rry did not seem to be attending. Leslie assented with
enthusiasm. But Dennis shook his head.

"I don't know," he said, "what to think about all that. It seems to me
rather irrelevant to the work of Art as such."

"Perhaps," I said, "but surely not to the work of Art as Good? Or do
you not agree with me that the true Good must be such purely of its
own nature?"

"Perhaps so," he replied; "it wants thinking over. But in any case I
agree with you so far, that I should never place the Good in Art."

"In what then?"

"I should be much more inclined to place it in Knowledge."

"In Knowledge!" I repeated. "That seems to me very strange!"

"But why strange?" he said. "Surely there is good authority for the
view. It was Aristotle's for example, and Spinoza's."

"I know," I replied, "and I used to think it was also mine. But of
late I have come to realize more clearly what Knowledge is; and now I
see, or seem to see, that whatever its value may be, it is something
that falls very far short of Good."

"Why," he said, "what is your idea of Knowledge?"

"You had better ask Wilson," I replied, "it is he who has instructed
me."

"Very well," he said, "I appeal to Wilson."

And Wilson, nothing loth, enunciated his definition of Knowledge.

"Knowledge," he said, "is the description and summing up in brief
formulae of the routine of our perceptions."

"There!" I exclaimed. "No one, I suppose, would identify that with
Good?"

"But"--objected Dennis--"in the first place, I don't understand the
definition; and, in the second place, I don't agree with it."

"As to understanding it," replied Wilson, "there need be no difficulty
there. You have only to seize clearly one or two main positions.
First, that Knowledge is of perceptions only, not of things in
themselves; secondly, that these perceptions occur in fixed routines;
thirdly ..."

"But," interrupted Dennis, "what is a perception? I suppose it's a
perception of something?"

"No," he said, "I don't know that it is."

"What then? Simply a state in me?"

"Very likely."

"Then does nothing exist except my states?"

"Nothing else exists primarily for you."

"Then what about the world before I existed, and after I cease to
exist?"

"You infer such a world from your states."

"Then there is something besides my states--this world which I infer;
and that, I suppose, and not merely my perceptions, is the reality of
which I have knowledge?"

"Not exactly," he re