Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/228

 214 BEBNAED BOSANQUET : We never, I believe, feel ourselves bound to compare abstract amounts of pleasure either in our own behalf or in that of others. We never, that is to say, try to compare them impartially, going out of our way to look for the greatest possible quantity. We do feel bound to promote the life and satisfaction of ourselves and others ; but such promotion always involves a reference, even if tacit, to definite lines of living and enjoyment, presupposed in our general standard of life. It may be objected that this is bringing in the reference to welfare or perfection, which was ex hypothesi to be excluded. It amounts, we may be told, to denying that the cetera ever can be paria that morality can be in- different as between two ways of enjoying ourselves. What I desire to urge on the other hand amounts to this, that life after all is a unity; and the very fact that two modes of enjoyment seem to me ethically indistinguishable, and also that I want one of them more than the other, is a fact, not strictly indeed of my morality, but of the determinate struc- ture of my being. Now I deny that I feel bound to consider, as in strictness I should according to the theory before us, which of these, or whether any other course, will bring the greatest pleasure as such. I do what I want most, or what attracts me most, and, morality not forbidding, help others to do the same for themselves. Of course, Psychological Hedonism being dropped, it cannot be assumed that this means acting with a view to the greatest pleasure of myself or others. The question before us is, which way of looking at the matter is usually acquiesced in ; as an argument to show which the moral consciousness demands. What I urge is, that we accept our wants as being along certain lines, grounded in the positive unity of our nature, even when outside morality. There is no impartial scrutiny of experience, to find where the greatest pleasure can be had, except de minimis, when we feel that we are out of touch with the true test, which is, simply, what we really want. (e) In sections 122-3 we come to the direct argument against an objection to the effect that pleasures, being in- tensive quantities, cannot be added and subtracted. The way in which this is met seems to me unsatisfactory. The form of the objection is taken as an admission that pleasures being intensive quantities are quantities. From this the characteristics of quantity in the fullest sense are inferred of them, e.g., that they can be brought into numerical relation with other quantities of the same kind ; and that you can affirm the pleasure in A to = the pleasures in B