sing
towards such a Good; and the more of it we apprehend and experience,
the more we are aware of our own well-being; or perhaps I ought to
say, of the well-being of that part of us, whatever it may be--I call
it the soul--which pursues after Good. For her attitude, perhaps you
will agree, towards her object, is not simply one of perception, but
one of appetency and enjoyment. Her aim is not merely to know Good,
but to experience it; so that along with her apprehension of Good goes
her apprehension of her own well-being, dependent upon and varying
with her relation to that, her object. Thus she is aware of a tension,
as it were, when she cannot expand, of a drooping and inanition when
nutriment fails, of a rush of health and vigour as she passes into a
new and larger life, as she freely unfolds this or that aspect of her
complex being, triumphs at last over an obstacle that has long hemmed
and thwarted her course, and rests for a moment in free and joyous
consciousness of self, like a stream newly escaped from a rocky gorge,
to meander in the sun through a green melodious valley. And this
perception she has of her own condition is like our perception of
health and disease. We know when we are well, not by any process of
ratiocination, by applying from without a standard of health deduced
by pure thought, but simply by direct sensation of well-being. So
it is with this soul of ours, which is conversant with Good. Her
perception of Good is but the other side of her perception of her own
well-being, for her well-being consists in her conformity to Good.
Thus every phase of her growth (in so far as she grows) is in
one sense good, and in another bad; good in so far as it is
self-expression, bad in so far as the expression is incomplete. From
the limitations of her being she flies, towards its expansion she
struggles; and by her perception that every Good she attains is also
bad, she is driven on in her quest of that ultimate Good which
would be, if she could reach it, at once the complete realization of
herself, and her complete conformity to Good."

"But," he objected, "apart from other difficulties, in your method of
discovering the Good is there no place for Reason at all?"

"I would not say that," I replied, "though I am bound to confess
that I see no place for what you call pure Reason. It is the part of
Reason, on my hypothesis, to tabulate and compare results. She
does not determine directly what is good, but work