Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/108

 course, follow that one and the same action is often both right and wrong, for the same reasons as were given in the last case. Thus, if, when I assert an action to be right, I am merely asserting that it is generally approved in the society to which I belong, it follows, of course, that if it is generally approved by my society, my assertion is true, and the action really is right. But as we saw, it seems undeniable, that some actions which are generally approved in my society, will have been disapproved or will still be disapproved in other societies. And, since any member of one of those societies will, on this view, when he judges an action to be wrong, be merely judging that it is disapproved in his society, it follows that when he judges one of these actions, which really is disapproved in his society, though approved in mine, to be wrong, this judgment of his will be just as true as my judgment that the same action was right: and hence the same action really will be both right and wrong. And similarly, if we adopt the other alternative, and say that when a man judges an action to be right he is merely judging that some man or other