'I am not going to argue the matter,' I said. 'There _was_ that question
of dates and wine, you see. And there always must be on an earth where
millions of men, with varying degrees of cunning, reside.'
'Oh, not at all necessalily!' she cries with conviction: 'not at all, at
all: since there are much more dates and wine than are enough for all.
If there should spling up more men now, having the whole wisdom,
science, and expelience of the past at their hand, and they made an
allangement among themselves that the first man who tlied to take more
than he could work for should be killed, and sent to dleam a
nonsense-dleam, the question could never again alise!'
'It arose before--it would arise again.'
'But no! I can guess clearly how it alose before: it alose thlough the
sheer carelessness of the first men. The land was at first so vely, vely
much more than enough for all, that the men did not take the tlouble to
make an allangement among themselves; and afterwards the habit of
carelessness was confirmed; till at last the vely oliginal carelessness
must have got to have the look of an allangement; and so the stleam
which began in a little long ended in a big long, the long glowing more
and more fixed and fatal as the stleam lolled further flom the source.
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