On the Absence of Population Limits on Bensalem
The institutions of Utopia (as presented in More’s (1516) Utopia) are non-trivially concerned with maintaining demographic equilibrium in each town on the island. In fact, Utopian colonialism is a direct effect of surplus population (recall this post). And, drawing on Plato, this fits with a wider interest in eugenic practices there (recall this one).
As presented in Bacon’s (1627) New Atlantis, the House of Salomon on Bensalem has non-trivial interest in medicine (“the cure of disease”) and the breeding of and even development of new plants (“We make [plants] also by art greater much than their nature…”) and a more general interest in enhancement and manipulation of life (“we know beforehand, of what matter and commixture what kind of those creatures will arise.”) There are, in fact, plenty of signs that they have an interest in breeding of humans, too, and they use “dissection” and experiments on “animals and birds” that “thereby we may take light what may be wrought upon the body of man.” In fact, it’s pretty clear that they experiment to extend life indefinitely (an obsession we also find in Descartes’ justification of the new science).
As is presumably well known, New Atlantis explicitly refers back to More’s Utopia. At one point one of the narrations informants, the “wise” Jew, Joabin, does so in the following fashion:
So not unlike in Utopia in Bensalem this mating/paring ritual is explicitly eugenic in character. It is a means to avoid having to partner with somebody with “many hidden defects in men and women’s bodies.”
So much for set up.
In Bensalem, one of the most important civic rituals is the so-called Feast of the Family. Its official occasion is this: “It is granted to any man that shall live to see thirty persons descended of his body alive together, and all above three years old, to make this feast which is done at the cost of the state.” This strongly suggests that the state has an interest in promoting population growth. And, in fact, fertility (“the subject of it is (always) the praises of Adam and Noah and Abraham; whereof the former two peopled the world”) and the maintenance of property are the key themes of the Feast of the Family.
However, because Bensalem is an island that explicitly does not engage with colonialism this interest in promoting population growth is a bit puzzling.* Unlike in Utopia, there seems to be no evident mechanisms at all to ensure that population stays in equilibrium or to handle pressure of population growth. This is especially notable because on Bensalem there are plenty of hints that they seem to have banished famine, and infectious disease. And while there is a purported “spirit of chastity” and purity on Bensalem, there are no signs that birth control is widely practiced or enforced.
So, this raises the question why unlike in Utopia, Bensalem need not have explicit institutions to maintain population in an equilibrium fit for the island. Why isn’t it facing a demographic timebomb after thousands of years of isolation? This is especially notable because Bensalem has been long populated, and unlike some of the other continents has not had relatively recent problems with depopulation.
At this point it is tempting to suggest that that this is just an oversight on Bacon’s part, or that it reflects the purported unfinished nature of New Atlantis. To each their own. But I want to propose a different solution.
We learn that despite the geographic isolation, there are quite a number of minority peoples that have maintained their religious and ethnic identity on Bensalem. So, for example, they have “some few stirps of Jews yet remaining among them, whom they leave to their own religion.” The use of ‘stirp’ (a stock; lineage) is quite notable. In the feast the family, the “linage” of the family is also a key and repeated theme. In other places we learn that before it closed itself to the world, the island may also have had some “Persians, and Indians, besides the natives,” although it is less clear what may have happened with them. (Persian influence is explicitly visible on the island.)
Anyway, the fact that the Jews have maintained themselves qua Jews for so long means that there is at least some non-interbreeding of populations occurring on the island. In fact, I suspect that the island has something like a caste system. In caste systems who can breed with who is severely limited. And, with limitations on inheritance, this limitation, in turn, prevents the free circulation of property outside the caste.
In our age, we tend to associate caste with India. But, of course, Bacon himself would have been familiar with the principles I have just mentioned through the existence of feudalism/nobility still practiced in England. We know that Francis Bacon was highly interested in questions of fertility and population, a theme that recurs throughout his writings.
That Bensalem has a caste system is most clear in the Feast of the Family, where one son out of many (“the son of the Vine”) is chosen to inherit the main estate. In fact, the estate itself seems to be inalienable, and has to remain in the family. Part of the business of the Feast of the Family is to pacify family conflicts over said property.
So, if we pull the threads together, one reason why, perhaps, Bensalem does not have a population problem is that it is struggling with infertility as an effect of caste and inbreeding.
*What follows reflects many years of discussion with students.