“Yes,” he said, “perhaps it is, but still I must protest against this appeal to prejudice and passion.  Supposing the truth really were as I suggested, we should have to face it, whether or no it seemed to ruin our own life.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “supposing the truth were so.  But, after all, we have no sufficient theoretical reason for believing it to be so, and every kind of practical reason against it.  We cannot, it is true, demonstrate—­and that was admitted from the first—­that any of our judgments about what is good are true; but there is no reason why we should not believe—­and I should say we must believe—­that somehow or other they do at least have truth in them.”

“Well, and if so?”

“If so, we do not depend, as you said we do, or at least we do not believe ourselves to depend, for our knowledge about Good, upon some purely rational process not yet discovered; but those things which we judge to be good really, we think, in some sense or so, and by analyzing and classifying and comparing our experiences of such things we may come to see more clearly what it is in them that we judge to be good; and again by increasing experience we may come to know more Good than we knew; and generally, if we once admit that we have some light, we may hope, by degrees, to get more; and that getting of more light will be the most important business, not only of philosophy, but of life.”

“But if we can judge of Good at all, why do we not judge rightly?  If we really have a perception, how is it that it is confused, not clear?”

“I cannot tell how or why; but perhaps it is something of this kind.  Our experience, in the first place, is limited, and we cannot know Good except in so far as we experience it—­so, at least, I think, though perhaps you may not agree.  And if that be so, even if our judgments about Good that we have experienced were clear, our conclusions drawn from them would yet be very imperfect and tentative, because there would be so much Good that we had not experienced.  But, in fact, as it seems, our judgments even about what we do experience are confused, because every experience is indefinitely complex, and contains, along with the Good, so much that is indifferent or bad.  And to analyze out precisely what it is that we are judging to be good is often a difficult and laborious task, though it is one that should be a main preoccupation with us all.”

“You think, then, that there are two reasons for the obscurity and confusion that prevail in our judgments about Good—­one, that our experience is limited, the other that it is complex?”

“Yes; and our position in this respect, as it always seems to me, is like that of people who are learning to see, or to develop some other sense.  Something they really do perceive, but they find it hard to say what.  Their knowledge of the object depends on the state of the organ; and it is only by the progressive perfecting of that, that they can settle their doubts and put an end to their disputes, whether with themselves or with other people.”