Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/381

CAN THERE BE A SUM OF PLEASURES? 367 the expectation that, though other pains are to be avoided, it might turn out that this pain was rather desirable than otherwise. If we know that the psychical state produced by such and such a bodily affection is painful, that is quite enough for us. Unless they suppose the pain to be a means to something other than itself or an inseparable element in some other good, all rational men avoid it : and it will hardly be denied that they avoid the severer pains more than the less severe. All pains are to them an object of aversion, and objects of aversion in proportion to their painfulness. That is what is meant by saying that pain as such is an object of aversion. I do not know that any one who admits that pain is an object of aversion but still denies that pleasure is a possible object of desire can be convicted of any actual logical inconsistency : but the position is, to say the least of it, a singular one. (6) But as I have already indicated, there are writers whose denial that pleasures can be summed or that a sum of pleasures can be desired does not carry with it the assertion either that pleasures are not possible objects of desire or even that pleasure in general may not become the object of pursuit. Their objection to a summation of pleasures rests upon other grounds ; and seems for the most part (so far as I can gather) to be based upon the very simple fact that we cannot enjoy a sum of pleasures all at once that a sum of pleasures is not capable of existing altogether at a given moment of time. Perhaps the best way of dealing with this objection will be to point out that the contention is as fatal to the existence of a desire for pleasure or even for one single definite pleasure as to the desire for a sum of pleasures. The briefest pleasure occupies a sensible time : and there is no time that cannot conceivably be subdivided into two halves. If, therefore, I cannot desire anything which I cannot have all at once, I could not desire either pleasant consciousness in general or any particular state of consciousness which is pleasant. The argument in fact goes further than this : it would prove not merely that pleasure cannot be desired, but that there can be no such thing ,as pleasure, since an indivisible point of pleasure could not be felt at all and therefore would not be pleasure. If so, of course, cadit quastio. But I must ask to be excused from attempting the task of proving to the sceptic that the word pleasure signifies something which has real existence. 1 1 The reader may possibly demand at this point a definition, but to discuss definitions of pleasure would require a separate article. Most of the attempts at definitions fail so grotesquely that I feel little inclination to add to the number.