the intensity of a psychological state is not a magnitude, nor can it be
measured. The "Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness" begins with
the proof of this leading statement. If it is a question of a simple
state, such as a sensation of light or weight, the intensity is measured by
a certain quality of shade which indicates to us approximately, by an
association of ideas and thanks to our acquired experience, the magnitude
of the objective cause from which it proceeds. If, on the contrary, it is
a question of a complex state, such as those impressions of profound joy or
sorrow which lay hold of us entirely, invading and overwhelming us, what we
call their intensity expresses only the confused feeling of a qualitative
progress, and increasing wealth. "Take, for example, an obscure desire,
which has gradually become a profound passion. You will see that the
feeble intensity of this desire consisted first of all in the fact that it
seemed to you isolated and in a way foreign to all the rest of your inner
life. But little by little it penetrated a larger number of psychic
elements, dyeing them, so to speak, its own colour; and now you find your
point of view on things as a whole appears to you to have changed. Is it
not true that you become aware of a profound passion, once it has taken
root, by the fact that the same objects no longer produce the same
impression upon you? All your sensations, all your ideas, appear to you
refreshed by it; it is like a new childhood." (Loc. cit., page 6.)

There is here none of the homogeneity which is the property of magnitude,
and the necessary condition of measurement, giving a view of the less in
the bosom of the more. The element of number has vanished, and with it
numerical multiplicity extended in space. Our inner states form a
qualitative continuity; they are prolonged and blended into one another;
they are grouped in harmonies, each note of which contains an echo of the
whole; they are encircled by an innumerable degradation of halos, which
gradually colour the total content of consciousness; they live each in the