=109.= The main points in this chapter, to which I desire to direct attention, may be summarised as follows:--(1) I first pointed out how the subject-matter with which it deals, namely, ethical judgments on conduct, involves a question, utterly different in kind from the two previously discussed, namely: (_a_) What is the nature of the predicate peculiar to Ethics? and (_b_) What kinds of things themselves possess this predicate? Practical Ethics asks, not ‘What ought to be?’ but ‘What ought we to do?’; it asks what actions are _duties_, what actions are _right_, and what _wrong_: and all these questions can only be answered by shewing the relation of the actions in question, as _causes_ or _necessary conditions_, to what is good in itself. The enquiries of Practical Ethics thus fall entirely under the _third_ division of ethical questions--questions which ask, ‘What is good as a means?’ which is equivalent to ‘What is a means to good--what is cause or necessary condition of things good in themselves?’ (86-88). But (2) it asks this question, almost exclusively, with regard to actions which it is possible for most men to perform, if only they _will_ them; and with regard to these, it does not ask merely, which among them will have _some_ good or bad result, but which, among all the actions possible to volition at any moment, will produce the best _total_ result. To assert that an action is a duty, is to assert that it is such a possible action, which will _always_, in certain known circumstances, produce better results than any other. It follows that universal propositions of which duty is predicate, so far from being self-evident, always require a proof, which it is beyond our present means of knowledge ever to give (89-92). But (3) all that Ethics has attempted or can attempt, is to shew that certain actions, possible by volition, _generally_ produce better or worse total results than any probable alternative: and it must obviously be very difficult to shew this with regard to the total results even in a comparatively near future; whereas that what has the best results in such a near future, also has the best on the whole, is a point requiring an investigation which it has not received. If it is true, and if, accordingly, we give the name of ‘duty’ to actions which _generally_ produce better total results in the near future than any possible alternative, it may be possible to prove that a few of the commonest rules of duty are true, but _only_ in certain conditions of society, which may be more or less universally presented in history; and such a proof is only possible _in some cases_ without a correct judgment of what things are good or bad in themselves--a judgment which has never yet been offered by ethical writers. With regard to actions of which the _general_ utility is thus proved, the individual should _always_ perform them; but in other cases, where rules are commonly offered, he should rather judge