"I am sorry. But it is unreason on your part, or else sheer cowardice. By what code of ethics in the world do you justify yourself? You are just frightened to do something that would make your conscience uncomfortable. On what do you base your morality?"
"On feeling."
"Would your feelings let you kill a man who was just going to kill some one else?"
"Certainly."
"Then why not a man whose existence does harm to others?"
"Others might think my existence did harm to them."
"But a life that is worthless to itself?"
"May not the poor fool's life be happier than yours or mine?" said Norman, who was always fond of abstract argument and apt to grow eloquent in the realm of ideas. "He lives with his ideal. His cobwebbed, cracked-plaster room is for him a most elegant palace; he sees the phantom courtiers all day long; they bring him presents of fruits and flowers and spices and gold. He is for himself the great Emperor of the World, for all we know."
"Then you will not justify a political assassination?"
"No. It's not so easy as you think, nor are my reasons so trumpery, Arnolfo—for you're as shallow as you are clever. Murder cuts at the source of all society—which war, which is organized killing, does not. Unorganized killing means death not to one man here or there but to society. That is why we English, who think society a good thing, hate murder. Let it loose, unpunished, and if but twenty people are killed the law unheeding, it's worse for society than if twenty thousand perish in war or plague. I will not touch it."