Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/379

 CAN THERE BE A SUM OF PLEASURES? 365 undoubtedly exist before they have received any satisfaction at all ? Is it not rather some new, some unsought for, some wholly unanticipated experience of the pleasantness of be- holding beautiful things which first rouses the desire to see more beautiful things ? I cannot help thinking that few even of those who deny the possibility of a " sum of pleasures " will agree with Prof. Mackenzie and Dr. Caird in holding that even particular pleasures cannot be the object of desire. But then it may be said : "Yes, a pleasure may be desired, but not pleasure a particular pleasure but not pleasure in general ". I have already admitted that we can never_desire to enjoy pleasure_ alone ; the pleasure must always come from some feeling, thought, or volition. So obvious a truism has, so far as I am aware, never been denied. But need we always set our heart upon the enjoyment of some particular pleasant thing? There is something in common between all the things which give us pleasure : and that something is surely capable of being made the object of pursuit. When a boy begins to smoke, he is certainly not influenced by the desire of the characteristic smoker's pleasure, which he has never enjoyed and will not enjoy, vezy probably, for some time to come. There can be no image before his mind of a definite pleasant content ; he does not know what the smoker's pleasure is, but he knows what pleasure is in general, and he knows that he likes all kinds of it which he has ever experienced. And, when he has gathered from the relation of credible witnesses that smoking is a source of pleasure, that is enough to set him in pursuit of it. If a booth were set up in a fair with the announcement "Pleasure here, 6d.," it is possible that it would not attract a large number of sixpences because there might be doubts as to the probabilities of the promised article being really supplied ; but it does seem to me a strange position to deny the psychological possibility of some one individual paying his sixpence, not (as it is very likely some would do) for the pleasure of satisfying curiosity but with the definite expectation of getting a fair sixpenny worth of en- joyment, and a broad-minded indifference as to the particular species supplied so long of course as it was a pleasure to him. I feel some diffidence in attempting a solemn argument in defence of a thesis which (with all respect for the eminent persons who deny it) seems to me so obviously true ; and I confess^I^findit^ difficult to understand what exactly it is t]j t a4ljjf"is~ really~ meant tooe Oenied when it is said that pleasur^cannot bej^ object of desire, is it trie oDvious fact tEat what we elich care about is not all pleasure equally, but