The Meaning of Good--A Dialogue | Page 6

man of that of the artist? and vice versa? Behind the mask of good manners we all of us go about judging and condemning one another root and branch. We are in no real agreement as to the worth either of men or things. It is an illusion of the 'canting moralist' (to use Stevenson's phrase) that there is any fixed and final standard of Good. Good is just what any one thinks it to be; and one man has as much right to his opinion as another."
"But," I objected, "it surely does not follow that because there are different opinions about Good, they are all equally valuable."
"No. I should infer rather that they are all equally worthless."
"That does not seem to me legitimate either; and I venture to doubt whether you really believe it yourself."
"Well, at any rate I am inclined to think I do."
"In a sense perhaps you do; but not in the sense which seems to me most important. I mean that when it comes to the point, you act, and are practically bound to act, upon your opinion about what is good, as though you did believe it to be true."
"How do you mean 'practically bound?'"
"I mean that it is only by so acting that you are able to introduce any order or system into your life, or in fact to give it to yourself any meaning at all. Without the belief that what you hold to be good really somehow is so, your life, I think, would resolve itself into mere chaos."
"I don't see that"
"Well, I may be wrong, but my notion is that what systematizes a life is choice; and choice, I believe, means choice of what we hold to be good."
"Surely not! Surely we may choose what we hold to be bad."
"I doubt it"
"But how then do you account for what you call bad men?"
"I should say they are men who choose what I think bad but they think good."
"But are there not men who deliberately choose what they think bad, like Milton's Satan--'Evil be thou my Good'?"
"Yes, but by the very terms of the expression he was choosing what he thought good; only he thought that evil was good."
"But that is a contradiction."
"Yes, it is the contradiction in which he was involved, and in which I believe everyone is involved who chooses, as you say, the Bad. To them it is not only bad, it is somehow also good."
"Does that apply to Nero, for example?"
"Yes, I think it very well might; the things which he chose, power and wealth and the pleasures of the senses, he chose because he thought them good; if his choice also involved what he thought bad, such as murder and rapine and the like (if he did think these bad, which I doubt), then there was a contradiction not so much in his choice as in its consequences. But even if I were to admit that he and others have chosen and do choose what they believe to be bad, it would not affect the point I want to make. For to choose Bad must be, in your view, as absurd as to choose Good; since, I suppose, you do not believe, that our opinions about the one have any more validity than our opinions about the other. So that if we are to abandon Good as a principle of choice, it is idle to say we may fall back upon Bad."
"No, I don't say that we may; nor do I see that we must We do not need either the one or the other. You must have noticed--I am sure I have--that men do not in practice choose with any direct reference to Good or Bad; they choose what they think will bring them pleasure, or fame, or power, or, it may be, barely a livelihood."
"But believing, surely, that these things are good?"
"Not necessarily; not thinking at all about it, perhaps."
"Perhaps not thinking about it as we are now; but still, so far believing that what they have chosen Is good, that if you were to go to them and suggest that, after all, it is bad they would be seriously angry and distressed."
"But, probably," interposed Audubon, "like me, they could not help themselves. We are none of us free, in the way you seem to imagine. We have to choose the best we can, and often it is bad enough."
"No doubt," I replied, "but still, as you say yourself, what we choose is the best we can, that is, the most good we can. The criterion is Good, only it is very little of it that we are able to realize."
"No," objected Ellis, "I am not prepared to admit that the criterion is Good. You will find that men will frankly confess that other pursuits