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 the thoughts of men—neither those of any particular man, nor those of any particular society, nor those of some man or other, nor those of mankind as a whole. To predicate of an action that it is right or wrong is to predicate of it something quite different from the mere fact that any man or set of men have any particular feeling towards, or opinion about, it.

But there are some philosophers who, while feeling the strongest objection to the view that one and the same action can ever be both right and wrong, and also to any view which implies that the question whether an action is right or wrong depends in any way upon what men—even the majority of men—actually feel or think about it, yet seem to be so strongly convinced that to call an action right must be merely to make an assertion about the attitude of some being towards it, that they have adopted the view that there is some being other than any man or set of men, whose attitude towards the same action or class of actions never changes, and that, when we assert actions to be right or wrong, what we are doing is merely to make an assertion about the attitude of this non-human being. And theories of