are intrinsically good and only to them—except simply the one that they all are intrinsically good and ought always to be preferred to nothing at all, if we had to choose between an action whose sole effect would be one of them and one which would have no effects whatever. The fact is that the view which seems to me to be true is the one which, apart from theories, I think every one would naturally take, namely, that there are an immense variety of different things, all of which are intrinsically good; and that though all these things may perhaps have some characteristic in common, their variety is so great that they have none, which, besides being common to them all, is also peculiar to them—that is to say, which never belongs to anything which is intrinsically bad or indifferent. All that can, I think, be done by way of making plain what kinds of things are intrinsically good or bad, and what are better or worse than others, is to classify some of the chief kinds of each, pointing out what the factors are upon which their goodness or badness depends. And I think this is one of the
