Yet,
after all, our concern for the extrinsic value of acts has to do only
with means to ends; and unless acts tend to produce intrinsic goodness
somewhere they are not extrinsically good. There is no sense in
sacrificing an immediate good unless the alternative act will tend
in its ultimate effects to produce a greater good, or unless the act
sacrificed would have brought, after its present intrinsic good, some
greater intrinsic evil. The sacrifice of a good for no greater good
is asceticism or fanaticism. From this there is no ultimate salvation
but by referring all acts to the final touchstone--asking which will
produce in the end the greatest amount of intrinsic good and the least
intrinsic evil. What sort of conduct, then, is good? And how shall
we define virtue? We are brought thus to the conception of an art which
shall not only teach us which of two immediate, intrinsic, goods is
the better, but shall consider all the near and remote consequences
of acts, and direct us to that conduct which will produce most good
in the end. [Footnote: The impossibility of finding any other ultimate
basis for our conception of moral "good" or "bad" is well expressed
by Socrates in Plato's Protagoras (p. 354): "Then you think that pain
is an evil and pleasure is a good, and even pleasure you deem an evil,
when it robs you of greater pleasure than it gives, or causes pain
greater than the pleasure. If, however, you call pleasure an evil in
regard to some other end or standard, you will be able to show us that
standard.
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