"And have you found a way?"
"No, I cannot say that I have. That's why I want to talk to you and hear how you have fared."
"I? Oh, I have given the whole subject up."
"You can hardly give up the subject till you give up life. You may have given up reading books about it; and, for that matter, so have I. But that is only because I want to grapple with it more closely."
"What do you do, then, if you do not read books?"
"I talk to as many people as I can, and especially to those who have had no special education in philosophy; and try to find out to what conclusions they have been led by their own direct experience."
"Conclusions about what?"
"About many things. But in particular about the point we used to be fondest of discussing in the days before you had, as you say, given up the subject—I mean the whole question of the values we attach, or ought to attach, to things."
"Oh!" he said, "well, as to all that, my opinion is the same as of old. 'There's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so,' So I used to say at college and so I say now."
"I remember," I replied, "that that is what you always used to say; but I thought I had refuted you over and over again."