A socially privileged young man embraces radical altruism and tries to persuade his acquaintances to renounce private property and selfish pleasures. The narrative follows his earnest lectures and domestic gatherings, where fashionable society greets his doctrines with boredom, mockery, and occasional curiosity, and traces the strain these ideas impose on his friendships and intimacies. Through satiric scenes and personal conflict the story probes the difficulty of turning idealist ethics into everyday practice, examining the personal costs, social resistance, and paradoxes that attend a life lived in uncompromising moral earnestness.