women all around them what human beings were capable
of when only partially released from feudal bondage. They
knew much of science, of history, of foreign lands, old and
newly discovered. Thus we may account, in part at least,
for the extraordinary range and richness of thought and
incident in More Utopia, Rabelais' Gargantua and
Pantagruel, Cervantes' Don Quixote, and Shakespeare's
major plays.

The content of these works was profoundly realistic but
their forms were fantastic, for absolute monarchies did
not permit the direct statement of social truth. Absolute
monarchy in the Renaissance was, in essence, a final rally-
ing of the landowners against the capitalists. The princes
had almost unlimited power to destroy individuals whom
they considered dangerous and subversive--that is, truth-
speaking or rebellious.

This was the main reason why More's ideal republic was
named Utopia, the Greek word for "nowhere"; his fictional
spokesman Hythlodaye--literally, "a distributor of non-
sense" was the mouthpiece for his severe criticism of kings
and social evils, as well as for his picture of a democratic,
communistic society.

It is, of course, unhistorical and mechanical to try to
contain the infinite variety of such a Renaissance mind
within single modern categories. Thomas More, as the
author of Utopia, cannot be adequately described as either
an orthodox Catholic, or a socialist, or a pre-Lutheran
reformer, or a progressive capitalist or a dispassionate
intellectual. More's mind, said Erasmus, had so many
sides that he felt inadequate to describe it.

Kautsky's study of More and his Utopia is valuable for
the broad background it gives of changing and conflicting

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