good, there is no bad, these be the whims of mortal will;
What works me weal that call I good, what harms and hurts I hold as ill.
They change with space, they shift with race, and in the veriest span of
time,
Each vice has worn a virtue's crown, all good been banned as sin or
crime.'"

"Yes," he assented, "and that is what is brought home to one by
travel. Though really, if one had penetration enough, it would not be
necessary to travel to make the discovery. A single country, a single
city, almost a single village, would illustrate, to one who can look
below the surface, the same truth. Under the professed uniformity of
beliefs, even here in England, what discrepancies and incongruities
are concealed! Every type, every individual almost, is distinguished
from every other in precisely this point of the judgments he makes
about Good. What does the soldier and adventurer think of the life of
a studious recluse? or the city man of that of the artist? and vice
versa? Behind the mask of good manners we all of us go about judging
and condemning one another root and branch. We are in no real
agreement as to the worth either of men or things. It is an illusion
of the 'canting moralist' (to use Stevenson's phrase) that there is
any fixed and final standard of Good. Good is just what any one thinks
it to be; and one man has as much right to his opinion as another."

"But," I objected, "it surely does not follow that because there are
different opinions about Good, they are all equally valuable."

"No. I should infer rather that they are all equally worthless."

"That does not seem to me legitimate either; and I venture to doubt
whether you really believe it yourself."

"Well, at any rate I am inclined to think I do."

"In a sense perhaps you do; but not in the sense which seems to me
most important. I mean that when it comes to the point, you act, and
are practically bound to act, upon your opinion about what is good, as
though you did believe it to be true."

"How do you mean 'practically bound?'"

"I mean that it is only by so acting that you are able to introduce
any order or system into your life, or in fact to give it to yourself
any meaning at all. Without the belief that what you hold to be good
really somehow is so, your life, I think, would resolve itself into
mere chaos."

"I don't see that"

"Well, I may be wrong, but my notion is that what systematizes a life
is choice; and choice, I believe,