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 these ideas do not merely consist in the thought that some man has a particular feeling towards some action? There is no more reason why such an idea should not have been developed out of the mere existence of a feeling than why the judgment that we have feelings should not have been developed from the same origin. And hence the theory that moral judgments originated in feelings does not, in fact, lend any support at all to the theory that now, as developed, they can only be judgments about feelings. No argument from the origin of a thing can be a safe guide as to exactly what the nature of the thing is now. That is a question which must be settled by actual analysis of the thing in its present state. And such analysis seems plainly to show that moral judgments are not merely judgments about feelings.

I conclude, then, that the theory that our judgments of right and wrong are merely judgments about somebody’s feelings is quite untenable in any of the forms in which it will lead to the conclusion that one and the same action is often both right and wrong. But I said that this was only one