Food and poison are such only relatively, and in view of
particular bodies, and the same material thing may be food and poison
at once; the child, and even the doctor, may easily mistake one for
the other. For the human system whiskey is truly more intoxicating
than coffee, and the contrary opinion would be an error; but what a
strange way of vindicating this real, though relative, distinction, to
insist that whiskey is more intoxicating in itself, without reference
to any animal; that it is pervaded, as it were, by an inherent
intoxication, and stands dead drunk in its bottle! Yet just in this
way Mr. Russell and Mr. Moore conceive things to be dead good and dead
bad. It is such a view, rather than the naturalistic one, that renders
reasoning and self-criticism impossible in morals; for wrong desires,
and false opinions as to value, are conceivable only because a point
of reference or criterion is available to prove them such. If no point
of reference and no criterion were admitted to be relevant, nothing
but physical stress could give to one assertion of value greater force
than to another. The shouting moralist no doubt has his place, but not
in philosophy.
That good is not an intrinsic or primary quality, but relative and
adventitious, is clearly betrayed by Mr.
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