| CHAPTER I. |
| THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. |
| A. |
| SECTION. | PAGE |
| 1. | In order to define Ethics, we must discover what is both common and peculiar to all undoubted ethical judgments; | 1 |
| 2. | but this is not that they are concerned with human conduct, but that they are concerned with a certain predicate ‘good,’ and its converse ‘bad,’ which may be applied both to conduct and to other things. | 1 |
| 3. | The subjects of the judgments of a scientific Ethics are not, like those of some studies, ‘particular things’; | 3 |
| 4. | but it includes all universal judgments which assert the relation of ‘goodness’ to any subject, and hence includes Casuistry. | 3 |
| B. |
| 5. | It must, however, enquire not only what things are universally related to goodness, but also, what this predicate, to which they are related, is: | 5 |
| 6. | and the answer to this question is that it is indefinable | 6 |
| 7. | or simple: for if by definition be meant the analysis of an object of thought, only complex objects can be defined; | 7 |
| 8. | and of the three senses in which ‘definition’ can be used, this is the most important. | 8 |
| 9. | What is thus indefinable is not ‘the good,’ or the whole of that which always possesses the predicate ‘good,’ but this predicate itself. | 8 |
| 10. | ‘Good,’ then, denotes one unique simple object of thought among innumerable others; but this object has very commonly been identified with some other—a fallacy which may be called ‘the naturalistic fallacy’ | 9 |
| 11. | and which reduces what is used as a fundamental principle of Ethics either to a tautology or to a statement about the meaning of a word. | 10 |
| 12. | The nature of this fallacy is easily recognised; | 12 |
| 13. | and if it were avoided, it would be plain that the only alternatives to the admission that ‘good’ is indefinable, are either that it is complex or that there is no notion at all peculiar to Ethics—alternatives which can only be refuted by an appeal to inspection, but which can be so refuted. | 15 |
| 14. | The ‘naturalistic fallacy’ illustrated by Bentham; and the importance of avoiding it pointed out. | 17 |
| C. |
| 15. | The relations which ethical judgments assert to hold universally between ‘goodness’ and other things are of two kinds: a thing may be asserted either to be good itself or to be causally related to something else which is itself good—to be ‘good as a means.’ | 21 |
| 16. | Our investigations of the latter kind of relation cannot hope to establish more than that a certain kind of action will generally be followed by the best possible results; | 22 |
| 17. | but a relation of the former kind, if true at all, will be true of all cases. All ordinary ethical judgments assert causal relations, but they are commonly treated as if they did not, because the two kinds of relation are not distinguished. | 23 |
| D. |
| 18. | The investigation of intrinsic values is complicated by the fact that the value of a whole may be different from the sum of the values of its parts, | 27 |
| 110 |
| 67. | and by ‘metaphysical Ethics’ I mean those systems which maintain or imply that the answer to the question ‘What is good?’ logically depends upon the answer to the question ‘What is the nature of supersensible reality?.’ All such systems obviously involve the same fallacy—the ‘naturalistic fallacy’—by the use of which Naturalism was also defined. | 113 |
| 68. | Metaphysics, as dealing with a ‘supersensible reality,’ may have a bearing upon practical Ethics (1) if its supersensible reality is conceived as something future, which our actions can affect; and (2) since it will prove that every proposition of practical Ethics is false, if it can shew that an eternal reality is either the only real thing or the only good thing. Most metaphysical writers, believing in a reality of the latter kind, do thus imply the complete falsehood of every practical proposition, although they fail to see that their Metaphysics thus contradicts their Ethics. | 115 |
| B. |
| 69. | But the theory, by which I have defined Metaphysical Ethics, is not that Metaphysics has a logical bearing upon the question involved in practical Ethics ‘What effects will my action produce?,’ but that it has such a bearing upon the fundamental ethical question ‘What is good in itself?.’ This theory has been refuted by the proof, in Chap. I, that the naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy: it only remains to discuss certain confusions which seem to have lent it plausibility. | 118 |
| 70. | One such source of confusion seems to lie in the failure to distinguish between the proposition ‘This is good,’ when it means ‘This existing thing is good,’ and the same proposition, when it means ‘The existence of this kind of thing would be good’; | 118 |
| 71. | and another seems to lie in the failure to distinguish between that which suggests a truth, or is a cause of our knowing it, and that upon which it logically depends, or which is a reason for believing it: in the former sense fiction has a more important bearing upon Ethics than Metaphysics can have. | 121 |
| C. |
| 72. | But a more important source of confusion seems to lie in the supposition that ‘to be good’ is identical with the possession of some supersensible property, which is also involved in the definition of ‘reality.’ | 122 |
| 73. | One cause of this supposition seems to be the logical prejudice that all propositions are of the most familiar type—that in which subject and predicate are both existents. | 123 |
| 74. | But ethical propositions cannot be reduced to this type: in particular, they are obviously to be distinguished | 125 |
| 75. | (1) from Natural Laws; with which one of Kant’s most famous doctrines confuses them, | 126 |
| 76. | and (2) from Commands; with which they are confused both by Kant and by others. | 127 |
| D. |
| 77. | This latter confusion is one of the sources of the prevalent modern doctrine that ‘being good’ is identical with ‘being willed’; but the prevalence of this doctrine seems to be chiefly due to other causes. I shall try to shew with regard to it (1) what are the chief errors which seem to have led to its adoption; and (2) that, apart from it, the Metaphysics of Volition can hardly have the smallest logical bearing upon Ethics. | 128 |
| 78. | (1) It has been commonly held, since Kant, that ‘goodness’ has the same relation to Will or Feeling, which ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ has to Cognition: that the proper method for Ethics is to discover what is implied in Will or Feeling, just as, according to Kant, the proper method for Metaphysics was to discover what is implied in Cognition. | 129 |
| 79. | The actual relations between ‘goodness’ and Will or Feeling, from which this false doctrine is inferred, seem to be mainly (a) the causal relation consisting in the fact that it is only by reflection upon the experiences of Will and Feeling that we become aware of ethical distinctions; (b) the facts that a cognition of goodness is perhaps always included in certain kinds of Willing and Feeling, and is generally accompanied by them: | 130 |
| to this a true belief in the existence of the object of the cognition, the whole thus formed is not much more valuable still. | 192 |
| 117. | I think that this question should be answered in the affirmative; but in order to ensure that this judgment is correct, we must carefully distinguish it | 194 |
| 118. | from the two judgments (a) that knowledge is valuable as a means, (b) that, where the object of the cognition is itself a good thing, its existence, of course, adds to the value of the whole state of things: | 195 |
| 119. | if, however, we attempt to avoid being biassed by these two facts, it still seems that mere true belief may be a condition essential to great value. | 197 |
| 120. | We thus get a third essential constituent of many great goods; and in this way we are able to justify (1) the attribution of value to knowledge, over and above its value as a means, and (2) the intrinsic superiority of the proper appreciation of a real object over the appreciation of an equally valuable object of mere imagination: emotions directed towards real objects may thus, even if the object be inferior, claim equality with the highest imaginative pleasures. | 198 |
| 121. | Finally (4) with regard to the objects of the cognition which is essential to these good wholes, it is the business of Aesthetics to analyse their nature: it need only be here remarked (1) that, by calling them ‘beautiful,’ we mean that they have this relation to a good whole; and (2) that they are, for the most part, themselves complex wholes, such that the admiring contemplation of the whole greatly exceeds in value the sum of the values of the admiring contemplation of the parts. | 200 |
| 122. | With regard to II. Personal Affection, the object is here not merely beautiful but also good in itself; it appears, however, that the appreciation of what is thus good in itself, viz. the mental qualities of a person, is certainly, by itself, not so great a good as the whole formed by the combination with it of an appreciation of corporeal beauty; it is doubtful whether it is even so great a good as the mere appreciation of corporeal beauty; but it is certain that the combination of both is a far greater good than either singly. | 203 |
| 123. | It follows from what has been said that we have every reason to suppose that a cognition of material qualities, and even their existence, is an essential constituent of the Ideal or Summum Bonum: there is only a bare possibility that they are not included in it. | 205 |
| 124. | It remains to consider positive evils and mixed goods. I. Evils may be divided into three classes, namely | 207 |
| 125. | (1) evils which consist in the love, or admiration, or enjoyment of what is evil or ugly | 208 |
| 126. | (2) evils which consist in the hatred or contempt of what is good or beautiful | 211 |
| 127. | and (3) the consciousness of intense pain: this appears to be the only thing, either greatly good or greatly evil, which does not involve both a cognition and an emotion directed towards its object; and hence it is not analogous to pleasure in respect of its intrinsic value, while it also seems not to add to the vileness of a whole, as a whole, in which it is combined with another bad thing, whereas pleasure does add to the goodness of a whole, in which it is combined with another good thing; | 212 |
| 128. | but pleasure and pain are completely analogous in this, that pleasure by no means always increases, and pain by no means always decreases, the total value of a whole in which it is included: the converse is often true. | 213 |
| 129. | In order to consider II. Mixed Goods, we must first distinguish between (1) the value of a whole as a whole, and (2) its value on the whole or total value: (1) = the difference between (2) and the sum of the values of the parts. In view of this distinction, it then appears: | 214 |
| 130. | (1) That the mere combination of two or more evils is never positively good on the whole, although it may certainly have great intrinsic value as a whole; | 216 |
| 131. | but (2) That a whole which includes a cognition of something evil or ugly may yet be a great positive good on the whole: most virtues, which have any intrinsic value whatever, see
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