“I don’t know about that,” said Ellis.  “I, for my part, at any rate, shall be very loth to dwell upon them.  I sometimes think these are the only pure Goods.”

“But at least,” I replied, “you will admit that they are precarious.  It is only at moments, and at moments that come and go without choice of ours, that this harmonious relation becomes established between our senses and the outer world.  The very same things which at such times appear to be perfectly at one with ourselves, as if they had been made for us and we for them, we see and feel to have also a nature not only distinct but even alien and hostile to our own.  The water which cools our skin and quenches our thirst also drowns; the fire which warms and comforts also burns; and so on through all the chapter—­I need not weary you with details.  Nature, you will agree, not only ministers to our bodies, she torments and destroys them; she is our foe in ways at least as varied and efficacious as she is our friend.”

“But,” objected Ellis, “that is only because we don’t treat her properly; we have to learn how to manage her.”

“Perhaps,” I replied, “though I should prefer to say, we have to learn how to fight and subdue her.  But in any case we have laid our finger here upon a defect in this first kind of Goods—­they are, as I said, precarious.  And the discovery of that fact, one might say, was the sword of the angel that drove man out of his imaginary Eden.  For at first we may suppose him, (if Wilson will permit me to romance a little,) seizing every delight as it offered itself, under an instinctive impression that there were nothing but delights to be met with, eating when he was hungry, drinking when he was thirsty, sleeping when he was tired, and so on, in unquestioning trust of his natural impulses.  But then, as he learnt by experience how evil follows good, and pleasure often enough is bought by pain, he would begin, would he not, instead of simply accepting Good where it is, to endeavour to create it where it is not, sacrificing often enough the present to the future, and rejecting many immediate delights for the sake of those more remote?  And this involves a complete change in his attitude; for he is endeavouring now to establish by his own effort that harmony between himself and the world which he fondly hoped at first was immediately given.”

“But,” objected Wilson, “he never did hope anything of the kind.  This reconstruction of the past is all imaginary.”

“I dare say it may be,” I replied, “but that is of little consequence, if it helps us to seize our point more clearly; for we are not at present writing history.  Man, then, we will suppose, is thus set out upon what is, whether he knows it or not, his quest to create, since he is unable to find ready-made, a world of objects harmonious to himself.  But in this quest has he been, should you say, successful?”

“More or less, I suppose,” answered Parry, “for he is progressively satisfying his needs, even if they are never completely satisfied.”