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Rh out of two theories, which seem to be those which have the most influence in leading people to adopt this conclusion. And we must now briefly consider the second of these two theories.

This second theory is one which is often confused with the one just considered. It consists in asserting that when we judge an action to be right or wrong what we are asserting is merely that somebody or other thinks it to be right or wrong. That is to say, just as the last theory asserted that our moral judgments are merely judgments about somebody’s feelings, this one asserts that they are merely judgments about somebody’s thoughts or opinions. And they are apt to be confused with one another because a man’s feelings with regard to an action are not always clearly distinguished from his opinion as to whether it is right or wrong. Thus one and the same word is often used, sometimes to express the fact that a man has a feeling towards an action, and sometimes to express the fact that he has an opinion about it. When, for instance, we say that a man approves an action, we may mean either that