Page:Principia Ethica 1922.djvu/201

 V] more extended beneficence. Egoism is undoubtedly superior to Altruism as a doctrine of means: in the immense majority of cases the best thing we can do is to aim at securing some good in which we are concerned, since for that very reason we are far more likely to secure it. (3) Goods, which can be secured in a future so near as to be called ‘the present,’ are in general to be preferred to those which, being in a further future, are, for that reason, far less certain of attainment. If that is to say as a mere means to good, we are apt to neglect one fact, at least, which is certain; namely that a thing that is really good in itself, if it exist now, has precisely the same value as a thing of the same kind which may be caused to exist in the future. Moreover moral rules, as has been said, are, in general, not directly means to positive goods but to what is necessary for the existence of positive goods; and so much of our labour must in any case be devoted to securing the continuance of what is thus a mere means—the claims of industry and attention to health determine the employment of so large a part of our time, that, in cases where choice is open, the certain attainment of a present good will in general have the strongest claims upon us. If it were not so, the whole of life would be spent in merely assuring its continuance; and, so far as the same rule were continued in the future, that for the sake of which it is worth having, would never exist at all.

101. (4) A fourth conclusion, which follows from the fact that what is ‘right’ or what is our ‘duty’ must in any case be defined as what is a means to good, is, as was pointed out above (§ 89), that the common distinction between these and the ‘expedient’ or ‘useful,’ disappears. Our ‘duty’ is merely that which will be a means to the best possible, and the expedient, if it is really expedient, must be just the same. We cannot distinguish them by saying that the former is something which we ought to do, whereas of the latter we cannot say we ‘ought.’ In short the two concepts are not, as is commonly assumed by all except Utilitarian moralists, simple concepts ultimately distinct. There is no such distinction in