Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/386

 372 HASTINGS EASHDALL: And this objection may be treated as fatal to the whole idea of a " sum of pleasures ". But I reply that it is not the values that they have in separation but the values that they have as elements in the whole that we are summing ; though our experience of them in separation or in other surroundings may be more or less of a help in estimating how much they will contribute to our enjoyment of the total consciousness into which they enter. It is true that my enjoyment of a certain man's company may be either greater or less when I meet him in a Swiss hotel than when I meet him in a college common room : but that does not prevent my ex- perience of his society in Oxford leading me to think that his presence will be a material addition to my enjoyment at such and such a Swiss hotel and determining me to go there in preference to one which I should otherwise have decidedly preferred. It is then undeniable (as it seems to me) that we can distinguish elements in a whole of pleasant consciousness. The society of my friend and the enjoyment of Alpine scenery may give me a combination of pleasure both greater and different in kind than I should derive from the two taken separately. But that does not prevent my putting together in my mind the probable enjoyment which I shall derive from the scenery and the probable enjoyment which I shall derive from the company of my friend, and recognising that the two elements go to form a whole of pleasure which is greater than either. If on comparing any two whole psy- choses I find that one would be preferable to the other but would become less desirable when a certain assignable element is taken away, there is (as it appears to me) a real meaning in saying that such a whole of pleasure is a sum of pleasures. No doubt, as the logicians remind us, the whole is something more than the sum of its parts ; but the ex- pression "whole " and "part" have a real meaning for all that : the whole is the sum of its parts, though it is something more. Or to take a more concrete and material parallel, I may judge how many pailfuls of water it will take to fill a cistern by adding together the capacity of each pail, though I must not forget to allow for the considerable quantity of water which will be lost in the process of adding them to- gether, or the quantity that will be added if it is raining. III. There remains for discussion our third and last thesis : that, though one pleasure may be greater than another, it can never be described as twice as great that degrees of pleasure cannot be numerically expressed.