nevertheless are somehow good, which is the hypothesis we were excluding.  Similarly, if you are a lawyer, you will not set your heart on doing justice, or perfecting the law; such ends as these for you are mere illusions; for even if justice exist at all, it certainly is not a Good, for if it were, it would be a Good for all, and, as we agree, there is no such thing.  Men like Bentham, therefore, to you will be mere visionaries, and the legal system as a whole will have no sense or purport, except so far as it contributes to sharpen your wits and fill your pocket And so, in general, with all professions and occupations; whichever you may adopt, you will treat it merely as a means to your own Good; and since you have no Good which is also common to other men, you will use these others without scruple to further what you conceive to be your own advantage, without necessarily paying any regard to what they may conceive to be theirs.”

“Well,” he said, “and why not?”

“I don’t ask ’why not’?” I replied, “I ask merely whether it would be so? whether you do, as a matter of fact, conceive it possible that you should ever adopt such an attitude?”

“Well, no,” he admitted, “I don’t think it is; but that is an idiosyncrasy of mine; and I have no doubt there are plenty of other men who are precisely in the position you describe.  Take, for example, a man like the late Jay Gould.  Do you suppose that he, in his business operations, ever had any regard for anything except his own personal advantage?  Do you suppose he cared how many people he ruined?  Do you suppose he cared even whether he ruined his country, except so far as such ruin might interfere with his own profit?  Or look again at the famous Mr. Leiter of Chicago!  What do you suppose it mattered to him that he might be starving half the world, and imperilling the governments of Europe?  It was enough for him that he should realize a fortune; of all the rest, I suppose, he washed his hands.  He and men like him adopt, I have no doubt, precisely the position which you are trying to show is impossible.”

“No,” I said, “I am not trying to show that it is impossible in general; I am only trying to show that it is impossible for you.  And my object is to suggest that if a man does deny a general Good, he denies it, as I say, at his peril.  If his denial is genuine, and not merely verbal, it will lead him to conduct of the kind I have described.”

“But surely,” interrupted Leslie, “you have no right to assume that a disbelief in a general Good, however genuine, necessarily involves a sheer egoism in conduct?  For a man might find that his own Good consisted in furthering the Good of other people; and in that case of course he will try to further it.”