So is it when we pass from inanimate objects to inanimate actions. We
call a day bad in which storms prevent us from satisfying certain of
our desires. A good season is the expression used when the weather has
favored the production of valuable crops.
If from lifeless things and actions we pass to living ones, we
similarly find that these words in their current applications refer
to efficient subservience. The goodness or badness of a pointer or a
hunter, of a sheep or an ox, ignoring all other attributes of these
creatures, refer in the one case to the fitness of their actions for
effecting the ends men use them for, and in the other case to the
qualities of their flesh as adapting it to support human life.
And those doings of men which, morally considered, are indifferent,
we class as good or bad according to their success or failure. A good
jump is a jump which, remoter ends ignored, well achieves the immediate
purpose of a jump; and a stroke at billiards is called good when the
movements are skillfully adjusted to the requirements. Oppositely,
the badness of a walk that is shuffling and an utterance that is
indistinct, is alleged because of the relative non-adaptations of the
acts to the ends.
Thus recognizing the meanings of good and bad as otherwise used, we
shall understand better their meanings as used in characterizing
conduct under its ethical aspects. Here, too, observation shows that
we apply them according as the adjustments of acts to ends are, or are
not, efficient. This truth is somewhat disguised. The entanglement of
social relations is such that men's actions often simultaneously affect
the welfares of self, of offspring, and of fellow-citizens. Hence
results confusion in judging of actions as good or bad; since actions
well fitted to achieve ends of one order, may prevent ends of the other
orders from being achieved Nevertheless, when we disentangle the three
orders of ends, and consider each separately, it becomes clear that the
conduct which achieves each kind of end is regarded as relatively good;
and is regarded as relatively bad if it fails to achieve it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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