PLEASUEES AND PAINS. 107 



doctrine is pursued in detail, the more unquestionable does 

 its truth become. Thus there is to be perceived, not merely 

 a general qualitative, but also a roughly quantitative relation 

 between the amount of pain and the degree of hurtfulness, as 

 well as between the amount of pleasure and tlie degree of 

 tvJwlcsomeness* As Mr. Allen observes, " nothing can more 

 thoroughly militate against the etticiency of the mechanism 

 than the loss of one of its component parts : and we find 

 accordingly that to deprive the body of any one of its mem- 

 bers is painful in a degree roughly proportionate to the 

 general value of such member to the organism as a whole. 

 Take, for example, the relative j)ainfulness of severing from 

 the body a leg, an arm, an eye, a finger-nail, a hair, or a piece 

 of skin." Similarly with Pleasures, the least pleasurable are 

 th'ose attending activities of the organism which are least 

 important for its welfare (or for that of its species), while 

 the most pleasurable are those which attend the satisfaction 

 of hunger, thirst, and sexual desire — especially if, in terms of 

 Mr. Allen's formula, the needs to which these cravings 

 minister have been long unsatisfied, so that the organism is 

 either in danger of enfeeblement and death, or in the most 

 fit condition for propagating its kind. Pleasures of the intel- 

 lectual kind, although subservient to the same general laws 

 of nutrition and exhaustion, have reference to such complex 

 nervous states, involving mental prevision of future contin- 

 gencies, &c., that for the purposes of clear analysis they had 

 best be here disregarded. 



The superficial or apparent objection to the doctrine we 

 are considering which arises from the fact that feelings of 

 Pleasure and Pain are not infallible indices of what is respec- 

 tively beneficial or injurious to the organism, is easily met by 

 the consideration that in all such exceptional cases it is not 

 the doctrine but its application which is at fault. Thus, 

 again to quote Mr. Allen, who in my opinion has given in 

 brief compass the best analysis of the philosophy of Pleasure 

 and Pain that has hitherto appeared, " every act, so long as 

 it is pleasurable, is in so far a healthy and useful one ; and 

 conversely, so long as it is painful, a morbid and destructive 

 one. The fallacy lies in the proleptic employment of the 

 words ' deleterious ' and ' useful.' To j^ut it in a simple form, 



* I use these antithetical words because their etymology alone suggests 

 forcibly the doctrine in question. 



