GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

346
ETHICS
It seems doubtful. Most people would, I imagine, confess
to intuitions to the effect that beauty is a good, that truth
is a good, and that moral virtue is a good. The line of
thought indicated by this suggested expansion of the scope
and increase in the number of our intuitions of value will
be developed in Chapter XII. 1
3. THAT SOME STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS ARE
VALUABLE IN THEMSELVES. It has been suggested
above 1 that in the last resort we must lode for the raw
material of our ethical philosophising to the deliverances
of the popular consciousness; for, in the last resort, there
is no other court of appeal. Now the popular consciousness
holds that certain states of mind are valuable
undoubtedly
in themselves. No doubt its intuitions to this effect are
neither universal nor unanimous, nor are their implications
always consistent with the implications of other intuitions
which are equally strongly held. They are, nevertheless,
entitled to respect. Let us imagine a case in point. A man
holds certain beliefs to be true and important, holds them
so strongly that he is prepared to suffer for them. These
beliefs are, we will suppose, political or religious; they
constitute, in fact, the tenets of what would normally be
called a faith. This faith, we will further suppose, is not
the dominant one at the time; its opponents are strong,,
its adherents oppressed and subject to persecution
which compels them to fight for their faith. The man
whose case we are imagining is, we will further suppose,
to the torture. Will he
captured by his adversaries and put
recant his opinions? Will he betray his faith? In spite of
the torture he does neither, and in due course he dies
under it. Of his martyrdom, we will suppose, nobody hears,
while the cause for which the martyr suffers is lost, the
faith suppressed as a heresy, and its followers persecuted,
until none remain.
Granted these assumptions, we may, I think, safely
conclude that from the determination and fortitude of our
*See Chapter XII, pp. 439-447. 'See Chapter V, pp. 173, 174.