Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/226

212 BERNAKD BOSANQUET : scopes, will suit me best. Of course in preferring one to the other I make a comparison which, qua comparison, has a quantitative side. But to try to reduce it to the bare form of quantity by, say, giving marks to the competing objects for their different qualities, would be darkening counsel. I have the requirements and the performances directly before me, and can estimate in the concrete how far the one is adequate to the other. To substitute an arithmetical process for this comparison would be a loss by abstraction, even if it were possible. The true typical case, under which all these choices should be ranged, is, I suggest, the comparison of theories with reference to their truth, that is, with reference to their comparative adequacy in view of a given scientific situation. With reference, then, to complex totals of pleasantness, I am not maintaining that introspection wholly denies the possibility of comparing them. I am rather arguing that it gives the limit of the process, in the consciousness of a number of elements, which we do enumerate and more or less attempt to weigh against each other. And I urge that in the attempt to push this process further it inevitably passes into another, of which the ultimate type is found in weighing theories with reference to their adequacy. And Introspection seems to convince me of a further point, which may be due to my prejudices, but primd facie is a datum deserving to be considered. I am pretty sure that the ordinary mind does not like these attempts at complex comparison of sheer agreeables and disagreeables. We enter upon them only when con- siderations of interest and efficiency fail us. We find them most troublesome and unsatisfactory, opinions, even within one's own mind, varying about them in a remarkable way. It may seem to contradict this statement when I agree that such a choice as that between the two dinners (though I cannot remember and here others agree with me ever to have made a choice that fulfils the supposed conditions) might be readily made. I believe the reason of this to be, however, that one would be guided by the first liking, or more probably, disliking, that came to hand. We should be uneasy to find ourselves reflecting in cold blood on such a subject, and we have, rightly as I think, been trained to make choice in matters of that kind without displaying deliberation. I think therefore that even this experience really supports the opinion that the whole business of calcu- lation, as applied to pleasantness, seems to us a pis aller> an undesirable preoccupation of the mind, which we only submit to when we can think of nothing better.