G. E. Moore

“ Thus a philosopher may often speak of an ethical truth as “a dictate of Reason,” without really meaning to imply that there is any faculty or part of our mind which invariably leads us right and never leads us wrong. ”

“ We must hold, on the contrary, that the wrongness of what is wrong consists simply and solely in the fact that God does forbid it—a view to which many even of those, who believe that what is wrong is in fact forbidden by God, will justly feel an objection. ”

“ It is, indeed, not at all an easy thing to define what is meant by "having the necessary authority," or, in other words, to say in what relation a person or set of persons must stand to a community, if it is to be true that nothing can be a law of that community except what these persons have willed, or what can be deduced from something which they have willed. But still it may be true that there always is some person or set of persons whose will or consent is necessary to make a law a law. ”

“ And if this is so, then it shows conclusively that to judge that a thing is intrinsically good is not the same thing as to judge that some man is pleased with it or desires it or desires it for its own sake. ”

“ Again it may be held that each man when he calls a thing “good” or “bad” merely means that he himself thinks it to be so or has some feeling towards it; a view from which it will follow, as in the case of right and wrong, that no two men can ever differ in opinion as to whether a thing is good or bad. ”

“ Now it may seem to many people that the most serious objection to views of this kind is that it is, to say the least, extremely doubtful whether there is any being, such as they suppose to exist—any being, who never wills what is wrong but always only what is right; and I think myself that, in all probability, there is no such being—neither a God, nor any being such as philosophers have called by the names I have mentioned. ”

“ But if we suppose the laws of nature to change, or if we conceive a Universe in which different laws of nature hold from those which hold in this one, then plainly a precisely similar action done in precisely similar circumstances might yet have different total effects. According to our principle, therefore, the statement that any two precisely similar actions, done in precisely similar circumstances, must both be right, if one is right, though true as applied to this Universe, provided (as is commonly supposed) the laws of nature cannot change, is not true absolutely unconditionally. ”

“ Let us suppose, for the moment, that nothing can be intrinsically good unless it contains some pleasure, and that every whole which contains more pleasure than pain is intrinsically good. The question we are now discussing is merely whether, supposing this to be so, any whole which did contain more pleasure than pain, would not be good, even if nobody had any further feeling towards it. ”

“ But the commonest of all views with regard to the meaning of the word “good,” is that to call a thing good is to say that it is desired, or desired for its own sake; and curiously enough this view has been used as an argument in favour of the very theory stated in our first two chapters, on the ground that no man ever desires (or desires for its own sake) anything at all except pleasure (or his own pleasure) , and that hence, since “good” means “desired,” any set of effects which contains more pleasure must always be better than one which contains less. ”

“ That some men can and do make such judgments—that they can and do judge that things which they themselves desire or are pleased with, are nevertheless intrinsically bad (that is to say would be bad, quite apart from their consequences, and even if they existed quite alone) is, I think, undeniable; and no doubt men make this judgment even more frequently with regard to things which are desired by others. ”

“ For if, in saying that one set of effects A is better than another B we merely mean to say that A has a relation to some mind or minds which B has not got, then it will follow that a set of effects precisely similar to A will not be better than a set precisely similar to B, if they do not happen to have the required relations to any mind. ”

“ For instance, it may, so far as I can see, be true that there really is some very special feeling of such a nature that any man who knows that he himself or anybody else really feels it towards any state of things cannot doubt that the state of things in question is intrinsically good. If this be so, then the last argument will not hold against the view that when we call a thing intrinsically good we may mean merely that this special feeling is felt towards it. ”

“ We cannot say that any action Y, whose total effects are precisely similar to those of X, will also be right if X is right. It is absolutely essential that the other condition should also be satisfied ”

“ He may even believe that it would be a positively bad thing—worse than nothing—that it should exist quite alone, in spite of the fact that he knows that it is desired and strongly desired for its own sake, even by himself. ”

“ The argument is simply that, whether there is such a being or not, there certainly are many people who do not believe that there is one, and that such people, in spite of not believing in its existence, can nevertheless continue to believe that actions are right and wrong. ”

“ Our theory does assert that, if any voluntary action is once right, then any other voluntary action which resembled it in one particular respect (or rather in a combination of two respects) must always also be right ”

“ It maintains, therefore, that everybody who believes that actions are right or wrong does, as a matter of fact, believe in the existence of one of these beings. And this contention seems to be plainly contrary to fact. ”

“ And whether this is so or not, it does seem to be the case that every law, which is the law of any community, is, in a certain sense, dependent upon the human will. This is true in the sense that, in the case of every law whatever, there always are some men, who, by performing certain acts of will, could make it cease to be the law ”

“ It was stated, at the beginning of the last chapter, that the ethical theory we are considering—the theory stated in the first two chapters—does not maintain with regard to any class of voluntary actions, that, if an action of the class in question is once right, any other action of the same class must always be right. ”

“ It might, indeed, be urged that when we say there are some people who do not believe in any of these beings, all that is really true is that there are some people who think they do not believe in them ”

“ We do not, of course, so constantly make judgments of this kind, as we do some other judgments about the goodness of things. But we certainly can make them, and it seems quite clear that we mean something by them. ”