ocence of this state of mind, Mr. Russell,
so far as I can see, has only one argument, and one analogy. The
argument is that "if this were not the case, we could not reason with
a man as to what is right." "We do in fact hold that when one man
approves of a certain act, while another disapproves, one of them is
mistaken, which would not be the case with a mere emotion. If one man
likes oysters and another dislikes them, we do not say that either of
them is mistaken." In other words, we are to maintain our prejudices,
however absurd, lest it should become unnecessary to quarrel about
them! Truly the debating society has its idols, no less than the cave
and the theatre. The analogy that comes to buttress somewhat this
singular argument is the analogy between ethical propriety and
physical or logical truth. An ethical proposition may be correct or
incorrect, in a sense justifying argument, when it touches what is
good as a means, that is, when it is not intrinsically ethical, but
deals with causes and effects, or with matters of fact or necessity.
But to speak of the truth of an ultimate good would be a false
collocation of terms; an ultimate good is chosen, found, or aimed at;
it is not opined. The ultimate intuitions on which ethics rests are
not debatable, for they are not opinions we hazard but preferences we
feel; and it can be neither correct nor incorrect to feel them. We may
assert these preferences fiercely or with sweet reasonableness, and we
may be more or less incapable of sympathising with the different
preferences of others; about oysters we may be tolerant, like Mr.
Russell, and about character intolerant; but that is already a great
advance in enlightenment, since the majority of mankind have regarded
as hateful in the highest degree any one who indulged in pork, or
beans, or frogs' legs, or who had a weakness for anything called
"unnatural"; for it is the things that offend their animal instincts
that intense natures have always found to be, intrinsically and _par
excellence_, abominations.

I am not sure whether Mr. Russell thinks he has disposed of this view
where he discusses the proposition that the good is the desired and
refutes it on the ground that "it is commonly admitted that there are
bad desires; and when people speak of bad desires, they seem to mean
desires for what is bad." Most people undoubtedly call desires bad
when they are generically contrary to their own desires, and call
objects tha