The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Utopia

UTOPIA (Gr., not, and , a place), the title of a political romance by Sir Thomas More, and the name that he gave to an imaginary island, which he represents to have been discovered by a companion of Amerigo Vespucci, and in which existed a perfect society. He pictured a community where all the property belonged to the government, to which every one contributed by his labor, receiving therefrom a supply of his wants; where the citizen rose through all the gradations of his existence from form to form, as if in a vast public school; where gold was contemned, and all the members of the society, unswerved by passion, were fixed each in his proper place. &ldquo;Utopia&rdquo; was published in Latin in 1516, and translated into English by Bishop Burnet.