Not murder? You might
attack one of his family. You have the habit in England of tracing
prejudices to the Feudal System: believe me, there is hardly anything in
Europe so modern. I should date at 4000 B.C. nearly all our present
conventions, from the British Sunday to the law of conspiracy. So long as
you say that property is sacred, you uplift the Patriarch and lose sight
of the man."
Sanchia, reminded of Senhouse--a Senhouse with his tongue dipped in
vinegar--objected that society may have demanded some of these laws in
defiance of the engrossing patriarch; but Morosine shook his head.
"Society is the patriarch's weapon. Society is a syndicate of patriarchs
who cannot live unless all men are enslaved. Man is not by nature
gregarious; he's solitary, like all the nobler beasts. Wolves and dogs
hunt in herds, but not the great cats; oxen and buffaloes, but not
elephants; rooks, but not eagles; bream, never salmon. And the time is not
so very far when man will discover why it is that he is herded and
marshalled hither and thither by police, legislatures, and monstrous
assemblies called armies or fleets. He has but to know it to abolish these
things; they fade like dreams in the morning.
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