Cases of difference in degree belong also to this third class, and are especially worthy of mention. If one good, e.g. one joy is in every respect quite equal to another, only more intense, then the preference which is given to the more intense is qualified as right, the more intense is the better. Conversely, the bad which is more intense, e.g. a more intense pain, is worse. That is to say: the degree of intensity corresponds with the distance from the zero point, and the distance of the greater degree of intensity from zero is compounded of its distance from the weaker degree of intensity plus the distance of this from zero. We have, therefore, really to do with a kind of addition, a view which has been disputed. 32. Many a one will, perhaps, think to himself that the three cases which I have set forth are so self-evident and insignificant that it is a matter for surprise that I have lingered over them at all. Self-evident they are of course, and this must be so, since we have here to do with what has to serve as a fundamentum. The case would be worse if they were insignificant; for, I confess it frankly, I have scarcely another further case to add: in all, or, at any rate, most of the cases not here included a criterion fails us completely.[38] An example. All insight is, we have said, something good in itself, and all noble love is likewise something good in itself. We recognize both these things clearly. But who shall say whether this act of insight or that act of love is in itself, the better? There have, of course, not been wanting those who have given a verdict on this point; some have even asserted that it is certain every act of noble love for its own sake is a good so high that, taken by itself, it is better than all scientific insight taken together. In my judgment this view is not only doubtful but altogether absurd. For a single act of noble love worthy as it is, is yet a certain finite good. But every act of insight is also a finite good and if I keep adding this finite quantity to itself _ad libitum_, its sum is bound some time to exceed every given finite measure of good. On the other hand, Plato and Aristotle were inclined to regard the act of knowing considered in itself as higher than ethically virtuous acts, this also quite unjustly, and I only mention it since the opposition of opinions here is a confirmatory proof of the absence of any criterion. As often happens in the sphere of the psychical,[39] so also here, real measurements are impossible. Now where the inner preference is not to be detected there holds good here what was said in a similar case of simple goodness--as far as our knowledge and practical concern go it is as good as non-existent.