"Digressing!" he cried "Would that I could digress out of this world altogether! Would that I could digress to a planet where they have no arithmetic! Where a man could be a man, not a figure in an addition sum, a unit in an average, an individual in a species——"
"Where," exclaimed Audubon, taking him up, "a man could be himself, as I have often said, 'imperial, plain, and true.'"
There was a chorus of protestation at the too familiar quotation; and for a time I was unable to lay hold of the broken thread of the argument. But at last I got a hearing for the question I was anxious to address to Wilson.
"You say," I began, "that by Good we mean the Good of the community?"
"I say," he replied, "that that is what we ought to mean."
"But in what sense do you understand the word community?"
"In the sense of that organization of individuals which represents, so to speak, the species."
"How represents?"
"In the sense that it is its function to maintain and perfect the species."
"But is that the function of the community?"