Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/116

 with some and displeased with others, but when they did not, as yet, judge any actions to be right or wrong; and that it was only because they transmitted these feelings, more or less modified, to their descendants, that those descendants at some later stage, began to make judgments of right and wrong; so that, in a sense, our moral judgments were developed out of mere feelings. And I can see no objection to the supposition that this was so. But, then, it seems also to be often supposed that, if our moral judgments were developed out of feelings—if this was their origin—they must still at this moment be somehow concerned with feelings: that the developed product must resemble the germ out of which it was developed in this particular respect. And this is an assumption for which there is, surely, no shadow of ground. It is admitted, on all hands, that the developed product does always differ, in some respects, from its origin; and the precise respects in which it differs is a matter which can only be settled by observation: we cannot lay down a universal rule that it must always resemble it in certain definite respects.