The Meaning of Good--A Dialogue | Page 9

suffer. Besides, it's a sort of point of honour. As I'm here, I'm going to play the game. All I say is that the game is not worth the playing; and you will never persuade me into the belief that it Is."
"But, my dear Philip," I said, "there is no need for me to persuade you, for it is clear that you are persuaded already. You believe, as you have really admitted in principle, that it is good to live rather than to die; and to live, moreover, a monotonous, laborious life, which you say you detest Take away that belief, and your whole being is transformed. Either you change your manner of life, abandon the routine which you hate, break up the order imposed (as I said at first) by your idea about Good, and give yourself up to the chaos of chance desires; or you depart from life altogether, on the hypothesis that that is the good thing to do. But in any case the truth appears to remain that somehow or other you do believe in Good; and that it is this belief which determines the whole course of your life."
"Well," he said, "it's no use arguing the point, but I am unconvinced." And he sank back to his customary silence. I thought it useless to pursue the subject with him; but Ellis took up the argument.
"I agree with Audubon," he said. "For even if I admitted your general contention, I should still maintain that it is not by virtue of any conscious idea of Good that we introduce order into our lives. We simply find ourselves, as a matter of fact, by nature and character, preferring one object to another, suppressing or developing this or that tendency. Our choices are not determined by our abstract notion of Good; on the contrary, our notion of Good is deduced from our choices."
"You mean, I suppose, that we collect from our particular choices our general idea of the kind of things which we consider good. That may be. But the point I insist upon is that we do attach validity to these choices; they are, to us, our choices of our Good, those that we approve as distinguished from those that we do not. And my contention is that, in spite of all diversity of opinions as to what really are the good things to choose, we are bound to attach, each of us, some validity to our own, under penalty of reducing our life to a moral chaos."
"But what do you mean by 'validity'?" asked Leslie. "Do you mean that we must believe that our opinions are right?"
"Yes," I said, "or, at least, if not that they are right, that they are the rightest we can attain to for the time being, and until we see something righter. But above all, that opinions on this subject really are either right or wrong, or more right and less right; and that of this rightness or wrongness we really have some kind of perception, however difficult it may be to give an account of it, and that in accordance with such perception we may come to change our opinions or those of other people, by the methods of discussion and persuasion and the like. And all this, as I understand, is what Ellis was denying."
"Certainly," said Ellis, "I was; and I still do not see that you have proved it."
"No," I said, "I have not even tried to. I have only tried to show that in spite of your denial you really do believe it, because a belief in it is implied in all your practical activity. And that, I thought, you did admit yourself."
"But even so," he replied, "it remains to be considered whether my theory is not more reasonable than my practice."
"Perhaps," I replied; "but that, I admit, is not the question that really interests me. What I want to get at is the belief which underlies the whole life of people like ourselves, and of which, it seems, we cannot practically divest ourselves. And such a belief, I think, is this which we have been discussing as to the validity of our opinions about Good."
"I see," he said; "in fact you are concerning yourself not with philosophy but with psychology."
"If you like; it matters little what you call it. Only, whatever it be, you will do me a service if for the moment you will place yourself at my standpoint, and see with me how things look from there."
"Very well," he said, "I have no objection, and so far, on the whole, I do agree with you; though I am bound to point out that you might easily find an opponent less complaisant. Your argument is very much one ad hominem."
"It is," I said, "and that, I