the "lies" told by "would-be scientific ethicists" ("Art, Morals, and Religion": May 5, 1901). In Moore' s view, a truly scientific ethic is able to prove very little concerning values, rules, duty, and virtues. Regarding values: such an ethic cannot establish anything concerning what has intrinsic value—what is good in itself. That must be left to the judgment of individuals who, taking due precautions, ask themselves what things would be good if they were the only things to exist in the world. Regarding rules of conduct: a truly scientific ethic can at most establish that "a very few rules" (Principia, xxii, italics in the original) ought always to be followed. Not even all the rules commended by Common Sense qualify: only "most of those most universally recognized by Common Sense" are possible candidates, and even in their case Moore maintains only that the requisite type of justification "may be possible" (p. xxii, italics in the original). That being so, almost all our decisions will need to be made without relying on any rule: in almost all cases, Moore writes, "rules of action should not be followed at all" (Ibid., p. xiii). In all cases of this sort, individuals should guide their choice "by a direct consideration of the effects which the action may produce" (p. XX), doing what one thinks will promote one' s own interests, as these are enlarged by the lives of others in whom one has "a strong personal interest" (Ibid., XX) instead of attempting to satisfy the demands of "a more extended beneficence," as in "the greatest good for the greatest number." And of the goods to be aimed at, the more immediate are generally to be preferred to the more distant. In short, in virtually all our activities in our day-to-day life we are at liberty to live and choose without troubling ourselves about whether we are doing what duty, in the form of the rules of morality, requires. Regarding virtues: a truly scientific ethic should promote the private virtues of prudence, temperance, and industry (the only virtues Moore discusses in Principia), not the (so-called) virtues of beneficence, charity, civic-mindedness, social justice, patriotism, piety, reverence, or altruism. Such an ethic should promote the virtues of the creative self, not the virtues of the conscientious citizen. On this basis Regan argues that Moore genuinely is "Bloomsbury' s prophet," advocating, as he does, the values, the rules