ABSTRACT
The method then by which any attempt to analyse ‘good’ has been condemned is itself objectionable, and yields no sound reason why a purely psychological account of the differences between good, bad, and indifferent experiences should not be given. The data for the inquiry are in part supplied by anthropology. It has become clear that the disparity among the states of mind recognized as good by persons of different races, habits and civilizations is overwhelming. Any observant child, it is true, might discover in the home circle how widely people disagree, but the effect of education is to suppress these scientific efforts. It has needed the vast accumulations of anthropological evidence
now available to establish the fact that as the organization of life and affairs alters very different experiences are perceived to be good or bad, are favoured or condemned. The Bakairi of Central Brazil and the Tahitians, among others, are reported, for example, to look upon eating with the same feelings which we reserve for quite different physiological performances, and to regard the public consumption of food as a grave breach of decency. In many parts of the world feelings of forgiveness towards enemies, for example, are looked upon as low and ignoble. The experiences which one person values are thought vicious by another. We must allow, it is true, for widespread confusion between intrinsic and instrumental values, and for the difficulty of identifying experiences. Many states of mind in other people which we judge to be bad or indifferent are no doubt unlike what we imagine them to be, or contain elements which we overlook, so that with fuller knowledge we might discover them to be good. In this manner it may be possible to reduce the reported disparity of value intuitions, but few people acquainted with the varying moral judgements of mankind will doubt that circumstances and necessities, present and past, explain our approval and disapproval. We start, then, with a hearty scepticism of all immediate intuitions, and inquire how it is that individuals in different conditions, and at different stages of their development, esteem things so differently.
