may seem an outrageous thing to say; and yet we must say it, if we are to hold that right and wrong depend upon the actual consequences. For these reasons many people are strongly inclined to hold that they do not depend upon the actual consequences, but only upon those which were antecedently probable, or which the agent had reason to expect, or which it was possible for him to foresee. They are inclined to say that an action is always right, whatever its actual consequences may be, provided the agent had reason to expect that they would be the best possible; and always wrong, if he had reason to expect that they would not.
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
