mental attitudes the good is relative: they are expressed in its
definition. Mr Bradley, it will be seen, re-states Green's doctrine with
a difference which makes it at once more logical and less ethical. Green
had said that "the moral good is that which satisfies the desire of a
moral agent"; and in so saying had simply walked round the difficulty,
for he was unable to say wherein consisted the peculiarity of the moral
agent without reference to the conception of moral good which he had
started out to define. But Mr Bradley dispenses with the qualification,
and says simply that the good "satisfies desire." And in so far his
definition is more logical. The question is whether it distinguishes
good from evil. Both the practical importance and the theoretical
difficulty of the problem arise from the fact that evil is sometimes
desired, and that the evil desire may be satisfied. The desire of a
malevolent man may be satisfied by another's downfall, and his mind may
even "rest with a feeling of contentment" in that result, much in the
same way as the benevolent man is satisfied and content with another's
happiness. Fortunately, the case is not so common: the dominant leanings
of most men are in sympathy with good rather than with evil: but it is
common enough to make the emotional characteristics of the individual an
uncertain basis on which to rest the distinction of good from evil.

[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 402.]

There is also another way of putting the matter: "the good is
coextensive with approbation."[1] If by 'approbation' we mean simply
'holding for good,' then the sentence will mean that the good is what
we hold for good--that is to say, that our judgments about good
are always true judgments,--a proposition which either ignores the
divergence between different individual judgments about good, or else
implies a complete relativity such that that is good to each man at
any time which he at that time approves or holds to be good; and this
latter view would make all discussion impossible. But this is not what
Mr Bradley means. "Approbation is to be taken in its widest sense";
in which sense "to approve is to have an idea in which we feel
satisfaction, and to have or imagine the presence of this idea in
existence."[2] And here the criterion is the same as before, and
equally subjective. In desire idea and existence are separated; they
are united in the satisfaction of desire; and approbation is said to