Excerpt from The Philosophy of Ethics
That a man ought to will and do the right, the good, the approvable, the virtuous act, is the common starting-point of all writers on the principles of morality. The question round which discussion has mainly turned is, How shall a man know that the act presumed to be right, good, and virtuous, is really so? What test, or touchstone shall be applied to the willing and acting of men whereby the rightness or wrongness, the goodness or badness, of a motive or act shall be revealed? In other words, "What is the measure or criterion of acts or states of the will in respect of rightness?" This mode of putting the question is, it seems to me, preferable to the more usual phrase, "What is the Criterion of morality," because the word "morality" is of varying and indefinite signification, and may be so used as to confound, if not sometimes to beg, the question at issue: at the same time, as it is legitimate to substitute the word "acts," in its larger and proper meaning, for "states of the will" the question may be also put thus:
"What is the criterion of rightness in acts?"
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