What measure of liberty Bacon would have granted to the people of
his perfect state we cannot say; his work breaks off before he comes
to describe their condition. But we receive the impression that the
government he conceived was strictly paternal, though perhaps less
rigorous than the theocratic despotism which Campanella, under
Plato's influence, set up in the City of the Sun. But even
Campanella has this in common with More--and we may be sure that
Bacon's conception would have agreed here--that there are no hard-
and-fast lines between the classes, and the welfare and happiness of
all the inhabitants is impartially considered, in contrast with
Plato's scheme in the Laws, where the artisans and manual labourers
were an inferior caste existing less for their own sake than for the
sake of the community as a whole. [Footnote: This however does not
apply to the Republic, as is so commonly asserted. See the just
criticisms of A. A. Trever, A History of Greek Economic Thought
(Chicago, 1916), 49 sqq.]

It may finally be pointed out that these three imaginary
commonwealths stand together as a group, marked by a humaner temper
than the ancient, and also by another common characteristic which
distinguishes them, on one hand, from the ideal states of Plato and,
on the other, from modern sketches of desirable societies. Plato and
Aristotle conceived their constructions within the geographical
limits of Hellas, either in the past or in the present. More, Bacon,
and Campanella placed theirs in distant seas, and this remoteness in
space helped to create a certain illusion, of reality. [Footnote:
Civitas Solis, p. 461 (ed. 1620). Expectancy of end of world: Ib. p.
455.] The modern plan is to project the perfect society into a
period of future time. The device of More and his successors was