“Well, then,” I said, “first of all we must find out what we consider good, what we mean by the good—that misused word—and to distinguish between the true and the artificial good. Have you any ideas about it?”
None of them had any definite idea of what they meant by the good, or of the distinction between the goody-goodiness which repelled them, and the goodness which they loved. They thought immediately of “good” people who are unlovable or stupid. Virginia and Marian exchanged remarks about a girl they had met that morning at Sunday-school; and all through the meeting, until I found effective means to stop them, they referred to her as an example.
“Now,” I said, “I will tell you of the true good, and by the light of it you will clearly distinguish the artificial. You remember the first law of art.”
Henry had the paper with him. It was: “Art is a symbol of completeness in a definite shape.”
“So the good, too, is a symbol of completeness in a definite shape,” I said. “Goodness is always of relation. It means the right relation, sympathy and unity of those who know each other. And the good man is the man who makes a complete world, a symbol of the perfect awakened universe, out of those few people whom he knows—that is, of whose existence he is aware—and of all that he knows in the universe, which is a small part of the whole. He makes it complete and perfect, by making all his relations with life complete, and understanding and beautiful. You realize that a Robinson Crusoe, alone on his desert island, if he never expected to see human beings again, could not be either good or bad.”
“Yes, he could,” said Virginia, “in the way he treated the animals.”
“That is right,” I answered. “If you include the animals as selves, he could still be good or bad in his relation with them. But you see that goodness is of relation. It is having our relations right, good and sympathetic, as far as they reach.
“That, then, is the law, the only law. All moralities and systems were made to uphold and fulfil that law, and they all change with the needs of man and his circumstances, but that one law is always the same, is always true, is the spirit which makes all actions either good or bad. For I believe there is no action in itself either good or bad, but all must be tested by this law. ‘Is it good?’ means: Does it make for true and understanding relations between men? Do you agree with me?”
“Yes,” they said.
“Take the laws of Moses, or any system of laws,” I went on, “and you will see that they were made by men, who realized in themselves the one supreme law, the law of progress toward the human whole. These systems of laws, if followed by people incapable of seeing the broad way for themselves, would lead toward that end. But the lesser laws change with circumstance, as a path changes with the landscape. Take the Mosaic laws. The first laws, ‘Thou shalt have no other God,’ ‘Thou shalt not take his name in vain,’ and ‘Thou shalt keep the Sabbath,’ seem to us now much less important than some later laws, such as ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ and so on. But if you stop to think, you will see that these first were most necessary; for the people’s idea of God, so much more limited than ours, was still, like ours, the reason for their morality, the law of laws, the ‘I Am’ that gave meaning to goodness. In their condition, if they had not reverenced and feared God, they would not have kept the laws of Moses. The actions or ways of life we often hear called good, but which arouse in us a feeling of contempt, as if it were goody-goodiness, or self-righteousness, are actions according to petty laws of goodness, by people who do not know the spirit, the great law above all laws. Sometimes they are actions no longer good at all, acted according to petty laws that we have passed. Do you see what I mean?”