111. In the simple cases of moral duty, where there is no real doubt as to the effects of this or that action, and danger arises from interested self-sophistication, we can best decide for ourselves whether we ought to act in this way or that by asking whether it is what is good in us--a disinterested or unselfish motive--that moves us to act in this way or that; and in judging of the actions of others, where the issues and circumstances are simple, the moral question, the question of 'ought' or 'ought not,' is often best put in the form, How far was the action such as could represent a good character? That indeed is the form in which the question should always be put, when the nature of the case admits it; since, as argued elsewhere [_Prol. to Ethics_, Bk II, Chaps I and II], it is only in its relation to character that action is in the full sense good or bad. But where the probable effects of a certain line of action are at the time of taking it very obscure, we cannot be sure that relatively the best character will lead a man to take the line which turns out best in the result, or that because a line of action has turned out well in result, the character of the man who adopted it was good. This being so, in judging of the act retrospectively we have to estimate it by the result simply, in abstraction from the character of the agent. Thus in looking back upon a revolutionary outbreak we can only judge whether it was vindicated by the result. If in the light of the result it appears that conditions were not present under which it would have furthered rather than interfered with the true objects of government, we judge that it should not have been made; if otherwise, we approve it,--judge that the persons concerned in it were doing their duty in acting as they did. But whether they were really doing their duty in the full sense of the term in acting as they did in a case when the outbreak was successful, or not doing it in a case where it failed, is what we simply cannot tell; for this depends on the state of character which their action represented, and that is beyond our ken.