THE RELATIONS OF ETHICS 397 



worth). Had the question of the origin and history of the moral 

 judgment been before us, a great deal more might have been neces- 

 sary. For our present purpose what has been already said may be 

 sufficient: it was required in order to enable us to approach the 

 consideration of the question already raised concerning the applica- 

 tion and meaning of the moral concept. 



The question is, Does our moral experience support the assignment 

 of the predicate "good" or "bad" to things regarded as quite inde- 

 pendent of volition or consciousness? At first sight it may seem 

 easy to answer the question in the affirmative. We do talk of sun- 

 shine and gentle rain and fertile land as good, and of tornadoes and 

 disease and death as bad. But I think that when we do so, in nine 

 cases out of ten, our "good" or "bad" is not a moral good or 

 bad; they are predicates of utility or sometimes aesthetic predicates, 

 not moral predicates; and we recognize this in recognizing their 

 relativity: the fertile land is called good because its fertility makes 

 it useful to man's primary needs; but the barren and rocky moun- 

 tain may be better in the eyes of the tourist, though the farmer 

 would call it bad land. There is an appreciation, a judgment of 

 worth in the most general sense, in such experiences; but they are 

 in most cases without the special feature of moral approbation or 

 disapprobation. 



There remains, however, the tenth case in which the moral predi- 

 cate does seem to be applied to the unconscious. One may instance 

 J. S. Mill's passionate impeachment of the course of nature, in which 

 "habitual injustice" and "nearly all the things which men are 

 hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another" are spoken of as 

 "nature's every-day performances;" 1 and a similar indictment 

 was brought by Professor Huxley, twenty years after the publica- 

 tion of Mill's essay, against the cosmic process for its encourage- 

 ment of selfishness and ferocity. 2 These are only examples. Litera- 

 ture is full of similar reflections on the indiscriminate slaughter 

 wrought by the earthquake or the hurricane, and on the sight of the 

 wicked flourishing or of the righteous begging his bread; and these 

 reflections find an echo in the experience of most men. 



But the nature of this experience calls for remark. 



In the first place, if we look more closely at the arguments of Mill 

 or Huxley, we see that both are cases of criticism of a philosophical 

 theory. Mill was refuting a view which he held (and rightly held) 

 to have influence still on popular thought, though it might have 

 ceased to be a living ethical theory the doctrine that the standard 

 of right and wrong was to be found in nature; it was in keeping 

 with his purpose, therefore, to speak of the operations of nature as 



1 J. S. Mill, Three Essays on Religion, pp. 35, 38. 



* T. H. Huxley, Evolution and Ethics (Romanes Lecture). 



