Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/392

 378 HASTINGS EASHDALL addition of parts remains to me an unintelligible paradox. If it consists of parts, the parts must surely all be looked at before we can pronounce upon the pleasurableness of the whole. Whether we can take in the whole quantity of pleasure by (as it were) a single mental glance, or whether we mentally run over the parts in succession, is a mere accidental difference of psychological habit. I am no less- summing the number of sheep in a flock when (as may be done by an experienced shepherd) I pronounce how many they are by a look at the whole flock together than when I have laboriously to count them. Further, I am directly conscious that in estimating the total of pleasure I take into account the intensity of successive time-reaches as well as their duration ; and this process can hardly be performed without thinking of the successive portions of time. If the whole time is likely to be equally pleasant, I may no doubt proceed at once to multiply (so to speak) intensity by dura- tion : if the successive portions are likely to be very variable, I must surely think how much pleasure or pain there will be in each before I can say how much there will be in the whole. If such a process of estimating a total quantity after estimating the constituent quantities is not to be called addi- tion and subtraction, I should be grateful to any logician who will tell me more precisely what mental operation it is. At all events that is what I mean by summing pleasures. If anybody means the same thing but objects to the word, I can only say that I see no objection to it except the fact that it has been used by Hedonists, and that some people consider it necessary to object to everything which has been said by Hedonists : but the question of the word is of comparatively small importance. And if in the view of some of my readers I have not succeeded in hitting the exact point of their objec- tion to the idea of a " sum of pleasures," I may be allowed to add that I have never yet met two persons who are exactly agreed as to the grounds of their anathema. One more of these objections may, however, demand moment's notice. To some the objection to the notion of a sum of pleasures seems based upon the alleged impossibility of adding one man's pleasure to another's. It appears to be denied that two people's pleasure is more than the like pleasure of one person. Of course it may be possible to find senses in which this might be the case. In the mind of those who make the objection, the summing of the pleasure of different persons seems to carry with it some suggestion that pleasure is a thing that can be actually separated from the consciousness of the person enjoying it, divided into lots,