In some cases a complex state of affairs contains some good parts and some bad parts. We can assign positive numbers to the good parts and negative numbers to the bad parts in order to represent their respective amounts of intrinsic value. The intrinsic value of the whole state of affairs may just be the sum of the values of those parts. In such cases Chisholm would say that the positive value of the good parts is “balanced off” by the negative value of the bad parts.