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The tendency towards analysis and criticism, realism and pluralism, which has been evident in general philosophy during the present century has had important effects on recent ethical discussion. Its influence is to be seen in the two theories which on account of their prominence and the number of their disciples may be said to be most characteristic of the period—Ideal Utilitarianism and the New Intuitionism—theories which no less an authority than Sir David Ross described as the rival theories. However different these theories are in many respects they have a tendency towards ethical pluralism, if not atomism—a tendency not only to emphasize distinctions but even to harden the distinguishable elements into independent, if not even unrelated, entities. The one leaves us with a series of independent goods and the other with a series of prima facie duties, with the result that neither gives us any unitary principle to help us in one of the principal tasks of the moral life, the attempt to discover what in particular circumstances we ought to do.
page 110 note 1 It is true that Ross admits (Foundations of Ethics, p. 112) that the man who does his duty from a bad motive has not performed the whole duty of man: he has failed to do one of his most important duties, that of cultivating in himself the sense of duty. But that refers to the man's past. His whole duty here and now is to do an act irrespective of motive.
page 111 note 1 “Because” here gives not my reason for believing it to be right but my motive for doing it.
