Kajira of Gor by John Norman Page B

anything, the possession of
    such properties would make a human being an even more valuable possession than a
    tarsk or verr.”
    “Where I come from it is wrong to own human beings but it is all right for other
    animals to be owned.”
    “If other animals made the laws where you come from,” she said, “perhaps it
    would be wrong, there to own them and right to own human beings.”
    “Perhapsl” I said, angrily.
    “Forgive me, Mistress,” said the girl. “I did not mean to displease you.”
    “It is wrong to own human beings” I said.
    “Can Mistress prove that?” she asked.
    “Nol” I said, angrily.
    “How does Mistress know it?” she asked.
    “It is self-evident” I said. I knew, of course, that I was so sure of this only
    because I had been taught, uncritically, to believe it.
    “If self-evidence is involved here,” she said, “it is surely self-evident that
    it is not wrong to own human beings. In most cultures, traditions and
    civilizations with which I am familiar, the right to own human beings was never
    questioned. To them the rectitude of the institution of slavery was
    self-evident.”
    “Slavery is wrong because it can involve pain and hardship,” I said.
    “Work, too,” she said, “can involve pain and hardship. Is work, thus, wrong?”
    “No,” I said.
    She shrugged.
    “Slavery is wrong,” I said, “because slaves may not like it.”
    “Many people may not like many things,” she said, “which does not make those
    things wrong. Too, it has never been regarded as a necessary condition for the
    rectitude of slavery that slaves approved of their condition.”
    “That is true,” I said.
    “See?” she asked.
    “How could someone approve of slavery,” I asked, “or regard it as right, if he
    himself did not wish to be a slave?”
    “In a sense,” she said, “one might approve of many things, and recognize their
    justifiability, without thereby wishing to become implicated personally in them.
    One might approve of medicine, say, without wishing to be a physician. One might
    approve of mathematics without desiring to become a mathematician, and so on.”
    “Of course,” I said, irritably.
    “It might be done in various ways,” she said. “One might, for example, regard a
    society in which the institution of slavery, with its various advantages and
    consequences, was an ingredient as a better society than one in which it did not
    exist. This, then, would be its justification. In such a way, then, be might
    approve of slavery as an institution without wishing necessarily to become a
    slave himself. In moral consistency, of course, in approving of the institution,
    he would seem to accept at least the theoretical risk of his own enslavement.
    This risk he would presumably regard as being a portion of the price he is
    willing to pay for the benefits of living in this type of society, which he
    regards, usually by far, as being a society superior to its alternatives.
    Another form of justification occurs when one believes that slavery is right and
    fit for certain human beings but not for others. This position presupposes that
    not all human beings are alike. In this point of view, the individual approves
    of slavery for those who should be slaves and disapproves of it, or at least is
    likely regret it somewhat, in the case of those who should not be slave. He is
    perfectly consistent in this, for he believes that if he himself should be a
    natural slave, then it would be right, too, for him to be enslaved. This seems
    somewhat more sensible than the categorical denial, unsubstantiated, that
    slavery is not right for any human being. Much would seem to depend on the
    nature of the particular human being.”
    “Slavery denies freedoml” I cried.
    “Your assertion seems to presuppose the desirability of universal freedom,” she
    said. “This may be part of what is at issue.”
    “Perhaps,” I said.
    “Is there more happiness in a society in which all are free,” she