Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/147

Rh expressions which are obviously equivalent to the imperatives, "Do no murder," "Do not steal," and which strictly, therefore, should express commands. For this reason alone it is very natural to suppose that the word "ought" always expresses a command. And there is yet another reason in favour of the same supposition—namely, that the fact that actions of a certain class ought or ought not to be done is often called "a moral law," a name which naturally suggests that such facts are in some way analogous to "laws," in the legal sense—the sense in which we talk of the laws of England or of any other country. But if we look to see what is meant by saying that any given thing is, in this sense, "part of the law" of a given community, there are a good many facts in favour of the view that nothing can be part of the law of any community, unless it has either itself been willed by some person or persons having the necessary authority over that community, or can be deduced from something which has been so willed. It is, indeed, not at all an easy thing to define what is meant by "having the necessary authority," or, in other words, to say