had not first said, as member of a
judicially acting group, "This is right," using the word as a noun. And
finally whatever we may claim as to the "cognitive" nature of the
aesthetic and moral judgment, the only test for the beauty of an object
is that persons of taste discover it. The only test for the rightness of
an act is that persons of good character approve it. The only test for
goodness is that good persons on reflection approve and choose it--just
as the test for good persons is that they choose and do the good.

(3) Right is not merely a means to good but has a place of its own in
the moral consciousness. Many of our moral choices or judgments do not
take the form of choice between right and wrong, or between duty and its
opposite; they appear to be choices between goods. That is, we do not
always consider our value as crystallized into a present standard or
feel a tension between a resisting and an authoritative self. But when
they do emerge they signify a distinct factor. What Moore says of good
may be said also of right. Right means just "right," nothing else. That
is, we mean that acts so characterized correspond exactly to a self in a
peculiar attitude, viz., one of adequate standardizing and adjustment,
of equilibrium, in view of all relations. The concept signifies that in
finding our way into a moral world into which we are born in the process
of valuing and judging, we take along the imagery of social judgment in
which through language and behavior the individual is constantly
adjusting himself, not only to the social institutions, and group
organization but far more subtly and unconsciously to the social
consciousness and attitudes.

This conception of an order to which the act must refer has usually been
regarded as peculiarly a "rational" factor. It is, however, rather an
order of social elements, of a nature of persons, than of a "nature of
things." In savage life the position of father, wife, child, guest, or
other members of the household, is one of the most prominent facts of
the situation. The relationship of various totem groups and
inter-marrying groups is the very focus of moral consciousness. Even in
the case of such a cosmic conception of order as Dike and Themis, Rita
and Tao, the "Way" is not impersonal cosmos. It is at least
quasi-personal. And if we say such primitive myth has no bearing on what
the "nature" of right or the "true" meaning of right is, it is pertinent
to repeat that