Page:Philosophical Review Volume 13.djvu/370

356 certain known circumstances, produce better results than any other. It follows that universal propositions of which duty is predicate, so far from being self-evident, always require a proof, which it is beyond our present means of knowledge ever to give. But (3) all that Ethics has attempted or can attempt, is to shew that certain actions, possible by volition, generally produce better or worse total results than any probable alternative: and it must obviously be very difficult to show this with regard to the total results even in a comparatively near future; whereas that which has the best results in such a near future, also has the best on the whole, is a point requiring an investigation which it has not received. If it is true, and if, accordingly, we give the name of 'duty' to actions which generally produce better total results in the near future than any possible alternative, it may be possible to prove that a few of the commonest rules of duty are true, but only in certain conditions of society, which may be more or less universally presented in history; and such a proof is only possible in some cases without a correct judgment of what things are good or bad in themselves—a judgment which has never yet been offered by ethical writers. With regard to actions of which the general utility is thus proved, the individual should always perform them; but in other cases, where rules are commonly offered, he should rather judge of the probable results in his particular case, guided by a correct conception of what things are intrinsically good or bad. (4) In order that any action may be shown to be a duty, it must be shown to fulfill the above conditions; but the actions commonly called 'duties' do not fulfill them to any greater extent than 'expedient' or 'interested' actions: by calling them 'duties' we only mean that they have, in addition, certain non-ethical predicates. Similarly by 'virtue' is mainly meant a permanent disposition to perform 'duties' in this restricted sense: and accordingly a virtue, if it is really a virtue, must be good as a means, in the sense that it fulfills the above conditions; but it is not better as a means than non-virtuous dispositions; it generally has no value in itself; and, where it has, it is far from being the sole good or the best of goods. Accordingly 'virtue' is not, as is commonly implied, an unique ethical predicate " (pp. 180-182). The final chapter discusses "The ideal." "The main object of this chapter has been to define roughly the class of things among which we may expect to find either great intrinsic goods or great intrinsic evils; and particularly to point out that there is a vast variety of such things, and that the simplest of them are, with one exception, highly complex wholes, composed of parts which have