28 NATURE S GOOD: A CONVERSATION 



gent discrimination of means and ends is the sole 

 final resource in this problem of all problems, the 

 control of the factors of good and ill in life. We 

 say, indeed, not merely that that is what intelli 

 gence does, but rather what it is. 



Historically, it is quite possible to show how 

 under certain social conditions this human and 

 practical problem of the relation of good and in 

 telligence generated the notion of the transcen 

 dental good and the pure reason. As Grimes re 

 minded us, Plato 



Moore. Yes, and Protagoras don t forget 

 him; for unfortunately we know both the origin 

 and the consequences of your doctrine that being 

 and seeming are the same. We know quite well 

 that pure empiricism leads to the identification 

 of being and seeming, and that is just why every 

 deeply moral and religious soul from the time of 

 Plato and Aristotle to the present has insisted upon 

 a transcendent reality. 



Eaton. Personally I don t need an absolute to 

 enable me to distinguish between, say, the good 

 of kindness and the evil of slander, or the good of 

 health and the evil of valetudinarianism. In ex 

 perience, things bear their own specific characters. 

 Nor has the absolute idealist as yet answered the 

 question of how the absolute reality enables him 

 to distinguish between being and seeming in one 

 single concrete case. The trouble is that for him 



