"By 'normal,'" retorted Wilson, doggedly, "I mean average, and I include every one except a few decadents and faddists." At this point, seeing that we were threatened with another digression, I thought it best to intervene again. "We are diverging," I said, "a little from the issue. Wilson's position, as I understand him, is that the prospect of the future Good of the race is sufficient to give significance to the life of the individual, even though he realize no Good for himself." "No," replied Wilson, "I don't say that; for I think he always does realize sufficient Good for himself." "But is it because of that Good which he realizes for himself that his life has significance? Or because of the future Good of the race?" "I don't know; both, I suppose." "You do not think then that the future Good of the race is sufficient, by itself, to give significance to the lives of individuals who are never to partake in it?" "I don't like that way of putting the question. What I believe is, that in realizing his own Good a man is also contributing to that of the race. There is no such antagonism between the two ends as you seem to suggest." "I don't say that there is an antagonism; but I do insist that there is a distinction. And I cannot help feeling--and this is where we seem to disagree--that in estimating the Good of individual lives we must have regard to that which they realize in and for themselves, not merely to that which they may be contributing to produce some day in somebody else." "These 'somebody elses,'" cried Ellis, "being after all nothing but other individuals like themselves! so that you get an infinite series of people doing Good to one another, and none of them getting any Good for themselves, like the: islanders who lived by taking in one another's washing!" "Well, but," said Wilson, "supposing I consent, for the sake of argument, to let you estimate the worth of life by the Good which individuals realize in themselves. What follows then?" "Why, then" I said, "it would, I think, be very hard to maintain that we do most of us realize Good enough to make it seem worth while to have lived at all, if indeed we are simply extinguished at death. At any rate, if we set aside an exceptional few, and look frankly at the mass of men and women, judging them not as means to something else, but as ends in themselves, with reference not to happiness, or content, or acquiescence, or indifference, but simply to Good--if we look at them so, can we honestly say that there is enough significance in their lives to justify the labour and expense of producing and maintaining them?" "I don't know," he replied, "they probably think themselves that there is." "Probably," I rejoined, "they do not think about it at all. But what I should like to know is, what do you think?" "I don't see," he objected, "how I can have any opinion; the problem is too vast and indeterminate."