“Oh,” said Audubon, “that is only because boredom is worse than pain.  It is not that they find any satisfaction in their work; it’s only that they find even greater distress in idleness.”

“But, surely,” I replied, “even you yourself would hardly maintain that there is nothing men do for its own sake, and because they take delight in it.  If there were nothing else at least there is play—­and I have known you play cricket yourself!”

“Known him play cricket!” cried Ellis.  “Why, if he had his way, he would do nothing else, except at the times when he was riding or shooting.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s enough, for the moment, to refute him.  And, in fact, I suppose none of us would seriously maintain that there is no form of activity which men feel to be good for its own sake, though the Good of course may be partial and precarious.”

“No,” said Ellis, “I should rather inquire whether there is any form which they pursue merely and exclusively as a means to something else.”

“Oh, surely!” I said.  “One might mention, for instance, the act of visiting the dentist.  Or what is more important, and what, I suppose, Parry had in his mind, there is the whole class of activities which one distinguishes as moral.”

“Do you mean to say,” said Parry, “that moral action has no Good in itself but is only a means to some other Good?”

“I don’t know,” I replied; “I am rather inclined to think so.  But it all depends upon how we define it.”

“And how do you define it?”

“I should say that its specific quality consists in the refusal to seize some immediate and inferior Good with a view to the attainment of one that is remoter but higher.”

“Oh, well, of course,” cried Leslie, “if you define it so, your proposition follows of itself.”

“So I thought,” I said.  “But how would you define it?”

“I should say it is a free and perfect activity in Good.”

“In that case, it is of course the very activity we are in quest of, and we should come upon it, if we were successful, at the end of our inquiry.  But I was supposing that the essence of morality is expressed in the word ‘ought’; and in that I take to be implied the definition I suggested—­namely, action pursued not for its own sake, but for the sake of something else.”

“Oh, oh!” cried Dennis, “there I really must protest!  I’ve kept silent as long as I possibly could; but when it comes to describing as a mere means the only kind of activity which is an end in itself——­”

“The only kind that is an end in itself!” I repeated, in some dismay.  “Is that really what you think?”

“Of course it is! why not?”

“I don’t know.  I have always supposed that, when we are doing what we ought, we are acting with a view to some ultimate Good.”

“Well, I, on the contrary, believe that we ought absolutely, without reference to anything else.  It is a unique form of activity, dependent on nothing but itself; and for anything we have yet shown, it may be the Good we are in quest of.”