to find in it any of those solaces which theorists pretend. They went because everybody went--because it was the right thing to do--just for the sake of going, and no other reason. This disinterestedness was the great thing that struck Edgar. He himself was aware that he did not at all possess it. He was continually desiring some result--pleasure or advantage of some description, which, when you come to think of it (he reflected), is a mean way of treating existence after all. Whereas, society was grand in its indifference to any issue. It lived, it assembled, it talked, it went to and fro, and gave itself a great deal of trouble; and from all this exertion it expected nothing to come. This was the first discovery Edgar made, or thought he made; and it staggered him much in the contempt for society which he had been settling into. Was not this in reality a higher principle than his own? It bewildered him, and he could not make it out; and Lord Newmarch, though he was a social philosopher of much greater experience than Edgar, did not seem capable of giving him any aid. “I don’t know what you mean by disinterestedness,” Lord Newmarch said. “There is nobody who is disinterested. We have some selfish object in whatever we do. I think, for my own part, that I desire sincerely the good of the country, and make it the grand object of my life; but I know that I want the country to be benefited in _my_ way, not in any one else’s. We are all like that. There is my brother Everard, do you see, making himself very agreeable to that great fat woman. He hates fat women, and that one in particular, I know; but he is being so very civil to her because he wants her to ask him to her garden party, which is coming off next week. He is going to call her carriage for her, like a humbug as he is--but all with the most selfish and interested motives.” “I allow that,” said Edgar. “I allow that anybody will do anything for an invitation; but why should he wish to go to her garden party? That is what I want to know.” “My dear fellow,” said Lord Newmarch, shrugging his shoulders, “why, even I am going! everybody will be there.” “Does he want to meet everybody?” said Edgar. “He does continually, and he is sick of them. Does he want to see any one in particular? Does he think he will enjoy himself? Is it for the pleasure of it he is going? When he has got his invitation he will say, what a confounded bore! He knows exactly beforehand what it will be like. Well, then, I say he is utterly disinterested. He is going for the sake of going. It is not to make him happier, or amuse him, or benefit him. And everybody is going just for the same reason. Surely something might be made of this wonderful disinterestedness! It cannot be meant to be wasted upon garden parties and Lady Bodmiller’s ball.”