thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we shall avoid disputes about words.
Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience, and equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart, and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labor and laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality in point of comfort. For the rest, if property is impossible on account of the desire to accumulate, communism would soon become so through the desire to shirk.
II. Property, in its turn, violates equality by the rights of exclusion and increase, and freedom by despotism. The former effect of property having been sufficiently developed in the last three chapters, I will content myself here with establishing by a final comparison, its perfect identity with robbery.
The Latin words for robber are fur and latro; the former taken from the Greek φορ, from φηρω, Latin fero, I carry away; the latter from λαθρω, I play the part of a brigand, which is derived from ληθω, Latin lateo, I conceal myself. The Greeks have also κλεπτης, from κλεπτω, I filch, whose radical consonants are the same as those of καλνπτω, I cover, I conceal. Thus, in these languages, the idea of a robber is that of a man who conceals, carries away, or diverts, in any manner whatever, a thing which does not belong to him.
The Hebrews expressed the same idea by the word gannab,—robber,—from the verb ganab, which means to put away, to turn aside: lo thi-gnob (Decalogue: Eighth Commandment), thou shalt not steal,—that is, thou shalt not hold back, thou shalt not put away any thing for thyself. That is the act of a man who, on entering into a society into which he agrees to
