Note 133 — Chapter XIII · CONDUCT AND CHARACTER

"Formally" and "materially" good or bad are terms also employed to denote the same distinction. (See Sidgwick, History of Ethics, pp. 199-200; so Bowne, Principles of Ethics, pp. 39-40.) "The familiar distinction between the formal and the material rightness of action: The former depends upon the attitude of the agent's will towards his ideal of right; the latter depends upon the harmony of the act with the laws of reality and its resulting tendency to produce and promote well-being." Bowne holds that both are necessary, while formal rightness is ethically more important, though not all important.