III
Another question unsettled by the diagram is so closely connected with
the one just examined as often to be confused with it. It is this: Are
all functions of the same kind, rank, or grade? They are not; and this
qualitative difference is indicated by the terms higher and lower, as
the quantitative difference was by greater and less. But differences
of rank are more slippery matters than difference of amount, and
easily lend themselves to arbitrary and capricious treatment. In
ordinary speech we are apt to employ the words high and low as mere
signs of approval or disapproval. We talk of one occupation,
enjoyment, work of art, as superior to another, and mean hardly more
than that we like it better. Probably there is not another pair of
terms current in ethics where the laudatory usage is so liable to slip
into the place of the descriptive. Our opponent's ethics always seem
to embody low ideals, our own to be of a higher type. Accordingly the
terms should not be used in controversy unless we have in mind for
them a precise meaning other than eulogy or disparagement.
And such a meaning they certainly may possess. As the term greater
good is employed to indicate the degree in which a quality serves as a
means, so may the higher good show the degree in which it is an end.
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