“But now,” I continued, “we come to the point of dispute.  For besides this Good of our own, we have also, according to the theory, to consider a Good in which we have no share, that of those who are to be born in some indefinite future.  And to this remote and alien Good we have even, on occasion, to sacrifice our own.”

“Certainly,” he said, “all good citizens will think so.”

“I believe,” I admitted, “that they will.  And yet, how strange it seems!  For consider it in this way.  Imagine that the successive generations can somehow be viewed as contemporaneous—­being projected, as it were, from the plane of time into that of space.”

“It’s rather hard,” he said, “to imagine that.”

“Well, but try, for the sake of argument; and consider what we shall have.  We shall have a society divided into two classes, composed, the one of all the generations who, if they followed one another in time, would precede the first millenarian one; the other of all the millenarian-generations themselves.  And of these two classes the first would be perpetually engaged in working for the second, sacrificing to it, if need be, on occasion, all its own Good, but without any hope or prospect of ever entering itself into that other Good which is the monopoly of the other class, but to the production of which its own efforts are directed.  What should we say of such a society?  Should we not say that it was founded on injustice and inequality, and all those other phrases with which we are wont to denounce a system of serfdom or slavery?”

“But,” he objected, “your projection of time into space has falsified the whole situation.  For in fact the millenarian generation would not come into being until the others had ceased to be; and therefore the latter would not be being sacrificed to it.”

“No,” I said, “but they would have been sacrificed; and surely it comes to the same thing?”

“I am not sure,” he replied, “and anyhow, I don’t think sacrifice is the right word.  In a society every man’s interest is in the Whole; and when he works for the Whole he is also working for himself.”

“No doubt that is true,” I replied, “in a society properly constituted, but I question whether it would be true in such a society as I have described.  And then there is a further difficulty—­and here, I confess, my projection of time into space really does falsify the issue; for in the succession of generations in time, where is the Whole?  Each generation comes into being, passes, and disappears; but how, or in what, are they summed up?”

“Why,” he said, “in a sense they are all summed up in the last generation.”

“But in what sense?  Do you mean that their consciousness somehow persists into it, so that they actually enjoy its Good?”

“Of course not,” he said, “but I mean that it was conditioned by them, and is the result of their labour and activities.”

“In that sense,” I replied, “you might say that the oysters I eat are summed up in me.  But it would be a poor consolation to the oysters!”