ave an object which is somehow
native to our thought, commensurate with it, or however you like
to put it; and it is the same with other abstract notions, such as
substance and causation."

"I see," I said. "And on the other hand, the element which is alien
to thought, and which is the cause of the impurity of most of what we
call knowledge, is the element of sense--the something given, which
thought cannot, as it were, digest, though it may dress and serve it
up in its own sauce?"

"Yes," he said, "that is my idea."

"So that knowledge, to be perfect, must not be of sense, but only of
pure thought, as Plato suggested long ago?"

"Yes."

"And such a knowledge, if we could attain it, you would call the
Good?"

"I think so."

"Well," I said, "in the first place, I have to point out that such a
Good (if it be one) implies an existence not merely better than
that of which we have an experience, but radically and fundamentally
different. For our whole life is bathed in sense. Not only are we sunk
in it up to the neck, but the greater part of the time our heads are
under too,--in fact most of us never get them out at all; it is only
a few philosophers every now and again who emerge for a moment or two
into sun and air, to breathe that element of pure thought which is too
fine even for them, except as a rare indulgence. At other times, they
too must be content with the grosser atmosphere which is the common
sustenance of common men."

"Well," he said, "but what of that? We have not been maintaining that
the Good is within easy reach of all."

"No," cried Ellis. "But even if it were, and were such as you describe
it, very few people would care to put out their hands to take it. I,
at any rate, for my part can see hardly a vestige of Good in the kind
of activity I understand you to mean. It is as though you should say,
that Good consists in the perpetual perception that 2 + 2 = 4."

"But that is an absurd parody. For the point of knowledge would be,
that it would be a closed circle of necessary connections. One would
move in it, as in infinity, with a motion that is also rest, central
at once and peripheral, free and yet bound by law. That is my ideal of
a perfect activity!"

"In form, perhaps," I said, "but surely not in content! For what, in
fact, in our experience comes nearest to what you describe? I suppose
the movement of a logic like Hegel's?"

"Yes; only that, of course, is imperfect, full of lapses and