From UTOPIA
Therefore they have accumulated an inestimable amount of gold and silver, but they do not keep it in the form of treasure.... (they did not value these
metals more than they deserved).. Iron is obviously greatly superior to either. Men can no more do without iron than without fire and water. But gold and silver have no indispensable qualities. Human folly has made then precious only because of their scarcity.(But how to store them) Their plan seems incredible to us because we
regard gold and silver as of great value and hoard it carefully. While there eating and drinking utensils are made of china and glass, beautiful but inexpensive, their chamber pots and stools in their public halls and their homes are made of gold and silver. They also use these metals for the chains and fetters of their bondmen. They hang gold rings from the ears of criminals, place gold rings on their fingers, gold collars around their necks and gold crowns on their heads. Thus they hold gold and silver up to scorn in every way.(On a state visit to Utopia, three Ambassadors from a distant land, thinking
to impress the islanders, wore cloaks of gold, necklaces and earrings of silver, gold rings, caps hung with huge gold chains.)....(but) in the eyes of all the Utopians, all this pomp and splendour seemed
shameful. The Utopians saluted all the lowest people in the entourage as lords and paid no respect at all to the Ambassadors themselves, because they seemed to be dressed as slaves with their gold chains.The Utopians wonder that there is any man who delights in the faint gleam
of a little gem when he can look at some star or even the sun itself. They marvel that there is any man so foolish as to think himself the nobler because of the fine texture of his woollen clothing. No matter how fine the thread, a sheep once wore it, and the sheep was a sheep still for all its wearing it.They do not understand why a blockhead with no more brains than a post
should have many wise and good men serving him, only because he happens to own a great sum of gold.(Some paragraphs from Book 11 of Sir Thomas More's 'Utopia', (1515), an
account of an imagined visit to an island where everything was perfect and all men led happy lives. They illustrate to what humourous lengths he takes his fanciful idealism. Utopia means 'Nowhere', taken from the Greek 'ou' not, and 'topos' place. [Later Samuel Butler invented a similar place, but anagrammed Nowhere into 'Erewhon' for the title of his book]. It is a book of a social satire on the world of More's time; also of ethics. In Utopia all should lead merry and delightful lives ,"No one is so much above the rest of mankind that he is nature's sole care". It has often been taken as a manifesto of social protest by modern revolutionaries. Sir Thomas More's life ended in 1535 when he was beheaded for refusing to swear an oath accepting King Henry VIII as Supreme Head of the Church)