Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/105

, distinguish carefully between the assertion that, whenever a man judges an action to be right, he only does so because he has a certain feeling, and the entirely different assertion, that, whenever he judges an action to be right, he is merely judging that he has this feeling. The former assertion, even if it be true, does not prove that the latter is true also. And we may, therefore, dispute the latter without disputing the former. It is only the latter which our argument proves to be untrue; and not a word has been said tending to show that the former may not be perfectly true.

Our argument, therefore, does not disprove the assertion, if it should be made, that we only judge actions to be right and wrong, when and because we have certain feelings towards them. And it is also important to insist that it does not disprove another assertion also. It does not disprove the assertion that, whenever any man has a certain feeling towards an action, the action is, as a matter of fact, always right. Anybody is still perfectly free to hold that this is true, as a matter of fact, and that, therefore, as a matter of fact, one and the