Page:Philosophical Review Volume 25.djvu/161

149 No. 2.] REASON AND FEELING IN ETHICS. 149 between idea and reality does not constitute the satisfaction of a desire, and so we do not, directly and necessarily, approve of it and call it good; and I should hesitate therefore to call the true a form of the good. Truth seeking may be good for further reasons, or the pleasure of speculative activity may be good immediately; but trueness by itself satisfies no desire, and what we recognize as true may either be approved, or disliked, or an object of complete indifference.

Now if I have made at all clear what I mean so far, I may go on to a further problem. I have already left myself a way of distinguishing between desires which are good, and desires which, quite conceivably, may be bad. Since good requires not simply the satisfaction of desire, but also that this gratification be approved, it is not at all impossible, even though satisfaction per se be always good, that there may be further reasons to lead me, when I come to think about some satisfaction in particular, to disapprove it. Such a complication is involved in the claim that good is in its intention objective; it is not enough that we do approve, but there are certain things which we ought to approve whether we do or not. Just what are we to make of this?

Let me say first that I shall proceed on the assumption that the point of the query has changed, and that instead of asking, What is goodness?, we are now asking, What is the good? It is only here, so far as I see, that we come within the ethical sphere in the narrower sense. The ethical problem has to do, not merely with the recognition of the quality of goodness, but with a comparison of various claimants to the title of the good; it involves, that is, the notion not merely of 'good,' but of 'better.' A man enjoys a simple experience of pleasure, say the pleasure of taste. I do not see but that he can look back upon this, approve it, and call it good, without any reference to a better at all. It is because he can judge, not only that various things are good, but that there are different degrees of goodness, that the ethical problem arises. What is then the content of the word 'better'?

As I see it, there are three possibilities. One is, that 'better' means simply 'more of it,' and that the ethical question is therefore purely a quantitative one. Another is, that there is a