“Why muddles?” I said, offended. “If you don’t force your neighbour to feed and clothe you, to transport you from place to place and defend you from your enemies, surely in the midst of a life entirely resting on slavery, that is progress, isn’t it? To my mind it is the most important progress, and perhaps the only one possible and necessary for man.”

“The limits of universal world progress are in infinity, and to talk of some ‘possible’ progress limited by our needs and temporary theories is, excuse my saying so, positively strange.”

“If the limits of progress are in infinity as you say, it follows that its aims are not definite,” I said. “To live without knowing definitely what you are living for!”

“So be it! But that ‘not knowing’ is not so dull as your ‘knowing.’ I am going up a ladder which is called progress, civilization, culture; I go on and up without knowing definitely where I am going, but really it is worth living for the sake of that delightful ladder; while you know what you are living for, you live for the sake of some people’s not enslaving others, that the artist and the man who rubs his paints may dine equally well. But you know that’s the petty, bourgeois, kitchen, grey side of life, and surely it is revolting to live for that alone? If some insects do enslave others, bother them, let them devour each other! We need not think about them. You know they will die and decay just the same, however zealously you rescue them from slavery. We must think of that great millennium which awaits humanity in the remote future.”

Blagovo argued warmly with me, but at the same time one could see he was troubled by some irrelevant idea.

“I suppose your sister is not coming?” he said, looking at his watch. “She was at our house yesterday, and said she would be seeing you today. You keep saying slavery, slavery …,” he went on. “But you know that is a special question, and all such questions are solved by humanity gradually.”