“Well,” said Wilson, “I don’t profess to take lofty views of life—­that I leave to the philosophers.  But I must say it seems to me to be a finer thing to work for a future in which one knows one will not participate oneself than for one in which one’s personal happiness is involved.  I have always sympathized with Comte, pedant as he was, in the remark he made when he was dying.”

“Which one?” interrupted Ellis. “‘Quelle perte irreparable?’ That always struck me as the most humorous thing ever said.”

“No,” said Wilson, gravely, “but when he said that the prospect of death would be to him infinitely less sublime, if it did not involve his own extinction; the notion being, I suppose, that death is the triumphant affirmation of the supremacy of the race over the individual.  And that, I think myself, is the sound and healthy and manly view.”

“My dear Wilson,” cried Ellis, “you talk of lofty views; but this is a pinnacle of loftiness to which I, for one, could never aspire.  Positively, to rejoice in the extinction of the individual with his faculties undeveloped, his opportunities unrealized, his ambitions unfulfilled—­why it’s sublime! its Kiplingese—­there’s no other word for it!  Shake hands, Wilson! you’re a hero.”

“Really,” said Wilson, rather impatiently, “I see nothing strained or high-faluting in the view.  And as to what you say about faculties undeveloped and the rest, that seems to me unreal and exaggerated!  Most men have a good enough time, and get pretty much what they deserve.  A healthy, normal man is ready to die—­he has done what he had it in him to do, and passed on his work to the next generation.”

“I have often wondered,” said Ellis, meditatively, “what ‘normal’ means.  Does it mean one in a million, should you say?  Or perhaps that is too large a proportion?  Some people say, do they not, that there never was a normal man?”

“By ‘normal,’” retorted Wilson, doggedly, “I mean average, and I include every one except a few decadents and faddists.”

At this point, seeing that we were threatened with another digression, I thought it best to intervene again.

“We are diverging,” I said, “a little from the issue.  Wilson’s position, as I understand him, is that the prospect of the future Good of the race is sufficient to give significance to the life of the individual, even though he realize no Good for himself.”

“No,” replied Wilson, “I don’t say that; for I think he always does realize sufficient Good for himself.”

“But is it because of that Good which he realizes for himself that his life has significance?  Or because of the future Good of the race?”

“I don’t know; both, I suppose.”

“You do not think then that the future Good of the race is sufficient, by itself, to give significance to the lives of individuals who are never to partake in it?”

“I don’t like that way of putting the question.  What I believe is, that in realizing his own Good a man is also contributing to that of the race.  There is no such antagonism between the two ends as you seem to suggest.”