Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/115

 so, then, the probability is that even where an action has the required relation to somebody’s feelings, it will not always be right.

There are, then, conclusive reasons against the view that, when we assert an action to be right or wrong, we are merely asserting that somebody has a particular feeling towards it, in any of the forms in which it will follow from this view that one and the same action can be both right and wrong. And we can, I think, also see that one of the reasons, which seems to have had most influence in leading people to suppose that this view must be true, in some form or other, is quite without weight. The reason I mean is one drawn from certain considerations as to the origin of our moral judgments. It has been widely held that, in the history of the human race, judgments of right and wrong originated in the fact that primitive men or their non-human ancestors had certain feelings towards certain classes of actions. That is to say, it is supposed that there was a time, if we go far enough back, when our ancestors did have different feelings towards different actions, being, for instance, pleased