Now things could never be in this state of perfection, if the soul was not placed in the pineal gland. For—but let me take you along with me in the argument. Let us go step by step. What notion have you of laws, and of the rule of right and wrong; of the _to Kalon_, as Plato calls it? SAVAGE.—Well, but my good sir, while you talk of going step by step, you speak to me of a hundred different things at a time. BACHELOR.—Every one converses in this manner. But tell me who made the laws in your country? SAVAGE.—The public good. BACHELOR.—That word _public good_ means a great deal. We have not any so expressive; pray, in what sense do you understand? SAVAGE.—I understand by it that those who have a plantation of cocoa trees or maize, have forbidden others to meddle with them, and that those who had them not, are obliged to work, in order to have a right to eat part of them. Everything that I have seen, either in your country or my own, teaches me that there can be no other spirit of the laws. BACHELOR.—But as to women, Mr. Savage, women? SAVAGE.—As to women, they please me when they are handsome and sweet-tempered; I prize them even before our cocoa trees; they are a fruit which we are not willing to have plucked by any but ourselves. A man has no more right to take my wife from me than to take my child. However, I have heard it said, that there are people who will suffer this; they have it certainly in their will; every one may do what he pleases with his own property. BACHELOR.—But as to successors, legatees, heirs, and collateral kindred? SAVAGE.—Every one must have a successor. I can no longer possess my field when I am buried in it, I leave it to my son; if I have two, I divide it equally between them. I hear that among you Europeans, there are several nations where the law gives the whole to the eldest child, and nothing to the younger. It must have been sordid interest that dictated such unequal and ridiculous laws. I suppose either the elder children made it themselves, or their fathers, who were willing they should have the pre-eminence. BACHELOR.—What body of laws appears to you the best? SAVAGE.—Those in which the interests of mankind, my fellow creatures, have been most consulted. BACHELOR.—And where are such laws to be found? SAVAGE.—In no place that I have ever heard of. BACHELOR.—You must tell me from whence the inhabitants of your country first came? Who do you think first peopled America? SAVAGE.—God—whom else should we think? BACHELOR.—That is no answer. I ask you from what country your people first came? SAVAGE.—The same country from which our trees came; really the Europeans appear to me a very pleasant kind of people, to pretend that we can have nothing without them; we have just as much reason to suppose ourselves your ancestors as you have to imagine yourselves ours. BACHELOR.—You are an obstinate little savage. SAVAGE.—You a very babbling bachelor.