seventeenth century (A description of the famous Kingdoms of
Macaria, 1641, by Hartlib), the pursuit of science is not a
feature.] It is evident that the predominating interest that moved
his imagination was different from that which guided Plato. While
Plato aimed at securing a permanent solid order founded on immutable
principles, the design of Bacon was to enable his imaginary
community to achieve dominion over nature by progressive
discoveries. The heads of Plato's city are metaphysicians, who
regulate the welfare of the people by abstract doctrines established
once for all; while the most important feature in the New Atlantis
is the college of scientific investigators, who are always
discovering new truths which may alter the conditions of life. Here,
though only in a restricted field, an idea of progressive
improvement, which is the note of the modern age, comes in to modify
the idea of a fixed order which exclusively prevailed in ancient
speculation.

On the other hand, we must not ignore the fact that Bacon's ideal
society is established by the same kind of agency as the ideal
societies of Plato and Aristotle. It has not developed; it was
framed by the wisdom of an original legislator Solamona. In this it
resembles the other imaginary commonwealths of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The organisation of More's Utopia is fixed
initially once for all by the lawgiver Utopus. The origin of
Campanella's Civitas Solis is not expressly stated, but there can be
no doubt that he conceived its institutions as created by the fiat
of a single lawgiver. Harrington, in his Oceana, argues with
Machiavelli that a commonwealth, to be well turned, must be the work
of one man, like a book or a building. [Footnote: Harrington,
Oceana, pp. 77-8, 3rd ed. (1747).]