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 have thought, if there were any Good for them, it would consist

in their being made better."

"I don't see that," objected Dennis; "it might be the best possible

thing, for them, to be eliminated."

"But in that case," I said, "the best possible thing would be absence

of Bad, not Good. And so far as we could talk of Good at all, we could

not apply it to them?"

"Perhaps not"

"Well then, in that case we have to fall back upon the other

alternative, and say that by the Good of the species we mean that of

the ultimately selected individuals."

"Well, what then?"

"Why, then, we return, do we not, to the position of Parry, that the

Good is that of some particular generation? And there, too, we were

met by difficulties. So that altogether I do not really see what

meaning to attach to Wilson's conception."

"There is no meaning to be attached to it!" cried Ellis. "The species

is a mere screen invented to conceal the massacre of individuals.

I'm sick of these biologico-sociologico-anthropologico-historico

treatises, with their talk of races, of nations, of classes, never of

men! their prate about laws as if they were the real entities, and

the people who are supposed to be subject to them mere indifferent

particles of stuff! their analysis of the perfection with which the

machine works, its combinations, differentiations, subordinations,

co-ordinations, and all the other abominations of desolations

standing where they ought not, as depressing to the mind as they are

cacophonous to the ear! and, worst of all, their impudent demand that

we should admire the diabolical process! Admire! As though we should

be asked to admire the beauty of the rack and the thumbscrew!"

"It's a matter of taste, no doubt," said Wilson, "but in me the

spectacle of natural law does awaken feelings of admiration."

"In me," replied Ellis, "it awakens, just as often, feelings of

disgust, and especially when its theatre is human life."

"At any rate, whether you admire it or not, the spectacle is there."

"No doubt, if you choose to look at it; but why should you? It's not

a good drama; it isn't up to date; it has no first-hand knowledge, nor

original vision of life. It simply ignores all the important facts."

"Which do you call the important facts?"

"Why, of course, the emotions; the hopes, fears, aspirations,

sympathies and the rest! There's more valuable information contained

in even an inferior novel that in all the sociological treatises that

ever have been or will be written."

"Oh, come!" cried Parry.

"I assure you," replied Ellis, "I am serious. Take, for example,

these unfortunate creatures who are in process of elimination. To

the sociologist their elimination is their only _raison d'être_. He

cancels them out with the same delight as if they were figures in a

complex fraction. But pick up any novel dealing with the life of

the slums, and you find that these figures are really composed of

innumerable individual units, existing each for himself, and each his

own sufficient justification, each a sacred book comprising its own

unique secret, a master-piece of the divine tragedian, a universe

self-moved and self-contained, a centre of infinity, a mirror of

totality, in a word, a human soul."

"All that I altogether deny," said Wilson, "but, even if it were true,

it would not affect the sociological laws."

"I don't say it would. I only say that the sociological laws are as

unimportant, if possible, as the law of gravitation."

"Which," replied Wilson, "may be regarded as a _reductio ad absurdum_

of your view."

"Anyhow," I interposed, "we are digressing from our point. What I

really want to know is whether Wilson has any more light to throw on

my difficulties with regard to his notion of the species."

"I have nothing more to say," he replied, "than I have said already."

"But I have!" cried Dennis, "and something very much to the point.

You see now the absurdities into which you are led by the position

you insisted on assuming, that Good involves conscious activity. If

it does, as you rightly inquired (though with a suicidal audacity),

conscious activity in whom? And to that question, of course, you can

find no answer."

"And yet," I said, endeavouring to turn the tables upon him, "I have

known you to maintain yourself that Good not merely involves, but is,

a conscious activity; only an activity in or of God."

"Rather," he replied, "that it _is_ God. But I don't really know

whether we ought to call God a conscious activity. Whatever He or It

be, is something that transcends our imagination. Only the things we

call good are somehow reflexes of God; and we have to accept them

as such without further inquiry. At any rate, we have no right to

endeavour, as you keep doing, to locate Good in some individual

persons."

"Well," I said, "here we come again to a fundamental difference

of view. All the Good of which I am aware as actually existing is

associated, somehow or other, with personal consciousness. I am

willing to admit, for the sake of argument, that the ultimate Good, if

ever we come to know it, might, perhaps, not be so associated. But of

that, as yet, I know nothing; you, perhaps, are more fortunate. And if

you can give us an account of Good, I mean, of course, of its content,

which shall represent it intelligibly to us as independent of any

consciousness like our own, I am quite ready to relinquish the

argument to you."

"I don't know," he replied, "that I can represent It to you in a way

that you would admit to be intelligible. I don't profess to have had

what you call 'experience' of it."

"Well, then," said Ellis, "what's the good of talking?"

"What, indeed!" I echoed, in some despondency. For I began to feel it

was impossible to carry on the conversation. But at this point, to my

great relief, Bartlett came to the rescue, not indeed with a solution

of the difficulty in which we were involved, but with a diversion of

which I was only too glad to take advantage.

"It seems to me," he said, "that you are getting off the track!

Whatever the ultimate Good may be, what we really want to know, is the

kind of thing we can conceive to be good for people like ourselves.

And I thought that was what you were going to discuss."

"So I was," I said, "if Dennis would have let me."

"I will let you, by all means," Dennis interposed, "so long as it is

quite understood that everything you say has nothing to do with the

real subject."

"Very well," said Bartlett, "that's understood. And now let's get

along, on the basis of you and me and the man in the street. What are

we trying to get, when we try to get Good? That I take it is the real

question."

"And I can only answer," I said, "as I did before, that we are

trying to get some state of conscious experience, to enter into some

activity."

"Very well, then, what activity?" he inquired, catching me up sharp,

as if he were afraid of Dennis interposing again.

"What activity!" cried Ellis, "why all and every one as much as

another, and the more the merrier."

"What!" I exclaimed, rather taken aback, "all at once do you mean?

whether they be good or whether they be bad, all alike indifferently?"

"There are no bad activities," he replied, "none bad essentially in

themselves. Their goodness and badness depends on the way in which

they are interchanged or combined. Any pursuit or occupation palls in

time if it is followed exclusively; but all may be delightful in the

just measure and proportion. We are complex creatures, and we ought to

employ all our faculties alike, never one alone at the cost of all the

others."

"That may be sound enough," I said, "but will you not describe more in

detail the kind of life which you consider to be good?"

"How can I?" he replied. "It is like trying to sum infinity! The most

I can do is to hint and rhapsodize."

"Hint away, then!" cried Parry; "rhapsodize away! we're all

listening."

"Well, then," he said, "my ideal of the good life would be to move in

a cycle of ever-changing activity, tasting to the full the peculiar

flavour of each new phase in the shock of its contrast with that of

all the rest. To pass, let us say, from the city with all its bustle,

smoke, and din, its press of business, gaiety, and crime, straight

away, without word or warning, breaking all engagements, to the

farthest and loneliest corner of the world. To hunt or fish for weeks

and months in strange wild places, camping out among strange beasts

and birds, lost in pathless forests, or wandering over silent plains.

Then, suddenly, back in the crowd, to feel the press of business, to

make or lose millions in a week, to adventure, compete, and win; but

always, at the moment when this might pall, with a haven of rest

in view, an ancient English mansion, stately, formal, and august,

islanded, over its sunken fence, by acres of buttercups. There to

study, perhaps to write, perhaps to experiment, dreaming in my garden

at night of new discoveries, to revolutionize science and bring the

world of commerce to my feet. Then, before I have time to tire, to be

off on my travels again, washing gold in Klondike, trading for furs

in Siberia, fighting in Madagascar, in Cuba, or in Crete, or smoking

hasheesh in tents with Persian mystics. To make my end action itself,

not anything action may gain, choosing not to pursue the Good for fear

I should let slip Goods, but, in my pursuit of Goods, attaining the

only Good I can conceive--a full and harmonious exercise of all my

faculties and powers."

On hearing him speak thus I felt, I confess, such a warmth of sympathy

that I hesitated to attempt an answer. But Leslie, who was young

enough still to live mainly in ideas, broke in with his usual zeal and

passion.

"But," he said, "all this activity of which you speak is no more

good than it is bad; every phase of it, by your own confession, is so

imperfect in itself that it requires to be constantly exchanged for

some other, equally defective."

"Not at all," answered Ellis, "each phase is good in its time and

place; but each becomes bad if it is pursued exclusively to the

detriment of others."

"But is each good in itself? or, at least, is it more good than bad?

You choose, in imagination, to dwell upon the good aspect of each; but

in practice you would have to experience also the bad. Your hunting

in trackless forests will involve exposure, fatigue, and hunger; your

fighting in Madagascar, fever, wounds, and disillusionment; and so

through all your chapter of accidents--for accidents they are at best,

and never the substance of Good; rather, indeed, a substance of Evil,

dogged by a shadow of Good."

"Oh!" cried Ellis, "what a horrid prosaic view--from an idealist, too!

Why, the Bad is all part of the Good; one takes the rough with the

smooth. Or rather the Good stands above what you call good and bad; it

consists in the activity itself which feeds upon both alike. If I were

Dennis I should say it is the synthesis of both."

"Well," said Leslie, "I never heard before of a synthesis produced by

one side of the antithesis simply swallowing the other."

"Didn't you?" said Ellis. "Then you have a great deal yet to learn.

This is known as the synthesis of the lion and the lamb."

"Oh, synthesis!" cried Parry. "Heaven save us from synthesis! What is

it you are trying to say?"

"That's what I want to know," I said "We seem to be coming perilously

near to Dennis's position, that what we call Evil is mere appearance."

"Well," said Ellis, "extremes meet! Dennis arrived at his view by a

denial of the world; I arrive at mine by an affirmation of it."

"But do you really think," I urged, "that everything in the world is

good?"

"I think," he replied, "that everything may be made to minister to

Good if you approach it in the proper way."

"That reads," said Audubon, "like an extract from a sermon."

"As I remarked before," replied Ellis, "extremes meet"

"But, Ellis," I protested, "do explain! How are you going to answer

Leslie?"

"Leslie is really too young," he replied, "to be answerable at all.

But if you insist on my being serious, what I meant to suggest is,

that when our activity is freshest and keenest we find delight in what

is called Evil no less than in what is called Good. The complexity of

the world charms us, its 'downs' as well as its 'ups,' its abysses

and glooms no less than its sunny levels. We would not alter it if we

could; it is better than we could make it; and we accept it not merely

with acquiescence but with triumph."

"Oh, do we!" said Audubon.

"We," answered Ellis, "not you! You, of course, do not accept

anything."

"But who are 'we'?" asked Leslie.

"All of us," he replied, "who try to make an art of living. Yes, art,

that is the word! To me life appears like a great tragi-comedy. It has

its shadows as well as its lights, but we would not lose one of them,

for fear of destroying the harmony of the whole. Call it good, or call

it bad, no matter, so it is. The villain no less than the hero claims

our applause; it would be dull without him. We can't afford to miss

anything or anyone."

"In fact," cried Audubon, "'Konx Ompax! Totality!' You and Dennis are

strangely agreed for once!"

"Yes," he replied, "but for very different reasons, as the judge said

on the one occasion when he concurred with his colleagues. Dennis

accepts the Whole because he finds it a perfect logical system; I,

because I find it a perfect work of art. His prophet is Hegel; mine is

Walt Whitman."

"Walt Whitman! And you profess to be an artist!"

"So was he, not in words but in life. One thing to him was no better

nor worse than another; small and great, high and low, good and

bad, he accepts them all, with the instinctive delight of an actual

physical contact. Listen to him!" And he began to quote:

"I do not call one greater and one smaller,

That which fills its period and place is equal to any.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of

the wren,

And the tree-toad is a 'chef-d'oeuvre' for the highest;

And the running blackberry would adorn the parlours of heaven,

And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,

And the cow-crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels."

"That's all very well," objected Leslie, "though, of course, it's

rather absurd; but it does not touch the question of evil at all."

"Wait a bit," cried Ellis, "he's ready for you there."

"I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of

wickedness also.

What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?

Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent,

My gait is no fault-finder's or rejector's gait,

I moisten the roots of all that grows."

* * * * *

"This is the meal equally set, this is the meat for natural hunger,

It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make appointment

with all,

I will not have a single person slighted or kept away,

The kept-woman, spunger, thief are hereby invited,

The heavy-lipped slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;

There shall be no difference between them and the rest."

"That's rather strong," remarked Parry.

"Don't you like it?" Ellis inquired.

"I think I might like it if I were drunk."

"Ah, but a poet, you see, is always drunk!"

'Well, I unfortunately, am often sober; and then I find the sponger

and the venerealee anything but agreeable objects."

"Besides," said Audubon, "though it's very good of Walt Whitman to

invite us all, the mere fact of dining with him, however miscellaneous

the company, doesn't alter the character of the dinner."

"No," cried Leslie, "and that's just the point Ellis has missed all

through. Even if it be true that the world appears to him as a work of

art, it doesn't appear so to the personages of the drama. What's play

to him is grim earnest to them; and, what's more, he himself is an

actor not a mere spectator, and may have that fact brought home to

him, any moment, in his flesh and blood."

"Of course!" replied Ellis, "and I wouldn't have it otherwise. The

point of the position is that one should play one's part oneself,

but play it as an artist with one's eye upon the total effect, never

complaining of Evil merely because one happens to suffer, but taking

the suffering itself as an element in the æsthetic perfection of the

Whole."

"I should like to see you doing that," said Bartlett, rather brutally,

"when you were down with a fit of yellow fever."

"Or shut up in a mad-house," said Leslie.

"Or working eight hours a day at business," said Audubon, "with the

thermometer 100 degrees in the shade."

"Oh well," answered Ellis, "those are the confounded accidents of our

unhealthy habits of life."

"I am afraid," I said, "they are accidents very essential to the

substance of the world."

"Besides," cried Parry, "there's the whole moral question, which you

seem to ignore altogether. If there be any activity that is good,

it must be, I suppose, the one that is right; and the activity you

describe seems to have nothing to do with right and wrong."

"Right and wrong! Right and wrong!" echoed Ellis,

"Das hör ich sechzlg Jahre wiederholen,

Ich fluche drauf, aber verstohlen."

"You may curse as much as you like," replied Parry, "but you can

hardly deny that there is an intimate connection between Good and

Right."

Instead of replying Ellis began to whistle; so I took up Parry's point

and said, "Yes, but what is the connection? My own idea is that Right

is really a means to Good. And I should separate off all activity

that is merely a means from that which is really an end in itself, and

good."

"But is there any activity," objected Leslie, "which is not merely a

means?"

"Oh yes," I said, "I should have thought so. Most men, it seems to

me, are well enough content with what they are doing for its own sake;

even though at the same time they have remoter ends in view, and if

these were cut off would cease, perhaps, to take pleasure in the work

of the moment. The attitude is not very logical, perhaps, but I think

it is very common. Why else is it that men who believe and maintain

that they only work in order to make money, nevertheless are so

unwilling to retire when the money is made; or, if they do, are so

often dissatisfied and unhappy?"

"Oh," said Audubon, "that is only because boredom is worse than pain.

It is not that they find any satisfaction in their work; it's only

that they find even greater distress in idleness."

"But, surely," I replied, "even you yourself would hardly maintain

that there is nothing men do for its own sake, and because they take

delight in it. If there were nothing else at least there is play--and

I have known you play cricket yourself!"

"Known him play cricket!" cried Ellis. "Why, if he had his way, he

would do nothing else, except at the times when he was riding or

shooting."

"Well," I said, "that's enough, for the moment, to refute him. And, in

fact, I suppose none of us would seriously maintain that there is no

form of activity which men feel to be good for its own sake, though

the Good of course may be partial and precarious."

"No," said Ellis, "I should rather inquire whether there is any form

which they pursue merely and exclusively as a means to something

else."

"Oh, surely!" I said. "One might mention, for instance, the act of

visiting the dentist. Or what is more important, and what, I suppose,

Parry had in his mind, there is the whole class of activities which

one distinguishes as moral."

"Do you mean to say," said Parry, "that moral action has no Good in

itself but is only a means to some other Good?"

"I don't know," I replied; "I am rather inclined to think so. But it

all depends upon how we define it."

"And how do you define it?"

"I should say that its specific quality consists in the refusal to

seize some immediate and inferior Good with a view to the attainment

of one that is remoter but higher."

"Oh, well, of course," cried Leslie, "if you define it so, your

proposition follows of itself."

"So I thought," I said. "But how would you define it?"

"I should say it is a free and perfect activity in Good."

"In that case, it is of course the very activity we are in quest of,

and we should come upon it, if we were successful, at the end of our

inquiry. But I was supposing that the essence of morality is expressed

in the word 'ought'; and in that I take to be implied the definition

I suggested--namely, action pursued not for its own sake, but for the

sake of something else."

"Oh, oh!" cried Dennis, "there I really must protest! I've kept silent

as long as I possibly could; but when it comes to describing as a mere

means the only kind of activity which is an end in itself----"

"The only kind that is an end in itself!" I repeated, in some dismay.

"Is that really what you think?"

"Of course it is! why not?"

"I don't know. I have always supposed that, when we are doing what we

ought, we are acting with a view to some ultimate Good."

"Well, I, on the contrary, believe that we ought absolutely, without

reference to anything else. It is a unique form of activity, dependent

on nothing but itself; and for anything we have yet shown, it may be

the Good we are in quest of."

This suggestion, unexpected as it was, threw me into great perplexity.

I did not see exactly how to meet it; yet it awakened no response in

me, nor as I thought In any of the others. But while I was hesitating,

Leslie began:

"Do you mean that the Good might consist simply in doing what we

ought, without any other accompaniment or conditions?"

"Yes, I think it might."

"So that, for example, a man might be in possession of the Good, even

while he was being racked or burnt alive, so long only as he was doing

what he ought"

"Yes, I suppose he might be."

"It's a trifle paradoxical," said Ellis.

"In fact," added Bartlett, "it might be called nonsense."

"I don't see why," replied Dennis; "for we haven't yet shown that the

Good is dependent on the things we call good."

"No," I said, "but we did show--or at least for the time being we

agreed to admit--that it must have some relation to what we call

goods; that they do somehow or other, and more or less, express

its nature; and indeed our whole present inquiry is based upon the

hypothesis that it is by examining goods that we may get to know

something about the Good. So that I do not see how we can entertain an

idea of Good which flatly contradicts all our experience of goods."

"Well," said Dennis, "I ought perhaps to modify the position. Let us

say that the Good consists in the activity of doing what we ought,

only that activity can't exist in its true perfection unless everybody

participates in it at once. But if everybody participated in it,

there would be no more burnings; and so Leslie's difficulty would not

arise."

"Well," I said, "the modification is very radical! But even so, I

don't know what to make of the position. For it is very difficult to

conceive a society perpetually and exclusively occupied, so to speak,

in 'oughting.' Just imagine the kind of life It would be--without

pleasure, without business, without knowledge, without anything at all

analogous to what we call good, purged wholly and completely of all

that might taint the purity of the moral sense, of philanthropy, of

friendship, of love, even, I suppose, of the love of virtue, a life

simply of obligation, without anything to be obliged to except a law."

"But," he protested, "you are taking an absurd and impossible case."

"I am taking the case which you yourself put, when you said that Good

consisted simply in doing what one ought, independently of all other

accompaniment or condition. But perhaps that is not what you really

meant?"

"No," he said; "of course, what I meant was that it is life according

to the moral law that is Good; but I did not intend to separate the

law from the life, and call it Good all by itself."

"But is the life the better for the law, in the sense, I mean, in

which law involves constraint? Or would it not be better still if the

same life were pursued freely for its own sake?"

"Perhaps so."

"But, then, in that case, the more we realized Good the less we should

be aware of obligation. And would a life without conscious and felt

obligation be a life specifically ethical, in the sense in which you

seemed to be using the word?"

"I should think not; for 'ought' in the ethical sense does certainly

seem to me to involve the idea of obligation."

"In that case it would seem to be truer to say that activity is Good,

not in so far as it is ethical but precisely in so far as it is not.

At any rate, I should maintain that we come nearer to a realization

of Good in the activities which we pursue without effort or friction,

than in those which involve a struggle between duty and inclination."

"But the activities we pursue without effort or friction often enough

are bad."

"No doubt; but some of them are good, and it is to those I should look

for the best idea I could form of what Good might be."

"Well," he said, "go on! Once more I have entered my protest; and now

I leave the road clear."

"The worst of you is," said Ellis, "that you always turn up in front!

When we think we have passed you once for all, you take a short cut

across the fields, and there you are in the middle of the road, with

the same old story, that we're altogether on the wrong track."

"Well," said Dennis, sententiously, "I do my duty."

"And," replied Ellis, "no doubt you have your reward! Proceed!" he

continued, turning to me.

"Well," I said, "I suppose I must try to go through to the end,

though these tactics of Dennis make me very nervous. I shall suppose,

however, that I have convinced him that it is not in ethical activity

as such that we can expect to find the most perfect example of Good.

And now I propose to examine in turn some other of our activities,

starting with that which seems to be the most primitive of all."

"And which is that?"

"I was thinking of the activity of our bodily senses, our direct

contact, so to speak, with objects, without the intermediation of

reflection, through the touch, the sight, the hearing, and the rest.

Is there anything in all this which we could call good?"

"Is there anything!" cried Ellis. "What a question to ask!" And he

broke out with the lines from Browning's "Saul":

"Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock,

The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock

Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear,

And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair.

And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine,

And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine,

And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell

That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well.

How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ

All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy."

The quotation seemed to loosen all tongues; and there followed a flood

of such talk as may be heard in almost every company of Englishmen,

in praise of sport and physical exercise, touched with a sentiment

not far removed from poetry--the only poetry of which they are not

half-ashamed. Audubon even joined in, forgetting for the moment his

customary pose, and rhapsodizing with the rest over his favourite

pursuits of snipe-shooting and cricket. Much of this talk was lost

upon me, for I am nothing of a sportsman; but some touches there were

that recalled experiences of my own, and for that reason, I suppose,

have lingered in my memory. Thus, I recollect, some one spoke of

skating on Derwentwater, the miles of black, virgin ice, the ringing

and roaring of the skates, the sunset glow, and the moon rising full

over the mountains; and another recalled a bathe on the shore of

Ægina, the sun on the rocks and the hot scent of the firs, as though

the whole naked body were plunged in some æthereal liqueur, drinking

it in with every sense and at every pore, like a great sponge of sheer

sensation. After some minutes of this talk, as I still sat silent,

Ellis turned to me with the appeal, "But what about you, who are

supposed to be our protagonist? Here are we all rhapsodizing and you

sit silent. Have you nothing to contribute to your own theme?"

"Oh," I replied, "any experiences of mine would be so trivial they

would be hardly worth recording. The most that could be said of them

would be that they might, perhaps, illustrate more exactly than yours

what one might call the pure Goods of sense. For, as far as I can

understand, the delights you have been describing are really very

complex. In addition to pleasures of mere sensation, there is clearly

an æsthetic charm--you kept speaking of heather and sunrises, and

colours and wide prospects; and then there is the satisfaction you

evidently feel in skill, acquiring or acquired, and in the knowledge

you possess of the habits of beasts and birds. All this, of course,

goes beyond the delight of simple sense perception, though, no doubt,

inextricably bound up with it But what I was thinking of at first was

something less complex and more elementary in which, nevertheless,

I think we can detect Good--Good of sheer unadulterated sensation.

Think, for example, of the joys of a cold bath when one is dusty and

hot! You will laugh at me, but sometimes when I have felt the

water pouring down my back I have shouted to myself in my tub 'nunc

dimittis.'"

They burst out laughing, and Ellis cried:

"You gross sensualist! And to think of all this being concealed behind

that masque of austere philosophy!"

Then they set off again In praise of the delights of such simple

sensations, and especially of those of the palate, instancing, I

remember, the famous tale about Keats--how he covered his tongue

and throat with cayenne pepper that he might enjoy, as he said, "the

delicious coolness of claret in all its glory." And when this had

gone on for some time, "Perhaps enough has been said," I began, "to

illustrate this particular kind of Good. We have, I think, recognized

to the full its merits; and we shall be equally ready, I suppose, to

recognize its defects."

"I don't know about that," said Ellis. "I, for my part, at any rate,

shall be very loth to dwell upon them. I sometimes think these are the

only pure Goods."

"But at least," I replied, "you will admit that they are precarious.

It is only at moments, and at moments that come and go without choice

of ours, that this harmonious relation becomes established between our

senses and the outer world. The very same things which at such times

appear to be perfectly at one with ourselves, as if they had been made

for us and we for them, we see and feel to have also a nature not only

distinct but even alien and hostile to our own. The water which cools

our skin and quenches our thirst also drowns; the fire which warms

and comforts also burns; and so on through all the chapter--I need not

weary you with details. Nature, you will agree, not only ministers to

our bodies, she torments and destroys them; she is our foe in ways at

least as varied and efficacious as she is our friend."

"But," objected Ellis, "that is only because we don't treat her

properly; we have to learn how to manage her."

"Perhaps," I replied, "though I should prefer to say, we have to learn

how to fight and subdue her. But in any case we have laid our finger

here upon a defect in this first kind of Goods--they are, as I said,

precarious. And the discovery of that fact, one might say, was the

sword of the angel that drove man out of his imaginary Eden. For

at first we may suppose him, (if Wilson will permit me to romance

a little,) seizing every delight as it offered itself, under an

instinctive impression that there were nothing but delights to be

met with, eating when he was hungry, drinking when he was thirsty,

sleeping when he was tired, and so on, in unquestioning trust of

his natural impulses. But then, as he learnt by experience how evil

follows good, and pleasure often enough is bought by pain, he would

begin, would he not, instead of simply accepting Good where it is, to

endeavour to create it where it is not, sacrificing often enough the

present to the future, and rejecting many immediate delights for the

sake of those more remote? And this involves a complete change in his

attitude; for he is endeavouring now to establish by his own effort

that harmony between himself and the world which he fondly hoped at

first was immediately given."

"But," objected Wilson, "he never did hope anything of the kind. This

reconstruction of the past is all imaginary."

"I dare say it may be," I replied, "but that is of little consequence,

if it helps us to seize our point more clearly; for we are not at

present writing history. Man, then, we will suppose, is thus set out

upon what is, whether he knows it or not, his quest to create, since

he is unable to find ready-made, a world of objects harmonious to

himself. But in this quest has he been, should you say, successful?"

"More or less, I suppose," answered Parry, "for he is progressively

satisfying his needs, even if they are never completely satisfied."

"Perhaps," I replied, "though I sometimes have my doubts. The relation

of man to nature, I have thought, is very strange and obscure. It

is as though he began with the idea that he had only to remove a few

blemishes from her face to make her completely accordant with

his desire. But no sooner has he gone to work than these surface

blemishes, as he thought them, prove to have roots deeper than all

his probings; the more he cuts away the more he exposes of an element

radically alien to himself, terrible and incomprehensible, branching

wide and striking deep, and throwing up from depths unknown those

symptoms and symbols of itself which he mistook for mere superficial

stains."

"Really," protested Parry, "I see no grounds for such a view."

"Perhaps not," I said, "but anyhow you will, I suppose, admit that a

certain precariousness does attach to these Goods of sense, whether

they be freely offered by nature or painfully acquired by the labour

of man."

"Not necessarily," he objected, "for we are constantly reducing to

order and routine what was once haphazard and uncontrolled. For

the great mass of civilized men the primitive goods of life, food,

shelter, clothing and the like, are practically secured against all

chance."

"Are they?" cried Bartlett, "I admire your optimism!"

"And I too," I said. "But even granting that it were as you say,

we are then met by this curious fact, that the Goods we really care

about, in our practical activity, are never those that are secure but

those that are precarious. As soon as we are safe against one risk we

proceed to take another, so that there is always a margin, as it were,

of precarious Goods, and those exactly the ones which we hold most

precious."

"In fact," said Audubon, "as soon as you get your Good it ceases to be

good. That's precisely what I am always saying."

"Then," I said, "there is the less need to labour the point. One way

or other, it seems, either because they are difficult to secure, or

because, when secured, they lose their specific quality. Goods of this

kind are caught in the wheels of chance and change, whether they be

offered to man by the free gift of Nature, or wrung from her in the

sweat of his brow. In other words, they are, as I said, precarious.

And now, have they any other defects?"

"Have they any?" cried Leslie, "why they have nothing else!"

"Well," I said, "but what in particular?"

"Oh," he replied, "it's all summed up, I suppose, in the fact that

they are Goods of sense, and not of intellect or of imagination."

"Is it then," I asked, "a defect in content that you are driving

at? Do you mean that they satisfy only a part of our nature, not the

whole? For that, I suppose, would be equally true of the other Goods

you mentioned, such as those of the intellect."

"Yes," he replied, "but it is the inferior part to which the Goods we

are speaking of appeal."

"Perhaps; but in what respect inferior?"

"Why, simply as the body is inferior to the soul."

"But how is that? You will think me very stupid, but the more I think

of it the less I understand this famous distinction between body and

soul, and the relation of one to the other."

"I doubt," said Wilson, "whether there is a distinction at all."

"I don't say that," I replied. "I only say that I can't understand

it; and I should be thankful, if possible, to keep it out of our

discussion."

"So should I!" said Wilson.

"Well, but," Leslie protested, "how can we?"

"I think perhaps we might," I said. "For instance, in the case before

us, why should we not try directly to define that specific property of

the Goods of sense which, according to you, constitutes their defect,

without having recourse to these difficult terms body and soul at

all?"

"Well," he agreed, "we might try."

"What, then" I said, "do you suggest?"

He hesitated a little, and then began in a tentative kind of way:

"I think what I feel about these Goods is that we are somehow their

slaves; they possess us, instead of our possessing them. They come

upon us we hardly know how or whence; they satisfy our desires we

can't tell why; our relation to them seems to be passive rather than

active."

"And that, you think, would not be the case with a true and perfect

Good?"

"No, I think not"

"How, then, should we feel towards such a Good?"

"We should feel, I think, that it was somehow an expression of

ourselves, and we of it; that it was its nature and its whole nature

to present itself as a Good and our nature and our whole nature to

experience it as such. There would be nothing in It alien to us and

nothing in us alien to it."

"Whereas in the case of Goods of sense----?"

"Whereas in their case," he said, "surely nothing of the kind applies.

For these Goods appear to arise in things and under circumstances

which have quite another nature than that of being good for us. It is

not the essence of water to quench our thirst, of fire to cook for us,

or of the sun to give us light----"

"Or of cork-trees to stop our ginger-beer bottles," added Ellis.

"Quite so," he continued; "in every case these things that do us good

are also quite as ready to do us harm, and, for that matter, to do

innumerable things which have no relation to us at all. So that the

goodness they have in them, so far as it is goodness to our senses,

they have, as it were, only by accident; and we feel that essentially

either they are not Goods, or their goodness is something beyond and

different from that which is revealed to sense."

"Your quarrel, then" I said, "with the Goods of sense, so far as I

understand you, is that they inhere, as it were, in a substance which,

so far as we can tell, is indifferent to Good, or at any rate to Good

of that kind?"

"Yes."

"Whereas a true Good, you think, must be good in essence and

substance?"

"Yes; don't you think so too?"

"I do," I replied, "but how about the others?"

Dennis assented, and the others did not object, not appearing, indeed,

to have attended much to the argument. So I continued, "We have then,

so far, discovered in this class of Goods, two main defects, the

first, that they are precarious; the second, which is closely

connected with the other, and is in fact, I suppose, its explanation,

that they are, shall we say, accidental, understanding the word in

the sense we have just defined. Now, let us see if we cannot find any

class of Goods similar to these, but free from their defects."

"But similar in what respect," he asked, "if they are not to have

similar defects?"

"Similar, I meant, in being direct presentations to sense."

"But are there any such Goods?"

"I think so," I said. "What do you say to works of Art? These, are

they not, are direct presentations to sense? Yet such that it is their

whole nature and essence on the one hand to be beautiful, and to that

extent Good--for I suppose you will admit that the Beautiful is a kind

of Good; and on the other hand, if I may dare to say so, to be, in a

certain sense, eternal."

"Eternal!" cried Ellis, "I only wish they were! What wouldn't we give

for the works of Polygnotus and Apelles!"

"Oh yes," I said, "of course, in that way, regarded as material

objects, they are as perishable as all the works of nature. But I was

talking of them as Art, not as mere things; and from that point of

view, surely, each is a moment, or a series of moments, cut away,

as it were, from the contact of chance or change and set apart in

a timeless world of its own, never of its own nature, to pass into

something else, but only through the alien nature of the matter to

which it is bound."

"What do you mean?" cried Parry. "I am quite at sea."

"Perhaps," I said, "you will understand the point better if I give it

you in the words of a poet."

And I quoted the well-known stanzas from Keats' "Ode on a Grecian

Urn":

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd.

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone;

Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love and she be fair!

"Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,

For ever panting and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue."

"Well," said Parry, when I had done, "that's very pretty; but I don't

see how it bears on the argument."

"I think," I replied, "that it illustrates the point I wanted to make.

Part, I mean, of the peculiar charm of works of Art consists in the

fact that they arrest a fleeting moment of delight, lift it from our

sphere of corruption and change, and fix it like a star in the eighth

heaven."

"Yes," said Ellis, "we grant you that"

"Or at least," added Parry, "we don't care to dispute it"

"And the other point which I want to make is, I think, clearer

still--that the Good of works of Art, that is to say their Beauty,

results from the very principle of their nature, and is not a mere

accident of circumstances."

"Of course," said Leslie, "their Beauty is their only _raison d'être_?"

"And yet," I went on, "they are still Goods of sense, and so far

resemble the other Goods of which we were speaking before."

"Yes," said Dennis, "but with what a difference! That is the point I

have been waiting to come to."

"What point?" I asked.

"Why," he said, "in the case of what you call Goods of sense, in their

simplest and purest form, making abstraction from all æsthetic

and other elements--as in the example you gave of a cold bath--the

relation of the object to the sense is so simple and direct, that

really, if we were to speak accurately, we should have, I think, to

say, that so far as the perception of Good is concerned the object is

merged in the subject, and what you get is simply a good sensation."

"Perhaps," I agreed, "that is how we ought to put it. But at the time

I did not think it necessary to be so precise."

"But it has become necessary now, I think," he replied, "if we are to

bring out a characteristic of works of Art which will throw light, I

believe, on the general nature of Good."

"What characteristic is that?"

"Why," he replied, "when we come to works of Art, the important thing

is the object, not the subject; if there is any merging of the one in

the other, it is the subject that is merged in the object, not

_vice versa_. We have to contemplate the object, anyhow, as having a

character of its own; and it is to this character that I want to draw

attention."

"In what respect?"

"In respect that every work of Art, and, for that matter, every work

of nature--so far as it can be viewed æsthetically--comprises a number

of elements necessarily connected in a whole; and this necessary

connection is the point on which we ought to insist"

"But necessary how?" asked Wilson. "Do you mean logically necessary?"

"No," he replied, "æsthetically. I mean, that we have a direct

perception that nothing in the work could be omitted or altered

without destroying the whole. This, at any rate, is the ideal; and

it holds, more or less, in proportion as the work is more or less

perfect. Everyone, I suppose, who understands these things would agree

to that."

No one seemed inclined to dispute the statement; certainly I was not,

myself; so I answered, "No doubt what you say is true of works of Art;

but will your contention be that it is also true of Good in general?"

"Yes," he said, "I think so, in so far at least as Good is to be

conceived as comprising a number of elements. For no one, I suppose,

would imagine that such elements might be thrown together haphazard

and yet constitute a good whole."

"I suppose not," I agreed, "and, if you are right, what we seem to

have arrived at is this: among the works which man creates in his

quest of the Good, there is one class, that of works of Art, which, in

the first place, may be said, in a sense, to be not precarious, seeing

that by their form, through which they are Art, they are set above the

flux of time, though by their matter, we admit, they are bound to

it And, in the second place, the Good which they have, they have by

virtue of their essence; Good is their substance, not an accident of

their changing relations. And, lastly, being complex wholes, the parts

of which they are composed are bound together in necessary connection.

These characteristics, at any rate, we have discovered in works of

Art: and no doubt many more might be discoverable. But now, let us

turn to the other side, and consider the defects in which this class

of Goods is involved."

"Ah!" cried Bartlett, "when you come to that, I have something to

say."

"Well," I said, "what is it? We shall be glad of any help."

"It can be summed up," he replied, "in a single word. Whatever may be

the merits of a work of Art--and they may be all that you say--it has

this one grand defect--it isn't real!"

"Real!" cried Leslie. "What is real? The word's the plague of my

life! People use it as if they meant something by it, something very

tremendous and august, and when you press them they never know what

it is. They talk of 'real life'--real life! what is it? As if one life

wasn't as real as another!"

"Oh, as to real life," said Ellis, "I can tell you what that is. Real

life is the shady side of life."

"Nonsense," said Parry, "real life is the life of men of the world."

"Or," retorted Ellis, "more generally, it is the life of the person

speaking, as opposed to that of the person to whom he speaks."

"Well, but," I interposed, "it is not 'real life' that is our present

concern, but Bartlett's meaning when he used the word 'real.' In what

sense is Art not real?"

"Why," he replied, "by your own confession Art is something ideal. It

is beautiful, it is good, it is lifted above chance and change; its

connection with matter, that is to say with reality, is a kind of

flaw, an indecency from which we discreetly turn our eyes. The real

world is nothing of all this; on the contrary, it is ugly, brutal,

material, coarse, and bad as bad can be!"

"I don't see that it is at all!" cried Leslie, "and, even if it were,

you have no right to assume that that is the reality of it. How do you

know that its reality doesn't consist precisely in the Ideal, as all

poets and philosophers have thought? And, in that case, Art would be

more real than what you would call Reality, because it would represent

the essence of the world, the thing it would like to be if it could,

and is, so far as it can. That was Aristotle's view, anyhow."

"Then all I can say is," replied Bartlett, "that I don't agree with

Aristotle! Anyhow, even if Art represents what the world would like to

be, it certainly doesn't represent what it is."

"I don't know; surely it does, sometimes," said Parry, "for instance,

there's the realistic novel!"

"Oh, that!" cried Ellis. "That's the most ideal of all--only it's apt

to be such bad idealism!"

"Anyhow," said Bartlett, "in so far as it is real, it's not Art, in

the sense, in which we have been using the word."

I began to be afraid that we should drift away into a discussion of

realism in Art. So, to recall the conversation to the point at issue,

I turned to Bartlett, and said:

"Your criticism seems to me to be fair enough as far as it goes. You

say that the world of Art is a world by itself; that side by side of

it, and unaffected by it, moves the world of what you call real life.

And that whatever be the relation between the two worlds, whether

we are to say that the one imitates the other, or interprets it, or

idealizes it, it does not, in any case, set it aside. Art is a refuge

from life, not a substitute for it; a little blessed island in the

howling sea of fact. Its Good is thus only a partial Good; whereas the

true Good, I suppose, would be somehow universal."

"Still," said Leslie, "as far as it goes it is a Good without

blemish."

"I am not so sure," I said, "even of that. I am inclined to think that

Bartlett's criticism, if we squeeze it tight, will yield us more than

we have yet got out of it--perhaps even more than he knows is in it"

"You don't mean to say," cried Bartlett, "that you are coming over to

my side!"

"Yes," I said, "like a spy to the enemy's camp to see where your

strength really lies."

"I have no objection," he replied, "if it ends in your discovering new

defences for me."

"Well," I said, "we shall see. Anyhow, this is what I had in my mind.

We were saying just now that when people talk about 'real life,' the

'real world,' and so on, they are not always very clear as to what

they mean. But one thing, I think, perhaps they have obscurely in

their heads--that the Real is something from which you cannot escape;

something which forces itself upon you without reference to choice or

desire, having a nature of its own which may or may not conform, more

or less to yours, but in any case is distinct and independent. That

is why they would say, for example, that the illusions of a madman

are not real, meaning that they do not represent real things, however

vivid their appearance may be, because they are the productions merely

of his own consciousness; whereas the very same appearances presented

to a sane man would be called without hesitation real, because they

would be conceived to proceed from objects having an independent

nature of their own. Something of this kind, I suppose, is included in

the notion 'real' as it is held by ordinary people."

"Perhaps" said Leslie, "but what then? And how does it bear upon Art?"

"I am not sure," I replied, "but it occurred to me that works of

Art, though of course they are real objects, are such that a certain

violence, as it were, has been done to their reality in our interest.

What I mean will be best understood, I think, if we put ourselves for

the moment into the position of the artist. To him certain materials

are presented which of course are real in our present acceptation

of the term, being such as they are of their own nature, without

any dependence upon him. Upon these materials he flings himself, and

shapes them according to his desire, impressing, as it were, his

own nature upon theirs, till they confront him as a kind of image of

himself in an alien stuff. So far, then, he has a Good, and a Good

presented to him as real; but for the Goodness of this reality he is

himself responsible. In so far as it is, so to speak, merely real, it

has still the nature which was first presented to him, before he began

his work--a nature indifferent, if not opposed, to all his operations,

as is shown by the fact that it changes and passes away into something

else, just as it would have done if he had never touched it. To this

nature he has, as I said, done a certain violence in order to stamp

upon it the appearance of Good; but the Good is still, in a sense,

only an appearance; the reality of the thing remains independent and

alien. So that what the man has found, in so far as he has found Good,

is after all only a form of himself; and one can conceive him feeling

a kind of despair, like that of Wotan in the Walküre, when in his

quest for a free, substantial, self-subsistent Good he finds after

all, for ever, nothing but images of himself:

"'Das Andre, das ich ersehne,

Das Andre, erseh' ich nie.'

"I don't know whether what I am saying is intelligible, for I find it

rather hard to put it into words."

"Yes," he said, "I think I understand. But what you are saying, so far

as it is true, seems to be true only for the artist himself. To

all others the work of Art must appear as something independent of

themselves."

"True," I said, "and yet I think that they too feel, or might be made

to fed if it were brought home to them, this same antagonism between

the nature of the stuff and the form that has been given to it.

The form will seem from this point of view something factitious and

artificial given to the stuff, not indeed by themselves, but by one

like themselves, and in their interest. They will contrast, perhaps,

as is often done, a picture of the landscape with the landscape

Itself. The picture, they will say, however beautiful, is not a

'natural' Good, not a real Good, not a Good in its own right; it is

a kind of makeshift produced by human effort, beautiful, if you will,

admirable, if you will, to be sought, to be cherished, to be loved in

default of a better, with the best faculties of brain and soul, but

still not that ultimate thing we wanted, that Good in and of itself,

as well as through and for us, Good by its own nature apart from our

interposition, self-moved, self-determined, self-dependent, and in

which alone our desires could finally rest.--Don't you think that some

such feeling may, perhaps, be at the bottom of Bartlett's criticism of

Art as unreal?"

Bartlett laughed. "If so," he said, "it is quite unknown to myself.

For to tell the truth, I have not understood a word that you have

said."

"Well," I said, "in that case, at any rate you can't disagree with me.

But what do the others think?" And I turned to Dennis and Leslie, for

Wilson and Parry did not seem to be attending. Leslie assented with

enthusiasm. But Dennis shook his head.

"I don't know," he said, "what to think about all that. It seems to me

rather irrelevant to the work of Art as such."

"Perhaps," I said, "but surely not to the work of Art as Good? Or do

you not agree with me that the true Good must be such purely of its

own nature?"

"Perhaps so," he replied; "it wants thinking over. But in any case I

agree with you so far, that I should never place the Good in Art."

"In what then?"

"I should be much more inclined to place it in Knowledge."

"In Knowledge!" I repeated. "That seems to me very strange!"

"But why strange?" he said. "Surely there is good authority for the

view. It was Aristotle's for example, and Spinoza's."

"I know," I replied, "and I used to think it was also mine. But of

late I have come to realize more clearly what Knowledge is; and now I

see, or seem to see, that whatever its value may be, it is something

that falls very far short of Good."

"Why," he said, "what is your idea of Knowledge?"

"You had better ask Wilson," I replied, "it is he who has instructed

me."

"Very well," he said, "I appeal to Wilson."

And Wilson, nothing loth, enunciated his definition of Knowledge.

"Knowledge," he said, "is the description and summing up in brief

formulæ of the routine of our perceptions."

"There!" I exclaimed. "No one, I suppose, would identify that with

Good?"

"But"--objected Dennis--"in the first place, I don't understand the

definition; and, in the second place, I don't agree with it."

"As to understanding it," replied Wilson, "there need be no difficulty

there. You have only to seize clearly one or two main positions.

First, that Knowledge is of perceptions only, not of things in

themselves; secondly, that these perceptions occur in fixed routines;

thirdly ..."

"But," interrupted Dennis, "what is a perception? I suppose it's a

perception of something?"

"No," he said, "I don't know that it is."

"What then? Simply a state in me?"

"Very likely."

"Then does nothing exist except my states?"

"Nothing else exists primarily for you."

"Then what about the world before I existed, and after I cease to

exist?"

"You infer such a world from your states."

"Then there is something besides my states--this world which I infer;

and that, I suppose, and not merely my perceptions, is the reality of

which I have knowledge?"

"Not exactly," he replied, "the fact is ..."

"I don't think," I interrupted, "that we ought to plunge into a

discussion of the nature of Reality. It is Good with which we are at

present concerned."

"But," said Dennis, "we wanted to find out the connection of Knowledge

with Good; and to do so we must first discover what Knowledge is."

"Well then," I said, "let us first take Wilson's account of Knowledge,

and see what he makes of that with regard to Good; and then we will

take yours, and see what we make of that. And if we don't find that

either satisfies the requirements of Good we will leave Knowledge and

go on to something else."

"Very well," he replied, "I am content, so long as I get my chance."

"You shall have your chance. But first we will take Wilson. And I

dare say he will not keep us long. For you will hardly maintain, I

suppose," I continued, turning to him, "that Knowledge, as you define

it, could be identified with Good?"

"I don't know," he said; "to tell the truth, I don't much believe in

Good, in any absolute sense. But that Knowledge, as I define it, is a

good thing, I have no doubt whatever."

"Neither have I," I replied; "but good, as it seems to me, mainly as a

means, in so far as it enables us to master Nature."

"Well," he said, "and what greater Good could there be?"

"I don't dispute the greatness of such a Good. I merely wish to point

out that if we look at it so, it is in the mastery of Nature that the

Good in question consists, and not in the Knowledge itself. Or should

you say that there is Good in the scientific activity itself, quite

apart from any practical results to which it may lead?"

"Certainly," he replied, "and the former, in my opinion, is the higher

and more ideal Good."

"This activity itself of inventing brief formulæ to resume the routine

of our perceptions?"

"Yes."