The Meaning of Good-A Dialogue Part 20

"Well," I said, "but what in particular?"

"Oh," he replied, "it's all summed up, I suppose, in the fact that they are Goods of sense, and not of intellect or of imagination."

"Is it then," I asked, "a defect in content that you are driving at? Do you mean that they satisfy only a part of our nature, not the whole? For that, I suppose, would be equally true of the other Goods you mentioned, such as those of the intellect."

"Yes," he replied, "but it is the inferior part to which the Goods we are speaking of appeal."

"Perhaps; but in what respect inferior?"

"Why, simply as the body is inferior to the soul."

"But how is that? You will think me very stupid, but the more I think of it the less I understand this famous distinction between body and soul, and the relation of one to the other."

"I doubt," said Wilson, "whether there is a distinction at all."

"I don't say that," I replied. "I only say that I can't understand it; and I should be thankful, if possible, to keep it out of our discussion."

"So should I!" said Wilson.

"Well, but," Leslie protested, "how can we?"

"I think perhaps we might," I said. "For instance, in the case before us, why should we not try directly to define that specific property of the Goods of sense which, according to you, const.i.tutes their defect, without having recourse to these difficult terms body and soul at all?"

"Well," he agreed, "we might try."

"What, then" I said, "do you suggest?"

He hesitated a little, and then began in a tentative kind of way:

"I think what I feel about these Goods is that we are somehow their slaves; they possess us, instead of our possessing them. They come upon us we hardly know how or whence; they satisfy our desires we can't tell why; our relation to them seems to be pa.s.sive rather than active."

"And that, you think, would not be the case with a true and perfect Good?"

"No, I think not"

"How, then, should we feel towards such a Good?"

"We should feel, I think, that it was somehow an expression of ourselves, and we of it; that it was its nature and its whole nature to present itself as a Good and our nature and our whole nature to experience it as such. There would be nothing in It alien to us and nothing in us alien to it."

"Whereas in the case of Goods of sense----?"

"Whereas in their case," he said, "surely nothing of the kind applies.

For these Goods appear to arise in things and under circ.u.mstances which have quite another nature than that of being good for us. It is not the essence of water to quench our thirst, of fire to cook for us, or of the sun to give us light----"

"Or of cork-trees to stop our ginger-beer bottles," added Ellis.

"Quite so," he continued; "in every case these things that do us good are also quite as ready to do us harm, and, for that matter, to do innumerable things which have no relation to us at all. So that the goodness they have in them, so far as it is goodness to our senses, they have, as it were, only by accident; and we feel that essentially either they are not Goods, or their goodness is something beyond and different from that which is revealed to sense."

"Your quarrel, then" I said, "with the Goods of sense, so far as I understand you, is that they inhere, as it were, in a substance which, so far as we can tell, is indifferent to Good, or at any rate to Good of that kind?"

"Yes."

"Whereas a true Good, you think, must be good in essence and substance?"

"Yes; don't you think so too?"

"I do," I replied, "but how about the others?"

Dennis a.s.sented, and the others did not object, not appearing, indeed, to have attended much to the argument. So I continued, "We have then, so far, discovered in this cla.s.s of Goods, two main defects, the first, that they are precarious; the second, which is closely connected with the other, and is in fact, I suppose, its explanation, that they are, shall we say, accidental, understanding the word in the sense we have just defined. Now, let us see if we cannot find any cla.s.s of Goods similar to these, but free from their defects."

"But similar in what respect," he asked, "if they are not to have similar defects?"

"Similar, I meant, in being direct presentations to sense."

"But are there any such Goods?"

"I think so," I said. "What do you say to works of Art? These, are they not, are direct presentations to sense? Yet such that it is their whole nature and essence on the one hand to be beautiful, and to that extent Good--for I suppose you will admit that the Beautiful is a kind of Good; and on the other hand, if I may dare to say so, to be, in a certain sense, eternal."

"Eternal!" cried Ellis, "I only wish they were! What wouldn't we give for the works of Polygnotus and Apelles!"

"Oh yes," I said, "of course, in that way, regarded as material objects, they are as perishable as all the works of nature. But I was talking of them as Art, not as mere things; and from that point of view, surely, each is a moment, or a series of moments, cut away, as it were, from the contact of chance or change and set apart in a timeless world of its own, never of its own nature, to pa.s.s into something else, but only through the alien nature of the matter to which it is bound."

"What do you mean?" cried Parry. "I am quite at sea."

"Perhaps," I said, "you will understand the point better if I give it you in the words of a poet."

And I quoted the well-known stanzas from Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn":

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd.

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone; Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love and she be fair!

"Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unwearied, For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoyed, For ever panting and for ever young; All breathing human pa.s.sion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue."

"Well," said Parry, when I had done, "that's very pretty; but I don't see how it bears on the argument."

"I think," I replied, "that it ill.u.s.trates the point I wanted to make.

Part, I mean, of the peculiar charm of works of Art consists in the fact that they arrest a fleeting moment of delight, lift it from our sphere of corruption and change, and fix it like a star in the eighth heaven."

"Yes," said Ellis, "we grant you that"

"Or at least," added Parry, "we don't care to dispute it"

"And the other point which I want to make is, I think, clearer still--that the Good of works of Art, that is to say their Beauty, results from the very principle of their nature, and is not a mere accident of circ.u.mstances."

"Of course," said Leslie, "their Beauty is their only _raison d'etre_?"

"And yet," I went on, "they are still Goods of sense, and so far resemble the other Goods of which we were speaking before."