History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [295]
As for ethics, we are told that they are too much inclined to think that felicity consists in pleasure. This view, however, has no bad consequences, because they think that in the next life the good are rewarded and the wicked punished. They are not ascetic, and consider fasting silly. There are many religions among them, all of which are tolerated. Almost all believe in God and immortality; the few who do not are not accounted citizens, and have no part in political life, but are otherwise unmolested. Some holy men eschew meat and matrimony; they are thought holy, but not wise. Women can be priests, if they are old and widowed. The priests are few; they have honour, but no power.
Bondmen are people condemned for heinous offences, or foreigners who have been condemned to death in their own countries, but whom the Utopians have agreed to take as bondmen.
In the case of a painful incurable disease, the patient is advised to commit suicide, but is carefully tended if he refuses to do so.
Raphael Hythloday relates that he preached Christianity to the Utopians, and that many were converted when they learnt that Christ was opposed to private property. The importance of communism is constantly stressed; almost at the end we are told that in all other nations 'I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the common wealth.'
More's Utopia was in many ways astonishingly liberal. I am not thinking so much of the preaching of communism, which was in the tradition of many religious movements. I am thinking rather of what is said about war, about religion and religious toleration, against the wanton killing of animals (there is a most eloquent passage against hunting), and in favour of a mild criminal law. (The book opens with an argument against the death penalty for theft.) It must be admitted, however, that life in More's Utopia, as in most others, would be intolerably dull. Diversity is essential to happiness, and in Utopia there is hardly any. This is a defect of all planned social systems, actual as well as imaginary.
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5
THE REFORMATION AND COUNTER-REFORMATION
The Reformation and Counter-Reformation, alike, represent the rebellion of less civilized nations against the intellectual domination of Italy. In the case of the Reformation, the revolt was also political and theological: the authority of the Pope was rejected, and the tribute which he had obtained from the power of the keys ceased to be paid. In the case of the Counter-Reformation, there was only revolt against the intellectual and moral freedom of Renaissance Italy; the power of the Pope was not diminished, but enhanced, while at the same time it was made clear that his authority was incompatible with the easy-going laxity of the Borgias and Medici. Roughly speaking, the Reformation was German, the Counter-Reformation Spanish; the wars of religion were at the same time wars between Spain and its enemies, coinciding in date with the period when Spanish power was at its height.
The attitude of public opinion in northern nations towards Renaissance Italy is illustrated in the English saying of that time:
An Englishman Italianate
Is a devil incarnate.
It will be observed how many of the villains in Shakespeare are Italians. Iago is perhaps the most prominent instance, but an even more illustrative one is Iachimo in Cymbeline, who leads astray the virtuous Briton travelling in Italy, and comes to England to practise his wicked wiles upon unsuspecting natives. Moral indignation against Italians had much to do with the Reformation. Unfortunately it involved also intellectual repudiation of what