"But," said Dennis, "to return to the other point, on your view is our knowledge of Good altogether subsequent to experience?"
"Yes," I replied, "our knowledge is, if you like; but it is a knowledge of experience in Good. We first recognize Good by what I call direct perception; then we analyze and define what we have recognized; and the results of this process, I suppose, is what we call knowledge, so far as it goes."
"And there can be no knowledge of Good independent of experience?"
"I do not know; perhaps there might be; only I should like to suggest that even if we could arrive at such a knowledge by pure reason, we should have achieved only a definition of Good, not Good itself; for Good, I suppose you will agree, must be a state of experience, not a formula."
"Even if it be so," he said, "it might still be possible to arrive at its formula by pure reason."
"It may be so," I replied, "only I console myself with the thought, that if, as is the case with so many of us, we cannot see our way to any such method, we are not left, on my hypothesis, altogether forlorn. For though we cannot know Good, we can go on realizing Goods, and so making progress towards the ultimate Good, which is the goal not merely of knowledge but of action."
"And how, may I ask," said Wilson, after a pause, "in your conception, is Good related to Happiness?"
"That," I replied, "is one of the points we have to ascertain by experience. For I regard the statement that happiness is the end as one of the numerous attempts which men have made to interpret the deliverances of their internal sense. I do not imagine the interpretation to be final and complete, and indeed it is too abstract and general to have very much meaning. But some meaning, no doubt, it has; and exactly what, may form the subject of much interesting discussion in detail, which belongs, however, rather to the question of the content of Good, than to that of the method of discovering it."
"The method!" replied Wilson, "but have you really indicated a method at all?"
"I have indicated," I replied "what I suppose to be the method of all science, namely, the interpretation of experience."