“Talk!” muttered Ray, “Don’t dignify it with that word. Gibberish!”
“No?” said Peter, “It’s too earnest to deserve that name. The man can’t express himself, but way down underneath all the absurd talk of ‘natural monopolies,’ and of ‘the oppression of the money-power,’ there lies a germ of truth, without which none of their theories would have a corporal’s guard of honest believers. We have been working towards that truth in an unsystematic way for centuries, but we are a long way from it, and till we solve how to realize it, we shall have ineffectual discontent.”
“But that makes the whole thing only the more arrant nonsense,” grumbled Ray. “It’s foolish enough in all conscience sake, if they had a chance of success, but when they haven’t any, why the deuce do they want to drag us poor beggars back from Newport?”
“Why did Rome insist on burning while Nero fiddled?” queried Peter smiling. “We should hear nothing of socialism and anarchy if Newport and the like had no existence.”
“I believe at heart you’re a Socialist yourself,” cried Ray.
“No danger,” laughed Ogden; “his bank account is too large. No man with Peter’s money is ever a Socialist”
“You forget,” said Ray, “that Peter is always an exception to the rule.”
“No,” said Peter. “I disagree with Socialists entirely both in aims and methods, but I sympathize with them, for I see the fearful problems which they think their theories will solve, and though I know how mistaken they are, I cannot blame them, when I see how seriously and honestly they believe in, and how unselfishly they work for, their ideas. Don’t blame the Socialists, for they are quite as conscientious as were the Abolitionists. Blame it to the lack of scientific education, which leaves these people to believe that theories containing a half truth are so wholly true that they mean the regeneration and salvation of society.”
“I suppose you are right,” sighed Ray, “for you’ve thought of it, and I haven’t. I don’t want to, either. I thank the Lord I’m not as serious as you, Graveyard. But if you want to air your theory, I’ll lend you my ears, for friendship’s sake. I don’t promise to remember.”
Peter puffed his cigar for a moment “I sometimes conclude,” he said, “that the people who are most in need of education, are the college-bred men. They seem to think they’ve done all the work and study of their life in their four years, and so can dissipate mentally ever after.” But Peter smiled as he said this and continued, more seriously: “Society and personal freedom are only possible in conjunction, when law or public opinion interferes to the degree of repressing all individual acts that interfere with the freedom of others; thus securing the greatest individual freedom to all. So far as physical force is concerned, we have pretty well realized this condition. Because a man is strong he can no longer take advantage of the weak. But strength is not limited to muscle. To protect the weak mind from the strong mind is an equal duty, and a far more difficult task. So far we have only partially succeeded. In this difficulty lies the whole problem. Socialism, so far as it attempts to repress individualism, and reduce mankind to an evenness opposed to all natural laws, is suicidal of the best in favor of mediocrity. But so far as it attempts to protect that mediocrity and weakness from the superior minds of the best, it is only in line with the laws which protect us from murder and robbery. You can’t expect men of the Most variety, however, to draw such distinctions.”