"You have laws, I believe, against theft and murder,
and slander and incest, and perjury and drunkenness?"
"Why, certainly."
"Then it appears to me that you have legislated honesty, regard for human
life, regard for character, abhorrence of unnatural vice, good faith, and
sobriety. I was told on the train coming up, by a gentleman who was
shocked at the sight of a man beating his horse, that you even had laws
against cruelty to animals."
"Yes, and I am happy to say that they are enforced to such a degree that a
man cannot kill a cat cruelly without being punished for it." The
Altrurian did not follow up his advantage, and I resolved not to be
outdone in magnanimity. "Come, I will own that you have the best of me on
those points. I must say you've trapped me very neatly, too; I can enjoy a
thing of that kind when it's well done, and I frankly knock under. But I
had in mind something altogether different when I spoke. I was thinking of
those idealists who want to bind us hand and foot and render us the slaves
of a state where the most intimate relations of life shall be penetrated
by legislation and the very hearthstone shall be a tablet of laws.
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