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HEDONISM AMONG IDEALISTS. 207 is primd facie readily disposed of, by help of the analogy of the exchange values of heterogeneous commodities. As regards the present question, whether pleasure gives a criterion that can be used, this is decisive so far as the mere fact of abstraction goes. But it does not show that a quanti- tative unit can, in fact, be applied to abstract pleasure, a point which will occupy us directly. I am accustomed to regard this objection from the ab- stractness of pleasure as holding more especially against its correctness as a criterion. With a view to that issue I will here merely note that the author's defence inevitably implies that all equal amounts of abstract pleasure, including equal algebraical sums of pleasure and pain, are ethically inter- changeable. This is subject of course to his final reservation on the limits of applicability of the criterion. (c) I will follow Mr. McTaggart in discussing at this point (sect. 114), the objection that pleasures vanish in the act of enjoyment so that a sum of them cannot really be possessed, though this, as he points out, is an objection against pleasures forming the supreme good rather than against the Hedonic criterion. The author's reply is in effect that while we live in time any good whatever can only manifest itself in a series of states of consciousness. If we say that the states in which perfection or the good will are manifested have the common- element of their characteristics running through them and uniting them, he answers that pleasant states have the com- mon element of pleasure. If we urge again that pleasure is an abstraction and so knits the successive states but slightly together, it is replied that every pure identity run- ning through a differentiated whole is to some extent an abstraction, by abstracting from the differentiation. Per- fection or the good will, therefore, if conceived as timeless elements of a consciousness existing in time, are just as much abstract as pleasure under the same conditions ; while if a timeless consciousness could come into being, a feeling, such as pleasure, would be as fit, or fitter, to enter into it, than a state of cognition or volition. Here I am strongly convinced that the anti-Hedonist does not get substantial justice from Mr. McTaggart. His analysis seems to let slip the peculiar nature of the ex- perience in question. To begin with, I am for once not satisfied that the logical point is rightly stated. An identity,, "which is sustained by the co-operation of differentiated parts, is surely on a different logical footing from an identity which lies in a general quality, common to two contents,