=1. It Makes Morality Really Important.=--Would there be any use or sense in moral acts if they did not tend to promote welfare, individual and social? If theft uniformly resulted in great happiness and security of life, if truth-telling introduced confusion and inefficiency into men's relations, would we not consider the first a virtue, and the latter a vice?[118] So far as the identification of goodness with mere motive (apart from results effected by acts) reduces morality to nullity, there seems to be furnished a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the theory that results are not the decisive thing. =(2) It Makes Morality a Definite, Concrete Thing.=--Morality is found in consequences; and consequences are definite, observable facts which the individual can be made responsible for noting and for employing in the direction of his further behavior. The theory gives morality an objective, a tangible guarantee and sanction. Moreover, results are something objective, common to different individuals because outside them all. But the doctrine that goodness consists in motives formed by and within the individual without reference to obvious, overt results, makes goodness something vague or else whimsical and arbitrary. The latter view makes virtue either something unattainable, or else attained by merely cultivating certain internal states having no outward results at all, or even results that are socially harmful. It encourages fanaticism, moral crankiness, moral isolation or pride; obstinate persistence in a bad course in spite of its demonstrable evil results. It makes morality non-progressive, since by its assumption no amount of experience of consequences can throw any light upon essential moral elements. =(3) The Content Theory Not Only Puts Morality Itself upon a Basis of Facts, but Also Puts the Theory of Morality upon a Solid Basis.=--We know what we mean by goodness and evil when we discuss them in terms of results achieved or missed, and can therefore discuss them intelligibly. We can formulate concrete ends and lay down rules for their attainment. Thus there can be a science of morals just as there can be a science of any body of observable facts having a common principle. But if morality depends upon purely subjective, personal motives, no objective observation and common interpretation are possible. We are thrown back upon the capricious individual _ipse dixit_, which by this theory is made final. Ethical theory is rendered impossible. Thus Bentham, who brings these charges (and others) against the "virtue" theory of goodness, says at the close of the preface to his _Principles of Morals and Legislation_ (ed. of 1823):