VALUATIONS OF PLEASURE AND PAIN 115 



pleasure has a distinct strength of its own, and that dis 

 tinctions of strength depend in all cases on degrees of 

 nervous susceptibility. Thus, a definite increase of sus 

 ceptibility (disturbing causes being left out of account) 

 will add a definite corresponding increase of pleasure to 

 all satisfactions, from the highest to the lowest, and the 

 total amount of each kind of pleasure will be constituted 

 by the pleasure, if any, attached to the same satisfactions 

 in the lower organism, plus the definite increase brought 

 about by the increase of susceptibility. It would follow 

 that, in the case of new satisfactions, which were unknown 

 to the lower organisms, and therefore could not for them 

 have been attended by pleasure, the whole of the attendant 

 pleasure for the higher organism will be the amount due 

 to the increased susceptibility. Direct evidence that some 

 thing of this kind does occur may be gathered from an obser 

 vation of the same impulses and their algedonic accompani 

 ments at different stages of evolution. The loves of the 

 savage are powerful but not romantic. The worship of 

 the beloved object, and the exaltation of spirit which finds 

 its expression in poetry and other forms of art, are later 

 accretions to the primitive feeling, and they are more 

 highly prized than that part of the total feeling which has 

 been inherited from more lowly ancestors. If there is any 

 distinction of quality, it is, surely, as manifest here as in 

 the satisfactions of the highest impulses. But, if the 

 distinction of quality (and it is possible, though unproved, 

 that there may be one) runs throughout the whole scale of 

 his feelings, and is common to the highest and the lowest 

 impulses alike, it cannot be regarded as an ally to one if 

 it conflicts with the other. 



The assertion that men only prefer lower pleasures 

 because they are unacquainted with the higher begs the 

 question. All that direct experience teaches us is that 

 men will often, perhaps usually, choose the lower line of 

 conduct in preference to the higher : that this is because 

 they have formed an erroneous estimate of the pleasure 

 coefficient is an inference from the premise that pleasure is 



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