care of the
State, and are taught at first, not out of books, but from paintings of
all kinds, which are emblazoned on the walls of the city. The city has
six interior circuits of walls, and an outer wall which is the
seventh. On this outer wall are painted the figures of legislators and
philosophers, and on each of the interior walls the symbols or forms
of some one of the sciences are delineated. The women are, for the most
part, trained, like the men, in warlike and other exercises; but they
have two special occupations of their own. After a battle, they and the
boys soothe and relieve the wounded warriors; also they encourage them
with embraces and pleasant words. Some elements of the Christian or
Catholic religion are preserved among them. The life of the Apostles is
greatly admired by this people because they had all things in common;
and the short prayer which Jesus Christ taught men is used in their
worship. It is a duty of the chief magistrates to pardon sins, and
therefore the whole people make secret confession of them to the
magistrates, and they to their chief, who is a sort of Rector
Metaphysicus; and by this means he is well informed of all that is going
on in the minds of men. After confession, absolution is granted to
the citizens collectively, but no one is mentioned by name. There
also exists among them a practice of perpetual prayer, performed by
a succession of priests, who change every hour. Their religion is
a worship of God in Trinity, that is of Wisdom, Love and Power,
but without any distinction of persons. They behold in the sun the
reflection of His glory; mere graven images they reject, refusing to
fall under the 'tyranny' of idolatry.

Many details are given about their customs of eating and drinking, about
their mode of dressing, their employments, their wars. Campanella looks
forward to a new mode of education, which is to be a study of nature,
and not of Aristotle. He would not have his citizens waste their time
in the consideration of what he calls 'the dead signs of things.' He
remarks that he who knows one science only, does not really know that
one any more than the rest, and insists strongly on the necessity of a
variety of knowledge. More scholars are turned out in the City of the
Sun in one year than by contemporary methods in ten or fifteen. He
evidently believes, like Bacon, that henceforward natural science will
play a great part in education, a hope which seems hardly to have