) what different rational systems would
be possible in places and times remote enough from one another not to
come into physical conflict. Such ethics, since it would express in
reflection the dumb but actual interests of men, might have both
influence and authority over them; two things which an alien and
dogmatic ethics necessarily lacks. The joy of the ethical sceptic in
Mr. Russell is destined, however, to be short-lived. Before proceeding
to the expression of concrete ideals, he thinks it necessary to ask a
preliminary and quite abstract question, to which his essay is chiefly
devoted; namely, what is the right definition of the predicate "good,"
which we hope to apply in the sequel to such a variety of things? And
he answers at once: The predicate "good" is indefinable. This answer
he shows to be unavoidable, and so evidently unavoidable that we might
perhaps have been absolved from asking the question; for, as he says,
the so-called definitions of "good"--that it is pleasure, the desired,
and so forth--are not definitions of the predicate "good," but
designations of the things to which this predicate is applied by
different persons. Pleasure, and its rivals, are not synonyms for the
abstract quality "good," but names for classes of concrete facts that
are supposed to possess that quality. From this correct, if somewhat
trifling, observation, however, Mr. Russell, like Mr. Moore before
him, evokes a portentous dogma. Not being able to define good, he
hypostasises it. "Good and bad," he says, "are qualities which belong
to objects independently of our opinions, just as much as round and
square do; and when two people differ as to whether a thing is good,
only one of them can be right, though it may be very hard to know
which is right." "We cannot maintain that for me a thing ought to
exist on its own account, while for you it ought not; that would
merely mean that one of us is mistaken, since in fact everything
either ought to exist, or ought not." Thus we are asked to believe
that good attaches to things for no reason or cause, and according to
no principles of distribution; that it must be found there by a sort
of receptive exploration in each separate case; in other words, that
it is an absolute, not a relative thing, a primary and not a secondary
quality.

That the quality "good" is indefinable is one assertion, and obvious;
but that the presence of this quality is unconditioned is another, and
astonishing. My