MEASUREMENTS 193 



state of our knowledge, the intensities of pleasures are not 

 measurable either directly or indirectly. 



Even if the advance of science were to provide us with 

 the means of recording a physiological rhythm which would 

 serve as a standard for the indirect measurement of inten 

 sities of pleasure, it is not probable that, from the point 

 of view of the moralist, we should be much better off than 

 we are without one. What we require is a measure of the 

 value at which we estimate pleasures, and it is easy to see 

 that their value does not always, or even usually, depend on 

 their intensity. If their intensity, as seems probable, varies 

 with the degree of the nervous excitement that goes with them, 

 and we assume that this would serve as the standard of 

 measurement, the animal pleasures of sense would register a 

 higher figure than those which are more distinctively human, 

 and the pleasures of sense generally a higher figure than 

 the pleasures of the intellect. We should obtain a measured 

 scale of intensities which would directly contradict our 

 comparative scale of values. The scale of values is regu 

 lated by some principle which is quite independent of 

 intensity of feeling, and until we know what that is it 

 would be useless to discuss the question whether it admits 

 of measurement. Of intensities, all that can be said is 

 that, if they are an element in value, and so much seems 

 probable, it is one of subordinate importance. It has been 

 asserted by high authority that all differences between 

 pleasures are quantitative only, and that there are no dis 

 tinctions of kind. This opinion is strongly opposed to our 

 common sense, and even if it be true, it postulates a concept 

 of pleasure which is purely abstract, and only ideally 

 separable from other incidents, which are its invariable 

 concomitants, and which are the real determinants of our 

 preferences. This, it need hardly be said, amounts to a com 

 plete abandonment of the hedonistic position. 



Another, and perhaps even more fatal objection, is this : 

 there is no common scale of pleasures which holds good, 

 even for purposes of comparison, for all human beings. 

 The nature of each man s pleasures depends on the nature 



BENETT Ef 



