"Oh, well, of course," cried Leslie, "if you define it so, your proposition follows of itself."
"So I thought," I said. "But how would you define it?"
"I should say it is a free and perfect activity in Good."
"In that case, it is of course the very activity we are in quest of, and we should come upon it, if we were successful, at the end of our inquiry. But I was supposing that the essence of morality is expressed in the word 'ought'; and in that I take to be implied the definition I suggested—namely, action pursued not for its own sake, but for the sake of something else."
"Oh, oh!" cried Dennis, "there I really must protest! I've kept silent as long as I possibly could; but when it comes to describing as a mere means the only kind of activity which is an end in itself——"
"The only kind that is an end in itself!" I repeated, in some dismay. "Is that really what you think?"
"Of course it is! why not?"
"I don't know. I have always supposed that, when we are doing what we ought, we are acting with a view to some ultimate Good."
"Well, I, on the contrary, believe that we ought absolutely, without reference to anything else. It is a unique form of activity, dependent on nothing but itself; and for anything we have yet shown, it may be the Good we are in quest of."
This suggestion, unexpected as it was, threw me into great perplexity. I did not see exactly how to meet it; yet it awakened no response in me, nor as I thought In any of the others. But while I was hesitating, Leslie began: