"One, as I said just now, that should be eternal and all-comprehensive."
"And so, in the end, you have nothing better than an imaginary heaven to land us in!"
"I have no power, I fear, to land you there. But I believe there is that dwelling within you which will not let you rest in anything short."
"Then I fear I shall never rest!"
"That may be. But meantime all I want to do is to ascertain, if we can, the meaning of your unrest. I have no interest in what you call an imaginary heaven, except in so far as its conception is necessary to enable us to interpret the world we know."
"But how should it be necessary? I have never found it so."
"It is necessary, I think, to explain our dissatisfaction. For the Goods we actually realize always point away from themselves to some other Good whose realization perhaps, as you say, for us is impossible. But even if the Good were chimerical, we cannot deny the passion that pursues it; for it is the same passion that urges us to the pursuit of such Goods as we really can attain. And if we want to understand the nature of that passion, we must understand the nature of its Good, whether it be attainable or no. Only it is for the sake of life here that we need that comprehension, not for the sake of life somewhere else."
"But do you reduce our passion for Good to this passion for Love?"
"I don't 'reduce' it; I interpret it so."
"And so we come back to the girl and the boy and the village green!"