198 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



to us, and not the time as measured by the clock. When 

 a man has been released from the rack after torments of 

 seemingly endless duration, it is no consolation to tell him 

 that they had not lasted quite ten minutes. It does not 

 affect my enjoyment of a fine speech to learn that it was 

 three times as long as I had thought it. Time measure 

 ments are as useless for the purposes of hedonic calculus 

 as measurements of intensity would be were those obtain 

 able. 



There is one more point which remains to be cleared up. 

 Professor Mackenzie urges that a sum of pleasures is no more 

 a pleasure than a sum of men is a man . For pleasures, 

 like men, cannot be added to one another. In one sense 

 this is true. The combination of two pleasures which occur 

 simultaneously in the same state of consciousness cannot 

 even be compared, in the same sense as the aggregate of 

 two unmeasured quantities may be compared, with either 

 of the factors separately. The result is a state of feeling 

 which is entirely different from the feeling produced by 

 either when it occurs separately. It may be more or less 

 pleasurable than either, or not pleasurable at all. Good 

 music or a good speech will produce intense pleasure, but, 

 when the two occur at the same time, the feeling, instead 

 of being pleasurable, is one of extreme discomfort. The 

 intensity of a combination of pleasures has no fixed ratio 

 to the intensity of either apart from the other. When, 

 however, the two pleasures occur separately at different 

 times, there is nothing to prevent our comparing the aggre 

 gate of the two with either separately. It is quite true 

 that three men do not make a giant, but when they are 

 acting in concert they are more likely to impose their 

 will on others than each man by himself. An army is 

 more powerful than a single individual. In the same way 

 the prospect of a multitude of pleasures, though each be 

 of low intensity, may have a stronger influence on conduct 

 than that of a few of a much higher grade of persuasiveness. 

 A man may reasonably prefer the music of a moderately 

 good amateur all the year round to a single first-class 



