There is one thing which all reasoning about morality assumes and
must assume; and that is morality itself. The moral concept--whether
described as worth or as duty or as goodness--cannot be distilled out
of any knowledge about the laws of existence or of occurrence. Nor
will speculation about the real conditions of experience yield it,
unless adequate recognition be first of all given to the fact that the
experience which is the subject-matter of philosophy is not merely a
sensuous and thinking, but also a moral, experience. The approval
of the good, the disapproval of the evil, and the preference of
the better: these would seem to be basal facts for an adequate
philosophical theory: and they imply the striving for a best--however
imperfect the apprehension of that best may always remain. Only
when these facts--the characteristic facts of moral experience--are
recognised as constituents of the experience which is our
subject-matter, are we in a position profitably to enquire what is
good and what evil, and how the best is to be conceived.
The recognition of these facts would only be a beginning; but it would
be a beginning which would avoid the cardinal error fallen into not
only by the leading exponents of evolutionist morality, but also to be
found in much of the ethical work of idealist metaphysicians.
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