It has always been found far more easy to divide experiences[15] into good and bad, valuable and the reverse, than to discover what we are doing when we make the division. The history of opinions as to what constitutes value, as to why and when anything is rightly called good, shows a bewildering variety. But in modern times the controversy narrows itself down to two questions. The first of these is whether the difference between experiences which are valuable and those which are not can be fully described in psychological terms; whether some additional distinctive ‘ethical’ or ‘moral’ idea of a non-psychological nature is or is not required. The second question concerns the exact psychological analysis needed in order to explain value if no further ‘ethical’ idea is shown to be necessary. The first question will not detain us long. It has been ably maintained[16] and widely accepted that when we say that an experience is good we are simply saying that it is endowed with a certain ethical property or attribute not to be reduced to any psychological properties or attributes such as being desired or approved, and that no further elucidation of this special ethical property by way of analysis is possible. ‘Good’ on this view is in no way a shorthand term for some more explicit account. The things which are good, it is held, are just good, possess a property which can be recognised by immediate intuition, and here, since good is unanalysable, the matter must rest. All that the study of value can do is to point out the things which possess this property, classify them, and remove certain confusions between ends which are good in themselves and means which are only called good, because they are instrumental in the attainment of intrinsically good ends. Usually those who maintain this view also hold that the only things which are good for their own sakes and not merely as a means are certain conscious experiences, for example, knowledge, admiring contemplation of beauty, and feelings of affection and veneration under some circumstances. Other things, such as mountains, books, railways, courageous actions, are good instrumentally because, and in so far as, they cause or make possible states of mind which are valuable intrinsically. Thus the occurrence of states of mind which are recognised as good is regarded as an isolated fact of experience, not capable of being accounted for, or linked up with the rest of human peculiarities as a product of development in the way made familiar by the biological sciences. The plausibility of this view derives principally from the metaphysical assumption that there are properties, in the sense of subsistent entities, which attach to existent particulars, but which might without absurdity be supposed to attach to nothing.