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Rh subjects of legitimate curiosity. But such questions only form one special branch of Psychology or Anthropology; and most writers have certainly proceeded on the assumption that the special business of Ethics, and the questions which it has to try to answer, are something quite different from this. They have assumed that the question whether an action is right cannot be completely settled by showing that any man or set of men have certain feelings or opinions about it. They would admit that the feelings and opinions of men may, in various ways, have a bearing on the question; but the mere fact that a given man or set of men has a given feeling or opinion can, they would say, never be sufficient, by itself, to show that an action is right or wrong.

But the views, which have been considered in this chapter, imply the direct contrary of this: they imply that, when once we have discovered, what men’s feelings or opinions actually are, the whole question is finally settled; that there is, in fact, no further question to discuss. I have tried to show that these views are untenable, and I shall,