If the
distinction is reached at all, it will be found to be psychological
rather than cosmical, to be relative to the attitude of the human mind
which contemplates the facts, and in this strict sense to be, what Mr
Bradley calls it, appearance.
And this is the view which Mr Bradley takes when he proceeds to describe
what he means by the 'good.' It is, he says, "that which satisfies
desire. It is that which we approve of, and in which we can rest with a
feeling of contentment."[1] "Desire"--"approval"--"feeling"--to these
mental attitudes the good is relative: they are expressed in its
definition. Mr Bradley, it will be seen, re-states Green's doctrine with
a difference which makes it at once more logical and less ethical. Green
had said that "the moral good is that which satisfies the desire of a
moral agent"; and in so saying had simply walked round the difficulty,
for he was unable to say wherein consisted the peculiarity of the moral
agent without reference to the conception of moral good which he had
started out to define. But Mr Bradley dispenses with the qualification,
and says simply that the good "satisfies desire." And in so far his
definition is more logical. The question is whether it distinguishes
good from evil. Both the practical importance and the theoretical
difficulty of the problem arise from the fact that evil is sometimes
desired, and that the evil desire may be satisfied.
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