"Well, but what _is_ the Good of it? That is what it is so hard for

a layman to get hold of. Does it consist in the discovery of Reality?

For that, I could understand, would be good."

"No," he said, "for we do not profess to touch Reality. We deal merely

with our perceptions."

"So that when, for example, you conceive such and such a perfect

fluid, or whatever you call it, and such and such motions in it, you

do not suppose this fluid to be real."

"No. It is merely a conception by means of which we are enabled to

give an account of the order in which certain of our perceptions

occur. But it is very satisfactory to be able to give such an

account."

"I suppose it must be," I said, "but once more, could you say more

precisely wherein the satisfaction consists? Is it, perhaps, in the

discovery of necessary connections?"

"No," he said, "we don't admit necessity. We admit only an order which

is, as a matter of fact, regular."

"You say, for example, that it so happens that all bodies do move

in relation to one another in the way summed up in the law of

gravitation; but that you see no reason why they should?"

"Yes."

"But ..." began Dennis, who had found difficulty all this time in

restraining himself.

"One moment!" I pleaded, "let Wilson have his say." And turning to him

I continued: "If, then, the satisfaction to be derived from scientific

activity does not consist in the discovery of Reality, nor yet in

that of necessary connection, wherein should you say, does it consist?

Perhaps in the regulating of expectation?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean, that it is painful for us to live in a world in which

we don't know what to expect; it excites not only our fears and

apprehensions, but also a kind of intellectual disgust. And,

conversely, it is a relief and a pleasure to discover an order among

our experiences, not only because it enables us the better to utilize

them for our ends (for that belongs to the practical results of

science), but because in itself we prefer order to disorder, even if

no other advantage were to be got out of it."

"I don't know that we do!" objected Ellis, "it depends on the kind

of order. An order of dull routine is far more intolerable than a

disorder of splendid possibilities! Ask the Oriental why he objects to

British rule! Simply because it is regular! He prefers the chances

of rapine, violent and picturesque, to the dreary machine-like

depredations of the tax-collector."

"Yes," I said, "but there you take in a number of complex factors. I

was thinking merely of the Good to be got out of scientific activity

as such. And I think there is an intellectual satisfaction in the

discovery of order, even though it be dissociated from necessity."

"No doubt there is," said Wilson, "but I shouldn't say that is the

only reason for our delight in Knowledge. The fact is, Knowledge is an

extension of experience, and is good simply as such. The sense of More

and still More beyond what has yet been discovered, of new facts, new

successions, new combinations, of ever fresh appeals to our interest,

our wonder, our admiration, the mere excitement of discovery for its

own sake, quite apart from anything else to which it may lead, a dash

of adventure, too, a heightening of life--that is what is the real

spur to science and, to my mind, its sufficient justification."

"But," I objected, "that is rather an account of the general process

of Experience than of the special one of Knowledge. No doubt there is

an attraction in all activity--Ellis has already expounded it; and all

experience involves a kind of Knowledge; but what we wanted to get at

was the special attraction of scientific activity; and that seems to

be, so far as I can see, simply the discovery of order."

"Well," he said, "if you like--what then?"

"Why, then," I said, "we can easily see the defect in this kind of

activity, when viewed from the standpoint of Good."

"What is it?"

"Why, clearly, that that in which we discover the order may be bad.

There is a science of disease as well as of health; and an activity

concerned with the Bad could hardly be purely good, even though it

were a discovery of order in the Bad. Or do you think that if all men

were diseased, they would nevertheless be in possession of the Good,

if only they had perfect knowledge of the laws of disease?"

"No," he said, "of course not. We have to take into account, not only

the character of Knowledge, but the character of the object known."

"Quite so, that is my point. You agree then with me that Knowledge

may be in various ways good, but that in so far as it is, or may be

knowledge of Bad, it cannot be said by itself to constitute the Good."

"I think," he agreed, "that I might admit that."

"Well, then," I said, "let us leave it there. And now, what has Dennis

to say?"

"Ah!" he said, "you unmuzzle me at last. It has really been very hard

to sit by in silence and listen to these heresies without a protest."

"Heresies!" retorted Wilson, "if it comes to that, which of us is the

heretic?"

"What," I asked, "is the point of disagreement?"

"It's a fundamental one. On Wilson's view, Knowledge is merely

the discovery of order among our perceptions. If that were all,

I shouldn't value it much. But on my view, it is the discovery of

necessary connection; and in the necessity lies the fascination."

"But where," argued Wilson, "do you find your necessity? All that is

really given is succession. The necessity is merely what we read into

the facts."

"Not at all! The necessity is 'given,' as you call it, as much as

anything else, if only you choose to look for it. The type of all

Knowledge is mathematical knowledge; and all mathematical knowledge is

necessary."

"But it is all based on assumptions."

"That may be; but granting the assumptions, it deduces from them

necessary consequences. And all true science is of that type. A law of

Nature is not a mere description of a routine; it's a statement

that, given such and such conditions, such and such results follow of

necessity."

"Still, you admit that the conditions have to be given! Everything is

based ultimately on certain successions and coincidences of which all

that can be said is simply that they exist, without any possibility of

getting behind them."

"I don't know about that," he said, "but at any rate it would be the

ideal of Knowledge to establish necessary connections throughout; so

that, given any one phenomenon of the universe, all the rest would

inevitably follow. And it is only in so far as it progresses towards

this consummation that Knowledge is Knowledge at all. A routine simply

given without internal coherence is to my mind a contradiction in

terms; either the routine is necessary, or it's not a routine at all,

but at best a mere appearance of a routine."

"I think," I interposed, "we must leave you and Wilson to fight this

out in private. At present, let us assume that your conception of

Knowledge is the true one, as we did with his, and examine it from the

point of view of the Good. Your conception, then, to begin with, seems

to me to be involved in the same defect we have already noted--namely,

that it may be knowledge of Bad just as much as knowledge of Good. And

I suppose you would hardly maintain, any more than Wilson did, that

the Good may consist in knowledge of Bad?"

"But," he objected, "I protest altogether against this notion that

there is Knowledge on the one hand and something of which there is

knowledge on the other. True Knowledge, if ever we could attain to

it, would be a unique kind of activity, in which there would be no

distinction, or at least no antagonism, between thinking on the one

hand and the thing thought on the other."

"I don't know," I said, "that I quite understand. Have we in fact any

knowledge of that kind, that might serve as a kind of type of what you

mean?"

"Yes," he replied, "I think we have. For example, if we are dealing

with pure number, as in arithmetic, we have an object which is somehow

native to our thought, commensurate with it, or however you like

to put it; and it is the same with other abstract notions, such as

substance and causation."

"I see," I said. "And on the other hand, the element which is alien

to thought, and which is the cause of the impurity of most of what we

call knowledge, is the element of sense--the something given, which

thought cannot, as it were, digest, though it may dress and serve it

up in its own sauce?"

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

"So that knowledge, to be perfect, must not be of sense, but only of

pure thought, as Plato suggested long ago?"

"Yes."

"And such a knowledge, if we could attain it, you would call the

Good?"

"I think so."

"Well," I said, "in the first place, I have to point out that such a

Good (if it be one) implies an existence not merely better than

that of which we have an experience, but radically and fundamentally

different. For our whole life is bathed in sense. Not only are we sunk

in it up to the neck, but the greater part of the time our heads are

under too,--in fact most of us never get them out at all; it is only

a few philosophers every now and again who emerge for a moment or two

into sun and air, to breathe that element of pure thought which is too

fine even for them, except as a rare indulgence. At other times, they

too must be content with the grosser atmosphere which is the common

sustenance of common men."

"Well," he said, "but what of that? We have not been maintaining that

the Good is within easy reach of all."

"No," cried Ellis. "But even if it were, and were such as you describe

it, very few people would care to put out their hands to take it. I,

at any rate, for my part can see hardly a vestige of Good in the kind

of activity I understand you to mean. It is as though you should say,

that Good consists in the perpetual perception that 2 + 2 = 4."

"But that is an absurd parody. For the point of knowledge would be,

that it would be a closed circle of necessary connections. One would

move in it, as in infinity, with a motion that is also rest, central

at once and peripheral, free and yet bound by law. That is my ideal of

a perfect activity!"

"In form, perhaps," I said, "but surely not in content! For what, in

fact, in our experience comes nearest to what you describe? I suppose

the movement of a logic like Hegel's?"

"Yes; only that, of course, is imperfect, full of lapses and flaws!"

"But even if it were perfect," cried Ellis, "would it be any the

better? Imagine being deprived of the whole content of life--of

nature, of history, of art, of religion, of everything in which we

are really interested; imagine being left to turn for ever, like a

squirrel in a cage, or rather like the idea of a squirrel in the idea

of a cage, round and round the wheel of these hollow notions, without

hands, without feet, without anything anywhere by which we could lay

hold of a something that is not thought, a something solid, resistant,

palpitating, 'luscious and aplomb,' as Walt Whitman might say, a

sense, a flesh, call it what you will, the unintelligible, but still

the indispensable, that which, even if it be bad, we cannot afford to

miss, and which, if it be not the Good itself, the Good must somehow

include!"

Dennis appeared to be somewhat struck by this way of putting the

matter. "But," he urged, "my difficulty is that if you admit sense, or

anything analogous to it, anything at once directly presented and also

alien to thought, you get, as you said yourself, something which is

unintelligible; and a Good which is not intelligible will be, so far,

not good."

"But," I said, "what do you mean by intelligible?"

"I think," he replied, "that I mean two things, both of which must be

present. First, that there shall be a necessary connection among the

elements presented; and secondly, that the elements themselves should

be of such a kind as to be, as it were, transparent to that which

apprehends them, so that it asks no questions as to what they are

or whence they come, but accepts them naturally and as a matter of

course, with the same inevitability as it accepts its own being."

"And these conditions, you think, are fulfilled by the objects of

thought as you defined them?

"I think so."

"I am not so sure of that," I said, "it would require a long

discussion. But, anyhow, you also seemed to admit, when Ellis pressed

you, that thought of that kind could hardly be identified absolutely

with Good."

"I admit," he replied, "that there are difficulties in that view."

"But at the same time the Good, whatever it be, ought to be

intelligible in the sense you have explained?"

"I should say so."

"And so should I. But now, the question is, can we not conceive of

any other kind of object, which might have, on the one hand, the

intelligibility you ascribe to pure ideas, and on the other, that

immediate something, 'luscious and aplomb,' to borrow Ellis's

quotation, which he desiderated as a constituent of the Good?"

"I don't know," he said, "perhaps we might. What is it you have in

your mind?"

"Well," I replied, "let us recur for a moment to works of art. In them

we have, to begin with, directly presented elements other than mere

ideas."

"No doubt."

"And further, these elements, we agreed, have a necessary connection

one with the other."

"Yes, but not logically necessary."

"No doubt, but still a necessary connection. And it is the necessity

of the connection, surely, that is important; the character of the

necessity is a secondary consideration."

"Perhaps."

"One condition, then, of intelligibility is satisfied by a work

of art. But how is it with the other? How is it with the elements

themselves? Are they transparent, to use your phrase, to that which

apprehends them?"

"Certainly not, for they are mere sense--of all things the most

obscure and baffling."

"And yet," I replied, "not mere sense, for they are sense made

beautiful; as beautiful, they are akin to us, and, so far,

intelligible."

"You suggest, then, that Beauty is akin to something in us, in a

way analogous to that in which, according to me, ideas are akin to

thought?"

"It seems so to me. In so far as a thing is beautiful it does not, I

think, demand explanation, but only in so far as it is something else

as well."

"Perhaps. But anyhow, inasmuch as a work of art is also sense, so far

at least it is not intelligible."

"True; and here we come by a new path upon the defect which we

noticed before in works of art--that their Beauty, or Goodness, is not

essential to their whole nature, but is something imposed, as it were,

on an alien stuff. And it is this alien element that we now pronounce

to be unintelligible."

"Yes; and so, as we agreed before, we cannot pronounce works of art to

be absolutely good."

"No. But what are we to do then? Where are we to turn? Is there

nothing in our experience to suggest the kind of object we seem to

want?"

No one answered. I looked round in vain for any help, and then, in

a kind of despair, moved by I know not what impulse, I made a direct

appeal to Audubon.

"Come!" I cried, "you have said nothing for the last hour! I am sure

you must have something to suggest."

"No," he said, "I haven't. Your whole way of dealing with these things

is a mystery to me. I can't conceive, for example, why you have never

once referred all through to what I should have thought was the best

Good we know--if, indeed, we know any Good at all."

"What do you mean?"

"Why," he said, "one's relations to persons. They're the only things

that I think really worth having--if anything were worth having."

A light suddenly broke on me, and I cried, "Yes! an idea!"

"Well," said Ellis, "what is it, you man of forlorn hopes?"

"Why," I said, "suppose the very object we are in search of should be

found just there?"

"Where?"

"Why, in persons!"

"Persons!" he repeated. "But what persons? Any, every, all?"

"Wait one moment," I cried, "and don't confuse me! Let me approach the

matter properly."

"Very well," he said, "you shan't be hurried! You shall have your

chance."

"Let us remind ourselves, then," I proceeded, "of the point we had

reached. The Good, we agreed, so far as we have been able to form

a conception of it, must be something immediately presented,

and presented in such a way, that it should be directly

intelligible--intelligible not only in the relations that obtain

between its elements, but also in the substance, so to speak, of the

elements themselves. Of such intelligibility we had a type, as Dennis

maintained, in the objects of pure thought, ideas and their relations.

But the Good, we held, could not consist in these. It must be

something, we felt, somehow analogous to sense, and yet it could not

be sense, for sense did not seem to be intelligible. But now, when

Audubon spoke, it occurred to me that perhaps we might find in persons

what we want And that is what I should like to examine now."

"Well," said Ellis, "proceed."

"To begin with, then, a person, I suppose we shall agree, is not

sense, though he is manifested through sense."

"What does that mean?" said Wilson.

"It means only, that a person is not his body, although we know him

through his body."

"If he isn't his body," said Wilson, "he is probably only a function

of it."

"Oh!" I said, "I know nothing about that. I only know that when we

talk of a person, we don't mean merely his body."

"No," said Ellis, "but we certainly mean also his body. Heaven save

me from a mere naked soul, 'ganz ohne Körper, ganz abstrakt,' as Heine

says."

"But, at any rate," I said, "let me ask you, for the moment, to

consider the soul apart from the body."

"The soul," cried Wilson, "I thought we weren't to talk about body and

soul."

"Well," I said, "I didn't intend to, but I seem to have been driven

into it unawares."

"But what do you mean by the soul?"

"I mean," I replied, "what I suppose to be the proper object of

psychology--for even people who object to the word 'soul' don't mind

talking (in Greek, of course) of the science of the soul. Anyhow, what

I mean is that which thinks and feels and wills."

"Well, but what about it?" said Ellis.

"The first thing about it is that it is, as it seems to me, of all

things the most intelligible."

"I should have said," Wilson objected, "that it was of all things the

least."

"Yes; but we are probably thinking of different things. What you have

in your mind is the connection of this thing which you refuse to call

the soul, with the body, the genesis and relations of its various

faculties, the measurement of its response to stimuli, and all the

other points which are examined in books of psychology. All that

I agree is very unintelligible; I, at least, make no profession of

understanding it. But what I meant was, that looking at persons as we

know them in ordinary life, or as they are shown to us in literature

and art, they really are intelligible to us in the same way that we

are intelligible to ourselves."

"And how is that?"

"Why, through motives and passions. There is, I suppose, no feeling or

action of which human beings are capable, from the very highest to

the very lowest, which other human beings may not sympathetically

understand, through the mere fact that they have the same nature.

They will understand more or less according as they have more or

less sympathy and insight; but in any case they are capable of

understanding, and it is the business of literature and art to make

them understand."

"That is surely a curious use of the word 'understand.'"

"But it is the one, I think, which is important for us. At any rate,

what I mean is that the object presented is so akin, not indeed (as

in the case of ideas) merely to our thought, but to our whole complex

nature, that it does not demand explanation."

"What!" cried Audubon. "Well, all I can say is that most of the people

I, at any rate, come across do most emphatically demand explanation.

I don't see why they're there, or what they're doing, or what they're

for. Their existence Is a perpetual problem to me! And what's worse,

probably my existence is the same to them!"

"But," I said, "surely if you had leisure or inclination to study them

all sympathetically, you would end by understanding them."

"I don't think I should. At least I might in a sort of pathological

way, as one comes to understand a disease; but I shouldn't understand

why they exist. It seems to me, most people aren't fit to exist; and I

dare say they have the same opinion about me."

"But are there no people of whose existence you approve?"

"Yes, a few: my friends."

"Surely," cried Ellis, "you flatter us! How often have you said that

you don't see why we are this, that, or the other! How often have

you complained of our faces, our legs, our arms, in fact, our whole

physique, not to mention spiritual blemishes!"

"Well," he replied, "I don't deny that it's a great grief to me to

be unable really and objectively to approve of any of my friends.

Still----"

"Still," I interrupted, "you have given me the suggestion I wanted.

For the relation of affection, however imperfect it may be, gives us

at least something which perhaps we shall find comes nearer to what

we might conceive to be absolutely Good than anything else we have yet

hit upon."

"How so?"

"Well, to begin with, one's friend appears to one, does he not, as

an object good in its own nature, not merely by imposition of our own

ideal upon an alien stuff, as we said was the case with works of art?"

"I don't know about that!" said Audubon. "In my own case, at any rate,

I am sure that my friends never see me at all as I really am, but

simply read into me their own ideal. They have just as much imposed

upon me their own conception, as if I were the marble out of which

they had carded a statue."

"You must allow us to be the judges of that," I replied.

"Well, but," he said, "anyhow you can't deny that such illusions are

common. What lover ever saw his mistress as she really is?"

"No," I said, "I don't deny that. But at the same time I should affirm

that the truer the love, the less the illusion. In what is commonly

called love, no doubt, the physical element is the predominant, or

even the only one present; and in that case there may be illusion to

an indefinite extent. But the love which is based upon years of common

experience, which has grown with the growth of the whole person,

in power and intelligence and insight, which has survived countless

disappointments and surmounted countless obstacles, the love of

husband and wife, the love, as we began by saying, of friends--such

love, as Browning says boldly, 'is never blind.' And such love, I

suppose you will admit, does exist, however rarely?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Well, then, in the case of such a love, it is the object as it really

is, not as it has been falsely fashioned by the imagination, that is

directly apprehended as good. And you cannot fairly say that its Good

is merely the ideal of the lover transferred to the person of the

loved."

"But," objected Leslie, "though that may be so, yet still the Good,

that Is the person, does inhere in an alien stuff--the body."

"But," I replied,"_is_ the body alien? Is it not rather an expression

of the person? as essential, somehow or other, as the soul?"

"Certainly!" cried Ellis. "Give me the flesh, the flesh!

"'Not with my soul, Love!--bid no soul like mine

Lap thee around nor leave the poor sense room!

Take sense too--let me love entire and whole--

Not with my soul.'"

"I don't agree with the sentiment of that," said Leslie, "and anyhow,

I don't see how it bears on the question. For the point of the poem

is rather to emphasize than to deny the opposition between body and

soul."

"Yes," replied Ellis, "but also to suggest what you idealists call the

transcending of it."

"Do you mean that in the marriage relation, for example ..."

"Yes, I mean that in that act the flesh, so to speak, is annihilated

at the very moment of its assertion, and what you get is a feeling of

total union with the person, body and soul at once, or rather, neither

one nor the other, but simply that which is in and through both."

"I should have thought," objected Leslie, "it was rather a case of the

soul being merged in the body."

"That depends," replied Ellis.

"Yes," I said, "it depends on many things! But what I was thinking

of was that, quite apart from that experience, and in the moments

of sober observation, one does feel, does one not, a ^correspondence

between body and soul, as though the one were the expression of the

other?"

"I don't know," objected Audubon. "What I feel is much more often a

discrepancy."

"But still," I urged, "even when there appears to be a discrepancy

to begin with, don't you think that in the course of years the spirit

does tend to stamp its own likeness on the flesh, and especially on

the features of the face?"

"'For soul is form,'" quoted Leslie, "'and doth the body make.'"

"Yes," I said, "and that verse, I believe, is not merely a beautiful

fancy of the poet's, but rather as the Greeks maintained--and on such

a point they were good judges--a profound and significant truth.

At any rate, I find it to be so in the case of the people I care

about--though there I know Audubon will dissent. In them, every

change of expression, every tone of voice, every gesture has its

significance; there is nothing that is not expressive--not a curl of

the hair, not a lift of the eyebrows, not a trick of speech or gait.

The body becomes, as it were, transparent and pervious to the soul;

and that inexplicable element of sense, which baffles us everywhere

else, seems here at last to receive its explanation in presenting

itself as the perfect medium of spirit."

"If you come to that," cried Ellis, "you might as well extend your

remarks to the clothes. For they, to a lover's eyes, are often as

expressive and adorable as the body itself."

"Well," I said, "the clothes, too, are a sort of image of the soul,

'an imitation of an imitation,' as Plato would say. But, seriously,

don't you agree with me that there is something in the view which

regards the body as the 'word made flesh,' a direct expression of the

person, not a mere stuff in which he Inheres?"

"Yes," he said, "there may be something in it. At any rate, I

understand what you mean."

"And in so far as that is so," I continued, "the body, though it be

a thing of sense, would nevertheless be directly intelligible in the

same way as the soul?"

"Perhaps, in a sort of way."

"And so we should have In the person loved an object which, though

presented to sense, would be at once good and intelligible; and our

activity in relation to this object, the activity, that is, of love,

would come nearer than any other experience of ours to what we might

call a perfect Good?"

"But," objected Leslie, "it is still far enough from being the Good

itself. For after all, say what you may about the body being the

medium of the soul, it is still body, still sense, and, like other

sensible things, subject to change and decay, and in the end to death.

And with the fate of the body, so far as we know, that of the person

is involved. So that this, too, like all other Goods of sense, is

precarious.'

"Perhaps it is," I said, "I cannot tell. But all that I mean to

maintain at present is that in the activity of love, as we have

analysed it, we have something which gives us, if it be only for

a moment, yet still in a real experience, an idea, at least, a

suggestion, to say no more, of what we might mean by a perfect Good,

even though we could not say that it be the Good itself."

"But what, then, would you call the Good itself?"

"A love, I suppose, which in the first place would be eternal, and in

the second all-comprehensive. For there is another defect in love, as

we know it, to which you did not refer, namely, that it is a relation

only to one or two individuals, while outside and beyond it proceeds

the main current of our lives, involving innumerable relations of a

very different kind from this."

"Yes," cried Ellis, "and that is why this gospel of love, with all its

attractiveness, which I admit, seems to me, nevertheless, so trivial

and absurd. Just consider! Here is the great round world with all that

in it is, infinite in time, infinite in space, infinite in complexity;

here is the whole range of human relations, to say nothing of those

that are not human, of activities innumerable in and upon nature and

man himself, of inventions, discoveries, institutions, laws, arts,

sciences, religions; and the meaning and purpose and end of all this

we calmly assert to be--what? A girl and a boy kissing on the village

green!"

"But," I protested, "who said anything about boys and girls and kisses

and village greens?"

"Well, I suppose that is love, of a sort?"

"Yes, of a sort, no doubt; but not a very good one."

"You are thinking, then, of a special kind of love?"

"I am thinking of the kind which I conceive to be the best."

"And what is that?"

"One, as I said just now, that should be eternal and

all-comprehensive."

"And so, in the end, you have nothing better than an imaginary heaven

to land us in!"

"I have no power, I fear, to land you there. But I believe there

is that dwelling within you which will not let you rest in anything

short."

"Then I fear I shall never rest!"

"That may be. But meantime all I want to do is to ascertain, if we

can, the meaning of your unrest. I have no interest in what you call

an imaginary heaven, except in so far as its conception is necessary

to enable us to interpret the world we know."

"But how should it be necessary? I have never found it so."

"It is necessary, I think, to explain our dissatisfaction. For the

Goods we actually realize always point away from themselves to

some other Good whose realization perhaps, as you say, for us is

impossible. But even if the Good were chimerical, we cannot deny the

passion that pursues it; for it is the same passion that urges us to

the pursuit of such Goods as we really can attain. And if we want to

understand the nature of that passion, we must understand the nature

of its Good, whether it be attainable or no. Only it is for the sake

of life here that we need that comprehension, not for the sake of life

somewhere else."

"But do you reduce our passion for Good to this passion for Love?"

"I don't 'reduce' it; I interpret it so."

"And so we come back to the girl and the boy and the village green!"

"No! we come back to the whole of life, of which that is only an

episode. Let me try to explain how the thing presents itself to me."

"By all means! That is what I want."

"Very well; I will do my best. Let us look then at life just as it is.

Here we find ourselves involved with one another in the most complex

relations--economic, political, social, domestic, and the rest; and

about and in these relations centres the interest of our life,

whether it be pleasurable or painful, empty or full, or whatever its

character. Among these relations some few perhaps--or, it may be,

even none--realize for a longer or shorter time, with more or less

completeness, that ultimate identity in diversity, that 'me in thee'

which we call love; the rest comprise various degrees of attraction

and repulsion, hatred, contempt, indifference, toleration, respect,

sympathy, and so on; and all together, always changing, dissolving,

and combining anew, weave about us, as they cross and intertwine, the

shifting, restless web we call life. Now these relations are an effect

and result of the pursuit of Good; but they are never the final goal

of that pursuit. The goal, I think, would be a perfect union of all

with all; and is not attained by anything that falls short of this,

whether the defect be in depth or In extent. And that is how it is

that love itself, even in its richer phases, and still more in those

which are merely light and sensual, though, as I think, through it

alone can we form our truest conception of Good, yet, as we have it,

never is the Good, even if it appear to be so for the moment; for

those who seek Good, I believe, will never feel that they have found

it merely in union with one other person. For what love gains in

intension it is apt to lose in extension; so that in practice it may

even come to frustrate the very end it seeks, limiting instead of

expanding, narrowing just in proportion as it deepens, and, by causing

the disruption of all other ties, impoverishing the natures it should

have enriched. Or don't you think that this happens sometimes, for

instance in married life?"

"I do indeed."

"And, on the other hand," I continued, "it may very well be that one

who passes through life without attaining the fruition of love,

yet with his gaze always set upon it, in and through many other

connections, may yet come closer to the end of his seeking than one

who, having known love, has sunk to rest in it then and there, as

though he had come already to his journey's end, when really he has

only reached an inn upon the road. So that I am far from thinking, as

you pretended to suppose, that the boy and girl on the village green

realize then and there the consummation of the world."

"Still," he objected, "I do not see, in the scheme you put forward,

what place is left for the common business of life--for the things

which really do, for the most part, occupy and possess men's minds,

and the more, in my opinion, the greater their force and capacity."

"You mean, I suppose, war and politics, and such things as that?

"Yes, and generally all that one calls business."

"Well," I said, "what these things mean to those who pursue them, I am

not as competent as you to say. But surely, what they are in

essence is just, like most other activities, relations between human

beings--relations of command and obedience, of respect, admiration,

antagonism, comradeship, infinitely complex, infinitely various, but

still all of them strung, as it were, upon a single thread of passion;

all of them at tension to become something else; all pointing to the

consummation which it is the nature of that which created them to

seek, and all, in that sense, paradoxical as it may sound, only means

to love."

"You don't repudiate such activities then?"

"How should I? I repudiate nothing. I am not trying to judge, but, if

I could, to explain. It is the men of action, I suppose, who have

the greatest extension of life, and sometimes, no doubt, the greatest

intension too. But every man has to live his own way, according to his

opportunities and capacity. Only, as I think myself, all are involved

in the same scheme, and all are driven to the same consummation."

"A consummation in the clouds!"

"I do not know about that; but at any rate, and this is the important

point, that which urges us to it is here and now. Everything is rooted

in it. Our pleasures and pains alike, our longing and dissatisfaction,

our restlessness never-to-be-quenched, our counting as nothing what

has been attained in the pressing on to more, our lying down and

rising up, our stumbling and recovering, whether we fail, as we call

it, or succeed, whether we act or suffer, whether we hate or love, all

that we are, all that we hope to be springs from the passion for Good,

and points, if we are right in our analysis, to love as its end."

Upon this Audubon broke out:--"That's all very well! But the one

crucial point you persistently evade. It may be quite true, for aught

I know, that the Good you describe is the Good we seek--though I am

not aware of seeking it myself. But, after all, the real question is,

Can we get it? If not, we are mere fools to seek it."

"So," I said, "you have brought me to bay at last! And, since you

challenge me, I am bound to admit that I don't know whether we can get

it or no."

"Well then," he said, impatiently, "what is the good of all this

discussion?"

"Clearly," I replied, "no good at all, if there be no Good, which is

the point to which you are always harking back. But you have surely

forgotten the basis of our whole argument?"

"What basis?"

"Why, that from the very beginning we have been trying to find out,

not so much what we know (for on that point I admit that we know

little enough), as what it is necessary for us to believe, if we are

to find significance in life."

"But how can we believe what we don't know?"

"Why," I replied, "we can surely adopt postulates, as indeed we always

do in practical life. Every man who is about to undertake anything

makes the assumption, in the first place, that it is worth doing, and

In the second place that it is possible to be done. He may be wrong in

both these assumptions, but without them he could not move a step. And

so with regard to the business of life, as a whole, it is necessary

to assume, if we are to make anything of it at all, both that there is

Good, and that we know something about it; and also, I think, that it

is somehow or other realizable; but I do not know that any of these

assumptions could be proved."

"But what right have we, then, to make such assumptions?"

"We have none at all, so far as knowledge is concerned. Indeed, to my

mind, it is necessary, if we are to be honest with ourselves, that we

should never forget that they are assumptions, so long as they have

not received definite proof. But still they are, I think, as I said,

assumptions we are bound to make, if we are to give any meaning to

life. We might perhaps call them 'postulates of the will'; and our

attitude, when we adopt them, that of faith."

"Faith!" protested Wilson, "that is a dangerous word!"

"It is," I agreed. "Yet I doubt whether we can dispense with it.

Only we must remember that to have 'faith' in a proposition is not to

affirm that it is true, but to live as we should do if it were. It

is, in fact, an attitude of the will, not of the understanding; the

attitude of the general going into battle, not of the philosopher in

his closet."

"But," he objected, "where we do not know, the proper attitude is

suspense of mind."

"In many matters, no doubt," I replied, "but surely not in those with

which we are dealing. For we must live or die; and if we are to choose

to do either, we must do so by virtue of some assumption about the

Good."

"But why should we choose to do either? Why should not we simply

wait?"

"But wait how? wait affirming or denying? active or passive? Is it

possible to wait without adopting an attitude? Is not waiting itself

an attitude, an acting on the assumption that it is good to wait?"

"But, at any rate, it does not involve assumptions as large as those

which you are trying to make us accept."

"I am not trying to make you do anything; I am only trying to discover

what you make yourself do. And do you, as a matter of fact, really

dispute the main conclusions to which we have come, or rather, if you

will accept my phrase, the main 'postulates of the will' which we have

elicited?"

"What are they? Let me have them again."

"Well," I said, "here they are. First, that Good has some meaning."

"Agreed!"

"Second, that we know something about that meaning."

"Doubtful!" said Dennis. "But it will be no use now to resume that

controversy."

"No," I replied, "only I thought I had shown that if we know nothing

about it, then, for us, it has no meaning; and so our first assumption

is also destroyed, and with it all significance in life."

"Well," he said, "go on. We can't go over all that again."

"Third," I continued, "that among our experiences the one which comes

nearest to Good is that which we called love."

"Possible!" said Dennis, "but a very tentative approximation."

"Certainly," I agreed, "and subject to constant revision."

"And after that?"

"Well," I said, "now comes the point Audubon raised. Is it necessary

to include also the postulate that Good can be realized?"

"But surely," objected Wilson, "here at least there is no room for

what you call faith. For whether or no the Good can be realized is a

question of knowledge."

"No doubt," I replied, "and so are all questions--if only we could

know. But I was assuming that this is one of the things we do not

know."

"But," he said, "it is one we are always coming to know. Every year we

are learning more and more about the course and destiny of mankind."

"Should you say, then," I asked, "that we are nearer to knowing

whether or no the soul is immortal?"

He looked at me in sheer amazement; and then, "What a question!" he

cried. "I should say that we have long known that it isn't"

"Then," I said, "if so, we know that the Good cannot be realized."

"What!" he exclaimed. "I had not understood that your conception of

the Good involved the idea of personal immortality."

"I am almost afraid it does," I replied, "but I am not quite sure.

We have already touched upon the point, if you remember, when we

were considering whether we must regard the Good as realizable in

ourselves, or only in some generation of people to come. And we

thought then that it must somehow be realizable in us."

"But we did not see at the time what that would involve, though I was

afraid all along of something of the kind."

"Well," I said, "for fear you should think you have been cheated, we

will reconsider the point; and first, if you like, we will suppose

that we mean by the Good of some future generation, still retaining

for Good the signification we gave to it. The question then of whether

or no the Good can be realized, will be the question whether or no it

is possible that at some future time all individuals should be knit

together in that ultimate relation which we called love."

"But," cried Leslie, "the love was to be eternal! So that _their_

souls at least would have to be immortal; and if theirs, why not

ours?"

I looked at Wilson; and "Well," I said, "what are we to say?"

"For my part," he replied, "I have nothing to say. I consider the

whole idea of immortality illegitimate."

"Yet on that," I said, "hangs the eternal nature of our Good. But may

we retain, perhaps, the all-comprehensiveness?"

"How could we!" cried Leslie, "for it is only the individuals who

happened to be alive who could be comprehended so long as they were

alive."

"Another glory shorn from our Good!" I said. "Still, let us hold fast

to what we may! Shall we say that if the Good is to be realized the

individuals then alive, so long as they are alive, will be bound

together in this relation?"

"You can say that if you like," said Wilson, "and something of that

kind I suppose one would envisage as the end. Only I'm not sure that I

very well know what you mean by love."

"Alas!" I cried, "is even that to go? Is nothing at all to be left of

my poor conception?"

"You, can say if you like," he replied, "and I suppose it comes

to much the same thing, that all individuals will be related in a

perfectly harmonious way."

"In other words," cried Ellis, "that you will have a society perfectly

definite, heterogeneous, and co-ordinate! 'There's glory for you!' as

Humpty Dumpty said."

"Well," I said, "this is something very different from what we defined

to be Good! But this, at any rate, you think, on grounds of positive

science, that it might be possible to realize?"

"Yes," replied Wilson; "or if not that, I think at any rate that

science may ultimately be in a position to decide whether or no it can

be realized."

"But," I said, "do you not think the same about personal immortality?"

"To be honest," he replied, "I do not think that the question of

personal immortality is one which science ought even to entertain."

"But," I urged, "I thought science was beginning to entertain it. Does

not the 'Society for Psychical Research' deal with such questions?"

"'The Society for Psychical Research!'" he exclaimed. "I do not call

that science."

"Well," I said, "at any rate there are men of a scientific turn of

mind connected with it" And I mentioned the names of one or two,

whereupon Wilson broke out into indignation, declaring with much

vehemence that the gentlemen in question were bringing discredit both

upon themselves and the University to which they belonged; and then

followed a discussion upon the proper objects and methods of science,

which I do not exactly recall. Only I remember that Wilson took up a

position which led Ellis, with some justice as I thought, to declare

that science appeared to be developing all the vices of theology

without any of its virtues--the dogmatism, the "index expurgatorius,"

and the whole machinery for suppressing speculation, without any of

the capacity to impose upon the conscience a clear and well-defined

scheme of life. This debate, however, was carried on in a tone too

polemic to elicit any really fruitful result; and as soon as I was

able I endeavoured to steer the conversation back into the smoother

waters from which it had been driven.

"Let us admit," I said, "if you like, for the sake of argument, that

on the question of the immortality of the soul we do not and cannot

know anything at all."

"But," objected Wilson, "I maintain that we do know that there is no

foundation at all for the idea. It is a mere reflection of our hopes

and fears, or of those of our ancestors."

"But," I said, "even if it be, that does not prove that it is not

true; it merely shows that we have no sufficient reason for thinking

it to be true."

"Well," he said, "put it so, if you like; that is enough to relegate

the notion to the limbo of centaurs and chimæras. What we have no

reason to suppose to be true, we have no reason to concern ourselves

with."

"Pardon me," I replied, "but I think we have, if the idea is one that

interests us, as Is the case with what we are discussing. We may not

know whether or no it is true, but we cannot help profoundly caring."

"Well," he said, "I may be peculiarly constituted, but, honestly, I do

not myself care in the least"

"But," I said, "perhaps you ought to, if you care about the Good;

and that is really the question I want to come back to. What is the

minimum we must believe if we are to make life significant? Is it

sufficient to believe in what you call the 'progress of the race'? Or

must we also believe in the progress of the individual, involving, as

it does, personal immortality?"

"Well," said Wilson, "I don't profess to take lofty views of

life--that I leave to the philosophers. But I must say it seems to me

to be a finer thing to work for a future in which one knows one will

not participate oneself than for one in which one's personal happiness

is involved. I have always sympathized with Comte, pedant as he was,

in the remark he made when he was dying."

"Which one?" interrupted Ellis. "'Quelle perte irréparable?' That

always struck me as the most humorous thing ever said."

"No," said Wilson, gravely, "but when he said that the prospect of

death would be to him infinitely less sublime, if it did not involve

his own extinction; the notion being, I suppose, that death is

the triumphant affirmation of the supremacy of the race over the

individual. And that, I think myself, is the sound and healthy and

manly view."

"My dear Wilson," cried Ellis, "you talk of lofty views; but this is

a pinnacle of loftiness to which I, for one, could never aspire.

Positively, to rejoice in the extinction of the individual with his

faculties undeveloped, his opportunities unrealized, his ambitions

unfulfilled--why it's sublime! its Kiplingese--there's no other word

for it! Shake hands, Wilson! you're a hero."

"Really," said Wilson, rather impatiently, "I see nothing strained

or high-faluting in the view. And as to what you say about faculties

undeveloped and the rest, that seems to me unreal and exaggerated!

Most men have a good enough time, and get pretty much what they

deserve. A healthy, normal man is ready to die--he has done what he

had it in him to do, and passed on his work to the next generation."

"I have often wondered," said Ellis, meditatively, "what 'normal'

means. Does it mean one in a million, should you say? Or perhaps that

is too large a proportion? Some people say, do they not, that there

never was a normal man?"

"By 'normal,'" retorted Wilson, doggedly, "I mean average, and I

include every one except a few decadents and faddists."

At this point, seeing that we were threatened with another digression,

I thought it best to intervene again.

"We are diverging," I said, "a little from the issue. Wilson's

position, as I understand him, is that the prospect of the future

Good of the race is sufficient to give significance to the life of the

individual, even though he realize no Good for himself."

"No," replied Wilson, "I don't say that; for I think he always does

realize sufficient Good for himself."

"But is it because of that Good which he realizes for himself that his

life has significance? Or because of the future Good of the race?"

"I don't know; both, I suppose."

"You do not think then that the future Good of the race is sufficient,

by itself, to give significance to the lives of individuals who are

never to partake in it?"

"I don't like that way of putting the question. What I believe is,

that in realizing his own Good a man is also contributing to that of

the race. There is no such antagonism between the two ends as you seem

to suggest."

"I don't say that there is an antagonism; but I do insist that there

is a distinction. And I cannot help feeling--and this is where we seem

to disagree--that in estimating the Good of individual lives we must

have regard to that which they realize in and for themselves, not

merely to that which they may be contributing to produce some day in

somebody else."

"These 'somebody elses,'" cried Ellis, "being after all nothing but

other individuals like themselves! so that you get an infinite series

of people doing Good to one another, and none of them getting any

Good for themselves, like the: islanders who lived by taking in one

another's washing!"

"Well, but," said Wilson, "supposing I consent, for the sake of

argument, to let you estimate the worth of life by the Good which

individuals realize in themselves. What follows then?"

"Why, then" I said, "it would, I think, be very hard to maintain that

we do most of us realize Good enough to make it seem worth while to

have lived at all, if indeed we are simply extinguished at death. At

any rate, if we set aside an exceptional few, and look frankly at the

mass of men and women, judging them not as means to something else,

but as ends in themselves, with reference not to happiness, or

content, or acquiescence, or indifference, but simply to Good--if we

look at them so, can we honestly say that there is enough significance

in their lives to justify the labour and expense of producing and

maintaining them?"

"I don't know," he replied, "they probably think themselves that there

is."

"Probably," I rejoined, "they do not think about it at all. But what I

should like to know is, what do you think?"

"I don't see," he objected, "how I can have any opinion; the problem

is too vast and indeterminate."

"Is it?" cried Audubon, intervening in his curious abrupt way, and

with more than his usual energy of protest "Well, indeterminate or no,

it's the one point on which I have no doubt. Most people are only fit

to have their necks broken, and it would be the kindest thing for them

if some one would do it."

"Well," I said, "at any rate that is a vigorous opinion. Does anyone

else share it?"

"I do," said Leslie, "on the whole. Most men, if they are not actually

bad, are at best indifferent--'sacs merely, floating with open mouths

for food to slip in.'"

"Upon my word!" cried Bartlett, "it's wonderful how much you know

about them, considering how very little you've seen of them!"

"Oh!" I said, turning to him, "then you do not agree with this

estimate?"

"I!" he said. "Oh, no! I am not a superior person! Most men, I

suppose, are as good as we are, and probably a great deal better!"

"They might well be that," I replied, "without being particularly

good. But perhaps, as you seem to suggest, it might be better to

confine ourselves to our own experience and consider whether for

ourselves, so far as we can see, we should think life much worth

having, supposing death to be the end of it all."

"Oh, as to that, of course I should, for my part," cried Ellis, "and

so, I hope, should we all. In fact, I consider it rather monstrous to

ask the question at all."

"My dear Ellis," I protested, "you are really the most inconsistent of

men! Not a minute ago you were laughing at Wilson for his acquiescence

in the extinction of the individual 'with his opportunities

unrealized, his faculties undeveloped,' and all the rest of it. And

now you appear to be adopting precisely the same attitude yourself."

"I can't help it," he replied; "consistent or no, life's good enough

for me. And so it should be for you, you ungrateful ruffian!"

"I am not so sure," I said, "that it should be; not so sure as I was a

few years ago."

"Why, you Methuselah, what has age got to do with it?"

"Just this," I replied, "that up to a certain time of life all the

Good that we get we take to be prophetic of more Good to come. What

we actually realize we value less for itself than for something else

which it promises. The moments of good experience we expand till they

fill all infinity; the intervening tracts of indifferent or bad we

simply forget or ignore. Life is good, we say, because the universe

is good; and this goodness we expect to grasp in its entirety, not

to-day, perhaps, nor to-morrow, but at least the day after. And so,

like the proverbial ass, we are lured on by a wisp of hay. But being,

at bottom, intelligent brutes, we begin, in time, to reflect; we put

back our ears, and plant our feet stiff and rigid where we stand, and

refuse to budge an inch till we have some further information as to

the meaning of the journey into which we are being enticed. That,

at least, is the point that has been reached by this ass who is now

addressing you. I want to know something more about that bundle of

hay; and that is why I am interested in the question of personal

immortality."

"Which means--to drop the metaphor----?"

"Which means, that I have come to realize that I am not likely to get

more Good out of life than I have already had, and that I may very

likely get less; or if more in some respects, then less in others.

For, in the first place, the world, as it seems, is just as much bad

as good, and whether Good or Bad predominate I cannot say. And in the

second place, even of what Good there is--and I do not under-estimate

its worth--it is but an infinitesimal portion that I am capable of

realizing, so limited am I by temperament and circumstance, so

bound by the errors and illusions of the past, so hampered by the

disabilities crowding in from the future. For though, as I think, the

older I get the more clearly I recognize what is good, and the more I

learn to value and to perceive it, yet at the same time the less do I

become capable of making it my own, and must in the nature of things

become less and less so, in so far at least as Goods other than those

of the intellect are concerned. And this is a position which seems to

be involved in the mere fact of age and death frankly seen from

the naturalistic point of view; and so it has always been felt

and expressed from the time of the Greeks onwards, and not least

effectively, perhaps, by Browning in his 'Cleon'--you remember the

passage:

"'... Every day my sense of joy

Grows more acute, my soul (intensified

By power and insight) more enlarged, more keen;

While every day my hairs fall more and more,

My hand shakes, and the heavy years increase--

The horror quickening still from year to year,

The consummation coming past escape,

When I shall know most, and yet least enjoy--

When all my works wherein I prove my worth,

Being present still to mock me in men's mouths,

Alive still in the phrase of such as thou,

I, I the feeling, thinking, acting man,

The man who loved his life so over-much,

Shall sleep in my urn.'

"You see the point; indeed, it is so familiar, I have laboured it,

perhaps, too much. But the result seems to be, that while it is

natural enough that in youth, for those who are capable of Good,

life should seem to be pre-eminently worth the having, yet the last

judgment of age, for those who believe that death is the end, will be

a doubt, and perhaps more than a doubt, even in the case of those

most favoured by fortune, whether after all a life has been worth the

trouble of living which has unfolded such infinite promise only to

bury it fruitless in the grave."

"I think that's rather a morbid view!" said Parry.

"I do not know," I said, "whether it is morbid, nor do I very much

care; the question is, whether it is reasonable, and whether it is not

the position naturally and perhaps inevitably adopted not by the

worst but by the best men among those who have abandoned the belief in

personal immortality."

"That," interposed Wilson, "is surely not the case. One knows of

people who, though they have no belief in survival after death, yet

maintain a perfectly cheerful and healthy attitude towards life.

Harriet Martineau is one that occurs to me. To her, you may remember,

life appeared not less but more worth living when she had become

convinced of her own annihilation at death; and she awaited

with perfect equanimity and calm its imminent approach, not as

a deliverance from a condition which was daily becoming more

intolerable, but as a fitting crown and consummation to a career of

untiring and fruitful activity."

"That," exclaimed Parry with enthusiasm, "is what I call magnanimous!"

"I don't!" retorted Leslie, "I call it simply stupid and

unimaginative."

"Call it what you like," said Wilson; "anyhow it is a position which

can be and has been adopted."

"Yes," I agreed, "but one which, I think, a clearer analysis of the

facts, a franker survey and a more penetrating insight, would make it

increasingly difficult to sustain. And after all, an estimate which is

to endure must be not only magnanimous but reasonable."

"But to her, and to others like her, it did and does appear to be

reasonable. And you ought to admit, I think, that there are cases in

which life is well worth living quite apart from the hypothesis of

personal immortality."

"I am ready to admit," I replied, "that there are people to whom it

seems to be so, but I doubt whether they are very numerous, among

those, I mean, who have reflected on the subject, and whose opinions

alone we need consider. I, at any rate, have commonly found in talking

to people about death--supposing, which is unusual, that they are

willing to talk about it at all--that they adopt one of two views,

either of which presupposes the worthlessness of life, if life, as we

know it, be indeed all"

"What views do you mean?"

"Why, either they believe that death means annihilation, and rejoice

in the prospect as a deliverance from an intolerable evil; or they

hold that there is a life beyond, and that they will find there the

reason and justification for existence which they have never been able

to discover here."

"You forget, surely," said Wilson, "a third point of view, which I

should have thought was as common as either of the others,--that of

those who believe in a life after death, but look forward to it with

inexpressible fear of the possible evils which it may contain."

"True," I said, "but such fear, I suppose, is a reflex of actual

experience, and implies, does it not, a vivid sense of the evils of

existence as we know it? So that these people, too, I should maintain,

have not really found life satisfactory, or they would look forward

with hope rather than fear to the possibility of Its continuance."

"But in their case, at any rate, the hypothesis of personal

immortality is an aggravation, not a remedy, of the evil."

"No doubt; but I have been assuming throughout that the hypothesis

involves the realization of that Good which, without it, we recognize

to be unattainable; and it is only in that sense, and from that point

of view, that I have introduced it."

"Well," he persisted, "considering how improbable the hypothesis is,

I should be very loth to admit that it is one which it is practically

necessary to adopt. And I still maintain that most people do not

require it--ordinary simple people, I mean, who do their work and make

no fuss about it."

"Perhaps not," I replied, "for it is characteristic of such people

to make no hypothesis at all, but to adopt for the moment any view

suggested by the state of their spirits. But I believe that if ever

you can get a man, no matter how plain and unsophisticated, to reflect

fairly upon his own experience, and to look impartially at the facts

all round, abstracting from all bias of habit and mood and prejudice,

he will admit that if it be true that the individual is extinguished

at death, together with all his possibilities of realizing Good,

then life cannot rationally be judged to be worth the living, however

imperatively we may be compelled to continue to live it."

"But it Is just that imperative compulsion," cried Parry, "on which I

rely! That seems to me the justification of life--the fact that we are

forced to live! I trust that instinct more than all the inclination in

the world!"

"But," I said, "when you say that you trust the instinct, do you mean

that you judge it to be good?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Then in trusting the instinct you are really trusting your reason,

which judges the instinct to be good, or, if not your reason, the

faculty, whatever it be, which judges of Good. And the only difference

between us is, that I try to ascertain what we do really believe to

be good, whereas you accept and cling to a particular judgment about

Good, without any attempt to test it and harmonize it with others."

"But you admit yourself that all your results are tentative and

problematical in the extreme."

"Certainly."

"And yet these results you venture to set in opposition to a simple,

profound, imperative cry of Nature!"

"Why should I not? For I have no right to suppose that nature is good,

except in so far as I can reasonably judge her to be so."

"That seems to me a sort of blasphemy."

"I am afraid," I said, "if I must choose, I would rather blaspheme

Nature than Reason. But I hope I am not blaspheming either. For it may

be that what you call Nature has provided for the realization of Good.

That, at any rate, is the hypothesis I was suggesting; and it is you

who appear to be setting it aside."

"But," objected Wilson, "you talk of this hypothesis as if it were

something one could really entertain! To me it is not a hypothesis at

all; it's simply an inconceivability."

"Do you mean that it is self-contradictory?"

"No, not exactly that. Simply that it is unimaginable."

"Oh!" I said; "but what one can imagine depends on the quality of

one's imagination! To me, for example, the immortality of the soul

does not seem any harder to imagine than birth and life, and death and

consciousness. It's all such a mystery together, if once one begins

trying to realize it."

"No one," interposed Ellis, "has put that point better than Walt

Whitman."

"True," I replied, "and that reminds me that I think you hardly did

justice to his view when you were quoting him a little while ago. It

is true that he does, as you said, accept all facts, good and bad, and

even appears at times to obliterate the distinction between them. But

also, whether consistently or no, he regards them all as phases of

a process, good only because of what they promise to be. So that his

view really requires a belief in immortality to justify it; and to him

such belief is as natural and simple as to Wilson it is absurd. There

is a passage somewhere, I remember--perhaps you can quote it--it

begins, 'Is it wonderful that I should be immortal?'"

"Yes," he said, "I remember":

"Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is

immortal;

"I know it is wonderful--but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and

how I was conceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful,

"And passed from a babe, in the creeping trance of a couple of

summers and winters to articulate and walk. All this is equally

wonderful.

"And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other

without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each other,

is every bit as wonderful.

"And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful,

"And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to be

true, is just as wonderful.

"And that the moon spins round the earth, and on with the earth, is

equally wonderful,

"And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally

wonderful."

"That," I said, "is the passage I meant, and it shows that Whitman, at

any rate, did not share Wilson's feeling that the immortality of the

soul is unimaginable."

"Well," said Wilson, "imaginable or no, we have no reason to believe

it to be true."

"No reason, indeed," I agreed, "so far as demonstration is concerned,

though equally, as I think, no reason to deny it. But the point I

raised was, whether, if we are to take a positive view of life and

hold that it somehow has a good significance, we are not bound to

adopt this, hypothesis of immortality--to believe, that is, that,

somehow or other, there awaits us a state of being in which all souls

shall be bound together in that harmonious and perfect relation of

which we have a type and foretaste in what we call love. For, if it be

true that perfect Good does involve some such relation, and yet that

it is one unattainable under the conditions of our present life, then

we must say either that such Good is unattainable--and in that case

why should we idly pursue it?--or that we believe we shall attain it

under some other conditions of existence. And according as we adopt

one or the other position--so it seems to me--our attitude towards

life will be one of affirmation or of negation."

"But," he objected, "even if you were right in your conception

of Good, and even if it be true that Good in its perfection is

unattainable, yet we might still choose to get at least what Good

we can--and some Good you admit we can get--and might find in that

pursuit a sufficient justification for life."

"We might, indeed," I admitted, "but also we might very well find,

that the Good we can attain is so small, and the Evil so immensely

preponderant, that we ought to labour rather to bring to an end an

existence so pitiful than to perpetuate it indefinitely in the persons

of our luckless descendants."

"That, thank heaven," said Parry, "is not the view which is taken by

the Western world."

"The West" I replied, "has not yet learned to reflect. Its activity is

the slave of instinct, blind and irresponsible."

"Yes," he assented eagerly, "and that is its saving grace! This

instinct, which you call blind, is health and sanity and vigour."

"I know," I said, "that you think so, and so does Mr. Kipling, and

all the train of violent and bloody bards who follow the camp of the

modern army of progress. I have no quarrel with you or with them; you

may very well be right in your somewhat savage worship of activity. I

am only trying to ascertain the conditions of your being right, and I

seem to find it in personal immortality."

"No," he persisted. "We are right without condition, right absolutely

and beyond all argument. Pursue Good is the one ultimate law; whether

or no it can be attained is a minor matter; and if to inquire into the

conditions of its attainment is only to weaken us in the pursuit, then

I say the inquiry is wrong, and ought to be discouraged."

"Well" I said, "I will not dispute with you further. Whether you are

right or wrong I cannot but admire your strenuous belief in Good

and in our obligation to pursue it. And that, after all, was my main

point. On the other question about what Good is and whether it is

attainable, I could hardly wish to make converts, so conscious am I

that I have infinitely more to learn than to teach. Only, that there

is really something to learn, of that I am profoundly convinced.

Perhaps even Audubon will agree with me there?"

"I don't know that I do," he replied, "and anyhow it doesn't seem to

me to make much difference. Whatever we may think about Good, that

doesn't affect the nature of Reality--and Reality, I believe, is bad!"

"Ah, Reality!" I rejoined, "but what is Reality? Is it just what we

see and touch and handle?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"That is a sober view, and one which I have constantly tried to

impress upon myself. Sometimes, even, I think I have succeeded,

under the combined stress of logic and experience. But there comes

an unguarded moment, some evening in summer, like this, when I am

walking, perhaps, alone in a solitary wood, or in a meadow beside a

quiet stream; and suddenly all my work is undone, and I am overwhelmed

by a direct apprehension, or what seems at least for the moment to be

such, that everything I hear and see and touch is mere illusion after

all, and behind it lies the true Reality, if only I could find the

way to seize it. It is due, I suppose, to some native and ineradicable

strain of mysticism; or perhaps, as I sometimes think, to the memory

of a strange experience which I once underwent and have never been

able to forget"

"What was that?"

"It will not be very easy, I fear, to describe, but perhaps it may be

worth while to make the attempt, for it bears, more or less, on the

subject of our conversation. Once then, you must know, and once

only, a good many years ago now, I was put under the influence

of anæsthetics; and during the time I was unconscious, or rather,

conscious in a new way, I had a very curious dream, if dream it were,

which has never ceased to affect my thoughts and my life. It was as

follows:

"As soon as I lost consciousness of the world without, my soul, I

thought, which seemed at first to be diffused throughout my body,

began to draw itself upward, beginning at the feet. It passed through

the veins of the legs and belly to the heart, which was beating like a

thousand drums, and thence by the aorta and the carotids to the brain,

whence it emerged by the fissures of the skull into the outer air.

No sooner was it free (though still attached, as I felt with some

uneasiness, by a thin elastic cord to the pia mater) than it gathered

itself together (into what form I could not say), and with incredible

speed shot upwards, till it reached what seemed to be the floor of

heaven. Through this it passed, I know not how, and found itself all

at once in a new world.

"What this world was like I must now endeavour to explain, difficult

though it be to find suitable language; for the things here, of which

our words are symbols, are themselves only symbols of the things

there. The feeling I had, however, (for I was now identified with my

soul, and had forgotten all about my body)--the feeling I had was that

of sitting alone beside a river. What kind of country it was I can

hardly describe, for there was nowhere any definite colour or form,

only a suggestion, such as I have seen in drawings, of vast infinite

tracts of empty space. I could not even say there was light or

darkness, for my organ of perception did not seem to be the eye; only

I was aware of an emotional effect similar to that of twilight, cold,

grey, and formless as night itself. The silence was absolute, if

indeed silence it were, for it was not by the ear that I perceived

either sound or its absence; but something there was, analogous to

silence in its effect And in the midst of the silence and the twilight

(since so I must call them) flowed the river, or what seemed such,

distinguishable, as I thought at first, rather by the fact that it

flowed, than by any peculiarity of substance, colour, or form, from

the stretches of empty space that formed its banks. But presently,

as I looked more closely, I saw, rising from its surface, dipping,

rising, and dipping again, in a regular rhythm, without change or

pause, what I can only compare to a shoal of flying fish. Not that

they looked like fish, or indeed like anything I had ever seen, but

that was the image suggested by their motion. As soon as I saw them

I knew what they were: they were souls; and the river down which they

passed was the river of Time; and their dipping in and out again was

the sequence of their lives and deaths.

"All this did not surprise me at all. Rather, I felt it was

something I had always known, yet something inexpressibly flat and

disillusioning. 'Of course!' I said to myself, or thought, or whatever

may have been my mode of cognition--'Of course! That is it, and that

is all! Souls are indeed immortal--why should we ever have imagined

otherwise? They are immortal, and what of it? I see the death-side

now as I saw the life-side then; and one has as little meaning as the

other. As it has been, so it will be, now, henceforth, and for ever,

in and out, in and out, without pause or stint, futile, trivial,

silly, stale, tedious, monotonous, and vain!' The long pre-occupation

of men with religion, philosophy, and art, seemed to me now as

incomprehensible as it was ridiculous. There was nothing after all to

be interested about! There was simply this! The dreariness of my mood

was indescribable, and corresponded so closely to the scene before

me that I found myself wondering which was effect, which cause. The

silence, the tracts of unformed space, the unsubstantial river, the

ceaseless vibration along its surface of infinite moving points,

all this was a reflex of my thoughts and they of it. My misery was

Intolerable; to escape became my only object; and with this in view I

rose and began to move, I knew not whither, along the silent shore.

"As I went, I presently became aware of what looked like high towers

standing along the margin of the stream. I say they looked like

towers, but I should rather have said they symbolized them; for they

had no specific shape, round or square, nor any definite substance

or dimensions. They suggested rather, if I may say so, the idea of

verticality; and otherwise were as blank and void of form or colour as

everything else in this strange land. I made my way towards them along

the bank; and when I had come close under the first, I saw that there

was a door in it, and written over the door, in a language I cannot

now recall, but which then I knew that I had always known, an

inscription whose sense was:

"'_I am the Eye; come into me and see_.'

"Miserable as I was, it was impossible that I should hesitate; I did

not know, it is true, what might await me within, but it could not be

worse and might well be better than my present plight. The door was

open; I stepped in; and no sooner had I crossed the threshold than I

was aware of an experience more extraordinary and delightful than it

had ever been my lot to encounter. I had the sensation of seeing light

for the first time! For hitherto, as I have tried to explain, though

it has been necessary to speak in terms of sight, I have done so

only by a metaphor, and it was not really by vision that I became

acquainted with the scene I have described. But now I saw, and saw

pure light! And yet not only saw, but, as I thought apprehended it

with the other senses, both with those we know and with others of

which we have not yet dreamt. I heard light, I tasted and touched it,

it enveloped and embraced me; I swam in it as in an element, wafted

and washed and luxuriantly lapped. Pure light, and nothing else!

No objects, at first! It was only by degrees, and as the first

intoxication subsided, that I began to be aware of anything but the

medium itself. I saw then that I was standing at what seemed to be a

window, looking out over the scene I had just left But how changed it

was! The river now, like a blue and golden snake, ran through a sunny

champaign bright with flowers; above it hung a cloudless summer sky;

and the happy souls went leaping in and out like dolphins on a calm

day in the Mediterranean. On all this I gazed with inexpressible

delight; but as I looked an extraordinary thing occurred. The flowery

plain before me seemed to globe itself into a sphere; the blue river

clasped it like a girdle; for a moment it hung before me like a star,

then opened out and split into a thousand more, and these again into

others and yet others, till a whole heaven of stars was revolving

about me in the most wonderful dance-measure you can conceive,

infinitely complex, but never for a moment confused, for the stars

were of various colours, more beautiful far than any of ours, and by

these, as they crossed and intertwined in exquisite harmonies, the

threads of the intricate figure were kept distinct.

"What I was looking upon, I knew, was the same heaven that our

astronomers describe; only I was privileged actually to perceive

the movements they can only infer and predict. For here on earth our

faculties are proportioned to our needs, and our apprehension of time

and change is measured by units too small for us to be able to embrace

by sense the large and spacious circuits of the stars. But I, in my

then condition, had powers commensurate with all existence; so that

not only could I follow with the eye the coils of that celestial

morrice, but in each one of the whirling orbs, as they approached

or receded in the dance, I could trace, so far as I was minded,

the course of its secular history; whole series of changes and

transformations such as we laboriously infer, from fossils and rocks

and hard unmalleable things, being there (as though petrifaction were

reversed and solidest things made fluid) unrolled before me, molten

and glowing and swift, in a stream of torrential evolution whose

moments were centuries. Wonderful it was, and strange, to see the

first trembling film creep like a mantle over a globe of fire, shiver,

and break, and form again, and gradually harden and cohere, now

crushed into ridges and pits, now extended into plains, and tossing

the hissing seas from bed to bed, as the levels of the viscous surface

rose and fell. Wonderful, too, when the crust was formed and life

became possible, how everywhere, in wet or dry, hot or cold alike,

wherever footing could be found, came up and flourished and decayed

things that root and things that move, winged or finned or legged,

creeping, flying, running, breeding, in mud or sand, in jungle,

forest, and marsh, pursuing and pursued, devouring and devoured,

pairing, contending, killing, things huge beyond belief, mammoth

and icthyosaurus, things minute and numerous past the power of

calculation, coming and going as they could find space, species

succeeding to species, and crowding every point and vantage for life

on the heaving tumultuous bosom of eddying worlds.

"Wonderful it was, but terrible, too; for what struck me with a kind

of chill, even while I was wrapt in admiration, was the fact that

though everything was in constant change, and in the change there was

clearly an order and routine, yet I could not detect anything that

seemed like purpose. Direction there was, but not direction to an end;

for the end was no better than the beginning, it was only different;

the idea of Good, in short, did not apply. And this fact, which was

striking enough in the case of the phenomena I have described, made

itself felt with even more insistence when I turned to consider the

course of human history. For that too I saw unrolled before me, not

only on our own, but on innumerable other worlds, in various phases

and in various forms, both those which we know, and others of which we

have no conception, and which I am now quite unable to recall. Men

I saw housing in caves, or on piles in swamps and lakes, dwellers in

wagons and tents, hunters, or shepherds under the stars, men of the

mountain, men of the plain, of the river-valley and the coast, nomad

tribes, village tribes, cities, kingdoms, empires, wars and peace,

politics, laws, manners, arts and sciences. Yet in all this, so far as

I could observe, although, through all vacillations, there appeared

to be a steady trend in a definite direction, there was nothing to

indicate what we call purpose. Men, I saw, had ideas about Good, but

these ideas of theirs, though they were part of the efficient causes

of events, were in no sense the explanation of the process. There

was no explanation, for there was no final cause, no purpose, end, or

justification at all. Man, like nature, was the plaything of a blind

fate. The idea of Good had no application.

"The horror I felt as this truth (for so I thought it) was borne in

upon me was proportioned to my previous delight. I had now but one

desire, to escape, even though it were only back to what I had left.

And as the Angel-Boys in 'Faust' cry out to Pater Seraphicus for

release, when they can no longer bear the sights they see through

his eyes, so I, in my anguish, cried, 'Let me out! Let me out!' And

instantly I found myself standing again at the foot of the tower, in

that land of twilight, silence, and infinite space, with the souls

going down the river, in and out, in and out, futile, trivial,

tedious, monotonous, and vain. Looking up, I saw written over the door

from which I had emerged, and which was opposite to that by which I

had entered, words whose sense was:

"'_Eye hath not seen_.'

"I walked round the Tower, and found a third door facing the river; and

over that was written:

"'_Turris scientiae_.'

"But all these doors were now closed; nor indeed, had they been open,

should I have felt any inclination to renew the experience from which

I had escaped. I therefore turned away sadly enough and made my way

along the bank towards the second tower.

"Over the door of this was written in the same language as before:

"'_I am the Ear; come into me and hear_.'

"The door was open, and I went in, this time with some apprehension,

but with still more curiosity and hope. No sooner was I within than I

was overwhelmed by an experience analogous to that which had greeted

me in the Tower of Sight, but even more ravishingly sweet. This time

what I felt was the sensation of pure sound: sound, not merely heard,

but, as before in the case of light, apprehended at once by every

avenue of sense, and folding and sustaining, as it seemed, my whole

being in a clear and buoyant element of tone. It was only by degrees

that out of this absolute essence of sheer sound distinctions of

rhythm and pitch began to appear, and to assume definite musical form.

The theme at first was pastoral and sweet, suggestive of rustling

grasses and murmuring reeds, interwoven with which was an exquisite

lilting tune, the song of the souls as they sped down the river.

But one by one other elements crept into the strain; it increased in

volume and variety of tone, in complexity of rhythm and tune, till it

grew at length into a symphony so august, so solemn, and so profound,

that there is nothing I know of in our music here to which I can fitly

compare it. It reminded me, however, of Wagner more than of any other

composer, in the richness of its colour, the insistence and force of

its rhythms, its fragments of ineffable melody, and above all, its

endless chromatic sequences, for ever suggesting but never actually

reaching the full close which I knew not whether most to dread or

to desire. The music itself was wonderful enough; but more wonderful

still was my clear perception, while I listened, that what was being

presented to me now through the medium of sound was precisely the same

world which I had seen from the Tower of Sight. Every phenomenon, and

sequence of phenomena, which I had witnessed there, I recognized now,

in appropriate musical form. The foundation of all was a great basal

rhythm, given out on something that throbbed like drums, terrible in

its persistence and yet beautiful too; and this, I knew, represented

the mechanical basis of the world, the processes which science

knows as 'laws of motion' and the like, but which really, as I then

perceived, might more aptly be described as the more inveterate of

Nature's habits. Upon this foundation, which varied, indeed, but by

almost imperceptible gradations, was built up an infinitely complex

structure of intermediate parts, increasing from below upwards in

freedom, ease and beauty of form, till high above all floated on the

ear snatches of melody, haunting, poignant, meltingly tender, or,

as it might be, martial and gay exquisite in themselves, yet never

complete, fragments rather, as it seemed, of some theme yet to come,

which they had hardly time to suggest before they were torn, as it

were, from their roots and sent drifting down the stream, to reappear

in new settings, richer combinations, and fairer forms; and these, I

knew, were symbols of the lives and deaths of conscious beings.

"As this character of the music and its representative meaning grew

gradually clearer to me, there began to mingle with my delight a

certain feeling of anguish. For while, on the one hand, I passionately

desired to hear given out in full the theme which as yet had been only

suggested in fragmentary hints, on the other, I knew that with its

appearance the music would come to a close, just at the moment when

its cessation would involve the keenest revulsion of feeling. And this

moment, I felt, was rapidly approaching. The rhythm grew more and

more rapid, the instruments scaled higher and higher, the tension of

chromatic progressions was strained to what seemed breaking point,

till suddenly, with an effect as though a stream, long pent in a

gorge, had escaped with a burst into broad sunny meadows, the whole

symphony broke away into the major key, and high and clear, chanted,

as it seemed, on ten thousand trumpets, silver, æthereal, and

exquisitely sweet for all their resonant clangour, I heard the

ultimate melody of things. For a moment only; for, as I had foreseen,

with the emergence of that air, the music came abruptly to a close;

and I found myself sitting bathed in tears at the door of the tower on

the opposite side to that by which I had entered; and there once more

was the land of silence, twilight, and infinite space, with the

souls going down the river, in and out, in and out, futile, trivial,

tedious, monotonous and vain!

"As soon as I had recovered myself, I looked up and saw written over

the door the inscription:

"'_Ear hath not heard_.'

"And going round to the side facing the river, I saw there inscribed:

"'_Turris Artis_?'

"Whereupon, full of perplexity, I made my way down towards the third

tower, reflecting, as I went; in a curious passion at once of hope and

fear, 'Neither this, then, nor that, neither Eye nor Ear, has given me

what I sought. Each is a symbol; but this, as it seems, a more perfect

symbol than that; for it, at least, is Beauty, and the other was only

Power. But is there, then, nothing but symbols? Or shall I, in one of

these towers, shall I perhaps find the thing that is symbolized?'

"By this time I had reached the third tower, and over the door facing

me I saw written:

"'_I am the Heart; come into me and feel_.'

"I entered without hesitation, and this time I was met by an experience

even stranger and more delightful than before, but also, I fear, more

indescribable. At first, I was aware of nothing but a pure feeling,

which was not of any particular sense, (as, before, of sight and

hearing,) but was rather, I think, the general feeling of Life itself,

the kind of diffused sensation of well-being one has in health,

underlying all particular activities. In this sensation I seemed, as

before, to be lapped, as in an element; but this time the feeling

did not pass. On the contrary, I found, when I came to myself, that I

actually was in the river, leaping along with the other souls in such

an ecstasy of physical delight as I have never felt before or since.

Such, at least, was my first impression; but gradually it changed

into something which I despair of rendering in words, for indeed I

can hardly render it in my own thoughts. Conceive, however, that as,

according to the teaching of science, every part of matter is affected

by every other, insomuch that, as they say, the fall of an apple

disturbs the balance of the universe; so, in my experience then, (and

this, I believe, is really true) all souls were intimately connected

by spiritual ties. Nothing that happened in one but was somehow or

other, more or less obscurely, reflected in the rest, so that all were

so closely involved and embraced in a network of fine relations that

they formed what may be compared to a planetary system, sustained

in their various orbits by force of attraction and repulsion,

distinguished into greater and lesser constellations, and fulfilling

in due proportion their periods and paths under the control of

spiritual laws. Of this system I was myself a member; about me were

grouped some of my dearest friends; and beyond and around stretched

away, like infinite points of light, in a clear heaven of passion,

the world of souls. I speak, of course, in a figure, for what I am

describing in terms of space, I apprehended through the medium of

feeling; and by 'feeling' I mean all degrees of affection, from

extreme of love to extreme of hate. For hate there was, as well as

love, the one representing repulsion, the other attraction; and by

their joint influence the whole system was sustained. It was not,

however, in equilibrium; at least, not in stable equilibrium. There

was a trend, as I soon became aware, towards a centre. The energy of

love was constantly striving to annihilate distance and unite in a

single sphere the scattered units that were only kept apart by the

energy of hate. This effort I felt proceeding in every particular

group, and, more faintly, from one group to another: I felt it with

an intensity at once of pain and of rapture, such as I cannot now even

imagine, much less describe; and most of all did I feel it within

the limits of my own group, of which some of those now present

were members. But within this group in particular I was aware of an

extraordinary resistance. One of its members, I thought, (I mention no

names,) steadily refused either to form a closer union with the rest

of us, or to enter into more intimate relations with other groups.

This resistance I felt in the form of an indescribable tension, a

tension which grew more and more acute, till suddenly the whole system

seemed to collapse, and I found myself in darkness and alone, being

dragged down, down, by the cord which attached me to my body. At the

same time there was a roaring in my ears, and I saw my body, as I

thought, like a fearful wild beast with open jaws; it swallowed me

down, and I awoke with a shock to find myself in the operator's room,

with a voice in my ears which somehow sounded like Audubon's, though

I afterwards ascertained it was really that of the assistant, uttering

the rather ridiculous words, 'I don't see why!'

"That, then, was the end of my dream, and I have never since been able

to continue it, and to discover what was written over the other doors

of the third tower, or what lay within the towers I did not enter.

So that I have had to go on ever since with the knowledge I then

acquired, that whatever Reality may ultimately be, it is in the life

of the affections, with all its confused tangle of loves and hates,

attractions, repulsions, and, worst of all, indifferences, it is

in this intricate commerce of souls that we may come nearest to

apprehending what perhaps we shall never wholly apprehend, but the

quest of which alone, as I believe, gives any significance to life,

and makes it a thing which a wise and brave man will be able to

persuade himself it is right to endure."

With that I ended; and Wilson was just beginning to explain to me

that my dream had no real significance, but was just a confused

reproduction of what I must have been thinking about before I took

the æther, when we were interrupted by the arrival of tea. In the

confusion that ensued Audubon came over to me and said: "It was

curious your dreaming that about me, for it is exactly the way I

should behave."

"Of course it is," I replied, "and that, no doubt, is why I dreamt

it."

"Well," he said, "you can say what you like, but I really do _not_ see

why!" And with that the conversation I had to report closed.