“But,” said Leslie, “do you really think that there is no common Good except this, which you yourself admit to be rather a condition of Good than Good itself?”

“No,” I replied, “that is not my view.  I do not, myself, regard society as nothing but a condition of the realization of independent, individual Goods.  On the contrary, I think that the Good of each individual consists in his relations with other individuals.  But this I do not know that I am in a position to establish.  Meantime, however, we can, I think, maintain, that few candid men, understanding the issue, will really deny altogether a common Good; for they will have to admit that in society we have at the very least a common condition of Good.”

“But still,” objected Leslie, “even so we have no proof that there is a common Good, but only that most civilized men, if pressed, would probably admit one.”

“Certainly,” I replied, “and I pretend nothing more.  I have not attempted to prove that there is a common Good, nor even that it is impossible not to believe in one.  I merely wished to show, as before, that if a man disbelieves, he disbelieves, so to speak, at his own peril.  And to sum up the argument, what I think we have shown is, that to deny a common Good is, in the first place, to deny to one’s life and action all worth except what is bound up with one’s own Good, to the complete exclusion of any Good of all.  In the second place, it is to deny all worth to every public and social institution—­to religion, law, government, the family, all activities, in a word, which contribute to and make up what we call society.  Further, it is to empty history, which is the record of society, of its main interest and significance, and in particular to eliminate the idea of progress; for progress, of course, implies a common Good towards which progress is directed.  In brief, it is to strip a man of his whole social self, and reveal him a poor, naked, shivering Ego, implicated in relations from which he may derive what advantage he can for himself, but which, apart from that advantage, have no point or purport or aim; it is to make him an Egoist even against his will; leaving him for his solitary ideal a cult of self-development, deprived of its main attraction by its dissociation from the development of others.  Now, if any man, having a full sense of what is implied in his words (a sense, not merely conceived by the intellect, but felt, as it were, in every nerve and tissue) will seriously and deliberately deny that he believes in a common Good; if he will not merely make the denial with his lips, but actually carry it out in his daily life, adjusting to his verbal proposition his habitual actions, feelings, and thoughts; if he will and can really and genuinely do this, then I, for my part, am willing to admit that I cannot prove him to be wrong.  All I can do is to set my experience against his, and to appeal to the experience of others; and we must wait till further experience on either