sions, one as
empty and baseless as another. The history of nations, the lives
of individual men, are stripped, in this view, of all interest and
meaning; nowhere is there advance or retrogression, nowhere better or
worse, nowhere sense or consistency at all. Systems, however imposing,
structures, however vast, fly into dust and powder at a touch. The
stars fall from the human firmament; the beacon-lights dance like
will-o'-the-wisps; the whole universe of history opens, cracks, and
dissolves in smoke; and we, from an ever-vanishing shore, gaze with
impotent eyes at the last gleam on the wings of the dove of Reason as
it dips for ever down to eternal night. Will not that be the only
view we can take of the course of human action if we hold that what we
believe to be goods have no relation to the true Good?"

"Yes," he admitted, "I suppose it will."

"And if we turn," I continued, "from the past to the present and the
future, we find ourselves, I think, in even worse case. For we
shall all, those of us who may come to accept the hypothesis you put
forward, be deprived of the consolation even of imagining a reason and
purpose in our lives. The great men of the past, at any rate, could
and did believe that they were helping to realize great Goods; but
we, in so far as we are philosophers, shall have to forego even that
satisfaction. We shall believe, indeed, that Good exists, and that
there is a method of discovering it by pure reason; but this method,
we may safely assume, we shall not most of us have ascertained. Or do
you think we shall?"

"I cannot tell," he said; "I do not profess to have ascertained it
myself."

"And meantime," I said, "you have not even the right to assume that
it is a good thing to endeavour to ascertain it. For the pursuit of
Truth, it must be admitted, is one of the things which we call
good; and these, we agreed, have not any relation to the true Good.
Consider, then, the position of these unfortunate men who have learnt
indeed that there is a Good, but who know nothing about it, except
that it has nothing to do with what they call good. What kind of life
will they live? Whatever they may put their hand to, they will at once
be paralyzed by the thought that it cannot possibly be worth pursuing.
Politics, art, pleasure, science--of these and all other ends
they know but one thing, that all is vanity. As by the touch of
enchantment, their world is turned to dust. Like Tantalus they stretch
l