(2) The other alternative will scarcely be more welcome. It is that the discussion is after all a verbal one. When A says ‘Good means pleasant’ and B says ‘Good means desired,’ they may merely wish to assert that most people have used the word for what is pleasant and for what is desired respectively. And this is quite an interesting subject for discussion: only it is not a whit more an ethical discussion than the last was. Nor do I think that any exponent of naturalistic Ethics would be willing to allow that this was all he meant. They are all so anxious to persuade us that what they call the good is what we really ought to do. ‘Do, pray, act so, because the word “good” is generally used to denote actions of this nature’: such, on this view, would be the substance of their teaching. And in so far as they tell us how we ought to act, their teaching is truly ethical, as they mean it to be. But how perfectly absurd is the reason they would give for it! ‘You are to do this, because most people use a certain word to denote conduct such as this.’ ‘You are to say the thing which is not, because most people call it lying.’ That is an argument just as good!--My dear sirs, what we want to know from you as ethical teachers, is not how people use a word; it is not even, what kind of actions they approve, which the use of this word ‘good’ may certainly imply: what we want to know is simply what _is_ good. We may indeed agree that what most people do think good, is actually so; we shall at all events be glad to know their opinions: but when we say their opinions about what _is_ good, we do mean what we say; we do not care whether they call that thing which they mean ‘horse’ or ‘table’ or ‘chair,’ ‘gut’ or ‘bon’ or ‘ἀγαθός’; we want to know what it is that they so call. When they say ‘Pleasure is good,’ we cannot believe that they merely mean ‘Pleasure is pleasure’ and nothing more than that.