flaws!"

"But even if it were perfect," cried Ellis, "would it be any the
better? Imagine being deprived of the whole content of life--of
nature, of history, of art, of religion, of everything in which we
are really interested; imagine being left to turn for ever, like a
squirrel in a cage, or rather like the idea of a squirrel in the idea
of a cage, round and round the wheel of these hollow notions, without
hands, without feet, without anything anywhere by which we could lay
hold of a something that is not thought, a something solid, resistant,
palpitating, 'luscious and aplomb,' as Walt Whitman might say, a
sense, a flesh, call it what you will, the unintelligible, but still
the indispensable, that which, even if it be bad, we cannot afford to
miss, and which, if it be not the Good itself, the Good must somehow
include!"

Dennis appeared to be somewhat struck by this way of putting the
matter. "But," he urged, "my difficulty is that if you admit sense, or
anything analogous to it, anything at once directly presented and also
alien to thought, you get, as you said yourself, something which is
unintelligible; and a Good which is not intelligible will be, so far,
not good."

"But," I said, "what do you mean by intelligible?"

"I think," he replied, "that I mean two things, both of which must be
present. First, that there shall be a necessary connection among the
elements presented; and secondly, that the elements themselves should
be of such a kind as to be, as it were, transparent to that which
apprehends them, so that it asks no questions as to what they are
or whence they come, but accepts them naturally and as a matter of
course, with the same inevitability as it accepts its own being."

"And these conditions, you think, are fulfilled by the objects of
thought as you defined them?

"I think so."

"I am not so sure of that," I said, "it would require a long
discussion. But, anyhow, you also seemed to admit, when Ellis pressed
you, that thought of that kind could hardly be identified absolutely
with Good."

"I admit," he replied, "that there are difficulties in that view."

"But at the same time the Good, whatever it be, ought to be
intelligible in the sense you have explained?"

"I should say so."

"And so should I. But now, the question is, can we not conceive of
any other kind of object, which might have, on the one hand, the
intelligibility you ascribe to pure ideas, and on the other, that
immediate