Page:Principia Ethica 1922.djvu/166

132 Even if your thinking the thing good is the same thing as your preference of it, yet the goodness of the thing—that of which you think—is, for that very reason, obviously not the same thing as your preference of it. Whether you have a certain thought or not is one question; and whether what you think is true is quite a different one, upon which the answer to the first has not the least bearing. The fact that you prefer a thing does not tend to shew that the thing is good; even if it does shew that you think it so.

It seems to be owing to this confusion, that the question ‘What is good?’ is thought to be identical with the question ‘What is preferred?’ It is said, with sufficient truth, that you would never know a thing was good unless you preferred it, just as you would never know a thing existed unless you perceived it. But it is added, and this is false, that you would never know a thing was good unless you knew that you preferred it, or that it existed unless knew that you perceived it. And it is finally added, and this is utterly false, that you cannot distinguish the fact that a thing is good from the fact that you prefer it, or the fact that it exists from the fact that you perceive it. It is often pointed out that I cannot at any given moment distinguish what is true from what I think so: and this is true. But though I cannot distinguish what is true from what I think so, I always can distinguish what I mean by saying that it is true from what I mean by saying that I think so. For I understand the meaning of the supposition that what I think true may nevertheless be false. When, therefore, I assert that it is true I mean to assert something different from the fact that I think so. What I think, namely that something is true, is always quite distinct from the fact that I think it. The assertion that it is true does not even include the assertion that I think it so; although, of course, whenever I do think a thing true, it is, as a matter of fact, also true that I do think it. This tautologous proposition that for a thing to be thought true it is necessary that it should be thought is, however, commonly identified with the proposition that for a thing to be true it is necessary that it should be thought. A very little reflection should suffice to convince