INTRODUCTION
TO THE
PRINCIPLES
OF
MORALS
AND
LEGISLATION
by
Jeremy Bentham
1781
PREFACE.
The following sheets were, as the note[1] on the opposite page expresses,
printed so long ago as the year 1780. The design, in pursuance of which they
were written, was not so extensive as that announced by the present title. They
had at that time no other destination than that of serving as an introduction
to a plan of a penal code in terminus, designed to follow them, in the same
volume.
The body of the work had received its completion according to the then
present extent of the author's views, when, in the investigation of some flaws
he had discovered, he found himself unexpectedly entangled in an unsuspected
corner of the metaphysical maze. A suspension, at first not apprehended to be
more than a temporary one, necessarily ensued: suspension brought on coolness,
and coolness, aided by other concurrent causes, ripened into disgust.
Imperfections pervading the whole mass had already been pointed out
by the sincerity of severe and discerning friends; and conscience had certified
the justness of their censure. The inordinate length of some of the chapters,
the apparent inutility of others, and the dry and metaphysical turn of the
whole, suggested an apprehension, that, if published in its present form, the
work would contend under great disadvantages for any chance, it might on other
accounts possess, of being read, and consequently of being of use.
But, though in this manner the idea of completing the present work
slid insensibly aside, that was not by any means the case with the considerations
which had led him to engage in it. Every opening, which promised to afford the
lights he stood in need of, was still pursued: as occasion arose the several
departments connected with that in which he had at first engaged, were
successively explored; insomuch that, in one branch or other of the pursuit,
his researches have nearly embraced the whole field of legislation.
Several causes have conspired at present to bring to light, under this
new title, a work which under its original one had been imperceptibly, but as
it had seemed irrevocably, doomed to oblivion. In the course of eight years, materials
for various works, corresponding to the different branches of the subject of
legislation, had been produced, and some nearly reduced to shape: and, in every
one of those works, the principles exhibited in the present publication had
been found so necessary, that, either to transcribe them piece-meal, or to exhibit
them somewhere where they could be referred to in the lump, was found unavoidable.
The former course would have occasioned repetitions too bulky to be employed
without necessity in the execution of a plan unavoidably so voluminous: the
latter was therefore indisputably the preferable one.
To publish the materials in the form in which they were already printed,
or to work them up into a new one, was therefore the only alternative: the
latter had all along been his wish, and, had time and the requisite degree of
alacrity been at command, it would as certainly have been realized. Cogent considerations,
however, concur, with the irksomeness of the task, in placing the
accomplishment of it at present at an unfathomable distance.
Another consideration is, that the suppression of the present work,
had it been ever so decidedly wished, is no longer altogether in his power. In
the course of so long an interval, various incidents have introduced copies into
various hands, from some of which they have been transferred by deaths and other
accidents, into others that are unknown to him. Detached, but considerable
extracts, have even been published, without any dishonourable
views (for the name of the author was very honestly subjoined to them), but without
his privity, and in publications undertaken without his knowledge.
It may perhaps be necessary to add, to complete his excuse for offering
to the public a work pervaded by blemishes, which have not escaped even the
author's partial eye, that the censure, so justly bestowed upon the form, did
not extend itself to the matter.
In sending it thus abroad into the world with all its imperfections
upon its head, he thinks it may be of assistance to the few readers he can
expect, to receive a short intimation of the chief particulars, in respect of
which it fails of corresponding with his maturer
views. It will thence be observed how in some respects it fails of quadrating
with the design announced by its original title, as in others it does with that
announced by the one it bears at present.
An introduction to a work which takes for its subject the totality
of any science, ought to contain all such matters, and such matters only, as belong
in common to every particular branch of that science, or at least to more
branches of it than one. Compared with its present title, the present work fails
in both ways of being conformable to that rule.
As an introduction to the principles of morals, in addition to the
analysis it contains of the extensive ideas signified by the terms pleasure, pain,
motive, and disposition, it ought to have given a similar analysis of the not
less extensive, though much less determinate, ideas annexed to the terms emotion,
passion, appetite, virtue, vice, and some others, including the names of the
particular virtues and vices. But as the true, and, if he conceives right, the
only true ground-work for the development of the latter set of terms, has been
laid by the explanation of the former, the completion of such a dictionary, so
to style it, would, in comparison of the commencement, be little more than a
mechanical operation.
Again, as an introduction to the principles of legislation in general,
it ought rather to have included matters belonging exclusively to the civil
branch, than matters more particularly applicable to the penal: the latter
being but a means of compassing the ends proposed by the former. In preference
therefore, or at least in priority, to the several chapters which will be found
relative to punishment, it ought to have exhibited a set of propositions which
have since presented themselves to him as affording a standard for the
operations performed by government, in the creation and distribution of
proprietary and other civil rights. He means certain axioms[2] of what may be
termed mental pathology, expressive of the connection betwixt the feelings of
the parties concerned, and the several classes of incidents, which either call
for, or are produced by, operations of the nature above mentioned.
The consideration of the division of offences, and everything else
that belongs to offences, ought, besides, to have preceded the consideration of
punishment: for the idea of punishment presupposes the idea of offence: punishment,
as such, not being inflicted but in consideration of offence.
Lastly, the analytical discussions relative to the classification of
offences would, according to his present views, be transferred to a separate treatise,
in which the system of legislation is considered solely in respect of its form:
in other words, in respect of its method and terminology.
In these respects the performance fails of coming up to the author's
own ideas of what should have been exhibited in a work, bearing the title he
has now given it. viz. that of an Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation. He knows however of no other that would be less unsuitable: nor in
particular would so adequate an intimation of its actual contents have been
given, by a title corresponding to the more limited design, with which it was
written: viz. that of serving as an introduction to a penal code.
Yet more. Dry and tedious as a great part of the discussions it contains
must unavoidably be found by the bulk of readers, he knows not how to regret
the having written them, nor even the having made them public. Under every
head, the practical uses, to which the discussions contained under that head
appeared applicable, are indicated: nor is there, he believes, a single proposition
that he has not found occasion to build upon in the penning of some article or
other of those provisions of detail, of which a body of law, authoritative or
unauthoritative, must be composed. He will venture to specify particularly, in
this view, the several chapters shortly characterized by the words Sensibility,
Actions, Intentionality, Consciousness, Motives, Dispositions, Consequences.
Even in the enormous chapter on the division of offenses, which,
notwithstanding the forced compression the plan has undergone in several of its
parts, in manner there mentioned, occupies no fewer than one hundred and four
closely printed quarto pages,[3] the ten concluding ones are employed in a
statement of the practical advantages that may be reaped from the plan of
classification which it exhibits. Those in whose sight the Defence
of Usury has been fortunate enough to find favour,
may reckon as one instance of those advantages the discovery of the principles
developed in that little treatise. In the preface to an anonymous tract[4]
published so long ago as in 1776, he had hinted at the utility of a natural classification
of offenses, in the character of a test for distinguishing genuine from
spurious ones. The case of usury is one among a number of instances of the
truth of that observation. A note at the end of Sect. xxxv. chap. xvi. of the
present publication, may serve to show how the opinions, developed in that
tract, owed their origin to the difficulty experienced in the attempt to find a
place in his system for that imaginary offense. To some readers, as a means of
helping them to support the fatigue of wading through an analysis of such
enormous length, he would almost recommend the beginning with those ten
concluding pages.
One good at least may result from the present publication; viz. that the more he has trespassed on the
patience of the reader on this occasion, the less need he will have so to do on
future ones: so that this may do to those, the office which is done, by books
of pure mathematics, to books of mixed mathematics and natural philosophy. The
narrower the circle of readers is, within which the present work may be
condemned to confine itself, the less limited may be the number of those to
whom the fruits of his succeeding labours may be
found accessible. He may therefore in this respect find himself in the
condition of those philosophers of antiquity, who are represented as having
held two bodies of doctrine, a popular and an occult one: but, with this
difference, that in his instance the occult and the popular will, he hopes, be
found as consistent as in those they were contradictory; and that in his
production whatever there is of occultness has been
the pure result of sad necessity, and in no respect of choice.
Having, in the course of this advertisement, had such frequent occasion
to allude to different arrangements, as having been suggested by more extensive
and maturer views, it may perhaps contribute to the
satisfaction of the reader, to receive a short intimation of their nature: the
rather, as, without such explanation, references, made here and there to
unpublished works, might be productive of perplexity and mistake. The following
then are the titles of the works by the publication of which his present
designs would be completed. They are exhibited in the order which seemed to him
best fitted for apprehension, and in which they would stand disposed, were the
whole assemblage ready to come out at once: but the order, in which they will
eventually appear, may probably enough be influenced in some degree by
collateral and temporary considerations.
Part the 1st. Principles of legislation in matters of civil, more distinctively
termed private distributive, or for shortness, distributive, law.
Part the 2nd. Principles of legislation in matters of penal law.
Part the 3rd. Principles of legislation in matters of procedure: uniting
in one view the criminal and civil branches, between which no line can be
drawn, but a very indistinct one, and that continually liable to variation.
Part the 4th. Principles of legislation in matters of reward.
Part the 5th. Principles of legislation in matters of public distributive,
more concisely as well as familiarly termed constitutional, law.
Part the 6th. Principles of legislation in matters of political tactics:
or of the art of maintaining order in the proceedings of political assemblies,
so as to direct them to the end of their institution: viz. by a system of
rules, which are to the constitutional branch, in some respects, what the law
of procedure is to the civil and the penal.
Part the 7th. Principles of legislation in matters betwixt nation and
nation, or, to use a new though not inexpressive appellation, in matters of international
law.
Part the 8th. Principles of legislation in matters of finance.
Part the 9th. Principles of legislation in matters of political economy.
Part the 10th. Plan of a body of law, complete in all its
branches, considered in respect of its form; in other words, in respect of its
method and terminology; including a view of the origination and connexion of the ideas expressed by the short list of
terms,[5] the exposition of which contains all that can be said with propriety
to belong to the head of universal jurisprudence.
The use of the principles laid down under the above several heads is
to prepare the way for the body of law itself exhibited in terminis; and which to be complete,
with reference to any political state, must consequently be calculated for the
meridian, and adapted to the circumstances, of some one such state in
particular.
Had he an unlimited power of drawing upon time, and every other condition
necessary, it would be his wish to postpone the publication of each part to the
completion of the whole. In particular, the use of the ten parts, which exhibit
what appear to him the dictates of utility in every line, being no other than
to furnish reasons for the several corresponding provisions contained in the
body of law itself, the exact truth of the former can never be precisely ascertained,
till the provisions, to which they are destined to apply, are themselves ascertained,
and that in terminis.
But as the infirmity of human nature renders all plans precarious in the
execution, in proportion as they are extensive in the design, and as he has
already made considerable advances in several branches of the theory, without
having made correspondent advances in the practical applications, he deems it
more than probable, that the eventual order of publication will not correspond
exactly with that which, had it been equally practicable, would have appeared
most eligible. Of this irregularity the unavoidable result will be, a multitude
of imperfections, which, if the execution of the body of law in terminis had
kept pace with the development of the principles, so that each part had been
adjusted and corrected by the other, might have been avoided. His conduct
however will be the less swayed by this inconvenience, from his suspecting it
to be of the number of those in which the personal vanity of the author is much
more concerned, than the instruction of the public: since whatever amendments
may be suggested in the detail of the principles, by the literal fixation of
the provisions to which they are relative, may easily be made in a corrected edition
of the former, succeeding upon the publication of the latter.
In the course of the ensuing pages, references will be found, as already
intimated, some to the plan of a penal code to which this work was meant as an
introduction, some to other branches of the above-mentioned general plan, under
titles somewhat different from those, by which they have been mentioned here.
The giving this warning is all which it is in the author's power to do, to save
the reader from the perplexity of looking out for what has not as yet any
existence. The recollection of the change of plan will in like manner account
for several similar incongruities not worth particularizing.
Allusion was made, at the outset of this advertisement, to some unspecified
difficulties, as the causes of the original suspension, and unfinished
complexion, of the present work. Ashamed of his defeat, and unable to dissemble
it, he knows not how to reface himself the benefit of such an apology as a
slight sketch of the nature of those difficulties may afford.
The discovery of them was produced by the attempt to solve the questions
that will be found at the conclusion of the volume: Wherein consisted the
identity and completeness of a law? What the distinction, and where the separation,
between a penal and a civil law? What the distinction, and where the
separation, between the penal and other branches of the law?
To give a complete and correct answer to these questions, it is but
too evident that the relations and dependencies of every part of the legislative
system, with respect to every other, must have been comprehended and ascertained.
But it is only upon a view of these parts themselves, that such an operation
could have been performed. To the accuracy of such a survey one necessary
condition would therefore be, the complete existence of the fabric to be
surveyed. To the performance of this condition no example is as yet to be met
with any where. Common law, as it styles itself in
England, judiciary law as it might aptly be styled every
where. that fictitious composition which has no known person for its
author, no known assemblage of words for its substance, forms everywhere the
main body of the legal fabric: like that fancied ether, which, in default of
sensible matter, fills up the measure of the universe. Shreds and scraps of
real law, stuck on upon that imaginary ground, compose the furniture of every
national code. What follows? — that he who, for the purpose just mentioned or
for any other, wants an example of a complete body of law to refer to, must
begin with making one.
There is, or rather there ought to be. a logic of the will. as well
as of the understanding: the operations of the former faculty, are neither less
susceptible, nor less worthy, then those of the latter, of being delineated by
rules. Of these two branches of that recondite art, Aristotle saw only the
latter: succeeding logicians, treading in the steps of their great founder,
have concurred in seeing with no other eyes. Yet so far as a difference can be
assigned between branches so intimately connected, whatever difference there
is, in point of importance, is in favour of the logic
of the will. Since it is only by their capacity of directing the operations of
this faculty, that the operations of the understanding are of any consequence.
Of this logic of the will, the science of law, considered in respect
of its form, is the most considerable branch, — the most important application.
It is, to the art of legislation, what the science of anatomy is to the art of
medicine: with this difference, that the subject of it is what the artist has
to work with, instead of being what he has to operate upon. Nor is the body
politic less in danger from a want of acquaintance with the one science, than
the body natural from ignorance in the other. One example, amongst a thousand
that might be adduced in proof of this assertion, may be seen in the note which
terminates this volume.
Such then were the difficulties: such the preliminaries: — an unexampled
work to achieve, and then a new science to create: a new branch to add to one
of the most abstruse of sciences.
Yet more: a body of proposed law, how complete soever, would be comparatively
useless and uninstructive, unless explained and justified, and that in every
tittle, by a continued accompaniment, a perpetual commentary of reasons:[6]
which reasons, that the comparative value of such as point in opposite
directions may be estimated, and the conjunct force, of such as point in the
same direction may be felt. must be marshalled, and put under subordination to
such extensive and leading ones as are termed principles. There must be
therefore, not one system only, but two parallel and connected systems, running
on together. the one of legislative provisions, the other of political reasons,
each affording to the other correction and support.
Are enterprises like these achievable? He knows not. This only he knows,
that they have been undertaken, proceeded in, and that some progress has been
made in all of them. He will venture to add, if at all achievable, never at
least by one, to whom the fatigue of attending to discussions, as arid as those
which occupy the ensuing pages, would either appear useless, or feel intolerable.
He will repeat it boldly (for it has been said before him), truths that form
the basis of political and moral science are not to be discovered but by
investigations as severe as mathematical ones, and beyond all comparison more
intricate and extensive. The familiarity of the terms is a presumption, but is
a most fallacious one, of the facility of the matter. Truths in general have
been called stubborn things: the truths just mentioned are so in their own way.
They are not to be forced into detached and general propositions, unencumbered with
explanations and exceptions. They will not compress themselves into epigrams.
They recoil from the tongue and the pen of the declaimer. They flourish not in
the same soil with sentiment. They grow among thorns; and are not to be
plucked, like daisies, by infants as they run. Labour,
the inevitable lot of humanity, is in no track more inevitable than here. In
vain would an Alexander bespeak a peculiar road for royal vanity, or a Ptolemy,
a smoother one, for royal indolence. There is no King's Road, no Stadtholder's
Gate, to legislative, any more than to mathematic science.
Footnotes
1. The First
Edition of this work was printed in the year 1780; and first published in 1789.
The present Edition is a careful reprint of ‘A New Edition, corrected by the Author’,
which was published in 1823.
2. For example.
— It is worse to lose than simply not to gain. — A loss falls the lighter by
being divided. — The suffering of a person hurt in gratification of enmity, is
greater than the gratification produced lay the same cause. — These, and a few
others which he will have occasion to exhibit at the head of another publication,
have the same claim to the appellation of axioms as those given by mathematicians
under that name; since, referring to universal experience as their immediate
basis, they are incapable of demonstration, and require only to be developed
and illustrated in order to be recognized as incontestable.
3. The first
edition was published in 1789, in quarto.
4. A Fragment on Government, &c.,
reprinted 1822.
5. Such as obligation,
right, power, possession, title, exemption, immunity, franchise, privilege,
nullity, validity, and the like.
6. To the aggregate
of them a common denomination has since been allotted — the rationale.
CHAPTER I.
OF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY.
I. 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 causes and 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[1] recognizes
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 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 explicit and determinate account of what is meant by
it. By the principle[2] of utility is meant that
principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever. according
to the tendency 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 happiness, (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 constituting as it were
its members. The interest of the community then is, what is it? —
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[3] 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 then 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 government, is supposed by a man to be
conformable to the principle of 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 conformable 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 proportioned 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 either
that it is one that ought to be done, or 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 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 at 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.[4] 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 impossible; but, from the causes that
have been mentioned, or from some confused or partial view of it, a man may
happen to 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, he 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 consider 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 an act by?
3. If there
be, let him examine and satisfy himself whether the principle he thinks he has
found is really any separate intelligible 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 disapprobation, 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 of being a standard to itself?
5. In the
first case, let him ask himself whether his principle is not despotical, and hostile to all the rest of human race?
6. In the
second case, whether it is not anarchical, 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 argument 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 sentiment which he proposes as a standard
must be grounded on reflection, let him say on what particulars the reflection
is to turn? if on particulars having relation to the utility of the act, then
let him say whether this is not deserting his own principle, 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?
1. 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 functionary 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 consideration of the number, of the
interests affected; to the number, as being the circumstance, which
contributes, in the largest proportion, to the formation 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 have 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.
2. 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
operations; 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.
3. Interest
is one of those words, which not having any superior genus, cannot in
the ordinary way be defined.
4. "The
principle of utility, (I have heard it said) is a dangerous principle: 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.
Addition by the Author, July 1822.
Not long after the publication of the Fragment on Government, anno 1776, in which,
in the character of all-comprehensive and all-commanding principle the principle
of utility was brought to view, one person by whom observation
to the above effect was made was Alexander Wedderburn,
at that time Attorney or Solicitor General, afterwards successively Chief Justice
of the Common Pleas, and Chancellor of England, under the successive titles of
Lord Loughborough and Earl of Rosslyn. It was made — not indeed in my hearing,
but in the hearing of a person by whom it was almost immediately communicated
to me. So far from being self-contradictory, it was a shrewd and perfectly true
one. By that distinguished functionary, the state of the Government was
thoroughly understood: by the obscure individual, at that time not so much as
supposed to be so: his disquisitions had not been as yet applied, with any thing like a comprehensive view, to the field of Constitutional
Law, nor therefore to those features of the English Government, by which the
greatest happiness of the ruling one with or without that of a
favoured few, are now so plainly seen to be the only
ends to which the course of it has at any time been directed. The principle
of utility was an appellative, at that time employed by me, as it had
been by others, to designate that which, in a more perspicuous and instructive
manner, may, as above, be designated by the name of the greatest
happiness principle. "This principle (said Wedderburn)
is a dangerous one." Saying so, he said that which, to a certain extent,
is strictly true: a principle, which lays down, as the only right and
justifiable end of Government, the greatest happiness of the greatest number —
how can it be denied to be a dangerous one? dangerous it unquestionably is, to
every government which has for its actual end or object, the greatest happiness
of a certain one, with or without the addition of some
comparatively small number of others, whom it is matter of pleasure or
accommodation to him to admit, each of them, to a share in the concern, on the
footing of so many junior partners. Dangerous it therefore
really was, to the interest — the sinister interest — of all those functionaries,
himself included, whose interest it was, to maximize delay, vexation, and
expense, in judicial and other modes of procedure, for the sake of the profit,
extractible out of the expense. In a Government which had for its end in view
the greatest happiness of the greatest number, Alexander Wedderburn
might have been Attorney General and then Chancellor: but he would not have
been Attorney General with £15,000 a year, nor Chancellor, with a peerage with
a veto upon all justice, with £25,000 a year, and with 500 sinecures at his
disposal, under the name of Ecclesiastical Benefices, besides et cæteras.
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 asceticism.[1] 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 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 partizan of the
principle of asceticism. It is only upon that principles 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 complexions, 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
appears 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 honour 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
characterize 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
consistently 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 indifference.
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 the lump. 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 honourable, the glorious, the reputable, the becoming,
the honestum, the decorum it
was to be called: in short, anything but pleasure.
VII. From
these two sources have flowed the doctrines from it which the sentiments of the
bulk of mankind have all along received a tincture of this principle; some from
the philosophical, 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 narrowness 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 partizan
of the principle of utility, whom they joined in branding with the odious name
of Epicurean.
VIII. The
principle of asceticism, however, with whatever warmth it may have been
embraced by its partizans as a rule of Private
conduct, seems not to have been carried to any considerable 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
considerable 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 no man has been astricted to without the intervention of his 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 attachment 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: witness 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 descriptions: 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 partizan
of the principle of utility. For a man to give himself a certain number of
stripes was indeed meritorious: 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 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 manifesting 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, or fancied, that certain pleasures, when
reaped in certain circumstances, 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 consistently 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 government, is what may be called the principle of sympathy
and antipathy.[2] 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 happiness, nor yet on
account of their tending to diminish the 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 disapprobation: 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 partizan
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 punishment: 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 tyrannized by the
harsh and rugged dictates of political utility.
XIV. The
various systems that have been formed concerning the standard of right may all be
reduced to the principle of sympathy and antipathy. One account may serve to for
all of them. They consist all of them in so many contrivances 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.[3] The phrases different,
but the principle the same.
XV. It
is manifest, that the dictates of this principle will frequently coincide with those
of utility, though perhaps without intending any such thing. Probably more
frequently than not: and hence it is that the business of penal justice is carried
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 neighbour, 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
difference 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.[4] This is one of the 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
mischief, though not less real, has no effect. Instances in proof of this will
occur in numbers in the course of the work.[5] It would be breaking in
upon the order of it to give them here.
XVIII. It
may be wondered, perhaps, that in all this no mention has been made of
the theological principle; meaning that principal 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 any thing 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 by virtue 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 mentioned above: for there cannot, as we have seen, be
any more. It is plain, therefore, that, setting revelation out of the question,
no light can ever be thrown upon the standard of right and wrong, by any thing
that can be said upon the question, what is God's will. We may be perfectly
sure, indeed, that whatever 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.[6]
XIX. There
are two things which are very apt to be confounded, but which it imports us carefully
to distinguish: — the motive or cause, which, by operating on the mind of an
individual, is productive of any act: and the ground or reason which warrants a
legislator, or other by-stander, 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, in other 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
circumstance 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 right action: but it does not make antipathy
a right ground of action. For the same sentiment of antipathy, if implicitly
deferred to, may be, 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 antipathy. 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 actions and of approbation 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 it doing mischief: to be regulated what? always by the
principle of utility. The principle of utility neither requires nor admits of
any another regulator than itself.
1. Ascetic is
a term that has been sometimes applied to Monks. It comes from a Greek 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 themselves 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 satisfaction it will give him to see us as happy as
he can make us in a life to come.
2. 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 appellative 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
obligations 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 one, or to subject him to the other? In this latter case
it may more appositely be characterized 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 unconnected 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 discovered
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.
When I know not what ingenious 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 befall the affairs of a traveller
whom an unforeseen accident has deprived of the object of his choice: it was,
that the incongruity, 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.[7] Fiat Justitia, ruat coelum, says another maxim, as full of extravagance as
it is of harmony: 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 know not what Roman sage, proclaimed in good Latin, for the
edification of German ears, Servitus servitutis non datur, [Cod.
Fred. tom. ii. par. 2. liv. 2. tit. x. §6. p. 308.] it was not that he had
conceded any aversion to the life-holder who, during the continuance of his term,
should wish to gratify a neighbour with a right of
way or water, or to the neighbour who should wish to
accept of the indulgence; but that, to a jurisprudential 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 conjunction quia,
reason's appointed harbinger quia servitus servitutis 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 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 diligent historiographers, or even
her most passionate panegyrists, seem to have been aware of. Everyone knows,
how, by the ministry of Orpheus, it was she who first collected the sons of men
beneath the shadow of the sceptre: yet, in the midst
of continual experience, men seem yet to learn, with what successful diligence
she has laboured to guide it in its course. Everyone
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 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 promulgated, not less determinate. Search indictments,
pleadings, proceedings 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,
everything 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 monosyllables:[8] in the latter, they are whole lines.[9]
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 the civil branch of 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 Coke, 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 exhibited 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 honour;
but huddled in towards the middle, without the smallest mark of preference.
[Coke, Littleton, ii. a.] Nor is this Latin inconvenience by any means the same
thing with the English one. It stands distinguished 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 inconvenience,
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
opposition, between the prescriptions of utility and the operations of the
common law: such constancy we have seen to be too much even for ascetic fervor.
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.
3. It is curious
enough to observe the variety of inventions men have 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 pardonable
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 neighbours.
It has another great advantage: by appearing to share power, it lessens envy:
for when a man gets up upon this ground, in order to anathematize 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. This understanding, he says, is the standard of right and wrong:
it tells him so and so. All good and wise men understand 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 anything
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 repugnant: 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 anything in the world but in
telling a lie: and that if, for example, you were to murder your own father, this
would only be 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, in truth, it ought not
to be done.
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 practicing
it. If therefore a man wants to know what is right and what is wrong, he has
nothing to do but to come to me.
10. 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 something; 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
practice it: and, consequently, do not practise it.
It is therefore repugnant to what ought to be the nature of every
body else.
The mischief
common 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 words) is
then serving as a cloke, and pretense, and aliment,
to despotism: if not a despotism in practice, a despotism however in
disposition: which is but too apt, when pretense 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 up the coals of
fanaticism, and branding with the charge of corruption and insincerity, every
man who does not think, or profess to think, as he does.
If such a man happens to possess
the advantages of style, his book may do a considerable deal of mischief before
the nothingness 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 pretense 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 himself 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 be an useful 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 any thing, that is, moral duty, 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 endeavour
to prevent it. 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 mischievous 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 anything to
hinder him, or make him suffer for it, it is you, and not he, that have done
wrong: it is not your 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 your antipathy, not
for him to truckle to it.”
4. King James
the First of England had conceived a violent antipathy against Arians: two of
whom he burnt.[10] This gratification he procured
himself without much difficulty: the notions of the times were favourable 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 satisfaction 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[11]) 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 composers at London; where riots
between the approvers and disapprovers of a new play are, at this day, not
infrequent. The ground of quarrel between the Big-endians
and the Little-endians in the fable, was 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[12] than to take any other part in such
disputes, than that of preventing the parties concerned from doing one another
a mischief.
5. See ch. xvi.
[Division], par. 42, 44.
6. The principle
of theology refers every thing to God's pleasure. But
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 partizan 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 necessarily answer (revelation apart) who professes
to take for his standard the will of God.
7. Additional
Note by the Author, July 1822.
Add, and that the bad system, of Mahometan and other
native law was to be put down at all events, to make way for the inapplicable
and still more mischievous system of English Judge-made law, and, by the hand
of his accomplice Hastings, was to be put into the pocket of Impey — Importer of this instrument of subversion, £8,000
a-year contrary to law, in addition to the £8,000 a-year lavished upon him,
with the customary profusion, by the hand of law. — See the Account of the
transaction in Mill's British India.
To this Governor a statue is erecting by a vote of
East India Directors and Proprietors: on it should be inscribed — Let it
but put money into our pockets, no tyranny too flagitious to be worshipped by us.
To this statue of the Arch-malefactor should be added,
for a companion, that of the long. robed accomplice: the one lodging the bribe
in the hand of the other. The hundred millions of plundered and oppressed Hindoos and Mahometans pay for
the one: a Westminster Hall subscription might pay for the other.
What they have done for Ireland with her seven millions
of souls, the authorized deniers and perverters of justice have done for Hindostan with her hundred millions. In this there is
nothing wonderful. The wonder is — that, under such institutions, men, though
in ever such small number, should be found, whom the view of the injustices
which, by English Judge-made law, they are compelled to commit, and
the miseries they are thus compelled to produce, deprive of health and rest.
witness the Letter of an English Hindostan Judge,
Sept. 1, 1819, which lies before me. I will not make so cruel a requital for
his honesty, as to put his name in print: indeed the House of Commons'
Documents already published leave little need of it.
8. Men (Mu epsilon
nu), toi (tau omicron iota), ge
(gamma epsilon), nun (nu upsilon nu), &c.
9. And be it
further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that—Provided always, and it is hereby
further enacted and declared that — &c. &c.
10. Hume's Hist. vol. 6.
11. Melanges Essai sur la Liberté de Musique.
12. Instruc. art. 474, 475, 476.
CHAPTER III.
OF THE FOUR SANCTIONS OR SOURCES OF PAIN AND PLEASURE.
I. It
has been shown that the happiness of the individuals, of whom a community is composed,
that is their pleasures and their security, is the end and the sole end which
the legislator ought to have in view: the sole standard, in conformity to which
each individual ought, as far as depends upon the legislator, to be made to
fashion his behaviour. But whether it be this or
anything else that is to be done, there is nothing by which a man
can ultimately be made to do it, but either pain or pleasure.
Having taken a general view of these two grand objects (viz. pleasure,
and what comes to the same thing, immunity from pain) in the character of final causes;
it will be necessary to take a view of pleasure and pain itself, in the
character of efficient causes or means.
II. There are
four distinguishable sources from which pleasure and pain are in use to flow:
considered separately they may be termed the physical, the political,
the moral and the religious: and inasmuch as the
pleasures and pains belonging to each of them are capable of giving a binding
force to any law or rule of conduct, they may all of them termed sanctions.[1]
III. If
it be in the present life, and from the ordinary course of nature, not purposely
modified by the interposition of these will of any human being, nor by any
extraordinary interposition of any superior invisible being, that the pleasure
or the pain takes place or is expected, it may be said to issue from or to
belong to the physical sanction.
IV. If
at the hands of a particular person or set of persons in the community,
who under names correspondent to that of judge, are chosen for the
particular purpose of dispensing it, according to the will of the sovereign or
supreme ruling power in the state, it may be said to issue from the political
sanction.
V. If at the
hands of such chance persons in the community, as the party in question may
happen in the course of his life to have concerns with, according to each man's
spontaneous disposition, and not according to any settled or concerted rule, it
may be said to issue from the moral or popular
sanction.[2]
VI. If from
the immediate hand of a superior invisible being, either in the present life,
or in a future, it may be said to issue from the religious sanction.
VII. Pleasures
or pains which may be expected to issue from the physical, political,
or moral sanctions, must all of them be expected to be experienced,
if ever, in the present life: those which may be expected to
issue from the religious sanction, may be expected to be
experienced either in the present life or in a future.
VIII. Those
which can be experienced in the present life, can of course be no others than such
as human nature in the course of the present life is susceptible of: and from
each of these sources may flow all the pleasures or pains of which, in the course
of the present life, human nature is susceptible. With regard to these then
(with which alone we have in this place any concern) those of them which belong
to any one of those sanctions, differ not ultimately in kind from those which
belong to any one of the other three: the only difference there is among them
lies in the circumstances that accompany their production. A suffering which
befalls a man in the natural and spontaneous course of things, shall be styled,
for instance, a calamity; in which case, if it be supposed to befall
him through any imprudence of his, it may be styled a punishment issuing from
the physical sanction. Now this same suffering, if inflicted by the law, will
be what is commonly called a punishment; if incurred for want of
any friendly assistance, which the misconduct, or supposed misconduct, of the
sufferer has occasioned to be withholden, a
punishment issuing from the moral sanction; if through the
immediate interposition of a particular providence, a punishment issuing from
the religious sanction.
IX. A
man's goods, or his person, are consumed by fire. If this happened to him by what
is called an accident, it was a calamity: if by reason of his own imprudence
(for instance, from his neglecting to put his candle out) it may be styled a
punishment of the physical sanction: if it happened to him by the sentence of
the political magistrate, a punishment belonging to the political sanction;
that is, what is commonly called a punishment: if for want of any assistance
which his neighbour withheld from
him out of some dislike to his moral character, a punishment
of the moral sanction: if by an immediate act of God's displeasure,
manifested on account of some sin committed by him, or through
any distraction of mind, occasioned by the dread of such displeasure, a
punishment[3] of the religious sanction.
X. As to such
of the pleasures and pains belonging to the religious sanction, as regard a
future life, of what kind these may be we cannot know. These lie not open to
our observation. During the present life they are matter only of expectation:
and, whether that expectation be derived from natural or revealed religion, the
particular kind of pleasure or pain, if it be different from all those which he
open to our observation, is what we can have no idea of. The best ideas we can
obtain of such pains and pleasures are altogether unliquidated in point of
quality. In what other respects our ideas of them may be
liquidated will be considered in another place.[4]
XI. Of
these four sanctions the physical is altogether, we may observe, the ground-work
of the political and the moral: so is it also of the religious, in as far as
the latter bears relation to the present life. It is included in each of those
other three. This may operate in any case, (that is, any of the pains or
pleasures belonging to it may operate) independently of them: none
of them can operate but by means of this. In a word, the powers
of nature may operate of themselves; but neither the magistrate, nor men at
large, can operate, nor is God in the case in question supposed to
operate, but through the powers of nature.
XII. For
these four objects, which in their nature have so much in common, it seemed of use
to find a common name. It seemed of use, in the first place, for the convenience
of giving a name to certain pleasures and pains, for which a name equally
characteristic could hardly otherwise have been found: in the second place, for
the sake of holding up the efficacy of certain moral forces, the influence of
which is apt not to be sufficiently attended to. Does the political sanction exert
an influence over the conduct of mankind? The moral, the religious sanctions do
so too. In every inch of his career are the operations of the political
magistrate liable to be aided or impeded by these two foreign powers: who, one
or other of them, or both, are sure to be either his rivals or his allies. Does
it happen to him to leave them out in his calculations? he will be sure almost
to find himself mistaken in the result. Of all this we shall find abundant
proofs in the sequel of this work. It behooves him, therefore, to have them
continually before his eyes; and that under such a name as exhibits the relation
they bear to his own purposes and designs.
1. Sanctio, in
Latin was used to signify the act of binding, and, by a common
grammatical transition, anything which serves to bind a man: to
wit, to the observance of such or such a mode of
conduct. According to a Latin grammarian,[5] the import of the word is derived by rather a
far-fetched process (such as those commonly are, and in a great measure indeed
must be, by which intellectual ideas are derived from sensible ones) from the
word sanguis, blood: because, among the
Romans, with a view to inculcate into the people a persuasion that such or such
a mode of conduct would be rendered obligatory upon a
man by the force of what I call the religious sanction (that is, that he would
be made to suffer by the extraordinary interposition of some superior being, if
he failed to observe the mode of conduct in question) certain ceremonies were
contrived by the priests: in the course of which ceremonies the blood of
victims was made use of.
A Sanction then is a source of obligatory powers
or motives that is, of pains and pleasures;
which, according as they are connected with such or such modes of conduct, operate,
and are indeed the only things which can operate, as motives. See
Chap. x. [Motives].
2. Better termed popular,
as more directly indicative of its constituent cause; as likewise of its
relation to the more common phrase public opinion, in French opinion
publique, the name there given to that tutelary
power, of which of late so much is said, and by which so much is done. The
latter appellation is however unhappy and inexpressive; since if opinion is
material, it is only in virtue of the influence it exercises over action, through
the medium of the affections and the will.
3. A suffering
conceived to befall a man by the immediate act of God, as above, is often, for
shortness' sake, called a judgment: instead of saying, a suffering
inflicted on him in consequence of a special judgment formed, and resolution
there upon taken, by the Deity.
4. See ch. xiii.
[Cases unmeet] par. 2. note.
5. Servius. See Ainsworth's Dict. ad verbum Sanctio.
CHAPTER IV.
VALUE OF A LOT OF PLEASURE OR PAIN, HOW TO BE MEASURED.
I. Pleasures
then, and the avoidance of pains, are the ends that the legislator
has in view; it behooves him therefore to understand their value. Pleasures
and pains are the instruments he has to work with: it behooves him therefore to
understand their force, which is again, in other words, their value.
II. To a person
considered by himself, the value of a pleasure or pain
considered by itself, will be greater or less, according to the
four following circumstances:[1]
1. Its intensity.
2. Its duration.
3. Its certainty or uncertainty.
4. Its propinquity or remoteness.
5. Its fecundity,
or the chance it has of being followed by sensations of the same kind:
that is, pleasures, if it be a pleasure: pains, if it be a pain.
6. Its purity, or
the chance it has of not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind:
that is, pains, if it be a pleasure: pleasures, if it be a pain.
These two last, however, are
in strictness scarcely to be deemed properties of the pleasure or the pain itself;
they are not, therefore, in strictness to be taken into the account of the
value of that pleasure or that pain. They are in strictness to be deemed properties
only of the act, or other event, by which such pleasure or pain has been
produced; and accordingly are only to be taken into the account of the tendency
of such act or such event.
IV. To a number of
persons, with reference to each of whom to the value of a pleasure or a pain is
considered, it will be greater or less, according to seven circumstances: to
wit, the six preceding ones; viz.
1. Its intensity.
2. Its duration.
3. Its certainty or uncertainty.
4. Its propinquity or remoteness.
5. Its fecundity.
6. Its purity.
And one other; to wit:
7. Its extent; that
is, the number of persons to whom it extends; or (in other words)
who are affected by it.
V. To
take an exact account then of the general tendency of any act, by which the interests
of a community are affected, proceed as follows. Begin with any one person of
those whose interests seem most immediately to be affected by it: and take an
account,
1. Of the value of each distinguishable pleasure which
appears to be produced by it in the first instance.
2. Of the value of
each pain which appears to be produced by it in the first instance.
3. Of the value of each pleasure
which appears to be produced by it after the first. This
constitutes the fecundity of the first pleasure and
the impurity of the first pain.
4. Of the value of
each pain which appears to be produced by it after the first.
This constitutes the fecundity of the first pain,
and the impurity of the first pleasure.
5. Sum up all the values of
all the pleasures on the one side, and those of all the pains on
the other. The balance, if it be on the side of pleasure, will give the good tendency
of the act upon the whole, with respect to the interests of that individual person;
if on the side of pain, the bad tendency of it upon the whole.
6. Take an account of
the number of persons whose interests appear to be concerned;
and repeat the above process with respect to each. Sum up the
numbers expressive of the degrees of good tendency, which the
act has, with respect to each individual, in regard to whom the tendency of it
is good upon the whole: do this again with respect to each
individual, in regard to whom the tendency of it is good upon
the whole: do this again with respect to each individual, in regard to whom the
tendency of it is bad upon the whole. Take the balance
which if on the side of pleasure, will give the general good
tendency of the act, with respect to the total number or community of
individuals concerned; if on the side of pain, the general evil
tendency, with respect to the same community.
VI. It
is not to be expected that this process should be strictly pursued previously to
every moral judgment, or to every legislative or judicial operation. It may, however,
be always kept in view: and as near as the process actually pursued on these
occasions approaches to it, so near will such process approach to the character
of an exact one.
VII. The
same process is alike applicable to pleasure and pain, in whatever shape they appear:
and by whatever denomination they are distinguished: to pleasure, whether it be
called good (which is properly the cause or instrument of
pleasure) or profit (which is distant pleasure, or the cause
or instrument of, distant pleasure,) or convenience, or advantage, benefit, emolument, happiness,
and so forth: to pain, whether it be called evil, (which corresponds
to good) or mischief, or inconvenience. or disadvantage,
or loss, or unhappiness, and so forth.
VIII. Nor
is this a novel and unwarranted, any more than it is a useless theory. In all this
there is nothing but what the practice of mankind, wheresoever
they have a clear view of their own interest, is perfectly conformable to. An
article of property, an estate in land, for instance, is valuable, on what
account? On account of the pleasures of all kinds which it enables a man to
produce, and what comes to the same thing the pains of all kinds which it
enables him to avert. But the value of such an article of property is
universally understood to rise or fall according to the length or shortness of
the time which a man has in it: the certainty or uncertainty of its coming into
possession: and the nearness or remoteness of the time at which, if at all, it
is to come into possession. As to the intensity of the
pleasures which a man may derive from it, this is never thought of, because it
depends upon the use which each particular person may come to make of it; which
cannot be estimated till the particular pleasures he may come to derive from
it, or the particular pains he may come to exclude by means of it, are brought
to view. For the same reason, neither does he think of the fecundity or purity of
those pleasures.
Thus much for pleasure and pain,
happiness and unhappiness, in general. We come now to consider the
several particular kinds of pain and pleasure.
1. These circumstances
have since been denominated elements or dimensions of value in
a pleasure or a pain.
Not long after the publication of the first edition,
the following memoriter
verses were framed, in the view of lodging more effectually, in the memory, these
points, on which the whole fabric of morals and legislation may be seen to
rest.
Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure —
Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.
Such pleasures seek if private be thy end:
If it be public, wide let them extend
Such pains avoid, whichever be thy view:
If pains must come, let them extend to few.