ABSTRACT
Moral principles can be properly regarded as rules of behaviour; as such they are clearly terms of the system of co-operation which people have taken to be aimed at making for a compatibility of fulfilment. It is no derogation from promise-keeping as a moral principle to say that the reasons for it are ones of social convenience. The person who tells stories which would be entertaining if they were true becomes a bore when they are not. The habitual liar ceases to be believed when in fact he tells the truth. Treated as principles beyond the necessity for argument they have been established as categorical imperatives to be imposed with the help of social sanctions, and the result has only too often been to divorce theoretic assertion from practical acceptance. It is true, again, that there is a wide content of moral agreement which can be expressed in general terms such as these, as used by Leonard Woolf.
