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Because community not severalty of property is the law of nature no man can assert an absolutely unalterable right to what is his.

Indeed, of all that is his every man is by nature and reason and therefore by conscience obligated to regard himself as a custodian.

He is a trustee for the common good, however feeble the safeguards which the positive or municipal law of property provides against his misuse of that share of the common fund, wisely or unwisely, entrusted to his keeping.

In contrast to this Stoic-patristic view, Utopia implies that the nature of man is such that to rely on individual conscience to supply the deficiencies of municipal law is to embark on the bottomless sea of human sinfulness in a sieve.

The Utopians brace conscience with legal sanctions.

In a properly ordered society the massive force of public law performs the function which in natural law theory ineptly is left altogether to a small voice so often still.