unique predicate ‘good’ in any of its various degrees: these are the conclusions, upon the truth of which I desire to insist. Similarly, in my last chapter, with regard to the question ‘What ought we to do?’ I have endeavoured rather to shew exactly what is the meaning of the question, and what difficulties must consequently be faced in answering it, than to prove that any particular answers are true. And that these two questions, having precisely the nature which I have assigned to them, are _the_ questions which it is the object of Ethics to answer, may be regarded as the main result of the preceding chapters. These are the questions which ethical philosophers have always been mainly concerned to answer, although they have not recognised what their question was--what predicate they were asserting to attach to things. The practice of asking what things are virtues or duties, without distinguishing what these terms mean; the practice of asking what ought to be here and now, without distinguishing whether as means or end--for its own sake or for that of its results; the search for one single _criterion_ of right or wrong, without the recognition that in order to discover a criterion we must first know what things _are_ right or wrong; and the neglect of the principle of ‘organic unities’--these sources of error have hitherto been almost universally prevalent in Ethics. The conscious endeavour to avoid them all, and to apply to all the ordinary objects of ethical judgment these two questions and these only: Has it intrinsic value? and Is it a means to the best possible?--this attempt, so far as I know, is entirely new; and its results, when compared with those habitual to moral philosophers, are certainly sufficiently surprising: that to Common Sense they will not appear so strange, I venture to hope and believe. It is, I think, much to be desired that the labour commonly devoted to answering such questions as whether certain ‘ends’ are more or less ‘comprehensive’ or more or less ‘consistent’ with one another--questions, which, even if a precise meaning were given to them, are wholly irrelevant to the proof of any ethical conclusion--should be diverted to the separate investigation of these two clear problems.