It is evident, and admitted, that there can be no balance, and no commensurability, between the laborer's disutility (pain) in producing the goods and the consumer's utility (pleasure) in consuming them, inasmuch as these two hedonistic phenomena lie each within the consciousness of a distinct person. There is, in fact, _no continuity of nervous tissue_ [italics mine] over the interval between consumer and producer, and a direct comparison, equilibrium, equality, or discrepancy in respect of pleasure and pain can, of course, not be sought except within each self-balanced individual complex of nervous tissue.
In the recent elaborate study, _Value and Distribution_, by Professor H. J. Davenport, the theories based on the conception of the individual as an isolated monad, a self-complete whole, with purely mechanical relationships with other men, find their fullest and most self-conscious expression, and the philosophical presuppositions are explicitly premised. The following quotation from Thackeray's _Pendennis_ is given as a footnote,[93] in which Professor Davenport's own conception is expressed:--
Ah, sir, a distinct universe walks about under your hat and under mine--all things in nature are different to each--the woman we look at has not the same features, the dish we eat has not the same taste, to the one and to the other; you and I are but a pair of infinite isolations, with some fellow islands a little more or less near us.
This is, of course, manifestly the theme of the old subjectivistic analysis, by which all things are reduced to thoughts, sensations, and desires within the individual soul, and in accordance with which we have none save conjectural knowledge of anything outside of our own souls. Now a general answer might be given that this is an epistemological principle which holds true only for what Kant calls the "_Ding an sich_,"--if such a thing there be--and that there is no more reason why it should apply to human emotions, considered purely as phenomena, than to any other of the phenomena with which science busies itself. If this principle be adhered to, its effect will be simply to cast doubt on the conclusions of all sciences, physical as well as psychical. Certainly psychology would be impossible on this assumption, except in so far as the psychologist claims only to be working out a science of his individual soul, which, so far as he knows, is not true of any other individual. But it is precisely _not_ this that psychology attempts. It is concerned with the laws and behavior of minds in general, with the "_typisch und allgemeingültig_" and not with the mental idiosyncrasies of the particular individual.