Obviously the orthodox Whigs were not prepared to swear allegiance to Bentham. He was drawing into closer connection with the Radicals. In 1809 Cobbett was denouncing the duke of York in consequence of the Mrs. Clarke scandal. Bentham wrote to him, but anonymously and cautiously, to obtain documents in regard to a previous libel case,[305] and proceeded to write a pamphlet on the Elements of the Art of Packing (as applied to Special Juries), so sharp that his faithful adviser, Romilly, procured its suppression for the time.[306] Copies, however, were printed and privately given to a few who could be trusted. Bentham next wrote (1809) a 'Catechism of Parliamentary Reform,' which he communicated to Cobbett (16th November 1810), with a request for its publication in the Register.[307] Cobbett was at this time in prison for his attack upon flogging militia men; and, though still more hostile to government, was bound to be more cautious in his line of assault. The plan was not published, whether because too daring or too dull; but it was apparently printed. Bentham's opinion of Cobbett was anything but flattering. Cobbett, he thought in 1812, was a 'vile rascal,' and was afterwards pronounced to be 'filled with the odium humani generis—his malevolence and lying beyond everything.'[308] Cobbett's radicalism, in fact, was of the type most hostile to the Utilitarians. John Hunt, in the Examiner, was 'trumpeting' Bentham and Romilly in 1812, and was praised accordingly.[309] Bentham formed an alliance with another leading Radical. He had made acquaintance by 1811 with Sir F. Burdett, to whom he then appealed for help in an attack upon the delays of Chancery.[310] Burdett, indeed, appeared to him to be far inferior to Romilly and Brougham, but he thought that so powerful a 'hero of the mob' ought to be turned to account in the good cause.[311] Burdett seems to have courted the old philosopher; and a few years later a closer alliance was brought about. The peace of 1815 was succeeded by a period of distress, the more acutely felt from the disappointment of natural hopes of prosperity; and a period of agitation, met by harsh repression, followed. Applications were made, to Bentham for permission to use his 'Catechism,' which was ultimately published (1818) in a cheap form by Wooler, well known as the editor of the democratic Black Dwarf.[312] Burdett applied for a plan of parliamentary reform. Henry Bickersteth (1783-1851), afterwards Lord Langdale and Master of the Rolls, at this time a rising barrister of high character, wrote an appeal to Bentham and Burdett to combine in setting forth a scheme which, with such authority, must command general acceptance. The result was a series of resolutions moved by Burdett in the House of Commons on 2nd June 1818,[313] demanding universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and vote by ballot. Bentham had thus accepted the conclusions reached in a different way by the believers in that 'hodge-podge' of absurdities, the declaration of the rights of man. Curiously enough, his assault upon that document appeared in Dumont's French version in the year 1816, at the very time when he was accepting its practical conclusions.

The schemes in which Mill was interested at this time drew Bentham's attention in other directions. In 1813 the Quaker, William Allen, who had been a close ally of Mill, induced Bentham to invest money in the New Lanark establishment. Owen, whose benevolent schemes had been hampered by his partners, bought them out, the new capital being partly provided by Allen, Bentham, and others. Bentham afterwards spoke contemptuously of Owen, who, as he said, 'began in vapour and ended in smoke,'[314] and whose disciples came in after years into sharp conflict with the Utilitarians. Bentham, however, took pleasure, it seems, in Owen's benevolent schemes for infant education, and made money by his investment, for once combining business with philanthropy successfully.[315] Probably he regarded New Lanark as a kind of Panopticon. Owen had not as yet become a prophet of Socialism.

Another set of controversies in which Mill and his friends took an active part, started Bentham in a whole series of speculations. A plan (which I shall have to mention in connection with Mill), was devised in 1815 for a 'Chrestomathic school,' which was to give a sound education of proper Utilitarian tendencies to the upper and middle classes. Brougham, Mackintosh, Ricardo, William Allen, and Place were all interested in this undertaking.[316] Bentham offered a site at Queen's Square Place, and though the scheme never came to the birth, it set him actively at work. He wrote a series of papers during his first year at Ford Abbey[317] upon the theory of education, published in 1816 as Chrestomathia; and to this was apparently due a further excursion beyond the limits of jurisprudence. Educational controversy in that ignorant day was complicated by religious animosity; the National Society and the 'British and Foreign' Society were fighting under the banners of Bell and Lancaster, and the war roused excessive bitterness. Bentham finding the church in his way, had little difficulty in discovering that the whole ecclesiastical system was part of the general complex of abuse against which he was warring. He fell foul of the Catechism; he exposed the abuses of non-residence and episcopal wealth; he discovered that the Thirty-nine Articles contained gross fallacies; he went on to make an onslaught upon the Apostle St Paul, whose evidence as to his conversion was exposed to a severe cross-examination; and, finally, he wrote, or supplied the materials for, a remarkable Analysis of Natural Religion, which was ultimately published by Grote under the pseudonym 'Philip Beauchamp,' in 1822. This procedure from the particular case of the Catechism in schools up to the general problem of the utility of religion in general, is curiously characteristic of Bentham.

Bentham's mind was attracted to various other schemes by the disciples who came to sit at his feet, and professed, with more or less sincerity, to regard him as a Solon. Foreigners had been resorting to him from all parts of the world, and gave him hopes of new fields for codifying. As early as 1808 he had been visited at Barrow Green by the strange adventurer, politician, lawyer, and filibuster, Aaron Burr, famous for the duel in which he killed Alexander Hamilton, and now framing wild schemes for an empire in Mexico. Unscrupulous, restlessly active and cynical, he was a singular contrast to the placid philosopher, upon whom his confidences seem to have made an impression of not unpleasing horror. Burr's conversation suggested to Bentham a singular scheme for emigrating to Mexico. He applied seriously for introductions to Lord Holland, who had passed some time in Spain, and to Holland's friend, Jovellanos (1749-1812), a member of the Spanish Junta, who had written treatises upon legislation (1785), of which Bentham approved.[318] The dream of Mexico was succeeded by a dream of Venezuela. General Miranda spent some years in England, and had become well known to James Mill. He was now about to start upon an unfortunate expedition to Venezuela, his native country. He took with him a draft of a law for the freedom of the press, which Bentham drew up, and he proposed that when his new state was founded, Bentham should be its legislator.[319] Miranda was betrayed to the Spanish government in 1812, and died (1816) in the hands of the Inquisition. Bolivar, who was also in London in 1810 and took some notice of Joseph Lancaster, applied in flattering terms to Bentham. Long afterwards, when dictator of Columbia, he forbade the use of Bentham's works in the schools, to which, however, the privilege of reading him was restored, and, let us hope, duly valued, in 1835.[320] Santander, another South American hero, was also a disciple, and encouraged the study of Bentham. Bentham says in 1830 that forty thousand copies of Dumont's Traites had been sold in Paris for the South American trade.[321] What share Bentham may have had in modifying South American ideas is unknown to me. In the United States he had many disciples of a more creditable kind than Burr. He appealed in 1811 to Madison, then President, for permission to construct a 'Pannomion' or complete body of law, for the use of the United States; and urged his claims both upon Madison and the Governor of Pennsylvania in 1817, when peace had been restored. He had many conversations upon this project with John Quincy Adams, who was then American minister in England.[322] This, of course, came to nothing, but an eminent American disciple, Edward Livingston (1764-1836), between 1820 and 1830 prepared codes for the State of Louisiana, and warmly acknowledged his obligations to Bentham.[323] In 1830 Bentham also acknowledges a notice of his labours, probably resulting from this, which had been made in one of General Jackson's presidential messages.[324] In his later years the United States became his ideal, and he never tired of comparing its cheap and honest enactment with the corruption and extravagance at home.

NOTES:

[291] Works, x. 403.

[292] Ibid. x. 62.

[293] Bentham had himself written some of his papers in French.

[294] Works, x. 407, 410, 413, 419.

[295] Ibid. x. 415.

[296] Lord E. Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne.

[297] Works, x. 413.

[298] This statement, I believe, refers to a complimentary reference to Bentham in the preface to the French Code.

[299] Works, x. 458.

[300] Bentham says that he reached these conclusions some time before 1809: Works, iii. 435. Cf. Ibid. v. 278.

[301] Works, x. 425.

[302] See description in Bain's James Mill, 129-36.

[303] Works, x. 479, 573.

[304] Works, x. 452-54.; Bain's James Mill, 104.

[305] The case of the 'King v. Cobbett,' (1804), which led to the proceedings against Mr. Justice Johnson in 1805.—Cobbett's State Trials, xxix.

[306] Works, x. 448-49.

[307] Ibid. x. 458.

[308] Works, x. 471, 570.

[309] Ibid. x. 471.

[310] Ibid. x. 461.

[311] Ibid. x. 471.

[312] Ibid. x. 490.

[313] Printed in Works, x. 495-97.

[314] Ibid. x. 570.

[315] Ibid. x. 476.

[316] Works, x. 485.

[317] Bain's James Mill, 136. Church of Englandism and Not Paul but Jesus were also written at Ford Abbey.

[318] Works, x. 433, 448.

[319] Ibid. x. 457-58; Bain's James Mill, 79.

[320] Works, 553-54, 565.

[321] Ibid. xi. 53.

[322] See Memoirs of J. Q. Adams (1874), iii. 511, 520, 532, 535-39, 540, 544, 560, 562-63. and Bentham's letter to Adams in Works, x. 554.

[323] Works, xi. 23.

[324] Ibid. xi. 40.

V. CODIFICATION

The unsettled conditions which followed the peace in various European countries found Bentham other employment. In 1809 Dumont did some codifying for the Emperor of Russia, and in 1817 was engaged to do the same service for Geneva. He was employed for some years, and is said to have introduced a Benthamite Penal Code and Panopticon, and an application of the Tactics.[325] In 1820 and 1821 Bentham was consulted by the Constitutional party in Spain and Portugal, and wrote elaborate tracts for their enlightenment. He made an impression upon at least one Spaniard. Borrow, when travelling in Spain some ten years after Bentham's death, was welcomed by an Alcalde on Cape Finisterre, who had upon his shelves all the works of the 'grand Baintham,' and compared him to Solon, Plato, and even Lope de Vega.[326] The last comparison appeared to Borrow to be overstrained. Bentham even endeavoured in 1822-23 to administer some sound advice to the government of Tripoli, but his suggestions for 'remedies against misrule' seem never to have been communicated.[327] In 1823 and 1824 he was a member of the Greek Committee; he corresponded with Mavrocordato and other leaders; and he begged Parr to turn some of his admonitions into 'Parrian' Greek for the benefit of the moderns.[328] Blaquiere and Stanhope, two ardent members of the committee, were disciples; and Stanhope carried with him to Greece Bentham's Table of the Springs of Action, with which he tried to indoctrinate Byron. The poet, however, thought with some plausibility that he was a better judge of human passions than the philosopher. Parry, the engineer, who joined Byron at the same time, gives a queer account of the old philosopher trotting about London in the service of the Greeks.[329] The coarse and thoughtless might laugh, and perhaps some neither coarse nor thoughtless might smile. But Bowring tells us that these were days of boundless happiness for Bentham.[330] Tributes of admiration were pouring in from all sides, and the true Gospel was spreading across the Atlantic and along the shores of the Mediterranean.

At home the Utilitarian party was consolidating itself; and the struggle which resulted in the Reform Bill was slowly beginning. The veteran Cartwright, Bentham's senior by eight years, tried in 1821 to persuade him to come out as one of a committee of 'Guardians of Constitutional Reform,' elected at a public meeting.[331] Bentham wisely refused to be drawn from his privacy. He left it to his friends to agitate, while he returned to labour in his study. The demand for legislation which had sprung up in so many parts of the world encouraged Bentham to undertake the last of his great labours. The Portuguese Cortes voted in December 1821 that he should be invited to prepare an 'all-comprehensive code'; and in 1822 he put out a curious 'Codification proposal,' offering to do the work for any nation in need of a legislator, and appending testimonials to his competence for the work. He set to work upon a 'Constitutional Code,' which occupied him at intervals during the remainder of his life, and embodied the final outcome of his speculations. He diverged from this main purpose to write various pamphlets upon topics of immediate interest; and was keenly interested in the various activities of his disciples. The Utilitarians now thought themselves entitled to enter the field of politics as a distinct body. An organ to defend their cause was desirable, and Bentham supplied the funds for the Westminster Review, of which the first number appeared in April 1824.

The editorship fell chiefly into the hands of Bowring (1792-1872). Bowring had travelled much upon the Continent for a commercial house, and his knowledge of Spanish politics had brought him into connection with Bentham, to whom Blaquiere recommended him in 1820.[332] A strong attachment sprang up between the two. Bentham confided all his thoughts and feelings to the young man, and Bowring looked up to his teacher with affectionate reverence. In 1828 Bentham says that Bowring is 'the most intimate friend he has.'[333] Bowring complains of calumnies, by which he was assailed, though they failed to alienate Bentham. What they may have been matters little; but it is clear that a certain jealousy arose between this last disciple and his older rivals. James Mill's stern and rigid character had evidently produced some irritation at intervals; and to him it would naturally appear that Bowring was the object of a senile favouritism. In any case it is to be regretted that Bentham thus became partly alienated from his older friends[334]. Mill was too proud to complain; and never wavered in his allegiance to the master's principles. But one result, and to us the most important, was that the new attachment led to the composition of one of the worst biographies in the language, out of materials which might have served for a masterpiece. Bowring was a great linguist, and an energetic man of business. He wrote hymns, and one of them, 'In the cross of Christ I glory,' is said to have 'universal fame.' A Benthamite capable of so singular an eccentricity judiciously agreed to avoid discussions upon religious topics with his master. To Bowring we also owe the Deontology, which professes to represent Bentham's dictation. The Mills repudiated this version, certainly a very poor one, of their teacher's morality, and held that it represented less Bentham than such an impression of Bentham as could be stamped upon a muddle-headed disciple.[335]

The last years of his life brought Bentham into closer connection with more remarkable men. The Radicals had despised the Whigs as trimmers and half-hearted reformers, and James Mill expressed this feeling very frankly in the first numbers of the Westminster Review. Reform, however, was now becoming respectable, and the Whigs were gaining the courage to take it up seriously. Foremost among the Edinburgh Reviewers was the great Henry Brougham, whose fame was at this time almost as great as his ambition could desire, and who considered himself to be the natural leader of all reform. He had shown eagerness to distinguish himself in lines fully approved by Bentham. His admirers regarded him as a giant; and his opponents, if they saw in him a dash of the charlatan, could not deny his amazing energy and his capacity as an orator. The insatiable vanity which afterwards ruined his career already made it doubtful whether he fought for the cause or the glory. But he was at least an instrument worth having. He was a kind of half-disciple. If in 1809 he had checked Mill's praise of Bentham, he was soon afterwards in frequent communication with the master. In July 1812 Bentham announces that Brougham is at last to be admitted to a dinner, for which he had been 'intriguing any time this six months,' and expects that his proselyte will soon be the first man in the House of Commons, and eclipse even Romilly.[336] In later years they had frequent communications; and when in 1827 Brougham was known to be preparing an utterance upon law reform, Bentham's hopes rose high. He offered to his disciple 'some nice little sweet pap of my own making,' sound teaching that is, upon evidence, judicial establishments and codification. Brougham thanks his 'dear grandpapa,' and Bentham offers further supplies to his 'dear, sweet little poppet.'[337] But when the orator had spoken Bentham declares (9th February 1828) that the mountain has been delivered of a mouse. Brougham was 'not the man to set up' simple and rational principles. He was the sham adversary but the real accomplice of Peel, pulling up lies by the root to plant others equally noxious.[338] In 1830 Bentham had even to hold up 'Master Peel' as a 'model good boy' to the self-styled reformer. Brougham needs a dose of jalap instead of pap, for he cannot even spell the 'greatest happiness principle' properly.[339] Bentham went so far as to write what he fondly took to be an epigram upon Brougham:

'So foolish and so wise, so great, so small, Everything now, to-morrow nought at all.'[340]

In September 1831 Brougham as Chancellor announced a scheme for certain changes in the constitution of the courts. The proposal called forth Bentham's last pamphlet, Lord Brougham displayed.[341] Bentham laments that his disciple has 'stretched out the right hand of fellowship to jobbers of all sorts.'[342] In vain had Brougham in his speech called Bentham 'one of the great sages of the law.' Bentham acknowledges his amiability and his genius; but laments over the untrustworthy character of a man who could only adopt principles so far as they were subservient to his own vanity.

Another light of the Edinburgh Review, who at this time took Brougham at his own valuation, did an incidental service to Bentham. Upon the publication of the Book of Fallacies in 1825, Sydney Smith reviewed or rather condensed it in the Edinburgh Review, and gave the pith of the whole in his famous Noodle's Oration. The noodle utters all the commonplaces by which the stupid conservatives, with Eldon at their head, met the demands of reformers. Nothing could be wittier than Smith's brilliant summary. Whigs and Radicals for the time agreed in ridiculing blind prejudice. The day was to come when the Whigs at least would see that some principles might be worse than prejudice. All the fools, said Lord Melbourne, 'were against Catholic Emancipation, and the worst of it is, the fools were in the right.' Sydney Smith was glad to be Bentham's mouthpiece for the moment: though, when Benthamism was applied to church reform, Smith began to perceive that Noodle was not so silly as he seemed.

One other ally of Bentham deserves notice. O'Connell had in 1828, in speaking of legal abuses, called himself 'an humble disciple of the immortal Bentham.'[343] Bentham wrote to acknowledge the compliment. He invited O'Connell to become an inmate of his hermitage at Queen's Square Place, and O'Connell responded warmly to the letters of his 'revered master.' Bentham's aversion to Catholicism was as strong as his objection to Catholic disqualifications, and he took some trouble to smooth down the difficulties which threatened an alliance between ardent believers and thoroughgoing sceptics. O'Connell had attacked some who were politically upon his side. 'Dan, dear child,' says Bentham, 'whom in imagination I am at this moment pressing to my fond bosom, put off, if it be possible, your intolerance.'[344] Their friendship, however, did not suffer from this discord, and their correspondence is in the same tone till the end. In one of Bentham's letters he speaks of a contemporary correspondence with another great man, whom he does not appear to have met personally. He was writing long letters, entreating the duke of Wellington to eclipse Cromwell by successfully attacking the lawyers. The duke wrote 'immediate answers in his own hand,' and took good-humouredly a remonstrance from Bentham upon the duel with Lord Winchilsea in 1829.[345] Bentham was ready to the end to seek allies in any quarter. When Lord Sidmouth took office in 1812, Bentham had an interview with him, and had some hopes of being employed to prepare a penal code.[346] Although experience had convinced him of the futility of expectations from the Sidmouths and Eldons, he was always on the look out for sympathy; and the venerable old man was naturally treated with respect by people who had little enough of real interest in his doctrines.

During the last ten years of his life, Bentham was cheered by symptoms of the triumph of his creed. The approach of the millennium seemed to be indicated by the gathering of the various forces which carried Roman Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill. Bentham still received testimonies of his fame abroad. In 1825 he visited Paris to consult some physicians. He was received with the respect which the French can always pay to intellectual eminence.[347] All the lawyers in a court of justice rose to receive him, and he was placed at the president's right hand. On the revolution of 1830, he addressed some good advice to the country of which he had been made a citizen nearly forty years before. In 1832, Talleyrand, to whom he had talked about the Panopticon in 1792, dined with him alone in his hermitage.[348] When Bowring observed to the prince that Bentham's works had been plundered, the polite diplomatist replied, et pille de tout le monde, il est toujours riche. Bentham was by this time failing. At eighty-two he was still, as he put it, 'codifying like any dragon.'[349] On 18th May 1832 he did his last bit of his lifelong labour, upon the 'Constitutional Code.' The great reform agitation was reaching the land of promise, but Bentham was to die in the wilderness. He sank without a struggle on 6th June 1832, his head resting on Bowring's bosom. He left the characteristic direction that his body should be dissected for the benefit of science. An incision was formally made; and the old gentleman, in his clothes as he lived, his face covered by a wax mask, is still to be seen at University College in Gower Street.

Bentham, as we are told, had a strong personal resemblance to Benjamin Franklin. Sagacity, benevolence, and playfulness were expressed in both physiognomies. Bentham, however, differed from the man whose intellect presents many points of likeness, in that he was not a man of the market-place or the office. Bentham was in many respects a child through life:[350] a child in simplicity, good humour, and vivacity; his health was unbroken; he knew no great sorrow; and after emerging from the discouragement of his youth, he was placidly contemplating a continuous growth of fame and influence. He is said to have expressed the wish that he could awake once in a century to contemplate the prospect of a world gradually adopting his principles and so making steady progress in happiness and wisdom.

No man could lead a simpler life. His chief luxuries at table were fruit, bread, and tea. He had a 'sacred teapot' called Dick, with associations of its own, and carefully regulated its functions. He refrained from wine during the greatest part of his life, and was never guilty of a single act of intemperance. In later life he took a daily half-glass of Madeira. He was scrupulously neat in person, and wore a Quaker-like brown coat, brown cassimere breeches, white worsted stockings and a straw hat. He walked or 'rather trotted' with his stick Dapple, and took his 'ante-prandial' and other 'circumgyrations' with absolute punctuality. He loved pets; he had a series of attached cats; and cherished the memory of a 'beautiful pig' at Hendon, and of a donkey at Ford Abbey. He encouraged mice to play in his study—a taste which involved some trouble with his cats, and suggests problems as to the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Kindness to animals was an essential point of his moral creed. 'I love everything,' he said, 'that has four legs.' He had a passion for flowers, and tried to introduce useful plants. He loved music—especially Handel—and had an organ in his house. He cared nothing for poetry: 'Prose,' he said,[351] 'is when all the lines except the last go on to the margin. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.' He was courteous and attentive to his guests, though occasionally irritable when his favourite crotchets were transgressed, or especially if his fixed hours of work were deranged.

His regularity in literary work was absolute. He lived by a time-table, working in the morning and turning out from ten to fifteen folio pages daily. He read the newspapers regularly, but few books, and cared nothing for criticisms on his own writings. His only substantial meal was a dinner at six or half-past, to which he occasionally admitted a few friends as a high privilege. He liked to discuss the topics of which his mind was full, and made notes beforehand of particular points to be introduced in conversation. He was invariably inaccessible to visitors, even famous ones, likely to distract his thoughts. 'Tell Mr. Bentham that Mr. Richard Lovell Edgeworth desires to see him.' 'Tell Mr. Richard Lovell Edgeworth that Mr. Bentham does not desire to see him' was the reply. When Mme. de Stael came to England, she said to Dumont: 'Tell Bentham I shall see nobody till I have seen him.' 'I am sorry for it,' said Bentham, 'for then she will never see anybody.' And he summed up his opinion of the famous author of Corinne by calling her 'a trumpery magpie.'[352] There is a simplicity and vivacity about some of the sayings reported by Bowring, which prove that Bentham could talk well, and increase our regret for the absence of a more efficient Boswell. At ten Bentham had his tea, at eleven his nightcap, and by twelve all his guests were ignominiously expelled. He was left to sleep on a hard bed. His sleep was light, and much disturbed by dreams.

Bentham was certainly amiable. The 'surest way to gain men,' he said, 'is to appear to love them, and the surest way to appear to love them is to love them in reality.' The least pleasing part of his character, however, is the apparent levity of his attachments. He was, as we have seen, partly alienated from Dumont, though some friendly communications are recorded in later years, and Dumont spoke warmly of Bentham only a few days before his death in 1829.[353] He not only cooled towards James Mill, but, if Bowring is to be trusted, spoke of him with great harshness.[354] Bowring was not a judicious reporter, indeed, and capable of taking hasty phrases too seriously. What Bentham's remarks upon these and other friends suggest is not malice or resentment, but the flippant utterance of a man whose feelings are wanting in depth rather than kindliness. It is noticeable that, after his early visit at Bowood, no woman seems to have counted for anything in Bentham's life. He was not only never in love, but it looks as if he never even talked to any woman except his cook or housemaid.

The one conclusion that I need draw concerns a question not, I think, hard to be solved. It would be easy to make a paradox by calling Bentham at once the most practical and most unpractical of men. This is to point out the one-sided nature of Bentham's development. Bentham's habits remind us in some ways of Kant; and the thought may be suggested that he would have been more in his element as a German professor of philosophies. In such a position he might have devoted himself to the delight of classifying and co-ordinating theories, and have found sufficient enjoyment in purely intellectual activity. After a fashion that was the actual result. How far, indeed, Bentham could have achieved much in the sphere of pure philosophy, and what kind of philosophy he would have turned out, must be left to conjecture. The circumstances of his time and country, and possibly his own temperament generally, turned his thoughts to problems of legislation and politics, that is to say, of direct practical interest. He was therefore always dealing with concrete facts, and a great part of his writings may be considered as raw material for acts of parliament. Bentham remained, however, unpractical, in the sense that he had not that knowledge which we ascribe either to the poet or to the man of the world. He had neither the passion nor the sympathetic imagination. The springs of active conduct which Byron knew from experience were to Bentham nothing more than names in a careful classification. Any shrewd attorney or Bow Street runner would have been a better judge of the management of convicts; and here were dozens of party politicians, such as Rigby and Barre, who could have explained to him beforehand those mysteries in the working of the political machinery, which it took him half a lifetime to discover. In this sense Bentham was unpractical in the highest degree, for at eighty he had not found out of what men are really made. And yet by his extraordinary intellectual activity and the concentration of all his faculties upon certain problems, he succeeded in preserving an example, and though not a unique yet an almost unsurpassable example, of the power which belongs to the man of one idea.

NOTES:

[325] See correspondence upon his codification plans in Russia, America, and Geneva in Works, iv. 451-594.

[326] Borrow's Bible in Spain, ch. xxx.

[327] Works, viii. 555-600.

[328] Ibid. x. 534. See Blaquiere's enthusiastic letter to Bentham.—Works, x. 475.

[329] See, however, Bentham's reference to this story.—Works, xi. 66.

[330] Works, x. 539.

[331] Ibid. x. 522.

[332] Works, x. 516.

[333] Ibid. x. 591.

[334] A letter from Mill in the University College MSS. describes a misunderstanding about borrowed books, a fertile, but hardly adequate, cause of quarrel.

[335] Bowring's religious principles prevented him from admitting some of Bentham's works to the collective edition.

[336] Works, x. 471-72.

[337] Ibid. x. 576.

[338] Ibid. x. 588.

[339] Works, xi. 37. Papers preserved at University College show that during Peel's law reforms at this time Bentham frequently communicated with him.

[340] Ibid. xi. 50.

[341] Ibid. v. 549.

[342] Ibid. v. 609.

[343] Works, x. 594.

[344] Ibid. xi. 26.

[345] Ibid. xi. 13, 28.

[346] Works, x. 468.

[347] Ibid. x. 551.

[348] Ibid. xi. 75.

[349] Ibid. xi. 33.

[350] Mill's Dissertations, i. 354 and 392 n.

[351] Works, x. 442.

[352] Works, x. 467; xi. 79.

[353] Ibid. xi. 23-24.

[354] Ibid. x. 450.



CHAPTER VI

BENTHAM'S DOCTRINE

I. FIRST PRINCIPLES

Bentham's position is in one respect unique. There have been many greater thinkers; but there has been hardly any one whose abstract theory has become in the same degree the platform of an active political party. To accept the philosophy was to be also pledged to practical applications of Utilitarianism. What, then, was the revelation made to the Benthamites, and to what did it owe its influence? The central doctrine is expressed in Bentham's famous formula: the test of right and wrong is the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number.' There was nothing new in this assertion. It only expresses the fact that Bentham accepted one of the two alternatives which have commended themselves to conflicting schools ever since ethical speculation was erected into a separate department of thought. Moreover, the side which Bentham took was, we may say, the winning side. The ordinary morality of the time was Utilitarian in substance. Hutcheson had invented the sacred phrase: and Hume had based his moral system upon 'utility.'[355] Bentham had learned much from Helvetius the French freethinker, and had been anticipated by Paley the English divine. The writings in which Bentham deals explicitly with the general principles of Ethics would hardly entitle him to a higher position than that of a disciple of Hume without Hume's subtlety; or of Paley without Paley's singular gift of exposition. Why, then, did Bentham's message come upon his disciples with the force and freshness of a new revelation? Our answer must be in general terms that Bentham founded not a doctrine but a method: and that the doctrine which came to him simply as a general principle was in his hands a potent instrument applied with most fruitful results to questions of immediate practical interest.

Beyond the general principle of utility, therefore, we have to consider the 'organon' constructed by him to give effect to a general principle too vague to be applied in detail. The fullest account of this is contained in the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. This work unfortunately is a fragment, but it gives his doctrine vigorously and decisively, without losing itself in the minute details which become wearisome in his later writings. Bentham intended it as an introduction to a penal code; and his investigation sent him back to more general problems. He found it necessary to settle the relations of the penal code to the whole body of law; and to settle these he had to consider the principles which underlie legislation in general. He had thus, he says, to 'create a new science,' and then to elaborate one department of the science. The 'introduction' would contain prolegomena not only for the penal code but for the other departments of inquiry which he intended to exhaust.[356] He had to lay down primary truths which should be to this science what the axioms are to mathematical sciences.[357] These truths therefore belong to the sphere of conduct in general, and include his ethical theory.

'Nature has placed mankind' (that is his opening phrase) 'under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.' There is the unassailable basis. It had been laid down as unequivocally by Locke,[358] and had been embodied in the brilliant couplets of Pope's Essay on Man.[359] At the head of the curious table of universal knowledge, given in the Chrestomathia, we have Eudaemonics as an all-comprehensive name of which every art is a branch.[360] Eudaemonics, as an art, corresponds to the science 'ontology.' It covers the whole sphere of human thought. It means knowledge in general as related to conduct. Its first principle, again, requires no more proof than the primary axioms of arithmetic or geometry. Once understood, it is by the same act of the mind seen to be true. Some people, indeed, do not see it. Bentham rather ignores than answers some of their arguments. But his mode of treating opponents indicates his own position. 'Happiness,' it is often said, is too vague a word to be the keystone of an ethical system; it varies from man to man: or it is 'subjective,' and therefore gives no absolute or independent ground for morality. A morality of 'eudaemonism' must be an 'empirical' morality, and we can never extort from it that 'categorical imperative,' without which we have instead of a true morality a simple system of 'expediency.' From Bentham's point of view the criticism must be retorted. He regards 'happiness' as precisely the least equivocal of words; and 'happiness' itself as therefore affording the one safe clue to all the intricate problems of human conduct. The authors of the Federalist, for example, had said that justice was the 'end of government.' 'Why not happiness?' asks Bentham. 'What happiness is every man knows, because what pleasure is, every man knows, and what pain is, every man knows. But what justice is—this is what on every occasion is the subject-matter of dispute.'[361] That phrase gives his view in a nutshell. Justice is the means, not the end. That is just which produces a maximum of happiness. Omit all reference to Happiness, and Justice becomes a meaningless word prescribing equality, but not telling us equality of what. Happiness, on the other hand, has a substantial and independent meaning from which the meaning of justice can be deduced. It has therefore a logical priority: and to attempt to ignore this is the way to all the labyrinths of hopeless confusion by which legislation has been made a chaos. Bentham's position is indicated by his early conflict with Blackstone, not a very powerful representative of the opposite principle. Blackstone, in fact, had tried to base his defence of that eminently empirical product, the British Constitution, upon some show of a philosophical groundwork. He had used the vague conception of a 'social contract,' frequently invoked for the same purpose at the revolution of 1688, and to eke out his arguments applied the ancient commonplaces about monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. He thus tried to invest the constitution with the sanctity derived from this mysterious 'contract,' while appealing also to tradition or the incarnate 'wisdom of our ancestors,' as shown by their judicious mixture of the three forms. Bentham had an easy task, though he performed it with remarkable vigour, in exposing the weakness of this heterogeneous aggregate. Look closely, and this fictitious contract can impose no new obligation: for the obligation itself rests upon Utility. Why not appeal to Utility at once? I am bound to obey, not because my great-grandfather may be regarded as having made a bargain, which he did not really make, with the great-grandfather of George III.; but simply because rebellion does more harm than good. The forms of government are abstractions, not names of realities, and their 'mixture' is a pure figment. King, Lords, and Commons are not really incarnations of power, wisdom, and goodness. Their combination forms a system the merits of which must in the last resort be judged by its working. 'It is the principle of utility, accurately apprehended and steadily applied, that affords the only clew to guide a man through these streights.'[362] So much in fact Bentham might learn from Hume; and to defend upon any other ground the congeries of traditional arrangements which passed for the British Constitution was obviously absurd. It was in this warfare against the shifting and ambiguous doctrines of Blackstone that Bentham first showed the superiority of his own method: for, as between the two, Bentham's position is at least the most coherent and intelligible.

Blackstone, however, represents little more than a bit of rhetoric embodying fragments of inconsistent theories. The Morals and Legislation opens by briefly and contemptuously setting aside more philosophical opponents of Utilitarianism. The 'ascetic' principle, for example, is the formal contradiction of the principle of Utility, for it professedly declares pleasure to be evil. Could it be consistently carried out it would turn earth into hell. But in fact it is at bottom an illegitimate corollary from the very principle which it ostensibly denies. It professes to condemn pleasure in general; it really means that certain pleasures can only be bought at an excessive cost of pain. Other theories are contrivances for avoiding the appeal 'to any external standard'; and in substance, therefore, they make the opinion of the individual theorist an ultimate and sufficient reason. Adam Smith by his doctrine of 'sympathy' makes the sentiment of approval itself the ultimate standard. My feeling echoes yours, and reciprocally; each cannot derive authority from the other. Another man (Hutcheson) invents a thing made on purpose to tell him what is right and what is wrong and calls it a 'moral sense.' Beattie substitutes 'common' for 'moral' sense, and his doctrine is attractive because every man supposes himself to possess common sense. Others, like Price, appeal to the Understanding, or, like Clarke, to the 'Fitness of Things,' or they invent such phrases as 'Law of Nature,' or 'Right Reason' or 'Natural Justice,' or what you please. Each really means that whatever he says is infallibly true and self-evident. Wollaston discovers that the only wrong thing is telling a lie; or that when you kill your father, it is a way of saying that he is not your father, and the same method is applicable to any conduct which he happens to dislike. The 'fairest and openest of them all' is the man who says, 'I am of the number of the Elect'; God tells the Elect what is right: therefore if you want to know what is right, you have only to come to me.[363] Bentham is writing here in his pithiest style. His criticism is of course of the rough and ready order; but I think that in a fashion he manages to hit the nail pretty well on the head.

His main point, at any rate, is clear. He argues briefly that the alternative systems are illusory because they refer to no 'external standard.' His opponents, not he, really make morality arbitrary. This, whatever the ultimate truth, is in fact the essential core of all the Utilitarian doctrine descended from or related to Benthamism. Benthamism aims at converting morality into a science. Science, according to him, must rest upon facts. It must apply to real things, and to things which have definite relations and a common measure. Now, if anything be real, pains and pleasures are real. The expectation of pain or pleasure determines conduct; and, if so, it must be the sole determinant of conduct. The attempt to conceal or evade this truth is the fatal source of all equivocation and confusion. Try the experiment. Introduce a 'moral sense.' What is its relation to the desire for happiness? If the dictates of the moral sense be treated as ultimate, an absolutely arbitrary element is introduced; and we have one of the 'innate ideas' exploded by Locke, a belief summarily intruded into the system without definite relations to any other beliefs: a dogmatic assertion which refuses to be tested or to be correlated with other dogmas; a reduction therefore of the whole system to chaos. It is at best an instinctive belief which requires to be justified and corrected by reference to some other criterion. Or resolve morality into 'reason,' that is, into some purely logical truth, and it then remains in the air—a mere nonentity until experience has supplied some material upon which it can work. Deny the principle of utility, in short, as he says in a vigorous passage,[364] and you are involved in a hopeless circle. Sooner or later you appeal to an arbitrary and despotic principle and find that you have substituted words for thoughts.

The only escape from this circle is the frank admission that happiness is, in fact, the sole aim of man. There are, of course, different kinds of happiness as there are different kinds of physical forces. But the motives to action are, like the physical forces, commensurable. Two courses of conduct can always be compared in respect of the happiness produced, as two motions of a body can be compared in respect of the energy expended. If, then, we take the moral judgment to be simply a judgment of amounts of happiness, the whole theory can be systematised, and its various theorems ranged under a single axiom or consistent set of axioms. Pain and pleasure give the real value of actions; they are the currency with a definite standard into which every general rule may be translated. There is always a common measure applicable in every formula for the estimation of conduct. If you admit your Moral Sense, you profess to settle values by some standard which has no definite relation to the standard which in fact governs the normal transactions. But any such double standard, in which the two measures are absolutely incommensurable, leads straight to chaos. Or, if again you appeal to reason in the abstract, you are attempting to settle an account by pure arithmetic without reference to the units upon which your operation is performed. Two pounds and two pounds will make four pounds whatever a pound may be; but till I know what it is, the result is nugatory. Somewhere I must come upon a basis of fact, if my whole construction is to stand.

This is the fundamental position implied in Bentham's doctrine. The moral judgment is simply one case of the judgment of happiness. Bentham is so much convinced of this that to him there appeared to be in reality no other theory. What passed for theories were mere combinations of words. Having said this, we know where to lay the foundations of the new science. It deals with a vast complicity of facts: it requires 'investigations as severe as mathematical ones, but beyond all comparison more intricate and extensive.'[365] Still it deals with facts, and with facts which have a common measure, and can, therefore, be presented as a coherent system. To present this system, or so much of it as is required for purposes of legislation, is therefore his next task. The partial execution is the chief substance of the Introduction. Right and wrong conduct, we may now take for granted, mean simply those classes of conduct which are conducive to or opposed to happiness; or, in the sacred formula, to act rightly means to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The legislator, like every one else, acts rightly in so far as he is guided by the principle (to use one of the phrases coined by Bentham) of 'maximising' happiness. He seeks to affect conduct; and conduct can be affected only by annexing pains or pleasures to given classes of actions. Hence we have a vitally important part of his doctrine—the theory of 'sanctions.' Pains and pleasures as annexed to action are called 'sanctions.' There are 'physical or natural,' 'political, 'moral or popular,' and 'religious' sanctions. The 'physical' sanctions are such pleasures and pains as follow a given course of conduct independently of the interference of any other human or supernatural being; the 'political' those which are annexed by the action of the legislator; the 'moral or popular' those which are annexed by other individuals not acting in a corporate capacity; and the 'religious' those which are annexed by a 'superior invisible being,' or, as he says elsewhere,[366] 'such as are capable of being expected at the hands of an invisible Ruler of the Universe.' The three last sanctions, he remarks, 'operate through the first.' The 'magistrate' or 'men at large' can only operate, and God is supposed only to operate, 'through the powers of nature,' that is, by applying some of the pains and pleasures which may also be natural sanctions. A man is burnt: if by his own imprudence, that is a 'physical' sanction; if by the magistrate, it is a 'political' sanction; if by some neglect of his neighbours, due to their dislike of his 'moral character,' a 'moral' sanction; if by the immediate act of God or by distraction caused by dread of God's displeasure, it is a 'religious' sanction. Of these, as Bentham characteristically observes[367] in a later writing the political is much stronger than the 'moral' or 'religious.' Many men fear the loss of character or the 'wrath of Heaven,' but all men fear the scourge and the gallows.[368] He admits, however, that the religious sanction and the additional sanction of 'benevolence' have the advantage of not requiring that the offender should be found out.[369] But in any case, the 'natural' and religious sanctions are beyond the legislator's power. His problem, therefore, is simply this: what sanctions ought he to annex to conduct, or remembering that 'ought' means simply 'conducive to happiness,' what political sanctions will increase happiness?

To answer this fully will be to give a complete system of legislation; but in order to answer it we require a whole logical and psychological apparatus. Bentham shows this apparatus at work, but does not expound its origin in any separate treatise. Enough information, however, is given as to his method in the curious collection of the fragments connected with the Chrestomathia. A logical method upon which he constantly insisted is that of 'bipartition,'[370] called also the 'dichotomous' or 'bifurcate' method, and exemplified by the so-called 'Porphyrian Tree.' The principle is, of course, simple. Take any genus: divide it into two classes, one of which has and the other has not a certain mark. The two classes must be mutually exclusive and together exhaustive. Repeat the operation upon each of the classes and continue the process as long as desired.[371] At every step you thus have a complete enumeration of all the species, varieties, and so on, each of which excludes all the others. No mere logic, indeed, can secure the accuracy and still less the utility of the procedure. The differences may be in themselves ambiguous or irrelevant. If I classify plants as 'trees' and 'not trees,' the logical form is satisfied: but I have still to ask whether 'tree' conveys a determinate meaning, and whether the distinction corresponds to a difference of any importance. A perfect classification, however, could always be stated in this form. Each species, that is, can be marked by the presence or absence of a given difference, whether we are dealing with classes of plants or actions: and Bentham aims at that consummation though he admits that centuries may be required for the construction of an accurate classification in ethical speculations.[372] He exaggerates the efficiency of his method, and overlooks the tendency of tacit assumptions to smuggle themselves into what affects to be a mere enumeration of classes. But in any case, no one could labour more industriously to get every object of his thought arranged and labelled and put into the right pigeon-hole of his mental museum. To codify[373] is to classify, and Bentham might be defined as a codifying animal.

Things thus present themselves to Bentham's mind as already prepared to fit into pigeon-holes. This is a characteristic point, and it appears in what we must call his metaphysical system. 'Metaphysics,' indeed, according to him, is simply 'a sprig,' and that a small one, of the 'branch termed Logic.'[374] It is merely the explanation of certain general terms such as 'existence,' 'necessity,' and so forth.[375] Under this would apparently fall the explanation of 'reality' which leads to a doctrine upon which he often insists, and which is most implicitly given in the fragment called Ontology. He there distinguishes 'real' from 'fictitious entities,' a distinction which, as he tells us,[376] he first learned from d'Alembert's phrase Etres fictifs and which he applies in his Morals and Legislation. 'Real entities,' according to him,[377] are 'individual perceptions,' 'impressions,' and 'ideas.' In this, of course, he is following Hume, though he applies the Johnsonian argument to Berkeley's immaterialism.[378] A 'fictitious entity' is a name which does note 'raise up in the mind any correspondent images.'[379] Such names owe their existence to the necessities of language. Without employing such fictions, however, 'the language of man could not have risen above the language of brutes';[380] and he emphatically distinguishes them from 'unreal' or 'fabulous entities.' A 'fictitious entity' is not a 'nonentity.'[381] He includes among such entities all Aristotle's 'predicaments' except the first: 'substance.'[382] Quantity, quality, relation, time, place are all 'physical fictitious entities.' This is apparently equivalent to saying that the only 'physical entities' are concrete things—sticks, stones, bodies, and so forth—the 'reality' of which he takes for granted in the ordinary common sense meaning. It is also perfectly true that things are really related, have quantity and quality, and are in time and space. But we cannot really conceive the quality or relation apart from the concrete things so qualified and related. We are forced by language to use substantives which in their nature have only the sense of adjectives. He does not suppose that a body is not really square or round; but he thinks it a fiction to speak of squareness or roundness or space in general as something existing apart from matter and, in some sense, alongside of matter.

This doctrine, which brings us within sight of metaphysical problems beyond our immediate purpose, becomes important to his moral speculation. His special example of a 'fictitious entity' in politics is 'obligation.'[383] Obligations, rights, and similar words are 'fictitious entities.' Obligation in particular implies a metaphor. The statement that a man is 'obliged' to perform an act means simply that he will suffer pain if he does not perform it. The use of the word obligation, as a noun substantive, introduces the 'fictitious entity' which represents nothing really separable from the pain or pleasure. Here, therefore, we have the ground of the doctrine already noticed. 'Pains and pleasures' are real.[384] 'Their existence,' he says,[385] 'is matter of universal and constant experience.' But other various names referring to these: emotion, inclination, vice, virtue, etc., are only 'psychological entities.' 'Take away pleasures and pains, not only happiness but justice and duty and obligation and virtue—all of which have been so elaborately held up to view as independent of them—are so many empty sounds.'[386] The ultimate facts, then, are pains and pleasures. They are the substantives of which these other words are properly the adjectives. A pain or a pleasure may exist by itself, that is without being virtuous or vicious: but virtue and vice can only exist in so far as pain and pleasure exists.

This analysis of 'obligation' is a characteristic doctrine of the Utilitarian school. We are under an 'obligation' so far as we are affected by a 'sanction.' It appeared to Bentham so obvious as to need no demonstration, only an exposition of the emptiness of any verbal contradiction. Such metaphysical basis as he needed is simply the attempt to express the corresponding conception of reality which, in his opinion, only requires to be expressed to carry conviction.

NOTES:

[355] See note under Bentham's life, ante, p. 178.

[356] Preface to Morals and Legislation.

[357] Works, i. ('Morals and Legislation'), ii. n.

[358] Essay, bk. ii. ch. xxi. Sec. 39-Sec. 44. The will, says Locke, is determined by the 'uneasiness of desire.' What moves desire? Happiness, and that alone. Happiness is pleasure, and misery pain. What produces pleasure we call good; and what produces pain we call evil. Locke, however, was not a consistent Utilitarian.

[359] Epistle iv., opening lines.

[360] Works, vii. 82.

[361] Works ('Constitutional Code'), ix. 123.

[362] Works ('Fragment'), i. 287.

[363] Works ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 8-10. Mill quotes this passage in his essay on Bentham in the first volume of his Dissertations. This essay, excellent in itself must be specially noticed as an exposition by an authoritative disciple.

[364] Works ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 13.

[365] Works ('Morals and Legislation'), i. v.

[366] Works ('Evidence'), vi. 261.

[367] Works ('Evidence'), vii. 116.

[368] Ibid. ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 14, etc.; Ibid. vi. 260. In Ibid. ('Evidence') vii. 116, 'humanity,' and in 'Logical Arrangements,' Ibid. ii. 290, 'sympathy' appears as a fifth sanction. Another modification is suggested in Ibid. i. 14 n.

[369] Ibid. ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 67.

[370] Works ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 96 n.

[371] See especially Ibid. viii. 104, etc.; 253, etc.; 289, etc.

[372] Ibid. viii. 106.

[373] 'Codify' was one of Bentham's successful neologisms.

[374] Works ('Logic'), viii. 220.

[375] Here Bentham coincides with Horne Tooke, to whose 'discoveries' he refers in the Chrestomathia (Works, viii. 120, 185, 188).

[376] Works, iii. 286; viii. 119.

[377] Ibid. ('Ontology') viii. 196 n.

[378] Ibid. viii, 197 n.

[379] Ibid. viii. 263.

[380] Works ('Ontology'), viii. 119.

[381] Ibid. viii. 198.

[382] Ibid. viii. 199.

[383] Ibid. viii. 206, 247.

[384] Helvetius adds to this that the only real pains and pleasures are the physical, but Bentham does not follow him here. See Helvetius, OEuvres (1781), ii. 121, etc.

[385] Works, i. 211 ('Springs of Action').

[386] Ibid. i. 206.

II. SPRINGS OF ACTION

Our path is now clear. Pains and pleasures give us what mathematicians call the 'independent variable.' Our units are (in Bentham's phrase) 'lots' of pain or pleasure. We have to interpret all the facts in terms of pain or pleasure, and we shall have the materials for what has since been called a 'felicific calculus.' To construct this with a view to legislation is his immediate purpose. The theory will fall into two parts: the 'pathological,' or an account of all the pains and pleasures which are the primary data; and the 'dynamical,' or an account of the various modes of conduct determined by expectations of pain and pleasure. This gives the theory of 'springs of action,' considered in themselves, and of 'motives,' that is, of the springs as influencing conduct.[387] The 'pathology' contains, in the first place, a discussion of the measure of pain and pleasure in general; secondly, a discussion of the various species of pain and pleasure; and thirdly, a discussion of the varying sensibilities of different individuals to pain and pleasure.[388] Thus under the first head, we are told that the value of a pleasure, considered by itself, depends upon its intensity, duration, certainty, and propinquity; and, considered with regard to modes of obtaining it, upon its fecundity (or tendency to produce other pains and pleasures) and its purity (or freedom from admixture of other pains and pleasures). The pain or pleasure is thus regarded as an entity which is capable of being in some sense weighed and measured.[389] The next step is to classify pains and pleasures, which though commensurable as psychological forces, have obviously very different qualities. Bentham gives the result of his classification without the analysis upon which it depends. He assures us that he has obtained an 'exhaustive' list of 'simple pleasures.' It must be confessed that the list does not commend itself either as exhaustive or as composed of 'simple pleasures.' He does not explain the principle of his analysis because he says, it was of 'too metaphysical a cast,'[390] but he thought it so important that he published it, edited with considerable modifications by James Mill, in 1817, as a Table of the Springs of Action.[391]

J. S. Mill remarks that this table should be studied by any one who would understand Bentham's philosophy. Such a study would suggest some unfavourable conclusions. Bentham seems to have made out his table without the slightest reference to any previous psychologist. It is simply constructed to meet the requirements of his legislative theories. As psychology it would be clearly absurd, especially if taken as giving the elementary or 'simple' feelings. No one can suppose, for example, that the pleasures of 'wealth' or 'power' are 'simple' pleasures. The classes therefore are not really distinct, and they are as far from being exhaustive. All that can be said for the list is that it gives a sufficiently long enumeration to call attention from his own point of view to most of the ordinary pleasures and pains; and contains as much psychology as he could really turn to account for his purpose.

The omissions with which his greatest disciple charges him are certainly significant. We find, says Mill, no reference to 'Conscience,' 'Principle,' 'Moral Rectitude,' or 'Moral Duty' among the 'springs of action,' unless among the synonyms of a 'love of reputation,' or in so far as 'Conscience' and 'Principle' are sometimes synonymous with the 'religious' motive or the motive of 'sympathy.' So the sense of 'honour,' the love of beauty, and of order, of power (except in the narrow sense of power over our fellows) and of action in general are all omitted. We may conjecture what reply Bentham would have made to this criticism. The omission of the love of beauty and aesthetic pleasures may surprise us when we remember that Bentham loved music, if he cared nothing for poetry. But he apparently regarded these as 'complex pleasures,'[392] and therefore not admissible into his table, if it be understood as an analysis into the simple pleasures alone. The pleasures of action are deliberately omitted, for Bentham pointedly gives the 'pains' of labour as a class without corresponding pleasure; and this, though indicative, I think, of a very serious error, is characteristic rather of his method of analysis than of his real estimate of pleasure. Nobody could have found more pleasure than Bentham in intellectual labour, but he separated the pleasure from the labour. He therefore thought 'labour,' as such, a pure evil, and classified the pleasure as a pleasure of 'curiosity.' But the main criticism is more remarkable. Mill certainly held himself to be a sound Utilitarian; and yet he seems to be condemning Bentham for consistent Utilitarianism. Bentham, by admitting the 'conscience' into his simple springs of action, would have fallen into the very circle from which he was struggling to emerge. If, in fact, the pleasures of conscience are simple pleasures, we have the objectionable 'moral sense' intruded as an ultimate factor of human nature. To get rid of that 'fictitious entity' is precisely Bentham's aim. The moral judgment is to be precisely equivalent to the judgment: 'this or that kind of conduct increases or diminishes the sum of human pains or pleasures.' Once allow that among the pains and pleasures themselves is an ultimate conscience—a faculty not constructed out of independent pains and pleasures—and the system becomes a vicious circle. Conscience on any really Utilitarian scheme must be a derivative, not an ultimate, faculty. If, as Mill seems to say, the omission is a blunder, Bentham's Utilitarianism at least must be an erroneous system.

We have now our list both of pains and pleasures and of the general modes of variation by which their value is to be measured. We must also allow for the varying sensibilities of different persons. Bentham accordingly gives a list of thirty-two 'circumstances influencing sensibility.'[393] Human beings differ in constitution, character, education, sex, race, and so forth, and in their degrees of sensibility to all the various classes of pains and pleasures; the consideration of these varieties is of the highest utility for the purposes of the judge and the legislator.[394] The 'sanctions' will operate differently in different cases. A blow will have different effects upon the sick and upon the healthy; the same fine imposed upon the rich and the poor will cause very different pains; and a law which is beneficent in Europe may be a scourge in America.

We have thus our 'pathology' or theory of the passive sensibilities of man. We know what are the 'springs of action,' how they vary in general, and how they vary from one man to another. We can therefore pass to the dynamics.[395] We have described the machinery in rest, and can now consider it in motion. We proceed as before by first considering action in general: which leads to consideration of the 'intention' and the 'motive' implied by any conscious action: and hence of the relation of these to the 'springs of action' as already described. The discussion is minute and elaborate; and Bentham improves as he comes nearer to the actual problems of legislation and further from the ostensible bases of psychology. The analysis of conduct, and of the sanctions by which conduct is modified, involves a view of morals and of the relations between the spheres of morality and legislation which is of critical importance for the whole Utilitarian creed. 'Moral laws' and a 'Positive law' both affect human action. How do they differ? Bentham's treatment of the problem shows, I think, a clearer appreciation of some difficulties than might be inferred from his later utterances. In any case, it brings into clear relief a moral doctrine which deeply affected his successors.

NOTES:

[387] Works, i. 205; and Dumont's Traites (1820), i. xxv, xxvi. The word 'springs of action' perhaps comes from the marginal note to the above-mentioned passage of Locke (bk. ii. chap. xxvi, Sec. 41, 42).

[388] Morals and Legislation, chaps. iv., v., vi.

[389] See 'Codification Proposal' (Works, iv. 540), where Bentham takes money as representing pleasure, and shows how the present value may be calculated like that of a sum put out to interest. The same assumption is often made by Political Economists in regard to 'utilities.'

[390] Works ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 17 n.

[391] It is not worth while to consider this at length; but I give the following conjectural account of the list as it appears in the Morals and Legislation above. In classifying pain or pleasures, Bentham is, I think, following the clue suggested by his 'sanctions.' He is really classifying according to their causes or the way in which they are 'annexed.' Thus pleasures may or may not be dependent upon other persons, or if upon other persons, may be indirectly or directly caused by their pleasures or pains. Pleasures not caused by persons correspond to the 'physical sanction,' and are those (1) of the 'senses,' (2) of wealth, i.e. caused by the possession of things, and (3) of 'skill,' i.e. caused by our ability to use things. Pleasures caused by persons indirectly correspond first to the 'popular or moral sanction,' and are pleasures (4) of 'amity,' caused by the goodwill of individuals, and (5) of a 'good name,' caused by the goodwill of people in general; secondly, to 'political sanction,' namely (6) pleasures of 'power'; and thirdly, to the 'religious sanction,' or (7) pleasures of 'piety.' All these are 'self-regarding pleasures.' The pleasures caused directly by the pleasure of others are those (8) of 'benevolence,' and (9) of malevolence. We then have what is really a cross division by classes of 'derivative' pleasures; these being due to (10) memory, (11) imagination, (12) expectation, (13) association. To each class of pleasures corresponds a class of pains, except that there are no pains corresponding to the pleasures of wealth or power. We have, however, a general class of pains of 'privation,' which might include pains of poverty or weakness: and to these are opposed (14) pleasures of 'relief,' i.e. of the privation of pains. In the Table, as separately published, Bentham modified this by dividing pleasures of sense into three classes, the last of which includes the two first; by substituting pleasures of 'curiosity' for pleasures of 'skill' by suppressing pleasures of relief and pains of privation; and by adding, as a class of 'pains' without corresponding pleasures, pains (1) of labour, (2) of 'death, and bodily pains in general.' These changes seem to have been introduced in the course of writing his Introduction, where they are partly assumed. Another class is added to include all classes of 'self-regarding pleasures or pains.' He is trying to give a list of all 'synonyms' for various pains and pleasures, and has therefore to admit classes corresponding to general names which include other classes.

[392] Works i. 210, where he speaks of pleasures of the 'ball-room,' the 'theatre,' and the 'fine arts' as derivable from the 'simple and elementary' pleasures.

[393] Works ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 22 etc.

[394] Ibid. i. 33.

[395] Morals and Legislation, ch. vii. to xi.

III. THE SANCTIONS

Let us first take his definitions of the fundamental conceptions. All action of reasonable beings implies the expectation of consequences. The agent's 'intention' is defined by the consequences actually contemplated. The cause of action is the hope of the consequent pleasures or the dread of the consequent pains. This anticipated pleasure or pain constitutes the 'internal motive' (a phrase used by Bentham to exclude the 'external motive' or event which causes the anticipation).[396] The motive, or 'internal motive,' is the anticipation of pain to be avoided or pleasure to be gained. Actions are good or bad simply and solely as they are on the whole 'productive of a balance of pleasure or pain.' The problem of the legislator is how to regulate actions so as to incline the balance to the right side. His weapons are 'sanctions' which modify 'motives.' What motives, then, should be strengthened or checked? Here we must be guided by a principle which is, in fact, the logical result of the doctrines already laid down. We are bound to apply our 'felicific calculus' with absolute impartiality. We must therefore assign equal value to all motives. 'No motives,' he says,[397] are 'constantly good or constantly bad.' Pleasure is itself a good; pain itself an evil: nay, they are 'the only good and the only evil.' This is true of every sort of pain and pleasure, even of the pains and pleasures of illwill. The pleasures of 'malevolence' are placed in his 'table' by the side of pleasures of 'benevolence.' Hence it 'follows immediately and incontestably, that there is no such thing as any sort of motive that is in itself a bad one.' The doctrine is no doubt a logical deduction from Bentham's assumptions, and he proceeds to illustrate its meaning. A 'motive' corresponds to one of his 'springs of action.' He shows how every one of the motives included in his table may lead either to good or to bad consequences. The desire of wealth may lead me to kill a man's enemy or to plough his field for him; the fear of God may prompt to fanaticism or to charity; illwill may lead to malicious conduct or may take the form of proper 'resentment,' as, for example, when I secure the punishment of my father's murderer. Though one act, he says, is approved and the other condemned, they spring from the same motive, namely, illwill.[398] He admits, however, that some motives are more likely than others to lead to 'useful' conduct; and thus arranges them in a certain 'order of pre-eminence.'[399] It is obvious that 'goodwill,' 'love of reputation,' and the 'desire of amity' are more likely than others to promote general happiness. 'The dictates of utility,' as he observes, are simply the 'dictates of the most extensive and enlightened (that is, well advised) benevolence.' It would, therefore, seem more appropriate to call the 'motive' good; though no one doubts that when directed by an erroneous judgment it may incidentally be mischievous.

The doctrine that morality depends upon 'consequences' and not upon 'motives' became a characteristic Utilitarian dogma, and I shall have to return to the question. Meanwhile, it was both a natural and, I think, in some senses, a correct view, when strictly confined to the province of legislation. For reasons too obvious to expand, the legislator must often be indifferent to the question of motives. He cannot know with certainty what are a man's motives. He must enforce the law whatever may be the motives for breaking it; and punish rebellion, for example, even if he attributes it to misguided philanthropy. He can, in any case, punish only such crimes as are found out; and must define crimes by palpable 'external' marks. He must punish by such coarse means as the gallows and the gaol: for his threats must appeal to the good and the bad alike. He depends, therefore, upon 'external' sanctions, sanctions, that is, which work mainly upon the fears of physical pain; and even if his punishments affect the wicked alone, they clearly cannot reach the wicked as wicked, nor in proportion to their wickedness. That is quite enough to show why in positive law motives are noticed indirectly or not at all. It shows also that the analogy between the positive and the moral law is treacherous. The exclusion of motive justifiable in law may take all meaning out of morality. The Utilitarians, as we shall see, were too much disposed to overlook the difference, and attempt to apply purely legal doctrine in the totally uncongenial sphere of ethical speculation. To accept the legal classification of actions by their external characteristics is, in fact, to beg the question in advance. Any outward criterion must group together actions springing from different 'motives' and therefore, as other moralists would say, ethically different.

There is, however, another meaning in this doctrine which is more to the purpose here. Bentham was aiming at a principle which, true or false, is implied in all ethical systems based upon experience instead of pure logic or a priori 'intuitions.' Such systems must accept human nature as a fact, and as the basis of a scientific theory. They do not aim at creating angels but at developing the existing constitution of mankind. So far as an action springs from one of the primitive or essential instincts of mankind, it simply proves the agent to be human, not to be vicious or virtuous, and therefore is no ground for any moral judgment. If Bentham's analysis could be accepted, this would be true of his 'springs of action.' The natural appetites have not in themselves a moral quality: they are simply necessary and original data in the problem. The perplexity is introduced by Bentham's assumption that conduct can be analysed so that the 'motive' is a separate entity which can be regarded as the sole cause of a corresponding action. That involves an irrelevant abstraction. There is no such thing as a single 'motive.' One of his cases is a mother who lets her child die for love of 'ease.' We do not condemn her because she loves ease, which is a motive common to all men and therefore unmoral, not immoral. But neither do we condemn her merely for the bad consequences of a particular action. We condemn her because she loves ease better than she loves her child: that is, because her whole character is 'unnatural' or ill-balanced, not on account of a particular element taken by itself. Morality is concerned with concrete human beings, and not with 'motives' running about by themselves. Bentham's meaning, if we make the necessary correction, would thus be expressed by saying that we don't blame a man because he has the 'natural' passions, but because they are somehow wrongly proportioned or the man himself wrongly constituted. Passions which may make a man vicious may also be essential to the highest virtue. That is quite true; but the passion is not a separate agent, only one constituent of the character.

Bentham admits this in his own fashion. If 'motives' cannot be properly called good or bad, is there, he asks, nothing good or bad in the man who on a given occasion obeys a certain motive? 'Yes, certainly,' he replies, 'his disposition.'[400] The disposition, he adds, is a 'fictitious entity, and designed for the convenience of discourse in order to express what there is supposed to be permanent in a man's frame of mind.' By 'fictitious,' as we have seen, he means not 'unreal' but simply not tangible, weighable, or measurable—like sticks and stones, or like pains and pleasures. 'Fictitious' as they may be, therefore, the fiction enables us to express real truths, and to state facts which are of the highest importance to the moralist and the legislator. Bentham discusses some cases of casuistry in order to show the relation between the tendency of an action and the intention and motives of the agent. Ravaillac murders a good king; Ravaillac's son enables his father to escape punishment, or conveys poison to his father to enable him to avoid torture by suicide.[401] What is the inference as to the son's disposition in either case? The solution (as he substantially and, I think, rightly suggests) will have to be reached by considering whether the facts indicate that the son's disposition was mischievous or otherwise; whether it indicates political disloyalty or filial affection, and so forth, and in what proportions. The most interesting case perhaps is that of religious persecution, where the religious motive is taken to be good, and the action to which it leads is yet admitted to be mischievous. The problem is often puzzling, but we are virtually making an inference as to the goodness or badness of the 'disposition' implied by the given action under all the supposed circumstances. This gives what Bentham calls the 'meritoriousness'[402] of the disposition. The 'intention' is caused by the 'motive.' The 'disposition' is the 'sum of the intentions'; that is to say, it expresses the agent's sensibility to various classes of motives; and the merit therefore will be in proportion to the total goodness or badness of the disposition thus indicated. The question of merit leads to interesting moral problems. Bentham, however, observes that he is not here speaking from the point of view of the moralist but of the legislator. Still, as a legislator he has to consider what is the 'depravity' of disposition indicated by different kinds of conduct. This consideration is of great importance. The 'disposition' includes sensibility to what he calls 'tutelary motives'—motives, that is, which deter a man from such conduct as generally produces mischievous consequences. No motive can be invariably, though some, especially the motive of goodwill, and in a minor degree those of 'amity' and a 'love of reputation,' are generally, on the right side. The legislator has to reinforce these 'tutelary motives' by 'artificial tutelary motives,' and mainly by appealing to the 'love of ease,' that is, by making mischievous conduct more difficult, and to 'self-preservation,' that is, by making it more dangerous.[403] He has therefore to measure the force by which these motives will be opposed; or, in other words, the 'strength of the temptation.' Now the more depraved a man's disposition, the weaker the temptation which will seduce him to crime. Consequently if an act shows depravity, it will require a stronger counter-motive or a more severe punishment, as the disposition indicated is more mischievous. An act, for example, which implies deliberation proves a greater insensibility to these social motives which, as Bentham remarks,[404] determine the 'general tenor of a man's life,' however depraved he may be. The legislator is guided solely by 'utility,' or aims at maximising happiness without reference to its quality. Still, so far as action implies disposition, he has to consider the depravity as a source of mischief. The legislator who looks solely at the moral quality implied is wrong; and, if guided solely by his sympathies, has no measure for the amount of punishment to be inflicted. These considerations will enable us to see what is the proper measure of resentment.[405]

The doctrine of the neutrality or 'unmorality' of motive is thus sufficiently clear. Bentham's whole aim is to urge that the criterion of morality is given by the consequences of actions. To say the conduct is good or bad is to say in other words that it produces a balance of pleasure or pain. To make the criterion independent, or escape the vicious circle, we must admit the pleasures and pains to be in themselves neutral; to have, that is, the same value, if equally strong, whatever their source. In our final balance-sheet we must set down pains of illwill and of goodwill, of sense and of intellect with absolute impartiality, and compare them simply in respect of intensity. We must not admit a 'conscience' or 'moral sense' which would be autocratic; nor, indeed, allow moral to have any meaning as applied to the separate passions. But it is quite consistent with this to admit that some motives, goodwill in particular, generally tend to bring out the desirable result, that is, a balance of pleasure for the greatest number. The pains and pleasures are the ultimate facts, and the 'disposition' is a 'fictitious entity' or a name for the sum of sensibilities. It represents the fact that some men are more inclined than others to increase the total of good or bad.

NOTES:

[396] Works ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 46.

[397] Ibid. i. 48.

[398] Works ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 56.

[399] Ibid. i. 56.

[400] Works ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 60.

[401] Ibid. i. 62.

[402] Ibid. i. 65.

[403] These are the two classes of 'springs of action' omitted in the Table.

[404] Works ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 68.

[405] Here Bentham lays down the rule that punishment should rise with the strength of the temptation, a theory which leads to some curious casuistical problems. He does not fully discuss, and I cannot here consider, them. I will only note that it may conceivably be necessary to increase the severity of punishment, instead of removing the temptation or strengthening the preventive action. If so, the law becomes immoral in the sense of punishing more severely as the crime has more moral excuse. This was often true of the old criminal law, which punished offences cruelly because it had no effective system of police. Bentham would of course have agreed that the principle in this case was a bad one.

IV. CRIMINAL LAW

We have now, after a long analysis, reached the point at which the principles can be applied to penal law. The legislator has to discourage certain classes of conduct by annexing 'tutelary motives.' The classes to be suppressed are of course those which diminish happiness. Pursuing the same method, and applying results already reached, we must in the first place consider how the 'mischief of an act' is to be measured.[406] Acts are mischievous as their 'consequences' are mischievous; and the consequences may be 'primary' or 'secondary.' Robbery causes pain to the loser of the money. That is a primary evil. It alarms the holders of money; it suggests the facility of robbery to others; and it weakens the 'tutelary motive' of respect for property. These are secondary evils. The 'secondary' evil may be at times the most important. The non-payment of a tax may do no appreciable harm in a particular case. But its secondary effects in injuring the whole political fabric may be disastrous and fruitful beyond calculation. Bentham proceeds to show carefully how the 'intentions' and 'motives' of the evildoer are of the greatest importance, especially in determining these secondary consequences, and must therefore be taken into account by the legislator. A homicide may cause the same primary evil, whether accidental or malignant; but accidental homicide may cause no alarm, whereas the intentional and malignant homicide may cause any quantity of alarm and shock to the general sense of security. In this way, therefore, the legislator has again indirectly to take into account the moral quality which is itself dependent upon utility.

I must, however, pass lightly over a very clear and interesting discussion to reach a further point of primary importance to the Utilitarian theory, as to the distinction between the moral and legal spheres.[407] Bentham has now 'made an analysis of evil.' He has, that is, classified the mischiefs produced by conduct, measured simply by their effect upon pleasures or pains, independently of any consideration as to virtue and vice. The next problem is: what conduct should be criminal?—a subject which is virtually discussed in two chapters (xv. and xix.) 'on cases unmeet for punishment' and on 'the limits between Private Ethics and the act of legislation.' We must, of course, follow the one clue to the labyrinth. We must count all the 'lots' of pain and pleasure indifferently. It is clear, on the one hand, that the pains suffered by criminals are far less than the pains which would be suffered were no such sanctions applied. On the other hand, all punishment is an evil, because punishment means pain, and it is therefore only to be inflicted when it excludes greater pain. It must, therefore, not be inflicted when it is 'groundless,' 'inefficacious,' 'unprofitable,' or 'needless.' 'Needless' includes all the cases in which the end may be attained 'as effectually at a cheaper rate.'[408] This applies to all 'dissemination of pernicious principles'; for in this case reason and not force is the appropriate remedy. The sword inflicts more pain, and is less efficient than the pen. The argument raises the wider question, What are the true limits of legislative interference? Bentham, in his last chapter, endeavours to answer this problem. 'Private ethics,' he says, and 'legislation' aim at the same end, namely, happiness, and the 'acts with which they are conversant are in great measure the same.' Why, then, should they have different spheres? Simply because the acts 'are not perfectly and throughout the same.'[409] How, then, are we to draw the line? By following the invariable clue of 'utility.' We simply have to apply an analysis to determine the cases in which punishment does more harm than good. He insists especially upon the cases in which punishment is 'unprofitable'; upon such offences as drunkenness and sexual immorality, where the law could only be enforced by a mischievous or impossible system of minute supervision, and such offences as ingratitude or rudeness, where the definition is so vague that the judge could not safely be entrusted with the power to punish.'[410] He endeavours to give a rather more precise distinction by subdividing 'ethics in general' into three classes. Duty may be to oneself, that is 'prudence'; or to one's neighbour negatively, that is 'probity'; or to one's neighbour positively, that is 'benevolence.'[411] Duties of the first class must be left chiefly to the individual, because he is the best judge of his own interest. Duties of the third class again are generally too vague to be enforced by the legislator, though a man ought perhaps to be punished for failing to help as well as for actually injuring. The second department of ethics, that of 'probity,' is the main field for legislative activity.[412] As a general principle, 'private ethics' teach a man how to pursue his own happiness, and the art of legislation how to pursue the greatest happiness of the community. It must be noticed, for the point is one of importance, that Bentham's purely empirical method draws no definite line. It implies that no definite line can be drawn. It does not suggest that any kind of conduct whatever is outside the proper province of legislator except in so far as the legislative machinery may happen to be inadequate or inappropriate.

Our analysis has now been carried so far that we can proceed to consider the principles by which we should be guided in punishing. What are the desirable properties of a 'lot of punishment'? This occupies two interesting chapters. Chapter xvi., 'on the proportion between punishments and offences,' gives twelve rules. The punishment, he urges, must outweigh the profit of the offence; it must be such as to make a man prefer a less offence to a greater—simple theft, for example, to violent robbery; it must be such that the punishment must be adaptable to the varying sensibility of the offender; it must be greater in 'value' as it falls short of certainty; and, when the offence indicates a habit, it must outweigh not only the profit of the particular offence, but of the undetected offences. In chapter xvii. Bentham considers the properties which fit a punishment to fulfil these conditions. Eleven properties are given. The punishment must be (1) 'variable,' that is, capable of adjustment to particular cases; and (2) equable, or inflicting equal pain by equal sentences. Thus the 'proportion' between punishment and crimes of a given class can be secured. In order that the punishments of different classes of crime may be proportional, the punishments should (3) be commensurable. To make punishments efficacious they should be (4) 'characteristical' or impressive to the imagination; and that they may not be excessive they should be (5) exemplary or likely to impress others, and (6) frugal. To secure minor ends they should be (7) reformatory; (8) disabling, i.e. from future offences; and (9) compensatory to the sufferer. Finally, to avoid collateral disadvantages they should be (10) popular, and (11) remittable. A twelfth property, simplicity, was added in Dumont's redaction. Dumont calls attention here to the value of Bentham's method.[413] Montesquieu and Beccaria had spoken in general terms of the desirable qualities of punishment. They had spoken of 'proportionality,' for example, but without that precise or definite meaning which appears in Bentham's Calculus. In fact, Bentham's statement, compared to the vaguer utterances of his predecessors, but still more when compared to the haphazard brutalities and inconsistencies of English criminal law, gives the best impression of the value of his method.

Bentham's next step is an elaborate classification of offences, worked out by a further application of his bifurcatory method.[414] This would form the groundwork of the projected code. I cannot, however, speak of this classification, or of many interesting remarks contained in the Principles of Penal Law, where some further details are considered. An analysis scarcely does justice to Bentham, for it has to omit his illustrations and his flashes of real vivacity. The mere dry logical framework is not appetising. I have gone so far in order to illustrate the characteristic of Bentham's teaching. It was not the bare appeal to utility, but the attempt to follow the clue of utility systematically and unflinchingly into every part of the subject. This one doctrine gives the touchstone by which every proposed measure is to be tested; and which will give to his system not such unity as arises from the development of an abstract logical principle, but such as is introduced into the physical sciences when we are able to range all the indefinitely complex phenomena which arise under some simple law of force. If Bentham's aim could have been achieved, 'utility' would have been in legislative theories what gravitation is in astronomical theories. All human conduct being ruled by pain and pleasure, we could compare all motives and actions, and trace out the consequences of any given law. I shall have hereafter to consider how this conception worked in different minds and was applied to different problems: what were the tenable results to which it led, and what were the errors caused by the implied oversight of some essential considerations.

Certain weaknesses are almost too obvious to be specified. He claimed to be constructing a science, comparable to the physical sciences. The attempt was obviously chimerical if we are to take it seriously. The makeshift doctrine which he substitutes for psychology would be a sufficient proof of the incapacity for his task. He had probably not read such writers as Hartley or Condillac, who might have suggested some ostensibly systematic theory. If he had little psychology he had not even a conception of 'sociology.' The 'felicific calculus' is enough to show the inadequacy of his method. The purpose is to enable us to calculate the effects of a proposed law. You propose to send robbers to the gallows or the gaol. You must, says Bentham, reckon up all the evils prevented: the suffering to the robbed, and to those who expect to be robbed, on the one hand; and, on the other, the evils caused, the suffering to the robber, and to the tax-payer who keeps the constable; then strike your balance and make your law if the evils prevented exceed the evils caused. Some such calculation is demanded by plain common sense. It points to the line of inquiry desirable. But can it be adequate? To estimate the utility of a law we must take into account all its 'effects.' What are the 'effects' of a law against robbery? They are all that is implied in the security of property. They correspond to the difference between England in the eighteenth century and England in the time of Hengist and Horsa; between a country where the supremacy of law is established, and a country still under the rule of the strong hand. Bentham's method may be applicable at a given moment, when the social structure is already consolidated and uniform. It would represent the practical arguments for establishing the police-force demanded by Colquhoun, and show the disadvantages of the old constables and watchmen. Bentham, that is, gives an admirable method for settling details of administrative and legislative machinery, and dealing with particular cases when once the main principles of law and order are established. Those principles, too, may depend upon 'utility,' but utility must be taken in a wider sense when we have to deal with the fundamental questions. We must consider the 'utility' of the whole organisation, not the fitness of separate details. Finally, if Bentham is weak in psychology and in sociology, he is clearly not satisfactory in ethics. Morality is, according to him, on the same plane with law. The difference is not in the sphere to which they apply, or in the end to which they are directed; but solely in the 'sanction.' The legislator uses threats of physical suffering; the moralist threats of 'popular' disapproval. Either 'sanction' may be most applicable to a given case; but the question is merely between different means to the same end under varying conditions. This implies the 'external' character of Bentham's morality, and explains his insistence upon the neutrality of motives. He takes the average man to be a compound of certain instincts, and merely seeks to regulate their action by supplying 'artificial tutelary motives.' The 'man' is given; the play of his instincts, separately neutral, makes his conduct more or less favourable to general happiness; and the moralist and the legislator have both to correct his deviations by supplying appropriate 'sanctions.' Bentham, therefore, is inclined to ignore the intrinsic character of morality, or the dependence of a man's morality upon the essential structure of his nature. He thinks of the superficial play of forces, not of their intimate constitution. The man is not to be changed in either case; only his circumstances. Such defects no doubt diminish the value of Bentham's work. Yet, after all, in his own sphere they are trifles. He did very well without philosophy. However imperfect his system might be considered as a science or an ultimate explanation of society and human nature, it was very much to the point as an expression of downright common sense. Dumont's eulogy seems to be fully deserved, when we contrast Bentham's theory of punishment with the theories (if they deserve the name) of contemporary legislators. His method involved a thoroughgoing examination of the whole body of laws, and a resolution to apply a searching test to every law. If that test was not so unequivocal or ultimate as he fancied, it yet implied the constant application of such considerations as must always carry weight, and, perhaps, be always the dominant considerations, with the actual legislator or jurist. What is the use of you? is a question which may fairly be put to every institution and to every law; and it concerns legislators to find some answer, even though the meaning of the word 'use' is not so clear as we could wish.

NOTES:

[406] Morals and Legislation, ch. xii.

[407] Morals and Legislation, ch. xiv. (a chapter inserted from Dumont's Traites).

[408] Works ('Morals and Legislation'), i. p. 86.

[409] Ibid. i. 144.

[410] Ibid. i. 145.

[411] Works ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 143.