Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/160

 action depends solely on the feelings? Was Joffre's action right merely because he loved his country? Was the girl's deception wrong, simply because she felt jealous of her rival? It would be absurd to believe that. The rightness and wrongness of actions depends not on the feeling alone, but on the feeling plus the end that is purposed. And both of these are included in the motive.

(2) It follows that it is just as erroneous to take motive to include only the end that is purposed. If motive be understood only in that sense, then it must be maintained that the rightness and wrongness of actions have nothing to do with the emotional disposition of the person who performs them. But that is simply not true. If a man gives £50,000 to build an hospital, his act is not morally right unless he feels sympathy with the people whose sufferings his money is destined to alleviate. Here again we see that an action is morally right only if the motive is complete, i.e. comprehends both the end purposed and the emotions felt.

Again, those who maintain that consequences constitute the criterion of the rightness or wrongness of actions often do not make clear what precisely they mean by consequences. "Consequences," as we have seen, may mean either (1) the intention, i.e. the total results of the action as purposed and foreseen, or (2) the actual results of the action when it has been performed.

Now, in neither of these senses do the consequences of an action supply an adequate test of the rightness or wrongness of that action. With regard to the former case, in which "consequences" is taken to