Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/437

421 to a number of them, no one of which can be shown to be better than the rest in any of the senses of the word good, which they recognize. To show that one of them is better than the rest in some other sense of the word good, would be quite easy, but quite irrelevant to the present undertaking, which is to develop the answer to the first of the two questions stated above,—to the question, namely, what is the best state of things in the sense of the word 'good,' in which a machine may be best? To this question the answer has been indicated. Let us turn to the second question. Those who address themselves to its solution mean by moral goodness something quite distinct from goodness in the ordinary sense of the word. They hold that for every one, or any one, to have all his desires gratified is by no means the highest ideal. There are some desires which are essentially low, and ought in any ideal scheme of life to be mortified. There are others which, if not exactly low, are trivial, and should be kept in due subordination to such of one's impulses as are nobler. And to the noblest of all, whose dictates alone deserve the name of moral, the supreme control is due.

This bare outline describes a number of systems of conduct, which differ from each other in the point, what is one's noblest impulse? This question each one decides for himself, or rather finds it already decided for him in the cast of his mind; what he feels to be the noblest, what his heart goes out to, is the noblest. That is the actual method of decision, and the only one possible within the limits of this form of moral system. To decide rationally which of one's impulses is the noblest, would be to decide by reference to some standard, which, by that very act, is assumed as a supreme standard already established. As one's point of departure is the assumption that just such a standard needs to be found, this would amount to a contradiction in terms. It would be trying to find which of a number of things is the ideal of nobility by referring them to some other thing which is confessedly the ideal of nobility.