THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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The abolition of private property does not dissolve the contrast: for while in More this abolition overcomes subordination and superiority in general and posits total
equality, in Campanella this equality becomes the very foundation soil on which a new hierarchy arises, that of talents, virtues and ‘primalities’. If we clarify this contrast
between More and Campanella in terms of the two more competing than connected natural myths of their time, then we can say that More or the utopia of freedom
corresponds almost as much to alchemy as Campanella or the utopia of order corresponds in fact to astrology. More never mentions alchemy, if only because gold is
despised on his island and because the refining of metals in the symbolic sense, as a refining of the world, no longer seems to be necessary there. But when More
relates right at the beginning that the founder of his island first blasted it away from the mainland, and when, as More says, it is isolated precisely from the world of the
‘plumbei’ or leaden ones, then these passages were soon interpreted alchemically and could be interpreted like this, in the sense of the later Rosicrucians or initiated
‘general reformers’ (Andreae, Comenius). ‘Utopia’ is distilled from the evil world like gold from lead, — alchemy was regarded as the mythology of this liberation.
Campanella on the other hand certainly does mention alchemy, even the golden lustre in Sol and Civitas sobs suggested this reminiscence, but the continuous pathos of
astrology in his work prevented the liberation of social gold from breaking out of its pre­ordered space and exploding it. In Campanella, the harmony of the world
below was also still to be founded, but the ‘Civitas solis’ remains strictly chained to the regency of the stars. Utopia does not have to be processed out here, but it is
cosmic harmony, and there has been not too much but too little government in society up to now, and consequently too little astrology. Thus the contrast between
More's model and that of Campanella is also a mythological one; and it extends — without a mythological cloak — into all following utopias. Liberal­federative
socialism (from Robert Owen onwards) has More as its ancestor, while centralist socialism (from Saint­Simon onwards) has points of contact with Campanella, with a
broad­based, high­built system of rule, with social utopia as strictness and arranged happiness.
Socratic inquiry into freedom and order, with regard to ‘Utopia’ and ‘Civitas solis’
The bigger the words, the more easily alien elements are able to hide in them. This is particularly the case with freedom, and with order, of which