"You see," I said, with no small satisfaction at the confusion I had caused, "I am new to all these things; I have to distinguish fact from fancy; the sacred from the profane." "Of course," said Ariston, "although we have our domestic life in the cities, apart, every family having its own separate home, even there we jostle against one another a great deal more than you used in your time; and here at the colony we are like one large family; we have, therefore, to respect one another's opinions, and I might add--prejudices." He bowed here at the Mater as though in deference to her cult of Demeter. "We wouldn't be happy otherwise; and we have learned that after all, the highest religion is the highest happiness. And so each of us respects the religion of the other; in our heart of hearts we doubtless tax one another with superstition, but we never admit it. Every cult, therefore, is tolerated and receives the outward respect of all." I could not help wondering whether this was true. Chairo clearly regarded the cult of Demeter as dangerous and bad; how long then would he tolerate it? Ariston divined my thought, for he added: "Of course, I assume that the cult involves no danger to the state; or to individual liberty." But the brows of the women darkened and I felt we were on dangerous ground, so I asked: "And what are you going to do this afternoon?" "We are going on with our haymaking." "But I thought you worked only three or four hours a day?" "Yes, that is all we owe the state; but we often ask to work all day for a season in order to have the whole day to ourselves later. And as harvesting must be done within a given space of time, it suits our economy as well as our inclination to work all day at this season and have October to ourselves. Most of us go hunting all of October, and in November we meet again at the Eleusinian festival." "Hunting?" I asked; "but where do you hunt?" "Almost wherever we want, though, of course, this has to be arranged. Since your time the state has replanted forests on all the high ground least suited to agriculture, and game is carefully preserved there during the whole year except October; which is our open season. Some hunting is done, too, in November and December to suit the convenience of those who have to work in October; but it is mostly done in October." Lunch was by this time over and we adjourned to the veranda for coffee and a cigar. There we were joined by Chairo and others, and gradually I began to get some notion of the working of their Collectivist State. But as their explanations left me in considerable bewilderment, and it was only when I saw the system in actual operation that I understood it, I shall not attempt to give an account of our conversations, but rather describe the events that followed, not only for the interest of the events themselves, but for the light they threw on the problems which still remain unsolved for our race.