“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 as it is sense.”

“No doubt,” he said, “but I don’t feel sure that it is.”

“In that case you can show me where I am wrong.”

“No,” he replied, “for, as I said, I can’t follow you.”

“He means he won’t,” said Ellis, breaking in with his usual air of an unprejudiced outsider, “But after all, what does it really matter?  Whatever the reason may be for our uncertainty as to Good, the fact remains that we are uncertain.  There’s my Good, thy Good, his Good, our Good, your Good, their Good; and all these Goods in process of flux, according to the time of day, the time of life, and the state of the liver.  That being so, what is the use of discussing Good in itself?  And why be so disturbed about it?  There’s Leslie, for instance, looking as if the bottom were knocked out of the universe because he can’t discover his objective standard!  My dear boy, life goes on just the same, my life, his life, your life, all the lives.  Why not make an end of the worry at once by admitting frankly that Good is a chimaera, and that we get on very well without it?”

“But I don’t get on well without it!” Leslie protested.

“No,” I said, “and I hoped that by this time we were agreed that none of us could.  But Ellis is incorrigible.”

“You don’t suppose,” he replied, “that I am going to agree with you merely because you override me in argument—­even if you did, which you don’t.”

“But at least,” cried Leslie, “you needn’t tell us so often that you disagree.”

“Very well,” he said, “I am dumb.”  And for a moment there was silence, till I began to fear that our argument would collapse; when, to my relief, Parry returned to the charge.

“You will think me,” he began, “as obstinate as Ellis; but I can’t help coming back to my old point of view.  Somehow or other, I feel sure you are making a difficulty which the practical man does not really feel.  You object to my saying that he knows what is good by instinct; but somehow or other I am sure that he does know it.  And what I suggest now is, that he finds it written in experience.”