Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/396

 382 H. RASHDALL : CAN THEKE BE A SUM OF PLEASURES ? church. Nay, more, supposing me to decide for church on these grounds, and supposing this voluntarily adopted mood to continue, I should be very likely to miss the pleasure, for the pleasure in this case consists largely in the gratification of other desires than the desire for pleasure or for such sources of pleasure as are common to the preacher and the novelist. These desires will ex hypothesi be in a state of repression, whereas I shall have stimulated my appetite for those pleasures which the novel would supply in greater abundance than the sermon. Considerations like these may show the inadvisability of frequently permitting ourselves to make these purely hedonistic comparisons between very heterogeneous sources of enjoyment, but they do not disprove the fact that the comparison can be, and in some cases must be, made. The higher pleasure is, I have suggested, a pleasure to which we attribute value on other grounds than its mere pleasantness. The problem of the commensurability of pleasures has led us up to the more difficult and, ethically speaking, more important problem of the commensurability of goods. I have tried to show that it is possible to compare pleasures no matter how heterogeneous and to say which is pleasantest. But is it possible to compare heterogeneous goods say, Virtue, Culture and Pleasure and say which is best. It is possible, though it is not always right, to aim at a greatest attainable quantum of pleasure : is it possible to aim at the production of a greatest quantum of good ? That such is a possible aim certainly seems to be implied by those who make the greatest good of society the criterion of con- duct (and there are few Moralists of any school who have not used some such language), and yet refuse to interpret "good" in the hedonistic sense. Upon this larger problem I hope to offer some remarks in a future article ; and till then, I must adjourn the question " What is the true place of the hedonistic calculus in a rational system of Ethics ? "