NOTE.--It is sometimes thought to be a necessary assumption of Hedonists that a surplus of pleasure over pain is actually attainable by human beings: a proposition which an extreme pessimist would deny. But the conclusion that life is always on the whole painful would not prove it to be unreasonable for a man to aim ultimately at minimising pain, if this is still admitted to be possible; though it would, no doubt, render immediate suicide, by some painless process, the only reasonable course for a perfect egoist--unless he looked forward to another life. FOOTNOTES: [99] We find it sometimes asserted by persons of enthusiastic and passionate temperament, that there are feelings so exquisitely delightful, that one moment of their rapture is preferable to an eternity of agreeable consciousness of an inferior kind. These assertions, however, are perhaps consciously hyperbolical, and not intended to be taken as scientific statements: but in the case of pain, it has been deliberately maintained by a thoughtful and subtle writer, with a view to important practical conclusions, that “torture” so extreme as to be “incommensurable with moderate pain” is an actual fact of experience. (See “A Chapter in the Ethics of Pain,” by the late Edmund Gurney, in a volume of essays entitled _Tertium Quid_.) This doctrine, however, does not correspond to my own experience; nor does it appear to me to be supported by the common sense of mankind:--at least I do not find, in the practical forethought of persons noted for caution, any recognition of the danger of agony such that, in order to avoid the smallest extra risk of it, the greatest conceivable amount of moderate pain should reasonably be incurred. [100] Bentham gives four qualities of any pleasure or pain (taken singly) as important for purposes of Hedonistic calculation: (1) Intensity, (2) Duration, (3) Certainty, (4) Proximity. If we assume (as above argued) that Intensity must be commensurable with Duration, the influence of the other qualities on the comparative value of pleasures and pains is not difficult to determine: for we are accustomed to estimate the value of chances numerically, and by this method we can tell exactly (in so far as the degree of uncertainty can be exactly determined) how much the doubtfulness of a pleasure detracts from its value: and _proximity_ is a property which it is reasonable to disregard except in so far as it diminishes uncertainty. For my feelings a year hence should be just as important to me as my feelings next minute, if only I could make an equally sure forecast of them. Indeed this equal and impartial concern for all parts of one’s conscious life is perhaps the most prominent element in the common notion of the _rational_--as opposed to the merely _impulsive_--pursuit of pleasure. [101] Cf. Cic. _de Fin._ Book i. chap. xi. § 38. [102] _Principles of Psychology_, Part ii. chap. ix. § 125. [103] _The Emotions and the Will_, 3rd Edition, p. 392.