Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/82

 should not speak of desires (in the plural) at all. There is one process of desiring, a process which may be directed to the attainment of this or that kind of object.

Now, if this be so, are we able to explain why people desire such very different kinds of objects? Or to relapse into the more usual language, why do people have such very different desires? At the present moment you may desire a knowledge of Italian, I a pork pie. Why do I desire the pork pie, and why do you desire a knowledge of Italian? The answer is that objects are always desired in reference to the self. They become objects of desire only because they have some value for the self that desires them. Hence what has value for one man may have none for another. Men desire only those objects on which they set some value, and they set a value on them because they promise a satisfaction of the self. Incidentally we may note that the reason why all men desire money is that money is potentially all that money can buy. Money is a standard of value because money can be turned into many of the objects which men desire. Money is not desired for itself, but because it can buy the objects in which the most different kinds of people find satisfaction.

All the objects of desire, whether purchasable by money or not, owe their moral worth to their relation to some self. In themselves, these objects of desire, or the sums of money that buy them, are neither good nor bad. Their moral goodness or badness springs from their relation to the self, and their connection with its dominant purposes and aims.