and had seen in early life but little of the outer world. We must not, therefore, be astonished at his simplicity in believing that such motives are sufficiently powerful in human nature to serve as the sole basis of social organisation and the maintenance of social order. That he had some misgivings as to the successful working of his scheme is shown by the fact of his prescribing such heavy pains and penalties in case of disobedience or dereliction of duty among the members of the commonwealth.

It is not at all unlikely, however, that he looked forward confidently to a time when, with the spread of education and enlightenment, a higher standard of morals would be created, in which the principle of fear would disappear, and voluntary devotedness to the common welfare would gain the victory over selfishness and self-seeking, and so render his scheme. practical.

To be able to raise himself amid the most depressing influences around him to such a high level of moral elevation and aspiring hope, stamps Campanella as a master-mind in his own day, as a genius worthy to stand by the side of the great pioneers of truth of that remarkable age, not only on account of his eminent philosophical attainments, but also, and chiefly, as the propounder of a new "terrestrial economy," founded on a superior moral basis.

L

If the "disciplined imagination" of Bacon afforded that great man a Pisgah-view of a society in the distant future, when his own new philosophy should have been utilised for the material improvement and moral elevation of mankind, the poetic passion of Campanella, on the other hand, opened out to him at least an equally grand prospect of a society in the future, where unselfishness and patriotic devotion would make use of the acquired knowledge and power in the cause of moral and material progress.

In the social speculations of both these great men we see, as in the case of the "Utopia," the spirit of the times reflected. Here, again, we notice the same. longing after a higher social ideal which haunts the human mind from age to age. Sometimes we see depicted in these Utopias, as it were, the throbbings of the heart of humanity in the midst of great social distress; at other times we notice the rebellion of the mind of man against prevailing social incongruities that are no longer reconcilable with increased prosperity and enlightenment. At all times, under varying modes of expression and forms of speech, the undying principle reasserts itself—and never, be it noticed, without some result-in the strong, irrepressible cry for social improvement among the masses and their leaders.

UNIVERSITY OF

CALIFORNIA,

CHAPTER III.

MORELLY'S 66 BASILIADE" AND BABEUF'S "SOCIETY OF EQUALS."

WE have seen already how the Protestant Reformation and the revival of learning gave rise to several Utopias. We now proceed to consider those Utopias which owed their origin to the three revolutionary waves that have passed over France in 1789, 1830, and 1848 successively, leaving their indelible impression on the social and political institutions of almost every country in Europe. In Morelly's "Basiliade" we have one of the earliest indications of the socialistic tendencies which characterised the first revolution. In Babeuf's schemes of social improvement, and his sublime failure when attempting to carry them into practice, we have the final and disappointing result of that mighty social upheaval. Morelly and Babeuf alike express in their social schemes the main object of the revolu

tionary movement-i.e. the establishment of a social republic on the principle of pure equality.

In order to understand the full meaning of these social schemes, we must take a hasty glance of society at the time.

The spread of enlightenment dating from the Reformation, the further extension of civilisation, and the democratic temper among the people, produced at last a collision between them and the privileged orders of society. The miserable condition of the labouring classes, ground down by unjust burdens and heavy taxation, aggravated by intolerable abuses of power on the part of the aristocracy and the clergy, provoked a social revolt against the existing order of things. The diffusion of new ideas among the educated, moreover, had produced the spiritual insubordination and audacious rebellion of the human mind against accepted notions affecting rights of property and class privileges. The demand for total emancipation of the masses from social, religious, and intellectual bondage, made by the leading philosophers, found an echo among thousands of the common people. The upper classes, corrupted by effeminate indulgence, reduced to a set of "gaudy dancing marionettes," were as ignorant of the danger of their position as they were impotent of averting their own doom. Alienated from the people by permanent

absenteeism from their estates, known only by the cruelty of exactions levied on their behalf by grasping middle-men, they failed to perceive the rising discontent of the masses and the urgent need for social reform until it was too late. Thus, when social distress brought about excessive social pressure, famine and distress produced at last, when the people were no longer able or willing to bear it, a social revolution.

Long before the outbreak of this revolution, a small but noble band of philanthropic thinkers and statesmen had endeavoured, by their writings and policy, to avert the catastrophe. Morelly was one of these. As we have seen before, the seething and fermenting of popular discontent reflected, and the popular hopes of a better future expressed, in the Utopias of a few thinking men who caught the spirit of the age, although far in advance of it; so here again, in Morelly's "Basiliade," we see not only the author's play of fancy in describing an ideal community and his veiled irony directed against existing social abuses, but we see, as it were in dim outline, the faint hopes of the people in the midst of their distress, and their growing desire for a return to a more simple state of society which was supposed to have prevailed at the first when all men were equal.

In Morelly we have the ideas of Sir Thomas More

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