THE MORALITY THAT OUGHT TO BE.
THERE is a distinction, certain thinkers say, between the morality that ought to be and the morality that is. The state of society, which the moral code, at any given time and place in force, tends to bring about, is (they say), or at least may be, a very bad state of things indeed. They do not mean by this, simply that this code may be very unintelligently adapted to realizing the objects for which it was designed; (those also who confine their investigations to the morality that is, may make this complaint and do make it); they mean that the very ideal of an existing moral code is not above question—that it may perhaps be a distinctly low or bad ideal. And they propose, as an intelligible object of inquiry, to ascertain what is the best ideal. This, they affirm, is the only ideal that deserves to be called the moral end; conduct in accordance with it is alone moral conduct; commands enjoining one to that conduct are the only injunctions of morality, and the obligation to obey these injunctions is the moral obligation properly so called.
Under this general description two distinct and separate inquiries are comprised, which ought in the name of clearness to be distinguished by different terminology, but which are not. There is the question as to what is the best ideal, in the sense of the word 'best' in which a machine may be best; and there is the question as to what is the best ideal in quite a different sense of the word 'best,' which will be more precisely set forth presently.
Those who busy themselves with the first question remark, that a machine which is not itself an object of beauty or curiosity, and is not fit to do anything that anybody wants done, is good for nothing. All things are held to be of value, to be good, only to the extent that directly or indirectly they minister to some desire, and the only thing which in and of
