“Perhaps so.”

“But, then, in that case, the more we realized Good the less we should be aware of obligation.  And would a life without conscious and felt obligation be a life specifically ethical, in the sense in which you seemed to be using the word?”

“I should think not; for ‘ought’ in the ethical sense does certainly seem to me to involve the idea of obligation.”

“In that case it would seem to be truer to say that activity is Good, not in so far as it is ethical but precisely in so far as it is not.  At any rate, I should maintain that we come nearer to a realization of Good in the activities which we pursue without effort or friction, than in those which involve a struggle between duty and inclination.”

“But the activities we pursue without effort or friction often enough are bad.”

“No doubt; but some of them are good, and it is to those I should look for the best idea I could form of what Good might be.”

“Well,” he said, “go on!  Once more I have entered my protest; and now I leave the road clear.”

“The worst of you is,” said Ellis, “that you always turn up in front!  When we think we have passed you once for all, you take a short cut across the fields, and there you are in the middle of the road, with the same old story, that we’re altogether on the wrong track.”

“Well,” said Dennis, sententiously, “I do my duty.”

“And,” replied Ellis, “no doubt you have your reward!  Proceed!” he continued, turning to me.

“Well,” I said, “I suppose I must try to go through to the end, though these tactics of Dennis make me very nervous.  I shall suppose, however, that I have convinced him that it is not in ethical activity as such that we can expect to find the most perfect example of Good.  And now I propose to examine in turn some other of our activities, starting with that which seems to be the most primitive of all.”

“And which is that?”

“I was thinking of the activity of our bodily senses, our direct contact, so to speak, with objects, without the intermediation of reflection, through the touch, the sight, the hearing, and the rest.  Is there anything in all this which we could call good?”

“Is there anything!” cried Ellis.  “What a question to ask!” And he broke out with the lines from Browning’s “Saul”: 

  “Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock,
  The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock
  Of the plunge in a pool’s living water, the hunt of the bear,
  And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair. 
  And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine,
  And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine,
  And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell
  That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well. 
  How good is man’s life, the mere living! how fit to employ
  All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy.”