“No,” I said, “in that way you will get, as you hint, nothing but an infinite regress.  The perception of Good, whenever it comes, must be, in the last analysis, something direct, immediate, and self-evident; and so far I am in agreement with Parry.  My only quarrel with him was in regard to his assumption that the judgments we make about Good are final and conclusive.  The experiences we recognize as good are always, it seems to me, also bad; because we are never able to apprehend or experience what is absolutely Good.  Only, as I like to believe—­you may say I have no grounds for the belief—­we are always progressing towards such a Good; and the more of it we apprehend and experience, the more we are aware of our own well-being; or perhaps I ought to say, of the well-being of that part of us, whatever it may be—­I call it the soul—­which pursues after Good.  For her attitude, perhaps you will agree, towards her object, is not simply one of perception, but one of appetency and enjoyment.  Her aim is not merely to know Good, but to experience it; so that along with her apprehension of Good goes her apprehension of her own well-being, dependent upon and varying with her relation to that, her object.  Thus she is aware of a tension, as it were, when she cannot expand, of a drooping and inanition when nutriment fails, of a rush of health and vigour as she passes into a new and larger life, as she freely unfolds this or that aspect of her complex being, triumphs at last over an obstacle that has long hemmed and thwarted her course, and rests for a moment in free and joyous consciousness of self, like a stream newly escaped from a rocky gorge, to meander in the sun through a green melodious valley.  And this perception she has of her own condition is like our perception of health and disease.  We know when we are well, not by any process of ratiocination, by applying from without a standard of health deduced by pure thought, but simply by direct sensation of well-being.  So it is with this soul of ours, which is conversant with Good.  Her perception of Good is but the other side of her perception of her own well-being, for her well-being consists in her conformity to Good.  Thus every phase of her growth (in so far as she grows) is in one sense good, and in another bad; good in so far as it is self-expression, bad in so far as the expression is incomplete.  From the limitations of her being she flies, towards its expansion she struggles; and by her perception that every Good she attains is also bad, she is driven on in her quest of that ultimate Good which would be, if she could reach it, at once the complete realization of herself, and her complete conformity to Good.”

“But,” he objected, “apart from other difficulties, in your method of discovering the Good is there no place for Reason at all?”