MEASUREMENTS 195 



of value ; and secondly, that unless we knew (which would 

 be impossible) the character of each individual to be affected 

 by our conduct, the calculation would still be inexact. 

 The second difficulty would be a fatal obstacle to the con 

 struction of any general scale of pleasures valid for humanity 

 generally. A numerical valuation, for example, of the 

 pleasure derived from bullfights, which was based on an 

 average of the figures for Spain and the United States, 

 would be glaringly inapplicable to both countries. Each 

 people would still continue to guide their conduct by their 

 subjective estimates of value, and if, rejecting these, they 

 preferred the results of the mathematical calculation, they 

 would be wrong ; that is to say, they would both fail to 

 attain the greatest possible amount of pleasure. The 

 calculation would, no doubt, advance a claim to scientific 

 authority, and, if this were admitted, to the detriment of 

 common sense, the tendency would be to reduce the esti 

 mates of both nations to a common level. If, for the purposes 

 of the argument, bullfighting be regarded as one of the 

 less elevated forms of enjoyment, the level of pleasure 

 would be raised in Spain and lowered in the United 

 States. 



The proposition that pleasures may be summed by 

 duration, that is, by temporal measurement, is less obviously 

 open to question. We attribute duration to pleasurable 

 states, and when we correct our estimate by measuring 

 the time between the commencement and the end, the opera 

 tion is as distinctly one of measurement as when we measure 

 the depth of a colour or the temperature of our bath. No 

 reference to objective circumstances is necessary, though 

 it may be convenient. It does not affect the essential 

 nature of the operation if, instead of taking the beginning 

 and the end of the pleasurable state in itself, we substitute 

 the time for which we have occupied our chair, or the time 

 between the first note and the last of the symphony we 

 have been listening to. Those may be useful adjuncts, 

 but they are no more indispensable than the starter s 

 pistol is to the time measurement of a footrace. In fact, 



N 2 



