gh perhaps you may not agree. And if that be so, even if our
judgments about Good that we have experienced were clear, our
conclusions drawn from them would yet be very imperfect and tentative,
because there would be so much Good that we had not experienced. But,
in fact, as it seems, our judgments even about what we do experience
are confused, because every experience is indefinitely complex, and
contains, along with the Good, so much that is indifferent or bad. And
to analyze out precisely what it is that we are judging to be good is
often a difficult and laborious task, though it is one that should be
a main preoccupation with us all."

"You think, then, that there are two reasons for the obscurity and
confusion that prevail in our judgments about Good--one, that our
experience is limited, the other that it is complex?"

"Yes; and our position in this respect, as it always seems to me, is
like that of people who are learning to see, or to develop some other
sense. Something they really do perceive, but they find it hard to say
what. Their knowledge of the object depends on the state of the organ;
and it is only by the progressive perfecting of that, that they can
settle their doubts and put an end to their disputes, whether with
themselves or with other people."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, if you will allow me to elaborate my metaphor, I conceive that
we have a kind of internal sense, like a rudimentary eye, whose
nature it is to be sensitive to Good, just as it is the nature of
the physical eye to be sensitive to light. But this eye of the soul,
being, as I said, rudimentary, does not as yet perceive Good with any
clearness or precision, but only in a faint imperfect way, catching
now one aspect of it, now another, but never resting content in any of
these, being driven on by the impulse to realize itself to ever surer
and finer discrimination, with the sense that it is learning its own
nature as it learns that of its object, and that it will never be
itself a true and perfect organ until it is confronted with the true
and perfect Good. And as by the physical eye we learn by degrees
to distinguish colours and forms, to separate and combine them,
and arrange them in definite groups, and then, going further, after
discerning in this way a world of physical things, proceed to fashion
for our delight a world of art, in that finer experience becoming
aware of our own finer self; so, by this eye of hers, does the soul