ETHICS. CHAPTER I. SCOPE AND METHOD. § 1. The Subject of the Ethical Judgment. WE are constantly passing judgments on the actions of ourselves and of others. We describe some acts as good, some as bad, and others again, perhaps, as indifferent. And in the same way we pass judgment on connected series of acts deliberately pursued, on what is called "conduct." Reflection shows that it is really as forming part of such a series of motives, judgments and acts, that we consider a given act as good, bad, or indifferent. An isolated act, regarded in the abstract and without reference to the acts preceding it, the motives which prompt it and the effects produced by it, is not properly the subject of an ethical judgment. Thus, suppose A inserts a knife into B, and thereby causes his death. Whether A's conduct is regarded as praiseworthy or the reverse depends on whether A is prompted by revenge or by desire to alleviate suffering, whether A is a properly qualified surgeon or an B ignorant quack, whether the circumstances in which B is placed warrant a dangerous operation or forbid it. Primarily then we pass ethical judgments on conduct. This excludes purely automatic acts, except in so far as previous voluntary acts have rendered them possible, likely, or inevitable.1 Those habitual acts, however, which are still conscious and in a sense voluntary, are included. All voluntary and habitual acts, linked together by common purposes consciously formulated, are collectively called conduct. We have seen that the motive with which an act is undertaken, as well as the end at which it aims, helps to determine our opinion of it. These purely psychological facts take their place in our conception of conduct, but they are so important that some moralists lay down that they are the really determining features. Given a right end and a right motive the act is good; at any rate, unless end and motive are right the act is not in a moral sense really excellent. If A saves B's life by an act intended to destroy it, or even as an unintended consequence of an act directed to another end, we do not count it a meritorious act on the part of A. That rightness of motive is alone necessary seems to be the general opinion among the accredited teachers of conduct. Cardinal Newman, for instance, tells us that it is our duty to follow conscience even if conscience bids us reject the claims of the Catholic Church; the materially or objectively good act of 1 See below, chap. iii. § 9. accepting the Faith becomes formally or subjectively wrong if it is done in opposition to our conscience. And Kant and Hutcheson among philosophers agree that as long as the motive is right the act is virtuous. Common sense, however, is hardly satisfied with this extreme position. The motives of a Torquemada or a Robespierre may be as pure as those of a St. Francis of Assisi or a Gordon, but the world will not consider them as equally good men. We should not regard a homicidal pessimist, who sought under the influence of the sincerest philanthropy to destroy human life by some wholesale application of scientific means, as a good man. Something else is necessary unless our ethical theory is to bring us into direct antagonism with the moral judgments of the majority of civilized men. We must refrain from assuming that ethical judgments have for their proper subject merely motive or intention. It may be urged, however, that character or disposition is the proper subject of ethical judgment. But unless carefully explained this throws us back on the view we have just been discussing. As usually applied, the term character means the permanent tendency to particular kinds of conduct, the dominant modes of volition. It is partly inherited and partly acquired. A good character is one which is constituted by the "possession of certain acquired tendencies or habitudes which we call virtues." The relation between character and conduct is thus very close. "Think of a man's conduct in relation to the mental conditions from |