Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/104

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

fused. It may be alleged to be a fact that whenever a man judges an action to be right, he only does so, because he has a certain feeling towards it; and this alleged fact may actually be used as an argument to prove that what he is judging is merely that he has the feeling. But obviously, even if the alleged fact be a fact, it does not in the least support this conclusion. The two points are entirely different, and there is a most important difference between their consequences. The difference is that, even if it be true that a man never judges an action to be right, unless he has a certain feeling towards it, yet, if this be all, the mere fact that he has this feeling, will not prove his judgment to be true; we may quite well hold that, even though he has the feeling and judges the action to be right, yet sometimes his judgment is false and the action is not really right. But if, on the other hand, we hold that what he is judging is merely that he has the feeling, then the mere fact that he has it will prove his judgment to be true: if he is only judging that he has it, then the mere fact that he has it is, of course, sufficient to make his judgment true. We must, there-