Chapter I: The Subject-Matter of Ethics.
§ 23.
In this chapter I
have endeavoured to enforce the following conclusions. (1) The peculiarity of
Ethics is not that it investigates assertions about human conduct, but that it
investigates assertions about the property of things which is denoted by the
term good,
and the converse property denoted by the term bad.
It
must, in order to establish its conclusions, investigate the truth of
all such assertions, except those which assert the relation of
this property only to a single existent (1—4). (2)
This property, by reference to which the subject-matter of Ethics must be
defined, is itself simple and indefinable (5—14).
And (3) all assertions about its relation to other things are of two, and only
two, kinds: they either assert in what degree things themselves possess this
property, or else they assert causal relations between other things and those
which possess it (15—17). Finally, (4) in
considering the different degrees in which things themselves possess this
property, we have to take account of the fact that a whole may possess it in a
degree different from that which is obtained by summing the degrees in which its
parts possess it (18—22). (§ 23 ¶ 1)