an
absolutely material world, containing only physical and chemical facts,
and existing from eternity without a God, without even an interested
spectator: would there be any sense in saying of that world that one of
its states is better than another? Or if there were two such worlds
possible, would there be any rhyme or reason in calling one good and
the other bad,--good or {190} bad positively, I mean, and apart from
the fact that one might relate itself better than the other to the
philosopher's private interests? But we must leave these private
interests out of the account, for the philosopher is a mental fact, and
we are asking whether goods and evils and obligations exist in physical
facts _per se_. Surely there is no _status_ for good and evil to exist
in, in a purely insentient world. How can one physical fact,
considered simply as a physical fact, be 'better' than another?
Betterness is not a physical relation. In its mere material capacity,
a thing can no more be good or bad than it can be pleasant or painful.
Good for what? Good for the production of another physical fact, do
you say? But what in a purely physical universe demands the production
of that other fact? Physical facts simply _are_ or are _not_; and
neither when present or absent, can they be supposed to make demands.
If they do, they can only do so by having desires; and then they have
ceased to be purely physical facts, and have become facts of conscious
sensibility. Goodness, badness, and obligation must be _realised_
somewhere in order really to exist; and the first step in ethical
philosophy is to see that no merely inorganic 'nature of things' can
realize them. Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing _in
vacuo_. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and no
world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to
which ethical propositions apply.

The moment one sentient being, however, is made a part of the universe,
there is a chance for goods and evils really to exist. Moral relations
now have their _status_, in that being's consciousness. So far as he
feels anything to be good, he _makes_ it good. It {191} _is_ good, for
him; and being good for him, is absolutely good, for he is the sole
creator of values in that universe, and outside of his opinion things
have no moral character at all.

In such a universe as that it would of course be absurd to raise the
question of whether the solitary