Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/318

 304 BERNAED BOSANQUET : of those who advocate the criterion of Perfection. They take their examples, the author affirms, not from a choice between two courses alike prima facie moral, but from a choice between courses one of which is stated as good or in the name of good, and the other as either defiant or neglect- ful of morality. In such a case, he agrees, the idea, or one might suggest, the mere name of perfection is enough to distinguish between them. But he contends, for the reason above mentioned, this is no test of the value of the criterion to a moral agent desirous to do right. His perplexity can only be between courses both of which appeal to him in the name of right. A criterion which only warns him against a choice which by its statement is immoral a criterion which = " Do what you believe to be right and not wrong " can be of no service to him. I do not know whether Green is here aimed at, but his argument will serve to point out what I take to be the defect in Mr. McTaggart's. Green selects, 1 no doubt, as one ex- ample of the operation of his criterion, a choice which, for the critical onlooker, appears to be a choice between a moral effort and a self-indulgence. But the supposed chooser is to choose I presume by the light of one or other of the criteria in question, and is not to be imagined as in the possession of a moral touchstone prior to their operation. The question then is which of the two criteria will most readily help the supposed chooser to the choice assumed by the critical on- looker to be right. Green alleges that the Hedonic criterion will or may co-operate with the tendencies that make for self-deception, whereas the criterion of perfection, from the fact that it appeals to a standard heterogeneous from personal enjoyment, is more likely to effect a discrimination such as no confusing desires can blur. It is implied that the choice is one in which a man could hardly go wrong except by serious self-deception. But this, from Green's point of view, makes the case stronger against the Hedonic criterion, which by operating in pari materia with the source of confusion, seems to him likely to permit such a confusion to take place even in a case where it should be easily avoided. It does not indeed make the positive case very strong for the criterion of perfection, because the choice selected is a fairly simple one, purposely with a view to its negative bearing against the Hedonic criterion. Never- theless it suggests, what is Green's principle throughout, 2 that to be habitually preoccupied with an idea of perfection 1 E.g., Prolegomena, sect. 374. - E.g., sect. 308.