POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY adults; excess numbers are transferred to other households who have fallen below quota If the number of households in the city exceeds 6,000, families are transferred to smaller cities If every city in the island is fully manned, a colony is planted overseas If the natives there resist settlement, the Utopians will establish it by force of arms, ‘for they count this the most just cause of war, when any people holdeth a piece of ground void and vacant to no good and proWtable use, keeping others from the use and possession of it which, notwithstanding, by the law of nature, ought thereof to be nourished and relieved’ (U, 76) Each household, as has been said, is devoted to a single craft The households’ produce is placed in storehouses in the city centre from which any householder can carry away, free of charge, whatever he needs The Utopians make no use of money; they employ gold and silver only to make chamber pots and fetters for criminals Internal travel is regulated by passport; but any authorized traveller is warmly welcomed in other cities But no one, wherever he may be, is fed unless he has done his daily stint of work The women of the households take turns in preparing meals, which are eaten in a common hall, with the men sitting with their backs to the wall facing the women on the outer benches Nursing mothers and children under Wve eat apart in a nursery; the children over Wve wait at table Before dinner and supper a passage is read from an edifying book; after supper there is music and spices are burnt to perfume the hall ‘For they be much inclined to this opinion: to think no kind of pleasure forbidden, whereof cometh no harm’ (U, 81) Utopians indeed are no ascetics, and they regard bodily mortiWcation for its own sake as something perverse However, they honour those who live selXess lives performing tasks that others reject as loathsome, such as roadbuilding or sick-nursing Some of these people practise celibacy and are vegetarians; others eat Xesh and live normal family lives The former, they say, are holier, but the latter are wiser Males marry at twenty-two and females at eighteen Premarital intercourse is forbidden, but before the marriage ‘a grave and honest matron showeth the woman, be she maid or widow, naked to the wooer; and likewise a sage and discreet man exhibiteth the wooer naked to the woman’ A man would not buy a colt without thorough inspection, the Utopians argue, so it is the height of foolishness to choose a partner for life without having 279