A yet stranger characteristic was seen in the peaceable way in which it lived side by side with the older religions.

More than a century before William of Orange More discerned and proclaimed the great principle of religious toleration.

In "Nowhere" it was lawful to every man to be of what religion he would.

Even the disbelievers in a Divine Being or in the immortality of man, who by a single exception to its perfect religious indifference were excluded from public office, were excluded, not on the ground of their religious belief, but because their opinions were deemed to be degrading to mankind and therefore to incapacitate those who held them from governing in a noble temper.

But they were subject to no punishment, because the people of Utopia were "persuaded that it is not in a man's power to believe what he list." The religion which a man held he might propagate by argument, though not by violence or insult to the religion of others.