instead of simplifying the matter, has been the chief cause of the prevailing confusion in ethical thought. Far from being a simple notion, "ought"[1] appears to me clearly decomposable, even though it may have a special flavour of its own. First of all it expresses a conation. When I feel that I ought to do a thing, I experience an impulse to do it, even though some opposite impulse may finally be the successful determinant of my action. And when I say to another man, "You ought to do this or that," there is certainly implied a conation on my part that he should do it. In the notion of duty, the moral content of which is identical with that of "ought," this conative element is not so obvious. Closely connected with the conative nature of ought is the imperative character it is apt to assume. Nevertheless, though being frequently used imperatively, "ought" is not necessarily and essentially imperative. Even if the "ought" I address to myself may, in a figurative sense, be styled a command, it is impossible to speak of a present command with reference to past actions. The common phrase, "You ought to have done this or that," cannot be called a command.
The conation expressed in "ought" is determined by the idea that what ought to be is not, or will possibly not be. It is also this idea of its non-existence that determines the emotion which gives to "ought" the character of a moral predicate. What ought not to be is apt to call forth moral indignation; this is the most essential fact involved in the notion of "ought". It has often been observed that the so-called negative commandments, which tell men what they ought not to do, are more ancient than the positive commandments which tell them what they ought to do. It is easy to understand why this is the case. The negative commandment is the simpler and more natural expression of "ought". Every "ought"-judgment contains implicitly a negation. Nobody would ever have dreamt of making a moral injunction if the idea of its transgression had not presented itself to his mind. When Solon was asked why he had specified no punishment for one who had murdered a father, he replied that he supposed that it could not occur
- ↑ I need hardly say that "ought," "wrong," "right," etc., are here used only in their moral sense. I shall not discuss the relation between the moral and non-moral meaning of these terms, since I believe that such a discussion would not help us to solve our problem. Language is a rough generaliser. The attempt to apply the philological method to an examination of moral conception has proved a failure which may be seen from Mr. Baynes's book on The Idea of God and the Moral Sense in the Light of Language (1895).
