good_. The answer will at once be, '_That is exactly, my dear Professor,
what I do turn to. And, listen_,' he might say--the following is again a
passage from his own writings--'_to the way in which I figure the
highest good to myself. It is a huge building, with its outer walls all
blind and windowless; a huge court within, surrounded by a colonnade of
white marble; in the midst a musical fountain with a jet of quick-silver
in the Arabian fashion; leaves of orange-trees and pomegranates placed
alternately; overhead the bluest of skies and the mellowest of suns;
great long-nosed greyhounds should be sleeping here and there; from time
to time barefoot negresses with golden ankle-rings, fair women servants
white and slender, and clad in rich strange garments, should pass
between the hollow arches, basket on arm, or urn poised on head._[19]
_Three things give me pleasure, gold, marble, and purple--brilliance,
mass, and colour. These are the stuffs out of which my dreams are made;
and all my ideal palaces are constructed of these materials._'[20] What
answer could Professor Huxley make to this that would not seem to the
other at once barbarous and nonsensical? The best answer he could make
would be simply, '_I do not agree with you_.' And to this again the
answer would at once be, '_That is because you are still hampered by
prejudices, whose only possible foundations we have both removed; and
because I am a man of culture, and you are not._'

Let us also consider again that other utterance of Professor Huxley's,
with which I began this chapter. According to the positive view of
morals, he says, those special sets of happiness that a moral system
selects for us, have no more to do with any theory as to the reason of
their selection, than a man's sight has to do with his theory of vision,
or than the hot taste of ginger has to do with a knowledge of its
analysis. That is a most clear and succinct statement of the whole
positive position; and we shall now be able to profit by its clearness,