ittle enough that you have shown,
or rather, that I have chosen to admit. For even if it were granted
that individuals, in order to choose, must believe in Good, it doesn't
follow that they believe in anything except each a Good for himself.
So that, even on your own hypothesis, all we could say would be that
there are a number of different and perhaps incompatible Goods, each
good for some particular individual, but none necessarily good for
all. I, at least, admit no more than that."

"How do you mean?" I asked, "for I am getting lost again."

"I mean," he replied, "something that I should have thought was
familiar enough. Granted that there really is a Good which each
individual ought to choose, and does choose, if you like, as far as
he can see it; or granted, at least, that he is bound to believe this,
under penalty of reducing his life to moral chaos; still, I see no
reason to suppose that the thing which one individual ought to choose
is identical, or even compatible, with that which another ought to
choose. There may be a whole series of distinct and mutually exclusive
moral worlds. In other words, even though I may admit a Good for each,
I am not prepared to admit a Good for all."

"But then," I objected, "each of these Goods will also be a not-Good;
and that seems to be a contradiction."

"Not at all," he replied, "for each of them only professes to be Good
for me, and that is quite compatible with being Bad for another."

"But," cried Leslie, trembling with excitement, "your whole conception
is absurd. Good is simply Good; it is not Good for anybody or
anything; it is Good in its own nature, one, simple, immutable
eternal."

"It may be," replied Ellis, "but I hope you will not actually tear me
to pieces if I humbly confess that I cannot see it. I see no reason to
admit any such Good; it even has no meaning to me."

"Well, anyhow, nothing else can have any meaning!"

"But, to me, something else has a meaning."

"Well, what?"

"Why, what I have been trying, apparently without success, to
explain."

"But don't you see that each of those things you call Goods, oughtn't
to be called Good at all, but each of them by some other particular
name of its own?"

"Oh, I don't want to quarrel about names; but I call each of them
Good because from one point of view--that of some particular
individual--each of them is something that ought to be. I, at any
rate, admit no more than that. For each individual the