y, including their own. They also know that human beings in a community cannot keep one another under surveillance all the time--although their best to do just that. Says Raphael: You see how it is--wherever you are, you always have to work. There's never any excuse for idleness. There are also no wine-taverns, no ale-houses, no brothels, no opportunities for seduction, no secret meeting-places. Everyone has his eye on you, so you're practically forced to get on with your job, and make some proper use of your spare time.[43]Given the Augustinian view of human nature in Utopia, we are not surprised that the society has harsh penalties for those who do not conform. More's contemporary Machiavelli posed this question in the same year that More wrote the Utopia: Is it better to be loved or feared? It is good to be both loved and feared, said the great Florentine political theorist, but if one has to make a choice between fear and love, it is better to be feared. Utopia is a machine of state constructed to the most reasonable specifications. But it is lubricated by fear. More posits the death penalty for two convictions of adultery, assuming that in a society where the family is the chief pillar, anything that disrupts the family is of lethal consequence to the state. And, as we have seen, he also requires the death penalty for private discussion of political affairs. Those who sin grievously in Utopia are tried in public and usually condemned to slavery. They are not usually put to death because the immediate disappearance of the criminal is not as helpful example as the salutary fear created by observing lifelong punishment. Those condemned slaves who rebel against their servitude are put to death like wild beasts.[44]All this represents a strange paradox. The individual is seen as a dangerous surd in society, likely to spin out of control at any moment and inflict catastrophic damage on the whole community unless the whole community keeps...
