 Principia Ethica took the consequentialist part of this view to be analytically true, since it defined the right as what most promotes the good. But once Moore abandoned this definition, he had to treat the consequentialist principle as synthetic and he did so in Ethics, which allowed that deontological views that say some acts that maximize the good are wrong are coherent. But even there he did not argue at length for consequentialism, simply announcing that it is self-evident (1912: 180–81/1947: 112–13/1965: 76–77). This in part reflected a common assumption of his time, when a majority of moral philosophers accepted some form of consequentialism. But it may also be relevant that the only alternative he seems to have considered was an absolute deontology like Kant’s, which says that some acts such as killing and lying are wrong no matter what their consequences (1903: 106/1993: 157; 1912: 175–81/1947: 109–13/1965: 74–77). His major ethical works did not consider a moderate deontology such as would later be developed by Ross (1930), in which deontological prohibitions against killing and lying often outweigh considerations of good consequences but can themselves be outweighed if enough good is at stake. It is not clear what Moore’s response to such a moderate deontology would have been.