Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/200

 hold that we absolutely can do things, which we don’t do, and that right and wrong depend upon what we thus can do, are also liable to be led to contradict our theory, though for a different reason. Our theory holds that, provided a man could have done something else, if he had chosen, that is sufficient to entitle us to say that his action really is either right or wrong. But those who hold the view we are considering will be liable to reply that this is by no means sufficient: that to say that it is sufficient, is entirely to misconceive the nature of right and wrong. They will say that, in order that an action may be really either right or wrong, it is absolutely essential that the agent should have been really able to act differently, able in some sense quite other than that of merely being able, if he had chosen. If all that were really ever true of us were merely that we could have acted differently, if we had chosen, then, these people would say, it really would be true that none of our actions are ever right and that none are ever wrong. They will say, therefore, that our theory entirely