The Meaning of Good--A Dialogue | Page 8

or to suppose that it is possible to have any true opinions on the subject at all."
"And what do you say to that?" asked Parry, turning to me.
"I said, or rather I suggested, for the whole matter is very difficult to me, that in spite of the divergency of opinions on the point, and the difficulty of bringing them into harmony, we are nevertheless practically bound, whether we can justify it to our reason or not, to believe that our own opinions about what is good have somehow some validity."
"But how 'practically bound'?" asked Leslie.
"Why, as I was trying to get Ellis to admit when you interrupted--and your interruption really completed my argument--I imagine it to be impossible for us not to make choices; and in making choices, as I think, we use our ideas about Good as a principle of choice."
"But you must remember," said Ellis, "that I have never admitted the truth of that last statement."
"But," I said, "if you do not admit it generally--and generally, I confess, I do not see how it could be proved or disproved, except by an appeal to every individual's experience--do you not admit it in your own case? Do you not find that, in choosing, you follow your idea of what is good, so far as you can under the limitations of your own passions and of external circumstances?"
"Well," he replied, "I wish to be candid, and I am ready to admit that I do."
"And that you cannot conceive yourself as choosing otherwise? I mean that if you had to abandon as a principle of choice your opinion about Good, you would have nothing else to fall back upon?"
"No; I think in that case I should simply cease to choose."
"And can you conceive yourself doing that? Can you conceive yourself living, as perhaps many men do, at random and haphazard, from moment to moment, following blindly any impulse that may happen to turn up, without any principle by which you might subordinate one to the other?"
"No," he said, "I don't think I can."
"That, then," I said, "is what I meant, when I suggested that you, at any rate, and I, and other people like us, are practically bound to believe that our opinions about what is good have some validity, even though we cannot say what or how much."
"You say, then, that we have to accept in practice what we deny in theory?"
"Yes, if you like. I say, at least, that the consequence of the attempt to bring our theoretical denial to bear upon our practice would be to reduce our life to a moral chaos, by denying the only principle of choice which we find ourselves actually able to accept. In your case and mine, as it seems, it is our opinion about Good that engenders order among our passions and desires; and without it we should sink back to be mere creatures of blind impulse, such as perhaps in fact, many men really are."
"What!" cried Audubon, interrupting in a tone of half indignant protest, "do you mean to say that it is some idea about Good that brings order into a man's life? All I can say is that, for my part, I never once think, from one year's end to another, of anything so abstract and remote. I simply go on, day after day, plodding the appointed round, without reflexion, without reason, simply because I have to. There's order in my life, heaven knows! but it has nothing to do with ideas about Good. And altogether," he ejaculated, in a kind of passion, "it's a preposterous thing to tell me that I believe in Good, merely because I lead a life like a mill-horse! That would be an admirable reason for believing in Bad--but Good!"
He lapsed again into silence; and I was half unwilling to press him further, knowing that he felt our dialectics to be a kind of insult to his concrete woes. However, it seemed to be necessary for the sake of the argument to give some answer, so I began:--
"But if you don't like the life of a mill-horse, why do you lead it?"
"Why? because I have to!" he replied; "you don't suppose I would do it if I could help it?"
"No," I said, "but why can't you help it?"
"Because," he said, "I have to earn my living."
"Then is it a good thing to earn your living?"
"No, but it's a necessary thing."
"Necessary, why?"
"Because one must live."
"Then it is a good thing to live?"
"No, it's a very bad one."
"Why do you live, then?"
"Because I can't help it."
"But it is always possible to stop living."
"No, it isn't"
"But why not?"
"Because there are other people dependent on me, and I don't choose to be such a mean skunk as to run away myself and leave other people here to