It is, therefore, only the consciousness of intense pain, which can be maintained to be a great evil. But that this, _by itself_, may be a great evil, I cannot avoid thinking. The case of pain thus seems to differ from that of pleasure: for the mere consciousness of pleasure, however intense, does not, _by itself_, appear to be a _great_ good, even if it has some slight intrinsic value. In short, pain (if we understand by this expression, the consciousness of pain) appears to be a far worse evil than pleasure is a good. But, if this be so, then _pain_ must be admitted to be an exception from the rule which seems to hold both of all _other_ great evils and of _all_ great goods: namely that they are all organic unities to which _both_ a cognition of an object _and_ an emotion directed towards that object are essential. In the case of pain and of pain alone, it seems to be true that a mere cognition, by itself, may be a great evil. It is, indeed, _an_ organic unity, since it involves both the cognition and the object, neither of which, by themselves, has either merit or demerit. But it is a less complex organic unity than any other great evil and than any great good, _both_ in respect of the fact that it does not involve, _beside_ the cognition, an emotion directed towards its object, _and also_ in respect of the fact that the _object_ may here be absolutely simple, whereas in most, if not all, other cases, the object itself is highly complex. This want of analogy between the relation of pain to intrinsic evil and of pleasure to intrinsic good, seems also to be exhibited in a second respect. Not only is it the case that consciousness of intense pain is, by itself, a great evil, whereas consciousness of intense pleasure is, by itself, no great good; but also the _converse_ difference appears to hold of the contribution which they make to the value of the whole, when they are combined respectively with another great evil or with a great good. That is to say, the presence of pleasure (though not in proportion to its intensity) does appear to enhance the value of a whole, in which it is combined with any of the great unmixed goods which we have considered: it might even be maintained that it is _only_ wholes, in which _some_ pleasure is included, that possess any great value: it is certain, at all events, that the presence of pleasure makes a contribution to the value of good wholes greatly in excess of its own intrinsic value. On the contrary, if a feeling of pain be combined with any of the evil states of mind which we have been considering, the difference which its presence makes to the value of the whole, _as a whole_, seems to be rather for the better than the worse: in any case, the only additional evil which it introduces, is that which it, by itself, intrinsically constitutes. Thus, whereas pain is _in itself_ a great evil, but makes no addition to the badness of a whole, in which it is combined with some other bad thing, except that