The Nature of Goodness | Page 5

be almost
equivalent to saying that nothing is good. For if the moment anything
becomes good it refers all its goodness to something beyond its own
walls, should we ever be able to discover an object endowed with
goodness at all? The knife is good in reference to the stick of wood; the
wood, in reference to the table; the table, in reference to the writing; the
writing, in reference to a reader's eyes; his eyes, in reference to
supporting his family--where shall we ever stop? We can never catch
up with goodness. It is always promising to disclose itself a little way
beyond, and then evading us, slipping from under our fingers just when
we are about to touch it. This meaning of goodness is

self-contradictory.
And it is also too large. It includes more to goodness than properly
belongs there. If we call everything good which is good _for_,
everything which shows adaptation to an end, then we shall be obliged
to count a multitude of matters good which we are accustomed to think
of as evil. Filth will be good, for it promotes fevers as nothing else does.
Earthquakes are good, for shaking down houses. It is inapposite to urge
that we do not want fevers or shaken houses. Wishes are provided no
place in our meaning of good. Goodness merely assists, promotes, is
conducive to any result whatever. It marks the functional character,
without regard to the desirability of that which the function effects. But
this is unsatisfactory and may well set us on a search for supplementary
meanings.

V
When we ask if the Venus of Milo is a good statue, we have to confess
that it is good beyond almost any object on which our eyes have ever
rested. And yet it is not good for anything; it is no means for an outside
end. Rather, it is good in itself. This possibility that things may be good
in themselves was once brought forcibly to my attention by a trivial
incident. Wandering over my fields with my farmer in autumn, we were
surveying the wrecks of summer. There on the ploughed ground lay a
great golden object. He pointed to it, saying, "That is a good big
pumpkin." I said, "Yes, but I don't care about pumpkins." "No," he said,
"nor do I." I said, "You care for them, though, as they grow large. You
called this a good big one." "No! On the contrary, a pumpkin that is
large is worth less. Growing makes it coarser. But that is a good big
pumpkin." I saw there was some meaning in his mind, but I could not
make out what it was. Soon after I heard a schoolboy telling about
having had a "good big thrashing." I knew that he did not like such
things. His phrase could not indicate approval, and what did it signify?
He coupled the two words good and _big_; and I asked myself if there
was between them any natural connection? On reflection I thought
there was. If you wish to find the full pumpkin nature, here you have it.
All that a pumpkin can be is set forth here as nowhere else. And for that
matter, anybody who might foolishly wish to explore a thrashing would
find all he sought in this one. In short, what seemed to be intended was

that all the functions constituting the things talked about were present
in these instances and hard at work, mutually assisting one another, and
joining to make up such a rounded whole that from it nothing was
omitted which possibly might render its organic wholeness complete.
Here then is a notion of goodness widely unlike the one previously
developed. Goodness now appears shut up within verifiable bounds
where it is not continually referred to something which lies beyond. An
object is here reckoned not as good _for_, but as good in itself. The
Venus of Milo is a good statue not through what it does, but through
what it is. And perhaps it may conduce to clearness if we now give
technical names to our two contrasted conceptions and call the former
extrinsic goodness and the latter intrinsic. Extrinsic goodness will then
signify the adjustment of an object to something which lies outside
itself; intrinsic will say that the many powers of an object are so
adjusted to one another that they cooperate to render the object a firm
totality. Both will indicate relationship; but in the one case the relations
considered are _extra se_, in the other inter se. Goodness, however,
will everywhere point to organic adjustment.
If this double aspect of goodness is as clear and important as I believe it
to be, it must have left its record in language. And in fact we find that