But if it is a judgment, what does it assert? Presumably a character
of some kind belonging to the subject that is called good. What sort
of character? Some moralists of eminence have thought it a character
like yellow, which could belong to its subject even if there was nothing
else in the world; others have held that it is a relational property like
loved-by-Smith, which could belong to something only as this was
related to something else. In this chapter we shall examine the most
influential view of the first type, and then the two most plausible
views -- themselves widely different -- of the second type.

There is no doubt that the most influential advocate in recent
times of the first position is G. E. Moore. ¹ 'Good' was for him the
name of a simple 'non-natural' quality present in everything that is
good intrinsically. Of course what he is considering is not instrumental
goodness, the value of something as a means, but the intrinsic good-
ness of that which is good in itself or good for its own sake. There are
many kinds of things that we regard as thus intrinsically good. There
is the good man, the good picture, the good holiday, the good dessert,
the good walk, the good scientific theory. Do we mean the same thing
by 'good' in all these cases? The assumption that we do merely on the
ground that we are using the same word is not quite safe. Some-
times when we use the same word there is no common element at all,
as when we speak of the pile of a carpet and a pile of stones; some-