Thus Alexander terms badness _a survival_, in part at least, of former goodness. Hinton says (Philosophy and Religion, p. 146), "That a thing is wrong does not mean that it ought never to have been done or thought, but that it ought to be left off". It will be noted that we are not dealing with the metaphysical or the religious problem of the nature and origin of evil, but simply with an account of bad action as it appears in individual conduct.
Badness has four traits, all derivable from this basal fact. They are: (1) Lawlessness, (2) Selfishness, (3) Baseness, (4) Demoralization.
1. _Lawlessness._ When desire and duty, that is, when desires based on past having and on future acting, conflict, the bad man lets duty go. He virtually denies that it is a good at all--it may be a good in the abstract but not a good for him. He denies that obligation as such has any value; that any end is to be consulted save his own state of mind. He denies that there is law for conduct--at least any law beyond the inclination which he happens to have at the time of action. Keeping himself within that which has verified itself to his feeling in the past, he abrogates all authority excepting that of his own immediate feelings.
2. _Selfishness._ It has already been shown that the self is not necessarily immoral, and hence that action for self is not necessarily bad--indeed, that the true self is social and interest in it right (see Sec. XXXV). But when a satisfaction based on past experience is set against one proceeding from an act as meeting obligation, there grows up a divorce in the self. The actual self, the self recognizing only past and sensible satisfaction, is set over against the self which recognizes the necessity of expansion and a wider environment. Since the former self confines its action to benefits demonstrably accruing to itself, while the latter, in meeting the demands of the situation, necessarily contributes to the satisfaction of others, one takes the form of a _private_ self, a self whose good is set over against and exclusive of that of others, while the self recognizing obligation becomes a social self--the self which performs its due function in society. It is, again, the contrast between getting and doing.