G. E. Moore

“ My judgment, then, is not merely a judgment about my own psychology: but, if so, about whose psychology is it a judgment? It cannot be a judgment that all men desire the one state more than the other; because that would include the judgment that I myself do so, which, as we have seen, I often know to be false, even while I judge that the one state really is better. And it cannot, I think, be a judgment merely about the feelings or desires of an impartial spectator in my own society ”

“ I propose to attack a proposition which seems to me to stand in this relation to the conclusion 'Reality is spiritual.' I do not propose to dispute that 'Reality is spiritual;' I do not deny that there may be reasons for thinking that it is: but I do propose to show that one reason upon which, to the best of my judgment, all other arguments ever used by Idealists depend is false. ”

“ For it does seem to me intensely silly to say that we can verify all our true ideas; intensely silly to say that every one of our true ideas is at some time useful; intensely silly to say that every idea which is ever useful is true. I hope Professor James would admit all these things to be silly, for if he and other Pragmatists would admit even as much as this, I think a good deal would be gained. But it by no means follows that because a philosopher would admit a view to be silly, when it is definitely put before him, he has not himself been constantly holding and implying that very view. ”

“ But it seems to me quite clear that when we say one morality is higher than another, we do not merely mean that it is our own. We are not merely asserting that it has a certain relation to our own feelings, but are asserting, if I may say so, that the person who has it has a better moral taste than the person who has not. And whether or not this means merely, as I think, that what the one believes is true, and what the other believes is false, it is at all events inconsistent with the view that in all cases we are merely making a statement about our own feelings. ”

“ We feel that to accuse a man of immoral conduct is quite a different thing from accusing him merely of bad taste or bad manners, or from accusing him merely of stupidity or ignorance. And no less clearly we distinguish between the idea of being under a moral obligation to do a thing, and the idea of being merely under a legal obligation to do it. It is a commonplace that the sphere of morality is much wider than the sphere of law: that we are morally bound to do and avoid many things, which are not enjoined or forbidden by the laws of our country ”

“ And I propose, therefore, to examine this assumption. If, as I hope to show, it is false; it will then follow, that if our own observation gives us any reason whatever, for believing in the existence of other persons, we must assume the existence, not only of our own perceptions, thoughts and feelings, but also of some, at least, among that other class of data, which I may now, for the sake of brevity, call "sense-contents"; we must assume that some of them exist, in precisely the same sense in which we assume that our perceptions, thoughts, and feelings exist. ”

“ It is, indeed, by no means agreed how observation can give a reason for any generalisation. Nobody knows what reason we have, if we have any, for supposing that it can. But that it can, everyone, I think, assumes. I think, therefore, most philosophers will agree, that if we can find any reason at all for generalisations of the kind in which I am interested, a reason for some of them at all events must be found in observation. And what I propose to ask is: What reason can be found in observation for even a single proposition of the kind I have described? ”

“ When I look for a good reason for our belief in the existence of other people, I shall not reject any proposition merely on the ground that it only renders their existence probable—only shows it to be more likely than not that they exist. ”

“ He says it is sheer nonsense to suppose that Time does not exist, is not a fact, does not belong to reality. It looks, therefore, as if he meant to make a distinction between "being real" on the one hand, and "existing," "being a fact," and "being" on the other hand—as if he meant to say that a thing may exist, and be, and be a fact, and yet not be real. And I think there is, at all events, some superficial difficulty in understanding this distinction. We might naturally think that to say "Time exists, is a fact, and is," is equivalent to saying that it is real. ”

“ Is it not the case that men do sometimes dwell on their faults and blemishes, when it is not useful for them to do so? when they would much better be thinking of something else? Is it not the case that they are often unable to get their minds away from a true idea, when it is harmful for them to dwell on it? Still more commonly, does it not happen that they waste their time in acquiring pieces of information which are no use to them, though perhaps very useful to other people? All this seems to me to be undeniable—just as undeniable as what Professor James himself has said ”

“ It seems quite obvious that in the case of many relational properties which things have, the fact that they have them is a mere matter of fact: that the things in question might have existed without having them. That this, which seems obvious, is true, seems to me to be the most important thing that can be meant by saying that some relations are purely external. And the difficulty is to see how any philosopher could have supposed that it was not true: that, for instance, the relation of part to whole is no more external than that of whole to part. ”

“ And what my analysis of sensation has been designed to show is, that whenever I have a mere sensation or idea, the fact is that I am then aware of something which is equally and in the same sense not an inseparable aspect of my experience. The awareness which I have maintained to be included in sensation is the very same unique fact which constitutes every kind of knowledge: "blue" is as much an object, and as little a mere content, of my experience, when I experience it, as the most exalted and independent real thing of which I am ever aware. ”

“ We might, indeed, object to this distinction between Time in one character and Time in another; on the ground that anything which has not got the character which Time exhibits, but only some other character, ought not to be called Time at all. We are, indeed, perfectly familiar with the conception that one and the same thing may at one time possess a character which it does not possess at another, so that what is true of it at one time may not be true of it at another. We are, that is, familiar with the idea of a thing changing its character. ”

“ Time is unreal. If Time is unreal, then plainly nothing ever happens before or after anything else; nothing is ever simultaneous with anything else; it is never true that anything is past; never true that anything will happen in the future ”

“ What thing, that any single man observes is such that it would probably not have existed, unless some other man had made a particular observation? So now I am asking: Which among the things, which one single man observes, are such that they would probably not have existed, unless it were true that some of them generally stood in certain relations to observations of some other person? ”

“ Assuming that religious ideas have been useful in the past, is it quite certain that they may not permanently continue to be useful, even though they are false? That, in short, even though they are not true, they nevertheless will be useful, not only for a time, but in the long run? And as for the assertion that all ideas, which pay for a considerable time, are true, this is obviously more doubtful still. Whether certain religious ideas will or will not be useful in the long run, it seems difficult to doubt that many of them have been useful for a considerable time. ”

“ It is mere superstition to suppose that an appeal to experience can prove reality. That I find something in existence in the world or in my self, shows that this something exists, and it cannot show more. ”

“ When I say that a kind of value, to be intrinsic, must satisfy the condition that it must be impossible for two things exactly alike to possess it in different degrees, I do not mean by this condition anything which a kind of value could be proved to satisfy, by the mere empirical fact that there was nothing else exactly like any of the things which possessed it. ”

“ This, it seems to me, is one consequence which Professor James means us to draw from the commonplace that the existence of our true beliefs depends upon human conditions. But does this consequence, in fact, follow from that commonplace? From the fact that we make our true beliefs, does it follow that we make them true?
In one sense, undoubtedly, even this does follow. If we say (as we may say) that no belief can be true, unless it exists, then it follows that, in a sense, the truth of a belief must always depend upon any conditions upon which its existence depends. ”

“ But I am strongly inclined to think that they are not merely psychological; that Moral Philosophy and Ethics are not mere departments of Psychology. In favour of the view that the two ideas in question are merely psychological, there is, so far as I am aware, nothing whatever to be said, except that so many philosophers have been absolutely convinced that they are. None of them seem to me to have succeeded in bringing forward a single argument in favour of their view. ”

“ Truth, Professor James has told us, is a property of certain of our ideas. And those of our ideas, which are true or false, are certainly only a part of the Universe. Other things in the Universe might, therefore, change, even if our ideas never changed in respect of this property. And our ideas themselves do undoubtedly change in some respects. A given idea exists in my mind at one moment and does not exist in it at another. ”

“ It is plain, I think, that, unless some such propositions are true, we have no more reason for supposing that Alexander the Great ever saw an elephant, than for supposing that Sindbad the Sailor saw a Roc; we have no more reason for supposing that anybody saw Julius Caesar murdered in the Senate House at Rome, than for supposing that somebody saw him carried up to Heaven in a fiery chariot. ”

“ I wish, therefore, briefly to point out that the question whether anything does exist, when it is not perceived, is one which I have not argued and shall not attempt to argue in this paper. I have, indeed, tried to show that since "exists" does not mean "is perceived," it is, at least, conceivable that things should exist, when they are not perceived. But I have admitted that it is quite possible none do so: it may be the case that whenever a thing exists, it is also at the same time perceived, for anything that I have said or shall say to the contrary. ”

“ Now, when Aristotle talks of "the good for man," there is, I think, as my quotation is sufficient to show, a certain confusion in his mind between what is good for man and what is best for man. What he really holds is that any mental activity which exhibits excellence and is pleasurable is a good; and when he adds that, if there are many excellences, the good must be mental activity which exhibits the best of them, and that it must last through a sufficiently long life, he only means that this is necessary if a man is to get the best he can get, not that this is the only good he can get. ”

“ In every case in which we believe in the existence of anything, past or future, we should say that we had helped to make the belief true, if and only if we had helped to cause the existence of the fact which, in that belief, we believed did exist or would exist. ”

“ If, on the other hand, we clearly recognise the nature of that peculiar relation which I have called "awareness of anything"; if we see that this is involved equally in the analysis of every experience—from the merest sensation to the most developed perception or reflexion, and that this is in fact the only essential element in an experience—the only thing that is both common and peculiar to all experiences—the only thing which gives us reason to call any fact mental ”

“ It is true that, if certain views which, if I understand them rightly, some Philosophers have seriously entertained, were true ones, it would be quite impossible that any of them should be judgments of perception. For some philosophers seem to me to have denied that we ever do in fact know such things as these, and others not only that we ever know them but also that they are ever true. ”

“ What Professor James says in this passage seems to me so indisputably true as fully to justify the vigour of his language. It is as clear as anything can be that it would not be useful for any man's mind to be always occupied with the true idea that he had certain faults and blemishes; or to be always occupied with the idea that twice two are four. It is clear, that is, that, if there are times at which a particular true idea is useful, there certainly are other times at which it would not be useful, but positively in the way. ”

“ I sometimes think of it in connection with one set of ideas and sometimes in connection with another set. Ideas, then, are constantly changing in some respects. They come and go; and at one time they stand in a given relation to other things or ideas, to which at another time they do not stand in that relation. In this sense, any given idea may certainly have a property at one time which it has not got at another time. All this seems obvious; and all this cannot be admitted, without admitting that reality is mutable—that some things change. ”

“ I should like, if I can, to interest you to-night in one particular question about Moral Philosophy. It is a question which resembles most philosophical questions, in respect of the fact that philosophers are by no means agreed as to what is the right answer to it: some seem to be very strongly convinced that one answer is correct, while others are equally strongly convinced of the opposite. For my own part I do feel some doubt as to which answer is the right one, although, as you will see, I incline rather strongly to one of the two alternatives. ”