it? It is in terms of the individual, and of the individual only, that
the value of life can at first be intelligibly stated. If the coin be
not itself genuine, we shall never be able to make it so by merely
shuffling it about from hand to hand, nor even by indefinitely
multiplying it. A million sham bank notes will not make us any richer
than a single one. Granting that the riches are really genuine, then the
knowledge of their diffusion may magnify for each of us our own pleasure
in possessing them. But it will only do this if the share that is
possessed by each be itself something very great to begin with. Certain
intense kinds of happiness may perhaps be raised to ecstasy by the
thought that another shares them. But if the feeling in question be
nothing more than cheerfulness, a man will not be made ecstatic by the
knowledge that any number of other people are cheerful as well as he.
When the happiness of two or more people rises to a certain temperature,
then it is true a certain fusion may take place, and there may perhaps
be a certain joint result, arising from the sum of the parts. But below
this melting point no fusion or union takes place at all, nor will any
number of lesser happinesses melt and be massed together into one great
one. Two great wits may increase each other's brilliancy, but two
half-wits will not make a single whole one. A bad picture will not
become good by being magnified, nor will a merely readable novel become
more than readable by the publication of a million copies of it. Suppose
it were a matter of life and death to ten men to walk to York from
London in a day. Were this feat a possible one, they might no doubt each
do their best to help the others to accomplish it. But if it were beyond
the power of each singly, they would not accomplish it as a body, by the
whole ten leaving Charing Cross together, and each of them walking one
tenth of the way. The distance they could all walk would be no greater
than the distance they could each walk. In the same way the value of
human life, as a whole, depends on the capacities of the individual