Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/46

 between the two positions. We may hold, for instance, that an act of murder, whenever it is wrong, always does produce greater unhappiness than would have followed if the agent had chosen instead some one of the other alternatives, which he could have carried out, if he had so chosen; and we may hold that this is true of all other wrong actions, actual or possible, and never of any right ones: but it seems a very different thing to hold that murder and all other wrong actions are wrong, when they are wrong, because they have this result—because they produce less than the possible maximum of pleasure. We may hold, that is to say, that the fact that it does produce or would produce less than a maximum of pleasure is absolutely always a sign that a voluntary action is wrong, while the fact that it does produce or would produce a maximum of pleasure is absolutely always a sign that it is right; but this does not seem to commit us to the very different proposition that these results, besides being signs of right and wrong, are also the reasons why actions are right when they