am wants, which used to give our forefathers much trouble, yet our life
is too complex for me to tell you in detail by means of words how it is
arranged; you must find that out by living amongst us. It is true that I
can better tell you what we don't do, than what we do do."

"Well?" said I.

"This is the way to put it," said he: "We have been living for a hundred
and fifty years, at least, more or less in our present manner, and a
tradition or habit of life has been growing on us; and that habit has
become a habit of acting on the whole for the best. It is easy for us to
live without robbing each other. It would be possible for us to contend
with and rob each other, but it would be harder for us than refraining
from strife and robbery. That is in short the foundation of our life and
our happiness."

"Whereas in the old days," said I, "it was very hard to live without
strife and robbery. That's what you mean, isn't it, by giving me the
negative side of your good conditions?"

"Yes," he said, "it was so hard, that those who habitually acted fairly
to their neighbours were celebrated as saints and heroes, and were looked
up to with the greatest reverence."

"While they were alive?" said I.

"No," said he, "after they were dead."

"But as to these days," I said; "you don't mean to tell me that no one
ever transgresses this habit of good fellowship?"

"Certainly not," said Hammond, "but when the transgressions occur,
everybody, transgressors and all, know them for what they are; the errors
of friends, not the habitual actions of persons driven into enmity
against society."

"I see," said I; "you mean that you have no 'criminal' classes."

"How could we have them," said he, "since there is no rich class to breed
enemies against the state by means of the injustice of the state?"

Said I: "I thought that I understood from something that fell from you a
little while ago that you had abolished civil law. Is that so,
literally?"

"It abolished itself, my friend," said he. "As I said before, the civil
law-courts were upheld for the defence of private property; for nobody
ever pretended that it was possible to make people act fairly to each
other by means of brute force. Well, private property being abolished,
all the laws and all the legal 'crimes' which it had manufactured of
course came to an end. Thou shalt not steal, had to be translated into,
Thou shalt work in order to live happily. Is there any need