,
law, government, the family, all activities, in a word, which
contribute to and make up what we call society. Further, it is to
empty history, which is the record of society, of its main interest
and significance, and in particular to eliminate the idea of progress;
for progress, of course, implies a common Good towards which progress
is directed. In brief, it is to strip a man of his whole social self,
and reveal him a poor, naked, shivering Ego, implicated in relations
from which he may derive what advantage he can for himself, but which,
apart from that advantage, have no point or purport or aim; it is to
make him an Egoist even against his will; leaving him for his solitary
ideal a cult of self-development, deprived of its main attraction
by its dissociation from the development of others. Now, if any man,
having a full sense of what is implied in his words (a sense, not
merely conceived by the intellect, but felt, as it were, in every
nerve and tissue) will seriously and deliberately deny that he
believes in a common Good; if he will not merely make the denial with
his lips, but actually carry it out in his daily life, adjusting to
his verbal proposition his habitual actions, feelings, and thoughts;
if he will and can really and genuinely do this, then I, for my part,
am willing to admit that I cannot prove him to be wrong. All I can do
is to set my experience against his, and to appeal to the experience
of others; and we must wait till further experience on either side
leads (if it ever is to lead) to an agreement. But, on the other hand,
if a man merely makes the denial with his lips, because, perhaps, he
conceives it impossible to prove the opposite, or because he sees
that what is good cannot be defined beyond dispute, or whatever other
plausible reason he may have; and if, while he persists in his denial,
he continues to act as if the contrary were true, taking part with
zest and enthusiasm in the common business of life, pushing causes,
supporting institutions, subscribing to societies, and the like, and
that without any pretence that in so doing he is seeking merely his
own Good--in that case I shall take leave to think that he does not
really believe what he says (though no doubt he may genuinely think he
does), and I shall take his life and his habits, the whole tissue of
his instincts and desires, as a truer index to his real opinion than
the propositions he enunciates with his lips."

"But," cried Les