Spencer's Principles of Ethics, pt. i. ch. iii.
Muirhead's Elements of Ethics, bk. iv. ch. ii.
Ladd's Philosophy of Conduct, ch. iii.
Kant's Practical Reason, bk. i. ch. ii.
The Meaning of Good, by G.L. Dickinson.
II
MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS
I
Our diagram of goodness, as drawn in the last chapter, has its special imperfections, and through these cannot fail to suggest certain erroneous notions of goodness. To these I now turn. The first of them is connected with its own method of construction. It will be remembered that we arbitrarily threw an arrow from D to A, thus making what was hitherto an end become a means to its own means. Was this legitimate? Does any such closed circle exist?
It certainly does not. Our universe contains nothing that can be represented by that figure. Indeed if anywhere such a self-sufficing organism did exist, we could never know it. For, by the hypothesis, it would be altogether adequate to itself and without relations beyond its own bounds. And if it were thus cut off from connection with everything except itself, it could not even affect our knowledge. It would be a closed universe within our universe, and be for us as good as zero. We must own, then, that we have no acquaintance with any such perfect organism, while the facts of life reveal conditions widely unlike those here represented.