So, after casting about in my mind, I began, with some hesitation, as follows:
"The first thing, then, that I want to say is this: Good, as it seems to me, necessarily involves some form of conscious activity."
As I had expected, Dennis interrupted me at once.
"I don't see that at all," he said. "Consciousness may have nothing to do with it."
"Perhaps, indeed, it may not," I replied, with all the suavity I could command. "I should rather have said that I, as a matter of fact, can form no idea of Good except in connection with consciousness."
"Can you not?" he exclaimed, "but I can! If a thing is good it's good, so it appears to me, whether or no there is any consciousness of it."
"But," I said, "I, you see, myself, have no experience of anything existing apart from consciousness, so it is difficult for me to know whether such a thing would be good or no. But you, perhaps, are differently constituted."
"Not in that point," he replied. "I admit, of course, that there is no experience without consciousness. But we can surely conceive that of which we have no experience? And I should have thought it was clear that Good, like Truth, is, whether or no anyone is aware of it. Or would you say that 2 + 2 = 4 is only true when someone is thinking of it?"
"As to that," I replied, "I would rather not say anything about it just now. On the logical point you may be right; but that, I think, need not at present detain us, because what I am trying to get at, for the moment, is something rather different. I will put it like this: Good, if it is to be conceived as an object of human action, must be conceived, must it not, as an object of consciousness? For otherwise do you think we should trouble to pursue it?"
"I don't know," he said, "whether we should; but perhaps we ought to."