Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/230

216 BERNABD BOSANQUET : dealt with in Weber's law, it would seem as if great difficulty might be met with here. Though pleasure may be homo- geneous, its stimuli are heterogeneous ; and any attempt at measurement would here lack the support which the precise variation of the stimulus affords to experiment with the specific sensations. The economic analogue of Weber's law seems subject to extensive reservations. (/) There is a further point, affecting the workableness, of pleasure-pain reckoning, to which my previous remarks on the tendency to convert it into another method may have served as a preface. I may call it the relativity of pleasure. If Hedonic calculation is to be true calculation it must start from definite magnitudes, which must be traceable, through purely quantitative processes, down to the results obtained. If, in the deliberation which is to be represented as calculation, an object becomes more attractive, it must have been shown to carry with it a new pleasure which has had to be added to its original pleasurableness. If it becomes less attractive, it must have been proved to carry with it a pain which has had to be subtracted from its original pleasurable- ness. Its original pleasurableness, in short, is a magnitude which can only be modified by addition or subtraction. Even if outweighed by greater pleasure incompatible with it, the original pleasurableness should still remain as a weight in the lighter scale. ' The magnitudes should be constant for the whole stretch of life to which a single deliberation applies ; or at the very least throughout a single deliberation. But in fact, as it seems to me, the magnitudes of pleasures and pains are reacted upon by the combinations conceived in deliberation, or met with in life, in a way wholly incompatible with that just described. A pleasure which seems strong at first, simply fades away in the light thrown upon it by a certain combination of objects of action. It need not be cancelled by associated pains, nor overbalanced in the scales by greater imcompatible pleasures. For that ought to mean that it continues per se to be as pleasant as before, but is shown, owing to circumstances, to bring with it a pain not before observed to attach to it, or to be outweighed by in- compatible pleasures not previously noticed to be possible at all, or to be incompatible with it. Its original magnitude should subsist, like that of a pound weight in the scales, what- ever you add to its side or the other. Or even if you say that you subtract from it by cancelling part or the whole of its magnitude, by reason of combination with a negative quantity, as you may withdraw a pint of water from a quart, still its