totally devoid of weight: we have, moreover, reason to suspect him of the error of confusion; since the offering of irrelevant evidence generally indicates that the philosopher who offers it has had before his mind, not the question which he professes to answer, but some other entirely different one. Ethical discussion, hitherto, has perhaps consisted chiefly in reasoning of this totally irrelevant kind. One main object of this book may, then, be expressed by slightly changing one of Kant’s famous titles. I have endeavoured to write ‘Prolegomena to any future Ethics that can possibly pretend to be scientific.’ In other words, I have endeavoured to discover what are the fundamental principles of ethical reasoning; and the establishment of these principles, rather than of any conclusions which may be attained by their use, may be regarded as my main object. I have, however, also attempted, in Chapter VI, to present some conclusions, with regard to the proper answer of the question ‘What is good in itself?’ which are very different from any which have commonly been advocated by philosophers. I have tried to define the classes within which all great goods and evils fall; and I have maintained that very many different things are good and evil in themselves, and that neither class of things possesses any other property which is both common to all its members and peculiar to them. In order to express the fact that ethical propositions of my _first_ class are incapable of proof or disproof, I have sometimes followed Sidgwick’s usage in calling them ‘Intuitions.’ But I beg it may be noticed that I am not an ‘Intuitionist,’ in the ordinary sense of the term. Sidgwick himself seems never to have been clearly aware of the immense importance of the difference which distinguishes his Intuitionism from the common doctrine, which has generally been called by that name. The Intuitionist proper is distinguished by maintaining that propositions of my _second_ class--propositions which assert that a certain action is _right_ or a _duty_--are incapable of proof or disproof by any enquiry into the results of such actions. I, on the contrary, am no less anxious to maintain that propositions of _this_ kind are _not_ ‘Intuitions,’ than to maintain that propositions of my _first_ class _are_ Intuitions. Again, I would wish it observed that, when I call such propositions ‘Intuitions,’ I mean _merely_ to assert that they are incapable of proof; I imply nothing whatever as to the manner or origin of our cognition of them. Still less do I imply (as most Intuitionists have done) that any proposition whatever is true, _because_ we cognise it in a particular way or by the exercise of any particular faculty: I hold, on the contrary, that in every way in which it is possible to cognise a true proposition, it is also possible to cognise a false one.