396 ETHICS 



saying that the moral attitude is present in the one and absent in the 

 other. But the difference is brought out by the fact that our sesthet- 

 ical and moral attitudes towards the same experience may diverge 

 from one another. We may admire the beauty of that which we 

 condemn as immoral. De Quincey saw a fine art in certain cases 

 of murder; the finish and perfection of wickedness may often stir 

 a certain artistic admiration, especially if we lull the moral sense to 

 sleep. And, on the other hand, moral approval is often tempered 

 by a certain aesthetic depreciation of those noble characters who do 

 good awkwardly, without the ease and grace of a gentleman. John 

 Knox and Mary Queen of Scots (if I may assume for the moment 

 an historical judgment which may need qualification) will each have 

 his or her admirers according as the moral or aesthetic attitude 

 preponderates - - the harsh tones of the one appealing to the law 

 of truth and goodness, the other an embodiment of the beauty and 

 gaiety of life, "without a moral sense, however feeble." 



Nor is esthetic appreciation the only other reflex attitude which 

 has a place in our experience side by side with the moral. Judgments 

 about matters of fact and relations of ideas are discriminated as 

 true or false; an ideal of truth is formed; and conditions of its 

 realization are laid down. Here again we have a concept and class 

 of judgments analogous to our sesthetical and ethical concepts and 

 judgments, but not the same as them, and not likely to be confused 

 with them. 



Beside these may be put a whole class of judgments of worth 

 which may be described as judgments of utility. We estimate and 

 approve or disapprove various facts of experience according to their 

 tendency to promote or interfere with certain ends or objects of 

 desire. That moral judgments are to be identified with a special 

 class of these judgments of utility is a thesis too well known to 

 require discussion here, and too important to admit of discussion in 

 a few words. But it may be pointed out that it is only in a very 

 special and restricted sense of the term "utility" that judgments 

 of utility have ever been identified with moral judgments. The 

 " jimmy " is useful to the burglar, as his instruments are useful to 

 the surgeon; and they are in both cases appreciated by the same 

 kind of reflective judgment. Judgments of utility are all of them, 

 properly speaking, judgments about means to ends; and the ends 

 may and do differ; while it is only by a forced interpretation that all 

 these ends are sometimes and somehow made to resolve themselves 

 into pleasure. 



It is enough, however, for my present purpose to recognize the 

 prima facie distinction of moral judgments or judgments of goodness 

 from other judgments of worth, such as those of utility, of beauty, 

 and of truth (in the sense in which these last also are judgments of 



