Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/65

 an excess of pain over pleasure; and intrinsically indifferent, whenever and only when it contains neither.

In addition, therefore, to laying down precise rules as to what things are intrinsically better or worse than others, our theory also lays down equally precise ones as to what things are intrinsically good and bad and indifferent. By saying that a thing is intrinsically good it means that it would be a good thing that the thing in question should exist, even if it existed quite alone, without any further accompaniments or effects whatever. By saying that it is intrinsically bad, it means that it would be a bad thing or an evil that it should exist, even if it existed quite alone, without any further accompaniments or effects whatever. And by saying that it is intrinsically indifferent, it means that, if it existed quite alone, its existence would be neither a good nor an evil in any degree whatever. And just as the conceptions “intrinsically better” and “intrinsically worse” are connected in a perfectly precise manner with the conceptions “right” and “wrong,” so, it maintains, are these