tributing to produce some day in
somebody else."

"These 'somebody elses,'" cried Ellis, "being after all nothing but
other individuals like themselves! so that you get an infinite series
of people doing Good to one another, and none of them getting any
Good for themselves, like the: islanders who lived by taking in one
another's washing!"

"Well, but," said Wilson, "supposing I consent, for the sake of
argument, to let you estimate the worth of life by the Good which
individuals realize in themselves. What follows then?"

"Why, then" I said, "it would, I think, be very hard to maintain that
we do most of us realize Good enough to make it seem worth while to
have lived at all, if indeed we are simply extinguished at death. At
any rate, if we set aside an exceptional few, and look frankly at the
mass of men and women, judging them not as means to something else,
but as ends in themselves, with reference not to happiness, or
content, or acquiescence, or indifference, but simply to Good--if we
look at them so, can we honestly say that there is enough significance
in their lives to justify the labour and expense of producing and
maintaining them?"

"I don't know," he replied, "they probably think themselves that there
is."

"Probably," I rejoined, "they do not think about it at all. But what I
should like to know is, what do you think?"

"I don't see," he objected, "how I can have any opinion; the problem
is too vast and indeterminate."

"Is it?" cried Audubon, intervening in his curious abrupt way, and
with more than his usual energy of protest "Well, indeterminate or no,
it's the one point on which I have no doubt. Most people are only fit
to have their necks broken, and it would be the kindest thing for them
if some one would do it."

"Well," I said, "at any rate that is a vigorous opinion. Does anyone
else share it?"

"I do," said Leslie, "on the whole. Most men, if they are not actually
bad, are at best indifferent--'sacs merely, floating with open mouths
for food to slip in.'"

"Upon my word!" cried Bartlett, "it's wonderful how much you know
about them, considering how very little you've seen of them!"

"Oh!" I said, turning to him, "then you do not agree with this
estimate?"

"I!" he said. "Oh, no! I am not a superior person! Most men, I
suppose, are as good as we are, and probably a great deal better!"

"They might well be that," I replied, "without being particularly
good. But perhaps, as you se