If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilised morality to savage morality.

Summary

This quote suggests that if all moral ideas were equally valid and there was no distinction between "civilized" and "savage" morality, there would be no reason to favor one over the other. It implies that there must be some objective measure of morality for us to appreciate the benefits of civilized moral values over more primitive or barbaric ones. In other words, if every moral code had equal merit, then the concept of progress or superior moral principles would lose its relevance.

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