or, as I understand the matter,
it was essential to the success of the Absolute's plan that we should
never discover the deception that is being played upon us. But, it
seems, we do discover it. Hegel, for example, by your own confession,
has not only detected but exposed it. Well then, what is to be done?
Do you suppose that we could, even if we would, continue to lend
ourselves to the imposition? Must not our aims and purposes cease to
have any interest for us, once we are clear that they are not true
ends? And that which, according to the hypothesis, _is_ the true end,
the 'dateless and irrevoluble circle' of activity, that, surely, we
at least cannot sanction or approve, seeing that it involves and
perpetuates the very misery and pain whose destruction was our only
motive for acting at all. For, whatever may be the case with God, we,
you will surely admit, are forbidden by all that in us is highest and
best, to approve or even to acquiesce in the deliberate perpetuation
of a world of whose existence all that we call evil is an essential
and eternal constituent So that, as I said at first, it looks as if
the Absolute Reason had not been, after all, quite as cunning as
it thought, since it has allowed us to discover and expose the very
imposition it had invented to cheat us into concurrence with its
plans."

Dennis laughed a little at this; and then, "Well," he began, "between
you, with your genial irony, and Audubon and Leslie with their
heaven-defying rhetoric, I scarcely know whether I stand on my head or
my heels. But, the fact is, I think I made a slip in stating my view;
or perhaps there was really a latent contradiction in my mind. At any
rate, what I believe, whether or no I can believe it consistently, is
that it is possible for us, so to speak, to take God's point of
view; so that the evil against which we rebel we may come at last to
acquiesce in, as seen from the higher point of view. And, seriously,
don't you think it is conceivable that that may be, after all, the
true meaning of the discipline of life?"

"I cannot tell," I said, "perhaps it may. But, meantime, allow me to
press home the importance of your admission. For, as you say, there is
at least one of our aims which has a real significance, namely, that
of reaching the point of view of God. But this is something that lies
in the future, something to be brought about. And so, on your own
hypothesis, Good, after all, would not be that which eterna