Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/97

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to change his opinion as to whether a particular action was right or wrong; and we must, I think, admit that, sometimes at least, his feelings towards it completely change as well; so that, for instance, an action, which he formerly regarded with moral disapproval, he may now regard with positive moral approval, and vice versa. So that, for this reason alone, and quite apart from differences of feeling between different men, we shall have to admit, according to our theory, that it is often now true of an action that it was right, although it was formerly true of the same action that it was wrong.

This fact, on which I have been insisting, that different men do feel differently towards the same action, and that even the same man may feel differently towards it at different times, is, of course, a mere commonplace; and my only excuse for insisting on it is that it might possibly be thought that some one feeling or pair of feelings, and those the very ones which it is most plausible to regard as the ones about which we are making an assertion in our judgments of right and wrong, are