external reference that gives its
certainty to science; and such a reference is impossible in the case
of judgments about the Beautiful and the Good. Such judgments are
merely records of what we think or feel. These ideas of ours may or
may not happen to be consistent one with another; but whether they are
so or not, they are merely our ideas, and have nothing to do with the
essential nature of reality."

"I am not sure," I replied, "that the distinction really holds in the
way in which you put it. Let us take for a moment the point of view
of God--only for the sake of argument," I added, seeing him about to
protest. "God, we will suppose, knows all Being through and through
as it really is; and along with this knowledge of reality he has a
conviction that reality is good. Now, with this conviction of his none
other, _ex hypothesi_, can compete; for he being God, we must at any
rate admit that if anybody can be right, it must be he. No one then
can dispute or shake his opinion; and since he is eternal he will
not change it of himself. Is there then, under the circumstances, any
distinction of validity between his judgment that what is, is, and his
judgment that what is, is good?"

"I don't see the use," he replied, "of considering such an imaginary
case. But if you press me I can only say that I still adhere to my
view that any judgment about Good, whether made by God or anybody
else, can be no more than a subjective expression of opinion."

"But," I rejoined, "in a sense, all certainty is subjective, in so far
as the certainty has to be perceived. It is impossible to eliminate
the Subject. In the case, for example, upon which you dwelt, of the
impressions of external sense, the certainty of the impressions is
your and my certainty that we have them; and so in the case of a
cogent argument; for any given person the test of the cogency is his
perception that the cogency is there. And it is the same with
the Beautiful and the Good; there is no conceivable test except
perception. Our difficulty here is simply that perceptions conflict;
not that we have no independent test. But if, as in the case I
imagined, the perception of Good was harmonious with itself, then
the certainty on that point would be as final and complete as the
certainty in the proof of a proposition of Euclid."

"I am afraid," said Wilson, "I don't follow you. You're beginning to
talk metaphysics."

"Call it what you will," I replied, "so long only