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How to measure Pain and Pleasure
Money the only current instrument of pleasure be a real or fictitious entity. Possessions that are
real entities are all of them to be formed among
the several substances bodies that surround us,: the value
whereof, that is their capability aptitude of producing
pleasure is measured by that one sort of thing which in
being the pledge and representative of almost all the others rest,is a means of requiring them at any time, I mean
money. Possessions that are fictitious entities, are
[either] power or [condition] [or] and reputation.
Money is also directly or indirectly a means of requiring even these.
Now then Of the these three possessions, Money, power and reputation
,
the two latter it is only in small quantities
from the nature of things it can that to a few persons and on particular
occasions that the two latter are at the disposal
of the Legislator. Suppose a fund of money first once collected
no matter by what means, and every individual in
the state may be made to profit by a distribution
of it money :See Hume's essays. contra What Mr Hume says he must be understood with this allowance. such men individuals may be
rich with respect to the individuals of another
state; but if they any of them be are rendered powerful
or honourable, by their own Government they must be powerful or
honourable in comparison of one another, and therefore with in respect to and at the expense of,
one another. Money therefore is the only current
possession, the only current instrument of pleasure.
When a Legislator then has occasion to apply
pleasure, the only way method he has of doing it, or
ordinarily speaking is by giving money. upon any occasion money cannot be given but it must be given in some certain quantity; which quantity becomes is made evident to the senses of any number of other at once, by weight and measure. Now
then money being the current instrument of pleasure, it
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How to measure Pain and Pleasure
is plain by experience that the quantity of actual pleasure follows
in every instance in some proportion or other
the quantity of [the instruments of pleasure money.In small turns, the quantity of pleasure is nearly at the quantity of money As to the Law of
that proportion nothing can be more indeterminate
.
It follows depends upon a great variety
of circumstances some of which however if not
all of them I shall endeavour to collect <add>[]in due time </add> will be collected See the next Chapter. This much however
is true in general, that the more money a man
has given him the more pleasure, There are
it is true some men to whom the same sum
would give more pleasure than to others: to the
same man likewise the same sum would give
more pleasure at one time than at another
and even with respect to the same man and
at the same time it is not true where the disproportion
is very large between two sums that the proportion between the two pleasures
would follow exactly the proportion between the
sums. One Guinea, suppose, gives a man onea certain quantity no matter what call it
degree of pleasure: it is not true by any
means that a million of guineas given
to the same man at the same time would give
him a million of such degrees of pleasure. Perhaps
not a thousand, perhaps not a hundred: who
knows? can say>? perhaps not fifty. In large sums The ratio of
pleasure to pleasure is in this way less than the ratio of money
to money. There is no limit beyond to which the quantity of money
can not go: but there are limits and those comparatively
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how to measure pain and pleasure |
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jeremy bentham |
[[watermarks::l v g propatria [britannia motif]]] |
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caroline vernon |
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