Bentham By John Stuart Mill Essay, Research Paper

Bentham

by John Stuart Mill

London and Westminster Review, Aug. 1838, revised in 1859 in

Dissertations and Discussion, vol. 1.

There are two work forces, late deceased, to whom their state

is indebted non merely for the greater portion of the of import thoughts

which have been thrown into circulation among its believing work forces in

their clip, but for a revolution in its general manners of idea

and probe. These work forces, dissimilar in about all else,

agreed in being closet-students & # 8212 ; secluded in a curious grade,

by fortunes and character, from the concern and intercourse

of the universe: and both were, through a big part of their

lives, regarded by those who took the lead in sentiment ( when they

happened to hear of them ) with feelings akin to contempt. But

they were destined to regenerate a lesson given to mankind by every

age, and ever disregarded & # 8212 ; to demo that bad

doctrine, which to the superficial appears a thing so distant

from the concern of life and the outward involvements of work forces, is in

world the thing on Earth which most influences them, and in the

long tally overbears every other influence save those which it must

itself obey. The authors of whom we speak have ne’er been read by

the battalion ; except for the more rebuff of their plants, their

readers have been few.. but they have been the instructors of the

instructors ; there is barely to be found in England an person of

any importance in the universe of head, who ( whatever sentiments he

may hold afterwards adopted ) did non foremost larn to believe from

one of these two ; and though their influences have but begun to

diffuse themselves through these intermediate channels over

society at big, there is already barely a publication of any

effect addressed to the educated categories, which, if these

individuals had non existed, would non hold been different from what

it is. These work forces are, Jeremy Bentham and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

& # 8211 ; the two great seminal heads of England in their age.

No comparing is intended here between the heads or

influences of these singular work forces: this was impossible unless

there were foremost formed a complete judgement of each, considered

apart. It is our purpose to try, on the present juncture,

an estimation of one of them ; the lone one, a complete edition of

whose plants is yet in advancement, and who, in the categorization

which may be made of all authors into Progressive and

Conservative, belongs to the same division with ourselves. For

although they were far excessively great work forces to be right designated

by either denomination entirely, yet in the chief, Bentham was a

Progressive philosopher, Coleridge a Conservative 1. The

influence of the former has made itself felt chiefly on heads of

the Progressive category ; of the latter, on those of the

Conservative: and the two systems of homocentric circles which the

daze given by them is distributing over the ocean of head, have

merely merely begun to run into and cross. The Hagiographas of both

contain terrible lessons to their ain side, on many of the mistakes

and mistakes they are addicted to: but to Bentham it was given to

discern more peculiarly those truths with which bing

philosophies and establishments were at discrepancy ; to Coleridge, the

neglected truths which lay in them.

A adult male of great cognition of the universe, and of the highest

repute for practical endowment and sagaciousness among the functionary

work forces of his clip ( himself no follower of Bentham, nor of any

partial or sole school whatever ) one time said to us, as the

consequence of his observation, that to Bentham more than to any other

beginning might be traced the oppugning spirit, the temperament to

demand the why of everything, which had gained so much land and

was bring forthing such of import effects in these times. The

more this averment is examined, the more true it will be found.

Bentham has been in this age and state the great inquirer of

things established. It is by the influence of the manners of

idea with which his Hagiographas inoculated a considerable figure

of believing work forces, that the yoke of authorization has been broken, and

countless sentiments, once received on tradition as

incontestible, are put upon their defense mechanism, and required to give

an history of themselves. Who, before Bentham ( whatever

contentions might be on points of item ) dared to talk

disrespectfully, in express footings, of the British Constitution,

or the English Law? He did so ; and his statements and his illustration

together encouraged others. We do non intend that his Hagiographas

caused the Reform Bill, or that the Appropriation Clause owns him

as its parent: the alterations which have been made, and the greater

alterations which will be made, in our establishments, are non the work

of philosophers, but of the involvements and inherent aptitudes of big

parts of society late grown into strength. But Bentham

gave voice to those involvements and inherent aptitudes: until he spoke out,

those who found our establishments unsuited to them did non make bold to

state so, did non make bold consciously to believe so ; they had ne’er

heard the excellence of those establishments questioned by

cultivated work forces, by work forces of acknowledged mind ; and it is non

in the nature of unenlightened heads to defy the united

authorization of the instructed. Bentham broke the enchantment. It was non

Bentham by his ain Hagiographas ; it was Bentham through the heads and

pens which those Hagiographas fed & # 8212 ; through the work forces in more direct

contact with the universe, into whom his spirit passed. If the

superstitious notion about ancestorial wisdom has fallen into decay ; if

the populace are grown familiar with the thought that their Torahs and

establishments are in great portion non the merchandise of mind and

virtuousness, but of modern corruptness grafted upon ancient brutality ;

if the hardiest invention is no longer scouted because it is an

invention & # 8212 ; establishments no longer considered sacred because

they are constitutions & # 8212 ; it will be found that those who have

accustomed the public head to these thoughts have learnt them in

Bentham & # 8217 ; s school, and that the assault on antediluvian establishments

has been, and is, carried on for the most portion with his arms.

It matters non although these minds, or so minds of any

description, have been but barely found among the individuals

conspicuously and apparently at the caput of the Reform motion.

All motions, except straight radical 1s, are headed,

non by those who originate them, but by those who know best how

to compromise between the old sentiments and the new. The male parent of

English invention both in philosophies and in establishments, is

Bentham: he is the great insurgent, or, in the linguistic communication of

Continental philosophers, the great critical, mind of his age

and state.

We consider this, nevertheless, to be non his highest rubric to

celebrity. Were this all, he were merely to be ranked among the lowest

order of the dictators of head & # 8212 ; the negative, or destructive

philosophers ; those who can comprehend what is false, but non what

is true ; who awaken the human head to the incompatibilities and

absurdnesss of time-sanctioned sentiments and establishments, but

replacement nil in the topographic point of what they take off. We have

no desire to underestimate the services of such individuals: world

have been profoundly indebted to them ; nor will there of all time be a deficiency

of work for them, in a universe in which so many false things are

believed, in which so many which have been true, are believed

long after they have ceased to be true. The qualities, nevertheless,

which fit work forces for comprehending anomalousnesss, without comprehending the

truths which would rectify them, are non among the rarest of

gifts. Courage, verbal acuteness, bid over the signifiers of

debate, and a popular manner, will do, out of the

shallowest adult male, with a sufficient deficiency of fear, a

considerable negative philosopher. Such work forces have ne’er been

desiring in periods of civilization ; and the period in which Bentham

formed his early feelings was decidedly their reign, in

proportion to its barrenness in the more baronial merchandises of the

human head. An age of formalism in the Church and corruptness in

the State, when the most valuable portion of the significance of

traditional philosophies had faded from the heads even of those who

retained from wont a mechanical belief in them, was the clip to

raise up all sorts of doubting doctrine. Consequently, France

had Voltaire, and his school of negative minds, and England

( or instead Scotland ) had the profoundest negative mind on

record, David Hume: a adult male, the distinctive features of whose head

qualified him to observe failure of cogent evidence, and privation of logical

consistence, at a deepness which Gallic skeptics, with their

relatively lame powers of analysis and abstractions stop far

short of, and which German nuance entirely could thoroughly

appreciate, or hope to equal.

If Bentham had simply continued the work of Hume, he would

barely have been heard of in doctrine. for he was far

inferior to Hume in Hume & # 8217 ; s qualities, and was in no regard

fitted to stand out as a metaphysician. We must non look for

nuance, or the power of abstruse analysis, among his

rational features. In the former quality, few great

minds have of all time been so lacking ; and to happen the latter, in

any considerable step, in a head admiting any kindred

with his, we must hold resort to the late Mr. Mill & # 8212 ; a adult male who

united the great qualities of the metaphysicians of the

18th century, with others of a different skin color,

laudably measure uping him to finish and rectify their work.

Bentham had non these curious gifts ; but he possessed others,

non inferior, which were non possessed by any of his precursors ;

which have made him a beginning of visible radiation to a coevals which has

far outgrown their influence, and, as we called him, the head

insurgent mind of an age which has long lost all that they

could overthrow.

To talk of him foremost as a simply negative philosopher & # 8212 ; as

one who refutes unlogical statements, unmaskings sophistry, detects

contradiction and absurdness ; even in that capacity at that place was a

broad field left vacant for him by Hume, and which he has occupied

to an unprecedented extent ; the field of practical maltreatments. This

was Bentham & # 8217 ; s curious state: to this he was called by the

whole set of his temperament: to transport the warfare against

absurdness into things practical. His was an basically practical

head. It was by practical maltreatments that his head was foremost turned

to guess & # 8212 ; by the maltreatments of the profession which was

chosen for him, that of the jurisprudence. He has himself stated what

peculiar maltreatment foremost gave that daze to his head, the kick of

which has made the whole mountain of maltreatment totter ; it was the

usage of doing the client wage for three attendings in the

office of a Maestro in Chancery ; when merely one was given. The jurisprudence,

he found, on scrutiny, was full of such things. But were these

finds of his? No ; they were known to every attorney who

practised, to every justice who sat on the bench, and neither

before nor for long after did they do any evident edginess

to the scrupless of these erudite individuals, nor impede them from

asserting, whenever juncture offered, in books, in parliament, or

on the bench, that the jurisprudence was the flawlessness of ground. During

so many coevalss, in each of which 1000s of educated immature

work forces were in turn placed in Bentham & # 8217 ; s place and with

Bentham & # 8217 ; s chances, he entirely was found with sufficient moral

esthesia and autonomy to state to himself that these

things, nevertheless profitable they might be, were frauds, and that

between them and himself there should be a gulf fixed. To this

rare brotherhood of autonomy and moral esthesia we are indebted

for all that Bentham has done. Sent to Oxford by his male parent at

the remarkably early age of 15 & # 8212 ; required, on admittance, to

declare his belief in the Thirty-nine Articles & # 8212 ; he felt it

necessary to analyze them ; and the scrutiny suggested

consciences, which he sought to acquire removed, but alternatively of the

satisfaction he expected was told that it was non for male childs like

him to put up their judgement against the great work forces of the Church.

After a battle, he signed ; but the feeling that he had done

an immoral act, ne’er left him ; he considered himself to hold

committed a falsity, and throughout life he ne’er relaxed in

his incensed denouncements of all Torahs which command such

falsities, all establishments which attach wagess to them.

By therefore transporting the war of unfavorable judgment and defense, the

struggle with falsity and absurdness, into the field of

practical immoralities, Bentham, even if he had done nil else, would

hold earned an of import topographic point in the history of mind. He

carried on the warfare without intermission. To this, non merely

many of his most savory chapters, but some of the most finished

of his full plants, are wholly devoted: the & # 8216 ; Defence of

Usury & # 8217 ; . the & # 8216 ; Book of Fallacies & # 8217 ; ; and the onslaught upon

Blackstone, published anonymously under the rubric of & # 8216 ; A Fragment

on Government & # 8217 ; , which, though a first production, and of a author

afterwards so much ridiculed for his manner, excited the highest

esteem no less for its composing than for its ideas, and

was attributed by bends to Lord Mansfield, to Lord Camden, and

( by Dr. Johnson ) to Dunning, one of the greatest Masterss of manner

among the attorneies of his twenty-four hours. These Hagiographas are wholly

original ; though of the negative school, they resemble nil

antecedently produced by negative philosophers ; and would hold

sufficed to make for Bentham, among the insurgent minds of

modern Europe, a topographic point particularly his ain. But it is non these

Hagiographas that constitute the existent differentiation between him and

them. There was a deeper difference. It was that they were strictly

negative minds, he was positive: they merely assailed mistake, he

made it a point of scruples non to make so until he thought he

could works alternatively the corresponding truth. Their character was

entirely analytic, his was man-made. They took for their

starting-point the standard sentiment on any topic, dug unit of ammunition it

with their logical implements, pronounced its foundations

faulty, and condemned it: he began de novo, laid his ain

foundations profoundly and steadfastly, built up his ain construction, and

Bade world compare the two ; it was when he had solved the

job himself, or thought he had done so, that he declared all

other solutions to be erroneous. Hence, what they produced will

non last ; it must die, much of it has already perished, with

the mistakes which it exploded: what he did has its ain value, by

which it must outlive all mistakes to which it is opposed. Though

we may reject, as we frequently must, his practical decisions, yet

his premises, the aggregations of facts and observations from

which his decisions were drawn, remain for of all time, a portion of the

stuffs of doctrine.

A topographic point, hence, must be assigned to Bentham among the

Masterss of wisdom, the great instructors and lasting rational

decorations of the human race. He is among those who have enriched

world with imperishable gifts ; and although these do non

exceed all other gifts, nor entitle him to those honours

& # 8216 ; above all Greek, above all Roman celebrity & # 8217 ; , which by a natural

reaction against the disregard and disdain of the ignorant, many

of his supporters were one time disposed to roll up upon him, yet to

decline an look up toing acknowledgment of what he was, on history of what

he was non, is a much worse mistake, and one which, pardonable in

the vulgar, is no longer permitted to any cultivated and

instructed head.

If we were asked to state, in the fewest possible words, what

we conceive to be Bentham & # 8217 ; s topographic point among these great rational

helpers of humanity ; what he was, and what he was non ; what

sort of service he did and did non render to truth ; we should state

he was non a great philosopher, but he was a great reformist in

doctrine. He brought into doctrine something which it greatly

needed, and for privation of which it was at a base. It was non his

philosophies which did this, it was his manner of geting at them. He

introduced into ethical motives and political relations those wonts of idea and

manners of probe, which are indispensable to the thought of

scientific discipline ; and the absence of which made those sections of

enquiry, as natural philosophies had been earlier Bacon, a field of

endless treatment, taking to no consequence. It was non his

sentiments, in short, but his method, that constituted the freshness

and the value of what he did ; a value beyond all monetary value, even

though we should reject the whole, as we unimpeachably must a

big portion, of the sentiments themselves.

Bentham & # 8217 ; s method may be shortly described as the method of

item ; of handling wholes by dividing them into their parts,

abstractions by deciding them into Things, categories and

generalizations by separating them into the persons of which

they are made up ; and interrupting every inquiry into pieces before

trying to work out it. The precise sum of originality of this

procedure, considered as a logical construct & # 8212 ; its grade of

connection with the methods of physical scientific discipline, or with the

old labors of Bacon, Hobbes or Locke & # 8212 ; is non an indispensable

consideration in this gait. Whatever originality at that place was in the

method & # 8212 ; in the topics he applied it to, and in the rigidness

with which he adhered to it, there was the greatest. Hence his

endless categorizations. Hence his luxuriant presentations

of the most acknowledged truths. That slaying, arson,

robbery, are arch actions, he will non take for granted

without cogent evidence ; allow the thing appear of all time so axiomatic, he will

cognize the why and the how of it with the last grade of preciseness ;

he will separate all the different mischievousnesss of a offense,

whether of the first, the 2nd or the 3rd order, viz. , 1.

the immorality to the sick person, and to his personal connections ; 2. the

danger from illustration, and the dismay or painful feeling of

insecurity ; and 3. the disheartenment to industry and utile

chases originating from the dismay, and the problem and resources

which must be expended in guarding off the danger. After this

numbering, he will turn out from the Torahs of human feeling, that

even the first of these immoralities, the agonies of the immediate

victim, will on the mean greatly outweigh the pleasance reaped

by the wrongdoer ; much more when all the other immoralities are taken

into history. Unless this could be proved, he would account the

imposition of penalty indefensible ; and for taking the

problem to turn out it officially, his defense mechanism is, & # 8216 ; there are truths

which it is necessary to turn out, non for their ain interests, because

they are acknowledged, but that an gap may be made for the

response of other truths which depend upon them. It is in this

mode we provide for the response of first rules, which,

one time received, fix the manner for admittance of all other

truths. & # 8217 ; To which may be added, that in this mode besides we

train the head for rehearsing the same kind of dissection

upon inquiries more complicated and of more dubious issue.

It is a sound axiom, and one which all stopping point minds have

felt, but which no 1 before Bentham of all time so systematically

applied, that mistake lurks in generalizations: that the human head is

non capable of encompassing a complex whole, until it has surveyed

and catalogued the parts of which that whole is made up ; that

abstractions are non worlds per Se, but an abridged manner of

showing facts, and that the lone practical manner of covering

with them is to follow them back to the facts ( whether of

experience or of consciousness ) of which they are the look.

Continuing on this rule, Bentham makes short work with the

ordinary manners of moral and political logical thinking. These, it

appeared to him, when hunted to their beginning, for the most portion

terminated in phrases. In political relations, autonomy, societal order,

fundamental law, jurisprudence of nature, societal compact, etc. , were the

mottos: moralss had its correspondent 1s. Such were the

statements on which the gravest inquiries of morality and policy

were made to turn ; non grounds, but allusions to grounds ;

sacramental looks, by which a drumhead entreaty was made to

some general sentiment of world, or to some axiom in familiar

usage, which might be true or non, but the restrictions of which no

one had of all time critically examined. And this satisfied other

people ; but non Bentham. He required something more than sentiment

as a ground for sentiment. Whenever he found a phrase used as an

statement for or against anything, he insisted upon cognizing what

it meant ; whether it appealed to any criterion, or gave hint

of any affair of fact relevant to the inquiry ; and if he could

non happen that it did either, he treated it as an effort on the

portion of the controversialist to enforce his ain single sentiment on

other people, without giving them a ground for it ; a & # 8216 ;

appliance for avoiding the duty of appealing to any

external criterion, and for predominating upon the reader to accept

of the writer & # 8217 ; s sentiment and sentiment as a ground, and that a

sufficient one, for itself. Bentham shall talk for himself on

this topic: the transition is from his first systematic work,

& # 8216 ; Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation & # 8217 ; , and

we could barely cite anything more strongly representing both

the strength and failing of his manner of philosophizing.

It is funny plenty to detect the assortment of innovations work forces

have hit upon, and the assortment of phrases they have brought

frontward, in order to hide from the universe, and, if possible,

from themselves, this really general and hence really pardonable

autonomy.

1. One adult male says, he has a thing made on purpose to state him

what is right and what is incorrect ; and that is called a & # 8216 ; moral

sense & # 8217 ; .. and so he goes to work at his easiness, and says, such a

thing is right, and such a thing is incorrect & # 8212 ; why? & # 8216 ; Because my

moral sense tells me it is. & # 8217 ;

2. Another adult male comes and alters the phrase: go forthing out

moral, and seting in common in the room of it. He so tells you

that his common sense tells him what is right and incorrect, as

certainly as the other & # 8217 ; s moral sense did ; significance by common sense a

sense of some sort or other, which, he says, is possessed by all

world: the sense of those whose sense is non the same as the

writer & # 8217 ; s being struck out as non worth taking. This appliance

does better than the other ; for a moral sense being a new thing,

a adult male may experience about him a good piece without being able to happen

it out: but common sense is every bit old as the creative activity ; and there is

no adult male but would be ashamed to be thought non to hold every bit much of

it as his neighbor. It has another great advantage: by

looking to portion power, it lessens enviousness ; for when a adult male gets up

upon this land, in order to accurse those who differ from

him, it is non by a sic volo sic jubeo, but by a velitis

jubeatis.

3. Another adult male comes, and says, that as to a moral sense

so, he can non happen that he has any such thing: that, nevertheless,

he has an apprehension, which will make rather every bit good. This

apprehension, he says, is the criterion of right and incorrect: it

Tells him so and so. All good and wise work forces understand as he does:

if other work forces & # 8217 ; s apprehensions differ in any portion from his, so

much the worse for them: it is a certain mark they are either

faulty or corrupt.

4. Another adult male says, that there is an ageless and changeless

Rule of Right: that the regulation of right dictates so and so: and

so he begins giving you his sentiments upon anything that comes

uppermost: and these sentiments ( you are to take for granted ) are

so many subdivisions of the ageless regulation of right.

5. Another adult male, or possibly the same adult male ( it is nO affair ) ,

says that there are certain patterns conformable and others

repugnant, to the Fitness of Things ; and so he tells you, at

his leisure, what patterns are conformable, and what repugnant:

merely as he happens to wish a pattern or dislike it.

6. A great battalion of people are continually speaking of the

Law of Nature ; and so they go on giving you their sentiments

about what is right and what is incorrect: and these sentiments, you

are to understand, are so many chapters and subdivisions of the Law

of Nature.

7. Alternatively of the phrase, Law of Nature, you have sometimes

Law of Reason, Right Reason, Natural Justice, Natural Equity,

Good Order. Any of them will make every bit good. This latter is most

used in political relations. The three last are much more tolerable than the

others, because they do non really explicitly claim to be anything

more than phrases: they insist but feebly upon their being looked

upon every bit so many positive criterions of themselves, and seem

content to be taken, upon juncture, for phrases expressive of the

conformance of the thing in inquiry to the proper criterions,

whatever that may be. On most occasions, nevertheless, it will be

better to state public-service corporation. public-service corporation is clearer as mentioning more

explicitly to trouble and pleasance.

8. We have one philosopher, who says, there is no injury in

anything in the universe but in stating a prevarication ; and that if, for

illustration, you were to slay your ain male parent, this would merely be a

peculiar manner of stating, he was non your male parent. Of class when

this philosopher sees anything that he does non wish, he says, it

is a peculiar manner of stating a prevarication. It is stating, that the act

ought to be done, or may be done, when, in truth, it ought non be

done.

9. The fairest and openest of them all is that kind of adult male

who speaks out, and says, I am of the figure of the Elect: now

God himself takes attention to inform the Elect what is right: and

that with so good consequence, and allow them endeavor of all time so, they

can non assist non merely cognizing it but rehearsing it. If hence a

adult male wants to cognize what is right and what is incorrect, he has nil

to make but to come to me.

Few will postulate that this is a absolutely just representation

of the animosity of those who employ the assorted phrases so

divertingly animadverted on ; but that the phrases contain no

statement, salvage what is grounded on the really feelings they are

adduced to warrant, is a truth which Bentham had the eminent

virtue of first indicating out.

It is the debut into the doctrine of human behavior,

of this method of item & # 8212 ; of this pattern of ne’er concluding

about wholes until they have been resolved into their parts, nor

about abstractions until they have been translated into worlds

& # 8211 ; that constitutes the originality of Bentham in doctrine, and

makes him the great reformist of the moral and political subdivision of

it. To what he footings the & # 8216 ; thorough method of categorization & # 8217 ; ,

which is but one subdivision of this more general method, he himself

ascribes everything original in the systematic and luxuriant work

from which we have quoted. The generalizations of his doctrine

itself have small or no freshness: to impute any to the philosophy

that general public-service corporation is the foundation of morality, would connote

great ignorance of the history of doctrine, of general

literature, and of Bentham & # 8217 ; s ain Hagiographas. He derived the thought,

as he says himself, from Helvetius ; and it was the philosophy no

less, of the spiritual philosophers of that age, prior to Reid

and Beattie. We ne’er saw an abler defense mechanism of the philosophy of

public-service corporation than in a book written in defense of Shaftesbury, and

now small read & # 8212 ; Brown & # 8217 ; s & # 8216 ; Essaies on the Characteristics & # 8217 ; ; and

in Johnson & # 8217 ; s celebrated reappraisal of Soame Jenyns, the same philosophy

is set away as that both of the writer and of the referee. In

all ages of doctrine one of its schools has been useful & # 8211 ;

non merely from the clip of Epicurus, but long earlier. It was by

mere accident that this sentiment became connected in Bentham with

his curious method. The useful philosophers antecedent to

him had no more claims to the method than their adversaries. To

refer, for case, to the Epicurean doctrine, harmonizing to

the most complete position we have of the moral portion of it, by the

most complete bookman of antiquity, Cicero ; we ask any one

who has read his philosophical Hagiographas, the & # 8216 ; De Finibus & # 8217 ; for

case, whether the statements of the Epicureans do non, merely as

much as those of the Stoics or Platonists, consist of mere

rhetorical entreaties to common impressions, to eikita and simeia

alternatively of tekmiria, impressions picked up as it were casually, and

when true at all, ne’er so narrowly looked into as to determine

in what sense and under what restrictions they are true. The

application of a existent inductive doctrine to the jobs of

moralss, is every bit unknown to the Epicurean moralists as to any of the

other schools ; they ne’er take a inquiry to pieces, and articulation

issue on a definite point. Bentham surely did non larn his

winnow and anatomising method from them.

This method Bentham has eventually installed in doctrine ; has

made it henceforth imperative on philosophers of all schools. By

it he has formed the minds of many minds, who either

ne’er adopted, or have abandoned, many of his curious sentiments.

He has taught the method to work forces of the most opposite schools to

his ; he has made them perceive that if they do non prove their

philosophies by the method of item, their antagonists will. He has

therefore, it is non excessively much to state, for the first clip introduced

preciseness of idea into moral and political doctrine. Alternatively

of taking up their sentiments by intuition, or by conclusion

from premises adopted on a mere unsmooth position, and couched in

linguistic communication so obscure that it is impossible to state precisely whether

they are true or false, philosophers are now forced to understand

one another, to interrupt down the generalization of their propositions,

and fall in a precise issue in every difference. This is nil less

than a revolution in doctrine. Its consequence is bit by bit going

evident in the Hagiographas of English minds of every assortment of

sentiment, and will be felt more and more in proportion as

Bentham & # 8217 ; s Hagiographas are diffused, and as the figure of heads to

whose formation they contribute is multiplied.

It will of course be presumed that of the fruits of this

great philosophical betterment some part at least will hold

been reaped by its writer. Armed with such a powerful instrument,

and exerting it with such straightforwardness of purpose ; cultivating the

field of practical doctrine with such untired and such

consistent usage of a method right in itself, and non adopted by

his predecessors ; it can non he but that Bentham by his ain

enquiries must hold accomplished something considerable. And so,

it will be found, he has ; something non merely considerable, but

extraordinary ; though but small compared with what he has left

undone, and far short of what his sanguine and about boyish

illusion made him blandish himself that he had accomplished. His

curious method, laudably calculated to do clear minds, and

certain 1s to the extent of their stuffs, has non equal

efficaciousness for doing those stuffs complete. It is a security

for truth, but non for fullness ; or instead, it is a

security for one kind of fullness, but non for another.

Bentham & # 8217 ; s method of puting out his topic is admirable as a

preservative against one sort of narrow and partial positions. He

Begins by puting before himself the whole of the field of

enquiry to which the peculiar inquiry belongs, and divides

down boulder clay he arrives at the thing he is in hunt of ; and therefore by

in turn rejecting all which is non the thing, he bit by bit

works out a definition of what it is. This, which he calls the

thorough method, is every bit old as doctrine itself. Plato owes

everything to it, and does everything by it ; and the usage made of

it by that great adult male in his Dialogues, Bacon, in one of those

pregnant logical intimations scattered through his Hagiographas, and so

much neglected by most of his assumed followings, pronounces to

be the nearest attack to a true inductive method in the antediluvian

doctrine. Bentham was likely non cognizant that Plato had

anticipated him in the procedure to which he excessively declared that he

owed everything. By the pattern of it, his guesss are

rendered eminently systematic and consistent ; no inquiry, with

him, is of all time an insulated one ; he sees every topic in connection

with all the other topics with which in his position it is related,

and from which it requires to be distinguished ; and as all that

he knows, in the least degree allied to the topic, has been

marshalled in

an orderly mode before him, he does non, like

people who use a looser method, forget and overlook a thing on

one juncture to retrieve it on another. Hence there is likely

no philosopher of so broad a scope, in whom there are so few

incompatibilities. If any of the truths which he did non see, had

come to be seen by him, he would hold remembered it everyplace

and at all times, and would hold adjusted his whole system to it.

And this is another admirable quality which he has impressed upon

the best of the heads trained in his wonts of idea: when

those heads open to acknowledge new truths, they digest them every bit fast as

they receive them.

But this system, excellent for maintaining before the head of the

mind all that he knows, does non do him cognize plenty ; it does

non do a cognition of some of the belongingss of a thing suffice

for the whole of it, nor render a frozen wont of appraising a

complex object ( though of all time so carefully ) in merely one of its

facets, tantamount to the power of contemplating it in all. To

give this last power, other qualities are required: whether

Bentham possessed those other qualities we now have to see.

Bentham & # 8217 ; s head, as we have already said, was eminently

synthetical. He begins all his enquiries by saying nil to

he known on the topic, and reconstructs all doctrine Bachelor of Arts

initio, without mention to the sentiments of his predecessors.

But to construct either a doctrine or anything else, there must be

stuffs. For the doctrine of affair, the stuffs are the

belongingss of affair ; for moral and political doctrine, the

belongingss of adult male, and of adult male & # 8217 ; s place in the universe. The

cognition which any enquirer possesses of these belongingss,

constitutes a bound beyond which, as a moralist or a political

philosopher, whatever be his powers of head, he can non make.

Cipher & # 8217 ; s synthesis can be more complete than his analysis. If in

his study of human nature and life he has left any component out,

so, wheresoever that component exerts any influence, his

decisions will neglect, more or less, in their application. If he

has left out many elements, and those really of import, his labor

may be extremely valuable ; he may hold mostly contributed to that

organic structure of partial truths which, when completed and corrected by one

another, represent practical truth ; but the pertinence of his

system to pattern in its ain proper form will be of an

extremely limited scope.

Human nature and human life are broad topics, and whoever

would ship in an endeavor necessitating a thorough cognition of

them, has need both of big shops of his ain, and of all AIDSs

and contraptions from elsewhere. His makings for success

will be relative to two things: the grade in which his ain

nature and fortunes supply them with a right and complete

image of adult male & # 8217 ; s nature and fortunes ; and his capacity of

deducing visible radiation from other heads.

Bentham failed in deducing visible radiation from other heads. His

Hagiographas contain few hints of the accurate cognition of any

schools of believing but his ain ; and many cogent evidence of his full

strong belief that they could learn him nil worth cognizing. For

some of the most celebrated of old minds, his disdain

was unmeasured. In about the lone transition of the & # 8216 ; Deontology & # 8217 ;

which, from its manner, and from its holding before appeared in

print, may be known to be Bentham & # 8217 ; s, Socrates, and Plato are

spoken of in footings straitening to his great supporters ; and the

incapacity to appreciate such work forces, is a fact absolutely in unison

with the general wonts of Bentham & # 8217 ; s head. He had a phrase,

expressive of the position he took of all moral guesss to which

his method had non been applied, or ( which he considered as the

same thing ) non founded on a acknowledgment of public-service corporation as the moral

criterion ; this phrase was & # 8216 ; obscure generalizations & # 8217 ; . Whatever

presented itself to him in such a form, he dismissed as unworthy

of notice, or brood upon merely to denounce as absurd. He did non

attentiveness, or instead the nature of his head prevented it from

happening to him, that these generalizations contained the whole

unanalysed experience of the human race.

Unless it can be asserted that world did non cognize anything

until logisticians taught it to them that until the last manus has

been put to a moral truth by giving it a metaphysically precise

look, all the old rough-hewing which it has undergone

by the common mind at the suggestion of common wants and

common experience is to travel for nil ; it must be allowed, that

even the originality which can, and the bravery which dares,

think for itself, is non a more necessary portion of the

philosophical character than a thoughtful respect for old

minds, and for the corporate head of the human race. What has

been the sentiment of world, has been the sentiment of individuals of

all piques and temperaments, of all fondnesss and

prepossessions, of all assortments in place, in instruction, in

chances of observation and enquiry. No 1 enquirer is all

this ; every enquirer is either immature or old, rich or hapless, sallow

or healthy, married or single, brooding or active, a poet or

a logician, an antediluvian or a modern, a adult male or a adult female ; and if a

believing individual, has, in add-on, the inadvertent distinctive features

of his single manners of idea. Every circumstance which

gives a character to the life of a human being, carries with it

its curious prejudices ; its peculiar installations for comprehending some

things, and for losing or burying others. But, from points of

position different from his, different things are perceptible ; and

none are more likely to hold seen what he does non see, than

those who do non see what he sees. The general sentiment of world

is the norm of the decisions of all heads, stripped so

of their choicest and most abstruse ideas, but freed from

their turns and fondnesss: a net consequence, in which everybody & # 8217 ; s

point of position is represented, cipher & # 8217 ; s predominant. The

corporate head does non perforate below the surface, but it sees

all the surface ; which profound minds, even by ground of their

reconditeness, frequently fail to make: their intenser position of a thing in

some of its facets deviating their attending from others.

The hardiest assertor, hence, of the freedom of private

judgement the keenest sensor of the mistakes of his predecessors,

and of the inaccuracies of current manners of idea & # 8212 ; is the

really individual who most demands to strengthen the weak side of his ain

mind, by survey of the sentiments of world in all ages and

states, and of the guesss of philosophers of the manners of

thought most opposite to his ain. It is at that place that he will happen

the experiences denied to himself & # 8212 ; the balance of the truth

of which he sees but half & # 8212 ; the truths, of which the mistakes he

detects are normally but the hyperboles. If, like Bentham, he

brings with him an improved instrument of probe, the

greater is the chance that he will happen ready prepared a

rich copiousness of unsmooth ore, which was simply waiting for that

instrument. A adult male of clear thoughts errs grievously if he imagines

that whatever is seen confusedly does non be: it belongs to

him, when he meets with such a thing, to chase away the mist, and repair

the lineations of the obscure signifier which is looming through it.

Bentham & # 8217 ; s disdain, so, of all other schools of minds ;

his finding to make a doctrine entirely out of the

stuffs furnished by his ain head, and by heads like his ain ;

was his first disqualification as a philosopher. His 2nd, was

the rawness of his ain head as a representative of

cosmopolitan human nature. In many of the most natural and strongest

feelings of human nature he had no understanding ; from many of its

graving tool experiences he was wholly cut off ; and the module by

which one head understands a head different from itself, and

throws itself into the feelings of that other head, was denied

him by his lack of Imagination.

With Imagination in the popular sense, bid of imagination and

metaphorical look, Bentham was, to a certain grade,

endowed. For privation, so, of poetical civilization, the images with

which his illusion supplied him were rarely beautiful, but they were

quaint and humourous, or bold, physical, and intense: transitions

might be quoted from him both of playful sarcasm, and of

declamatory fluency, rarely surpassed in the Hagiographas of

philosophers. The Imagination which he had non, was that to which

the name is by and large appropriated by the best authors of the

present twenty-four hours ; that which enables us, by a voluntary attempt, to

gestate the absent as if it were present, the fanciful as if it

were existent, and to cloth it in the feelings which, if it were

so existent, it would convey along with it. This is the power by

which one homo being enters into the head and fortunes of

another. This power constitutes the poet, in so far as he does

anything but tunefully arrant his ain existent feelings. It

constitutes the playwright wholly. It is one of the components

of the historiographer ; by it we understand other times ; by it Guizot

interprets to us the in-between ages ; Nisard, in his beautiful

Surveies on the ulterior Latin poets, topographic points us in the Rome of the

Julius caesars ; Michelet disengages the typical characters of the

different races and coevalss of world from the facts of

their history. Without it cipher knows even his ain nature,

farther than fortunes have really tried it and called it

out ; nor the nature of his fellow-creatures, beyond such

generalisations as he may hold been enabled to do from his

observation of their outward behavior.

By these bounds, consequently, Bentham & # 8217 ; s cognition of homo

nature is bounded. It is entirely empirical ; and the empiricist philosophy of

1 who has had small experience. He had neither internal

experience nor external ; the lull, even tenor of his life, and

his good health of head, conspired to except him from both. He

ne’er knew prosperity and hardship, passion nor repletion. he

ne’er had even the experiences which sickness gives ; he lived

from childhood to the age of 85 in boylike wellness. He

cognize no dejection, no weightiness of bosom. He ne’er felt life a

sore and a weary burthen. He was a male child to the last.

Self-consciousness, that devil of the work forces of mastermind of our clip,

from Wordsworth to Byron, from Goethe to Chateaubriand, and to

which this age owes so much both of its cheerful and its mournful

wisdom, ne’er was awakened in him. How much of human nature

slumbered in him he knew non, neither can we cognize. He had ne’er

been made alive to the unobserved influences which were moving on

himself, nor accordingly on his fellow-creatures. Other ages and

other states were a clean to him for intents of direction. He

measured them but by one criterion ; their cognition of facts, and

their capableness to take right positions of public-service corporation, and unify all

other objects in it. His ain batch was cast in a coevals of the

leanest and barrenest work forces whom England had yet produced, and he

was an old adult male when a better race came in with the present

century. He saw consequently in adult male small but what the vulgarest

oculus can see ; recognized no diversenesss of character but such as

he who runs may read. Knowing so small of human feelings, he

knew still less of the influences by which those feelings are

formed: all the more elusive workings both of the head upon

itself, and of external things upon the head, escaped him ; and no

one, likely, who, in a extremely instructed age, of all time attempted to

give a regulation to all human behavior, set out with a more limited

construct either of the bureaus by which human behavior is, or

of those by which it should be, influenced.

This, so, is our thought of Bentham. He was a adult male both of

singular gifts for doctrine, and of singular

lacks for it: fitted, beyond about any adult male, for pulling

from his premises, decisions non merely right, but sufficiently

precise and specific to be practical: but whose general

construct of human nature and life furnished him with an

remarkably slight stock of premises. It is obvious what would be

likely to be achieved by such a adult male ; what a mind, therefore gifted

and therefore disqualified, could make in doctrine. He could, with

near and accurate logic, run half-truths to their effects

and practical applications, on a scale both of illustriousness and of

diminutiveness non antecedently exemplified ; and this is the character

which descendants will likely delegate to Bentham.

We express our sincere and well-considered strong belief when we

state, that there is barely anything positive in Bentham & # 8217 ; s

doctrine which is non true: that when his practical decisions

are erroneous, which in our sentiment they are really frequently, it is

non because the considerations which he urges are non rational

and valid in themselves, but because some more of import

rule, which he did non perceive, supersedes those

considerations, and turns the graduated table. The bad portion of his Hagiographas

is his resolute denial of all that he does non see, of all truths

but those which he recognizes. By that entirely has he exercised any

bad influence upon his age ; by that he has, non created a school

of deniers, for this is an nescient bias, but put himself at

the caput of the school which exists ever, though it does non

ever happen a great adult male to give it the countenance of doctrine.

thrown the mantle of mind over the natural inclination of work forces

in all ages to deny or belittle all feelings and mental provinces

of which they have no consciousness in themselves.

The truths which are non Bentham & # 8217 ; s, which his doctrine

takes no history of, are many and of import ; but his

non-recognition of them does non set them out of being ; they

are still with us, and it is a relatively easy undertaking that is

reserved for us, to harmonise those truths with his. To reject

his half of the truth because he overlooked the other half, would

be to fall into his mistake without holding his alibi. For our ain

portion, we have a big tolerance for one-eyed work forces, provided their

one oculus is a perforating one: if they saw more, they likely

would non see so keenly, nor so thirstily prosecute one class of

enquiry. Almost all rich venas of original and dramatic

guess have been opened by systematic half-thinkers: though

whether these new ideas drive out others as good, or are

peacefully superadded to them, depends on whether these

half-thinkers are or are non followed in the same path by

complete minds. The field of adult male & # 8217 ; s nature and life can non be

excessively much worked, or in excessively many waies ; until every ball is

turned up the work is imperfect ; no whole truth is possible but

by uniting the points of position of all the fractional truths,

nor, hence, until it has been to the full seen what each fractional

truth can make by itself.

What Bentham & # 8217 ; s fractional truths could make, there is no such

good agencies of demoing as by a reappraisal of his doctrine: and such

a reappraisal, though necessarily a most brief and general one, it is

now necessary to try.

The first inquiry in respect to any adult male of guess is,

what is his theory of human life? In the heads of many

philosophers, whatever theory they have of this kind is latent,

and it would be a disclosure to themselves to hold it pointed out

to them in their Hagiographas as others can see it, unconsciously

modeling everything to its ain similitude. But Bentham ever knew

his ain premises, and made his reader know them: it was non his

usage to go forth the theoretic evidences of his practical

decisions to speculation. Few great minds have afforded the

agencies of delegating with so much certainty the exact construct

which they had formed of adult male and of adult male & # 8217 ; s life.

Man is conceived by Bentham as a being susceptible of

pleasances and strivings, and governed in all his behavior partially by

the different alterations of opportunism, and the passions

normally classed as selfish, partially by understandings, or

on occasion aversions, towards other existences. And here

Bentham & # 8217 ; s construct of human nature Michigans. He does non except

faith ; the chance of Godhead wagess and penalties he

includes under the caput of & # 8217 ; self-regarding involvement & # 8217 ; , and the

devotional feeling under that of understanding with God. But the whole

of the impelling or keeping rules, whether of this or of

another universe, which he recognizes, are either self-love, or love

or hatred towards other animate existences. That there might be no

uncertainty of what he thought on the topic, he has non left us to

the general grounds of his Hagiographas, but has drawn out a & # 8216 ; Table

of the Springs of Action & # 8217 ; , an express numbering and

categorization of human motivations, with their assorted names,

laudatory, scathing, and impersonal: and this tabular array, to be found

in Part I of his gathered plants, we recommend to the survey of

those who would understand his doctrine.

Man is ne’er recognized by him as a being capable of prosecuting

religious flawlessness as an terminal ; of desiring, for its ain interest,

the conformance of his ain character to his criterion of

excellence, without hope of good or fright of immorality from other

beginning than his ain inward consciousness. Even in the more

limited signifier of Conscience, this great fact in human nature

flights him. Nothing is more funny than the absence of

acknowledgment in any of his Hagiographas of the being of

scruples, as a thing distinct from philanthropic gift, from fondness

for God or adult male, and from self-interest in this universe or in the

following. There is a studied abstention from any of the phrases

which, in the oral cavities of others, import the recognition of such

a fact. If we find the words & # 8216 ; Conscience & # 8217 ; , & # 8216 ; Principle & # 8217 ; , & # 8216 ; Moral

Rectitude & # 8217 ; , & # 8216 ; Moral Duty & # 8217 ; , in his Table of the Springs of Action,

it is among the synonymes of the & # 8216 ; love of repute & # 8217 ; . with an

hint as to the two former phrases, that they are besides

sometimes synonymous with the spiritual motivation, or the motivation of

understanding. The feeling of moral approbation or condemnation

decently so called, either towards ourselves or our

fellow-creatures, he seems unaware of the being of ; and

neither the word dignity, nor the thought to which that word is

appropriated, occurs even one time, so far as our remembrance serves

us, in his whole Hagiographas.

Nor is it merely the moral portion of adult male & # 8217 ; s nature, in the strict

sense of the term & # 8212 ; the desire of flawlessness, or the feeling of

an blessing or of an impeaching scruples & # 8212 ; that he overlooks ;

he but faintly recognizes, as a fact in human nature, the chase

of any other ideal terminal for its ain interest. The sense of honor, and

personal self-respect & # 8212 ; that feeling of personal ecstasy and

debasement which acts independently of other people & # 8217 ; s sentiment,

or even in rebelliousness of it ; the love of beauty, the passion of the

creative person ; the love of order, of congruousness, of consistence in all

things, and conformance to their terminal ; the love of power, non in

the limited signifier of power over other human existences, but abstract

power, the power of doing our wills effectual ; the love of

action, the thirst for motion and activity, a rule

barely of less influence in human life than its antonym, the

love of easiness: None of these powerful components of human nature

are thought worthy of a topographic point among the & # 8216 ; Springs of Action & # 8217 ; ; and

though there is perchance no 1 of them of the being of which

an recognition might non be found in some corner of Bentham & # 8217 ; s

Hagiographas, no decisions are of all time founded on the recognition.

Man, that most complex being, is a really simple one in his eyes.

Even under the caput of understanding, his acknowledgment does non widen

to the more complex signifiers of the feeling & # 8212 ; the love of loving,

the demand of a sympathizing support, or of objects of esteem

and fear. If he thought at all of any of the deeper feelings

of human nature, it was but as foibles of gustatory sensation, with

which the moralist no more than the legislator had any concern,

farther than to forbid such as were arch among the

actions to which they might opportunity to take. To state either that

adult male should, or that he should non, take pleasance in one thing,

displeasure in another, appeared to him every bit much an act of

absolutism in the moralist as in the political swayer.

It would be most unfair to Bentham to surmise ( as

shockable and passionate antagonists are disposed in such instances to

make ) that this image of human nature was copied from himself ;

that all those components of humanity which he rejected from

his tabular array of motivations, were desiring in his ain chest. The unusual

strength of his early feelings of virtuousness, was, as we have seen,

the original cause of all his guesss ; and a baronial sense of

morality, and particularly of justness, ushers and pervades them

all. But holding been early accustomed to maintain before his head & # 8217 ; s

oculus the felicity of world ( or instead of the whole sentient

universe ) , as the lone thing desirable in itself, or which rendered

anything else desirable, he confounded wholly disinterested feelings

which he found in himself, with the desire of general felicity:

merely as some spiritual authors, who loved virtuousness for its ain interest

as much possibly as work forces could make, habitually confounded their love

of virtuousness with their fright of snake pit. It would hold required greater

nuance than Bentham possessed, to separate from each other,

feelings which, from long wont, ever acted in the same

way ; and his privation of imaginativeness prevented him from reading

the differentiation, where it is legible plenty, in the Black Marias of

others.

Consequently, he has non been followed in th