Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/113

Rh These facts, then, seem to me to prove conclusively that, when a man judges an action to be right or wrong, he is not always merely judging that his society has some particular feeling towards actions of that class, nor yet that some man has. But here again it is important to insist on the limitations of the argument; and to distinguish clearly between what it does prove and what it does not. It does not, of course, prove that any class of action towards which any society has a particular feeling, may not, as a matter of fact, always be right; nor even that any action, towards which any man whatever has the feeling, may not, as a matter of fact, always be so. Anybody, while fully admitting the force of our argument, is still perfectly free to hold that these things are true, as a matter of fact; and hence that one and the same action often is both right and wrong. All that our arguments, taken together, do strictly prove, is that, when a man asserts an action to be right or wrong, he is not merely making an assertion either about his own feelings nor yet about those of the society in which he lives, nor yet