ABSTRACT
Our discussion, up to the present, has assumed that there is such a thing as the knowledge of good and of evil, and has postponed consideration of difficulties that may be incident to this species of knowledge, supposing it to exist. This chapter explains therefore, that the attitude here called approval does in fact have the characteristics which are proper to judgment and to knowledge of good and of evil. The claim to truth, in short, is undoubtedly made; and approval could never be what we take it to be if in fact it could never be true or false. The generality of moral approval is similarly a necessary characteristic of it. Our approval of an action is not our private feeling. The only other argument which seems to bear directly upon the possibility, in principle, of this knowledge of good and evil is an indirect psychological argument.
