the terms in which we state it must derive all their meaning from reference to the actual facts of our inner experience; otherwise they could have no meaning. (3) How do the accepted moral rules stand in relation to the End? In what sense, if any, can they be 'deduced' from it, or criticised in the light of it? I shall consider later the view that there is no such End, either for the individual or for the collective (social) life. If we do accept the teleological view that there is a supreme ideal of human life, a supreme standard of worth or value, then we must critically establish the grounds of it, and not accept it simply because the conception of a general or ultimate Good is current in ordinary thought, as Professor Sidgwick does (Methods, bk. I, ch. ix; bk. III, ch. xiv). This writer apparently accepts it just because moralists have been in the habit of theorizing, and practical people of talking and thinking, as if there were an ultimate Good. Finding no general agreement as to what it is, he enters on the task of precisely defining its nature. He tacitly assumes that the only significant use of the conception for Ethics is that we may deduce practical rules of conduct from it, and to a great extent justify by it the accepted rules ; the sole object of bringing it into clear consciousness is that it may afford practical guidance. Hence the conclusion that in so far as Virtue is a constituent of the ultimate Good for man, our "reason in relation to practice" is landed in a circle. In other words: in so far as the supreme good consists in virtuous conduct, we cannot deduce rules of virtue from it, unless we know them already; neither can we defend the accepted rules by appealing to the conception of the supreme Good, since that would be to defend them by appealing to themselves. Thus, if we admit the previous assumption, it is evidently unreasonable to regard Virtue as having any more than a quite subordinate place as a constituent of the Good; and accordingly Professor Sidgwick proceeds to argue that the Good must consist in 'happiness' in the Utilitarian (not the ordinary) sense of that word: that is, the sense in which it signifies pleasure valued only according to its quantity.
