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adequate. But here again our reasoning is strongly affirmative 

 in content, even if the form of the conclusion be negative. 



We believe that we have shown, in the first place, that 

 behind pleasure, or utility, or preservation of life, or any other 

 ethical motive, or criterion, there lies the great fact of prefer- 

 ence. It could only be through an exhaustive analysis of 

 preference that we might claim the right to assume that any 

 particular fact is the one always preferred. Such an investiga- 

 tion is demanded as the ground-work of an ethical theory. 



In the second place we have concluded that morality and 

 the welfare of society as a whole are bound up together. 

 Merely individual ethics cannot begin to deal with the ques- 

 tions with which an ethics must concern itself. Whether we 

 regard truth-telling, honesty, or justice, or their opposites, as 

 being the subject of our consideration, it is clear that these 

 facts have no meaning at all apart from some kind of society. 

 Ethics must, therefore, be an investigation of society rather 

 than of a mere individual. But such a social ethics must con- 

 cern itself, not with superficial questions of social happenings, 

 but rather with the fundamental principles upon which alone 

 an organized society can exist. And yet in the consciousness of 

 the social individuals which compose such a society must be 

 found both the beginning and the end of the ethical problem. 

 If it be clear that the highest development possible for man 

 can only be found in the ideal society, it is doubly true that an 

 ideal society is a pure fiction apart from the individuals who 

 compose it. In the experience of the individual with which an 

 ethical theory can concern itself, there is already included an 

 experience of a society. However much man may have been 

 disposed to ignore that experienced society in his preferences 

 in any particular stage of his development, it is quite clear that 

 his development, from a moral point of view, has been coin- 

 cident with the recognition of the fact that his immediate sense 

 of well-being is a " will-o'-the-wisp", unless in such sense of 

 well-being there is involved the well-being of that society 

 which he actually experiences. In other words, moral progress 

 has been a process of learning that the struggle for moral 

 existence at least depends for its success, not upon the con- 

 quest and death of the other man, but rather upon bringing 

 him also to that point of "fitness" in which he is a helper, at 

 least in so far as his preferences make it easier for those associ- 

 ated with him to live a moral life. Such a view could only be 

 unsatisfactory because we have become so accustomed to 

 dealing with values in connection with which competition is 

 possible that we have overlooked the fact that there may be, 

 and, we believe, undoubtedly are, values concerning which 



