33. There are some who, in opposition to the clear teaching of experience, assert that only pleasure is good for its own sake, and pleasure is _the_ good. Assuming this view to be right, would it have the advantage, as many have believed, and as Bentham in particular maintained in its favour,[40] that we should at once attain to a determination of the relative value of goods, seeing that now we should have only homogeneous goods and these admit of being measured side by side? Every more intense pleasure would then be a greater good than one less intense, and a good having double the intensity would be equal to two of half the intensity. In this way everything would become clear. A moment’s reflection only is needed to shatter an illusion born of such hope. Are we really able to find out that one pleasure is twice as great as another? Gauss[41] himself, who knew something about measurements, has denied this. A more intense pleasure is never really made up of twelve less intense pleasures distinguishable as equal parts within it, as a foot is made up of twelve inches. So the matter presents itself even in simpler cases. But how foolish would any one appear were he to assert that the pleasure he had in smoking a good cigar increased 127, or, let us say, 1077 times in intensity yielded a measure of the pleasure experienced by him in listening to a symphony of Beethoven or contemplating one of Raphael’s madonnas![42] I think I have said enough, and do not need to allude to the further difficulty involved in comparing the intensity of pleasure with that of pain. 34. Only therefore to this very limited extent are we able to derive from experience a knowledge of what is better in itself. I can well understand how any one, reflecting upon this for the first time, will be led to fear that the great gaps which remain must, in practice, prove in the highest degree embarrassing. Yet as we proceed and make a vigorous use of what we do possess, we shall find that the most sensible deficiencies may fortunately turn out harmless in practice.