save them, and together they offered for the land pretty nearly as much as
the timber was worth. But he had got it into his head that the land here
by the lake would sell for building lots if it was cleared, and he could
make money on that as well as on the trees; and so they had to go. Of
course, one might say that he was deficient in public spirit, but I don't
blame him, altogether."

"No," the Altrurian assented, somewhat to my surprise, I confess.

I resumed: "There was no one else to look after his interests, and it was
not only his right but his duty to get the most he could for himself and
his own, according to his best light. That is what I tell people when they
fall foul of him for his want of public spirit."

"The trouble seems to be, then, in the system that obliges each man to be
the guardian of his own interests. Is that what you blame?"

"No, I consider it a very perfect system. It is based upon individuality,
and we believe that individuality is the principle that differences
civilized men from savages, from the lower animals, and makes us a nation
instead of a tribe or a herd. There isn't one of us, no matter how much he
censured this man's want of public spirit, but would resent the slightest
interference with his property rights. The woods were his; he had the
right to do what he pleased with his own."

"Do I understand you that, in America, a man may do what is wrong with his
own?"

"He may do anything with his own."