred years old, today? Both, like many utopian tracts, remind us of a recurring vision of political honesty and transparency which jolts uneasily against our own age of cynicism, greed and corruption, when politics is too easily regarded as a legitimate path to private and corporate enrichment. Civic