BOOK II.

When we reassembled for coffee on the loggia after lunch, I did not suppose we should continue the morning's discussion. The conversation had been turning mostly on climbing, and other such topics, and finally had died away into a long silence, which, for my own part, I felt no particular inclination to break. We had let down an awning to shelter us from the sun, where it began to shine in upon us, so that it was still cool and pleasant where we sat; and so delightful did I feel the situation to be, that I was almost vexed to be challenged to renew our interrupted debate. The challenge, rather to my surprise, came from Audubon, who suddenly said to me, à propos of nothing, in a tone at once ironic and genial:

"Well, I thought you talked very well this morning."

"Really!" I rejoined, "I imagined you were thinking it all great nonsense."

"So no doubt it was," he replied; "still, it amused me to hear you."

"I am glad of that, at any rate; I was afraid perhaps you were bored."

"Not at all. Of course, I couldn't fail to see that you weren't arriving anywhere. But that I never expected. In fact, what amuses me most about you is, the way in which you continue to hope that you're going to get at some result."

"But didn't we?"

"I don't see that you did. You showed, or tried to show, that we must believe in Good; but you made no attempt to discover what Good is."

"No," I admitted; "that, of course, is much more difficult."

"Exactly; but it is the only point of importance."

"Well," I said, "perhaps if we were to try, we should find that we can come to some agreement even about that."

"I don't believe it."

"But why not?"

"Because people are so radically different, that there is no common ground to build upon."

"But is the difference really so radical as all that?"

"Yes," he said, "I think so. At any rate, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I make you an offer. Here are eight of us, all Englishmen, all contemporaries, all brought up more or less in the same way. And I venture to say that, if you will raise the question, you won't find, even among ourselves, with all the chances in your favour, any substantial agreement about what we think good."

This direct challenge was rather alarming. I didn't feel that I could refuse to take it up, but I was anxious to guard myself against the consequences of failure. So I began, with some hesitation, "You must remember that I have never maintained that at any given moment any given set of people will be found to be in agreement on all points. All I ventured to suggest was, that instead of our all being made, as you contend, radically different, we have, underneath our differences, a common nature, capable of judging, and judging truly, about Good, though only on the basis of actual experience of Good. And on this view I shall, of course, expect to find differences of opinion, corresponding to differences of experience, even among people as much alike as ourselves; only I shall not expect the differences to be finally irreconcilable, but that we shall be able to supplement and elucidate one another's conclusions by bringing to bear each his own experience upon that of the rest."

"Well," he said, "we shall see. I have invited you to make the experiment."

"I am willing," I replied, "if it is agreeable to the others. Only I must ask you to understand from the beginning precisely what it is I am trying to do. I shall be merely describing to you what I have been able to perceive, with such experience as I have had, in this difficult matter; and you will judge, all of you, whether or no, and to what extent, your perceptions coincide with mine, the object being simply to clear up these perceptions of ours, if we can; to define somehow, as it were, what we have seen, in the hope of coming to see something more."

They agreed to take me on my own terms, and I was about to begin, when, happening to catch Dennis' eye, I suddenly felt discouraged. "After all," I said, "I doubt whether it's much use my making the attempt."

"Why, what's the matter?"

"Nothing," I said. "At least—well, I may as well confess it, though it seems like giving away my whole case. The fact is, that there are certain quite fundamental points in this connection on which Dennis and I have never been able to agree; and although I believe we should in time come to understand one another, I doubt whether we can do so here and now. At any rate, he doesn't look at all as if he meant to make it easy for me; and if I cannot carry him along with me, I suppose I may as well give up at once."

"Oh," said Audubon, "if that is all, I will make a concession. We will leave Dennis out of the reckoning. It shall be enough if you can persuade the rest of us."

"But," I urged, "I doubt, even so, whether Dennis will ever allow me to get to the end. You see, he never lets things pass if he doesn't happen to agree."

"Oh," cried Ellis, "it's all right. We will keep him in order."

Dennis laughed. "You're disposing of me," he said, "in a very easy manner. But perhaps I had better go away altogether; for, if I stay, I certainly cannot pledge myself not to interrupt."

"No," I said, "that seems hardly fair. What I propose is, that we should both try to be as conciliatory as we can. And then, by the process of 'give and take,' I shall perhaps slip past you without any really scandalous concession on either side."

"Well," he said, "you can try."

So, after casting about in my mind, I began, with some hesitation, as follows:

"The first thing, then, that I want to say is this: Good, as it seems to me, necessarily involves some form of conscious activity."

As I had expected, Dennis interrupted me at once.

"I don't see that at all," he said. "Consciousness may have nothing to do with it."

"Perhaps, indeed, it may not," I replied, with all the suavity I could command. "I should rather have said that I, as a matter of fact, can form no idea of Good except in connection with consciousness."

"Can you not?" he exclaimed, "but I can! If a thing is good it's good, so it appears to me, whether or no there is any consciousness of it."

"But," I said, "I, you see, myself, have no experience of anything existing apart from consciousness, so it is difficult for me to know whether such a thing would be good or no. But you, perhaps, are differently constituted."

"Not in that point," he replied. "I admit, of course, that there is no experience without consciousness. But we can surely conceive that of which we have no experience? And I should have thought it was clear that Good, like Truth, is, whether or no anyone is aware of it. Or would you say that 2 + 2 = 4 is only true when someone is thinking of it?"

"As to that," I replied, "I would rather not say anything about it just now. On the logical point you may be right; but that, I think, need not at present detain us, because what I am trying to get at, for the moment, is something rather different. I will put it like this: Good, if it is to be conceived as an object of human action, must be conceived, must it not, as an object of consciousness? For otherwise do you think we should trouble to pursue it?"

"I don't know," he said, "whether we should; but perhaps we ought to."

"But," I urged, "do you really think we ought? Do you think, to take an example, that it could be a possible or a right aim for an artist, say, to be perpetually producing, in a state of complete unconsciousness, works which on completion should be immediately hermetically sealed and buried for all eternity at the bottom of the sea? Do you think that he could or ought to consider such production as a Good? And so with all the works of man. Do we, and really ought we to, do anything except with some reference to consciousness?"

"I don't know whether we do," he replied, "but I think it quite possible that we ought."

"Well," I said, "we shall not, I suppose, just now, come to a closer agreement But is there anyone else who shares your view? for, if not, I will, with your permission, go on to the next point"

None spoke, and Dennis made no further opposition. So, after a pause, I proceeded as follows: "I shall assume, then, that Good, in the sense in which I am conceiving it, as an end of human action, involves some kind of conscious activity. And the next question would seem to be, activity of whom?"

"That, at any rate," said Leslie, "appears to be simple enough. It must be an activity of some person or persons."

"Once more," murmured Dennis, "I protest."

But this time I ventured to ignore him, and merely said, in answer to Leslie, "The question, then, will be, what persons?"

"Why," he replied, "ourselves, I suppose!"

"What do you say, Parry?" I asked.

"I don't quite understand," he replied, "the kind of way you put your questions. But my own idea has always been, what I suppose is most people's now, that the Good we are working for is that of some future generation."

At this Leslie made some inarticulate interjection, which I thought it better to ignore. And, answering Parry, I said, "Suppose, then, we were to make a beginning by examining your hypothesis."

"By all means," he said, "though I should have thought we should all have accepted it—unless, perhaps, it were Dennis."

"I most certainly don't!" cried Leslie.

"Nor I," added Audubon.

"Oh you!" cried Parry, "you accept nothing!"

"True"; he replied, "my motto is 'j'attends.'"

"Well," I resumed, "let us follow the argument and see where it leads us. The hypothesis is, that Good involves some state of activity of some generation indefinitely remote. Is not that so, Parry?"

"Yes," he said, "and one can more or less define what the state of activity, as you call it, will be."

"Of course," interposed Ellis, "it will be one of heterogeneous, co-ordinate, coherent——"

"That," I interrupted, "is not at present the question. The question is merely as to the location of Good. According to Parry, it is located in this particular remote generation, and, I suppose, in those that follow it. But now, what about all the other generations, from the beginning of the world onward? Good, it would seem, can have no meaning for them, since it is the special privilege of those who come after them."

"Oh, yes, it has!" he replied, "for it is their business to bring it about, not indeed for themselves, but for their successors."

"But," cried Leslie, "what an absurd idea! Countless myriads of men and women are born upon the earth, live through their complex lives of action and suffering, pleasure and pain, hopes, fears, satisfactions, aspirations, and the like, pursuing what they call Good, and avoiding what they call Bad, under the naïf impression that there is Good and Bad for them—and yet the significance of all this is not really for themselves at all, but for some quite other people who will have the luck to be born in the remote future, and for whose sake alone their fellow-creatures, from the very beginning of time, have been brought into being like so many lifeless tools, to be used up and laid aside, when done with, on the black infinite ash-heap of the dead."

"Oh, come!" said Parry, "you exaggerate! These tools, as you call them, have a good enough time. It does not follow, because the final Good lies in the future, that the present has no Good at all. It has just as much Good as people can get out of it."

"But then," said Leslie, "in that case it is this Good of their own with which each generation is really concerned. So far as they do get Good at all they get it as an activity in themselves."

"Certainly," said Ellis; "and for my own part, I am sick of that cant of living for future generations. Let us, at least, live for ourselves, whether we live well or badly."

"Well," replied Parry, rather stiffly, "of course every one has his own ideas. But I confess that, for my own part, the men I admire are those who have sacrificed themselves for the future."

"But, Parry," I interposed, "let us get clear about this; and with a view to clearness let us take our own case. We, as I understand you, have to keep in view a double Good: first, a Good for ourselves, which is not indeed the perfect Good (for that is reserved for a future generation), but still is something Good as far as it goes—whether it be a certain degree of happiness, or however else we may have to define it; and as to this Good, there appears to be no difficulty, for we who pursue it are also the people who get it That is so, is it not?"

He agreed.

"But now," I continued, "we come to the point of dispute. For besides this Good of our own, we have also, according to the theory, to consider a Good in which we have no share, that of those who are to be born in some indefinite future. And to this remote and alien Good we have even, on occasion, to sacrifice our own."

"Certainly," he said, "all good citizens will think so."

"I believe," I admitted, "that they will. And yet, how strange it seems! For consider it in this way. Imagine that the successive generations can somehow be viewed as contemporaneous—being projected, as it were, from the plane of time into that of space."

"It's rather hard," he said, "to imagine that."

"Well, but try, for the sake of argument; and consider what we shall have. We shall have a society divided into two classes, composed, the one of all the generations who, if they followed one another in time, would precede the first millenarian one; the other of all the millenarian-generations themselves. And of these two classes the first would be perpetually engaged in working for the second, sacrificing to it, if need be, on occasion, all its own Good, but without any hope or prospect of ever entering itself into that other Good which is the monopoly of the other class, but to the production of which its own efforts are directed. What should we say of such a society? Should we not say that it was founded on injustice and inequality, and all those other phrases with which we are wont to denounce a system of serfdom or slavery?"

"But," he objected, "your projection of time into space has falsified the whole situation. For in fact the millenarian generation would not come into being until the others had ceased to be; and therefore the latter would not be being sacrificed to it."

"No," I said, "but they would have been sacrificed; and surely it comes to the same thing?"

"I am not sure," he replied, "and anyhow, I don't think sacrifice is the right word. In a society every man's interest is in the Whole; and when he works for the Whole he is also working for himself."

"No doubt that is true," I replied, "in a society properly constituted, but I question whether it would be true in such a society as I have described. And then there is a further difficulty—and here, I confess, my projection of time into space really does falsify the issue; for in the succession of generations in time, where is the Whole? Each generation comes into being, passes, and disappears; but how, or in what, are they summed up?"

"Why," he said, "in a sense they are all summed up in the last generation."

"But in what sense? Do you mean that their consciousness somehow persists into it, so that they actually enjoy its Good?"

"Of course not," he said, "but I mean that it was conditioned by them, and is the result of their labour and activities."

"In that sense," I replied, "you might say that the oysters I eat are summed up in me. But it would be a poor consolation to the oysters!"

"Well," he rejoined, "whatever you may say, I still think it right that each generation should sacrifice itself (as you call it) for the next. And so, I believe, would you, when it came to the point. At any rate, I have often heard you inveigh against the shortsightedness of modern politicians, and their unwillingness to run great risks and undertake great labours for the future."

"Quite true," I said, "that is the view I take. But I was trying to see how the view could be justified. For it seems to me, I confess, that we can only be expected to labour for what is, in some sense or other, our own Good; and I do not see how the Good of future generations, in your way of putting it, is also ours."

"But," he said, "we have an instinct that it is."

"I believe we have," I replied, "but the question would be, what that instinct really means. Somehow or other, I think it must mean, as you yourself suggested, that our Good is the Good of the Whole. Only the difficulty is to see how there is a Whole at all."

"Well," he said, "perhaps there is no Whole. What then?"

"Why, then," I replied, "how can we justify an instinct which bids us labour and sacrifice ourselves for a Good, which, on this hypothesis, has no significance for us, but only for other people."

"Perhaps," he said, "we cannot justify it, but I am sure we ought to obey it; and, indeed, I believe we cannot do otherwise. Even taking the view that the order of the world is altogether unjust, as I admit it would be on the view we are considering, yet, since we cannot remedy the injustice, we are bound at least to make the best of it; and the best we can do is to prepare the Good for those who come after us, even though we can never enter into it ourselves."

"I am not so sure about that," Ellis interrupted, "I think the best we can do is to try and realize Good for ourselves—as much as we can get, even if we admit that this is but little. For we do at least know, or may hope to discover, what Good for ourselves is; whereas Good for other people is far more hypothetical."

"But, surely," he objected, "that would lead to action we cannot approve—to a sacrifice of all larger Goods to our own pleasure of the moment. We should breed, for example, without any regard to the future efficacy of the race——"

"That," interrupted Ellis, "we do as it is."

"Yes, but we don't justify it—those of us, at least, who think. And, again, we should squander on immediate gratifications wealth which ought to be stored up against the future. And so on, and so on; it is not necessary to multiply examples."

"But," I objected, "we should only do these things if we thought that kind of short-sighted activity to be good; but, as a matter of fact, we do not, we who object to it. And that is because, as I hinted before, our idea of even our own Good is that of an activity in and for the Whole, and not merely in and for ourselves. And, whether it is reasonable or no, we cannot help extending the idea of the Whole, so as to include future generations. But, as it seems to me, the real meaning and justification of our action is not merely that we are seeking the Good of future generations but that we are endeavouring to realize our own Good, which consists in some such form of activity. So that really, as was suggested at the beginning, Good will be a kind of activity in ourselves, even though that activity be directed towards ends in which we do not expect to share."

At this point, Dennis, who had been struggling to speak, broke in at last, in spite of Ellis's efforts to restrain him.

"Why do you keep saying 'Our Good'?" he cried. "Why do you not say the Good? I can't understand this talk of me and thee, our Good, and their Good, as if there were as many Goods as there are people."

"Well," I said, "the distinction, after all, was introduced by Parry, who said that we ought to aim at the Good of a future generation. Still, I admit that I was getting a little unhappy myself at the kind of language into which I was betrayed. But what I want to say is this: So far as it is true at all that it is good to labour for future generations, goodness consists in the activity of so labouring, as much, at least, as in the result produced in those for whose sake the labour is. That, at least, is the only way in which I can find the position reasonable at all."

"I don't see it," said Parry, and was preparing to re-state his position, when Wilson suddenly intervened with a new train of thought.

"The fact is," he said, "you have begun altogether at the wrong end."

"I daresay," I said, "I can't find the end; it's all such a coil."

"Well," he said, "this is where I believe the trouble came in. You started with the idea that the Good must be good for individuals; and that was sure to land you in confusion."

"What then is your idea?" I asked.

"Why," he said, "as you might expect from a biologist, I regard everything from the point of view of the species."

At this I saw Ellis sit up and prepare for an encounter.

"Nature," continued Wilson, "has always in view the Whole not the Part, the species not the individual. And this law, which is true of the whole creation, is thrown into special relief in the case of man, because there the interest of the species is embodied in a particular form—the Society or the State—and may be clearly envisaged, as a thing apart, towards the maintenance of which conscious efforts may be directed."

"And this, which is the end of Nature, according to you, is also the Good?"

"Naturally."

"Well," I said, "I will not recapitulate here the objections I have already urged against the view that the course of Nature determines the content of the Good. For, quite apart from that, it is a view which many people hold—and one which was held long before there was a science of biology—that the community is the end, and the individual only the means."

"But," he said, "biology has given a new basis and a new colour to the view."

"I don't know about that," cried Ellis, unable any longer to restrain himself, "but I am sure it has given us a new kind of language. In the old days, when Wilson's opinion was represented by Plato, men were still men, and were spoken of as such, however much they might be subordinated to the community. But now!—why, if you open one of these sociological books, mostly, I am bound to say, in German, 'Entwurf einer Sozial-anthropologie,' 'Versuch einer anthropologischen Darstellung der menschlichen Gesellschaft vom Sozial-biologischen Standpunkt aus,' and the like—you will hardly be able to realize that you are dealing with human beings at all. I have seen an unmarried woman called a 'female non-childbearing human.' And at the worst, men actually cease to be even animals; they become mere numbers; they are calculated by the theory of combinations; they are masses, averages, classes, curves, anything but men! For every million of the population, it has been solemnly estimated, there will be one genius, one imbecile, 256,791 individuals just above the mean, 256,791 just below it! Observe, 256,791! Not, as one might have been tempted to believe, 256,790! What a saving grace in that odd unit!

And this is the kind of thing that is revolutionizing history and politics! No more great men, no more heroic actions, no more inspirations, passions, and ideals! Nothing but calculations of the chances that A will meet and breed out of B! Nothing but analysis of the mechanism of survival! Nothing but——"

"My dear Ellis," interrupted Wilson, "you appear to me to be digressing."

"Digressing!" he cried "Would that I could digress out of this world altogether! Would that I could digress to a planet where they have no arithmetic! Where a man could be a man, not a figure in an addition sum, a unit in an average, an individual in a species——"

"Where," exclaimed Audubon, taking him up, "a man could be himself, as I have often said, 'imperial, plain, and true.'"

There was a chorus of protestation at the too familiar quotation; and for a time I was unable to lay hold of the broken thread of the argument. But at last I got a hearing for the question I was anxious to address to Wilson.

"You say," I began, "that by Good we mean the Good of the community?"

"I say," he replied, "that that is what we ought to mean."

"But in what sense do you understand the word community?"

"In the sense of that organization of individuals which represents, so to speak, the species."

"How represents?"

"In the sense that it is its function to maintain and perfect the species."

"But is that the function of the community?"

"If it is not, it ought to be; and to a great extent it is. If you look at the social mechanism, not with the eyes of a mere historian, who usually sees nothing, but with those of a biologist and man of science, intent upon essentials, you will find that it is nothing but an elaborate apparatus of selection, natural or artificial, as you like to call it. First, there is the struggle of races, which may be traced not only in war and conquest, but more insidiously under the guise of peace, so that, for example, at this day you may witness throughout Europe the gradual extinction of the long-headed fair by the round-headed dark stock. Then there is the struggle of nation with nation, resulting in the gradual elimination of the weaker—that, of course, is obvious enough; but what is not always so clearly seen is the not less certain fact, that within the limits of each society the same process is everywhere at work. To pass over the economic struggle for existence, of which we are perhaps sufficiently aware, what else is our system of examinations but a mechanism of selection, whereby it is determined that certain persons only shall have access to certain professions?

What else is the convention whereby marriages are confined to people of the same class, thus securing the perpetuation of certain types, and especially of the better-gifted and better-disposed? Turn where we may we find the same phenomenon. Society is a machine for sifting out the various elements of the race, combining the like, disparting the unlike, bringing some to the top, others to the bottom, preserving these, eliminating those, indifferent to the fate, good or bad, of the individuals it controls, but envisaging always the well-being of the Whole."

"But," I objected, "is it so certain that it is well-being that is kept in view? Do you not recognize a process of deterioration as well as of improvement? You mentioned, for instance, that the long-headed fair race, is giving place to what I understand is regarded as an inferior type."

"No doubt," he admitted, "there are periods of decline. Still, on the whole, the movement is an upward one."

"Well," I replied, "that, after all, is not the question we are at present discussing. Your main point is, that when we speak of Good we mean, or should mean, the Good, not of the individual, but of the species. But what, I should like to know, is the species? Is it somehow an entity, or being, that it has a Good?"

"No," he replied, "it is merely, of course, a general name for the individuals; only for all the individuals taken together, not one by one or in groups."

"The Good of the species, then, is the Good of all the individuals taken together."

"Yes."

"But" I said, "how can that be? It is good for the species, according to you, that certain individuals should be eliminated, or should sink to the bottom, or whatever else their fate may be. But is that also good for the individual in question?"

"I don't know about that," he replied, "and I don't see that it matters. I only say that it is good for the species."

"But they are part of the species; so that if it is good for the species it is good for them."

"No! for the Good of the species consists in the selection of the best individuals. It is indifferent to all the rest"

"Then by the Good of the species you mean the good of the selected individuals?"

"Not exactly; I mean it is good that those individuals should be selected."

"But good for whom, if not for them? For the individuals who are eliminated? Or for you who look on? Or perhaps, for God?"

"God! No! I mean good, simply good."

"I'm afraid I don't understand," I said. "Does Good then hang, as it were, in the air, being Good for nobody at all?"

"Well, if you like, we will say it is good for Nature."

"But is Nature, then, a conscious being?"

"I don't say that"

"I am very sorry," I said, "but really I cannot understand you. If you reject God, I see only two alternatives remaining. Either the Good you speak of is that of all the individuals of the species taken together, or it is that of the best individuals; and in either case I seem to see difficulties."

"What difficulties?" asked Parry. For Wilson did not speak.

"Why," I said, "taking the first alternative, I do not see how it can be good for the inferior individuals to be degraded or eliminated. I should have thought, if there were any Good for them, it would consist in their being made better."

"I don't see that," objected Dennis; "it might be the best possible thing, for them, to be eliminated."

"But in that case," I said, "the best possible thing would be absence of Bad, not Good. And so far as we could talk of Good at all, we could not apply it to them?"

"Perhaps not"

"Well then, in that case we have to fall back upon the other alternative, and say that by the Good of the species we mean that of the ultimately selected individuals."

"Well, what then?"

"Why, then, we return, do we not, to the position of Parry, that the Good is that of some particular generation? And there, too, we were met by difficulties. So that altogether I do not really see what meaning to attach to Wilson's conception."

"There is no meaning to be attached to it!" cried Ellis. "The species is a mere screen invented to conceal the massacre of individuals. I'm sick of these biologico-sociologico-anthropologico-historico treatises, with their talk of races, of nations, of classes, never of men! their prate about laws as if they were the real entities, and the people who are supposed to be subject to them mere indifferent particles of stuff! their analysis of the perfection with which the machine works, its combinations, differentiations, subordinations, co-ordinations, and all the other abominations of desolations standing where they ought not, as depressing to the mind as they are cacophonous to the ear! and, worst of all, their impudent demand that we should admire the diabolical process! Admire! As though we should be asked to admire the beauty of the rack and the thumbscrew!"