parting of the ways between the more and the less desirable phases of possible conscious life.  Morality of an elementary type would exist on this level even without the further complications of actual life.  At least a very important art would arise; whether or not we should call it morality is a mere matter of definition.  For a choice between alternatives immediately felt goods would arise, and the problem of how to get the better kinds of experience and avoid the worse would demand solution.  Every bit of plus value added to experience would make the world so much the brighter, as would every bit of pain avoided.  There are, to be sure, the mystical optimisms and pessimisms to be reckoned with, the sweeping assertions of certain schools and individuals that everything is equally good or equally bad.  Such undiscriminating formulas are either the mere objectification of a mood, of some unusual period of ecstasy or sorrow, a blind outcry of thanksgiving or of bitterness, or they are the clumsy expression of some practical truth, as, the wisdom of acquiescence, and the futility of preoccupation with evil.  But taken seriously and literally such statements are simply untrue to the facts and blur our fundamental perceptions.  If actually accredited, either would lead to quiescence; if everything were equally good or evil all striving would be meaningless, one might as well jump from a housetop or walk into the fire.  But as a matter of fact such mystical assertions are indulged in only in the inactive moments of life, and mean no more than a lyric poem or a burst of music.  Every one in his practical moments acknowledges tacitly, at least, the difference between the intrinsic goodness and badness of experiences.  A life of even delight or even wretchedness, or of colorless indifference, is not inconceivable, but it is not the lot of any actual human beings.

The larger quarrel between optimists and pessimists need not, for our purposes, be settled.  Life may be a very good thing, on the whole, or a very bad thing.  The only point we need to note is that it is at any rate a varying thing.  Some experiences are more worth having than others.  Moral theory needs no further admission to find its foothold.  Nor do we need to discuss the problem of evil.  It may be that all pain has its ultimate uses that nothing is “really” bad, if we take that to mean that all evil has a necessary existence as a means to a good otherwise unattainable and worth the cost.  But however useful as a means evil may be, it is nonetheless evil and regrettable.  It is not good qua pain.  If the same amount of good could be obtained without the preliminary evil, it were better to skip it.  In short, the existence of different values in immediate experience is indisputable; we may call them for convenience intrinsic goodness and badness.

What is extrinsic goodness?