From Nowhere: Utopian and Dystopian Visions of our - Chris J. Young

29. Francis Bacon (1561–1626). Sylva sylvarvm, or, A Naturall Historie, in Ten
Centuries. London: J. H. Haviland, 1627.
Perhaps better known as an English statesman, scientist, and scholar, Francis Bacon’s most
enduring legacy may be his utopian work The New Atlantis. Written around 1624 and published
posthumously in 1627 as an appendix to Sylva Sylvarum, The New Atlantis became a prototype
for all subsequent utopias based on scientific and technological foundations. The New Atlantis is
narrated by a Spanish sailor whose crew arrived on the isolated island of Bensalem off the Pacific
coast of Peru following a storm. The sailor describes his encounter with the Bensalemites, and
provides a detailed account of their social practices and organization. Citizens acquire knowledge
through the observation of natural phenomena at the Hall of Science called Solomon’s House. There
they learn everything there is to know about God’s creation so they can bring themselves closer
to His divinity. Although a noble endeavour by the Bensalemites, Bacon hints at how arduous a
process this will be when he states ‘and the rest was not perfected’.
30. James Harrington (1611–1677). The Common-wealth of Oceana. London: J.
Streater, 1656
Matthew Wren (1629–1672). Monarchy Asserted, or, The State of
Monarchicall & Popular Government, in Vindication of the Considerations
upon Mr Harrington’s Oceana. Oxford: W. Hall, 1659.
James Harrington’s The Commonwealth of Oceana represents a moderate reaction to both the
monarchists and the radical democrats of mid-seventeenth-century political life. Published
anonymously five years after the end of the English Civil War, The Commonwealth of Oceana
demands the eradication of England’s social ills through improvement of the economy, and an
end to unlimited powers and terms of office. it proposes an idealized replacement for monarchy
by a government based on reason and temperance. Harrington, who had immense influence over
the drafting of the United States Constitution in the late eighteenth century, presents a British
government based on a balance of power.
An equal commonwealth is a government established upon an equal agrarian [law],
arising into the superstructures or three orders, the senate debating and proposing,
the people resolving, and the magistracy executing, by an equal rotation through the
suffrage of the people given by the ballot.
48 Case Five & Six: Exploring Nowhere