It has indeed been maintained by moralists of influence that the moral value of our conduct depends upon the degree to which we are actuated by the one motive which they regard as truly moral: viz. the desire or free choice[159] of doing what is right as such, realising duty or virtue for duty or virtue’s sake:[160] and that a perfectly good act must be done entirely from this motive. I think, however, that it is difficult to combine this view--which I may conveniently distinguish as Stoical--with the belief, which modern orthodox moralists have usually been concerned to maintain, that it is always a man’s true interest to act virtuously. I do not mean that a man who holds this belief must necessarily be an egoist: but it seems to me impossible for him to exclude from his motives a regard for his own interest, while yet believing that it will be promoted by the act which he is willing. If, therefore, we hold that this self-regard impairs the moral value of an act otherwise virtuous, and at the same time hold that virtue is always conducive to the virtuous agent’s interest, we seem driven to the conclusion that knowledge of the true relation between virtue and happiness is an insuperable obstacle to the attainment of moral perfection. I cannot accept this paradox: and in subsequent chapters I shall try to show that the Stoical view of moral goodness is not on the whole sustained by a comprehensive survey and comparison of common moral judgments: since in some cases acts appear to have the quality of virtue even more strikingly when performed from some motive other than the love of virtue as such. For the present I wish rather to point out that the doctrine above stated is diametrically opposed to the view that the universal or normal motives of human action are either particular desires of pleasure or aversions to pain for the agent himself, or the more general regard to his happiness on the whole which I term Self-love; that it also excludes the less extreme doctrine that duties may be to some extent properly done from such self-regarding motives; and that one or other of these positions has frequently been held by writers who have expressly adopted an Intuitional method of Ethics. For instance, we find Locke laying down, without reserve or qualification, that “good and evil are nothing but pleasure and pain, or that which occasions or procures pleasure or pain to us:”[161] so that “it would be utterly in vain to suppose a rule set to the free actions of man, without annexing it to some reward or punishment to determine his will.” On the other hand, he expresses, with no less emphasis, the conviction that “from self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences, as incontestable as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out,”[162] so that “morality might be placed among the sciences capable of demonstration.” The combination of these two doctrines gives us the view that moral rules