Ms-139a,1r I [Ge|Mr] Chairman, Ladies & Gentlemen!

Before I begin to speak about my subject proper let me say a few intro- ductory words. I feel there that I will be have very great difficulties in communicating the thoughts which I want to communicate, to you & I want to mention some of these difficulties because I think that <this> they can may possibly thereby be diminished ˇthem. The first I will mention – but which is I believe ☐ by no means the greatest – is that, as you, know English is not my native language & my expression will therefore not be as clear & precise as it would be desirable when one has something very difficult to communicate. Please help me in my task of making myself understood by abstracting overlooking as much as possible from the faults against the English grammar which will constanty occur in my speech. The second difficul- ty which I will mention is t seams to me to be by far more serious & to ex- plane it I must tell you why I have chosen the subject which I have chosen. W<h>en your former secretary honourd me by asking me to read a paper to your society the first thought that came in<to> my head was that I would certainly do it & the second was this: I said to myself that [I|i]f I hade the opportu- nity of talking to a room full of Ms-139a,1v II people that I would use this oppor- tunity to say something that comes from my heart & not to [ill|mis]use the time that I was give to speak to you [to|by] either explan<ing> some scientific matter to you which to be propperly explained wou<l>d needs a course of lectures or an audience specialy trained in one particular line of thought & that I would still less [ill|mis]use this oppotunity of speaking to you by giving you a popular lecture, say on logic, which would serve to make you believe that you understand a thing w<h>ich as a matter of fact you dont understand (& which it is not a bit neccessary that you should) & to gratifie the very lowest of modern desires viz. the superficial curiosity about the latest discoveries of physicists, psychologists & logiciansscientists I decided – I say – that I should use this opportunity to speak to you about not as a logician, still less as a cross between a scientist & a journalist but as a human being to human beings who tries to tell his fellow other human beings something they which some of them might possibly find usefull, I say usefull not interesting. The third and last difficulty I will mention is one that applies toadheres to most philosophical subjects ˇexplanations & it is this that it ☐ sometimes is almost impossible to explain a Ms-139a,2r III matter in such a way that the hearer at once sees the ways roads he is lead & the [E|e]nd goal to which it leads. That is to say it so very often happens that the hearer thinks <“>I understand perfectly what he is saying says but what on earth is he driving at<”> or else that he sees what one is dr<i>ving at & <t>hinks „that's all very well by how is he going to get there”. This perhaps is the gravest diff- cultie & all I [k|c]an do is to ˇask you to be patient & to hope that in the end we will see bothe the [R|r]o[de|ad] & where it leeds to. – Now let me begin.

My subject is Ethics & I will adopt the definition or explanation which Prof. Moore has given in his Pricipia Ethica. He says there which is: Ethics is the General Enquiry into what is good. I will just modifie this slightly & say Ethics is the general enquiry into what is valuabl<e>. I do this because I want to include in my Notion of Ethic<s>s also what is common ly understood to belong to the sub- ject matter of Aesthetics. The reason for this will perhaps get cl<e>ar later on.

Now let me point out first of all that in our Definition of Ethics I might have substituted many other words for the word valuable. And I will enumerate some of them which seem to me to be Ms-139a,2v IV synonyms so far ˇat any rate as th<e>i<r>s meaning is important to us and by enumerating them I want to produce the same sort of effect that Gallstone pro- duced when he copied a number of different faces on the same photo- graphic plate in order to get the picture of the typical features they all have in comon.And as by looking at shewing to you such a photo you can I could make you see what is the typical, say, chinese face so if you look as it where through all the synonyms which I will place one behind the other before in front of you you will see which feature common to them all I want you to look at in each of them. Now there is the word valuable or value or the word good taken in a slighly wider sense perhaps

Now instead of saying Ethics is the Enquiry int what is valuable I might have said it is the Enquiry into what is of absolute importance or into what is the meaning of life or into what makes life worth living. And now you And if you hold all th[o|e]se Expressions together as value, good, great, ˇRight, sense of life, that what makes life worth living, worth etc you will I believe see what it is I['m|am] concerned with.

Now the first thing I want you to notice about all these expressions is that they can all be used in two Ms-139a,3r V. very different senses: I will call them the relat<i>ve & the absolutec ˇor ethical meaning use. The relative use of these words is their use relative to some predetermined end. When I say this is a good piano I mean it comes up to a certain standart ˇof tone etc. which I have fixed & which I conceive as its purpose. It has only sense to say that a piano is good if you have previously fixed what sort of qualities a piano must have to deserve that name. And the same a<p>plies when I say that a man is a good piano player or a good golf player or that a road is good etc. In☐ all such [C|c]ases good simply means: coming up to a certan standard which I have previously fixed. The same applies to the word important in the ordinary relative sense which is the relative sense. In this sense we say something is important for a certain purpose. The same ap<p>lies to wright. The right ro[de|ad] is that which leeds to the place I want to go to it is right relativly to the desired End. In this relative sense the words value, good, importance etc. are easily understood & pesent no geat problems.

Now in Ethics these same words are used aparently in an entirely different sense. Supposing I could play the piano & one of you Ms-139a,3v 6 a great conn[a|o]isseur of pianoplaying heard me & said, Well your playing pretty badly & suppose I answerd, him: I know I'm playing badly but I dont want to play any better. All the connaisseur could say would be well then that's all right, & there would be an end to the discussion. The connaisseur would have judged me by certain stan- darts which he could ˇif neccessary explain & I would aggree that he had ranked me wrightly. Now take another case suppose I had told one of you a preposterous ly & this man came to me & said look here you have behaved like a beast. & now I were to answer [I|Y]es I know I ☐behaved badly but then I didnt want to behave ˇany better. [C|W]ould he then say ththen thats all right? Obviously not. He would say well you ought to want to behave better. The difference was that this man was making an absolute ethical judgment whereas the other connaisseur made a relative judgment.

Now the essence of this difference seems to me to be obviously this: Every judgment of relative value, goodnes, importance etc. can be is a simple statement of facts & can be put in such a form that it looses all appearance of a judgment of value. Instead of saying this is the right Ms-139a,4r 7 road I can say equaly well this is the road that leeds me to where I want to go. This is a good piano- player simly means that he can play peaces of a certain degree of complicatedness in a certain definable way. To say the [V|v]iolor has a good voice means it has a Tone agreable to the ear & so on. Now what I wish to contend is this that although all relative judgment can be shewn to be statements of facts no statement of fact can ever be or imply what we call an absolute that is ethical judgment.

Let me explain this like this: Suppose that one of you or I was an omnicient person who therefore knew all the movements of all the bodies in the wo[r|l]d, dead or alive who further knew & could describe all the states of minds of all human beings that ever were & suppose that this omnicient person wrote all he knew, that is everything that is to be known, in a big book. Then this book would contain the whole description of the world. And what I want to say is that this book would ˇthen not contain anything that we [c|w]ould call an absolute ethical judjment of value or anything that would ˇdirectly [e|i]mply such a judgment. It would of course contain all relat<i>ve judgments of value as for Ms-139a,4v 8 IV instance that so & so is a good ˇor a bad runner for it would contain the fact that he ran so many yards the distance of 1 mile in so many seconds minutes & seconds. The book would ˇof course contain all possible true scientific propositions & in fact all A significant ˇ& true propositions that can be made.

Now what I wish to say is that all facts are as it were on the same level that there is no such thing as absolute impor- tance or unimportance in them & that therefore in the same way all propositions are on the same level that there are no propositions which are in any absolute sense sublime, important or ˇon the other hand trivial. Now perhaps some of you will agree to that & be reminded of Hamlet's words ‒ ‒ ‒. Dut this again could lead to misunderstanding. What Hamlet says seems to imply that good & bad are not qualities of the world [a|o]utside us but a<t>tributes of our states of mind. But what I mean is that the state of mind to so far as we mean by that a fact which we cann describe is in no ethical sense good or bad.

If for instance in our world book ˇwe read the description of an appalling murder is described in all the details physical & psychological psychical that is with all the pains & anguish the victim had to endure with all the studied cruelty of the murderer the ˇmere description of facts ˇpysical & psychical will contain nothing of Ms-139a,5r 9 what which we [w|c]ould say that this is an ethical proposition. The event murder will be on exactly the same level as any other event for instance the falling of a stone. Certainly the reading of this description might cause us pains or rage or any other emotions or we might read about the pain or rage caused by this murder in other people when they got to know it but there will simply be facts facts & fa<c>ts but no Ethics. –

And now I must say that if I contemplate what Ethics realy would have to be if there were such a science ˇthis: seems to me quite obvious. It seems to me quite obvious that nothing we could ever think or say should be the thing. That we can<n>'t write a ˇscientific book the subject matter of which was is intrinsically sublime, above all other sujecti matte<r>s. I can only describe my feeling by the metaphor that if a man could write a book about Ethics which realy was a book on Ethics this would with an explosion destroy all the other books in the world. Our words used as we use them in science are vesels capable only to contain & convey meaning & sense, natural meaning & sense. Ethics if it is anything must be is supernatural & our words Ms-139a,5v 10 will only express facts as a teacup will only hold a teacup full of water & <if> I was to empty pour out a gallon over it.

I said that so far as facts & propositions are concerned there is only relative value & relative good, right etc. And let me, before I go on, illustrate this by a rather obvious example: The right road is the road which leads to an ˇabitrarily predetermined end & it is quite clear to us all that a road apart from such a predetermined gool it has no sense in ordinary life to talk about the a right road apart from such a predetermined end, that there is no such thing as the right wroad. Now let us see what we could possibly mean by such an the expression the ˇabsolutely wright road. I think it would be the road which everybody if he sees it would with logical necessity have to go or be ashamed for of not going. Generaly speaking, the Absolute good, if it is a describable state of affairs, would be one that everybody irrespective independent of his tasts and inclinations would necessarily go or feel guilty for not bring about or feel guilty for not bringing about. And I want to say that such a state of afairs is a Chimer[e|a]. – <No state of affairs contains has the coercive power in itself> Then what do all of us who are, like myself, still tempted to use such phrases Expressions as Ms-139a,6r 11 abo[s|l]ute good, absolute value etc what have they in mind & what do we try to express?

Now whenever I try to make this clear to m[e|y]self it is natural that I should try to recall what use I in which cases I would particularly certainly use these expressions & I am then in the situation in which you would be if for instance I were to give you a lecture, say, on the psyco- logy of pleasure. What you would do then would be to try and recall some typical situation in which you allways felt pleasure, for, bearing this situation in mind, you all which I would have to say to you about pleasure would become concrete &, as it where, controlabel. One man would for instance chuse as his stock example of pleasure the sensation whic he has when taking a walk on a fime summers morning & or any ˇsome such occasion. Now in this situation I am if I want to fix my mind on what I mean by absolute or ethical value. And there in my case it allways happens that the idea of one particular experience presents itself to m[e|y] ˇmind which therefore is for me in a sense the experience par ex<c>elence & this is the reason why in talking to you now I <(>will always<)> referr to this experience particularly I am using this it as my first & foremost example (As I have said this Ms-139a,6v 12 is realy a personal matter & others would find other examples more striking) The experience the which I'm talking about I will describe this experience in order if possible to make you recall to your minds the same or similar experiences so that we may have a common ground for our investigation. Now the best way of describing this my experience is to say that when I have it I wonder at the existence of the world. And I am then inclined to use such a phrase like as <“>how extraordinary that anything should exist<”>, or “how extra- ordinary that the world should exist”. I will mention an other experience strait away which I also know & which others of you might be aquainted with & this is what one might call the experience of feeling absolutely safe. I mean the state in which one says to onesself I am safe nothing can happen to injure me whatever happens.

Now let me consider these experiences because they exhibit I believe the very characteristics we want to get clear about. Now there the first thing I have to say is that the verbal expression which we give to these experiences is nonsense! If I say I wonder at the existence of the world I am misusing language. Let me explain this: It has a perfectly good and and inteligible sense to say Ms-139a,7r 13 that I wonder at something being the case. I We all understand what it means when I say that I wonder at a dog which is bigger than any <…> dog I have ever seen before or at any other thing which in the common sense of the word is „extraordinary”. In every such case I wonder ab something being the case which I could conceive not to be the case. I wonder at the size of t<h>is dog because I could conceive of a dog of another namely the ordinay size at which I would not wonder. To [I|s]ay I wonder at such & such being the case has only sense if I can immagine it not to be the case. In this sense one can wonder at the existence of say a house when one sees it & hasnt seen visited it for many years & has immagined that it had been pulled down in the meantime. But it is nonsense to say that I wonder at the exis- tence of the world because I cannot immagine it not existing. I could of course wonder at the world round me being as it is. For instance if I had th[i|e]s experience ˇof wonder while looking into the blue sky I could wonder at the sky being blue as opposed to the case where its clouded. But that's not what I mean. I am wonde- ring at the sky being whatever it is. One might be tempted to say that what I am wondering at is a tautologie namely at the sky being blue or not being blue. But then its just Ms-139a,7v 14 that its nonsense to say that one wonders at a tautolog[ie|y]. The verbal expression do whith it what I may remains nonsense & I think it is essential that it should do so.

Now the same applies to that other experience which I have mentioned the experience of being safe absolute safety. We all know what it means in ordinary life to be safe. I am sa☐fe in my rooms when I cannt be run over by an Omnibus. I am safe if I have had whooping cough once & cannt therefore have it again. That is to be safe essentialy means that it is phys<i>cally impossible improbable that certain things should happen to me, & therefore its nonsense to say that I am safe whatever happens. Again it is a misuse of the word safe as the other ˇexample was a misuse of the word existence.

Now I want to impress on you that a certain characteristic misuse of language runs through all ethical & religious expressions. I can perhaps best describe it in this way: When it has become clear to one that there is amongst significant propositions no such thing as a judgment of absolute value the first thought I believe is that all ethical & religious propositions are realy only similes & that['s|is] what they realy seem to be. It seems that when we are using the word right in an ethical sense although Ms-139a,8r 15 what we mean is not what we mean ˇby right when we say this is the right road to Granchester its something similar & when we say this is a good fellow we dont mean it in the same sense as when we say he is a good football- player but there is some similar<ity> And when we say th[is|e] Life of this man was valuable we dont mean it in the same sense as when we say this piece of ju[w|v]elry is valuable but there se[a|e]ms to be some sort of connection.

Now all religious terms & notions seem in this sense to be used as simil[ei|e]s or alegorical. For when we speak of God & that he sees & hears everything & when we pra kneel & pray to him it is seems obvious that all our terms & actions are part of a big great & elaborate alegory which represents him as a human being of great power whose grace we try to win etc etc. Now this simile also extends over the two experiences which I have described above in fac[k|t]t the first of them wondering at the existence of the world is I believe exactly what we are ref people were referring to when they said that God had created the World & the the experience of absolute safety is described by saying that we are safe under Gods protektion. A third experience which belongs to this realm is the experience of feeling guilty & again that was described Ms-139a,9r 16 by the p<h>rase that God disaprooves of our conduct. Now the three experiences which I have mentioned

I have said that whenever we describe ethical or religious experiences we seem to use language only to make up similes. N But a simile must be the simile for something & if I can express a fact by means of a simile I must also be able to drop the simile and to explain the facts without it. Now what happens to us in this case is that as soon as we try to drop the simile & try to state simply the facts that stand behind them We find that there are no such facts. And so what at first appeard to be similes now seems to be mere nonsense.

Now the three experiences which I mentioned before (and I could have added many some more) seem to those who have experienced them ˇfor instance to me to have some in some sense an intrinsic <an> absolute value. But when I say they are experiences surely they are facts, they have taken place then & there, lasted a certain definite time & consequently are describable. And so, from what I said some minutes ago I must admit it is nonsense to say that they have absolute value. And here I [am|ha]ve at arrived at the main point of this paper & it is the paradox for I know not how to call it that <an experience> Ms-139a,10r 17 a fact should have an absolute value. And I will make the point still more acute by saying, that ˇan experience a fact schould have a supernatural value.

Now the way I would be tempted at first to meet this paradox is this: Let me consider again the Experience of wondering at existence & let me des cribe it in a slighly different way: We all know what in ordinary life would be called a mira[kal|cle]: It obviously is simply an event which the like of which we have never yet seen. Now suppose such an event happened. Take the case that one of you suddenly grew a lions head & began to roaring certainly thats as extraordinary a thing as I can ¤ [There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so] immagine. Now whenever we would have recovered from our surprise what I would suggest is to fech a physiolo gist & have the case scientifically investigated & if it were not for being afraid of hurting him I'lld have him vivisected. And where would the miracle have gone to, for it is clear that looking at it in this way everything miraculous has disappeared unless what we mean by miraculous is merely that a fact☐ has not jet been explanied by science wh<i>ch again means ˇmerely th[t|a]t Ms-139a,11r 18 we have hitherto failed to group this fact with others in a scientific system. But [t|T]his means that it has no sense to say „scien[s|c]e has prooved that there are no mira[k|c]les”. No: the scientific way of looking at a fact is not the way to look at it as a miracle. For immagine whatever fact you may, it is not in itself a miracle in the absolute sense & there [ar|on]e is in itself not not more or less mira[k|c]uleus than the other. I • heard ↺once [in|a] preacher in a Cambridge Church say that of course there were still mira[k|c]les happening only look at the tiny little seed from which a trees grows. But is this more is wrong for is this more mira[k|c]ul[e|o]us than that a stone falls or in fact any thing which happens whatever happens! Again we see that we have used the term miracle in a relative & an absolute sense. In the rolative sense it simply meant a hitherto unknown kind of event. well that's a trivial meaning. But when we are tempted to use it in what I would like to [k|c]all a deep meaning sense then it meanswe want it to mean that we wonder at it not bec[o|a]use of its the rarity of what has happened the event but because what has happened has happened whatever has happened. And here we have the misuse of the word „to wonder” which we talked about previously. –

In fact Ms-139a,11v 19 what I then called to wonder at the existence of the world I might have equaly well described by saying to regard to as the experience of look<ing> ˇ<…> at existens as a mira[k|c]le. Now I am tempted to say that the ˇright expres- sion in language for the miracle of the existence of the world is the miracle of the existence of language but this would not account for a fact being important the absolute importance of but what <…> does it mean to notice that this miracle some times & not at other times? For of course the expression „miracle at the For all I have said by shifting the expression of the miraculous from [i|a]n expression by means of language to the expression by the existence of language, all I have said is again that we can not express what we want to express & that all we say about it is remaines nonsense.

Now the answer to all this will se[a|e]m ˇperfectly clear to may of you. You will say: Well if certain experiences constantly tempt us to attribute a quality to them which we call absolute or☐ ethical value & importance this simply shows that by these words we do|not mean nonsense ☐☐ that after all what we mean by saying that an experience has absolute value is just a fact [&|l]ike other facts Ms-139a,12r 20 & that is to say that my contention in the beginning of this paper when I said that no describable fact could ˇever be or imply an absolute judgment was wrong. Now when this is urged against me I say <(>immediately<)> see perfectly clearly as it where in a flash of light, not only that no description that could I can think of would do to describe significantly these experiences, but that I would reject every explanation that anybody could possibly suggest ˇab initio on the ground of its significance.

That is to say: I see now that these nonsensical expressions were not nonsensical bec[o|a]use I had not jet found the significant explana tion expression but that there nonsensi cality was there very essence for all I wanted to do with them was just to go beyond the world & that is to say beyond language.

But this is just ☐mpossible. My <w>hole tendency ˇ& as I believe the tendency of all those who ever tried to talk or write about Ethics & religion was to run against the boundar[y|ie]s of language. This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely, hopeless<.> & still I feel respect for it & <…> would not ˇfor my life ridicul it. I will sum up. I therefore believe that so far as Ethics springs from the desire to sa express say something about the ultimat ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute important it can be no Ms-139a,12v 21 science, that is to say what it sa<i>ys does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document which I of a tendency in the human mind which I person<a>ly cannot help respecting deeply & I would not for my life ridicul it. Ms-139a,8v

of scientific expression they are a misuse of language in fact they are nonsense. The word to wonder has of course a good sense which we all understand if it means to wonder at a certain state of things to wonder that such & such is the case. It has a good & clear sense to say that I wonder at some unusually dressed man as I have neve seen before or at some strange sound etc. etc. It is also clear what it means to w[a|o]nder at the existence of say a building which you had thought had been pulled down long ago for here it has a meaning to say I did not think that this building still existed or to say that it does exist. On On the other hand its nonsense ˇ& not a prop at all to say that colour & sound exists & for this reason its nonsense to say that I wonder at their existence. Now the correct wright expression of what we mean when we say that colour & sound etc. exist is not a proposition at all but realy the vocabulary Ms-139a,9v

< Galstonsche Photogr. Sense of life, what makes life worth living Worth. Value, importance> Ethic is the enquiry into what is good.   Ethic is the enquiry into what is valuable.   Ethic is if anything the natural science of value.   Distinction between relative & abso- lute value. Examples.   Statements of relat<i>ve value, goodness or importance are statement of facts which are in no way problematic.    [K|C]ontrast to judgments of absolute value. Att<i>tude of the Judge to the judged.   No Statement of fact is or implies an absolute judgment.   Science & the whole realm of propositions contains no absolute no ethical judgment.   Still let us investigate such absolute judgments & that we can only do by investigating the cases where we are tempted to make absolute judgements.   I will describe an experience which I allways must think about when I want to know what I mean by <…> abso lute importance. The experience of won dering at the world at the Existence of the World.   Let us analyse this verbal expres sion of my experience. It is nonsense.   Expression of existence & possibility ¤ Ms-139a,10v