“Neither,” said Derwent, “is property. Christ, from his principle of non-resistance, admitted property in others; but his own disciples were to do without it. There have been two great religions--religions in the true sense religion, transcendental faiths, looking from this world to the next--and each was followed by a so-called religion which was really not religion, but looked to this world alone. Both the two religions aimed at the annihilation of the individual; the Buddhist by passive abnegation, the Christian by active emulation in the doing of good to others. The one is the negation of self; the other is its apotheosis. Therefore, Christianity has naught to do with property, which is the accentuation of self, by aggrandizement, by appendages. Christ recognized persons, not personages. Christianity came with a commercial civilization, and as an antidote to it, after the Jewish religion, which had asserted a divine recognition of property; and set up an earthly kingdom, that had to do with flocks and herds and landed-estates. And after Christ Islam came, with wars and conquests. So the Jews never recognized the Messiah; they looked not beyond into the next world.” “And as a compensation,” interposed Wemyss, “they seem likely to obtain all that there is of this. But we are told that finally the Jews, too, shall become Christians--which lends a terror even to the millennium.” There was a general laugh; of which Derwent seemed to be unconscious. “So the gospels,” Derwent added, “recognize no property save in the soul. This is what we are adjured to preserve, though we lose the whole world besides. A man’s truth and love, his sense of goodness and beauty, his courage and his pity, are his alone. Even his body is only his secondarily, and temporarily; his broad acres, his trees and rivers, are no part of him at all.” “But it remains property--even if you sell it all and give it to the poor,” said Haviland. “Not if they give it over again to whomsoever has immediate need,” answered Derwent. “In this broad world there is room for all; and there are fruits in plenty, ample food, and raiment always ready. Let each one take what he needs, and have no fear of getting no more when these are gone. Why, the labor of all men for some few minutes a day will suffice to bring them all things they can need and use. Property is unnecessary. But men are like rude children at a public feast: each one fearing that he shall not get enough, they trample one another forward, and the foremost few lay hands upon it all.” “No one of us who thinks,” said Haviland, “would object to communism if it were practicable. But I must have an overcoat, or a roof, or a horse; is anyone coming along who prefers my coat, my roof, to his, or to none, to take it? And, in the second place, men are not unselfish enough to work, even those few minutes a day, that all humanity may live.”