Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/170

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CHAPTER V

RESULTS THE TEST OF RIGHT AND WRONG

In our last chapter we began considering objections to one very fundamental principle, which is presupposed by the theory stated in the first two chapters—a principle which may be summed up in the two propositions (1) that the question whether an action is right or wrong always depends upon its total consequences, and (2) that if it is once right to prefer one set of total consequences, A, to another set, B, it must always be right to prefer any set precisely similar to A to any set precisely similar to B. The objections to this principle, which we considered in the last chapter, rested on certain views with regard to the meaning of the words “right” and “good.” But there remain several other quite independent objections, which may be urged against it