"But," he protested, "you are taking an absurd and impossible case."
"I am taking the case which you yourself put, when you said that Good consisted simply in doing what one ought, independently of all other accompaniment or condition. But perhaps that is not what you really meant?"
"No," he said; "of course, what I meant was that it is life according to the moral law that is Good; but I did not intend to separate the law from the life, and call it Good all by itself."
"But is the life the better for the law, in the sense, I mean, in which law involves constraint? Or would it not be better still if the same life were pursued freely for its own sake?"
"Perhaps so."
"But, then, in that case, the more we realized Good the less we should be aware of obligation. And would a life without conscious and felt obligation be a life specifically ethical, in the sense in which you seemed to be using the word?"
"I should think not; for 'ought' in the ethical sense does certainly seem to me to involve the idea of obligation."
"In that case it would seem to be truer to say that activity is Good, not in so far as it is ethical but precisely in so far as it is not. At any rate, I should maintain that we come nearer to a realization of Good in the activities which we pursue without effort or friction, than in those which involve a struggle between duty and inclination."
"But the activities we pursue without effort or friction often enough are bad."
"No doubt; but some of them are good, and it is to those I should look for the best idea I could form of what Good might be."