G. E. Moore

“ Thus even those who would assent to the maxim that “Justice should always be done, though the heavens should fall,” will generally be disposed to believe that justice never will, in fact, cause the heavens to fall, but will rather be always the best means of upholding them. And similarly those who say that “you should never do evil that good may come,” though their maxim seems to imply that good may sometimes come from doing wrong, would yet be very loth to admit that, by doing wrong, you ever would really produce better consequences on the whole than if you had acted rightly instead. ”

“ This, I think, is the most serious objection to the view that right and wrong depend upon the actual consequences. But yet I am inclined to think that even this objection can be got over by reference to the distinction between what is right or wrong, on the one hand, and what is morally praiseworthy or blameworthy on the other. What we should naturally say of a man whose action turns out badly owing to some unforeseen accident when he had every reason to expect that it would turn out well, is not that his action was right, but rather that he is not to blame. ”

“ And such a view does necessarily contradict our principle; since, whether it be true or not that an act of injustice ever actually could in this world produce the best possible consequences, it is certainly possible to conceive circumstances in which it would do so. I doubt whether those who believe in the absolute universality of certain moral rules do generally thus distinguish quite clearly between the question whether disobedience to the rule ever could produce the best possible consequences, and the question whether, if it did, then disobedience would be wrong. ”

“ If we held this view, we might still hold that a man may act wrongly from a good motive, and rightly from a bad one, and that the motive would make no difference whatever to the rightness or wrongness of the action. ”

“ But, no doubt, what is meant by many who urge this objection is to deny this. What they mean to say is not merely that to call an action expedient is a different thing from calling it a duty, but also that sometimes what is expedient is wrong, and what is a duty is inexpedient. This is a view which is undoubtedly often held; people often speak as if there often were an actual conflict between duty and expediency. ”

“ Those, therefore, who hold that certain specific ways of acting are absolutely always right, and others absolutely always wrong, do, I think, generally hold that the former do also, as a matter of fact, absolutely always produce the best results, and the latter never. But, for the reasons given at the beginning of Chapter III, it is, I think, very unlikely that this belief can be justified. The total results of an action always depend, not merely on the specific nature of the action, but on the circumstances in which it is done ”

“ And it may be admitted that, in some cases at least, it is right and proper that a man’s motives should thus influence our judgment. But the question is: What sort of moral judgment is it right and proper that they should influence? ”

“ For though, in the case supposed, the bad motive would not actually have led to wrong action, yet, if it is true that motives of that kind do generally lead to wrong action, we should be right in passing this judgment upon it; and judgments to the effect that a motive is of a kind which generally leads to wrong action are undoubtedly moral judgments of a sort, and an important sort, though they do not prove that every action done from such a motive is wrong. ”

“ But, no doubt, there may be some persons who will hold, in the case of some particular rule or set of rules, that even if obedience to it does in some cases not produce the best possible consequences, yet we ought even in these cases to obey it. ”