"Well," he said, "go on! Once more I have entered my protest; and now I leave the road clear."
"The worst of you is," said Ellis, "that you always turn up in front! When we think we have passed you once for all, you take a short cut across the fields, and there you are in the middle of the road, with the same old story, that we're altogether on the wrong track."
"Well," said Dennis, sententiously, "I do my duty."
"And," replied Ellis, "no doubt you have your reward! Proceed!" he continued, turning to me.
"Well," I said, "I suppose I must try to go through to the end, though these tactics of Dennis make me very nervous. I shall suppose, however, that I have convinced him that it is not in ethical activity as such that we can expect to find the most perfect example of Good. And now I propose to examine in turn some other of our activities, starting with that which seems to be the most primitive of all."
"And which is that?"
"I was thinking of the activity of our bodily senses, our direct contact, so to speak, with objects, without the intermediation of reflection, through the touch, the sight, the hearing, and the rest. Is there anything in all this which we could call good?"
"Is there anything!" cried Ellis. "What a question to ask!" And he broke out with the lines from Browning's "Saul":
"Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock,
The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock