The Meaning of Good—A DialogueDickinson, G. Lowes (Goldsworthy Lowes)
Philosophy
The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue
Dickinson, G. Lowes (Goldsworthy Lowes)
Good and evil
"You are thinking, then, of a special kind of love?"
"I am thinking of the kind which I conceive to be the best."
"And what is that?"
"One, as I said just now, that should be eternal and
all-comprehensive."
"And so, in the end, you have nothing better than an imaginary heaven
to land us in!"
"I have no power, I fear, to land you there. But I believe there
is that dwelling within you which will not let you rest in anything
short."
"Then I fear I shall never rest!"
"That may be. But meantime all I want to do is to ascertain, if we
can, the meaning of your unrest. I have no interest in what you call
an imaginary heaven, except in so far as its conception is necessary
to enable us to interpret the world we know."
"But how should it be necessary? I have never found it so."
"It is necessary, I think, to explain our dissatisfaction. For the
Goods we actually realize always point away from themselves to
some other Good whose realization perhaps, as you say, for us is
impossible. But even if the Good were chimerical, we cannot deny the
passion that pursues it; for it is the same passion that urges us to
the pursuit of such Goods as we really can attain. And if we want to
understand the nature of that passion, we must understand the nature
of its Good, whether it be attainable or no. Only it is for the sake
of life here that we need that comprehension, not for the sake of life
somewhere else."
"But do you reduce our passion for Good to this passion for Love?"
"I don't 'reduce' it; I interpret it so."
"And so we come back to the girl and the boy and the village green!"
"No! we come back to the whole of life, of which that is only an
episode. Let me try to explain how the thing presents itself to me."
"By all means! That is what I want."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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