"You are possessed by the notions that prevailed in your day--notions that resulted in great part from the fact that most of your criminals were poor and dirty. Your system created a residuum--a criminal class--as surely as the thresher by sifting out the wheat leaves behind the residuum we call chaff. And the residuum of your competitive system, which recognized practically only one prize (that is to say, money), necessarily consisted of those who being unable to earn this prize became destitute; of these the most enterprising were criminals, the least enterprising, paupers. This is the state of things to which Collectivism puts an end. Because all work for the state all are entitled to an equal share in the national income; there are no destitute, no paupers, no criminal _class_. Indeed, it may be said that the criminal, such as you were accustomed to see him in your police courts, does not exist among us at all. Occasionally a man is tempted beyond endurance, as in the case of Harmes, or in the case of Chairo and his confederates. But if Chairo were convicted and sent to a penal colony, he would on his release recover the social position to which he was by his conduct entitled without regard to the fact that he had served a term. No one would think of applying the Word 'criminal' to either Chairo or Harmes. Of course there are men born among us, as among you, with what may be termed truly criminal instinct--moral perverts who take pleasure in causing pain. Such are rarely curable. They seldom return to social life. They are treated like lepers. We try to make their lot as little wretched as we can. But we recognize that the happiness of the entire community must be preferred to that of these exceptions; they are kept in confinement, and above all, they are not allowed to perpetuate the type." There was nothing new in all this. We were as familiar in my day with this reasoning as Ariston. But we were dominated by our institutions, our penal codes, our criminal lawyers, our prisons, and, above all, our amazing doctrines of individual liberty, which vindicated it for the criminal and disregarded it for the workingman. So that the industrious were bound to as enforced labor as the convict all the time, whereas the convict was periodically let loose on the community to idle and to steal. CHAPTER XX ON FLAVORS AND FINANCE Next evening we met at Theodore's restaurant and sat down to a dinner, which reminded me of the best I had ever tasted in Paris. Theodore himself was a type. Rather short in stature and stout, he had a large head off which was combed thick hair, treated very much as a sculptor would treat hair in a monument. For Theodore took himself very seriously. He believed gastronomy to be one of the fine arts, and that he was its high priest. He would never allow any one to joke about it, and admitted to his restaurant only those who behaved toward him with the respect to which he felt entitled.