A Fountain Sealed

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

"Anglomaniac!" Imogen smiled, sugaring her second cup of tea.

Mrs. Wake flushed slightly. "Because I see the good qualities of another 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."