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

A THEORY OP GOOD OR VALUE 467
to be valuable which are not valuable. Admittedly, he
may be morally virtuous to the extent that he may try
to do the good that he sees, but, if his community is bad,
he will lack that faculty of right valuation which enables
him justly to appraise the value of the consequences of
his actions. Moreover, actions which he might have
expected to turn out well will turn out ill, because of the
perverting effect of the environment in which they are
performed. Secondly, communities change and, it may be,
progress, and the moral insight of the individuals who
compose them changes and progresses as the community
changes. Such changes are almost always in the first
instance due to the original genius of some one or more
individuals whose insight into the nature of value is keener
than that of the rest of the community, 1 and who persist-
ently advocate changes in the law and custom of the
community which will lead to a greater embodiment of
value in men's lives, and a clearer perception of it by
men's consciousnesses. In due course the community as
a whole moves, or may move up to the level bf the insight
of its moral pioneers, laws and custom are changed, and
a gain in morality is thereby achieved. Thus the morals of
the Old Testament become the morals of the New, the
Christian condemnation of slavery is accepted among
civilized peoples, with the result that slavery is
abolished, while, prior to the war of 1914-1918, there was
an increasing realization that individuals should be treated
as ends and not merely as means. But the process whereby
the moral insight of a community advances is not a
necessary one, and it may be interrupted or reversed.
Thirdly, an ideal community may be defined as one in
which everybody wishes to do what he thinks right, and
everybody thinks right what is in fact right; it is, in other
words, a community in which the actions which people
think right and habitually try to do are those which
produce the best consequences, namely, those which
contain and embody the greatest amounts of the values
Scc Chapter VIII, pp. 308-310.