doubt," I replied, "but still, as you say yourself, what we choose
is the best we can, that is, the most good we can. The criterion is
Good, only it is very little of it that we are able to realize."

"No," objected Ellis, "I am not prepared to admit that the criterion
is Good. You will find that men will frankly confess that other
pursuits or occupations are, in their opinion, better than those
they have chosen, and that these better things were and are open to
themselves, and yet they continue to devote themselves to the worse,
knowing it all the time to be the worse."

"But in most cases," I replied, "these better things, surely, are not
really 'open' to them, except so far as external circumstances are
concerned. They are hampered in their choice by passions and desires,
by that part of them which does not choose, but is passively carried
away by alien attractions; and the course they actually adopt is the
best they can choose, though they see a better which they would choose
if they could. The choice is always of Good, but it may be diverted by
passion to less Good."

"I don't know," he said, "that that is a fair account of the matter."

"Nor do I. It is so hard to analyse what goes on in one's own
consciousness, much more what goes on in other people's. Still, that
is the kind of way I should describe my own experience, and I should
expect that most people who reflect would agree with me. They would
say, I think, that they always choose the best they can, though
regretting that they cannot choose better than they do; and it would
seem to them, I think, absurd to suggest that they choose Bad, or
choose without any reference either to Good or Bad."

"Well," he said, "granting, for the moment, that you are right--what
follows?"

"Why, then," I said, "it follows that we are, as I said, 'practically
bound' to accept as valid, for the moment at least, our opinions about
what is good; for otherwise we should have no principle to choose by,
if it be true that the principle of choice is Good."

"Very well," he said, "then we should have to do without choosing!"

"But could we?"

"I don't see why not; many people do."

"But what sort of people? I mean what sort of life would it be?"

Ellis was preparing to answer when we were interrupted by a voice from
behind. The place in which we were sitting opened at the back into one
of those large lofty barns which commonly form part of a Swiss house;
and as the floor of