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The first argument is thus an ideal experiment in which we use the method of difference.

It removes our present expression and shows that the badness we meant would not be affected by this, whereas on positivist grounds it should be.

The second argument applies the method in the reverse way.

It ideally removes the past event, and shows that this would render false what we mean to say, whereas on positivist grounds it should not.

Let us suppose that the animal did not in fact fall into the trap and did not suffer at all, but that we mistakenly believe it did, and say as before that its suffering was an evil thing.

On the positivist theory, everything I sought to express by calling it evil in the first case is still present in the second.

In the only sense in which badness is involved at all, whatever was bad in the first case is still present in its entirety, since all that is expressed in either case is a state of feeling, and that feeling is still there.

And our question is, is such an implication consistent with what we meant??

Clearly it is not.

If anyone asked us, after we made the remark that the suffering was a bad thing, whether we should think it relevant to what we said to learn that the incident had never occurred and no pain had been suffered at all, we should say that it made all the difference in the world, that what we were asserting to be bad was precisely the suffering we thought had occurred back there, that if this had not occurred, there was nothing left to be bad, and that our assertion was in that case mistaken.

The suggestion that in saying something evil had occurred we were after all making no mistake, because we had never meant anyhow to say anything about the past suffering, seems to me merely frivolous.

If we did not mean to say this, why should we be so relieved on finding that the suffering had not occurred??

On the theory before us, such relief would be groundless, for in that suffering itself there was nothing bad at all, and hence in its nonoccurrence there would be nothing to be relieved about.

The positivist theory would here distort our meaning beyond recognition.