judgements, but that we never succeed in doing so. A man might
conceivably hold that there is no real distinction between right and
wrong or between beautiful and ugly, but that it is a universal illusion
of mankind to suppose that there are such distinctions. Or he might hold
that the distinctions are real, but that we do not know where to draw
them. He might suggest that some ways of acting are really right and
others really wrong, but that we do not know which are the right acts
and so regularly confuse what we like doing with what is 'really' right.
Mr. Russell, in some of his later writings, seems to incline to views of
this sort. But the suggestion is really unmotived. It would be just as
reasonable to suggest that all geometrical or astronomical propositions
are only expressions of the personal and private feelings of geometers
and astronomers, and that either there is no distinction between truths
and falsehoods in geometry and astronomy, or that, at any rate, we do
not know which the true propositions are. That there is a real
distinction between true and false propositions and that, with pains and
care, we can discover some truths are assumptions we must make if we are
to recognize the possibility of pursuing knowledge at all, and there is
no reason to suppose that these assumptions do not hold as good in
matters of art and morals as elsewhere. No doubt, in practice men are
prone to mistake what they like for what is right or beautiful, but this
danger, such as it is, is not confined to art and morals. Men do often
call acts right merely because they like doing them or pictures
beautiful merely because they get pleasure from them. But it is also
notorious that many men are prone to believe that a thing is likely to
happen merely because they wish it to happen, or that it is unlikely to
happen merely because they wish it not to happen. Yet no one seriously
makes the reality of these tendencies a ground for denying the
possibility of 'inferring the future from the past'. We must then, I
hold, regard it as an integral part of the whole story of everything to