as it is sense."

"No doubt," he said, "but I don't feel sure that it is."

"In that case you can show me where I am wrong."

"No," he replied, "for, as I said, I can't follow you."

"He means he won't," said Ellis, breaking in with his usual air of
an unprejudiced outsider, "But after all, what does it really matter?
Whatever the reason may be for our uncertainty as to Good, the fact
remains that we are uncertain. There's my Good, thy Good, his Good,
our Good, your Good, their Good; and all these Goods in process of
flux, according to the time of day, the time of life, and the state
of the liver. That being so, what is the use of discussing Good
in itself? And why be so disturbed about it? There's Leslie, for
instance, looking as if the bottom were knocked out of the universe
because he can't discover his objective standard! My dear boy, life
goes on just the same, my life, his life, your life, all the lives.
Why not make an end of the worry at once by admitting frankly that
Good is a chimaera, and that we get on very well without it?"

"But I don't get on well without it!" Leslie protested.

"No," I said, "and I hoped that by this time we were agreed that none
of us could. But Ellis is incorrigible."

"You don't suppose," he replied, "that I am going to agree with you
merely because you override me in argument--even if you did, which you
don't."

"But at least," cried Leslie, "you needn't tell us so often that you
disagree."

"Very well," he said, "I am dumb." And for a moment there was silence,
till I began to fear that our argument would collapse; when, to my
relief, Parry returned to the charge.

"You will think me," he began, "as obstinate as Ellis; but I can't
help coming back to my old point of view. Somehow or other, I feel
sure you are making a difficulty which the practical man does not
really feel. You object to my saying that he knows what is good by
instinct; but somehow or other I am sure that he does know it. And
what I suggest now is, that he finds it written in experience."

"In whose experience?" Leslie asked defiantly.

"In that of the race, or, at least, in that of his own age and
country. Now, do be patient a moment, and let me explain! What I want
to suggest is, that every civilization worth the name possesses, in
its laws and institutions, in the customs it blindly follows, the
moral code it instinctively obeys, an actual objective standard,
worked out in minute detail, of what, in