“I don’t know that I swear allegiance to any of them,” he replied.  “I merely ventured to suggest that it is only by some such method of pure reason that one can ever hope to discover Good.”

“You do not profess then,” I said, “to have discovered any such method yourself?”

“No.”

“Nor do you feel sure that anyone else has?”

“No.”

“You simply lie down and block the road?”

“Yes,” he said, “and you may walk over me if you can.”

“No,” I said, “It will be simpler, I think, if possible, to walk round you.”  For by this time an idea had occurred to me.

“Do so,” he said, “by all means, if you can.”

“Well” I began, “let us suppose for the sake of argument that there really is some such method as you suggest of discovering Good—­a purely rational method, independent of all common experience.”

“Let us suppose it,” he said, “if you are willing.”

“Is it your idea then,” I continued, “that this Good so discovered, would be out of all relation to what we call goods?  Or would it be merely the total reality of which they are imperfect and inadequate expressions?”

“I do not see,” he said, “why it should have any relationship to them.  All the things we call good may really be bad; or some good and some bad in a quite chaotic fashion.  There is no reason to suppose that our ideas about Good have any validity unless it were by an accidental coincidence.”

“And further,” I said, “though we really do believe there is a Good, and that there is a purely rational and a priori method of discovering it, yet we do not profess to have ascertained that method ourselves, nor do we feel sure that it has been ascertained by anyone?  In any case, we admit, I suppose, that to the great mass of men, both of our own and all previous ages, such a method has remained unknown and unsuspected?”

He agreed.

“But these men, nevertheless, have been pursuing Goods under the impression that they were really good.”

“Yes.”

“And in this pursuit they have been expending, great men and small alike, or rather those whom we call great and small, all that store of energy, of passion, and blood and tears which makes up the drama of history?”

“Undoubtedly!”

“But that expenditure, as we now see, was futile and absurd.  The purposes to which it was directed were not really good, nor had they any tendency to promote Good, unless it were in some particular case by some fortunate chance.  Whatever men have striven to achieve, whether like Christ, to found a religion, or, like Caesar, to found a polity, whether their quest were virtue or power or truth, or any other of the ends we are accustomed to value and praise, or whether they sought the direct opposites of these, or simply lived from hour to hour following without reflexion the impulse of the moment, in any and every case all alike, great and small, good and bad, leaders