“Well,” I said, “the clothes, too, are a sort of image of the soul, ‘an imitation of an imitation,’ as Plato would say.  But, seriously, don’t you agree with me that there is something in the view which regards the body as the ‘word made flesh,’ a direct expression of the person, not a mere stuff in which he Inheres?”

“Yes,” he said, “there may be something in it.  At any rate, I understand what you mean.”

“And in so far as that is so,” I continued, “the body, though it be a thing of sense, would nevertheless be directly intelligible in the same way as the soul?”

“Perhaps, in a sort of way.”

“And so we should have In the person loved an object which, though presented to sense, would be at once good and intelligible; and our activity in relation to this object, the activity, that is, of love, would come nearer than any other experience of ours to what we might call a perfect Good?”

“But,” objected Leslie, “it is still far enough from being the Good itself.  For after all, say what you may about the body being the medium of the soul, it is still body, still sense, and, like other sensible things, subject to change and decay, and in the end to death.  And with the fate of the body, so far as we know, that of the person is involved.  So that this, too, like all other Goods of sense, is precarious.’

“Perhaps it is,” I said, “I cannot tell.  But all that I mean to maintain at present is that in the activity of love, as we have analysed it, we have something which gives us, if it be only for a moment, yet still in a real experience, an idea, at least, a suggestion, to say no more, of what we might mean by a perfect Good, even though we could not say that it be the Good itself.”

“But what, then, would you call the Good itself?”

“A love, I suppose, which in the first place would be eternal, and in the second all-comprehensive.  For there is another defect in love, as we know it, to which you did not refer, namely, that it is a relation only to one or two individuals, while outside and beyond it proceeds the main current of our lives, involving innumerable relations of a very different kind from this.”

“Yes,” cried Ellis, “and that is why this gospel of love, with all its attractiveness, which I admit, seems to me, nevertheless, so trivial and absurd.  Just consider!  Here is the great round world with all that in it is, infinite in time, infinite in space, infinite in complexity; here is the whole range of human relations, to say nothing of those that are not human, of activities innumerable in and upon nature and man himself, of inventions, discoveries, institutions, laws, arts, sciences, religions; and the meaning and purpose and end of all this we calmly assert to be—­what?  A girl and a boy kissing on the village green!”

“But,” I protested, “who said anything about boys and girls and kisses and village greens?”

“Well, I suppose that is love, of a sort?”