The Meaning of Good-A Dialogue Part 15

"But, Parry," I interposed, "let us get clear about this; and with a view to clearness let us take our own case. We, as I understand you, have to keep in view a double Good: first, a Good for ourselves, which is not indeed the perfect Good (for that is reserved for a future generation), but still is something Good as far as it goes--whether it be a certain degree of happiness, or however else we may have to define it; and as to this Good, there appears to be no difficulty, for we who pursue it are also the people who get it That is so, is it not?"

He agreed.

"But now," I continued, "we come to the point of dispute. For besides this Good of our own, we have also, according to the theory, to consider a Good in which we have no share, that of those who are to be born in some indefinite future. And to this remote and alien Good we have even, on occasion, to sacrifice our own."

"Certainly," he said, "all good citizens will think so."

"I believe," I admitted, "that they will. And yet, how strange it seems! For consider it in this way. Imagine that the successive generations can somehow be viewed as contemporaneous--being projected, as it were, from the plane of time into that of s.p.a.ce."

"It's rather hard," he said, "to imagine that."

"Well, but try, for the sake of argument; and consider what we shall have. We shall have a society divided into two cla.s.ses, composed, the one of all the generations who, if they followed one another in time, would precede the first millenarian one; the other of all the millenarian-generations themselves. And of these two cla.s.ses the first would be perpetually engaged in working for the second, sacrificing to it, if need be, on occasion, all its own Good, but without any hope or prospect of ever entering itself into that other Good which is the monopoly of the other cla.s.s, but to the production of which its own efforts are directed. What should we say of such a society? Should we not say that it was founded on injustice and inequality, and all those other phrases with which we are wont to denounce a system of serfdom or slavery?"

"But," he objected, "your projection of time into s.p.a.ce has falsified the whole situation. For in fact the millenarian generation would not come into being until the others had ceased to be; and therefore the latter would not be being sacrificed to it."

"No," I said, "but they would have been sacrificed; and surely it comes to the same thing?"

"I am not sure," he replied, "and anyhow, I don't think sacrifice is the right word. In a society every man's interest is in the Whole; and when he works for the Whole he is also working for himself."

"No doubt that is true," I replied, "in a society properly const.i.tuted, but I question whether it would be true in such a society as I have described. And then there is a further difficulty--and here, I confess, my projection of time into s.p.a.ce really does falsify the issue; for in the succession of generations in time, where _is_ the Whole? Each generation comes into being, pa.s.ses, and disappears; but how, or in what, are they summed up?"

"Why," he said, "in a sense they are all summed up in the last generation."

"But in what sense? Do you mean that their consciousness somehow persists into it, so that they actually enjoy its Good?"

"Of course not," he said, "but I mean that it was conditioned by them, and is the result of their labour and activities."

"In that sense," I replied, "you might say that the oysters I eat are summed up in me. But it would be a poor consolation to the oysters!"

"Well," he rejoined, "whatever you may say, I still think it right that each generation should sacrifice itself (as you call it) for the next. And so, I believe, would you, when it came to the point. At any rate, I have often heard you inveigh against the shortsightedness of modern politicians, and their unwillingness to run great risks and undertake great labours for the future."

"Quite true," I said, "that is the view I take. But I was trying to see how the view could be justified. For it seems to me, I confess, that we can only be expected to labour for what is, in some sense or other, our own Good; and I do not see how the Good of future generations, in your way of putting it, is also ours."

"But," he said, "we have an instinct that it is."

"I believe we have," I replied, "but the question would be, what that instinct really means. Somehow or other, I think it must mean, as you yourself suggested, that our Good is the Good of the Whole. Only the difficulty is to see how there is a Whole at all."

"Well," he said, "perhaps there is no Whole. What then?"

"Why, then," I replied, "how can we justify an instinct which bids us labour and sacrifice ourselves for a Good, which, on this hypothesis, has no significance for us, but only for other people."

"Perhaps," he said, "we cannot justify it, but I am sure we ought to obey it; and, indeed, I believe we cannot do otherwise. Even taking the view that the order of the world is altogether unjust, as I admit it would be on the view we are considering, yet, since we cannot remedy the injustice, we are bound at least to make the best of it; and the best we can do is to prepare the Good for those who come after us, even though we can never enter into it ourselves."

"I am not so sure about that," Ellis interrupted, "I think the best we can do is to try and realize Good for ourselves--as much as we can get, even if we admit that this is but little. For we do at least know, or may hope to discover, what Good for ourselves is; whereas Good for other people is far more hypothetical."

"But, surely," he objected, "that would lead to action we cannot approve--to a sacrifice of all larger Goods to our own pleasure of the moment. We should breed, for example, without any regard to the future efficacy of the race----"

"That," interrupted Ellis, "we do as it is."

"Yes, but we don't justify it--those of us, at least, who think. And, again, we should squander on immediate gratifications wealth which ought to be stored up against the future. And so on, and so on; it is not necessary to multiply examples."

"But," I objected, "we should only do these things if we thought that kind of short-sighted activity to be good; but, as a matter of fact, we do not, we who object to it. And that is because, as I hinted before, our idea of even our own Good is that of an activity in and for the Whole, and not merely in and for ourselves. And, whether it is reasonable or no, we cannot help extending the idea of the Whole, so as to include future generations. But, as it seems to me, the real meaning and justification of our action is not merely that we are seeking the Good of future generations but that we are endeavouring to realize our own Good, which consists in some such form of activity. So that really, as was suggested at the beginning, Good will be a kind of activity in ourselves, even though that activity be directed towards ends in which we do not expect to share."

At this point, Dennis, who had been struggling to speak, broke in at last, in spite of Ellis's efforts to restrain him.

"Why do you keep saying '_Our_ Good'?" he cried. "Why do you not say _the_ Good? I can't understand this talk of me and thee, our Good, and their Good, as if there were as many Goods as there are people."

"Well," I said, "the distinction, after all, was introduced by Parry, who said that we ought to aim at the Good of a future generation.

Still, I admit that I was getting a little unhappy myself at the kind of language into which I was betrayed. But what I want to say is this: So far as it is true at all that it is good to labour for future generations, goodness consists in the activity of so labouring, as much, at least, as in the result produced in those for whose sake the labour is. That, at least, is the only way in which I can find the position reasonable at all."

"I don't see it," said Parry, and was preparing to re-state his position, when Wilson suddenly intervened with a new train of thought.

"The fact is," he said, "you have begun altogether at the wrong end."

"I daresay," I said, "I can't find the end; it's all such a coil."

"Well," he said, "this is where I believe the trouble came in. You started with the idea that the Good must be good for individuals; and that was sure to land you in confusion."

"What then is your idea?" I asked.

"Why," he said, "as you might expect from a biologist, I regard everything from the point of view of the species."

At this I saw Ellis sit up and prepare for an encounter.

"Nature," continued Wilson, "has always in view the Whole not the Part, the species not the individual. And this law, which is true of the whole creation, is thrown into special relief in the case of man, because there the interest of the species is embodied in a particular form--the Society or the State--and may be clearly envisaged, as a thing apart, towards the maintenance of which conscious efforts may be directed."

"And this, which is the end of Nature, according to you, is also the Good?"

"Naturally."

"Well," I said, "I will not recapitulate here the objections I have already urged against the view that the course of Nature determines the content of the Good. For, quite apart from that, it is a view which many people hold--and one which was held long before there was a science of biology--that the community is the end, and the individual only the means."

"But," he said, "biology has given a new basis and a new colour to the view."

"I don't know about that," cried Ellis, unable any longer to restrain himself, "but I am sure it has given us a new kind of language. In the old days, when Wilson's opinion was represented by Plato, men were still men, and were spoken of as such, however much they might be subordinated to the community. But now!--why, if you open one of these sociological books, mostly, I am bound to say, in German, 'Entwurf einer Sozial-anthropologie,' 'Versuch einer anthropologischen Darstellung der menschlichen Gesellschaft vom Sozial-biologischen Standpunkt aus,' and the like--you will hardly be able to realize that you are dealing with human beings at all. I have seen an unmarried woman called a 'female non-childbearing human.' And at the worst, men actually cease to be even animals; they become mere numbers; they are calculated by the theory of combinations; they are ma.s.ses, averages, cla.s.ses, curves, anything but men! For every million of the population, it has been solemnly estimated, there will be one genius, one imbecile, 256,791 individuals just above the mean, 256,791 just below it! Observe, 256,791! Not, as one might have been tempted to believe, 256,790! What a saving grace in that odd unit! And this is the kind of thing that is revolutionizing history and politics!

No more great men, no more heroic actions, no more inspirations, pa.s.sions, and ideals! Nothing but calculations of the chances that A will meet and breed out of B! Nothing but a.n.a.lysis of the mechanism of survival! Nothing but----"

"My dear Ellis," interrupted Wilson, "you appear to me to be digressing."

"Digressing!" he cried "Would that I could digress out of this world altogether! Would that I could digress to a planet where they have no arithmetic! Where a man could be a man, not a figure in an addition sum, a unit in an average, an individual in a species----"

"Where," exclaimed Audubon, taking him up, "a man could be himself, as I have often said, 'imperial, plain, and true.'"

There was a chorus of protestation at the too familiar quotation; and for a time I was unable to lay hold of the broken thread of the argument. But at last I got a hearing for the question I was anxious to address to Wilson.

"You say," I began, "that by Good we mean the Good of the community?"

"I say," he replied, "that that is what we ought to mean."