you." For by this time an idea had occurred to me.

"Do so," he said, "by all means, if you can."

"Well" I began, "let us suppose for the sake of argument that there
really is some such method as you suggest of discovering Good--a
purely rational method, independent of all common experience."

"Let us suppose it," he said, "if you are willing."

"Is it your idea then," I continued, "that this Good so discovered,
would be out of all relation to what we call goods? Or would it be
merely the total reality of which they are imperfect and inadequate
expressions?"

"I do not see," he said, "why it should have any relationship to them.
All the things we call good may really be bad; or some good and some
bad in a quite chaotic fashion. There is no reason to suppose that
our ideas about Good have any validity unless it were by an accidental
coincidence."

"And further," I said, "though we really do believe there is a
Good, and that there is a purely rational and _a priori_ method of
discovering it, yet we do not profess to have ascertained that method
ourselves, nor do we feel sure that it has been ascertained by anyone?
In any case, we admit, I suppose, that to the great mass of men, both
of our own and all previous ages, such a method has remained unknown
and unsuspected?"

He agreed.

"But these men, nevertheless, have been pursuing Goods under the
impression that they were really good."

"Yes."

"And in this pursuit they have been expending, great men and small
alike, or rather those whom we call great and small, all that store
of energy, of passion, and blood and tears which makes up the drama of
history?"

"Undoubtedly!"

"But that expenditure, as we now see, was futile and absurd. The
purposes to which it was directed were not really good, nor had they
any tendency to promote Good, unless it were in some particular
case by some fortunate chance. Whatever men have striven to achieve,
whether like Christ, to found a religion, or, like Caesar, to found
a polity, whether their quest were virtue or power or truth, or any
other of the ends we are accustomed to value and praise, or whether
they sought the direct opposites of these, or simply lived from hour
to hour following without reflexion the impulse of the moment, in any
and every case all alike, great and small, good and bad, leaders and
followers, or however else we may class them, were, in fact, equally
insignificant and absurd, the idle sport of illu