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The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue

by G. Lowes Dickinson · English · Gutenberg #12508 · 370,007 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue

Author: G. Lowes Dickinson


        
Release date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #12508]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MEANING OF GOOD—A DIALOGUE ***

THE MEANING OF GOOD--A DIALOGUE

BY G. LOWES DICKINSON

Fellow of King's College, Cambridge,
and Author of a Modern Symposium

THIRD EDITION

1900







DEDICATION

  How do the waves along the level shore
    Follow and fly in hurrying sheets of foam,
  For ever doing what they did before,
    For ever climbing what is never clomb!
  Is there an end to their perpetual haste,
    Their iterated round of low and high,
  Or is it one monotony of waste
    Under the vision of the vacant sky?
  And thou, who on the ocean of thy days
    Dost like a swimmer patiently contend,
  And though thou steerest with a shoreward gaze
    Misdoubtest of a harbour or an end,
  What would the threat, or what the promise be,
    Could I but read the riddle of the sea!




PREFACE

An attempt at Philosophic Dialogue may seem to demand a word of
explanation, if not of apology. For, it may be said, the Dialogue is
a literary form not only exceedingly difficult to handle, but, in its
application to philosophy, discredited by a long series of failures. I
am not indifferent to this warning; yet I cannot but think that I have
chosen the form best suited to my purpose. For, in the first place,
the problems I have undertaken to discuss have an interest not only
philosophic but practical; and I was ambitious to treat them in a
way which might perhaps appeal to some readers who are not professed
students of philosophy. And, secondly, my subject is one which belongs
to the sphere of right opinion and perception, rather than to that of
logic and demonstration; and seems therefore to be properly approached
in the tentative spirit favoured by the Dialogue form. On such topics
most men, I think, will feel that it is in conversation that they get
their best lights; and Dialogue is merely an attempt to reproduce in
literary form this natural genesis of opinion. Lastly, my own attitude
in approaching the issues with which I have dealt was, I found, so
little dogmatic, so sincerely speculative, that I should have felt
myself hampered by the form of a treatise. I was more desirous to
set forth various points of view than finally to repudiate or endorse
them; and though I have taken occasion to suggest certain opinions of
my own, I have endeavoured to do so in the way which should be least
imprisoning to my own thought, and least provocative of the reader's
antagonism. It has been my object, to borrow a phrase of Renan, 'de
présenter des séries d'idées se développant selon un ordre logique, et
non d'inculquer une opinion ou de prêcher un systême déterminé.' And
I may add, with him, 'Moins que jamais je me sens l'audace de parler
doctrinalernent en pareille matière.'

In conclusion, there is one defect which is, I think, inherent in the
Dialogue form, even if it were treated with far greater skill than any
to which I can pretend. The connection of the various phases of the
discussion can hardly be as clearly marked as it would be in a formal
treatise; and in the midst of digressions and interruptions, such
as are natural in conversation, the main thread of the reasoning may
sometimes be lost I have therefore appended a brief summary of the
argument, set forth in its logical connections.




ARGUMENT

BOOK I.


I. After a brief introduction, the discussion starts with a
consideration of the diversity of men's ideas about Good, a diversity
which suggests _primâ facie_ a scepticism as to the truth of any of
these ideas.

The sceptical position is stated; and, in answer, an attempt is made
to show that the position is one which is not really accepted by
thinking men. For such men, it is maintained, regulate their lives by
their ideas about Good, and thus by implication admit their belief in
these ideas.

This is admitted; but the further objection is made, that for the
regulation of life it is only necessary for a man to admit a Good for
himself, without admitting also a General Good or Good of all. It is
suggested, in reply, that the conduct of thinking men commonly does
imply a belief in a General Good.

Against this it is urged that the belief implied is not in a Good
of all, but merely in the mutual compatibility of the Goods of
individuals; so that each whilst pursuing exclusively his own Good,
may also believe that he is contributing to that of others. In reply,
it is suggested (1) that such a belief is not borne out by fact;
(2) that the belief does itself admit a Good common to all, namely,
society and its institutions.

In conclusion, it is urged that to disbelieve in a General Good is to
empty life of what constitutes, for most thinking men, its main value.

II. The position has now been taken up (1) that men who reflect do,
whatever may be their theoretical opinion, imply, in their actual
conduct, a belief in their ideas about Good, (2) but that there seems
to be no certainty that such ideas are true. This latter proposition
is distasteful to some of the party, who endeavour to maintain that
there really is no uncertainty as to what is good.

Thus it is argued:

(1) That the criterion of Good is a simple infallible instinct. To
which it is replied that there appear to be many such 'instincts'
conflicting among themselves.

(2) That the criterion of Good is the course of Nature; Good being
defined as the end to which Nature is tending. To which it is replied
that such a judgment is as _a priori_ and unbased as any other, and as
much open to dispute.

It is then urged that if we reject the proposed criterion, we can have
no scientific basis for Ethics; which leads to a brief discussion of
the nature of Science, and the applicability of its methods to Ethics.

(3) That the criterion of Good is current convention. To which it
is replied, that conventions are always changing, and that the moral
reformer is precisely the man who disputes those which are current.
Especially, it is urged that our own conventions are, in fact,
vigorously challenged, e.g. by Nietzsche.

(4) That the criterion of Good is Pleasure, or the "greatest happiness
of the greatest number." To which it is replied:

(a) That this view is not, as is commonly urged, in accordance with
'common sense.'

(b) That either Pleasure must be taken in the simplest and narrowest
sense; in which case it is palpably inadequate as a criterion of
Good; or its meaning must be so widely extended that the term Pleasure
becomes as indefinite as the term Good.

(c) That if the criterion of Pleasure were to be fairly applied, it
would lead to results that would shock those who profess to adopt it.

III. These methods of determining Good having been set aside, it is
suggested that it is only by 'interrogating experience' that we can
discover, tentatively, what things are good.

To this it is objected, that perhaps all our ideas derived from
experience are false, and that the only method of determining Good
would be metaphysical, and _a priori_. In reply, the bare possibility
of such a method is admitted; but it is urged that no one really
believes that all our opinions derived from experience are false,
and that such a belief, if held, would deprive life of all ethical
significance and worth.

Finally, it is suggested that the position in which we do actually
find ourselves, is that of men who have a real, though imperfect
perception of a real Good, and who are endeavouring, by practice, to
perfect that perception. In this respect an analogy is drawn between
our perception of Good and our perception of Beauty.

It is further suggested that the end of life is not merely a knowledge
but an experience of Good; this end being conceived as one to be
realised in Time.

IV. On this, the point is raised, whether it is not necessary to
conceive Good as eternally existing, rather than as something to be
brought into existence in the course of Time? On this view, Evil must
be conceived as mere 'appearance.'

In reply, it is suggested:

(1) That it is impossible to reconcile the conception of eternal Good
with the obvious fact of temporal Evil.

(2) That such a view reduces to an absurdity all action directed to
ends in Time. And yet it seems that such action not only is but ought
to be pursued, as appears to be admitted even by those who hold that
Good exists eternally, since they make it an end of action that they
should come to see that everything is good.

(3) That this latter conception of the end of action--namely, that we
should bring ourselves to see that what appears to be Evil is really
Good--is too flagrantly opposed to common sense to be seriously
accepted.

To sum up:

In this Book the following positions have been discussed and rejected:

(1) That our ideas about Good have no relation to any real fact.

(2) That we have easy and simple criteria of Good--such as (a)
an infallible instinct, (b) the course of Nature, (c) current
conventions, (d) pleasure.

(3) That all Reality is good, and all Evil is mere 'appearance.'

And it has been suggested that our experience is, or may be made, a
progressive discovery of Good.

In the following Book the question of the content of Good is
approached.

       *       *       *       *       *




BOOK II.


This Book comprises an attempt to examine some kinds of Good, to point
out their defects and limitations, and to suggest the character of
a Good which we might hold to be perfect--here referred to as '_The_
Good.'

The attitude adopted is tentative, for it is based on the position, at
which we are supposed to have arrived, that the experience of any one
person, or set of persons, about Good is limited and imperfect, and
that therefore in any attempt to describe what it is that we hold
to be good, to compare Goods among one another, and to suggest
an absolute Good, we can only hope, at best, to arrive at some
approximation to truth.

I. This attitude is explained at the outset, and certain preliminary
points are then discussed. These are:

(1) Can any Good be an end for us unless it is conceived to be an
object of consciousness? The negative answer is suggested.

(2) In pursuing Good, for whom do we pursue it? It is suggested that
the Good we pursue is

(a) That of future generations. Some difficulties in this view are
brought out; and it is hinted that what we really pursue is the Good
of 'the Whole,' though it is not easy to see what we mean by that.

(b) That of 'the species.' But this view too is seen to be involved
in difficulty.

II. The difficulty is left unsolved, and the conversation passes on
to an examination of some of our activities from the point of view
of Good. In this examination a double object is kept in view: (1) to
bring out the characteristics and defects of each kind of Good; (2) to
suggest a Good which might be conceived to be free from defects, such
a Good being referred to as '_The_ Good.'

(1) It is first suggested that _all_ activities are good, if pursued
in the proper order and proportion; and that what seems bad in each,
viewed in isolation, is seen to be good in a general survey of them
all. This view, it is argued, is too extravagant to be tenable.

(2) It is suggested that Good consists in ethical activity. To this it
is objected that ethical actions are always means to an end, and that
it is this end that must be conceived to be really good.

(3) The activity of the senses in their direct contact with physical
objects is discussed. This is admitted to be a kind of Good; but
such Good, it is maintained, is defective, not only because it is
precarious, but because it depends upon objects of which it is not the
essence to produce that Good, but which, on the contrary, just as much
and as often produce Evil.

(4) This leads to a discussion of Art. In Art, it seems, we are
brought into relation with objects of which it may be said:

(a) That they have, by their essence, that Good which is called
Beauty.

(b) That, in a certain sense, they may be said to be eternal.

(c) That, though complex, they are such that their parts are
necessarily connected, in the sense that each is essential to the
total Beauty.

On the other hand, the Good of Art suffers from the defects:

(a) That outside and independent of Art there is the 'real world,'
so that this Good is only a partial one.

(b) That Art is a creation of man, whereas we seem to demand, for
a thing that shall be perfectly good, that it shall be so of its own
nature, without our intervention.

(5) It is suggested that perhaps we may find the Good we seek in
knowledge. This raises the difficulty that various views are held as
to the nature of knowledge. Of these, two are discussed:

(a) the view that knowledge is 'the description and summing up in
brief formulæ, of the routine of our perceptions.' It is questioned
whether there is really much Good in such an activity. And it is
argued that, whatever Good it may have, it cannot be _the_ Good,
seeing that knowledge may be, and frequently is, knowledge of Bad.

(b) the view that knowledge consists in the perception of 'necessary
connections,' Viewed from the standpoint of Good, this seems to be
open to the same objection as (a). But, further, it is argued that
the perpetual contemplation of necessary relations among ideas does
not satisfy our conception of the Good; but that we require an
element analogous somehow to that of sense, though not, like sense,
unintelligible and obscure.

(6) Finally, it is suggested that in our relation to other persons,
where the relation takes the form of love, we may perhaps find
something that comes nearer than any other of our experiences to being
absolutely good. For in that relation, it is urged, we are in contact

(a) with objects, not 'mere ideas.'

(b) with objects that are good in themselves and

(c) intelligible and

(d) harmonious to our own nature.

It is objected that love, so conceived, is

(a) rarely, perhaps never, experienced.

(b) in any case, is neither eternal nor universal.

This is admitted; but it is maintained that the best love we know
comes nearer than anything else to what we might conceive to be
absolutely good.

III. The question is now raised: if 'the Good' be so conceived, is it
not clearly unattainable? The answer to this question seems to depend
on whether or not we believe in personal immortality. The following
points are therefore discussed:

(a) Whether personal immortality is conceivable?

(b) Whether a belief in it is essential to a reasonable pursuit of
Good?

On these points no dogmatic solution is offered; and the Dialogue
closes with the description of a dream.




BOOK I.


Every summer, for several years past, it has been my custom to arrange
in some pleasant place, either in England or on the continent, a
gathering of old college friends. In this way I have been enabled
not only to maintain some happy intimacies, but (what to a man of
my occupation is not unimportant) to refresh and extend, by an
interchange of ideas with men of various callings, an experience of
life which might be otherwise unduly monotonous and confined. Last
year, in particular, our meeting was rendered to me especially
agreeable by the presence of a very dear friend, Philip Audubon, whom,
since his business lay in the East, I had not had an opportunity of
seeing for many years. I mention him particularly, because, although,
as will be seen, he did not take much part in the discussion I am
about to describe, he was, in a sense, the originator of it. For, in
the first place, it was he who had invited us to the place in which we
were staying,--an upland valley in Switzerland, where he had taken a
house; and, further, it was through my renewed intercourse with him
that I was led into the train of thought which issued in the following
conversation. His life in the East, a life laborious and monotonous
in the extreme, had confirmed in him a melancholy to which he was
constitutionally inclined, and which appeared to be rather heightened
than diminished by exceptional success in a difficult career. I
hesitate to describe his attitude as pessimistic, for the word has
associations with the schools from which he was singularly free. His
melancholy was not the artificial product of a philosophic system; it
was temperamental rather than intellectual, and might be described,
perhaps, as an intuition rather than a judgment of the worthlessness
and irrationality of the world. Such a position is not readily shaken
by argument, nor did I make any direct attempt to assail it; but it
could not fail to impress itself strongly upon my mind, and to keep
my thoughts constantly employed upon that old problem of the worth
of things, in which, indeed, for other reasons, I was already
sufficiently interested.

A further impulse in the same direction was given by the arrival of
another old friend, Arthur Ellis. He and I had been drawn together
at college by a common interest in philosophy; but in later years our
paths had diverged widely. Fortune and inclination had led him into
an active career, and for some years he had been travelling abroad
as correspondent to one of the daily papers. I felt, therefore, some
curiosity to renew my acquaintance with him, and to ascertain how far
his views had been modified by his experience of the world.

The morning after his arrival he joined Audubon and myself in a kind
of loggia at the back of the house, which was our common place of
rendezvous. We exchanged the usual greetings, and for some minutes
nothing more was said, so pleasant was it to sit silent in the shade
listening to the swish of scythes (they were cutting the grass in
the meadow opposite) and to the bubbling of a little fountain in the
garden on our right, while the sun grew hotter every minute on the
fir-covered slopes beyond. I wanted to talk, and yet I was unwilling
to begin; but presently Ellis turned to me and said: "Well, my dear
philosopher, and how goes the world with you? What have you been doing
in all these years since we met?"

"Oh," I replied, "nothing worth talking about."

"What have you been thinking then?"

"Just now I have been thinking how well you look. Knocking about the
world seems to suit you."

"I think it does. And yet at this moment, whether it be the quiet of
the place, or whether it be the sight of your philosophic countenance,
I feel a kind of yearning for the contemplative life. I believe if
I stayed here long you would lure me back to philosophy; and yet I
thought I had finally escaped when I broke away from you before."

"It is not so easy," I said, "to escape from that net, once one is
caught. But it was not I who spread the snare; I was only trying to
help you out, or, at least, to get out myself."

"And have you found a way?"

"No, I cannot say that I have. That's why I want to talk to you and
hear how you have fared."

"I? Oh, I have given the whole subject up."

"You can hardly give up the subject till you give up life. You may
have given up reading books about it; and, for that matter, so have I.
But that is only because I want to grapple with it more closely."

"What do you do, then, if you do not read books?"

"I talk to as many people as I can, and especially to those who have
had no special education in philosophy; and try to find out to what
conclusions they have been led by their own direct experience."

"Conclusions about what?"

"About many things. But in particular about the point we used to be
fondest of discussing in the days before you had, as you say, given
up the subject--I mean the whole question of the values we attach, or
ought to attach, to things."

"Oh!" he said, "well, as to all that, my opinion is the same as of
old. 'There's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so,' So I used
to say at college and so I say now."

"I remember," I replied, "that that is what you always used to say;
but I thought I had refuted you over and over again."

"So you may have done, as far as logic can refute; but every bit of
experience which I have had since last we met has confirmed me in my
original view."

"That," I said, "is very interesting, and is just what I want to hear
about. What is it that experience has done for you? For, as you
know, I have so little of my own, I try to get all I can out of other
people's."

"Well," he said, "the effect of mine has been to bring home to me,
in a way I could never realize before, the extraordinary diversity of
men's ideals."

"That, you find, is the effect of travel?"

"I think so. Travelling really does open the eyes. For instance, until
I went to the East I never really felt the antagonism between the
Oriental view of life and our own. Now, it seems to me clear that
either they are mad or we are; and upon my word, I don't know which.
Of course, when one is here, one supposes it is they. But when one
gets among them and really talks to them, when one realizes how
profound and intelligent is their contempt for our civilization,
how worthless they hold our aims and activities, how illusory our
progress, how futile our intelligence, one begins to wonder whether,
after all, it is not merely by an effect of habit that one judges them
to be wrong and ourselves right, and whether there is anything at
all except blind prejudice in any opinions and ideas about Right and
Wrong."

"In fact," interposed Audubon, "you agree, like me, with Sir Richard
Burton:

"'There is no good, there is no bad, these be the whims of mortal will;
What works me weal that call I good, what harms and hurts I hold as ill.
They change with space, they shift with race, and in the veriest span of
     time,
Each vice has worn a virtue's crown, all good been banned as sin or
     crime.'"

"Yes," he assented, "and that is what is brought home to one by
travel. Though really, if one had penetration enough, it would not be
necessary to travel to make the discovery. A single country, a single
city, almost a single village, would illustrate, to one who can look
below the surface, the same truth. Under the professed uniformity of
beliefs, even here in England, what discrepancies and incongruities
are concealed! Every type, every individual almost, is distinguished
from every other in precisely this point of the judgments he makes
about Good. What does the soldier and adventurer think of the life of
a studious recluse? or the city man of that of the artist? and vice
versa? Behind the mask of good manners we all of us go about judging
and condemning one another root and branch. We are in no real
agreement as to the worth either of men or things. It is an illusion
of the 'canting moralist' (to use Stevenson's phrase) that there is
any fixed and final standard of Good. Good is just what any one thinks
it to be; and one man has as much right to his opinion as another."

"But," I objected, "it surely does not follow that because there are
different opinions about Good, they are all equally valuable."

"No. I should infer rather that they are all equally worthless."

"That does not seem to me legitimate either; and I venture to doubt
whether you really believe it yourself."

"Well, at any rate I am inclined to think I do."

"In a sense perhaps you do; but not in the sense which seems to me
most important. I mean that when it comes to the point, you act, and
are practically bound to act, upon your opinion about what is good, as
though you did believe it to be true."

"How do you mean 'practically bound?'"

"I mean that it is only by so acting that you are able to introduce
any order or system into your life, or in fact to give it to yourself
any meaning at all. Without the belief that what you hold to be good
really somehow is so, your life, I think, would resolve itself into
mere chaos."

"I don't see that"

"Well, I may be wrong, but my notion is that what systematizes a life
is choice; and choice, I believe, means choice of what we hold to be
good."

"Surely not! Surely we may choose what we hold to be bad."

"I doubt it"

"But how then do you account for what you call bad men?"

"I should say they are men who choose what I think bad but they think
good."

"But are there not men who deliberately choose what they think bad,
like Milton's Satan--'Evil be thou my Good'?"

"Yes, but by the very terms of the expression he was choosing what he
thought good; only he thought that evil was good."

"But that is a contradiction."

"Yes, it is the contradiction in which he was involved, and in which I
believe everyone is involved who chooses, as you say, the Bad. To them
it is not only bad, it is somehow also good."

"Does that apply to Nero, for example?"

"Yes, I think it very well might; the things which he chose, power and
wealth and the pleasures of the senses, he chose because he thought
them good; if his choice also involved what he thought bad, such as
murder and rapine and the like (if he did think these bad, which I
doubt), then there was a contradiction not so much in his choice as in
its consequences. But even if I were to admit that he and others have
chosen and do choose what they believe to be bad, it would not affect
the point I want to make. For to choose Bad must be, in your view, as
absurd as to choose Good; since, I suppose, you do not believe, that
our opinions about the one have any more validity than our opinions
about the other. So that if we are to abandon Good as a principle of
choice, it is idle to say we may fall back upon Bad."

"No, I don't say that we may; nor do I see that we must We do not
need either the one or the other. You must have noticed--I am sure I
have--that men do not in practice choose with any direct reference to
Good or Bad; they choose what they think will bring them pleasure, or
fame, or power, or, it may be, barely a livelihood."

"But believing, surely, that these things are good?"

"Not necessarily; not thinking at all about it, perhaps."

"Perhaps not thinking about it as we are now; but still, so far
believing that what they have chosen Is good, that if you were to go
to them and suggest that, after all, it is bad they would be seriously
angry and distressed."

"But, probably," interposed Audubon, "like me, they could not help
themselves. We are none of us free, in the way you seem to imagine. We
have to choose the best we can, and often it is bad enough."

"No doubt," I replied, "but still, as you say yourself, what we choose
is the best we can, that is, the most good we can. The criterion is
Good, only it is very little of it that we are able to realize."

"No," objected Ellis, "I am not prepared to admit that the criterion
is Good. You will find that men will frankly confess that other
pursuits or occupations are, in their opinion, better than those
they have chosen, and that these better things were and are open to
themselves, and yet they continue to devote themselves to the worse,
knowing it all the time to be the worse."

"But in most cases," I replied, "these better things, surely, are not
really 'open' to them, except so far as external circumstances are
concerned. They are hampered in their choice by passions and desires,
by that part of them which does not choose, but is passively carried
away by alien attractions; and the course they actually adopt is the
best they can choose, though they see a better which they would choose
if they could. The choice is always of Good, but it may be diverted by
passion to less Good."

"I don't know," he said, "that that is a fair account of the matter."

"Nor do I. It is so hard to analyse what goes on in one's own
consciousness, much more what goes on in other people's. Still, that
is the kind of way I should describe my own experience, and I should
expect that most people who reflect would agree with me. They would
say, I think, that they always choose the best they can, though
regretting that they cannot choose better than they do; and it would
seem to them, I think, absurd to suggest that they choose Bad, or
choose without any reference either to Good or Bad."

"Well," he said, "granting, for the moment, that you are right--what
follows?"

"Why, then," I said, "it follows that we are, as I said, 'practically
bound' to accept as valid, for the moment at least, our opinions about
what is good; for otherwise we should have no principle to choose by,
if it be true that the principle of choice is Good."

"Very well," he said, "then we should have to do without choosing!"

"But could we?"

"I don't see why not; many people do."

"But what sort of people? I mean what sort of life would it be?"

Ellis was preparing to answer when we were interrupted by a voice from
behind. The place in which we were sitting opened at the back into one
of those large lofty barns which commonly form part of a Swiss house;
and as the floor of this room was covered with straw, it was possible
to approach that way without making much noise. For this reason, two
others of our party had been able to join us without our observing it.
Their names were Parry and Leslie; the former a man of thirty, just
getting into practice at the Bar, the latter still almost a boy in
years, though a very precocious one, whom I had brought with me,
ostensibly as a pupil, but really as a companion. He was an eager
student of philosophy, and had something of that contempt of youth for
any one older than twenty-five, which I can never find it in my heart
to resent, though have long passed the age which qualifies me to
become the object of it. He it was who was speaking, in a passionate
way he had, when anything like a philosophic discussion was
proceeding.

"Why," he was saying, in answer to my last remark, "without choice one
would be a mere slave of passion, a creature of every random mood and
impulse, a beast, a thing, not a man at all!"

Ellis looked round rather amused.

"Well," he said, "you fire-eater, and why not? I don't know that
impulse is such a bad thing. A good impulse is better than a bad
calculation any day!"

"Yes, but you deny the validity of the distinction between Good and
Bad, so it's absurd for you to talk about a good impulse."

"What _is_ your position, Ellis?" asked Parry. "I've been trying in
vain to make head or tail of it"

"Why should I take a position at all?" rejoined Ellis "I protest
against this bullying."

"But you _must_ take a position," cried Leslie, "if we are to
discuss."

"I don't see why; you might take one instead."

"Yes, but you began."

"Well," he conceded, "anything to oblige you. My position, then, to
go back again to the beginning, is this. Seeing that there are so many
different opinions about what things are good, and that no criterion
has been discovered for testing these opinions----"

"My dear Ellis," interrupted Parry, "I protest against all that from
the very beginning. For all practical purposes there is a substantial
agreement about what is good."

"My dear Parry," retorted Ellis, "if I am to state a position, let
me state it without interruption. Considering, as I was saying, that
there are so many different opinions about what things are good, and
that no criterion has been discovered for testing them, I hold that we
have no reason to attach any validity to these opinions, or to suppose
that it is possible to have any true opinions on the subject at all."

"And what do you say to that?" asked Parry, turning to me.

"I said, or rather I suggested, for the whole matter is very difficult
to me, that in spite of the divergency of opinions on the point, and
the difficulty of bringing them into harmony, we are nevertheless
practically bound, whether we can justify it to our reason or not,
to believe that our own opinions about what is good have somehow some
validity."

"But how 'practically bound'?" asked Leslie.

"Why, as I was trying to get Ellis to admit when you interrupted--and
your interruption really completed my argument--I imagine it to be
impossible for us not to make choices; and in making choices, as I
think, we use our ideas about Good as a principle of choice."

"But you must remember," said Ellis, "that I have never admitted the
truth of that last statement."

"But," I said, "if you do not admit it generally--and generally, I
confess, I do not see how it could be proved or disproved, except by
an appeal to every individual's experience--do you not admit it in
your own case? Do you not find that, in choosing, you follow your idea
of what is good, so far as you can under the limitations of your own
passions and of external circumstances?"

"Well," he replied, "I wish to be candid, and I am ready to admit that
I do."

"And that you cannot conceive yourself as choosing otherwise? I mean
that if you had to abandon as a principle of choice your opinion about
Good, you would have nothing else to fall back upon?"

"No; I think in that case I should simply cease to choose."

"And can you conceive yourself doing that? Can you conceive yourself
living, as perhaps many men do, at random and haphazard, from moment
to moment, following blindly any impulse that may happen to turn
up, without any principle by which you might subordinate one to the
other?"

"No," he said, "I don't think I can."

"That, then," I said, "is what I meant, when I suggested that you, at
any rate, and I, and other people like us, are practically bound to
believe that our opinions about what is good have some validity, even
though we cannot say what or how much."

"You say, then, that we have to accept in practice what we deny in
theory?"

"Yes, if you like. I say, at least, that the consequence of the
attempt to bring our theoretical denial to bear upon our practice
would be to reduce our life to a moral chaos, by denying the only
principle of choice which we find ourselves actually able to accept.
In your case and mine, as it seems, it is our opinion about Good that
engenders order among our passions and desires; and without it we
should sink back to be mere creatures of blind impulse, such as
perhaps in fact, many men really are."

"What!" cried Audubon, interrupting in a tone of half indignant
protest, "do you mean to say that it is some idea about Good that
brings order into a man's life? All I can say is that, for my part,
I never once think, from one year's end to another, of anything so
abstract and remote. I simply go on, day after day, plodding the
appointed round, without reflexion, without reason, simply because I
have to. There's order in my life, heaven knows! but it has nothing to
do with ideas about Good. And altogether," he ejaculated, in a kind of
passion, "it's a preposterous thing to tell me that I believe in
Good, merely because I lead a life like a mill-horse! That would be an
admirable reason for believing in Bad--but Good!"

He lapsed again into silence; and I was half unwilling to press him
further, knowing that he felt our dialectics to be a kind of insult to
his concrete woes. However, it seemed to be necessary for the sake of
the argument to give some answer, so I began:--

"But if you don't like the life of a mill-horse, why do you lead it?"

"Why? because I have to!" he replied; "you don't suppose I would do it
if I could help it?"

"No," I said, "but why can't you help it?"

"Because," he said, "I have to earn my living."

"Then is it a good thing to earn your living?"

"No, but it's a necessary thing."

"Necessary, why?"

"Because one must live."

"Then it is a good thing to live?"

"No, it's a very bad one."

"Why do you live, then?"

"Because I can't help it."

"But it is always possible to stop living."

"No, it isn't"

"But why not?"

"Because there are other people dependent on me, and I don't choose to
be such a mean skunk as to run away myself and leave other people here
to suffer. Besides, it's a sort of point of honour. As I'm here, I'm
going to play the game. All I say is that the game is not worth the
playing; and you will never persuade me into the belief that it Is."

"But, my dear Philip," I said, "there is no need for me to persuade
you, for it is clear that you are persuaded already. You believe, as
you have really admitted in principle, that it is good to live rather
than to die; and to live, moreover, a monotonous, laborious life,
which you say you detest Take away that belief, and your whole being
is transformed. Either you change your manner of life, abandon the
routine which you hate, break up the order imposed (as I said at
first) by your idea about Good, and give yourself up to the chaos of
chance desires; or you depart from life altogether, on the hypothesis
that that is the good thing to do. But in any case the truth appears
to remain that somehow or other you do believe in Good; and that it is
this belief which determines the whole course of your life."

"Well," he said, "it's no use arguing the point, but I am
unconvinced." And he sank back to his customary silence. I thought
it useless to pursue the subject with him; but Ellis took up the
argument.

"I agree with Audubon," he said. "For even if I admitted your general
contention, I should still maintain that it is not by virtue of any
conscious idea of Good that we introduce order into our lives. We
simply find ourselves, as a matter of fact, by nature and character,
preferring one object to another, suppressing or developing this or
that tendency. Our choices are not determined by our abstract notion
of Good; on the contrary, our notion of Good is deduced from our
choices."

"You mean, I suppose, that we collect from our particular choices our
general idea of the kind of things which we consider good. That may
be. But the point I insist upon is that we do attach validity to
these choices; they are, to us, our choices of our Good, those that we
approve as distinguished from those that we do not. And my contention
is that, in spite of all diversity of opinions as to what really are
the good things to choose, we are bound to attach, each of us, some
validity to our own, under penalty of reducing our life to a moral
chaos."

"But what do you mean by 'validity'?" asked Leslie. "Do you mean that
we must believe that our opinions are right?"

"Yes," I said, "or, at least, if not that they are right, that they
are the rightest we can attain to for the time being, and until we see
something righter. But above all, that opinions on this subject really
are either right or wrong, or more right and less right; and that of
this rightness or wrongness we really have some kind of perception,
however difficult it may be to give an account of it, and that in
accordance with such perception we may come to change our opinions or
those of other people, by the methods of discussion and persuasion and
the like. And all this, as I understand, is what Ellis was denying."

"Certainly," said Ellis, "I was; and I still do not see that you have
proved it."

"No," I said, "I have not even tried to. I have only tried to show
that in spite of your denial you really do believe it, because a
belief in it is implied in all your practical activity. And that, I
thought, you did admit yourself."

"But even so," he replied, "it remains to be considered whether my
theory is not more reasonable than my practice."

"Perhaps," I replied; "but that, I admit, is not the question that
really interests me. What I want to get at is the belief which
underlies the whole life of people like ourselves, and of which, it
seems, we cannot practically divest ourselves. And such a belief, I
think, is this which we have been discussing as to the validity of our
opinions about Good."

"I see," he said; "in fact you are concerning yourself not with
philosophy but with psychology."

"If you like; it matters little what you call it. Only, whatever it
be, you will do me a service if for the moment you will place yourself
at my standpoint, and see with me how things look from there."

"Very well," he said, "I have no objection, and so far, on the whole,
I do agree with you; though I am bound to point out that you might
easily find an opponent less complaisant. Your argument is very much
one _ad hominem_."

"It is," I said, "and that, I confess, is the only kind of argument in
which I much believe in these matters. I am content, for the present,
if you and the others here go along with me."

"I do," said Parry, "but you seem to me to be only stating, in an
unnecessarily elaborate way, what after all is a mere matter of common
sense."

"Perhaps it is," I replied, "though I have always thought myself
rather deficient in that kind of sense. But what does Leslie say?"

"Oh," he said, "I can't think how you can be content with anything so
lame and impotent! Some method there must be, absolute and _à priori_,
by which we may prove for certain that Good is, and discover, as well,
what things are good."

"Well," I said, "if there be such a method, you, if anyone, should
find it; and I wish you from my heart good luck in the quest. It is
only in default of anything better that I fall back on this--I dare
not call it method; this appeal to opinion and belief."

"And even so," said Ellis, "it is little enough that you have shown,
or rather, that I have chosen to admit. For even if it were granted
that individuals, in order to choose, must believe in Good, it doesn't
follow that they believe in anything except each a Good for himself.
So that, even on your own hypothesis, all we could say would be that
there are a number of different and perhaps incompatible Goods, each
good for some particular individual, but none necessarily good for
all. I, at least, admit no more than that."

"How do you mean?" I asked, "for I am getting lost again."

"I mean," he replied, "something that I should have thought was
familiar enough. Granted that there really is a Good which each
individual ought to choose, and does choose, if you like, as far as
he can see it; or granted, at least, that he is bound to believe this,
under penalty of reducing his life to moral chaos; still, I see no
reason to suppose that the thing which one individual ought to choose
is identical, or even compatible, with that which another ought to
choose. There may be a whole series of distinct and mutually exclusive
moral worlds. In other words, even though I may admit a Good for each,
I am not prepared to admit a Good for all."

"But then," I objected, "each of these Goods will also be a not-Good;
and that seems to be a contradiction."

"Not at all," he replied, "for each of them only professes to be Good
for me, and that is quite compatible with being Bad for another."

"But," cried Leslie, trembling with excitement, "your whole conception
is absurd. Good is simply Good; it is not Good for anybody or
anything; it is Good in its own nature, one, simple, immutable
eternal."

"It may be," replied Ellis, "but I hope you will not actually tear me
to pieces if I humbly confess that I cannot see it. I see no reason to
admit any such Good; it even has no meaning to me."

"Well, anyhow, nothing else can have any meaning!"

"But, to me, something else has a meaning."

"Well, what?"

"Why, what I have been trying, apparently without success, to
explain."

"But don't you see that each of those things you call Goods, oughtn't
to be called Good at all, but each of them by some other particular
name of its own?"

"Oh, I don't want to quarrel about names; but I call each of them
Good because from one point of view--that of some particular
individual--each of them is something that ought to be. I, at any
rate, admit no more than that. For each individual there is something
that ought to be; but this, which ought to be for him, is very likely
something that ought not to be for somebody else."

On this Leslie threw himself back with a gesture of disgust and
despair; and I took the opportunity of intervening.

"Let us have some concrete instances," I said, "of these incompatible
Goods."

"By all means," he replied, "nothing can be simpler. It is good, say,
for Nero, to preserve supreme power; but it is bad for the people who
come in his way. It is good for an American millionaire to make and
increase his fortune; but it is bad for the people he ruins in the
process. And so on, _ad infinitum_; one has only to look at the
world to see that the Goods of individuals are not only diverse but
incompatible one with another."

"Of course," I said, "it is true that people do hold things to be good
which are in this way mutually incompatible. But does not the fact
of this incompatibility make one suspect that perhaps the things in
question are not really good?"

"It may, in some cases, but I see no ground for the suspicion. It
may very well be that what is good for me is in the nature of things
incompatible with what is good for you."

"I don't say it may not be so; but does one believe it to be so?
Doesn't one believe that what is really good for one must somehow be
compatible with what is really good for others?"

"Some people may believe it, but many don't; and it can never be
proved."

"No; and so I am driven back upon my argument _ad hominem_. Do not
you, as a matter of fact, believe it?"

"No, I don't know that I do."

"Do you believe then that there is nothing which is good for people in
general?"

"I don't see what is to prevent my believing it."

"But, at any rate you do not act as if you believed it."

"In what way do I not?"

"Why, for instance, you said last night that you intended to enter
Parliament."

"Well?"

"And in a few weeks you will be making speeches all over the country
in favour of--well, I don't quite know what--shall we say in favour of
the war?"

"Say so, by all means, if you like."

"And this war, I presume, you believe to be a good thing?"

"Well?"

"Good, that is, not merely for yourself but for the world at large? or
at least for the English or the Boers, or one or other of them? Do you
admit that?"

"Oh," he said, "I am nothing if not frank! At present, we will admit,
I think the war a good thing (whatever that may mean); but what of
that? Very probably I am wrong."

"Very probably you are; but that is not the point. The main thing is,
that you admit that it is possible to be wrong or right at all; that
there is something to be wrong or right about."

"But I don't know that I do admit it, or, at any rate, that I shall
always admit it. Probably, after changing my opinions again and again,
I shall come to the conclusion that none of them are worth anything at
all; that, in fact, there's nothing to have an opinion about; and then
I shall retire from politics altogether; and then--then how will you
get hold of me?"

"Oh," I replied, "easily enough! For you will still continue, I
suppose, to do some kind of work, and work which will necessarily
affect innumerable people besides yourself; and you will believe, I
presume, that somehow or other the work you do is contributing to some
general Good?"

"'You presume'! you do indeed presume! Suppose I believe nothing of
the kind? Suppose I deny altogether a general Good?"

"We will suppose it, if you like," I said. "And now let us go on to
examine the consequences of the supposition."

"By all means!" he said, "proceed!"

"Well," I began, "since you are still living in society, (for that, I
suppose, you allow me to assume,) you are, by the nature of the case,
interchanging with others innumerable offices. At the same time, on
the supposition we are adopting, that you deny a general Good, your
only object in this interchange will be your own Good, (in which you
admit that you do believe.) If, for example, you are a doctor,
your aim, at the highest, is to develop yourself, to increase your
knowledge, your skill, your self-control; at the lowest, it is to
accumulate a fortune; but in neither case can your purpose be to
alleviate or cure disease, nor to contribute to the advance of
science; for that would be to suppose that these ends, although they
purport to be general, nevertheless are somehow good, which is the
hypothesis we were excluding. Similarly, if you are a lawyer, you will
not set your heart on doing justice, or perfecting the law; such ends
as these for you are mere illusions; for even if justice exist at all,
it certainly is not a Good, for if it were, it would be a Good for
all, and, as we agree, there is no such thing. Men like Bentham,
therefore, to you will be mere visionaries, and the legal system as a
whole will have no sense or purport, except so far as it contributes
to sharpen your wits and fill your pocket And so, in general, with all
professions and occupations; whichever you may adopt, you will treat
it merely as a means to your own Good; and since you have no Good
which is also common to other men, you will use these others without
scruple to further what you conceive to be your own advantage, without
necessarily paying any regard to what they may conceive to be theirs."

"Well," he said, "and why not?"

"I don't ask 'why not'?" I replied, "I ask merely whether it would be
so? whether you do, as a matter of fact, conceive it possible that you
should ever adopt such an attitude?"

"Well, no," he admitted, "I don't think it is; but that is an
idiosyncrasy of mine; and I have no doubt there are plenty of other
men who are precisely in the position you describe. Take, for example,
a man like the late Jay Gould. Do you suppose that he, in his business
operations, ever had any regard for anything except his own personal
advantage? Do you suppose he cared how many people he ruined? Do you
suppose he cared even whether he ruined his country, except so far as
such ruin might interfere with his own profit? Or look again at the
famous Mr. Leiter of Chicago! What do you suppose it mattered to
him that he might be starving half the world, and imperilling the
governments of Europe? It was enough for him that he should realize a
fortune; of all the rest, I suppose, he washed his hands. He and men
like him adopt, I have no doubt, precisely the position which you are
trying to show is impossible."

"No," I said, "I am not trying to show that it is impossible in
general; I am only trying to show that it is impossible for you. And
my object is to suggest that if a man does deny a general Good, he
denies it, as I say, at his peril. If his denial is genuine, and
not merely verbal, it will lead him to conduct of the kind I have
described."

"But surely," interrupted Leslie, "you have no right to assume that a
disbelief in a general Good, however genuine, necessarily involves
a sheer egoism in conduct? For a man might find that his own Good
consisted in furthering the Good of other people; and in that case of
course he will try to further it."

"But," I replied, "on our hypothesis there is no Good of other people.
Each individual, we agreed, has his Good, but there is no Good common
to all. And thus we could have no guarantee that in furthering the
Good of one we are also furthering that of others. So that even
supposing a man to believe that his own Good consists in furthering
the Good of others, yet he will not be able to put his belief into
practice, but at most will be able to help some one man, with the
likelihood that in so doing he is thwarting and injuring many others.
Though, therefore, he may not wish to be an egoist, yet he cannot work
for a common Good; and that simply because there is no common Good to
work for."

At this point Parry, who had been sitting silent during the
discussion, probably because of its somewhat abstract character,
suddenly broke in upon it as follows. He had a great fund of optimism
and what is sometimes called common sense, which to me was rather
pleasant and refreshing, though some of the others, and especially
Leslie and Ellis, were apt, I think, to find it irritating. His
present speech was characteristic of his manner.

"Ah!" he began, "there you touch upon the point which has vitiated
your argument throughout. You seem to assume that because every man
has his own Good, and there is no Good we can affirm to be common
to all, therefore these individual Goods are incompatible one with
another, so that a man who is intent on his own Good is necessarily
hindering, or, at least, not helping, other people who are intent on
theirs. But I believe, and my view is borne out by all experience,
that exactly the opposite is the case. Every man, in pursuing his own
advantage, is also enabling the rest to pursue theirs. The world, if
you like to put it so, is a world of egoists; but a world constructed
with such exquisite art, that the egoism of one is not only compatible
with, but indispensable to that of another. On this principle all
society rests. The producer, seeking his own profit, is bound to
satisfy the consumer; the capitalist cannot exist without supporting
the labourer; the borrower and lender are knit by the closest ties of
mutual advantage; and so with all the ranks and divisions of mankind,
social, political, economic, or what you will. Balanced, one against
the other, in delicate counterpoise, in subtlest interaction of part
with part, they sweep on in one majestic system, an equilibrium for
ever disturbed, yet ever recovering itself anew, created, it is true,
and maintained by countless individual impulses, yet summing up and
reflecting all of these in a single, perfect, all-harmonious whole.
And when we consider----"

But here he was interrupted by a kind of groan from Audubon; and
Ellis, seeing his opportunity, broke in ironically, as follows:

"The theme, my dear Parry, is indeed a vast one, and suggests
countless developments. When, for example, we consider (to borrow your
own phrase) the reciprocal relations of the householder and the thief,
of the murderer and his victim, of the investor and the fraudulent
company-promoter; when, turning from these private examples, we cast
our eyes on international relations, when we observe the perfect
accord of interest between all the great powers in the far East;
when we note the smooth harmonious working of that flawless political
machine so aptly named the European Concert, each member pursuing its
own advantage, yet co-operating without friction to a common end; or
when, reverting to the economic sphere, we contemplate the exquisite
adjustment that prevails between the mutual interest of labour and
capital--an adjustment broken only now and again by an occasional
disturbance, just to show that the centre of gravity is changing;
when we observe the World Trust quietly, without a creak or a groan,
annihilating the individual producer; or when, to take the sublime
example which has already been quoted, we perceive a single
individual, in the pursuit of his own Good, positively co-operating
with revolutionists on the other side of the globe, and contributing,
by the process of starvation, to the deliverance of a great and
oppressed people--if indeed, in such a world as ours, anyone can
be said to be oppressed--when, my dear Parry, we contemplate these
things, then--then--words fail me! Finish the sentence as you only
can."

"Oh," said Parry, good-naturedly enough, "of course I know very well
you can make anything ridiculous if you like. But I still maintain
that we must take broad views of these matters, and that the position
adopted is substantially correct, if you take long enough periods
of time. Every man in the long run by pursuing his own Good does
contribute also to the Good of others."

"Well," I said, anxious to keep the argument to the main point,
"let us admit for the moment that it is so. You assert, then, that
everyone's Good is distinct from everyone else's, and that there is no
common Good; but that each one's pursuit of his own Good is essential
to the realization of the Good of all the rest"

"Yes," he said; "roughly, that is the kind of thing I believe."

"Well, but," I continued, "on that system there is at least one thing
which we shall have to call a common Good."

"And what is that?"

"Society itself! For society is the condition indispensable to
all alike for the realization of any individual Good; and a common
condition of Good is, I suppose, in a sense, a common Good."

"Yes," he replied, "I suppose, in a sense, it is."

"Well," I said, "I want no larger admission. For under 'society' what
is not included! Sanction society, and you sanction, or at least you
admit the possibility of a sanction for every kind of common activity
and end; and the motives of men in undertaking these common activities
become a matter of comparative indifference. Whatever they are
consciously aiming at, whether it be their own Good, or the Good of
all, or, as is more probable, a varying mixture of both, the fact
remains that they do, and we do, admit a common Good, the maintenance
and development of society itself. And that is all I was concerned to
get you to agree to."

"But," said Leslie, "do you really think that there is no common Good
except this, which you yourself admit to be rather a condition of Good
than Good itself?"

"No," I replied, "that is not my view. I do not, myself, regard
society as nothing but a condition of the realization of independent,
individual Goods. On the contrary, I think that the Good of each
individual consists in his relations with other individuals. But this
I do not know that I am in a position to establish. Meantime, however,
we can, I think, maintain, that few candid men, understanding the
issue, will really deny altogether a common Good; for they will have
to admit that in society we have at the very least a common condition
of Good."

"But still," objected Leslie, "even so we have no proof that there
is a common Good, but only that most civilized men, if pressed, would
probably admit one."

"Certainly," I replied, "and I pretend nothing more. I have not
attempted to prove that there is a common Good, nor even that it is
impossible not to believe in one. I merely wished to show, as before,
that if a man disbelieves, he disbelieves, so to speak, at his own
peril. And to sum up the argument, what I think we have shown is, that
to deny a common Good is, in the first place, to deny to one's life
and action all worth except what is bound up with one's own Good, to
the complete exclusion of any Good of all. In the second place, it is
to deny all worth to every public and social institution--to religion,
law, government, the family, all activities, in a word, which
contribute to and make up what we call society. Further, it is to
empty history, which is the record of society, of its main interest
and significance, and in particular to eliminate the idea of progress;
for progress, of course, implies a common Good towards which progress
is directed. In brief, it is to strip a man of his whole social self,
and reveal him a poor, naked, shivering Ego, implicated in relations
from which he may derive what advantage he can for himself, but which,
apart from that advantage, have no point or purport or aim; it is to
make him an Egoist even against his will; leaving him for his solitary
ideal a cult of self-development, deprived of its main attraction
by its dissociation from the development of others. Now, if any man,
having a full sense of what is implied in his words (a sense, not
merely conceived by the intellect, but felt, as it were, in every
nerve and tissue) will seriously and deliberately deny that he
believes in a common Good; if he will not merely make the denial with
his lips, but actually carry it out in his daily life, adjusting to
his verbal proposition his habitual actions, feelings, and thoughts;
if he will and can really and genuinely do this, then I, for my part,
am willing to admit that I cannot prove him to be wrong. All I can do
is to set my experience against his, and to appeal to the experience
of others; and we must wait till further experience on either side
leads (if it ever is to lead) to an agreement. But, on the other hand,
if a man merely makes the denial with his lips, because, perhaps, he
conceives it impossible to prove the opposite, or because he sees
that what is good cannot be defined beyond dispute, or whatever other
plausible reason he may have; and if, while he persists in his denial,
he continues to act as if the contrary were true, taking part with
zest and enthusiasm in the common business of life, pushing causes,
supporting institutions, subscribing to societies, and the like, and
that without any pretence that in so doing he is seeking merely his
own Good--in that case I shall take leave to think that he does not
really believe what he says (though no doubt he may genuinely think he
does), and I shall take his life and his habits, the whole tissue of
his instincts and desires, as a truer index to his real opinion than
the propositions he enunciates with his lips."

"But," cried Leslie, "that is a mere appeal to prejudice! Of course
we all want to believe that there is a common Good; the question is,
whether we have a right to."

"Perhaps," I replied, "but the question I wished to raise was the more
modest one, whether we can help it? Whether we have a right or no
is another matter, more difficult and more profound than I care to
approach at present. If, indeed, it could be proved beyond dispute to
the reason, either that certain things are good or that they are not,
there would be no place for such discussions as this. But, it appears,
such proof has not yet been given,--or do you think it has?"

"No!" he said, "but I think it might be and must be!"

"Possibly," I said, "but meantime, perhaps, it is wiser to fall back
on this kind of reasoning which you call an appeal to prejudice,--and
so no doubt in a sense it is; for it is an appeal to the passion men
have to find worth in their lives, and their refusal to accept any
view by which such worth is denied. To anyone who refuses to accept
any judgment about what is good, I prove, or endeavour to prove, that
such refusal cuts away the whole basis of his life; and I ask him if
he is prepared to accept that consequence. If he affirms that he is,
and affirms it not only with his lips but in his action, then I have
no more to say; but if he cannot accept the consequences, then, I
suppose, he will reconsider the premisses, and admit that he does
really believe that judgments about what is good may be true, and,
provisionally, that his own are true, or at least as true as he can
make them, and that he does in fact accept and act upon them as true,
and intends to do so until he is convinced that they are false. And
this attitude of his feelings, you may call, if you like, an attitude
of faith; it is, I think, the attitude most men would adopt if they
were pressed home upon the subject; and to my mind it is reasonable
enough, and rather to be praised than to be condemned."

"I don't think so at all," cried Leslie, "I consider it very
unsatisfactory."

"So do I," said Parry, "and for my part, I can't see what you're all
driving at. You seem to be making a great fuss about nothing."

"Oh no!" retorted Ellis, "not about nothing! about a really delightful
paradox! We have arrived at the conclusion that we are bound to
believe in Good, but that we haven't the least notion what it is!"

"Exactly!" said Parry, "and that is just what I dispute!"

"What? That we are bound to believe in Good?"

"No! But that we don't know what Good is, or rather, what things are
good."

"Oh!" I cried, "do you really think we do know? I wish I could think
that! The trouble with me is, that while I seem to see that we are
bound to trust our judgments about what is good, yet I cannot see
that we know that they are true. Indeed, from their very diversity, it
seems as if they could not all be true. My only hope is, that perhaps
they do all contain some truth, although they may contain falsehood as
well."

"But surely," said Parry, "you exaggerate the difficulty. All the
confusion seems to me to arise from the assumption that we can't see
what lies under our noses. I don't believe, myself, that there is all
this difficulty in discovering Good. Philosophers always assume,
as you seem to be doing, that it is all a matter of opinion and
reasoning, and that opinions and reasons really determine conduct.
Whereas in fact, I believe, conduct is determined, at least in
essentials, by something very much more like instinct. And it is
to this instinct which, by the nature of the case, is simple and
infallible, that we ought to look to tell us what is good, and not
to our reason, which, as you admit yourself, can only land us in
contradictory judgments. I know, of course, that you have a prejudice
against any such view."

"Not at all!" I said, "if only I could understand it. I should be glad
of any simple and infallible criterion; only I have never yet been
able to find one."

"That, I believe, is because you look for it in the wrong place; or,
perhaps, because you look for it instead of simply seeing it. You will
never discover what is good by any process of rational inquiry. It's a
matter of direct perception, above and beyond all argument."

"Perhaps it is," I said, "but surely not of perception, as you said,
simple and infallible?"

"If not that, at least sufficiently clear and distinct for all
practical purposes. And to my mind, all discussion about Good is for
this reason rather factitious and unreal. I don't mean to say, of
course, that it isn't amusing, among ourselves, to pass an hour or two
in this kind of talk; but I should think it very unfortunate if the
habit of it were to spread among the mass of men. For inquiry does
tend in the long run to influence opinion, and generally to influence
it in the wrong way; whereas, if people simply go on following their
instinct, they are much more likely to do what is right, than if they
try to act on so-called rational grounds."

"But," cried Leslie, who during this speech had found obvious
difficulty in containing himself, "what is this instinct which you bid
us follow? What authority has it? What validity? What is its content?
What _is_ it, anyhow, that it should be set up in this way above
reason?"

"As to authority," replied Parry, "the point about an instinct is,
that its authority is unimpeachable. It commands and we obey; there's
no question about it."

"But there _is_ question about the content of Good."

"I should rather say that we make question. But, after all, how small
a part of our life is affected by our theories! As a rule, we act
simply and without reflection; and such action is the safest and most
prosperous."

"The safest and most prosperous! But how do you know that? What
standard are you applying? Where do you get it from?"

"From common sense."

"And what is common sense?"

"Oh, a kind of instinct too!"

"A kind of instinct? How many are there then? And does every instinct
require another to justify it, and so _ad infinitum_?"

"Logomachy, my dear Leslie!" cried Parry, with imperturbable
good-humour. He had a habit of treating Leslie as if he were a clever
child.

"But really, Parry," I interposed, "this is the critical point. Is
it your view that an instinct is its own sufficient justification, or
does it require justification by something else?"

"No," he said, "it justifies itself. Take, for example, a strong
instinct, like that of self-preservation. How completely it stands
above all criticism! Not that it cannot be criticised in a kind of
dilettante, abstract way; but in the moment of action the criticism
simply disappears in face of the overwhelming fact it challenges."

"Do you mean to say, then," said Leslie, "that because this instinct
is so strong therefore it is always good to follow it?"

"I should say so, generally speaking."

"How is it, then, that you consider it disgraceful that a man should
run away in battle?"

"Ah!" replied Parry, "that is a very interesting point! There you get
a superposition of the social upon the merely individual instinct."

"And how does that come about?"

"That may be a matter of some dispute; but it has been ingeniously
explained as follows. We start with the primary instinct of
self-preservation. This means, at first, that each individual strives
to preserve himself. But as time goes on individuals discover that
they can only preserve themselves by associating with others, and that
they must defend society if they want to defend themselves. They thus
form a habit of defending society; and this habit becomes in time a
second instinct, and an instinct so strong that it even overrides
the primary one from which it was derived; till at last you get
individuals sacrificing in defence of the community those very lives
which they originally entered the community to preserve."

"What a charming paradox!" cried Ellis. "And so it is really true that
every soldier who dies on the field of battle does so only by virtue
of a miscalculation? And if he could but pull himself up and remember
that, after all, the preservation of his life was the only motive that
induced him to endanger it, he would run away like a sensible man, and
try some other device to achieve his end, the device of society having
evidently broken down, so far as he is concerned."

"There you are again," said Parry, "with your crude rationalism! The
point is that the social habit has now become an instinct, and has
therefore, as I say, imperative authority! No operations of the reason
touch it in the least"

"Well," rejoined Ellis, "I must say that it seems to me very hard that
a man can't rectify such an important error. The imposition is simply
monstrous! Here are a number of fellows shut up in society on the
distinct understanding, to begin with, that society was to help them
to preserve their lives; instead of which, it starves them and hangs
them and sends them to be shot in battle, and they aren't allowed
to raise a word of protest or even to perceive what a fraud is being
perpetrated upon them!"

"I don't see that it's hard at all," replied Parry; "it seems to me
a beautiful device of nature to ensure the predominance of the better
instincts."

"The better instincts!" I cried, "but there is the point! These
instincts of yours, it seems, conflict; in battle, for example, the
instinct to run away conflicts with the instinct to stay and fight?"

"No doubt," he admitted.

"And sometimes one prevails and sometimes the other?"

"Yes."

"And in the one case we say that the man does right, when he stays and
fights; and in the other that he does wrong, when he runs away?"

"I suppose so."

"Well, then, how does your theory of instincts help us to know what is
Good? For it seems that after all we have to choose between instincts,
to approve one and condemn another. And our problem still remains, how
can we do this? how can we get any certainty of standard?"

"Perhaps the faculty that judges is itself an instinct?"

"Perhaps it is," I replied, "I don't really know what an instinct is.
My quarrel is not with the word instinct, but with what seemed to
be your assumption that whatever it is in us that judges about Good
judges in a single, uniform, infallible way. Whereas, in fact, as you
had to admit, sometimes at the same moment it pronounces judgments not
only diverse but contradictory."

"But," he replied, "those seem to me to be exceptional cases. As
a rule the difficulty doesn't occur. When it does, I admit that we
require a criterion. But I should expect to find it in science rather
than in philosophy."

"In science!" exclaimed Leslie. "What has science to do with it?"

"What has _not_ science to do with?" said a new voice from behind. It
was Wilson who, in his turn, had joined us from the breakfast room (he
always breakfasted late), and had overheard the last remark. He was a
lecturer in Biology at Cambridge, rather distinguished in that field,
and an enthusiastic believer in the capacity of the scientific method
to solve all problems.

"I was saying," Leslie repeated in answer to his question, "that
science has nothing to do with the Good."

"So much the worse for the Good," rejoined Wilson, "if indeed that be
true."

"But you, I suppose, would never admit that it is," I interposed. I
was anxious to hear what he had to say, though at the same time I was
desirous to avoid a discussion between him and Leslie, for their types
of mind and habits of thought were so radically opposed that it was
as idle for them to engage in debate as for two bishops of opposite
colour to attempt to capture one another upon a chessboard. He
answered readily enough to my challenge.

"I think," he said, "that there is only one method of knowledge, and
that is the method we call scientific."

"But do you think there is any knowledge of Good at all, even by that
method? or that there is nothing but erroneous opinions?"

"I think," he replied, "that there is a possibility of knowledge, but
only if we abjure dialectics. Here, as everywhere, the only safe guide
is the actual concrete operation of Nature."

"How do you mean?" asked Leslie, his voice vibrating with latent
hostility.

"I mean that the real significance of what we call Good is only to
be ascertained by observing the course of Nature; Good being in fact
identical with the condition towards which she tends, and morality the
means to attaining it."

"But----" Leslie was beginning, when Parry cut him short.

"Wait a moment!" he said. "Let Wilson have a fair hearing!"

"This end and this means," continued Wilson, "we can only ascertain
by a study of the facts of animal and human evolution. Biology and
Sociology, throwing light back and forward upon one another, are
rapidly superseding the pseudo-science of Ethics."

"Oh dear!" cried Ellis, _sotto-voce_, "here comes the social organism!
I knew it would be upon us sooner or later."

"And though at present, I admit," proceeded Wilson, not hearing, or
ignoring, this interruption, "we are hardly in a position to draw any
certain conclusions, yet to me, at least, it seems pretty clear what
kind of results we shall arrive at."

"Yes!" cried Parry, eagerly, "and what are they?"

"Well," replied Wilson, "I will indicate, if you like, the position
I am inclined to take up, though of course it must be regarded as
provisional."

"Of course! Pray go on!"

"Well," he proceeded, "biology, as you know, starts with the single
cell----"

"How do you spell it?" said Ellis, with shameless frivolity, "with a C
or with an S?"

"Of these cells," continued Wilson, imperturbably, "every animal body
is a compound or aggregation; the aggregation involving a progressive
modification in the structure of each cell, the differentiation of
groups of cells to perform special functions,--digestive, respiratory,
and the rest,--and the subordination of each cell or group of cells to
the whole. Similarly, in sociology----"

"Dear Wilson," cried Ellis, unable any longer to contain himself,
"mightn't we take all this for granted?"

"Wait a minute," I said, "let him finish his analogy."

"That's just it!" cried Leslie, "it's nothing but an analogy. And I
don't see how----"

"Hush, hush!" said Parry. "Do let him speak!"

"I was about to say," continued Wilson, "when I was interrupted, that
in the social organism----"

"Ah!" interjected Ellis, "here it is!"

"In the social organism, the individual corresponds to the cell, the
various trades and professions to the organs. Society has thus its
alimentary system, in the apparatus of production and exchange; its
circulatory system, in the network of communications; its nervous
system, in the government machinery; its----"

"By the bye," interrupted Ellis, "could you tell me, for I never could
find it in Herbert Spencer, what exactly in society corresponds to the
spleen?"

"Or the liver?" added Leslie.

"Or the vermiform appendix?" Ellis pursued.

"Oh, well," said Wilson, a little huffed at last, "if you are tired of
being serious it's no use for me to continue."

"I'm sorry, Wilson!" said Ellis. "I won't do it again; but one does
get a little tired of the social organism."

"More people talk about it," answered Wilson, "than really understand
it."

"Very true," retorted Ellis, "especially among biologists."

At this point I began to fear we should lose our subject in polemics;
so I ventured to recall Wilson to the real issue.

"Supposing," I said, "that we grant the whole of your position, how
does it help us to judge what is good?"

"Why," he said, "in this way. What we learn from biology is, that it
is the constant effort of nature to combine cells into individuals
and individuals into societies--the protozoon, in other words,
evolves into the animal, the animal into what some have called the
'hyper-zoon,' or super-organism. Well, now, to this physical evolution
corresponds a psychical one. What kind of consciousness an animal may
have, we can indeed only conjecture; and we cannot even go so far as
conjecture in the case of the cell; but we may reasonably assume
that important psychical changes of the original elements are
accompaniments and conditions of their aggregation into larger
entities; and the morality (if you will permit the word) of the cell
that is incorporated in an animal body will consist in adapting itself
as perfectly as may be to the new conditions, in subordinating its
consciousness to that of the Whole--briefly, in acquiring a social
instead of an individual self. And now, to follow the clue thus
obtained into the higher manifestations of life. As the cell is to the
animal, so is the individual to society, and that on the psychical as
well as on the physical side. Nature has perfected the animal; she
is perfecting society; that is the end and goal of all her striving.
When, therefore, you raise the question, what is Good, biology has
this simple answer to give you: Good is the perfect social soul in the
perfect social body."

As he concluded, Ellis exclaimed softly,"'_Parturiunt montes_,'" and
Leslie took it up with: "And not even a mouse!"

"Whether it is a mouse or no," I said, "it would be hard to say, until
we had examined it more closely. At present it seems to me more like
a cloud, which may or may not conceal the goddess Truth. But the
question I really want to ask is, What particular advantage Wilson
gets from the biological method? For the conclusion itself, I suppose,
might have been reached, and commonly is, without any recourse to the
aid of natural science."

"No doubt," he said, "but my contention is, that it is only by the
scientific method that you get proof. You, for example, may assert
that you believe the social virtues ought to prevail over individual
passions; but if your position were challenged, I don't see how you
would defend it. Whereas I can simply point to the whole evolution of
Nature as tending towards the Good I advocate; and can say:--if you
resist that tendency you are resisting Nature herself!"

"But isn't it rather odd," said Ellis, "that we should be able to
resist Nature?"

"Not at all," he replied, "for our very resistance is part of the
plan; it's the lower stage persisting into the higher, but destined
sooner or later to be absorbed."

"I see," I said, "and the keynote of your position is, as you said at
the beginning, that Good is simply what Nature wants. So that, instead
of looking within to find our criterion, we ought really to look
without, to discover, if we can, the tendency of Nature and to
acquiesce in that as the goal of our aspiration."

"Precisely," he replied, "that is the position."

"Well," I said, "it is plausible enough; but the plausibility, I am
inclined to think, comes from the fact that you have been able to make
out, more or less, that the tendency of Nature is in the direction
which, on the whole, we prefer."

"How do you mean?"

"Well," I said, "supposing your biological researches had led you to
just the opposite conclusion, that the tendency of Nature was not from
the cell to the animal, and from the individual to society, but in
precisely the reverse direction, so that the end of all things was a
resolution into the primitive elements--do you think you would have
been as ready to assert that it is the goal of Nature that must
determine our ideal of Good?"

"But why consider such a hypothetical case?"

"I am not so sure," I replied, "that it is more hypothetical than
the other. At any rate it is a hypothesis adopted by one of your
authorities. Mr. Herbert Spencer, you will remember, conceives
the process of Nature to be one, not, as you appear to think, of
continuous progress, but rather of a circular movement, from the
utmost simplicity to the utmost complexity of Being, and back again to
the original condition. What you were describing is the movement which
we call upward, and which we can readily enough believe to be good,
at any rate upon a superficial view of it. But now, suppose us to have
reached the point at which the opposite movement begins; suppose what
we had to look forward to and to describe as the course of Nature
were a process, not from simple to complex, from homogeneous to
heterogeneous, or whatever the formula may be, but one in exactly the
contrary direction, a dissolution of society into its individuals,
of animals into the cells of which they are composed, of life into
chemistry, of chemistry into mechanism, and so on through the scale of
Being, reversing the whole course of evolution--should we, in such a
case, still have to say that the process of Nature was right, and that
she is to give the law to our judgment about Good?"

"Yes," he replied, "I think we should; and for this reason. Only those
who do on the whole approve the course of Nature have the qualities
enabling them to survive; the others will, in the long run, be
eliminated. There is thus a constant tendency to harmonize opinions
with the actual process of the world; and that, no doubt, is why we
approve what you call the upward movement, which is the one in which
Nature is at present engaged. But, for the same reason, if, or when,
a movement in the opposite direction should set in, people holding
opinions like ours will tend to be eliminated, while those will tend
to survive more and more who approve the current of evolution then
prevailing."

"And in this way," said Ellis, "an exquisite unanimity will be at last
attained, by the simple process of eliminating the dissentients!"

"Precisely!"

"Well," cried Leslie, "no doubt that will be very satisfactory for the
people who survive; but it does not help us much. What we want to know
is, what _we_ are to judge to be Good, not what somebody else will be
made to judge, centuries hence."

"And for my part," said Ellis, "I'm not much impressed by the argument
you attribute to Nature, that if we don't agree with her we shall be
knocked on the head. I, for instance, happen to object strongly to
her whole procedure: I don't much believe in the harmony of the final
consummation--even if it were to be final, and not merely the turn of
the tide; and I am sensibly aware of the horrible discomfort of the
intermediate stages, the pushing, kicking, trampling of the host, and
the wounded and dead left behind on the march. Of all this I venture
to disapprove; then comes Nature and says, 'but you ought to approve!'
I ask why, and she says, 'Because the procedure is mine.' I still
demur, and she comes down on me with a threat--'Very good, approve or
no, as you like; but if you don't approve you will be eliminated!' 'By
all means,' I say, and cling to my old opinion with the more affection
that I feel myself invested with something of the glory of a martyr.
Nature, it seems, is waiting for me round the corner because I venture
to stick to my principles. 'Ruat caelum!' I cry; and in my humble
opinion it's Nature, not _I_, that cuts a poor figure!"

"My dear Ellis," protested Wilson, "what's the use of talking like
that? It's not really sublime, it's only ridiculous!"

"Certainly!" retorted Ellis; "it's you who are sublime. I prefer the
ridiculous."

"So," I said, "does Wilson, if one may judge by appearances. For I
cannot help thinking he is really laughing at us."

"Not at all," he replied, "I am perfectly serious."

"But surely," I said, "you must see that any discussion about Good
must turn somehow upon our perception of it? The course of Nature may,
as you say, be good; but Nature cannot be the measure of Good; the
measure can only be Good itself; and the most that the study of
Nature could do would be to illuminate our perception by giving it
new material for judgment. Judge we must, in the last resort; and the
judgment can never be a mere statement as to the course which Nature
is pursuing."

"Well," said Wilson, "but you will admit at least the paramount
importance of the study of Nature, if we are ever to form a right
judgment?"

"I feel much more strongly," I replied, "the importance of the study
of Man; however, we need not at present discuss that. All that I
wanted to insist upon was, that the contention which you have been
trying to sustain, that it is possible, somehow or other, to get rid
of the subjectivity of our judgments about Good by substituting for
them a statement about the tendencies of Nature--that this contention
cannot be upheld."

"If that be so," he said, "I don't see how you are ever to get a
scientific basis for your judgment."

"I don't know," I replied, "that we can. It depends upon what you
include under science."

"Oh," he said, "by science I mean the resumption in brief formulæ of
the sequence of phenomena; or, more briefly, a description of what
happens."

"If that be so," I replied, "the method of judging about Good can
certainly not be scientific; for judgments about Good are judgments of
what ought to be, not of what is."

"But then," objected Wilson, "what method is left you? You have
nothing to fall back upon but a chaos of opinions."

"But might there not be some way of judging between opinions?"

"How should there be, in the absence of any external objective test?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Why," he replied, "the kind of test which you have in the case of the
sciences. They depend, in the last resort, not on ideas of ours,
but on the routine of common sense-perception; a routine which is
independent of our choice or will, but is forced upon us from without
with an absolute authority such as no imaginings of our own can
impugn. Thus we get a certainty upon which, by the power of inference,
whose mechanism we need not now discuss, we are able to build up a
knowledge of what is. But when, on the other hand, we turn to such of
our ideas as deal with the Good, the Beautiful, and the like--here
we have no test external to ourselves, no authority superior and
independent. Invite a group of men to witness a scientific experiment,
and none of them will be able to deny either the sequence of the
phenomena produced, or the chain of reasoning (supposing it to be
sound) which leads to the conclusion based upon them. Invite the same
men to judge of a picture, or consult them on a question of moral
casuistry, and they will propound the most opposite opinions; nor will
there be any objective test by which you can affirm that one opinion
is more correct than another. The deliverances of the external sense
are, or at least can be made, by correction of the personal equation,
infallible and the same for all; those of the internal sense are
different not only in different persons, but in the same person at
different times."

"Yes," said Leslie, impatiently, "we have all admitted that! The
question is whether--"

"Excuse me," Wilson interposed, "I haven't yet come to my main point.
I was going to say that not merely are there these differences
of opinion, but even if there were not, even if the opinions were
uniform, they would still, as opinions, be subjective and devoid
of scientific validity. It is the external reference that gives its
certainty to science; and such a reference is impossible in the case
of judgments about the Beautiful and the Good. Such judgments are
merely records of what we think or feel. These ideas of ours may or
may not happen to be consistent one with another; but whether they are
so or not, they are merely our ideas, and have nothing to do with the
essential nature of reality."

"I am not sure," I replied, "that the distinction really holds in the
way in which you put it. Let us take for a moment the point of view
of God--only for the sake of argument," I added, seeing him about to
protest. "God, we will suppose, knows all Being through and through
as it really is; and along with this knowledge of reality he has a
conviction that reality is good. Now, with this conviction of his none
other, _ex hypothesi_, can compete; for he being God, we must at any
rate admit that if anybody can be right, it must be he. No one then
can dispute or shake his opinion; and since he is eternal he will
not change it of himself. Is there then, under the circumstances, any
distinction of validity between his judgment that what is, is, and his
judgment that what is, is good?"

"I don't see the use," he replied, "of considering such an imaginary
case. But if you press me I can only say that I still adhere to my
view that any judgment about Good, whether made by God or anybody
else, can be no more than a subjective expression of opinion."

"But," I rejoined, "in a sense, all certainty is subjective, in so far
as the certainty has to be perceived. It is impossible to eliminate
the Subject. In the case, for example, upon which you dwelt, of the
impressions of external sense, the certainty of the impressions is
your and my certainty that we have them; and so in the case of a
cogent argument; for any given person the test of the cogency is his
perception that the cogency is there. And it is the same with
the Beautiful and the Good; there is no conceivable test except
perception. Our difficulty here is simply that perceptions conflict;
not that we have no independent test. But if, as in the case I
imagined, the perception of Good was harmonious with itself, then
the certainty on that point would be as final and complete as the
certainty in the proof of a proposition of Euclid."

"I am afraid," said Wilson, "I don't follow you. You're beginning to
talk metaphysics."

"Call it what you will," I replied, "so long only as it is sense."

"No doubt," he said, "but I don't feel sure that it is."

"In that case you can show me where I am wrong."

"No," he replied, "for, as I said, I can't follow you."

"He means he won't," said Ellis, breaking in with his usual air of
an unprejudiced outsider, "But after all, what does it really matter?
Whatever the reason may be for our uncertainty as to Good, the fact
remains that we are uncertain. There's my Good, thy Good, his Good,
our Good, your Good, their Good; and all these Goods in process of
flux, according to the time of day, the time of life, and the state
of the liver. That being so, what is the use of discussing Good
in itself? And why be so disturbed about it? There's Leslie, for
instance, looking as if the bottom were knocked out of the universe
because he can't discover his objective standard! My dear boy, life
goes on just the same, my life, his life, your life, all the lives.
Why not make an end of the worry at once by admitting frankly that
Good is a chimæra, and that we get on very well without it?"

"But I don't get on well without it!" Leslie protested.

"No," I said, "and I hoped that by this time we were agreed that none
of us could. But Ellis is incorrigible."

"You don't suppose," he replied, "that I am going to agree with you
merely because you override me in argument--even if you did, which you
don't."

"But at least," cried Leslie, "you needn't tell us so often that you
disagree."

"Very well," he said, "I am dumb." And for a moment there was silence,
till I began to fear that our argument would collapse; when, to my
relief, Parry returned to the charge.

"You will think me," he began, "as obstinate as Ellis; but I can't
help coming back to my old point of view. Somehow or other, I feel
sure you are making a difficulty which the practical man does not
really feel. You object to my saying that he knows what is good by
instinct; but somehow or other I am sure that he does know it. And
what I suggest now is, that he finds it written in experience."

"In whose experience?" Leslie asked defiantly.

"In that of the race, or, at least, in that of his own age and
country. Now, do be patient a moment, and let me explain! What I want
to suggest is, that every civilization worth the name possesses, in
its laws and institutions, in the customs it blindly follows, the
moral code it instinctively obeys, an actual objective standard,
worked out in minute detail, of what, in every department of life,
really is good. To this standard every plain man, without reasoning,
and even without reflexion, does in fact simply and naturally conform;
so do all of us who are discussing here, in all the common affairs of
our daily life. We know, if I may say so, better than we know; and the
difficulties into which we are driven, in speculations such as
that upon which we are engaged, arise, to my mind, from a false and
unnecessary abstraction--from putting aside all the rich content
of actual life, and calling into the wilderness for the answer to a
question which solves itself in the street and the market-place."

"Well," I said, "for my own part, I am a good deal in sympathy with
what you say. At the same time there is a difficulty."

"A difficulty!" cried Leslie, "there are hundreds and thousands!"

"Perhaps," I replied, "but the particular one to which I was referring
is this. Every civilization, no doubt, has its own standard of Good;
but these standards are different and even opposite; so that it would
seem we require some criterion by which to compare and judge them."

"No," cried Parry, "that is just what I protest against. We are not
concerned with other ideals than our own. Every great civilization
believes in itself. Take, for instance, the ancient Greeks, of
whom you are so fond of talking. In my opinion they are absurdly
over-estimated; but they had at least that good quality--they believed
in themselves. To them the whole non-Greek world was barbarian; the
standard of Good was frankly their own standard; and it was a standard
knowable and known, however wide might be the deviations from it in
practice. We find accordingly that for them the ideal was rooted in
the real. Plato, even, in constructing his imaginary republic,
does not build in the void, evoking from his own consciousness
a Cloud-Cuckoo-city for the Birds; on the contrary, he bases
his structure upon the actual, following the general plan of the
institutions of Sparta and Crete; and neither to him nor to Aristotle
does it ever occur that there is, or could be, any form of state worth
considering, except the city-state with which they were familiar. It
is the same with their treatment of ethics; their ideal is that of
the Greeks, not of Man in general, and stands in close relation to the
facts of contemporary life. So, too, with their art; it is not,
like that of our modern romanticists, an impotent yearning for
vaguely-imagined millenniums. On the contrary, it is an ideal
interpretation of their own activity, a mirror focussing into feature
and form the very same fact which they saw distorted and blurred in
the troubled stream of time. The Good, in the Greek world, was simply
the essence and soul of the Real; and the Socrates of Xenophon who
frankly identified justice with the laws, was only expressing, and
hardly with exaggeration, the current convictions of his countrymen.
That, to my mind, is the attitude of health; and it is the one natural
to the plain man in every well-organized society. Good is best known
when it is not investigated; and people like ourselves would do no
useful service if we were to induce in others the habit of discussion
which education has made a second nature to ourselves."

"My dear Parry!" cried Ellis, "you alarm me! Is it possible that we
are all anarchists in disguise?"

"Parry," I observed, "seems to agree with the view attributed by
Browning to Paracelsus, that thought is disease, and natural health is
ignorance."

"Well," rejoined Ellis, "there is a good deal to be said for that."

"There's a good deal to be said for everything," I rejoined. "But
if thought indeed be disease, we must recognise the fact that we are
suffering from it; and so, I fear, is the whole modern world. It was
easy for the Greeks to be 'healthy'; practically they had no past. But
for us the past overweights the present; we cannot, if we would,
get rid of the burden of it. All that was once absolute has become
relative, including our own conceptions and ideals; and as we look
back down the ages and see civilization after civilization come into
being, flourish and decay, it is impossible for us to believe that
the society in which we happen to be born is more ultimate than any
of these, or that its ideal, as reflected in its institutions, has
any more claim than theirs to be regarded as a final and absolute
expression of Good."

"Well," said Parry, "let us admit, if you like, that ideals evolve,
but, in any case, the ideal of our own time has more validity for
us than any other. As to those of the past, they were, no doubt,
important in their day, but they have no importance for the modern
world. The very fact that they are past is proof that they are also
superseded."

"What!" cried Leslie, indignantly, "do you mean to say that everything
that is later in time is also better? That we are better artists than
the Greeks? better citizens than the Romans? more spiritual than the
men of the Middle Ages? more vigorous than those of the Renaissance?"

"I don't know," replied Parry, "that I am bound to maintain all that.
I only say that on the whole I believe that ideals progress; and that
therefore it is the ideals of our own time, and that alone, which we
ought practically to consider."

"The ideal of our own time?" I said, "but which of them? there are so
many."

"No, there is really only one, as I said before; the one that is
embodied in current laws and customs."

"But these are always themselves in process of change."

"Yes, gradual change."

"Not necessarily gradual; and even if it were, still change. And to
sanction a change, however slight, may always mean, in the end, the
sanctioning of a whole revolution."

"Besides," cried Leslie, "even if there were anything finally
established, what right have we to judge that the established is the
Good?"

"I don't know that we have any right; but I am sure it is what we do."

"Perhaps we do, many of us," I said, "but always, so far as we
reflect, with a lurking sense that we may be all wrong. Or how else do
you account for the curious, almost physical, sinking and disquiet we
are apt to experience in the presence of a bold denier?"

"I don't know that I do experience it."

"Do you not? I do so often; and only yesterday I had a specially vivid
experience of the kind."

"What was that?"

"Well, I was reading Nietzsche."

"Who is he?"

"A German writer. It does not much matter, but I had him in my mind
when I was speaking."

"Well, but what does he say?"

"It's not so much what he says, as what he denies."

"What does he deny, then?"

"Everything that you, I suppose, would assert. I should conjecture,
at least, that you believe in progress, democracy, and all the rest of
it."

"Well?"

"Well, he repudiates all that. Everything that you would reckon as
progress, he reckons as decadence. Democracy he regards, with all that
it involves, as a revolt of the weak against the strong, of the bad
against the good, of the herd against the master. Every great society,
in his view, is aristocratic, and aristocratic in the sense that the
many are deliberately and consciously sacrificed to the few; and
that, not as a painful necessity, but with a good conscience, in free
obedience to the universal law of the world. 'Be strong, be hard' are
his ultimate ethical principles. The modern virtues, or what we affect
to consider such, sympathy, pity, justice, thrift, unselfishness and
the like, are merely symptoms of moral degeneration. The true and
great and noble man is above all things selfish; and the highest type
of humanity is to be sought in Napoleon or Cæsar Borgia."

"But that's mere raving!"

"So you are pleased to say; and so, indeed, it really may be. But
not simply because it contradicts those current notions which we are
embodying, as fast as we can, in our institutions. It is precisely
those notions that it challenges; and it is idle to meet it with a
bare denial."

"I can conceive no better way of meeting it!"

"Perhaps, for purposes of battle. Yet, even so, you would surely be
stronger if you had reason for your faith."

"But I think my reason sufficient--those are not the ideas of the
age."

"But for all you know they may be those of the next."

"Well, that will be its concern."

"But surely, on your own theory, it must also be yours; for you said
that the later was also the better. And the better, I suppose, is what
you want to attain."

"Well!"

"Well then, in supporting the ideas and institutions generally
current, you may be hindering instead of helping the realization of
the Good you want to achieve."

"But I don't believe Nietzsche's ideas ever could represent the Good!"

"Why not?"

"Because I don't."

"But, at any rate, do you abandon the position that we can take the
ideas of our time as a final criterion?"

"I suppose so--I don't know--I'm sure there's something in it! Do you
believe yourself that they have no import for us?"

"I didn't say that; but I think we have to find what the import is.
We cannot substitute for our own judgment the mere fact of a current
convention, any more than we can substitute the mere fact of the
tendency of Nature. For, after all, it is the part of a moral reformer
to modify the convention. Or do you not think so?"

"Perhaps," he admitted, "it may be!"

"Perhaps it may be!" cried Leslie, "but palpably it is! Is there any
institution or law or opinion you could name which is not open to
obvious criticism? Take what you will--parliamentary government, the
family, the law of real property--is there one of them that could be
adequately and successfully defended?"

"Certainly!" began Parry, with some indignation. "The family--"

"Oh," I interrupted, "we are not yet in a position to discuss that!
But upon one thing we seem to be agreed--that whatever may be the
value of current standards of Good in assisting our judgment, we
cannot permit them simply to supersede it by an act of authority. And
so once more we are thrown back each upon his own opinions."

"To which, according to you," interposed Parry, "we are bound to
attach some validity."

"And yet which we are aware," added Ellis, "cannot possibly have any."

I was about to protest against this remark when I saw, coming round
from the garden, Bartlett and Dennis, the two remaining members of our
party. They had just returned from a mountaineering expedition; and
now, having had their bath, had come out to join us in our usual
place of assembly. Bartlett had in his hand the _Times_ and the _Daily
Chronicle_. He was a keen business man, and a Radical politician of
some note; and though not naturally inclined to speculative thought,
would sometimes take part in our discussions if ever they seemed to
touch on any practical issue. On these occasions his remarks were
often very much to the point; but his manner being somewhat aggressive
and polemic, his interposition did not always tend to make smooth
the course of debate. It was therefore with mingled feelings of
satisfaction and anxiety that I greeted his return. After some
talk about their expedition, he turned to me and said, "We ought to
apologise, I suppose, for interrupting a discussion?"

"Not at all!" I replied; "but, as you are here, perhaps you will be
willing to help us?"

"Oh," he said, "I leave that to Dennis. This kind of thing isn't much
in my line."

"What kind of thing?" Leslie interjected. "I don't believe you even
know what we're talking about!"

"Talking about. Why, philosophy, of course! What else should it be
when you get together?"

"This time," I said, "it's not exactly philosophy, but something more
like ethics."

"What is the question?" asked Dennis.

Dennis was always ready for a discussion, and the more abstract
the theme, the better he was pleased. He had been trained for the
profession of medicine, but coming into possession of a fortune, had
not found it necessary to practise, and had been devoting his time for
some years past to Art and Metaphysics. I always enjoyed talking to
him, though the position he had come to hold was one which I found it
very difficult to understand, and I am not sure that I have been able
to represent it fairly.

"We have been discussing," I said, in answer to his question, "our
judgments about what is good, and trying without much success to get
over the difficulty, that whereas, on the one hand, we seem to be
practically obliged to trust these judgments, on the other we find it
hard to say which of them, if any, are true, and how far and in what
sense."

"Oh," he replied, "then Bartlett ought really to be able to help you.
At any rate he's very positive himself about what's good and what's
bad. Curiously enough, he and I have been touching upon the same
point as you, and I find, among other things, that he is a convinced
Utilitarian."

"I never said so," said Bartlett, "but I have no objection to the
word. It savours of healthy homes and pure beer!"

"And is that your idea of Good?" asked Leslie, irritated, as I could
see, by this obtrusion of the concrete.

"Yes," he replied, "why not? It's as good an idea as most."

"I suppose," I said, "all of us here should agree that the things you
speak of are good. But somebody might very well deny it."

"Of course somebody can deny anything, if only for the sake of
argument."

"You mean that no one could be serious in such a denial?"

"I mean that everybody really knows perfectly well what is good and
what is bad; the difficulty is, not to know it, but to do it!"

"But surely you will admit that opinions do differ?"

"They don't differ nearly so much as people pretend, on important
points; or, if they do, the difference is not about what ought to be
done, but about how to do it."

"What ought to be done, then?" asked Leslie defiantly.

"Well, for example we ought to make our cities decent and healthy."

"Why?"

"Because we ought; or, if you like, because it will make people
happy."

"But I don't like at all! I don't see that it's necessarily good to
make people happy."

"Oh well, if you deny that--"

"Well, if I deny that?"

"I don't believe you to be serious, that's all. Good simply means,
what makes people happy; and you must know that as well as I do."

"You see!" interposed Dennis; "I told you he was a Utilitarian."

"I daresay I am; at any rate, that's what I think; and so, I believe,
does everybody else."

"'The Universe,'" murmured Ellis, "'so far as sane conjecture can go,
is an immeasurable swine's trough, consisting of solid and liquid, and
of other contrasts and kinds; especially consisting of attainable
and unattainable, the latter in immensely greater quantities for most
pigs.'"

"That's very unfair," Parry protested, "as an account of Hedonism."

"I don't see that it is at all," cried Leslie.

"I think," I said, "that it represents Bentham's position well enough,
though probably not Bartlett's."

"Oh well," said Parry, "Bentham was only an egoistic Hedonist."

"A what?" said Bartlett.

"An egoistic Hedonist."

"And what may that be?"

"An egoistic Hedonist," Parry was beginning, but Ellis cut him short.
"It's best explained," he said, "by an example. Here, for example,
is Bentham's definition of the pleasures of friendship; they are, he
says, 'those which accompany the persuasion of possessing the goodwill
of such and such individuals, and the right of expecting from them, in
consequence, spontaneous and gratuitous services.'"

We all laughed, though Parry, who loved fair play, could not help
protesting. "You really can't judge," he said, "by a single example."

"Can't you?" cried Ellis; "well then, here's another. 'The pleasures
of piety' are 'those which accompany the persuasion of acquiring
or possessing the favour of God; and the power, in consequence, of
expecting particular favours from him, either in this life or in
another.'"

We laughed again; and Parry said, "Well, I resign myself to your
levity. And after all, it doesn't much matter, for no one now is an
egoistic Hedonist."

"What are we then," asked Bartlett, "you and I?"

"Why, of course, altruistic Hedonists," said Parry.

"And what's the difference?"

"The difference is," Parry began to explain, but Ellis interrupted him
again.

"The difference is," he cried, "that one is a brute and the other a
prig."

"Really, Ellis," Parry began in a tone of remonstrance.

"But, Parry," I interposed, "are you a Utilitarian?"

"Not precisely," he replied; "but my conclusions are much the same
as theirs. And of all the _à priori_ systems I prefer Utilitarianism,
because it is at least clear, simple, and precise."

"That is what I can never see that it is."

"Why, what is your difficulty?"

"In the first place," I said, "the system appears to rest upon a
dogma."

"True," he said, "but that particular dogma--the greatest happiness
of the greatest number--is one which commends itself to everyone's
consciousness."

"I don't believe it!" said Ellis. "Let us take an example. A
crossing-sweeper, we will suppose, is suffering from a certain disease
about which the doctors know nothing. Their only chance of discovering
how to cure it is to vivisect the patient; and it is found, by the
hedonistic calculus, that if they do so, a general preponderance
of pleasure over pain will result. Accordingly, they go to the
crossing-sweeper and say,'O crossing-sweeper! In the name of the
utilitarian philosophy we call upon you to submit to vivisection. The
tortures you will have to endure, it is true, will be inconceivable:
but think of the result! A general preponderance in the community at
large of pleasure over pain! For every atom of pain inflicted on you,
an atom of pleasure will accrue to somebody else. Upon you, it is
true, will fall the whole of the pain; whereas the pleasure will be so
minutely distributed among innumerable individuals that the increment
in each case will be almost imperceptible. No matter, it will be
there! and our arithmetic assures us that the total gain in pleasure
will exceed the total loss in pain. It will also be distributed among
a greater number of individuals. Thus all the requirements of the
hedonistic calculus are satisfied! Your duty lies plain before you!
Rise to the height of your destiny, and follow us to the dissecting
room! What do you think the crossing-sweeper would say? I leave it to
Bartlett to express his sentiments!"

"My dear Ellis," said Parry, "your example is absurd. The case, to
begin with, is one that could not possibly occur. And even if it did,
one could not expect the man who was actually to suffer, to take an
impartial view of the situation."

"But," I said, "putting the sufferer out of the question, what would
really be the opinion of the people for whom he was to suffer? Do you
think they would believe they ought to accept the sacrifice? Every
man, I think, would repudiate it with horror for himself; and what
right has he to accept it for other people?"

"On the utilitarian hypothesis," said Parry, "he certainly ought to."

"No doubt; but would he? Utilitarianism claims to rest upon common
sense, but, in the case adduced, I venture to think common sense would
repudiate it."

"Perhaps," he said, "but the example is misleading. It is a case, as I
said, that could not occur--a mere marginal case."

"Still," I said, "a marginal case may suggest a fundamental fallacy.
Anyhow, I cannot see myself that the judgment that the greatest
happiness of the greatest number is good has a more obvious and
indisputable validity than any other judgments of worth. It seems to
me to be just one judgment among others; and, like the others, it may
be true or false. However, I will not press that point. But what I
should like to insist upon is, that the doctrine which Bartlett seemed
to hold--"

"I hold no doctrine," interrupted Bartlett; "I merely expressed an
opinion, which I am not likely to change for all the philosophy in
the world." And with that he opened the _Chronicle_, and presently
becoming absorbed, paid for some time no further attention to the
course of our debate.

"Well," I continued, "the doctrine, whether Bartlett holds it or
no, that the ultimately good thing is the greatest happiness of the
greatest number, cannot be insisted upon as one which appeals at
once to everyone's consciousness as true, so that, in fact, since its
enunciation, the controversy about Good may be regarded as closed. It
will hardly be maintained, I imagine, even by Parry, that the truth of
the doctrine is a direct and simple intuition, so that it has only to
be stated to be accepted?"

"Certainly not," Parry replied, "the contention of the Utilitarians
is that everyone who has the capacity and will take the trouble to
reflect will, in fact, arrive at their conclusions."

"The conclusions being like other conclusions about what is good, the
result of a difficult process of analysis, in which there are many
possibilities of error, and no more self-evident and simple than any
other judgment of the kind?"

He agreed.

"And further, the general principle, tentative and uncertain as it is,
requiring itself to be perpetually interpreted anew for every fresh
case that turns up."

"How do you mean?"

"Why," I said, "even if we grant that the end of action is the
greatest happiness of the greatest number, yet we have still to
discover wherein that happiness consists."

"But," he said, "happiness we define quite simply as pleasure."

"Yes; but how do we define pleasure?"

"We don't need to define it. Pleasure and pain are simply sensations.
If I cut my finger, I feel pain; if I drink when I am thirsty, I
feel pleasure. There can be no mistake about these feelings; they are
simple and radical."

"Undoubtedly. But if you limit pleasure and pain to such simple cases
as these, you will never get out of them a system of Ethics. And, on
the other hand, if you extend the terms indefinitely, they lose at
once all their boasted precision, and become as difficult to interpret
as Good and Evil."

"How do you mean?"

"Why," I said, "if all conduct turned on such simple choices as that
between thick soup and clear, then perhaps its rules might be fairly
summed up in the utilitarian formula. But in fact, as everyone knows,
the choices are far more difficult; they are between, let us say, a
bottle of port and a Beethoven symphony; leisure and liberty now, or
£1000 a-year twenty years hence; art and fame at the cost of health,
or sound nerves and obscurity; and so on, and so on through all
the possible cases, infinitely more complex in reality than I could
attempt to indicate here, all of which, no doubt, could be brought
under your formula, but none of which the formula would help to
solve."

"Of course," said Parry, "the hedonistic calculus is difficult to
apply. No one, that I know of, denies that."

"No one could very well deny it," I replied. "But now, see what
follows. Granting, for the moment, for the sake of argument, that in
making these difficult choices we really do apply what you call the
hedonistic calculus--"

"Which I, for my part, altogether deny!" cried Leslie.

"Well," I resumed, "but granting it for the moment, yet the important
point is not the criterion, but the result. It is a small thing to
know in general terms (supposing even it were true that we do know it)
that what we ought to seek is a preponderance of pleasure over pain;
the whole problem is to discover, in innumerable detailed cases,
wherein precisely the preponderance consists. But this can only be
learnt, if at all, by long and difficult, and, it may be, painful
experience. We do not really know, _à priori_, what things are
pleasurable, in the extended sense which we must give to the word if
the doctrine is to be at all plausible, any more definitely than we
know what things are good. And the Utilitarians by substituting
the word Pleasure for the word Good, even if the substitution were
legitimate, have not really done much to help us in our choice."

"But," he objected, "we do at least know what Pleasure is, even if we
do not know what things are pleasurable."

"And so I might say we do know what Good is, even if we do not know
what things are good."

"But we know Pleasure by direct sensation."

"And so I might say we know Good by direct perception."

"But you cannot define Good."

"Neither can you define Pleasure. Both must be recognised by direct
experience."

"But, at any rate," he said, "there is this distinction, that in the
case of Pleasure everyone _does_ recognise it when it occurs; whereas
there is no such general recognition of Good."

"That," I admitted, "may, perhaps, be true; I am not sure."

"But," broke in Leslie, "what does it matter whether it be true or
no? What has all this to do with the question? It's immaterial whether
Pleasure or Good is the more easily and generally recognisable. The
point is that they are radically different things."

"No," objected Parry, "_our_ point is that they are the same thing."

"But I don't believe you really think so, or that anyone can."

"And _I_ don't believe that anyone _cannot_!"

"Do you mean to say that you really agree with Bentham that, quantity
of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry?"

"Yes; at least I agree with what he means, though the particular
example doesn't appeal to me, for I hardly know what either pushpin or
poetry is."

"Well then, let us take Plato's example. Do you think that, quantity
of pleasure being equal, scratching oneself when one itches is as good
as, say, pursuing scientific research."

"Yes. But of course the point is that quantity of pleasure is not
equal."

"You mean," interposed Ellis, "that there is more pleasure in
scratching?"

"No, of course not."

"But at least you will admit that there is more pleasure in some
physical experiences? Plato, for example, takes the case of a
catamite."

"I admit nothing of the kind. In the first place, these gross physical
pleasures do not last."

"But suppose they did? Imagine an eternal, never-changing bliss of
scratching, or of--"

"I don't see the use of discussing the matter in this kind of way. It
seems to me to deserve serious treatment"

"But I am perfectly serious. I do genuinely believe that a heaven of
scratching, or at any rate of some analogous but intenser experience,
would involve an indefinitely greater sum of pleasure than a heaven of
scientific research."

"Well, all I can say is, I don't agree with you."

"But why not?" cried Leslie. "If you were candid I believe you would.
The fact is that you have predetermined that scientific research is a
better thing than such physical pleasure, and then you bring out your
calculation of pleasure so as to agree with that foregone conclusion.
And that is what the Utilitarians always do. Being ordinary decent
people they accept the same values as the rest of the world, and on
the same grounds as the rest of the world. And then they pretend,
and no doubt believe themselves, that they have been led to their
conclusions by the hedonistic calculus. But really, if they made an
impartial attempt to apply the calculus fairly, they would arrive
at quite different results, results which would surprise and shock
themselves, and destroy the whole plausibility of their theory."

"That is your view of the matter."

"But isn't it yours?"

"No, certainly not."

"At any rate," I interposed, "it seems to be clear that this
utilitarian doctrine has nothing absolute or final or self-evident
about it. All we can say is that among the many opinions about what
things are good, there is also this opinion, very widely held, that
all pleasurable things are good, and that nothing is good that is not
pleasurable. But that, like any other opinion, can be and is disputed.
So that we return pretty much to the point we left, that there are
a number of conflicting opinions about what things are good, that
to these opinions some validity must be attached, but that it is
difficult to see how we are to reconcile them or to choose between
them. Only, somehow or other, as it seems to me, the truth about Good
must be adumbrated in these opinions, and by interrogating the actual
experience of men in their judgments about good things, we may perhaps
be able to get at least some, shadowy notion of the object of our
quest"

"And so," said Ellis, getting up and stretching himself, "even by your
own confession we end where we began."

"Not quite," I replied. "Besides, have we ended?"

For some minutes it seemed as though we had. The mid-day heat (it was
now twelve o'clock) and the silence broken only by the murmur of
the fountain (for the mowers opposite had gone home to their dinner)
seemed to have induced a general disinclination to the effort of
speech or thought Even Dennis whom I had never known to be tired in
body or mind, and who was always debating something--it seemed to
matter very little what--even he, I thought at first, was ready to let
the discussion drop. But presently it became clear that he was only
revolving my last words in his mind, for before long he turned to me
and said:

"I don't know what you mean by 'interrogating experience,' or what
results you hope to attain by that process." At this Leslie pricked
up his ears, and I saw that he at least was as eager as ever to pursue
the subject further.

"Why," continued Dennis, "should there not be a method of discovering
Good independently of all experience?"

The phrase immediately arrested Wilson's attention.

"'A method independent of experience,'" he cried, "why, what kind of a
method would that be?"

"It is not so easy to describe," replied Dennis. "But I was thinking
of the kind of method, for example, that is worked out by Hegel in his
_Logic_?"

"I have never read Hegel," said Wilson. "So that doesn't convey much
to my mind."

"Well," said Dennis, "I am afraid I can't summarize him!"

"Can't you?" cried Ellis, "I can! Here he is in a nutshell! Take any
statement you like--for example, 'Nothing exists!'--put it into the
dialectical machine, turn the handle, and hey presto! out comes the
Absolute! The thing's infallible; it does not matter what you put in;
you always get out the same identical sausage."

Dennis laughed. "There, Wilson," he said, "I hope you understand now!"

"I can't say I do," replied Wilson, "but I daresay it doesn't much
matter."

"Perhaps, then," said Ellis, "you would prefer the Kantian plan."

"What is that?"

"Oh, it's much simpler than the other. You go into your room, lock the
door, and close the shutters, excluding all light Then you proceed
to invert the mind, so as to relieve it of all its contents; look
steadily into the empty vessel, as if it were a well; and at the
bottom you will find Truth in the form of a categorical imperative.
Or, if you don't like that, there's the method of Fichte. You take an
Ego, by preference yourself; convert it into a proposition; negate it,
affirm it, negate it again, and so on _ad infinitum_, until you get
out the whole Universe in the likeness of yourself. But that's rather
a difficult method; probably you would prefer Spinoza's. You take--"

"No!" cried Dennis, "there I protest! Spinoza is too venerable a
name."

"So are they all, all venerable names," said Ellis. "But the question
is, to which of them do you swear allegiance? For they all arrive at
totally different results."

"I don't know that I swear allegiance to any of them," he replied. "I
merely ventured to suggest that it is only by some such method of pure
reason that one can ever hope to discover Good."

"You do not profess then," I said, "to have discovered any such method
yourself?"

"No."

"Nor do you feel sure that anyone else has?"

"No."

"You simply lie down and block the road?"

"Yes," he said, "and you may walk over me if you can."

"No," I said, "It will be simpler, I think, if possible, to walk round
you." For by this time an idea had occurred to me.

"Do so," he said, "by all means, if you can."

"Well" I began, "let us suppose for the sake of argument that there
really is some such method as you suggest of discovering Good--a
purely rational method, independent of all common experience."

"Let us suppose it," he said, "if you are willing."

"Is it your idea then," I continued, "that this Good so discovered,
would be out of all relation to what we call goods? Or would it be
merely the total reality of which they are imperfect and inadequate
expressions?"

"I do not see," he said, "why it should have any relationship to them.
All the things we call good may really be bad; or some good and some
bad in a quite chaotic fashion. There is no reason to suppose that
our ideas about Good have any validity unless it were by an accidental
coincidence."

"And further," I said, "though we really do believe there is a
Good, and that there is a purely rational and _à priori_ method of
discovering it, yet we do not profess to have ascertained that method
ourselves, nor do we feel sure that it has been ascertained by anyone?
In any case, we admit, I suppose, that to the great mass of men, both
of our own and all previous ages, such a method has remained unknown
and unsuspected?"

He agreed.

"But these men, nevertheless, have been pursuing Goods under the
impression that they were really good."

"Yes."

"And in this pursuit they have been expending, great men and small
alike, or rather those whom we call great and small, all that store
of energy, of passion, and blood and tears which makes up the drama of
history?"

"Undoubtedly!"

"But that expenditure, as we now see, was futile and absurd. The
purposes to which it was directed were not really good, nor had they
any tendency to promote Good, unless it were in some particular
case by some fortunate chance. Whatever men have striven to achieve,
whether like Christ, to found a religion, or, like Cæsar, to found
a polity, whether their quest were virtue or power or truth, or any
other of the ends we are accustomed to value and praise, or whether
they sought the direct opposites of these, or simply lived from hour
to hour following without reflexion the impulse of the moment, in any
and every case all alike, great and small, good and bad, leaders and
followers, or however else we may class them, were, in fact, equally
insignificant and absurd, the idle sport of illusions, one as
empty and baseless as another. The history of nations, the lives
of individual men, are stripped, in this view, of all interest and
meaning; nowhere is there advance or retrogression, nowhere better or
worse, nowhere sense or consistency at all. Systems, however imposing,
structures, however vast, fly into dust and powder at a touch. The
stars fall from the human firmament; the beacon-lights dance like
will-o'-the-wisps; the whole universe of history opens, cracks, and
dissolves in smoke; and we, from an ever-vanishing shore, gaze with
impotent eyes at the last gleam on the wings of the dove of Reason as
it dips for ever down to eternal night. Will not that be the only
view we can take of the course of human action if we hold that what we
believe to be goods have no relation to the true Good?"

"Yes," he admitted, "I suppose it will."

"And if we turn," I continued, "from the past to the present and the
future, we find ourselves, I think, in even worse case. For we
shall all, those of us who may come to accept the hypothesis you put
forward, be deprived of the consolation even of imagining a reason and
purpose in our lives. The great men of the past, at any rate, could
and did believe that they were helping to realize great Goods; but
we, in so far as we are philosophers, shall have to forego even that
satisfaction. We shall believe, indeed, that Good exists, and that
there is a method of discovering it by pure reason; but this method,
we may safely assume, we shall not most of us have ascertained. Or do
you think we shall?"

"I cannot tell," he said; "I do not profess to have ascertained it
myself."

"And meantime," I said, "you have not even the right to assume that
it is a good thing to endeavour to ascertain it. For the pursuit of
Truth, it must be admitted, is one of the things which we call
good; and these, we agreed, have not any relation to the true Good.
Consider, then, the position of these unfortunate men who have learnt
indeed that there is a Good, but who know nothing about it, except
that it has nothing to do with what they call good. What kind of life
will they live? Whatever they may put their hand to, they will at once
be paralyzed by the thought that it cannot possibly be worth pursuing.
Politics, art, pleasure, science--of these and all other ends
they know but one thing, that all is vanity. As by the touch of
enchantment, their world is turned to dust. Like Tantalus they stretch
lips and hands towards a water for ever vanishing, a fruit for
ever withdrawn. At war with empty phantoms, they 'strike with their
spirit's knife,' as Shelley has it, 'invulnerable nothings,' Dizzy and
lost they move about in worlds not only unrealized, but unrealizable,
'children crying in the night, with no language but a cry,' and no
father to cry to. And in all this blind confusion the only comfort
vouchsafed is that somehow or other they may, they cannot tell how,
discover a Good of which the only thing they know is that it has no
connection with the Goods they have lost. Is not this a fair account
of the condition to which men would be reduced who really did accept
and believe your hypothesis?"

"Yes," he said, "perhaps it is, but still I must protest against this
appeal to prejudice and passion. Supposing the truth really were as I
suggested, we should have to face it, whether or no it seemed to ruin
our own life."

"Yes," I agreed, "supposing the truth were so. But, after all, we have
no sufficient theoretical reason for believing it to be so, and
every kind of practical reason against it. We cannot, it is true,
demonstrate--and that was admitted from the first--that any of our
judgments about what is good are true; but there is no reason why we
should not believe--and I should say we must believe--that somehow or
other they do at least have truth in them."

"Well, and if so?"

"If so, we do not depend, as you said we do, or at least we do not
believe ourselves to depend, for our knowledge about Good, upon some
purely rational process not yet discovered; but those things which
we judge to be good really, we think, in some sense or so, and by
analyzing and classifying and comparing our experiences of such things
we may come to see more clearly what it is in them that we judge to be
good; and again by increasing experience we may come to know more Good
than we knew; and generally, if we once admit that we have some light,
we may hope, by degrees, to get more; and that getting of more light
will be the most important business, not only of philosophy, but of
life."

"But if we can judge of Good at all, why do we not judge rightly?
If we really have a perception, how is it that it is confused, not
clear?"

"I cannot tell how or why; but perhaps it is something of this kind.
Our experience, in the first place, is limited, and we cannot know
Good except in so far as we experience it--so, at least, I think,
though perhaps you may not agree. And if that be so, even if our
judgments about Good that we have experienced were clear, our
conclusions drawn from them would yet be very imperfect and tentative,
because there would be so much Good that we had not experienced. But,
in fact, as it seems, our judgments even about what we do experience
are confused, because every experience is indefinitely complex, and
contains, along with the Good, so much that is indifferent or bad. And
to analyze out precisely what it is that we are judging to be good is
often a difficult and laborious task, though it is one that should be
a main preoccupation with us all."

"You think, then, that there are two reasons for the obscurity and
confusion that prevail in our judgments about Good--one, that our
experience is limited, the other that it is complex?"

"Yes; and our position in this respect, as it always seems to me, is
like that of people who are learning to see, or to develop some other
sense. Something they really do perceive, but they find it hard to say
what. Their knowledge of the object depends on the state of the organ;
and it is only by the progressive perfecting of that, that they can
settle their doubts and put an end to their disputes, whether with
themselves or with other people."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, if you will allow me to elaborate my metaphor, I conceive that
we have a kind of internal sense, like a rudimentary eye, whose
nature it is to be sensitive to Good, just as it is the nature of
the physical eye to be sensitive to light. But this eye of the soul,
being, as I said, rudimentary, does not as yet perceive Good with any
clearness or precision, but only in a faint imperfect way, catching
now one aspect of it, now another, but never resting content in any of
these, being driven on by the impulse to realize itself to ever surer
and finer discrimination, with the sense that it is learning its own
nature as it learns that of its object, and that it will never be
itself a true and perfect organ until it is confronted with the true
and perfect Good. And as by the physical eye we learn by degrees
to distinguish colours and forms, to separate and combine them,
and arrange them in definite groups, and then, going further, after
discerning in this way a world of physical things, proceed to fashion
for our delight a world of art, in that finer experience becoming
aware of our own finer self; so, by this eye of hers, does the soul,
by long and tentative effort, learn to distinguish and appraise the
Goods which Nature presents to her; and then, still unsatisfied,
proceed to shape for herself a new world, as it were, of moral art,
fashioning the relations of man to Nature and to his fellow-man under
the stress of her need to realize herself, ever creating and ever
destroying only to create anew, learning in the process her own
nature, yet aware that she has never learnt it, but passing on without
rest to that unimagined consummation wherein the impulse that urges
her on will be satisfied at last, and she will rest in the perfect
enjoyment of that which she knows to be Good, because in it she
has found not only her object but herself. Is not this a possible
conception?"

"I do not say," he replied, "that it is impossible; but I still feel a
difficulty."

"What is it?" I said, "for I am anxious not to shirk anything."

"Well," he said, "you will remember when Parry suggested that the
perception of Good might perhaps be an instinct, you objected that
instincts conflict one with another, and that we therefore require
another faculty to choose between them. Now it seems to me that
your own argument is open to the same objection. You postulate some
faculty--which perhaps you might as well call an instinct--and
this faculty, as I understand you, in the effort to realize itself,
proceeds to discriminate various objects as good. But, now, does this
same faculty also know that the Goods are good, and which is better
than which, and generally in what relations they stand to one another
and to the absolutely Good? Or do we not require here, too, another
faculty to make these judgments, and must not this faculty, as I
said at first, have previously achieved, by some method of its own, a
knowledge of Good, in order that it may judge between Goods?"

"No," I said, "in that way you will get, as you hint, nothing but an
infinite regress. The perception of Good, whenever it comes, must be,
in the last analysis, something direct, immediate, and self-evident;
and so far I am in agreement with Parry. My only quarrel with him was
in regard to his assumption that the judgments we make about Good are
final and conclusive. The experiences we recognize as good are always,
it seems to me, also bad; because we are never able to apprehend or
experience what is absolutely Good. Only, as I like to believe--you
may say I have no grounds for the belief--we are always progressing
towards such a Good; and the more of it we apprehend and experience,
the more we are aware of our own well-being; or perhaps I ought to
say, of the well-being of that part of us, whatever it may be--I call
it the soul--which pursues after Good. For her attitude, perhaps you
will agree, towards her object, is not simply one of perception, but
one of appetency and enjoyment. Her aim is not merely to know Good,
but to experience it; so that along with her apprehension of Good goes
her apprehension of her own well-being, dependent upon and varying
with her relation to that, her object. Thus she is aware of a tension,
as it were, when she cannot expand, of a drooping and inanition when
nutriment fails, of a rush of health and vigour as she passes into a
new and larger life, as she freely unfolds this or that aspect of her
complex being, triumphs at last over an obstacle that has long hemmed
and thwarted her course, and rests for a moment in free and joyous
consciousness of self, like a stream newly escaped from a rocky gorge,
to meander in the sun through a green melodious valley. And this
perception she has of her own condition is like our perception of
health and disease. We know when we are well, not by any process of
ratiocination, by applying from without a standard of health deduced
by pure thought, but simply by direct sensation of well-being. So
it is with this soul of ours, which is conversant with Good. Her
perception of Good is but the other side of her perception of her own
well-being, for her well-being consists in her conformity to Good.
Thus every phase of her growth (in so far as she grows) is in
one sense good, and in another bad; good in so far as it is
self-expression, bad in so far as the expression is incomplete. From
the limitations of her being she flies, towards its expansion she
struggles; and by her perception that every Good she attains is also
bad, she is driven on in her quest of that ultimate Good which
would be, if she could reach it, at once the complete realization of
herself, and her complete conformity to Good."

"But," he objected, "apart from other difficulties, in your method of
discovering the Good is there no place for Reason at all?"

"I would not say that," I replied, "though I am bound to confess
that I see no place for what you call pure Reason. It is the part of
Reason, on my hypothesis, to tabulate and compare results. She
does not determine directly what is good, but works, as in all the
sciences, upon given data, recording the determinations not (in this
case) of the outer but of the inner sense, noticing what kinds of
activity satisfy, and to what degree, the expanding nature of this
soul that seeks Good, and deducing therefrom, so far as may be,
temporary rules of conduct based upon that unique and central
experience which is the root and foundation of the whole. Temporary
rules, I say, because, by the nature of the case, they can have in
them nothing absolute and final, inasmuch as they are mere deductions
from a process which is always developing and transforming itself.
Systems of morals, maxims of conduct are so many landmarks left to
show the route by which the soul is marching; casts, as it were, of
her features at various stages of her growth, but never the final
record of her perfect countenance. And that is why the current
morality, the positive institutions and laws, on which Parry insisted
with so much force, both have and have not the value he assigned to
them. They are in truth invaluable records of experience, and he is
rash who attacks them without understanding; and yet, in a sense,
they are only to be understood in order to be superseded, because the
experience they resume is not final, but partial and incomplete. Would
you agree with that, Parry, or no?"

"I am not sure," he said. "It would be a dangerous doctrine to put in
practice."

"Yes," I said, "but I fear that life itself is a dangerous thing,
and nothing we can do will make it safe. Our only hope is courage and
sanity."

"But," said Dennis, "to return to the other point, on your view is our
knowledge of Good altogether subsequent to experience?"

"Yes," I replied, "our knowledge is, if you like; but it is a
knowledge of experience in Good. We first recognize Good by what
I call direct perception; then we analyze and define what we have
recognized; and the results of this process, I suppose, is what we
call knowledge, so far as it goes."

"And there can be no knowledge of Good independent of experience?"

"I do not know; perhaps there might be; only I should like to suggest
that even if we could arrive at such a knowledge by pure reason, we
should have achieved only a definition of Good, not Good itself; for
Good, I suppose you will agree, must be a state of experience, not a
formula."

"Even if it be so," he said, "it might still be possible to arrive at
its formula by pure reason."

"It may be so," I replied, "only I console myself with the thought,
that if, as is the case with so many of us, we cannot see our way
to any such method, we are not left, on my hypothesis, altogether
forlorn. For though we cannot know Good, we can go on realizing Goods,
and so making progress towards the ultimate Good, which is the goal
not merely of knowledge but of action."

"And how, may I ask," said Wilson, after a pause, "in your conception,
is Good related to Happiness?"

"That," I replied, "is one of the points we have to ascertain by
experience. For I regard the statement that happiness is the end as
one of the numerous attempts which men have made to interpret
the deliverances of their internal sense. I do not imagine the
interpretation to be final and complete, and indeed it is too abstract
and general to have very much meaning. But some meaning, no doubt,
it has; and exactly what, may form the subject of much interesting
discussion in detail, which belongs, however, rather to the question
of the content of Good, than to that of the method of discovering it."

"The method!" replied Wilson, "but have you really indicated a method
at all?"

"I have indicated," I replied "what I suppose to be the method of all
science, namely, the interpretation of experience."

"But," he objected, "everything depends on the kind of
interpretation."

"True," I admitted, "but long ago I did my best to prove that we could
not learn anything about Good by the scientific method as you defined
it. For that can tell us only about what is, not about what ought to
be. At the same time, the recording and comparing and classifying of
the deliverances of this internal sense, has a certain analogy to the
procedure of science. At any rate, it might, I think, fairly be called
a method, though a method difficult to apply, and one, above
all, which only he can apply who has within himself the requisite
experience. And in this respect the study of the Good resembles the
study of the Beautiful."

"How do you mean?"

"Why," I said, "those who are conversant with the arts are well aware
that there is such a thing as a true canon, though they do not profess
to be in complete possession of it. They have a perception of the
Beautiful, not ready-made and final, but tentative and in process
of growth. This perception they cultivate by constant observation of
beautiful works, some more and some less, according to their genius
and opportunities; and thus they are always coming to see, though they
never see perfectly, just as I said was the case in the matter of the
Good."

"But," objected Parry, "what proof is there that there is any standard
at all in such matters?"

"There is no proof," I replied, "except the perception itself; and
that is sufficient proof to those who have it. And to some slight
extent, no doubt, all men have it; only many do not care to develop
it; and so, feeling in themselves that they have no standard of
judgment in art, they suppose that all others are like themselves;
and that there really is no standard and no knowledge possible in such
matters. And it is the same with Good; if a man will not choose to
cultivate his inner sense, and to train it to clear and ever clearer
perception, he will either never believe that there is any knowledge
of Good, or any meaning at all in the word; or else, since all men
feel the need of an end for action, he will have recourse to a fixed
dogma, taken up by accident and clung to with obstinate desperation,
without any root in his true inner nature; and to him all discussion
about Good will seem to be mere folly, since he will believe either
that he possesses it already or that it cannot be possessed at all.
Or If he ask after the method of discovering it, he will be unable
to understand it, because he does not choose to develop the necessary
experience; and so he will go through life for ever unconvinced,
arguing often and angrily, but always with no result, while all the
time the knowledge he denies is lying hidden within him, if only he
had the patience and faith to seek it there. But without that, there
is no possibility of convincing him; and it will be wiser altogether
to leave him alone. This, whether you call it a method or no, is the
only idea I can form as to the possibility of discovering what is
Beautiful and Good."

There was silence for a few moments, and then Wilson said:

"Do you mean to imply, on your hypothesis, that we all are always
seeking Good?"

"No," I said; "whatever I may think on that point, I have not
committed myself. It is enough for my purpose if we admit that we have
the faculty of seeking Good, supposing we choose to do so."

"And also the faculty of seeking Bad?"

"Possibly; I do not pronounce upon that."

"Well, anyhow, do you admit the existence of Bad?"

"Oh yes," I cried, "as much as you like; for it is bad, to my mind,
that we should be in a difficult quest of Good, instead of in secure
possession of it. And about the nature of that quest I make no facile
assumption. I do not pretend that what I have called the growth of the
soul from within is a smooth and easy process, a quiet unfolding of
leafy green in a bright and windless air. If I recognize the delight
of expansion, I recognize also the pain of repression--the thwarted
desire, the unfulfilled hope, the passion vain and abortive. I do not
say even whether or no, in this dim travail of the spirit, pleasure
prevails over pain, evil over good. The most I would claim is to have
suggested a meaning for our life in terms of Good; and my view, I half
hoped, would have appealed in particular to you, because what I have
offered is not an abstract formula, hard to interpret, hard to
relate to the actual facts of life, but an attempt to suggest the
significance of those facts themselves, to supply a key to the
cryptogram we call experience. And in proportion as we really believed
this view to be true, it would lead us not away from but into life,
not shutting us up, as has been too much the bent of philosophy, like
the homunculus of Goethe's 'Faust,' in the crystal phial of a set and
rigid system, to ring our little chiming bell and flash our tiny light
over the vast sea of experience, which all around us foams and floods,
myriad-streaming, immense, and clearly seen, yet never felt, through
that transparent barrier; but rather, like him when he broke the
glass, made free of the illimitable main, to follow under the yellow
moon the car of Galatea, her masque of nymphs and tritons, her gliding
pomp of cymbals and conchs, away through tempest and calm, by night or
day, companioned or alone, to the haunts of the far Cabeiri, and the
home where the Mothers dwell."

As I concluded, I looked across at Audubon, to see if I had made any
impression upon him. But he only smiled at me rather ironically
and said, "Is that meant, may I ask, for an account of everyday
experience?"

"Rather," I replied, "for an interpretation of it."

"It would need a great deal of interpretation," he said, "to make
anything of the kind out of mine."

"No doubt," I said; "yet I am not without hope that the interpretation
may be true; and that some day you may recognize it to be so yourself.
Meantime, perhaps, I, who look on, see more of the game than you
who play it; and surely in moments of leisure like this you will not
refuse to listen to my poor attempt to read the riddle of the sphinx."

"Oh," he said, "I listen gladly enough, but as I would to a poem."

"And do you think," I replied, "that there is not more truth in poetry
than in philosophy or science?"

But Wilson entered a vigorous protest, and for a time there was a
babel of argument and declamation, from which no clear line of thought
disengaged itself. Dennis, however, in his persistent way, had been
revolving in his mind what I had said, and at the first opportunity he
turned to me with the remark, "There's one point in your position that
I can't understand. Do you mean to say that it is our seeking that
determines the Good, or the Good that determines our seeking."

"Really," I said, "I don't know. I should say both are true. We, in
the process of our seeking, affirm what we find to be good, and
in that sense determine for ourselves what for us was previously
indeterminate; but, on the other hand, our determination is not mere
caprice; it is determination of Good, which we must therefore suppose
somehow or other to 'be' before we discern it."

"But then, in what sense _is_ it?"

"That is what it is so hard to say. Perhaps it is the law of our
seeking, the creative and urging principle of the world, striving
through us to realize itself, and recognized by us in that effort and
strain."

"Then your hypothesis is that Good has to be brought about, even while
you admit that in some sense it is?"

"Yes, it exists partially, and it ought to come to exist completely."

"Well now, that is exactly what seems to me absurd. If Good is at all
it is eternal and complete."

"But then, I ask in my turn, in what sense _is_ it?"

"In the only sense that anything really is. The rest is nothing but
appearance."

"What we call Evil, you mean, is nothing but appearance."

"Yes."

"You think, in fact, with the poet, that 'all that is, is good'?"

"Yes," he replied, "all that really is."

"Ah!" I said, "but in that 'really' lies the crux of the matter. Take,
for instance, a simple fact of our own experience--pain. Would you
say, perhaps, that pain is good?"

"No," he replied, "not as it appears to us; but as it really is."

"As it really is to whom, or in whom?"

"To the Absolute, we will say; to God, if you like."

"Well, but what is the relation of the pain as it is in God to the
pain that appears to us?"

"I don't pretend to know," he said, "but that is hardly the point. The
point is, that it is only in connection with what is in God that the
word Good has any real meaning. Appearance is neither good nor bad; it
is simply not real."

"But," cried Audubon, interrupting in a kind of passion, "It is in
appearance that we live and move and have our being. What is the use
of saying that appearance is neither good nor bad, when we are feeling
it as the one or the other every moment of our lives? And as to the
Good that is in God, who knows or cares about it? What consolation is
it to me when I am suffering from the toothache, to be told that God
is enjoying the pain that tortures me? It is simply absurd to call
God's Good good at all, unless it has some kind of relation to our
Good."

"Well," said Dennis, "as to that, I can only say that, in my opinion,
it is nothing but our weakness that leads us to take such a view. When
I am really at my best, when my intellect and imagination are working
freely, and the humours and passions of the flesh are laid to rest, I
seem to see, with a kind of direct intuition, that the world, just as
it is, is good, and that it is only the confusion and obscurity due to
imperfect vision that makes us call it defective and wish to alter it
for the better. When I perceive Truth at all, I perceive that it is
also Good; and I cannot then distinguish between what is, and what
ought to be."

"Really," cried Audubon, "really? Well, that I cannot understand."

"I hardly know how to make it clear," he replied, "unless it were by
a concrete example. I find that when I think out any particular aspect
of things, so far, that is to say, as I can think it out at all, all
the parts and details fall into such perfect order and arrangement
that it becomes impossible for me any longer to desire that anything
should be other than it is. And that, even in the regions where at
other times I am most prone to discover error and defect. You know,
for instance, that I am something of an economist?"

"What are you not?" I said. "If you sin, it is not from lack of
light!"

"Well," he continued, "there is, I suppose, no department of affairs
which one is more inclined to criticise than this. And yet the more
one investigates the more one discovers, even here, the harmony
and necessity that pervade the whole universe. The ebb and flow of
business from this trade or country to that, the rise and fall of
wages, or of the rate of interest, the pouring of capital into or
out of one industry or another, the varying relations of imports
to exports, the periods of depression and recovery, and in close
connection with all this the ever-changing conditions of the lives of
countless workmen throughout the world, their well-being or ill-being,
it may be their very life and death, together with the whole fate
of future generations in health, capacity, opportunity, and the
like,--all this complexus of things, so chaotic and unintelligible at
the first view, so full, as we say, of iniquity, injustice, and the
like, falls, as we penetrate further, into one vast and harmonious
system, so inspiring to the imagination, so inevitable to the
understanding, that our objections and cavillings, ethical, æsthetic,
or what you will, simply vanish away at the clearer vision, or, if
they persist, persist as mere irrelevant illusions; while we
abandon ourselves to the contemplation of the whole, as of some
world-symphony, whose dissonances, no less than its concords, are
taken up and resolved in the irresistible march and progress, the
ocean-flooding of the Whole. You will think," he continued, "that I am
absurdly rhapsodical over what, after all, is matter prosaic enough;
but what I wanted to suggest was that it is Reality so conceived that
appeals to me at once as Truth and as Good. This partial vision of
mine in the economic sphere is a kind of type of the way in which
I conceive the Absolute. I conceive Him to be a Being necessary and
therefore perfect; a Being in face of whom our own incoherent and
tentative criticisms, our complaints that this or that should, if only
it could, be otherwise, our regrets, desires, aspirations, and
the like, shew but as so many testimonies to our own essential
imperfection, weaknesses to be surmounted, rather than signs of worth
to stamp us, as we vainly boast, the elect of creation."

He finished; and I half expected that Leslie would intervene, since
I saw, as I thought, many weak points in the position. But he kept
silence, impressed, perhaps, by that idea of the Perfect and Eternal
which has a natural home in the minds of the generous and the young.
So I began myself rather tentatively:

"I think," I said, "I understand the position you wish to indicate;
and so stated, in general terms, no doubt it is attractive. It is when
we endeavour to work it out in detail that the difficulties appear.
The position, as I understand it, is, that, from the point of view of
the Absolute, what we call Evil and what we call Good simply have
no existence. Good and Evil, in our sense, are mere appearances; and
Good, in the absolute sense, is identical with the Absolute or with
God?"

"Yes," he said, "that is my notion."

"And so, for example, to apply the idea in detail, in the region which
you yourself selected, all that we regret, or hate, or fear in our
social system--poverty, disease, starvation and the rest--is not
really evil at all, does not in fact exist, but is merely what appears
to us? There is, in fact, no social evil?"

"No," he replied, "in the sense I have explained there is none."

"Well then," I continued, "how is it with all our social and other
ideals? Our desire to make our own lives and other people's lives
happier? Our efforts to subdue nature, to conquer disease, to
introduce order and harmony where there appears to be discord and
confusion? How is it with those finer and less directly practical
impulses by which you yourself are mainly pre-occupied--the quest
of knowledge or of beauty for their own sake, the mere putting of
ourselves into right relations with the universe, apart from any
attempt to modify it? Are all these desires and activities mere
illusions of ours, or worse than illusions, errors and even vices,
impious misapprehensions of the absolutely Good, frivolous attempts to
adapt the Perfect to our own imperfections?"

"No," he replied, "I would not put it so. Some meaning, I apprehend,
there must be in time and change, and some meaning also in our
efforts, though not, I believe, the meaning which we imagine. The
divine life, as I conceive it, is a process; only a process that
is somehow eternal, circular, so to speak, not rectilinear, much as
Milton appears to imagine it when he describes the blessed spirits
'progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle of eternity'; and
of this eternal process our activity, which we suppose to be moving
towards an end, is somehow or other an essential element. So that,
in this way, it is necessary and right that we should strive after
ideals; only, when we are thinking philosophically, we ought to make
clear to ourselves that in truth the Ideal is eternally fulfilled, its
fulfilment consisting precisely In that process which we are apt to
regard as a mere means to its realization. This, as Hegel has it, is
the 'cunning' of the Absolute Reason, which deludes us into the
belief that there is a purpose to be attained, and by the help of that
delusion preserves that energy of action which all the time is really
itself the End."

I looked up at him as he finished, to see whether he was quite
serious; and as he appeared to be so, and as Leslie still kept
silence, I took up the argument as follows.

"I understand," I said, "in a sort of way what you mean; but still the
same difficulty recurs which Audubon has already put forward. On
your hypothesis there seems to be an impassable gulf between God's
conception of Good and ours. To God, as it seems, the world is
eternally good; and in its goodness is included that illusion by which
it appears to us so bad, that we are continually employed in trying to
make it better. The maintenance of this illusion is essential to the
nature of the world; to us, evil always must appear. But, as we know
by experience, the evil that _appears_ is just as terrible and just
as hateful as it would be if it really _were_. A toothache, as Audubon
put it, is no less a pain to us because it is a pleasure to God. We
cannot, if we would, adopt His point of view; and clearly it would
be impious to try, since we should be endeavouring to defeat His
ingenious plan to keep the world going by hoodwinking us. We therefore
are chained and bound to the whirling wheel of appearance; to us what
seems good is good, and what seems bad, bad; and your contention that
all existence is somehow eternally good is for us simply irrelevant;
it belongs to the point of view of God to which we have no access."

"Yes," cried Audubon, "and what a God to call God at all! Why not
just as much the devil? What are we to think of the Being who is
responsible for a world of whose economy our evil is not merely
an accident, a mistake, but positively an essential, inseparable
condition!"

"What, indeed!" exclaimed Leslie. "Call Him God, by all means, if you
like, but such a God as Zeus was to Prometheus, omnipotent, indeed,
and able to exact with infallible precision His daily and hourly toll
of blood and tears, but powerless at least to chain the mind He has
created free, or to exact allegiance and homage from spirits greater,
though weaker, than Himself."

This was the sort of talk, I knew, that rather annoyed Dennis. I did
not therefore, for the moment, leave him time to reply, but proceeded
to a somewhat different point:

"Even putting aside," I said, "the moral character of God, as it
appears in your scheme of the universe, must we not perhaps accuse Him
of a slight lapse of intelligence? For, as I understand the matter,
it was essential to the success of the Absolute's plan that we should
never discover the deception that is being played upon us. But, it
seems, we do discover it. Hegel, for example, by your own confession,
has not only detected but exposed it. Well then, what is to be done?
Do you suppose that we could, even if we would, continue to lend
ourselves to the imposition? Must not our aims and purposes cease to
have any interest for us, once we are clear that they are not true
ends? And that which, according to the hypothesis, _is_ the true end,
the 'dateless and irrevoluble circle' of activity, that, surely, we
at least cannot sanction or approve, seeing that it involves and
perpetuates the very misery and pain whose destruction was our only
motive for acting at all. For, whatever may be the case with God, we,
you will surely admit, are forbidden by all that in us is highest and
best, to approve or even to acquiesce in the deliberate perpetuation
of a world of whose existence all that we call evil is an essential
and eternal constituent So that, as I said at first, it looks as if
the Absolute Reason had not been, after all, quite as cunning as
it thought, since it has allowed us to discover and expose the very
imposition it had invented to cheat us into concurrence with its
plans."

Dennis laughed a little at this; and then, "Well," he began, "between
you, with your genial irony, and Audubon and Leslie with their
heaven-defying rhetoric, I scarcely know whether I stand on my head or
my heels. But, the fact is, I think I made a slip in stating my view;
or perhaps there was really a latent contradiction in my mind. At any
rate, what I believe, whether or no I can believe it consistently, is
that it is possible for us, so to speak, to take God's point of
view; so that the evil against which we rebel we may come at last to
acquiesce in, as seen from the higher point of view. And, seriously,
don't you think it is conceivable that that may be, after all, the
true meaning of the discipline of life?"

"I cannot tell," I said, "perhaps it may. But, meantime, allow me to
press home the importance of your admission. For, as you say, there is
at least one of our aims which has a real significance, namely, that
of reaching the point of view of God. But this is something that lies
in the future, something to be brought about. And so, on your own
hypothesis, Good, after all, would not be that which eternally exists,
but something which has to be realized in time--namely, a change of
mind on the part of all rational beings, whereby they view the world
no longer in a partial imperfect way, but, in Spinoza's phrase, '_sub
specie æternitatis_'"

"No," he said, "I cannot admit that that is an end for the Absolute,
though I admit it is an end for us. The Absolute, somehow or other, is
eternally perfect and good; and this eternal perfection and goodness
are unaffected by any change that may take place in our minds."

"Well," I said, "I must leave it to the Absolute and yourself to
settle how that can possibly be. Meantime, I am content with your
admission that, for us, at least, there is an end and a Good lying
before us to be realized in the future. For that, as I understand, you
do admit. In your own life, for example, even if you aim at nothing
else, or at nothing else which you wholly approve, yet you do aim, at
least, with your whole nature at this--to attain a view of the world
as it may be conceived in its essence to be, not merely as it appears
to us."

"Yes," he said, "I admit that is my aim."

"That aim, then, is your Good?"

"I suppose so."

"And it is something, as I said, that lies in the future? For you do
not, I suppose, count yourself to have attained, or at least to have
attained as perfectly as you hope to?"

He agreed again.

"Well then," I continued, "what may be the relation of this Good of
yours, awaiting realization in the future, to that eternal Good of God
in which you also believe, we will reserve, with your permission, for
some future inquiry. It is enough for our present purpose that even
you, who assert the eternal perfection of the world, do nevertheless
at the same time admit a future Good; and much more do other men admit
it, who have no idea that the world is perfect at all. So that we may,
I think, safely suppose it to be generally agreed that the Good is
something to be realized in the future, so far, at any rate as it
concerns us--and, for my part, I have no desire to go farther than
that."

"Well," he said, "I am content for the present to leave the matter so.
But I reserve the right to go back upon the argument."

"Of course!" I replied, "for it is not, I hope, an argument, but a
discussion; and a discussion not for victory but for truth. Meantime,
then, let us take as a hypothesis that Good is something to be brought
about; and let us consider next the other point that Is included in
your position. According to you, as I understand, what requires to be
brought about, if ever Good is to be realized, is not any change in
the actual stuff, so to speak, of the world, in the structure, as it
were, of our experience, but only a change in our attitude towards all
this--a change in the subject, as they say, and not in the object.
Our aim should be not to abolish what we call evil, by successive
modifications of physical and social conditions, but rather, all these
remaining essentially the same, to come to see that what appears to be
evil is not really so."

"Yes," he said, "that is the view I would suggest."

"So that, for example, though we might still experience a toothache,
we should no longer regard it as an evil; and so with all the host
of things we are in the habit of calling bad: they would continue
unchanged 'in themselves,' as you Hegelians say, only to us they would
appear no longer bad, but good?"

"Yes; as I said at first, all reality is good, and all Evil,
so-called, is merely illusion."

I was about to reply when I was forestalled by Bartlett. For some time
past the discussion had been left pretty much to Dennis and myself,
with an occasional incursion from Audubon and Leslie. Ellis had gone
indoors; Parry and Wilson were talking together about something else;
and Bartlett appeared to be still absorbed in the _Chronicle_. I
noticed, however, that for the last few moments he had been getting
restless, and I suspected that he was listening, behind his newspaper,
to what we were saying. I was not therefore altogether surprised when,
upon Dennis' last remark, he suddenly broke into our debate with the
exclamation;

"Would it be' in order' to introduce a concrete example? There is a
curiously apt one here in the _Chronicle_."

And upon our assenting, he read us a long extract about
phosphorus-poisoning, the details of which I now forget, but at any
rate it brought before us, very vividly, a tale of cruel suffering and
oppression.

"Now," he said, as he finished, "is that, may I ask, the kind of thing
that it amuses you to call mere illusion?"

"Yes," replied Dennis stoutly, "that will do very well for an
example."

"Well," he rejoined, "I do not propose to dispute about words; but for
my own part I should have thought that, if anything is real, that
is; and so, I think, you would find it, if you yourself were the
sufferer."

"But," objected Dennis, "do you think that it is in the moment of
suffering that one is most competent to judge about the reality of
pain?"

"Certainly, for it is only in the moment of suffering that one really
knows what it is that one is judging about."

"I am not sure about that. I doubt whether it is true that experience
involves knowledge and _vice versa_. It is, indeed, to my mind,
part of the irony of life, that we know so much which we can never
experience, and experience so much which we can never know."

"I don't follow that," said Bartlett, "but of one thing I am sure,
that you will never get rid of evil by calling it illusion."

"No," Dennis conceded, "you will never of course get rid of it, in the
sense you mean, by that, or indeed, in my opinion, by any other means.
But we were discussing not what we are to do with evil, but how we are
to conceive it."

"But," he objected, "if you begin by conceiving it as illusion, you
will never do anything with it at all."

"Perhaps not, but I am not sure that that is my business."

"At any rate, Dennis," I interposed, "you will, I expect, admit, that
for us, while we live in the region of what you call 'Appearance,'
Evil is at least as pressing and as obvious as Good."

"Yes," he said, "I am ready to admit that."

"And," I continued, "for my part I agree with Bartlett and with
Leslie, that it is Appearance with which we are concerned. What I have
been contending for throughout, is that in the world in which we live
(whether we are to call it Reality or Appearance), Evil and Good are
the really dominating facts; and that we cannot dismiss them from our
consideration either on the ground that we know nothing of them (as
Ellis was inclined to maintain) or on the ground that we know all
about them (as Parry and Wilson seemed to think). On the contrary, it
is, I believe, our main business to find out about them; and that
we can find out about them is with me an article of faith, and so, I
believe, it is with most people, whether or no they are aware of it or
are ready to admit it."

Dennis was preparing to reply, when Ellis reappeared to summon us to
lunch. We followed him in gladly enough, for it was past our usual
hour and we were hungry; and the conversation naturally taking a
lighter turn, I have nothing further to record until we reassembled in
the afternoon.




BOOK II.


When we reassembled for coffee on the loggia after lunch, I did not
suppose we should continue the morning's discussion. The conversation
had been turning mostly on climbing, and other such topics, and
finally had died away into a long silence, which, for my own part, I
felt no particular inclination to break. We had let down an awning to
shelter us from the sun, where it began to shine in upon us, so that
it was still cool and pleasant where we sat; and so delightful did I
feel the situation to be, that I was almost vexed to be challenged to
renew our interrupted debate. The challenge, rather to my surprise,
came from Audubon, who suddenly said to me, _à propos_ of nothing, in
a tone at once ironic and genial:

"Well, I thought you talked very well this morning."

"Really!" I rejoined, "I imagined you were thinking it all great
nonsense."

"So no doubt it was," he replied; "still, it amused me to hear you."

"I am glad of that, at any rate; I was afraid perhaps you were bored."

"Not at all. Of course, I couldn't fail to see that you weren't
arriving anywhere. But that I never expected. In fact, what amuses me
most about you is, the way in which you continue to hope that you're
going to get at some result."

"But didn't we?"

"I don't see that you did. You showed, or tried to show, that we must
believe in Good; but you made no attempt to discover what Good is."

"No," I admitted; "that, of course, is much more difficult."

"Exactly; but it is the only point of importance."

"Well," I said, "perhaps if we were to try, we should find that we can
come to some agreement even about that."

"I don't believe it."

"But why not?"

"Because people are so radically different, that there is no common
ground to build upon."

"But is the difference really so radical as all that?"

"Yes," he said, "I think so. At any rate, the proof of the pudding
is in the eating, and I make you an offer. Here are eight of us, all
Englishmen, all contemporaries, all brought up more or less in the
same way. And I venture to say that, if you will raise the question,
you won't find, even among ourselves, with all the chances in your
favour, any substantial agreement about what we think good."

This direct challenge was rather alarming. I didn't feel that I could
refuse to take it up, but I was anxious to guard myself against the
consequences of failure. So I began, with some hesitation, "You must
remember that I have never maintained that at any given moment any
given set of people will be found to be in agreement on all points.
All I ventured to suggest was, that instead of our all being made, as
you contend, radically different, we have, underneath our differences,
a common nature, capable of judging, and judging truly, about Good,
though only on the basis of actual experience of Good. And on this
view I shall, of course, expect to find differences of opinion,
corresponding to differences of experience, even among people as much
alike as ourselves; only I shall not expect the differences to be
finally irreconcilable, but that we shall be able to supplement and
elucidate one another's conclusions by bringing to bear each his own
experience upon that of the rest."

"Well," he said, "we shall see. I have invited you to make the
experiment."

"I am willing," I replied, "if it is agreeable to the others. Only I
must ask you to understand from the beginning precisely what it is I
am trying to do. I shall be merely describing to you what I have
been able to perceive, with such experience as I have had, in this
difficult matter; and you will judge, all of you, whether or no, and
to what extent, your perceptions coincide with mine, the object being
simply to clear up these perceptions of ours, if we can; to define
somehow, as it were, what we have seen, in the hope of coming to see
something more."

They agreed to take me on my own terms, and I was about to begin,
when, happening to catch Dennis' eye, I suddenly felt discouraged.
"After all," I said, "I doubt whether it's much use my making the
attempt."

"Why, what's the matter?"

"Nothing," I said. "At least--well, I may as well confess it, though
it seems like giving away my whole case. The fact is, that there are
certain quite fundamental points in this connection on which Dennis
and I have never been able to agree; and although I believe we should
in time come to understand one another, I doubt whether we can do so
here and now. At any rate, he doesn't look at all as if he meant
to make it easy for me; and if I cannot carry him along with me, I
suppose I may as well give up at once."

"Oh," said Audubon, "if that is all, I will make a concession. We
will leave Dennis out of the reckoning. It shall be enough if you can
persuade the rest of us."

"But," I urged, "I doubt, even so, whether Dennis will ever allow me
to get to the end. You see, he never lets things pass if he doesn't
happen to agree."

"Oh," cried Ellis, "it's all right. We will keep him in order."

Dennis laughed. "You're disposing of me," he said, "in a very easy
manner. But perhaps I had better go away altogether; for, if I stay, I
certainly cannot pledge myself not to interrupt."

"No," I said, "that seems hardly fair. What I propose is, that we
should both try to be as conciliatory as we can. And then, by the
process of 'give and take,' I shall perhaps slip past you without any
really scandalous concession on either side."

"Well," he said, "you can try."

So, after casting about in my mind, I began, with some hesitation, as
follows:

"The first thing, then, that I want to say is this: Good, as it seems
to me, necessarily involves some form of conscious activity."

As I had expected, Dennis interrupted me at once.

"I don't see that at all," he said. "Consciousness may have nothing to
do with it."

"Perhaps, indeed, it may not," I replied, with all the suavity I could
command. "I should rather have said that I, as a matter of fact, can
form no idea of Good except in connection with consciousness."

"Can you not?" he exclaimed, "but I can! If a thing is good it's good,
so it appears to me, whether or no there is any consciousness of it."

"But," I said, "I, you see, myself, have no experience of anything
existing apart from consciousness, so it is difficult for me to
know whether such a thing would be good or no. But you, perhaps, are
differently constituted."

"Not in that point," he replied. "I admit, of course, that there is no
experience without consciousness. But we can surely conceive that of
which we have no experience? And I should have thought it was clear
that Good, like Truth, _is_, whether or no anyone is aware of it. Or
would you say that 2 + 2 = 4 is only true when someone is thinking of
it?"

"As to that," I replied, "I would rather not say anything about it
just now. On the logical point you may be right; but that, I think,
need not at present detain us, because what I am trying to get at, for
the moment, is something rather different. I will put it like this:
Good, if it is to be conceived as an object of human action, must be
conceived, must it not, as an object of consciousness? For otherwise
do you think we should trouble to pursue it?"

"I don't know," he said, "whether we should; but perhaps we ought to."

"But," I urged, "do you really think we ought? Do you think, to take
an example, that it could be a possible or a right aim for an
artist, say, to be perpetually producing, in a state of complete
unconsciousness, works which on completion should be immediately
hermetically sealed and buried for all eternity at the bottom of the
sea? Do you think that he could or ought to consider such production
as a Good? And so with all the works of man. Do we, and really ought
we to, do anything except with some reference to consciousness?"

"I don't know whether we do," he replied, "but I think it quite
possible that we ought."

"Well," I said, "we shall not, I suppose, just now, come to a closer
agreement But is there anyone else who shares your view? for, if not,
I will, with your permission, go on to the next point"

None spoke, and Dennis made no further opposition. So, after a pause,
I proceeded as follows: "I shall assume, then, that Good, in the sense
in which I am conceiving it, as an end of human action, involves some
kind of conscious activity. And the next question would seem to be,
activity of whom?"

"That, at any rate," said Leslie, "appears to be simple enough. It
must be an activity of some person or persons."

"Once more," murmured Dennis, "I protest."

But this time I ventured to ignore him, and merely said, in answer to
Leslie, "The question, then, will be, what persons?"

"Why," he replied, "ourselves, I suppose!"

"What do you say, Parry?" I asked.

"I don't quite understand," he replied, "the kind of way you put your
questions. But my own idea has always been, what I suppose is most
people's now, that the Good we are working for is that of some future
generation."

At this Leslie made some inarticulate interjection, which I thought
it better to ignore. And, answering Parry, I said, "Suppose, then, we
were to make a beginning by examining your hypothesis."

"By all means," he said, "though I should have thought we should all
have accepted it--unless, perhaps, it were Dennis."

"I most certainly don't!" cried Leslie.

"Nor I," added Audubon.

"Oh you!" cried Parry, "you accept nothing!"

"True"; he replied, "my motto is 'j'attends.'"

"Well," I resumed, "let us follow the argument and see where it leads
us. The hypothesis is, that Good involves some state of activity of
some generation indefinitely remote. Is not that so, Parry?"

"Yes," he said, "and one can more or less define what the state of
activity, as you call it, will be."

"Of course," interposed Ellis, "it will be one of heterogeneous,
co-ordinate, coherent----"

"That," I interrupted, "is not at present the question. The question
is merely as to the location of Good. According to Parry, it is
located in this particular remote generation, and, I suppose, in those
that follow it. But now, what about all the other generations, from
the beginning of the world onward? Good, it would seem, can have no
meaning for them, since it is the special privilege of those who come
after them."

"Oh, yes, it has!" he replied, "for it is their business to bring it
about, not indeed for themselves, but for their successors."

"But," cried Leslie, "what an absurd idea! Countless myriads of men
and women are born upon the earth, live through their complex lives of
action and suffering, pleasure and pain, hopes, fears, satisfactions,
aspirations, and the like, pursuing what they call Good, and avoiding
what they call Bad, under the naïf impression that there is Good and
Bad for them--and yet the significance of all this is not really for
themselves at all, but for some quite other people who will have the
luck to be born in the remote future, and for whose sake alone their
fellow-creatures, from the very beginning of time, have been brought
into being like so many lifeless tools, to be used up and laid aside,
when done with, on the black infinite ash-heap of the dead."

"Oh, come!" said Parry, "you exaggerate! These tools, as you call
them, have a good enough time. It does not follow, because the final
Good lies in the future, that the present has no Good at all. It has
just as much Good as people can get out of it."

"But then," said Leslie, "in that case it is this Good of their own
with which each generation is really concerned. So far as they do get
Good at all they get it as an activity in themselves."

"Certainly," said Ellis; "and for my own part, I am sick of that
cant of living for future generations. Let us, at least, live for
ourselves, whether we live well or badly."

"Well," replied Parry, rather stiffly, "of course every one has his
own ideas. But I confess that, for my own part, the men I admire are
those who have sacrificed themselves for the future."

"But, Parry," I interposed, "let us get clear about this; and with a
view to clearness let us take our own case. We, as I understand you,
have to keep in view a double Good: first, a Good for ourselves, which
is not indeed the perfect Good (for that is reserved for a future
generation), but still is something Good as far as it goes--whether
it be a certain degree of happiness, or however else we may have to
define it; and as to this Good, there appears to be no difficulty,
for we who pursue it are also the people who get it That is so, is it
not?"

He agreed.

"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!"

"Well," he rejoined, "whatever you may say, I still think it right
that each generation should sacrifice itself (as you call it) for the
next. And so, I believe, would you, when it came to the point. At any
rate, I have often heard you inveigh against the shortsightedness of
modern politicians, and their unwillingness to run great risks and
undertake great labours for the future."

"Quite true," I said, "that is the view I take. But I was trying to
see how the view could be justified. For it seems to me, I confess,
that we can only be expected to labour for what is, in some sense
or other, our own Good; and I do not see how the Good of future
generations, in your way of putting it, is also ours."

"But," he said, "we have an instinct that it is."

"I believe we have," I replied, "but the question would be, what that
instinct really means. Somehow or other, I think it must mean, as you
yourself suggested, that our Good is the Good of the Whole. Only the
difficulty is to see how there is a Whole at all."

"Well," he said, "perhaps there is no Whole. What then?"

"Why, then," I replied, "how can we justify an instinct which bids us
labour and sacrifice ourselves for a Good, which, on this hypothesis,
has no significance for us, but only for other people."

"Perhaps," he said, "we cannot justify it, but I am sure we ought to
obey it; and, indeed, I believe we cannot do otherwise. Even taking
the view that the order of the world is altogether unjust, as I admit
it would be on the view we are considering, yet, since we cannot
remedy the injustice, we are bound at least to make the best of it;
and the best we can do is to prepare the Good for those who come after
us, even though we can never enter into it ourselves."

"I am not so sure about that," Ellis interrupted, "I think the best
we can do is to try and realize Good for ourselves--as much as we
can get, even if we admit that this is but little. For we do at least
know, or may hope to discover, what Good for ourselves is; whereas
Good for other people is far more hypothetical."

"But, surely," he objected, "that would lead to action we cannot
approve--to a sacrifice of all larger Goods to our own pleasure of the
moment. We should breed, for example, without any regard to the future
efficacy of the race----"

"That," interrupted Ellis, "we do as it is."

"Yes, but we don't justify it--those of us, at least, who think. And,
again, we should squander on immediate gratifications wealth which
ought to be stored up against the future. And so on, and so on; it is
not necessary to multiply examples."

"But," I objected, "we should only do these things if we thought that
kind of short-sighted activity to be good; but, as a matter of fact,
we do not, we who object to it. And that is because, as I hinted
before, our idea of even our own Good is that of an activity in and
for the Whole, and not merely in and for ourselves. And, whether it is
reasonable or no, we cannot help extending the idea of the Whole, so
as to include future generations. But, as it seems to me, the real
meaning and justification of our action is not merely that we are
seeking the Good of future generations but that we are endeavouring to
realize our own Good, which consists in some such form of activity. So
that really, as was suggested at the beginning, Good will be a kind of
activity in ourselves, even though that activity be directed towards
ends in which we do not expect to share."

At this point, Dennis, who had been struggling to speak, broke in at
last, in spite of Ellis's efforts to restrain him.

"Why do you keep saying '_Our_ Good'?" he cried. "Why do you not say
_the_ Good? I can't understand this talk of me and thee, our Good, and
their Good, as if there were as many Goods as there are people."

"Well," I said, "the distinction, after all, was introduced by Parry,
who said that we ought to aim at the Good of a future generation.
Still, I admit that I was getting a little unhappy myself at the kind
of language into which I was betrayed. But what I want to say is
this: So far as it is true at all that it is good to labour for future
generations, goodness consists in the activity of so labouring, as
much, at least, as in the result produced in those for whose sake the
labour is. That, at least, is the only way in which I can find the
position reasonable at all."

"I don't see it," said Parry, and was preparing to re-state his
position, when Wilson suddenly intervened with a new train of thought.

"The fact is," he said, "you have begun altogether at the wrong end."

"I daresay," I said, "I can't find the end; it's all such a coil."

"Well," he said, "this is where I believe the trouble came in. You
started with the idea that the Good must be good for individuals; and
that was sure to land you in confusion."

"What then is your idea?" I asked.

"Why," he said, "as you might expect from a biologist, I regard
everything from the point of view of the species."

At this I saw Ellis sit up and prepare for an encounter.

"Nature," continued Wilson, "has always in view the Whole not the
Part, the species not the individual. And this law, which is true of
the whole creation, is thrown into special relief in the case of man,
because there the interest of the species is embodied in a particular
form--the Society or the State--and may be clearly envisaged, as a
thing apart, towards the maintenance of which conscious efforts may be
directed."

"And this, which is the end of Nature, according to you, is also the
Good?"

"Naturally."

"Well," I said, "I will not recapitulate here the objections I have
already urged against the view that the course of Nature determines
the content of the Good. For, quite apart from that, it is a view
which many people hold--and one which was held long before there was a
science of biology--that the community is the end, and the individual
only the means."

"But," he said, "biology has given a new basis and a new colour to the
view."

"I don't know about that," cried Ellis, unable any longer to restrain
himself, "but I am sure it has given us a new kind of language. In
the old days, when Wilson's opinion was represented by Plato, men
were still men, and were spoken of as such, however much they might be
subordinated to the community. But now!--why, if you open one of these
sociological books, mostly, I am bound to say, in German, 'Entwurf
einer Sozial-anthropologie,' 'Versuch einer anthropologischen
Darstellung der menschlichen Gesellschaft vom Sozial-biologischen
Standpunkt aus,' and the like--you will hardly be able to realize that
you are dealing with human beings at all. I have seen an unmarried
woman called a 'female non-childbearing human.' And at the worst, men
actually cease to be even animals; they become mere numbers; they are
calculated by the theory of combinations; they are masses, averages,
classes, curves, anything but men! For every million of the
population, it has been solemnly estimated, there will be one genius,
one imbecile, 256,791 individuals just above the mean, 256,791 just
below it! Observe, 256,791! Not, as one might have been tempted to
believe, 256,790! What a saving grace in that odd unit! And this is
the kind of thing that is revolutionizing history and politics!
No more great men, no more heroic actions, no more inspirations,
passions, and ideals! Nothing but calculations of the chances that A
will meet and breed out of B! Nothing but analysis of the mechanism of
survival! Nothing but----"

"My dear Ellis," interrupted Wilson, "you appear to me to be
digressing."

"Digressing!" he cried "Would that I could digress out of this world
altogether! Would that I could digress to a planet where they have no
arithmetic! Where a man could be a man, not a figure in an addition
sum, a unit in an average, an individual in a species----"

"Where," exclaimed Audubon, taking him up, "a man could be himself, as
I have often said, 'imperial, plain, and true.'"

There was a chorus of protestation at the too familiar quotation;
and for a time I was unable to lay hold of the broken thread of the
argument. But at last I got a hearing for the question I was anxious
to address to Wilson.

"You say," I began, "that by Good we mean the Good of the community?"

"I say," he replied, "that that is what we ought to mean."

"But in what sense do you understand the word community?"

"In the sense of that organization of individuals which represents, so
to speak, the species."

"How represents?"

"In the sense that it is its function to maintain and perfect the
species."

"But is that the function of the community?"

"If it is not, it ought to be; and to a great extent it is. If you
look at the social mechanism, not with the eyes of a mere historian,
who usually sees nothing, but with those of a biologist and man of
science, intent upon essentials, you will find that it is nothing but
an elaborate apparatus of selection, natural or artificial, as you
like to call it. First, there is the struggle of races, which may be
traced not only in war and conquest, but more insidiously under the
guise of peace, so that, for example, at this day you may witness
throughout Europe the gradual extinction of the long-headed fair by
the round-headed dark stock. Then there is the struggle of nation with
nation, resulting in the gradual elimination of the weaker--that, of
course, is obvious enough; but what is not always so clearly seen is
the not less certain fact, that within the limits of each society the
same process is everywhere at work. To pass over the economic struggle
for existence, of which we are perhaps sufficiently aware, what else
is our system of examinations but a mechanism of selection, whereby it
is determined that certain persons only shall have access to certain
professions? What else is the convention whereby marriages are
confined to people of the same class, thus securing the perpetuation
of certain types, and especially of the better-gifted and
better-disposed? Turn where we may we find the same phenomenon.
Society is a machine for sifting out the various elements of the race,
combining the like, disparting the unlike, bringing some to the top,
others to the bottom, preserving these, eliminating those, indifferent
to the fate, good or bad, of the individuals it controls, but
envisaging always the well-being of the Whole."

"But," I objected, "is it so certain that it is well-being that is
kept in view? Do you not recognize a process of deterioration as well
as of improvement? You mentioned, for instance, that the long-headed
fair race, is giving place to what I understand is regarded as an
inferior type."

"No doubt," he admitted, "there are periods of decline. Still, on the
whole, the movement is an upward one."

"Well," I replied, "that, after all, is not the question we are at
present discussing. Your main point is, that when we speak of Good
we mean, or should mean, the Good, not of the individual, but of
the species. But what, I should like to know, is the species? Is it
somehow an entity, or being, that it has a Good?"

"No," he replied, "it is merely, of course, a general name for the
individuals; only for all the individuals taken together, not one by
one or in groups."

"The Good of the species, then, is the Good of all the individuals
taken together."

"Yes."

"But" I said, "how can that be? It is good for the species, according
to you, that certain individuals should be eliminated, or should sink
to the bottom, or whatever else their fate may be. But is that also
good for the individual in question?"

"I don't know about that," he replied, "and I don't see that it
matters. I only say that it is good for the species."

"But they are part of the species; so that if it is good for the
species it is good for them."

"No! for the Good of the species consists in the selection of the best
individuals. It is indifferent to all the rest"

"Then by the Good of the species you mean the good of the selected
individuals?"

"Not exactly; I mean it is good that those individuals should be
selected."

"But good for whom, if not for them? For the individuals who are
eliminated? Or for you who look on? Or perhaps, for God?"

"God! No! I mean good, simply good."

"I'm afraid I don't understand," I said. "Does Good then hang, as it
were, in the air, being Good for nobody at all?"

"Well, if you like, we will say it is good for Nature."

"But is Nature, then, a conscious being?"

"I don't say that"

"I am very sorry," I said, "but really I cannot understand you. If you
reject God, I see only two alternatives remaining. Either the Good you
speak of is that of all the individuals of the species taken together,
or it is that of the best individuals; and in either case I seem to
see difficulties."

"What difficulties?" asked Parry. For Wilson did not speak.

"Why," I said, "taking the first alternative, I do not see how it can
be good for the inferior individuals to be degraded or eliminated. I
should hav

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