 “Ethical Axioms” (1894) was the last piece that Russell wrote for Sidgwick’s course on ethics (RoE: 53–56/Papers 1: 226–228). Russell takes it as a datum that “we do make moral judgments” and that “we regard these, like judgments as to what is, as liable to truth and falsehood”. We are “precluded from skepticism” (presumably the view that moral judgments are all false) “by the mere fact we will and act”. (This is not a very convincing argument since I can desire something—and hence act—without thinking it good, as non-human animals presumably do. The precondition of action is desire, not desire tricked out in the vocabulary of good and evil.) Hence “some basis must be found for ethical judgments”, but “it is sufficiently obvious that such a basis cannot be sought in any proposition about what is or has been”. Thus Russell has set himself a rather difficult problem, since it is not at all clear that there can be any true propositions that are not, in some sense, propositions about what is, has been or will be. Perhaps what he has in mind is a set of self-evident axioms about what ought to be or what we ought to do which do not admit of any further analysis. But he rejects this option because “the Kantian maxim” (whatever that is) is purely formal and because no “material precept” “has obtained the universal consent of moralists”. (It seems that a maxim cannot count as self-evident unless it is evident to every qualified self.) Russell also rejects the view that moral judgments are “merely statements of a psychological state” (as, for example, that the speaker desires this or that) on the grounds that in that case “they could not err (except by the speaker’s mistaking his own feelings)”. He seems to think that it is a conceptual truth that moral judgments are liable to error. Finally he plumps for the view that “we may define the good as that which satisfies desire” (that is, that what is good for each person is what will satisfy that person’s desires). This allows for the possibility of error, for though we usually know what we want, we can be wrong about whether we will like it when we get it. Russell hastens to explain that this definition is not as sordid as it sounds. “Our duty will consist in self-realization, but self-realization may of course be best attained by what is commonly called self-sacrifice.”