ted--namely, action pursued not for its own sake, but for the
sake of something else."

"Oh, oh!" cried Dennis, "there I really must protest! I've kept silent
as long as I possibly could; but when it comes to describing as a mere
means the only kind of activity which is an end in itself----"

"The only kind that is an end in itself!" I repeated, in some dismay.
"Is that really what you think?"

"Of course it is! why not?"

"I don't know. I have always supposed that, when we are doing what we
ought, we are acting with a view to some ultimate Good."

"Well, I, on the contrary, believe that we ought absolutely, without
reference to anything else. It is a unique form of activity, dependent
on nothing but itself; and for anything we have yet shown, it may be
the Good we are in quest of."

This suggestion, unexpected as it was, threw me into great perplexity.
I did not see exactly how to meet it; yet it awakened no response in
me, nor as I thought In any of the others. But while I was hesitating,
Leslie began:

"Do you mean that the Good might consist simply in doing what we
ought, without any other accompaniment or conditions?"

"Yes, I think it might."

"So that, for example, a man might be in possession of the Good, even
while he was being racked or burnt alive, so long only as he was doing
what he ought"

"Yes, I suppose he might be."

"It's a trifle paradoxical," said Ellis.

"In fact," added Bartlett, "it might be called nonsense."

"I don't see why," replied Dennis; "for we haven't yet shown that the
Good is dependent on the things we call good."

"No," I said, "but we did show--or at least for the time being we
agreed to admit--that it must have some relation to what we call
goods; that they do somehow or other, and more or less, express
its nature; and indeed our whole present inquiry is based upon the
hypothesis that it is by examining goods that we may get to know
something about the Good. So that I do not see how we can entertain an
idea of Good which flatly contradicts all our experience of goods."

"Well," said Dennis, "I ought perhaps to modify the position. Let us
say that the Good consists in the activity of doing what we ought,
only that activity can't exist in its true perfection unless everybody
participates in it at once. But if everybody participated in it,
there would be no more burnings; and so Leslie's difficulty would not
arise."

"Well," I said, "the modification is very radical