country?"

"Because you see its defects with a glamour over them."

"Is it a defect to do well by instinct what we have not yet learned to do
without effort!"

"Ah,--but the danger there is--" Jack here broke in, much interested, "the
danger there is that you merge the individual in the function. When
function becomes instinctive it atrophies unless it can grow into higher
forms of function. Imogen's right, you know."

"In a sense, no doubt. But all the same our defect is that we have so
little interest except as individuals."

"What more interest can any one have than that?"

"In older civilizations people may have all the accumulated interest of the
deep background, the long past, that, quite unconsciously, they embody."

"We have the interest of the future."

"I don't think so, quite; for the individual, the future doesn't seem to
count. The individual is sacrificed to the future, but the past is, in a
sense, sacrificed for the individual; in the right sort it's all
there--summed up."

Imogen had listened, still with her steady smile, to these heresies and to
Jack's over-lenient dealing with them. She picked up a review, turning the
pages and glancing through it while she said, ever so lightly and gently: