“Not at all!” I replied; “but, as you are here, perhaps you will be willing to help us?”

“Oh,” he said, “I leave that to Dennis.  This kind of thing isn’t much in my line.”

“What kind of thing?” Leslie interjected.  “I don’t believe you even know what we’re talking about!”

“Talking about.  Why, philosophy, of course!  What else should it be when you get together?”

“This time,” I said, “it’s not exactly philosophy, but something more like ethics.”

“What is the question?” asked Dennis.

Dennis was always ready for a discussion, and the more abstract the theme, the better he was pleased.  He had been trained for the profession of medicine, but coming into possession of a fortune, had not found it necessary to practise, and had been devoting his time for some years past to Art and Metaphysics.  I always enjoyed talking to him, though the position he had come to hold was one which I found it very difficult to understand, and I am not sure that I have been able to represent it fairly.

“We have been discussing,” I said, in answer to his question, “our judgments about what is good, and trying without much success to get over the difficulty, that whereas, on the one hand, we seem to be practically obliged to trust these judgments, on the other we find it hard to say which of them, if any, are true, and how far and in what sense.”

“Oh,” he replied, “then Bartlett ought really to be able to help you.  At any rate he’s very positive himself about what’s good and what’s bad.  Curiously enough, he and I have been touching upon the same point as you, and I find, among other things, that he is a convinced Utilitarian.”

“I never said so,” said Bartlett, “but I have no objection to the word.  It savours of healthy homes and pure beer!”

“And is that your idea of Good?” asked Leslie, irritated, as I could see, by this obtrusion of the concrete.

“Yes,” he replied, “why not?  It’s as good an idea as most.”

“I suppose,” I said, “all of us here should agree that the things you speak of are good.  But somebody might very well deny it.”

“Of course somebody can deny anything, if only for the sake of argument.”

“You mean that no one could be serious in such a denial?”

“I mean that everybody really knows perfectly well what is good and what is bad; the difficulty is, not to know it, but to do it!”

“But surely you will admit that opinions do differ?”

“They don’t differ nearly so much as people pretend, on important points; or, if they do, the difference is not about what ought to be done, but about how to do it.”

“What ought to be done, then?” asked Leslie defiantly.

“Well, for example we ought to make our cities decent and healthy.”

“Why?”

“Because we ought; or, if you like, because it will make people happy.”

“But I don’t like at all!  I don’t see that it’s necessarily good to make people happy.”