26 The Naturalist in Nicaragua 
to a great distance, making a regular division of work, the 
whole community taking charge of the rearing of the young, 
and all imbued with the strongest sense of industry, each 
individual labouring not for itself alone but also for its 
fellows—we may imagine that Sir Thomas More’s descrip- 
tion of Utopia might have been applied with greater justice 
to such a community than to any human society. “ But 
in Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they 
do all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores 
full, no private man can want anything; for among them 
there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, 
nor in any necessity, and though no man has anything, yet 
they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead 
a serene and cheerful life, free from anxieties, neither appre- 
hending want himself, nor vexed with the endless complaints 
of his wife? He is not afraid of the misery of his children, 
nor is he contriving how to raise a portion for his daughters, 
but is secure in this, that both he and his wife, his children 
and grandchildren, to as many generations as he can fancy, 
will all live both plentifully and happily.” 
