“To spend an hour on Menelaus when it might have been Helen!” said Orestes. “She has a fine mind, but it’s undisciplined. She is very acute in her perceptions, but as far as I could observe, she follows them to no logical end. About the difference between error and sin, and about repenting only in advance, she’s essentially right, but she declines to give those ideas a social application.”

“How wise you are,” said Hermione. “What do you mean?”

“Why, she talks as though society were only a name for a group of human beings, and as though each human being were the important thing, whereas we know now that ‘human being’ is just a term for the social atom. Until that talk with her, I never understood what you told me of her love-of-life theory, but it’s perfectly plain now; she’s interested in the happiness of the individual, and there is no sound reason why any individual should be happy. She ought to be concerned for the welfare of society. It’s odd that she and I should have come together, for we have been working on principles diametrically opposed. You can’t hold aloof from your fellows and be an individual, as she tries to be; you’ve got to take your place in society, as I try to. Repenting in advance is all very well for the egotist, but for the socially-minded it’s meaningless. You’ve got to punish crime and reward virtue, if you feel any responsibility for keeping the world going. She hardly is aware of such ideas, I should say, and Menelaus is a bit blind to them, too.”

“Will you open that smaller wallet?” said Hermione. “No, father is not socially-minded, but his individual biscuits are serviceable.”

“The hopeful thing to me,” said Orestes, “is that her mind runs on ethical theory. It’s a promising sign, even though her view of the subject is limited and personal. You observed, I suppose, that her theories all throw light on her own conduct. I should call that a meagre result. You can’t get very far in modern ethics unless you approach it as a social problem. One man on a desert island would be neither good nor bad.”

“Oh, you don’t understand her at all!” said Hermione. “Your own account of what she said makes it clearer to me than it evidently is to you. I’m sure mother would reply to any such illustration as that, that a single apple on a desert island would be either a good apple or a bad one, and the same with a single man. And if society wasn’t there to appreciate the apple, or if society was there and didn’t appreciate the man, so much the worse for society.”