Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/382

 368 HASTINGS EASHDALL: Assuming that there is such a thing as pleasure, it must be in time : and the time or the temporal state that is incapable of division is not time or in time at all. We have heard, of course, of the timeless self and its aspirations after a good which, though it is not in time is, it seems, to have a begin- ning and to be capable of being brought about by human acts which take place within the time series : but I am not aware that the supporters of the timeless self have ever assigned to it a timeless pleasure. At all events, if any such thing there be, it must be something quite different from what I and, I am persuaded, the majority of my readers understand by the word. As I understand a sum of pleasures, every pleasure is really a sum of pleasures : it is impossible to desire pleasure at all without desiring a sum of pleasures' What I understand by the assertion that I desire a sum o pleasures is, that I desire to enjoy pleasure as intense as possible and for as long as possible that I regard two" minutes' pleasure as more valuable than one minute of the same pleasure, and further that I regard the intensity of one pleasant moment as something which can be compared with the duration of another pleasant state, so that on comparing the duration and intensity of pleasure which will be secured by one course of conduct with the duration and intensity of pleasure which I may win by another, I can pronounce which on the whole appears to me to possess the greatest pleasure- value, and that (in so far as I am in pursuit of pleasure to the disregard of other considerations) I shall determine action by that judgment. I do not see how I can put th< matter more clearly, and therefore I proceed to the examina- tion of the second of the theses which I have undertaken to deny. 1 1 Prof. Green's argument against the idea that something which cannot be enjoyed all at once can be the summum bonum does not directly concern us here, but it seems to me open to much the same objections as have been made against the denial that a sum of pleasures is a possible object of desire. His argument seems to amount to the assertion that a. sum of pleasures cannot be made the object of pursuit because you can never reach it, while a greatest possible sum of pleasures is a contradic- tion in terms, because when you have enjoyed any given amount of pleasure, it is always still possible to desire more. I should myself be prepared to contend that any other view of the ethical end is liable to the same objection, since any good for man must be in time, and can never be summed once for all as a KTrj^a ts del ; but I am not arguing that a sum of pleasures is the true ethical end, but only that it is an intelligible object of pursuit. A greatest possible sum of pleasures means that as much pleasure should be got into a given time as possible and that the time in which we are enjoying pleasure should be as long as possible. Nobody, I take it, has ever maintained the possibility of arriving at a sum of