Editorial note — Page 411 CHAPTER XV

[Footnote 3: The hedonic calculus of Bentham was, briefly, the following: "Every proposed act is to be viewed with reference to its probable consequences, in (1) intensity of pleasures and pains, (2) their duration, (3) their certainty or uncertainty, (4) their nearness or remoteness, (5) their fecundity, i.e., the tendency of a pleasure to be followed by others, or a pain by other pains; (6) their purity, i.e., the tendency of a pleasure to be followed by pains and vice versa; (7) their extent, that is, the number or range of persons whose happiness is affected—with reference to whose pleasures and pains each one of the first six items ought in strictness also to be calculated. Then sum up all the pleasures which stand to the credit side of the account; add the pains which are the debit items, or liabilities, on the other; then take their algebraic sum, and the balance of it on the side of pleasure will be the good tendency of the act upon the whole." (Dewey and Tufts: Ethics, pp. 275-76.)