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Kl MMiKS ON THE PREDICATES OF MORAL JUDGMENTS. 203 roads which are equally good, it is indifferent to the pro- posed moral duty which road I take ; it is not indifferent that I do take one or the other ; and whichever road I do take, I am doing my duty on it, and hence it is far from indifferent : my walking on road A is a matter of duty in reference to the end, though not a matter of duty if you consider it against walking on road B ; and so with B but I can escape the sphere of duty neither on A nor on B." All this is true, hut forms no argument against the "indifferent". The state- ment, " You ought to go to the town and to take either road A or B," refers to two volitions which are regarded as wrong, viz., the volition not to go to the town at all, and the volition to take any road not A or B, and it refers also to two pairs of volitions in reference to which it indicates that the choice between the volitions constituting each pair is indifferent. You may choose to take road A or not to take it ; you may choose to take road B or not to take it. The " indifferent " is always an alternative between contradictories. It can therefore never form part of an " ought "-totality, being itself a totality as complete as possible. This is somewhat dis- guised by a judgment which makes an obligation of a choice between A and B, but becomes conspicuous if we consider a simple case of indifference. Suppose that it is considered indifferent if you speak or do not speak on a certain occasion. What is here the " ought " that forms the totality of the in- different? Would there be any sense in saying that you ought either to speak or not to speak? Or is the alter- native, speaking not-speaking, only a link in an indefinite chain of alternatives, each of which is by itself indiffer- ent, in a relative sense, but the sum of which forms the " ought " ? You may be permitted it will perhaps be argued in a given moment to speak or to abstain from speaking, to write or to abstain from writing, to read or to abstain from reading, and so on, but however wide the province of the permissible may be, there must always be a limit inside which you ought to remain. That you do this or that may be a matter of indifference, but only relative indifference, for it is not indifferent what you do on the whole, hence there is nothing absolutely indifferent. Such an argument, how- ever, involves a misapprehension of the true meaning of the " indifferent". The predicate expressing indifference refers to certain definite volitions and their contradictories, not to the whole of a man's conduct in a certain moment. The whole of a man's conduct is never indifferent. But neither is the whole of a man's conduct ever wrong. In the moment when the murderer kills his victim he is fulfilling