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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
UTILITARIANISM
BY
JEREMY BENTHAM.
Price Threepence.
LONDON:
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,.
28 Stonecutter. Street, E.O.
1890.
�LONDON:
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY G. W. FOOTE,
28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
�Mo Co
PUBLISHER ’S
NOTE.
The following reprint is from Bentham’s Introduction to the
Principles of Morals and Legislation. This is one of his most
important and characteristic works. The first edition was
printed in 1780, and published in 1789. “A New Edition,
corrected by the Author ” was published in 1823. This ex
explains the different styles observable in the footnotes.
Bentham’s early writing was lucid and direct, his plater
writing was somewhat turbid and much involved.
This reprint comprises the first two chapters of Bentham’s
work. Two or three footnotes, of no present importance or
application, -have been omitted. For .the sake of convenience
two very long footnotes to the second chapter have been
printed as appendices.
A title had to be selected for the reprint, and Utilitarianism,
has been chosen. There is no danger of its being confused
with the larger work of John Stuart Mill.
��CHAPTER I.
OF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY.
L Nature has placed mankind 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. On the one hand the standard of right and
wrong, on the other the chain of causesand effects, are fastened to
their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all
we think : every effort we can make to throw off our subjection,
will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man
may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will
remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility
*
recognises this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation
of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of
felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which
* Note by the Author, July 1822.
To this denomination has of late been added, or substituted, the
greatest happiness or greatest felicity principle : this for shortness, instead
of saying at length that principle which states the greatest happiness of
all those whose interest is in question, as being the right and proper,
and only right and proper and universally desirable, end of human action :
of human action in every situation, and in particular in that of a func
tionary or set of functionaries exercising the powers of Government. The
word utility does not so clearly point to the ideas of pleasure and pain as
the words happiness and felicity do : nor does it lead us to the considera
tion of the number of the interests affected ; to the number, as being the
circumstance, which contributes, in the largest proportion, to the forma
tion of the standard here in question ; the standard of right and wrong,
by which alone the propriety of human conduct, in every situation, can
with propriety be tried. This want of a sufficiently manifest connexion
between the ideas of happiness and pleasure on the one hand, and the idea
of utility on the other, I nave every now and then found operating, and
with but too much efficiency, as a bar to the acceptance, that might
otherwise have been given, to this principle.
�6
Uti litarianism.
attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in
caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.
But enough of metaphor and declamation : it is not by such
means that moral science is to be improved.
II. The principle of utility is the foundation of the present
work; it will be proper therefore at the outset to give an ex
plicit and determinate account of what is meant by it. By
the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves
*
or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the
tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the
happiness of the party whose interest is in question : or, what
is the same thing in other words, to promote or to oppose that
happiness. I say of every action whatsoever; and therefore
not only of every action of a private individual, but of every
measure of government.
III. By utility is meant that property in any object, whereby
it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happi
ness (all this in the present case comes to the same thing) or
(what comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening
of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose
interest is considered : if that party be the community in
general, then the happiness of the community: if a particular
individual, then the happiness of that individual.
IV. The interest of the community is one of the most
general expressions that can occur in the phraseology of
morals : no wonder that the meaning of it is often lost. When
it has a meaning, it is this. The community is a fictitious body,
composed of the individual persons who are considered as con
stituting as it were its members. The interest of the com
* The word principle is derived from the Latin principium : which
seems to be compounded of the two words primus, first, or chief, and
cipium, a termination which seems to be derived from capio, to take, as in
mancipium, municipium; to which are analogous auceps, forceps and
Others. It is a term of very vague and very extensive signification : it is
applied to any thing which is conceived to serve as a foundation or
beginning to any series of operations : in some cases, of physical opera
tions ; but of mental operations in the present case.
The principle here in question may be taken for an act of the mind ; a
sentiment; a sentiment of approbation ; a sentiment which, when applied
■ to an action, approves of its utility, as that quality of it by which the
measure of approbation or disapprobation bestowed upon it ought to be
governed.
�Uti litarianism.
7
munity then is, what ?—the sum of the interests of the several
members who compose it.
V. It is in vain to talk of the interest of the community,
without understanding what is the interest of the individual.
*
A thing is said to promote the interest, or to be for the interest,
of an individual, when it tends to add to the sum total of his
pleasures : or, what comes to the same thing, to diminish the
sum total of his pains.
VI. An action then may be said to be conformable to the
principle of utility, or, for shortness sake, to utility (meaning
with respect to the community at large) when the tendency it
has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than
any it has to diminish it.
VII. A measure of government (which is but a particular
kind of action, performed by a particular- person or persons)
may be said to be conformable to or dictated by the principle
of utility, when in like manner the tendency which it has to
augment the happiness of the community is greater than any
which it has to diminish it.
VIII. When an action, or in particular a measure of govern
ment, is supposed by a man to be conformable to the principle
or utility, it may(be convenient, for the purposes of discourse, to
imagine a kind of law or dictate, called a law or dictate of
utility: and to speak of the action in question, as being con
formable to such law or dictate.
IX. A man may be said to be a partisan of the principle of
utility, when the approbation or disapprobation he annexes to
any action, or to any measure, is determined by and propor
tioned to the tendency which he conceives it to have to augment
or to diminish the happiness of the community: or in other
words, to its conformity or unconformity to the laws or dictates
of utility.
X. Of an action that is conformable to the principle of utility,
one may always say eithei- that it is one that ought to be done,
©r at least that it is not one that ought not to be done. One
may say also, that it is right it should be done ; at least that it
is not wrong it should be done : that it is a right action; at
least that it is not a wrong action. When thus interpreted, the
* Interest is one of those words, which not having any superior genus,
eannot in the ordinary way be defined.
�Utilitarianism.
words ought, and right and wrong, and others of that stamp,
have a meaning: when otherwise, they have none.
XI. Has the rectitude of this principle been ever formally
contested? It should seem that it had, by those who have not
known what they have been meaning. Is it susceptible of any
direct proof ? it should seem not: for that which is used to
prove everything else, cannot itself be proved: a chain of
proofs must have their commencement somewhere. To give
.such proof is as impossible as it is needless.
XII. Not that there is or ever has been that human creature
breathing, however stupid or perverse, who has not on many,
perhaps on most occasions of his life, deferred to it. By the
natural constitution of the human frame, on most occasions of
their lives men in general embrace this principle, without
thinking of it: if not for the ordering of their own actions, yet
for the trying of their own actions, as well as of those of other
men. There have been, at the same time, not many, perhaps,
even of the most intelligent, who have been disposed to embrace
it purely and without reserve. There are even few who have
not taken some occasion or other to quarrel with it, either on
account of their not understanding always how to apply it, or
on account of some prejudice or other which they were afraid
to examine into, or could not bear to part with. For such is
the stuff that man is made of : in principle and in practice, in
a right track, and in a wrong one, the rarest of all human
qualities is consistency.
XIII. When a man attempts to combat the principle of
utility, it is with reasons drawn, without his being aware of it,
from that very principle itself. His arguments, if they prove
*
anything, prove not that the principle is wrong, but that,
according to the applications he supposes to be made of it, it is
misapplied. Is it possible for a man to move the earth ?
Yes ; but he must first find out another earth to stand upon.
XIV. To disprove the propriety of it by arguments is im
possible ; but, from the causes that have been mentioned, or
from some confused or partial view of it, a man may happen to
_ * “ The principle of utility (I have heard it said), is a dangerous prin
ciple : it is dangerous on certain occasions to consult it.” This is as
much as to say, what ? that it is not consonant to utility, to consult
utility : in short, that it is not consulting it, to consult it.
�Utilitarianism.
9
be disposed not to relish it. Where this is the case, if he
thinks the settling of his opinions on such a subject worth the
trouble, let him take the following steps, and at length, perhaps,
h® may come to reconcile himself to it.
1. Let him settle with himself, whether he would wish to
discard this principle altogether; if so, let him considei’ what
it is that all his reasonings (in matters of politics especially)
can amount to ?
2. If he would, let him settle with himself, whether he would
judge and act without any principle, or whether there is any
other he would judge and act by ?
3. If there be, let him examine and satisfy himself whethei’
the principle he thinks he has found is really any separate in
telligible principle; or whether it be not a mere principle in
words, a kind of phrase, which at bottom expresses neither
more nor less than the mere averment of his own unfounded
sentiments ; that is, what in another person he might be apt to
call caprice?
4. If he is inclined to think that his own approbation or dis
approbation, annexed to the idea of an act, without any regard
to its consequences, is a sufficient foundation for him to judge
and act upon, let him ask himself whether his sentiment is to
be a standard of right and wrong, with respect to every other
man, or whether every man’s sentiment’has the same privilege
©f being a standard to itself ?
5. In the first case, let him ask himself whether his prin
ciple is not despotical, and hostile to all the rest of human race ?
6. In the second case, whether it is not anarchial, and
whether at this rate there are not as many different standards
of right and wrong as there are men ? and whether even to the
same man, the same thing, which is right to-day, may not
(without the least change in its nature) be wrong to-morrow ?
and whether the same thing is not right and wrong in the same
place at the same time ? and in either case, whether all argu
ment is not at an end ? and whether, when two men have said,
* I like this,” and “ I don’t like it,” they can (upon such a
principle) have anything more to say ?
7. If he should have said to himself, No : for that the senti
ment which he proposes as a standard must be grounded on
reflection, let him say on what particulars the reflection is to
�10
Utilitarianism.
turn ? if on particulars having relation to the utility of the act,
then let him say whether this is not deserting his own prin
ciple, and borrowing assistance from that very one in opposition
to which he sets it up : or if not on those particulars, on what
other particulars ?
8. If he should be for compounding the matter, and adopting
his own principle in part, and the principle of utility in part,
let him say how far he will adopt it ?
9. When he has settled with himself where he will stop, then
let him ask himself how he justifies to himself the adopting it
so far ? and why he will not adopt it any farther ?
10. Admitting any other principle than the principle of
utility to be a right principle, a principle that it is right for a
man to pursue; admitting (what is not true) that the word
right can have a meaning without reference to utility, let him
say whether there is any such thing as a motive that a man can
have to pursue the dictates of it: if there is, let him say what
that motive is, and how it is to be distinguished from those
which enforce the dictates of utility; if not, then lastly let
him say what it is this other principle can be good for ?
�Uti litarianism.
11
CHAPTER II.
OF PRINCIPLES ADVERSE TO THAT OF UTILITY.
I. If the principle of utility be a right principle to be
governed by, and that in all cases, it follows from ’what has
been just observed, that whatever principle differs from it in
any case must necessarily be a wrong one. To prove any other
principle, therefore, to be a wrong one, there needs no more
than just to show it to be what it is, a principle of which the
dictates are in some point or other different from those of the
principle of utility : to state it is to confute it.
II. A principle may be different from that of utility in two
ways: 1. By being constantly opposed to it: this is the case
with a principle which may be termed the principle of asceti
*
cism 2. By being sometimes opposed to it, and sometimes
not, as it may happen : this is the case with another, which
may be termed the principle of sympathy and antipathy.
III. By the principle of asceticism I mean that principle,
which, like the principle of utility, approves or disapproves of
any action, according to the tendency which it appears to have
* Ascetic is a term that has been, sometimes applied to monks. It comes
from a G-reek word which signifies exercise. The practices by which
monks sought to distinguish themselves from other men were called their
exercises. These exercises consisted in so many contrivances they had
for tormenting themselves. By this they thought to ingratiate them
selves with the Deity. For the Deity, said they, is a Being of infinite
benevolence : now a Being of the most ordinary benevolence is pleased
to see others make themselves as happy as they can : therefore to make
ourselves as unhappy as we can is the way to please the Deity. If any
body asked them, what motive they could find for doing all this ? Oh ! said
they, you are not to imagine that we are punishing ourselves for nothing :
we know very well what we are about. You are to know, that for every
grain of pain it costs us now, we are to have a hundred grains of pleasure
by and by. The case is, that God loves to see us torment ourselves at
present; indeed he has as good as told us so. But this is done only to
try us, in order just to see how we should behave : which it is plain he
could not know, without making the experiment. Now then, from the
satisfaction it gives him to see us make ourselves as unhappy as we can
make ourselves in this present life, we have a sure proof of the satis
faction it will give him to see us as happy as he can make us in a life to
come.
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Utilitarianism.
to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose
interest is in question; but in an inverse manner: approving
of actions in as far as they tend to diminish his happiness;
disapproving of them in as far as they tend to augment it.
IV. It is evident that any one who reprobates any the least
particle of pleasure, as such, from whatever source derived, is
pro tanto a partisan of the principle of asceticism. It is only
upon that principle, and not from the principle of utility, that
the most abominable pleasure which the vilest of malefactors
ever reaped from his crime would be to be reprobated, if it
stood alone. The case is, that it never does stand alone; but
is necessarily followed by such a quantity of pain (or, what
comes to the same thing, such a chance for a certain quantity
of pain), that the pleasure in comparison of it, is as nothing:
and this is the true and sole, but perfectly sufficient, reason for
making it a ground for punishment.
V. There are two classes of men of very different com
plexions, by whom the principle of asceticism appears to have
been embraced; the one a set of moralists, the other a set of
religionists. Different accordingly have been the motives
which appear to have recommended it to the notice of these
different parties. Hope, that is the prospect of pleasure, seems
to have animated the former : hope, the aliment of philosophic
pride : the hope of honor and reputation at the hands of men.
Fear, that is the prospect of pain, the latter : fear, the offspring
of superstitious fancy : the fear of future punishment at the
hands of a splenetic and revengeful Deity. I say in this case
fear: for of the invisible future, fear is more powerful than
hope. These circumstances characterise the two different
parties among the partisans of the principle of asceticism ; the
parties and their motives different, the principle the same.
VI. The religious party, however, appear to have carried it
farther than the philosophical: they have acted more con
sistently and less wisely. The philosophical party have
scarcely gone farther than to reprobate pleasure : the religious
party have frequently gone so far as to make it a matter of
merit and of duty to court pain. The philosophical party have
hardly gone farther than the making pain a matter of indiffer
ence. It is no evil, they have said: they have not said, it is a
good. They have not so much as reprobated all pleasure in
�Utilitarianism.
13
tike tamp. They have discarded only what they have called
the gross ; that is, such as are organical, or of which the origin
is easily traced up to such as are organical: they have even
cherished and magnified the refined. Yet this, however, not
under the name of pleasure : to cleanse itself from the sordes
of its impure original, it was necessary it should change its
name : the honorable, the glorious, the reputable, the becoming,
the honestum, the decorum, it was to be called: in short, any
thing but pleasure.
VII. From these two sources have flowed the doctrines from
which the sentiments of the bulk of mankind have all along
received a tincture of this principle; some from the philo
sophical, some from the religious, some from both. Men of
education more frequently from the philosophical, as more
suited to the elevation of their sentiments : the vulgar more
frequently from the superstitious, as more suited to the narrow
ness of their intellect, undilated by knowledge : and to the
abjectness of their condition, continually open to the attacks
of fear. The tinctures, however, derived from the two sources,
would naturally intermingle, insomuch that a man would not
always know by which of them he was most influenced : and
they would often serve to corroborate and enliven one another.
It was this conformity that made a kind of alliance between
parties of a complexion otherwise so dissimilar : and disposed
them to unite upon various occasions against the common
enemy, the partisan of the principle of utility, whom they
joined in branding with the odious name of Epicurean.
VIII. The principle of asceticism, however, with whatever
fWarmth it may have been embraced by its partizans as a rule of
private conduct, seems not to have been carried to any consider
able length, when applied to the business of government. In a
few instances it has been carried a little way by the philosophical
party ; witness the Spartan regimen. Though then, perhaps, it
maybe considered as having been a measure of security : and an
application, though a precipitate and perverse application, of
the principle of utility. Scarcely in any instances, to any con
siderable length, by the religious: for the various monastic
orders, and the societies of the Quakers, Dumplers, Moravians,
and other religionists, have been free societies, whose regimen
Bo man has been astricted to without the intervention of his
�14
Ut i litarian ism.
own consent. Whatever merit a man may have thought there
would be in making himself miserable, no such notion seems ever
to have occurred to any of them, that it may be a merit, much less
a duty, to make others miserable : although it should seem that
if a certain quantity of misery were a thing so desirable, it would
not matter much whether it were brought by each man upon
himself, or by one man upon another. It is true, that from the
same source from whence, among the religionists, the attach
ment to the principle of asceticism took its rise, flowed other
doctrines and practices, from which misery in abundance was
produced in one man by the instrumentality of another : wit
ness the holy wars, and the persecutions for religion. But the
passion for producing misery in these cases proceeded upon
some special ground : the exercise of it was confined to persons
of particular description: they were tormented, not as men,
but as heretics and infidels. To have inflicted the same
miseries on their fellow-believers and fellow-sectaries, would
have been as blameable in the eyes even of these religionists,
as in those of a partisan of the principle of utility. For a man
to give himself a certain number of stripes was indeed meri
torious : but to give the same number of stripes to another
man, not consenting, would have, been a sin. We read of
saints, who for the good of their souls, and the mortification
of their bodies, have voluntarily yielded themselves a prey to
vermin : but though many persons of this class have wielded
the reins of empire, we read of none who have set themselves
to work, and made laws on purpose, with a view of stocking
the body politic with the breed of highwaymen, housebreakers,
or incendiaries. If at any time they have suffered the nation
to be preyed upon by swarms of idle pensioners, or useless
placemen, it has rather been from negligence and imbecility,
than from any settled plan for oppressing and plundering of
the people. If at any time they have sapped the sources of
national wealth, by cramping commerce, and driving the
inhabitants into emigration, it has been with other views, and
in pursuit of other ends. If they have declaimed against the
pursuit of pleasure, and the use of wealth, they have commonly
stopped at declamation: they have not, like Lycurgus, made
express ordinances for the purpose of banishing the precious
metals. If they have established idleness by a law, it has
�Utilitarianism.
15
been not because idleness, the mother of vice and misery, is
itself a virtue, but because idleness (say they) is the road to
holiness. If under the notion of fasting, they have joined in
the plan of confining their subjects to a diet, thought by some
to be of the most nourishing and prolific nature, it has been
not for the sake of making them tributaries to the nations by
whom that diet was to be supplied, but for the sake of mani
festing their own power, and exercising the obedience of the
people. If they have established, or suffered to be established,
punishments for the breach of celibacy, they have done no
more than comply with the petitions of those deluded rigorists.
who, dupes to the ambitious and deep-laid policy of their
rulers, first laid themselves under that idle obligation by
a vow.
IX. The principle of asceticism seems originally to have been
the reverie of certain hasty speculators, who having perceived,
(Jr fancied, that certain' pleasures, when reaped in certain cir
cumstances, have, at the long run, been attended with pains more
than equivalent to them, took occasion to quarrel with every
thing that offered itself under the name of pleasure. Having
then got thus far, and having forgot the point which they set
out from, they pushed on, and went so much further as to think
it meritorious to fall in love with pain. Even this, we see, is
at bottom but the principle of utility misapplied.
X. The principle of utility is capable of being consistently
pursued; and it is but tautology to say, that the more con
sistently it is pursued, the better it must ever be for human
kind. The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can
be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one
tenth part of the inhabitants of this earth pursue it consistently,
and in a day’s time they will have turned it into a hell.
XI. Among principles adverse to that of utility, that which
*
at this day seems to have most influence in matters of govern
ment, is what may be called the principle of sympathy and
antipathy. By the principle of sympathy and antipathy, I
mean that principle which approves or disapproves of certain
actions, not on account of their tending to augment the happi
ness, nor yet on account of their tending to diminish the
See Appendix I.
�16
Utilitarianism.
happiness of the party whose interest is in question, but merely
because a man finds himself disposed to approve or disapprove
of them: holding up that approbation or disapprobation as a
sufficient reason for itself, and disclaiming the necessity of
looking out for any extrinsic ground. Thus far in the general
department of morals : and in the particular department of
politics, measuring out the quantum (as well as determining
the ground) of punishment,by the degree of the disapprobation.
XII. It is manifest, that this is rather a principle in name
than in reality : it is not a positive principle of itself, so much
as a term employed to signify the negation of all principle.
What one expects to find in a principle is something that points
out some external consideration, as a means of warranting and
guiding the internal sentiments of approbation and disappro
bation : this expectation is but ill fulfilled by a proposition,
which does neither more nor less than hold up each of those
sentiments as a ground and standard for itself.
XIII. In looking over the catalogue of human actions (says
a partisan of this principle) in order to determine which of
them are to be marked with the seal, of disapprobation, you
need but to take counsel of your own feelings : whatever you
find in yourself a propensity to condemn, is wrong for that
very reason. For the same reason it is also meet for punish
ment : in what proportion it is adverse to utility, or whether it
be adverse to utility at all, is a matter that makes no difference.
In that same proportion also is it meet for punishment: if you
hate much, punish much : if you hate little, punish little :
punish as you hate. If you hate not at all, punish not at all:
the fine feelings of the soul are not to be overborne and
tyrannised by the harsh and rugged dictates of political utility.
XIV. The various systems that have been formed concerning
the standard of right and wrong, may all be reduced to the
principle of sympathy and antipathy. One account may serve
for all of them. They consist all of them in so many con
trivances for avoiding the obligation of appealing to any external
standard, and for prevailing upon the reader to accept of the
author’s sentiment or opinion as a reason for itself. The
phrases different, but the principle the same.
*
See Appendix II.
�Utilitarianism.
17
XV. It is manifest, that the dictates of this principle will
frequently coincide with those of utility, though perhaps with
out intending any such thing. Probably more frequently than
not: and hence it is that the business of penal justice is carried
on upon that tolerable sort of footing upon which we see it
carried on in common at this day. For what more natural or
more general ground of hatred to a practice can there be, than
the mischievousness of such practice ? What all men are
exposed to suffer by, all men will be disposed to hate. It is
far yet, however, from being a constant ground : for when a
man suffers, it is not always that he knows what it is he suffers
by. A man may suffer grievously, for instance, by a new tax,
without being able to trace up the cause of his sufferings to the
injustice of some neighbor, who has eluded the payment of an
old one.
XVI. The principle of sympathy and antipathy is most apt
to err on the side of severity. It is for applying punishment
in many cases which deserve none : in many cases which
deserve some, it is for applying more than they deserve.
There is no incident imaginable, be it ever so trivial, and so
remote from mischief, from which this principle may not extract
a ground of punishment. Any difference in taste : any differ
ence in opinion : upon one subject as well as upon another.
No disagreement so trifling which perseverance and altercation
will not render serious. Each becomes in the other’s eyes an
enemy, and, if laws permit, a criminal. This is one of the
*
*_King James the First of England had conceived a violent antipathy
against Arians : two of whom he burnt. This gratification he procured
himself without much difficulty : the notions of the times were favorable
to it. He wrote a furious book against Vorstius, for being what was
called an Arminian : for Vorstius was at a distance. He also wrote a
furious book called A Counterblast to Tobacco, against the use of that drug
which Sir Walter Raleigh had then lately introduced. Had the notions
of the times co-operated with him, he would have burnt the Anabaptist
and the smoker of tobacco in the same fire. However he had the satis
faction of putting Raleigh to death afterwards, though for another crime
Disputes concerning the comparative excellence of French and Italian
music have occasioned very serious bickerings at Paris. One of the
parties would not have been sorry (says Mr. D’Alembert) to have
brought government into the quarrel. Pretences were sought after and
Urged. Long before that, a dispute of like nature, and of at least equal
warmth, had been kindled at London upon the comparative merits of two
©omposers at London ; where riots between the approvers and disapprovers of a new play are, at this day, not unfrequent. The ground of
quarrel between the Big-endians and the Little-endians in the fable, was
B
�18
Utilitarianism.
circumstances by which the human race is distinguished (not
much indeed to its advantage) from the brute creation.
XVII. It is not, however, by any means unexampled for this
principle to err on the side of lenity. A near and perceptible
mischief moves antipathy. A remote and imperceptible mis
chief, though not less real, has no effect. Instances in proof of
this will occur in numbers in the course of the work. It
would be breaking in upon the order of it to give them here.
XVIII. It may be wondered, perhaps, that in all this while
no mention has been made of the theological principle; meaning
that principle which professes to recur for the standard of right
and wrong to the will of God. But the case is, this is not in
fact a distinct principle. It is never anything more or less
than one or other of the three before-mentioned principles presenting itself under another shape. The will of God here
meant cannot be his revealed will, as contained in the sacred
writings : for that is a system which nobody ever thinks of
recurring to at this time of day, for the details of political
administration : and even before it can be applied to the details
of private conduct, it is universally allowed, by the most
eminent divines of all persuasions, to stand in need of pretty
ample interpretations ; else to what use are the works of those
divines ? And for the guidance of these interpretations, it is
also allowed, that some other standard must be assumed. The
will then which is meant on this occasion, is that which may
be called the presumptive will: that is to say, that which is
presumed to be his will on account of the conformity of its
dictates to those of some other principle. What then may be
this other principle ? it must be one or other of the three men
tioned above : for there cannot, as we have seen, be any more.
It is plain, therefore, that, setting revelation out of the questipn,
no light can ever be thrown upon the standard of right and
wrong, by anything that can be said upon the question, what
is God’s will. We may be perfectly sure, indeed, that what
not more frivolous than many an one which has laid empires desolate.
In Russia, it is said, there was a time when some thousands of persons
lost their lives in a quarrel, in which the government had taken part,
about the number of fingers to be used in making the sign of the cross.
This was in days of yore: the ministers of Catherine II. are better
instructed than to take any other part in such disputes, than of preventing
the parties concerned from doing one another a mischief.
�Utilitarianism.
19'
ever is right is conformable to the will of God: but so far is
that from answering the purpose of showing us what is right,that it is necessary to know first whether a thing is right, in
order to know from thence whether it be conformable to the
will of God.
*
XIX. There are two things which are very apt to be con
founded, but which it imports us carefully to distinguish :—the
motive or cause, which, by operating on the mind of an indi
vidual, is productive of any act: and the ground or reason
which warrants a legislator, or other bystander, in regarding
that act with an eye of approbation. When the act happens,,
in the particular instance in question, to be productive of
effects which we approve of, much more if we happen to
observe that the same motive may frequently be productive, inother instances, of the like effects, we are apt to transfer our'
approbation to the motive itself, and to assume, as the just
ground for the approbation we bestow on the act, the circum
stance of its originating from that motive. It is in this way
that the sentiment of antipathy has often been considered as a
just ground of action. Antipathy, for instance, in such or such
a case, is the cause of an action which is attended with good
effects: but this does not make it a right ground of action in
that case, any more than in any other. Still farther. Not only
the effects are good, but the agent sees beforehand that they
will be so. This may make the action indeed a perfectly righ
action : but it does not make antipathy a right ground of action
* The principle of theology refers everything to God’s pleasure. Bu
what is God’s pleasure ? God does not, he confessedly does not now
either speak or write to us. How then are we to know what is his
pleasure ? By observing what is our own pleasure, and pronouncing it
to be his. Accordingly, what is called the pleasure of God, is and must
necessarily be (revelation apart) neither more nor less than the good
pleasure of the person, whoever he be, who is pronouncing what he
believes, or pretends, to be God’s pleasure. How know you it to be God’s
pleasure that such or such an act should be abstained from? whence
come you even to suppose as much ? “ Because the engaging in it would,
I imagine, be prejudicial upon the whole to the happiness of mankind ” ■
says the partisan of the principle of utility : “ Because the commission of
it is attended with a gross and sensual, or at least with a trifling and
transient satisfaction ” ; says the partisan of the principle of asceticism :
“ Because I detest the thoughts of it ; and I cannot, neither ought I to
be called upon to tell why,” says he who proceeds upon the principle of
antipathy. In the words of one or other of these must that person neces
sarily answer (revelation apart) who professes to take for his standard
the will of God.
�20
TJti litarianism.
For the same sentiment of antipathy, if implicitly deferred to,
may he, and very frequently is, productive of the very worst
■effects. Antipathy, therefore, can never be a right ground of
action. No more, therefore, can resentment, which, as will be
seen more particularly hereafter, is but a modification of anti
pathy. The only right ground of action, that can possibly
subsist, is, after all, the consideration of utility, which, if it is
a right principle of action, and of approbation, in any one case,
is so in every other. Other principles in abundance, that is,
other motives, may be the reasons why such and such an act
has been done : that is, the reasons or causes of its being
done : but it is this alone that can be the reason why it might
or ought to have been done. Antipathy or resentment requires
always to be regulated, to prevent its doing mischief: to be
regulated by what ? always by the principle of utility. The
principle of utility neither requires nor admits of any other
regulator than itself.
�IJtilitarianism.
21
APPENDIX I. to CHAPTER II.
[Bentham’s long footnote to “Among principles adverse,” in Section XT.,
is here printed as an Appendix.]
The following Note was first printed in January 1789.
It ought rather to have been styled, more extensively, the
principle of caprice. Where it applies to the choice of actions
to be marked out for injunction or prohibition, for reward or
punishment (to stand, in a word, as subjects for obligations to
be imposed), it may indeed with propriety be termed, as in the
text, the principle of sympathy and antipathy. But this apellative does not so well apply to it, when occupied in the choice
of the events which are to serve as sources of title with respect
to rights: where the actions prohibited and allowed, the obli
gations and rights, being already fixed, the only question is,
under what circumstances a man is to be invested with the one
or subjected to the other ? from what incidents occasion is to
be taken to invest a man, or to refuse to invest him, with the
on®, or to subject him to the other? In this latter case it may
more appositely be characterised by the name of the phantastic
principle. Sympathy and antipathy are affections of the
sensible faculty. But the choice of titles with respect to rights,
especially with respect to proprietary rights, upon grounds un
connected with utility, has been in many instances the work,
not of the affections but of the imagination.
When, in justification of an article of English Common Law,
calling uncles to succeed in certain cases in preference to
fathers, Lord Coke produced a sort of ponderosity he had dis
covered in rights, disqualifying them from ascending in a
straight line, it was not that he loved uncles particularly, or
hated fathers, but because the analogy, such as it was, was
what his imagination presented him with, instead of a reason,
and because, to a judgment unobservant of the standard of
utility, or unacquainted with the art of consulting it, where
affection is out of the way, imagination is the only guide.
�22
Utilitarianism.
When I know not what ingenions grammarian invented the
proposition Delegatus non potest delegare, to serve as a rule of
law, it was not surely that he had any antipathy to delegates
of the second order, or that it was any pleasure to him to think
of the ruin which, for want of a manager at home, may befal
the affairs of a traveller, whom an unforeseen accident has
deprived of the object of his choice : it was, that the incon
gruity, of giving the same law to objects so contrasted as
active and passive are, was not to be surmounted, and that
-atus chimes, as well as it contrasts, with -are.
When that inexorable maxim (of which the dominion is no
more to be defined, than the date of its birth, or the name of
its father, is to be found), was imported from England for the
government of Bengal, and the whole fabric of judicature was
-crushed by the thunders of ex post facto justice, it was not
surely that the prospect of a blameless magistracy perishing
in prison afforded any enjoyment to the unoffended authors of
their misery; but that the music of the maxim, absorbing the
whole imagination, had drowned the cries of humanity along
with the dictates of common sense. Fiat Justitia, ruat coelum,
®ays another maxim, as full of extravagance as it is of har
mony : Go heaven to wreck—so justice be but done :—and
what is the ruin of kingdoms, in comparison of the wreck of
heaven ?
So again, when the Prussian chancellor, inspired with the
wisdom of I not what Roman sage, proclaimed in good Latin,
for the edification of German ears, Servitus servitutis nondatur
[Cod. Fred. tom. ii., par. 2., liv. 2., tit. x., § 6, p. 308] it was
not that he had conceived any aversion to the life-holder who,
during the continuance of his term, should wish to gratify a
neighbor with a right of way or water, or to the neighbor who
should wish to accept of the indulgence; but that, to a juris
prudential ear, -tus -tutis sound little less melodious than -atus
-are. Whether the melody of the maxim was the real reason
of the rule, is not left open to dispute : for it is ushered in by
the conjuction quia, reason’s appointed harbinger: quia ser
vitus servitutus non datur.
Neither would equal melody have been produced, nor indeed
could similar melody have been called for, in either of these
instances, by the opposite provision : it is only when they are
�Utilitarianism.
23
opposed to general rules, and not when by their conformity
they are absorbed in them, that more specific ones can obtain
a separate existence. Delegatus potest delegare, and Servitus
servitutis datur, provisions already included under the
general adoption of contracts, would have been as unnecessary
to the apprehension and the memory, as, in comparison of their
energetic negatives, they are insipid to the ear.
Were the inquiry diligently made, it would be found that
the goddess of harmony has exercised more influence, however
latent, over the dispensations of Themis, than her most dili
gent historiographers, or even her most passionate panegyrists,
seem to have been aware of. Every one knows, how, by the
ministry of Orpheus, it was she who first collected the sons of
wen beneath the shadow of the sceptre: yet, in the midst of
continual experience, men seem yet to learn, with what suc
cessful diligence she has labored to guide it in its course.
Every one knows that measured numbers were the language
of the infancy of law : none seem to have observed, with what
imperious sway they have governed her maturer age. In
English jurisprudence in particular, the connexion betwixt law
and music, however less perceived than in Spartan legislation,
is not perhaps less real nor less close. The music of the Office,
though not of the same kind, is not'less musical in its kind,
than the music of the Theatre ; that which hardens the heart,
than that which softens it—sostenutos as long, cadences as
sonorous; and those governed by rules, though not yet pro
mulgated, not less determinate, Search indictments, pleadings,
p roceedings in chancery, conveyances : whatever trespasses
you may find against truth or common sense, you will find
none against the laws of harmony. The English Liturgy,
justly as this quality has been extolled in that sacred office,
possesses not a greater measure of it, than is commonly to be
found in an English Act of Parliament. Dignity, simplicity,
brevity, precision, intelligibility, possibility of being retained
or so much as apprehended, every thing yields to Harmony.
Volumes might be filled, shelves loaded, with the sacrifices
that are made to this insatiate power. Expletives, her ministers
in Grecian poetry, are not less busy, though in different shape
and bulk, in English legislation—in the former they are mono
syllables, in the latter they are whole lines.
�24
Utilitarianism.
To return to the principle of sympathy and antipathy: a
term preferred at first, on account of its impartiality, to the
principle of caprice. The choice of an appellative, in the
above respects too narrow, was owing to my not having at that
time extended my views over 1he civil branch of the law, any
otherwise than as I had found it inseparably involved in the
penal. But when we come to the former branch we shall see
the phantastic principle making at least as great a figure there,
as the principle of sympathy and antipathy in the latter.
In the days of Lord Ooke the light of utility can scarcely be
said to have as yet shone upon the face of Common Law. If
a faint ray of it, under the name of the argumentum ab inconvenienti, is to be found in a list of about twenty topics exhi
bited by that great lawyer as the co-ordinate leaders of that
all-perfect system, the admission, so circumstanced, is as sure
a proof of neglect, as, to the statues of Brutus and Cassius,
exclusion was a cause of notice. It stands neither in the front
nor in the rear, nor in any post of honor; but huddled in
towards the middle, without the smallest mark of preference.
[Ooke, Littleton, 11. a.] Nor is this Latin inconvenience by
any means the same thing with the English one. It stands dis
tinguished from mischief: and because by the vulgar it is
taken for something less bad, it is given by the learned as
something worse. The law prefers a mischief to an inconveni
ence, says an admired maxim, and the more admired, because
as nothing is expressed by it, the more is supposed to be
understood.
Not that there is any avowed, much less a constant opposi
tion, between the prescriptions of utility and the operations o f
the common law—such constancy we have seen to be too much
even for ascetic fervor. [Supra, par. x.] From time to time instinct
would unavoidably betray them into the paths of reason
instinct which, however it may be cramped, can never be killed
by education. The cobwebs spun out of the materials brought
together by “ the competition of opposite analogies,” can never
have ceased being warped by the silent attraction of the
rational principle, though it should have been, as the needle
is by the magnet, without the privity of conscience.
�Uti litarianism.
25
APPENDIX II. to CHAPTER II.
[Bentham’s second long footnote to the end of Section XIV. is also
printed here as an appendix.]
It is curious enough to observe the variety of inventions
that men hit upon, and the variety of phrases they have brought
forward, in order to conceal from the world, and, if possible,
from themselves, this very general and therefore very par
donable self-sufficiency.
1. One man says, he has a thing made on purpose to tell him
what is right and what is wrong ; and that it is called a moral
sense: and then he goes to work at his ease, and says, such
a thing is right and such a thing is wrong—why ? “ because
my moral sense tells me it is.”
2. Another man comes and alters the phrase : leaving out
moral, and putting in common, in the room of it. He then tells
you, that his common sense teaches him what is right and
wrong, as surely as the other’s moral sense did: meaning by
common sense, a sense of some kind or other, which, he says,
is possessed by all mankind : the sense of those, whose sense
is not the same as the author’s, being struck out of the account
as not worth taking. This contrivance does better than the
other; for a moral sense, being a new thing, a man may feel
about him a good while without being able to find it out: but
common sense is as old as the creation; and there is no man
but would be ashamed to be thought not to have as much of it
as his neighbors. It has another great advantage : by appear
ing to share power, it lessens envy: for when a man gets up
upon this ground, in order to anathematise those who differ
from him, it is not by a sic volo sic jubeo, but by a velitis
'jubeatis.
3. Another man comes, and says, that as to a moral sense
indeed, he cannot find that he has any such thing; that however he has an understanding, which will do quite as well-
�26
Utilitarianism.
This understanding, he says, is the standard of right and
wrong : it tells him so and so. All good and wise men under
stand as he does : if other men’s understandings differ in any
point from his, so much the worse for them : it is a sure sign
they are either defective or corrupt.
4. Another man says, that there is an eternal and immutable
Rule of Right: that that rule of right dictates so and so : and
then he begins giving you his sentiments upon any thing that
comes uppermost: and these sentiments (you are to take for
granted) are so many branches of the eternal rule of right.
5. Another man, or perhaps the same man (it’s no matter)
says, that there are certain practices conformable, and others
repugnant, to the Fitness of Things; and then he tells you, at
his leisure, what practices are conformable and what repug
nant : just as he happens to like a practice or dislike it.
6. A great multitude of people are continually talking of the
Law of Nature ; and then they go on giving you their sentiments
about what is right and what is wrong; and these sentiments,
you are to understand, are so many chapters and sections of
the Law of Nature.
7. Instead of the phrase, Law of Nature, you have sometimes
Law of Reason, Right Reason, Natural Justice, Natural Equity,
Good Order. Any of them will do equally well. This latter
is ‘ most used in politics. The three last are much more
tolerable than the others, because they do not very explicitly
claim to be any thing more than phrases: they insist but
feebly upon the being looked upon as so many positive
standards of themselves, and seem content to be taken, upon
occasion, for phrases expressive of the conformity of the thing
in question to the proper standard, whatever that may be. On
most occasions, however, it will be better to say utility : utility
is clearer, as referring more explicitly to pain and pleasure.
8. We have one philosopher, who says, there is no harm in
any thing in the world but in telling a lie: and that if, for
example, you were to murder youi' own father, this would only
b e a particular way of saying, he was not your father. Of
course, when this philosopher sees any thing that he does not
like, he says, it is a particular way of telling a lie. It is
saying, that the act ought to be done, or may be done, when,
i n truth, it ought not to be done.
�Utilitarianism.
9. The fairest and openest of them all is that sort of man
who speaks out, and says, I am of the number of the Elect:
now God himself takes care to inform the Elect what is right:
and that with so good effect, and let them strive ever so, they
cannot help not only' knowing it but practising it. If there
fore a man wants to know what is right and what is wrong, he
has nothing to do but to come to me.
It is upon the principle of antipathy that such and such acts
are often reprobated on the score of their being unnatural: the
practice of exposing children, established among the Greeks
and Romans, was an unnatural practice. Unnatural, when it
means any thing, means unfrequent: and there it means some
thing ; although nothing to the present purpose. But here it
means no such thing: for the frequency of such acts is perhaps
the great complaint. It therefore means nothing; nothing I
mean, which there is in the act itself. All it can serve to
express is, the disposition of the person who is talking of it :
the disposition he is in to be angry at the thoughts of it. Does
it merit his anger? Very likely it may : but whether it does
or no is a question, which, to be answered rightly, can only be
answered upon the principle of utility.
Unnatural is as good a word as moral sense, or common
sense ; and would be as good a foundation for a system. Such
an act is unnatural; that is, repugnant to nature : for I do not
like to practise it; and, consequently, do not practise it. It is
therefore repugnant to what ought to be the nature of every
body else.
The mischief comfnon to all these ways of thinking and
arguing (which, in truth, as we have seen, are but one and the
same method, couched in different forms of wordsj is their
serving as a cloke, and pretence, and aliment, to despotism :
if not a despotism in practice, a despotism however in dis
position : which is but too apt, when pretence and power offer,
to show itself in practice. The consequence is, that with
intentions very commonly of the purest kind, a man becomes
a torment either to himself or his fellow-creatures. If he be
of the melancholy cast, he sits in silent grief, bewailing their
blindness and depravity : if of the irascible, he declaims with
fury and virulence against all who differ from him; blowing
the coals of fanaticism, and branding with the charge of
�28
Utilitarianism.
corruption and insincerity, every man who does not think, or
*
profess to think, as he does.
If such a man happens to possess the advantage of style, his
book may do a considerable deal of mischief before the nothing
ness of it is understood.
These principles, if such they can be called, it is more
frequent to see applied to morals than to politics : but their
influence extends itself to both. In politics, as well as morals,
a man will be at least equally glad of a pretence for deciding
any question in the manner that best pleases him, without the
trouble of inquiry. If a man is an infallible judge of what is
right and wrong in the actions of private individuals, why not
in the measures to be observed by public men in the direction
of those actions ? Accordingly (not to mention other chimeras)
I have more than once known the pretended law of nature set
up in legislative debates, in opposition to arguments derived
from the principle of utility.
“ But is it never, then, from any other considerations than
those of utility, that we derive our notions’of right and wrong?”
I do not know : I do not care. Whether a moral sentiment
can be originally conceived from any other source than a view
of utility, is one question: whether upon examination and
reflection it can, in point of fact, be actually persisted in and
justified on any other ground, by a person reflecting within
himself, is another : whether in point of right it can properly
be justified on any other ground, by a person addressing him
self to the community is a third. The two first are questions
of speculation: it matters not, comparatively speaking, how
they are decided. The last is a question of practice : the
decision of it is of as much importance as that of any can be.
“ I feel in myself,” (say you) “ a disposition to approve of such
or such an action in a moral view : but this is not owing to any
notions I have of its being a useful one to the community. I do
not pretend to know whether it beauseful one or not : it may be,
for aught I know, a mischievous one.” “ But is it then,” (say I)
“ a mischievous one ? examine; and if you can make yourself
sensible that it is so, then, if duty means anything, that is,
moral duty, it is your duty at least to abstain from it: and
more than that, if it is what lies in your power, and can be
done without too great a sacrifice, to endeavor to prevent it.
�Utilitarianism.
29
It is not your cherishing the notion of it in your bosom, and
giving it the name of virtue, that will excuse you.”
“ I feel in myself,” (say you again) “ a disposition to detest
such or such an action in a moral view; but this is not owing
to any notions I have of its being a mischievous one to the
community. I do not pretend to know whether it be a mis
chievous one or not: it may be not a mischievous one : it may
be, for aught I know, an useful one.”—“May it indeed,” (say I)
“an useful one ? but let me tell you then,that unless duty, and
right and wrong, be just what you please to make them, if it
really be not a mischievous one, and anybody has a mind to
do it, it is no duty of yours, but on the contrary, it would be
very wrong in you, to take upon you to prevent him : detest it
within yourself as much as you please; that may be a very
.good reason (unless it be also a useful one) for your not doing
it yourself: but if you go about, by word or deed, to do any
thing to hinder him, or make him suffer for it, it is you and
not he, that have done wrong; it is not youi- setting yourself
to blame his conduct, or branding it with the name of vice,
that will make him culpable, or you blameless. Therefore, if
you can make yourself content that he shall be of one mind,
and you of another, about that matter, and so continue, it is
well: but if nothing will serve you, but that you and he
must needs be of the same mind, I’ll tell you what you have
to do: it is for you to get the better of you antipathy, not
for him to truckle to it.”
�I
�
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Utilitarianism
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Bentham, Jeremy [1748-1832]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 29 p. ; 19 cm.
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1890
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Utilitarianism
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Utilitarianism), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
NSS
Utilitarianism