UTOPIA (Neo-Lat., from Gk. on, not + TOiros, topes. place). An impracticable scheme of social regeneration, an imaginary state of so ciety, an ideal country where all things are per fect. The term as thus used goes back to the Utopia of Sir Thomas More (q.v.). a political ro mance descriptive of a happy society on an imagi nary island. This work originally appeared in Latin at Louvain in 1516 under the title De Optima 1?eipublicce Statu dequc fora Inside Utopia and was translated into English by Bishop Burnet. The romance was a disguised exposition of a liberal and rationalistic theory of society. including certain principles that would now be called socialistic. Far from being so unique that it might have been expected to give a generic name to ideal commonwealths, the Utopia is only one of a long series of similar dreams. First in order of both time and im portance is Plato's Republic, the chief thought of which is that ideal justice can be established only in a commonwealth where every individual has that place in the division of labor for which he is fitted by nature, and where all affairs are directed by the men of superior wisdom, whose government should extend even to provision for the nurture and education of children brought into the world under a system of stirpiculture. Plu tarch's Lifc of Lyda-gas idealizes the socialistic State of the Spartans. Bacon's New Atlantis
.( 1024-29) pictures a commonwealth in which all men attain happiness through a regulation of life by science. Campenella's City of the Sun (1637) portrays a community where all live to gether in public buildings, working only four hours a day, and despising idleness. Very dif ferent in its ideal of society is .James Harring ton's Oceana (1656), a book which emphasizes the Aristotelian idea of a natural aristocracy among men, and develops fully the thought of personal liberty established wider parliamentary government. It exercised a great influence upon the minds of American political thinkers during and after the Revolution. Other Utopias more or less influential have been the Voyage en Na lente in Taemaque; Cabet's Voyage en Icarie a Utopia of the modern prole tariat ; Bulwer Lytton's The Cowing Race ( 1S71 ) ; Pellainy's Looking Backward ( 1889 ) ; William Morris's News from ,Von-herc (1890). in which joy in beautiful work is to be the true social bond: and Hertzka's Freiland (1891). Some of the more important works mentioned, excepting Plato's Republic, and the nineteenth century romances. are reprinted in Morley's Ideal Commonwealths (18S6).