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A THEORY OF GOOD Oft VALUE 461
moralists and religions teachers have agreed. Thus moral
virtue is not only valuable in itself, but possesses also an
instrumental value in the sense that it tends by its very
nature to promote a general increase in the manifestation
of values in the world, and to promote, therefore, an
increase in the manifestation of the particular value which
is moral virtue.
Moral virtue is, I think, the only value which has this
instrumental characteristic. Beauty does not itself increase
or create beauty, nor does truth increase truth; happiness
in oneself does no doubt conduce to happiness in others,
but the fact that it does sp seems to be accidental and not,
as in the case of moral virtue, an expression of the nature
of the value.
The Distinction between Right Action and What is
Thought to Be Right Action. The relation between
moral virtue and right action raises, however, a further
complication, and one which gives rise to some of the
most difficult problems of ethics. The morally virtuous
man, we have agreed, will try to the best of his ability
to do his duty; he will try, that is to say, to do what
he believes to be right. But what he believes to be
right may differ from what is in fact right, and it
may be the fact of this difference which has led such
writers as Dr. Ross to conclude that there is no necessary
connection between moral virtue and right action. The
complication arising from the difference must now be
examined.
a certain sort
The morally virtuous man is actuated by
of motive. Now motives, as I have tried to show1 , cannot
be divorced from the consequences which the actions
prompted by thp motive are intended to produce. It
may, however, be the case (i) that the consequences
which do in fact follow from the morally virtuous man's
actions may, owing to his faulty judgment, be habitually
different from those which he intends, and (2) that, though
1 See Chapter VIII, pp. 289-293.