she pleases.
Furthermore, our standards of honour and public estimation are very different
from the old ones; success in besting our neighbours is a road to renown now
closed, let us hope for ever. Each man is free to exercise his special faculty
to the utmost, and every one encourages him in so doing. So that we have got rid
of the scowling envy, coupled by the poets with hatred, and surely with good
reason; heaps of unhappiness and ill-blood were caused by it, which with
irritable and passionate men - i. e., energetic and active men - often led to
violence.«
    I laughed, and said: »So that you now withdraw your admission, and say that
there is no violence amongst you?«
    »No,« said he, »I withdraw nothing; as I told you, such things will happen.
Hot blood will err sometimes. A man may strike another, and the stricken strike
back again, and the result be a homicide, to put it at the worst. But what then?
Shall we the neighbours make it worse still? Shall we think so poorly of each
other as to suppose that the slain man calls on us to revenge him, when we know
that if he had been maimed, he would, when in cold blood and able to weigh all
the circumstances, have forgiven his maimer? Or will the death of the slayer
bring the slain man to life again and cure the unhappiness his loss has caused?«
    »Yes,« I said, »but consider, must not the safety of society be safeguarded
by some punishment?«
    »There, neighbour!« said the old man, with some exultation. »You have hit
the mark. That punishment of which men used to talk so wisely and act so
foolishly, what was it but the expression of their fear? And they had need to
fear, since they - i. e., the rulers of society - were dwelling like an armed
band in a hostile country. But we who live amongst our friends need neither fear
nor punish. Surely if we, in dread of an occasional rare homicide, an occasional
rough blow, were solemnly and legally to commit homicide and violence, we could
only be a society of ferocious cowards. Don't you think so, neighbour?«
    »Yes, I do, when I come to think of it from that side,« said I.
    »Yet you must understand,« said the old man, »that when any violence is
committed, we expect the transgressor to make any