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 262 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

well as the other. The utilitarians have never contended for anything but pleasure as the predeterminant in the judgment which precedes action. One can certainly trade the prospective pains of a toothache for the briefer, if no less intense, pains of the dentist's chair; and the contention is that the process is general. The instance here given seems to be a summing of pains. May not the summing of pleasures be undertaken in the same way ? Mr. Rashdall has pointed out very conclusively that the objection that a sum of pleasures is not capable of existing altogether at a given moment of time is an objection equally valid against the desire for one single pleasure ; for it occurs in time, and is itself a sum of timed units. Every pleasure is thus a sum of pleasures. In the prospective judgment the pleasure in the field of view may be of long duration, as the thought of a summer abroad or a college education, now possible for one who has hitherto desired it against hope. Pleasures are here summed through the time series ; or my pleasure may at one instant call into action my entire organism. Coming thus without rivals, it will be most intense. In this way a sum of pleasures will be a sum of coordinate functionings which can be measured at length, perhaps, by cellular conditions. It is imaginatively possible to sum all pleasures either in the spatial or in the temporal series. And the so-called qualities of pleasure, or even qualities of conduct, which are not commonly supposed to have this cumulative aspect, appear to be no exceptions to the rule. The joy of the martyr may have an intensity which can be summed against the pains of the consuming fire. A good character may bring the thought of joy extending through an infinite series of time moments to its possessor. The accumulated thrills of a nation, extending both in space and time, may appear in the warrior as a veritable passion for death.

But even granting that all actions have pleasure tones, and that these pleasure tones vary in quantitatively determinable ways, Green's contention is still true that the greatest-possible- happiness doctrine offers no possibility of determining within what limits the quantity of happiness is to be taken. The test seems at one time to be the happiness of society ; but the question then