Page:Principia Ethica 1922.djvu/210

176 And that as many people as possible should have a like disposition is, no doubt, of great utility: it is good as a means. Yet I may safely assert that neither my various performances of this duty, nor my disposition to perform them, have the smallest intrinsic value. It is because the majority of instances of virtue seem to be of this nature, that we may venture to assert that virtues have, in general, no intrinsic value whatsoever. And there seems to be good reason to think that the more generally they are of this nature the more useful they are; since a great economy of labour is effected when a useful action becomes habitual or instinctive. But to maintain that a virtue which includes no more than this, is good in itself is a gross absurdity. And of this gross absurdity, it may be observed, the Ethics of Aristotle is guilty. For his definition of virtue does not exclude a disposition to perform actions in this way, whereas his descriptions of the particular virtues plainly include such actions: that an action, in order to exhibit virtue, must be done τοϋ καλοϋ ένεκα is a qualification which he allows often to drop out of sight. And, on the other hand, he seems certainly to regard the exercise of all virtues as an end in itself. His treatment of Ethics is indeed, in the most important points, highly unsystematic and confused, owing to his attempt to base it on the naturalistic fallacy; for strictly we should be obliged by his words to regard θεωπία as the only thing good in itself, in which case the goodness which he attributes to the practical virtues cannot be intrinsic value; while on the other hand he does not seem to regard it merely as utility, since he makes no attempt to shew that they are means to θεωπία. But there seems no doubt that on the whole he regards the exercise of the practical virtues as a good of the same kind as (i.e. having intrinsic value), only in a less degree than, θεωπία; so that he cannot avoid the charge that he recommends as having intrinsic value, such instances of the exercise of virtue as we are at present discussing—instances of a disposition to perform actions which, in the modern phrase, have merely an ‘external rightness.’ That he is right in applying the word ‘virtue’ to such a disposition cannot be doubted. But the protest against the view that ‘external rightness’ is sufficient to constitute either ‘duty’ or ‘virtue’—a protest which is