[Footnote: The neo-realists would prefer to say, perhaps, "apart
from the existence of organisms,"] and this may be an exacter phrase;
we from previous page [Footnote: pleasures and pains that remain out
of connection with that interrelated stream of experience to which
we usually limit the term "consciousness." On the other hand, MAY it
not be that God, and angels, or other disembodied beings, have
consciousness, and intrinsic goodness, without having organisms?
Of course, for all we know, the world about us may be chock full
of pleasures and pains. But for practical purposes, and so far as
our morality is concerned, either the statement in the text or the
suggested equivalent is true. The point is, that the foundation
of morality is in US--whether you call US in the last analysis
consciousnesses or organisms]
It is the existence of felt goodness, intrinsic goodness, and its
opposite, that allows us to attribute to objects another kind of
goodness or badness, according as they are calculated to produce in
us the former kind. This kind of goodness and badness we may call
extrinsic. It is only by thus attributing a sort of goodness and
badness to senseless objects that we can aim for and avoid the good
and bad phases of conscious life. In themselves these conscious moments
are largely unnamable and inexpressible. There are, as it is, dumb
objectless ecstasies that are of transcendent sweetness; but we do
not usually know how to reproduce them, and for the most part we have
to overlook these goods in our ideals and aim only for those that we
can associate with recognized outer stimuli.
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