Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/275

 PLEASURE AS ETHICAL STANDARD 26 1

that the body is the standard for all changes of the whole organ- ism, and refuse to diagnose insanity without discovering a bodily lesion.

The old contention that pleasures could not be summed has been found to be an illusion. Hegel taught us, long since, that the whole world could be viewed under any one of the catego- ries. All measuring is measuring of the contents of mental states. Whoever contends that the universe is one is contend- ing that it can be measured. Only the thoroughgoing pluralist objects to such a procedure, and remains in an unrelated world. Here their own method condemns the utilitarian thinking ; for with them the total one is rather an accident than a thorough- going identity. A measurable universe must be tightly ribbed together by a common nature, else it is not measurable. The logical necessity of their position forces this admission from them, but always half-heartedly. It is not necessary here to meet the overpowering question of the relation of quality to quantity. It can only be met imaginatively, as yet. But it is permitted one to have a strong faith that everything which appears in space or in time can be reduced at length to the quantitative form. "Quantity without an essential qualitative side, and a qualitative object with no quantity, are not conceiv- able." To say that we are unable to measure does not prove the impossibility of measuring. Measure is a principle which seems to belong everywhere.

But to remove this objection we must go deeper. It is some- times declared that pleasures cannot even be desired : that they cannot appear in the projected image ; for their only being is a present being. But they can be foredetermined in just the same way in which objective "goods" are in thought. Quite true, the pleasure which is thought of is not the pleasure of attainment. Neither is the good which is thought of the good which is at length attained. Both are anticipations, and there is inherently no reason why one state of mind should not be prefigured as well as another. No matter what the difficulties of introspection, one can at least prospect the will and the feeling as well as the thought. States of mind can be used to symbolize the one as