"You do like to make fun of us, don't you?" she said. "But after you have made fun of us, admit that what we strive for is worth more than a life of agreeable social relations. For that is your ideal, isn't it?" "But, Miss Davis, the most important thing in a man's life is his social relations! It is true that in China everything is built on that. We have a sense of harmony and just proportion that you can never understand. In a man's duty to his gods we leave him considerable choice. It concerns him alone. In letters and the arts he is allowed less choice: an error of taste or judgment would have more effect on others. But in his duties to those dependent on him and on whom he is dependent, it was long ago decided what they were to be and since then no choice has ever been allowed. Our fault is that we are what one might call myopic. We cannot see clearly beyond a certain radius. Few of our works of art, for instance, are meant to be seen from a distance. And so the immediate relations are apt to seem more important to us, the more distant ones less so. It seems to work out with us that a man's relations to his father are very nearly perfect, to his state as good as he can conveniently make them." The General picked up a few pebbles and threw them one by one into the stream, then he threw them a little farther, until one struck the knee of a seated figure. It was the first gesture Megan had seen him make that did not seem the expression of some secret strain, in spite of the fact that all his gestures were gracious. "Now I've told you what our goal is, tell me what you understand to be yours. I'll see if I think it is so much finer than a life of agreeable social relations." "You explain things so much better than I do, I don't know whether I can tell you." She thought a moment. "I suppose," she said, "our ideal is all contained in the words of Christ. 'Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with thy whole mind, thy whole soul, and thy whole strength.' And following that, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' He himself says that is all the law."