The Meaning of Good-A Dialogue Part 18

"I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.

What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?

Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent, My gait is no fault-finder's or rejector's gait, I moisten the roots of all that grows."

"This is the meal equally set, this is the meat for natural hunger, It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make appointment with all, I will not have a single person slighted or kept away, The kept-woman, spunger, thief are hereby invited, The heavy-lipped slave is invited, the venerealee is invited; There shall be no difference between them and the rest."

"That's rather strong," remarked Parry.

"Don't you like it?" Ellis inquired.

"I think I might like it if I were drunk."

"Ah, but a poet, you see, is always drunk!"

'Well, I unfortunately, am often sober; and then I find the sponger and the venerealee anything but agreeable objects."

"Besides," said Audubon, "though it's very good of Walt Whitman to invite us all, the mere fact of dining with him, however miscellaneous the company, doesn't alter the character of the dinner."

"No," cried Leslie, "and that's just the point Ellis has missed all through. Even if it be true that the world appears to him as a work of art, it doesn't appear so to the personages of the drama. What's play to him is grim earnest to them; and, what's more, he himself is an actor not a mere spectator, and may have that fact brought home to him, any moment, in his flesh and blood."

"Of course!" replied Ellis, "and I wouldn't have it otherwise. The point of the position is that one should play one's part oneself, but play it as an artist with one's eye upon the total effect, never complaining of Evil merely because one happens to suffer, but taking the suffering itself as an element in the aesthetic perfection of the Whole."

"I should like to see you doing that," said Bartlett, rather brutally, "when you were down with a fit of yellow fever."

"Or shut up in a mad-house," said Leslie.

"Or working eight hours a day at business," said Audubon, "with the thermometer 100 degrees in the shade."

"Oh well," answered Ellis, "those are the confounded accidents of our unhealthy habits of life."

"I am afraid," I said, "they are accidents very essential to the substance of the world."

"Besides," cried Parry, "there's the whole moral question, which you seem to ignore altogether. If there be any activity that is good, it must be, I suppose, the one that is right; and the activity you describe seems to have nothing to do with right and wrong."

"Right and wrong! Right and wrong!" echoed Ellis,

"Das hor ich sechzlg Jahre wiederholen, Ich fluche drauf, aber verstohlen."

"You may curse as much as you like," replied Parry, "but you can hardly deny that there is an intimate connection between Good and Right."

Instead of replying Ellis began to whistle; so I took up Parry's point and said, "Yes, but what is the connection? My own idea is that Right is really a means to Good. And I should separate off all activity that is merely a means from that which is really an end in itself, and good."

"But is there any activity," objected Leslie, "which is not merely a means?"

"Oh yes," I said, "I should have thought so. Most men, it seems to me, are well enough content with what they are doing for its own sake; even though at the same time they have remoter ends in view, and if these were cut off would cease, perhaps, to take pleasure in the work of the moment. The att.i.tude is not very logical, perhaps, but I think it is very common. Why else is it that men who believe and maintain that they only work in order to make money, nevertheless are so unwilling to retire when the money is made; or, if they do, are so often dissatisfied and unhappy?"

"Oh," said Audubon, "that is only because boredom is worse than pain.

It is not that they find any satisfaction in their work; it's only that they find even greater distress in idleness."

"But, surely," I replied, "even you yourself would hardly maintain that there is nothing men do for its own sake, and because they take delight in it. If there were nothing else at least there is play--and I have known you play cricket yourself!"

"Known him play cricket!" cried Ellis. "Why, if he had his way, he would do nothing else, except at the times when he was riding or shooting."

"Well," I said, "that's enough, for the moment, to refute him. And, in fact, I suppose none of us would seriously maintain that there is no form of activity which men feel to be good for its own sake, though the Good of course may be partial and precarious."

"No," said Ellis, "I should rather inquire whether there is any form which they pursue merely and exclusively as a means to something else."

"Oh, surely!" I said. "One might mention, for instance, the act of visiting the dentist. Or what is more important, and what, I suppose, Parry had in his mind, there is the whole cla.s.s of activities which one distinguishes as moral."

"Do you mean to say," said Parry, "that moral action has no Good in itself but is only a means to some other Good?"

"I don't know," I replied; "I am rather inclined to think so. But it all depends upon how we define it."

"And how do you define it?"

"I should say that its specific quality consists in the refusal to seize some immediate and inferior Good with a view to the attainment of one that is remoter but higher."

"Oh, well, of course," cried Leslie, "if you define it so, your proposition follows of itself."

"So I thought," I said. "But how would you define it?"

"I should say it is a free and perfect activity in Good."

"In that case, it is of course the very activity we are in quest of, and we should come upon it, if we were successful, at the end of our inquiry. But I was supposing that the essence of morality is expressed in the word 'ought'; and in that I take to be implied the definition I suggested--namely, action pursued not for its own sake, but for the sake of something else."

"Oh, oh!" cried Dennis, "there I really must protest! I've kept silent as long as I possibly could; but when it comes to describing as a mere means the only kind of activity which is an end in itself----"

"The only kind that is an end in itself!" I repeated, in some dismay.

"Is that really what you think?"

"Of course it is! why not?"

"I don't know. I have always supposed that, when we are doing what we ought, we are acting with a view to some ultimate Good."

"Well, I, on the contrary, believe that we ought absolutely, without reference to anything else. It is a unique form of activity, dependent on nothing but itself; and for anything we have yet shown, it may be the Good we are in quest of."

This suggestion, unexpected as it was, threw me into great perplexity.

I did not see exactly how to meet it; yet it awakened no response in me, nor as I thought In any of the others. But while I was hesitating, Leslie began:

"Do you mean that the Good might consist simply in doing what we ought, without any other accompaniment or conditions?"

"Yes, I think it might."

"So that, for example, a man might be in possession of the Good, even while he was being racked or burnt alive, so long only as he was doing what he ought"

"Yes, I suppose he might be."