Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/190

 or wrong, there ceases, I think, to be any reason to suppose that this last question ever depends upon the motive at all. At all events the mere fact that motives are and ought to be taken account of in some moral judgments does not constitute such a reason. And hence this fact cannot be urged as an objection to the view that right and wrong depend solely on consequences.

But there remains one last objection to this view, which is, I am inclined to think, the most serious of all. This is an objection which will be urged by people who strongly maintain that right and wrong do not depend either upon the nature of the action or upon its motive, and who will even go so far as to admit as self-evident the hypothetical proposition that if any being absolutely knew that one action would have better total consequences than another, then it would always be his duty to choose the former rather than the latter. But what such people would point out is that this hypothetical case is hardly ever, if ever, realised among us men. We hardly ever, if ever, know for certain which among the