Scientific Romances (First Series)Hinton, Charles Howard
Philosophy
Scientific Romances (First Series)
Hinton, Charles Howard
Fourth dimension
When he first began to organize the life of the beings he did not
consciously keep back any of his pain-bearing power, but threw it all in
the activities which he started. Still from time to time he wished to
start new activities quite unconnected with the old, and for this reason
he withdrew some of his pain-bearing power, as will be shown afterwards.
There were many beings. The king chose that the type of activity in each
should be a routine. In that way he could calculate on the activity, and
hold it in his mind as a settled process on whose operation he could
count. But as the routines of the beings proceeded they came into
contact with one another, and made, even by their simple co-existence,
something different from what a routine by itself was. They interwove in
various ways. Then, in order to take advantage of the combinations of
these routines, or to modify them, it was necessary to set going other
routines.
In order to be able to originate these connected routines the king
adopted the following plan.
In the first action AB he separated the creatures’ apathy into 1000
pleasure and 1000 pain, bearing 2 of the pain himself. The creature thus
went through 1000 of pleasure and 998 of pain. In the next action AB he
did not separate the beings’ apathy up into so much pleasure and pain.
He separated it up into 980 pleasure and 980 pain, that is, each moment
of feeling was 20 less in sensation than the moments of feeling were in
the first action.
Now it is obvious that if the bearing 2 of pain will make it worth while
for a being to go through 1000 pleasure and 998 pain, then the bearing
on the king’s part of 1 of pain would make it worth while for the being
to go through 500 pleasure and 499 of pain.
And a similar relation would hold for different amounts of pleasure and
pain. Thus clearly for the being to go through 980 of pleasure and the
corresponding amount of pain, it would not be necessary for the king to
bear so much as when the being went through 1000 of pleasure and the
corresponding amount of pain.
Consequently when the king divided the beings’ apathy into 980 pleasure
and 980 pain, it would not be necessary for him to bear 2 of pain to
make it worth the beings’ while to go through the action. The king would
not bear so much as 2 of pain, and thus he would have some of his
pain-bearing power set free. He would have exactly as much as would
enable him to make it worth a being’s while to go through an action with
the moments of 20 of pleasure and 20 of pain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account