I found myself saying: “But your life is ascetic. In your devotion to an idea you sacrifice too much; you are like monks.”
“Not at all,” he maintained. “We take no vow. Our life is wonderfully broad and free. Instead of being bound by mere individual experience we share the lives of all.”
I wondered that I had not thought of this before.
“The usual existence of married people,” he said deliberately, “with its narrow, selfish interests, seems to me, especially in the case of women, largely animal. They cannot know the higher joys of service to one’s kind.”
It was strange to hear these opinions coming from the rounded, childlike lips.
“There is no reason,” he went on, “why families should not come down here to share their lives with the poor. That would be in some ways a better solution of the problem than Barnet House, or my solitary effort. Surely it is the duty of the cultured, to whom much has been given, to share of their abundance with those who starve.”
“But the children,—” I suggested. “It would not be possible to bring up children in such associations.”
“I sometimes think,” said the Altruist, “that a further sacrifice is necessary in order to wipe out the sins of our forefathers. Perhaps, in order to be free for this great work, it is the duty of the race to abstain for a generation from bringing children into the world,—for a generation or two,” he added dreamily.
“That,” I assented mentally, as I rose to go, “would certainly be effectual.”