INTRODUCTION TO THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS AND LEGISLATION
by
Jeremy Bentham
1781
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. . . .
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 thingwhich 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.
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.