If, however, we are thus to say that predicates of value, though _dependent_ solely on intrinsic properties, are not themselves intrinsic properties, there must be some characteristic belonging to intrinsic properties which predicates of value never possess. And it seems to me quite obvious that there is; only I can't see _what_ it is. It seems to me quite obvious that if you assert of a given state of things that it contains a balance of pleasure over pain, you are asserting of it not only a _different_ predicate, from what you would be asserting of it if you said it was "good"--but a predicate which is of quite a different _kind_; and in the same way that when you assert of a patch of colour that it is "yellow," the predicate you assert is not only _different_ from "beautiful," but of quite a different _kind,_ in the same way as before. And of course the mere fact that many people have thought that goodness and beauty were subjective is evidence that there is _some_ great difference of kind between them and such predicates as being yellow or containing a balance of pleasure. But _what_ the difference is, if we suppose, as I suppose, that goodness and beauty are _not_ subjective, and that they do share with "yellowness" and "containing pleasure," the property of depending _solely_ on the intrinsic nature of what possesses them, I confess I cannot say. I can only vaguely express the kind of difference I feel there to be by saying that intrinsic properties seem to _describe_ the intrinsic nature of what possesses them in a sense in which predicates of value never do. If you could enumerate _all_ the intrinsic properties a given thing possessed, you would have given a _complete_ description of it, and would not need to mention any predicates of value it possessed; whereas no description of a given thing could be _complete_ which omitted any intrinsic property. But, in any case, owing to the fact that predicates of intrinsic value are not themselves intrinsic properties, you cannot define "intrinsic property," in the way which at first sight seems obviously the right one. You cannot say that an intrinsic property is a property such that, if one thing possesses it and another does not, the intrinsic nature of the two things _must_ be different. For this is the very thing which we are maintaining to be true of predicates of intrinsic value, while at the same time we say that they are _not_ intrinsic properties. Such a definition of "intrinsic property" would therefore only be possible if, we could say that the necessity there is that, if _x_ and _y_ possess different intrinsic properties, their nature must be different, is a necessity of a _different kind_ from the necessity there is that, if _x_ and _y_ are of different intrinsic values, their nature must be different, although both necessities are unconditional. And it seems to me possible that this is the true explanation. But, if so, it obviously