D.

    § 77. This latter confusion is one of the sources of the prevalent modern doctrine that ‘being good’ is identical with ‘being willed’; but the prevalence of this doctrine seems to be chiefly due to other causes. I shall try to shew with regard to it (1) what are the chief errors which seem to have led to its adoption; and (2) that, apart from it, the Metaphysics of Volition can hardly have the smallest logical bearing upon Ethics. …
    § 78. (1) It has been commonly held, since Kant, that ‘goodness’ has the same relation to Will or Feeling, which ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ has to Cognition: that the proper method for Ethics is to discover what is implied in Will or Feeling, just as, according to Kant, the proper method for Metaphysics was to discover what is implied in Cognition. …
    § 79. The actual relations between ‘goodness’ and Will or Feeling, from which this false doctrine is inferred, seem to be mainly (a) the causal relation consisting in the fact that it is only by reflection upon the experiences of Will and Feeling that we become aware of ethical distinctions; (b) the facts that a cognition of goodness is perhaps always included in certain kinds of Willing and Feeling, and is generally accompanied by them: …
    § 80. but from neither of these psychological facts does it follow that ‘to be good’ is identical with being willed or felt in a certain way. The supposition that it does follow is an instance of the fundamental contradiction of modern Epistemology—the contradiction involved in both distinguishing and identifying the object and the act of Thought, ‘truth’ itself and its supposed criterion: …
    § 81. and, once this analogy between Volition and Cognition is accepted, the view that ethical propositions have an essential reference to Will or Feeling, is strengthened by another error with regard to the nature of Cognition—the error of supposing that ‘perception’ denotes merely a certain way of cognising an object, whereas it actually includes the assertion that the object is also true. …
    § 82. The argument of the last three §§ is recapitulated; and it is pointed out (1) that Volition and Feeling are not analogous to Cognition (2) that, even if they were, ‘to be good’ could not mean ‘to be willed or felt in a certain way’. …
    § 83. (2) If ‘being good’ and ‘being willed’ are not identical then the latter could only be a criterion of the former; and, in order to shew that it was so, we should have to establish independently that many things were good—that is to say, we should have to establish most of our ethical conclusions before the Metaphysics of Volition could possibly give us the smallest assistance. …
    § 84. The fact that the metaphysical writers who, like Green, attempt to base Ethics on Volition, do not even attempt this independent investigation, shows that they start from the false assumption that goodness is identical with being willed, and hence that their ethical reasonings have no value whatsoever. …
    § 85. Summary of chapter.