ke, our longing and dissatisfaction,
our restlessness never-to-be-quenched, our counting as nothing what
has been attained in the pressing on to more, our lying down and
rising up, our stumbling and recovering, whether we fail, as we call
it, or succeed, whether we act or suffer, whether we hate or love, all
that we are, all that we hope to be springs from the passion for Good,
and points, if we are right in our analysis, to love as its end."

Upon this Audubon broke out:--"That's all very well! But the one
crucial point you persistently evade. It may be quite true, for aught
I know, that the Good you describe is the Good we seek--though I am
not aware of seeking it myself. But, after all, the real question is,
Can we get it? If not, we are mere fools to seek it."

"So," I said, "you have brought me to bay at last! And, since you
challenge me, I am bound to admit that I don't know whether we can get
it or no."

"Well then," he said, impatiently, "what is the good of all this
discussion?"

"Clearly," I replied, "no good at all, if there be no Good, which is
the point to which you are always harking back. But you have surely
forgotten the basis of our whole argument?"

"What basis?"

"Why, that from the very beginning we have been trying to find out,
not so much what we know (for on that point I admit that we know
little enough), as what it is necessary for us to believe, if we are
to find significance in life."

"But how can we believe what we don't know?"

"Why," I replied, "we can surely adopt postulates, as indeed we always
do in practical life. Every man who is about to undertake anything
makes the assumption, in the first place, that it is worth doing, and
In the second place that it is possible to be done. He may be wrong in
both these assumptions, but without them he could not move a step. And
so with regard to the business of life, as a whole, it is necessary
to assume, if we are to make anything of it at all, both that there is
Good, and that we know something about it; and also, I think, that it
is somehow or other realizable; but I do not know that any of these
assumptions could be proved."

"But what right have we, then, to make such assumptions?"

"We have none at all, so far as knowledge is concerned. Indeed, to my
mind, it is necessary, if we are to be honest with ourselves, that we
should never forget that they are assumptions, so long as they have
not received definite proof. But still they