“It will be well for you to understand how happily we have solved this question of property, but of course we could not have found such a solution until we had first reached a high spiritual plane and learned the lesson of true brotherhood. From your words I know just about the point in our development which corresponds with the present state of your race, and therefore I know something of the nature of the struggle through which the earth is now passing. I warn you that the unrestricted right of private ownership is a menace to your civilization, all the greater because its evil is probably not clearly seen. We are assured by our historians, who try to point out the causes for all the great convulsions in our career, that excessive individualism in property rights, with its selfish disregard of others, was a potent factor in the downfall of many of the enlightened nations of our antiquity. We have noticed that even our animals have the instinct of possession, and it is certain that the love of ownership and accumulation has been one of the hardest evils to eradicate from our naturally selfish nature. If you should ever return to the earth, do not neglect to signal for this danger.” “But what is the remedy?” asked the doctor. “The system of which you have been speaking might be called the mainspring of our society. I can hardly imagine what we should be without it. With our note of warning, what message of help will you send?” “Doctor,” answered Thorwald, “it pleases me to hear you ask that question, and I am rejoiced also that I have so good an answer for you. The remedy is to be found in the law of love. Follow that law as closely as possible. The way will be hard, the progress slow, but every step taken will be a solid advance. It is the only safe road, and you will find that every other will lead to disappointment and disaster.” Whenever Thorwald struck these high spiritual themes he spoke with such enthusiasm and positiveness that our respect for him increased rapidly. CHAPTER XII. WE REACH THORWALD’S HOME. All this time we had been riding leisurely along, enraptured with the delightful country, while the way itself and the estates on either hand offered such variety of landscape that the view never became tiresome nor uninteresting. But as the day was waning, our friends quickened the pace and showed us a burst of speed. This was most exhilarating, and soon brought us to the station where Thorwald told us we were to take an express train for home, which was about two hundred miles distant.