Principles of Morals and Legislation Chapters 1-4 Jeremy Bentham 1781
Copyright 1996, James Fieser (jfieser@utm.edu). This e-text was scanned
from The Works of Jeremy Bentham (1838-1843), edited by John Bowring. See
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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 utility2
recognises this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system,
the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason
and of law. Systems which 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 principle3of
utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every
action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to
augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question:
or, what is the same thing in other words, to promote or to oppose that
happiness. I say of every action whatsoever; and therefore not, only of
every action of a private individual, but of every measure of government.
III. By utility is meant that property in any
object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good,
or 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 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? -- the sum of the interests of the several
members who compose it.
V. It is in vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding
what is the interest of the individual.4 A
thing is said to promote the interest, or to be for the interest,
of an individual, when it tends to add to the sum total of his pleasures:
or, what comes to the same thing, to diminish the sum total of his pains.
VI. An action then may be said to be conformable to the principle of
utility, or, for shortness sake, to utility, (meaning with respect to the
community at large) when the tendency it has to augment the happiness of
the community is greater than any it has to diminish it.
VII. A measure of government (which is but a particular kind of action,
performed by a particular person or persons) may be said to be conformable
to or dictated by the principle of utility, when in like manner the tendency
which it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than
any which it has to diminish it.
VIII. When an action, or in particular a measure of 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 partizan 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 every thing else, cannot itself be proved:
a chain of proofs must have their commencement somewhere. To give such
proof is as impossible as it is needless.
XII. Not that there is or ever has been that human creature breathing,
however stupid or perverse, who has not on many, perhaps on most occasions
of his life, deferred to it. By the natural constitution of the human frame,
on most occasions of their lives men in general embrace this principle,
without thinking of it: if not for the ordering of their own actions, yet
for the trying of their own actions, as well as of those of other men.
There have been, at the same time, not many, perhaps, even of the most
intelligent, who have been disposed to embrace it purely and without reserve.
There are even few who have not taken some occasion or other to quarrel
with it, either on account of their not understanding always how to apply
it, or on account of some prejudice or other which they were afraid to
examine into, or could not bear to part with. For such in 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.5 His arguments, if they prove any thing, 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
and 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 anarchial, and whether at this
rate there are not as many different standards of right and wrong as there
are men? and whether even to the same man, the same thing, which is right
to-day, may not (without the least change in its nature) be wrong to-morrow?
and whether the same thing is not right and wrong in the same place at
the same time? and in either case, whether all 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 any thing 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?
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.6 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 principle,
and not from the principle of utility, that the most abominable pleasure
which the vilest of malefactors ever reaped from his crime would be to
be reprobated, if it stood alone. The case is, that it never does stand
alone; but is necessarily followed by such a quantity of pain (or, what
comes to the same thing, such a chance for a certain quantity of pain)
that the pleasure in comparison of it, is as nothing: and this is the true
and sole, but perfectly sufficient, reason for making it 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 appear to have recommended it to the notice of these
different parties. Hope, that is the prospect of pleasure, seems to have
animated the former: hope, the aliment of philosophic pride: the hope of
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 partizans 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, any thing but pleasure.
VII. From these two sources have flowed the doctrines from which the
sentiments of the bulk of mankind have all along received a tincture of
this principle; some from the 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 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
Lycurgas, 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 everything 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 a 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 humankind. 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 adverse7 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.
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 and wrong, may all be reduced to the principle of sympathy and
antipathy. One account may serve for all of them. They consist all of them
in so many contrivances for avoiding the obligation of appealing to any
external standard, and for prevailing upon the reader to accept the
author's sentiment or opinion as a reason for itself. The phrases different,
but the principle the same.8
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 on upon that tolerable sort of footing upon
which we see it carried on in common at this day. For what more natural
or more general ground of hatred to a practice can there be, than the mischievousness
of such practice? What all men are exposed to suffer by, all men will be
disposed to hate. It is far yet, however, from being a constant ground:
for when a man suffers, it is not always that he knows what it is he suffers
by. A man may suffer grievously, for instance, by a new tax, without being
able to trace up the cause of his sufferings to the injustice of some 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.9 This
is one of the circumstances by which the human race is distinguished (not
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.
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 principle which
professes to recur for the standard of right and wrong to the will of God.
But the case is, this is not in fact a distinct principle. It is never
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 on account of the conformity
of its dictates to those of some other principle. What then may be this
other principle? it must be one or other of the three 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 .10
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 bystander, in regarding
that act with an eye of approbation. When the act happens, in the particular
instance in question, to be productive of effects which we approve of,
much more if we happen to observe that the same motive may frequently be
productive, 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 action, and of approbation,
in any one case, is so in every other. Other principles in abundance, that
is, other motives, may be the reasons why such and such an act has been
done: that is, the reasons or causes of its being done: but it is this
alone that can be the reason why it might or ought to have been done. Antipathy
or resentment requires always to be regulated, to prevent its doing mischief:
to be regulated by what? always by the principle of utility. The principle
of utility neither requires nor admits of any other regulator than itself.
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 any thing else that is to be done, there is nothing
by which a man can ultimately be done 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 pairs belonging
to each of them are capable of giving a binding force to any law or rule
of conduct, they may all of them be termed sanctions.11
III If it be in the present life, and from the ordinary course of nature,
not purposely modified by the interposition of the 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.12
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.
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 sanctions.
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 the
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.13
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 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 lie 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.14
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 the mean 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 an this we shall find abundant
proofs in the sequel of this work. It behoves 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.
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 which the legislator has in view: it behoves him therefore
to understand their value. Pleasures and pains are the instruments
he has to work with: it behoves 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: 15
1. Its intensity.
2. Its duration.
3. Its certainty or uncertainty.
4. Its propinquity or remoteness.
III. These are the circumstances which are to
be considered in estimating a pleasure or a pain considered each of them
by itself. But when the value of any pleasure or pain is considered for
the purpose of estimating the tendency of any act by which it is
produced, there are two other circumstances to be taken into the account;
these are,
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 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.
Notes
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2Note 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 circumstances, 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.
3The 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.
4Interest is one of those words, which not having any superior
genus, cannot in the ordinary way be defined.
5'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 an 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 -- 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, extractable 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 L15,000 a year, nor chancellor, with a
peerage with a veto upon all justice, with L25,000 a year, and with 500
sinecures at his disposal, under the name of Ecclesiastical Benefices,
besides et caeteras.
6Ascetic 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.
7The 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?
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? 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 thunders of ex post facto justice, it blameless magistracy
perishing in the unoffended authors of their misery; absorbing the whole
imagination, had drowned the cries of humanity along with the dictates
of common sense. Fiat Justitia, ruat caelum, 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. sect 6. p. 308.] it was not that he had conceived
any aversion to the life-holder who, during the continuance of his term,
should wish to gratify a 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 n they
are opposed to general rules, and 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. Every one 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. Every one knows, that measured numbers were the language
of the infancy of law: none seem to have observed, with what imperious
sway they have governed her maturer age. In English jurisprudence in particular,
the connexion betwixt law and music, however less perceived than in Spartan
legislation, is not perhaps less real nor less close. the music of the
Office, though not of the same kind, is not less musical in its kind, than
the music of the Theatre; that which hardens the heart, than that which
softens it: -- sostenutos as long, cadences as sonorous; and those governed
by rules, though not yet 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. every thing yields to Harmony. Volumes might be filled, shelves
loaded, with the sacrifices that are made to this insatiate power. Expletives
her ministers in Grecian poetry are not less busy, though in different
shape and bulk, in English legislation: in the former, they are monosyllables:
in the latter, they are whole lines.
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 ad 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 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. [Supra,
par. x] From time to time instinct would unavoidably betray them into the
paths of reason: instinct which, however it may be cramped, can never be
killed by education. the cobwebs spun out of the materials brought together
by 'the competition of opposite analogies,' can never have ceased being
warped by the silent attraction of the rational principle: though it should
have been, as the needle is by the magnet, without the privity of conscience.
8It is curious enough to observe the variety of inventions
men have hit upon, and the variety of phrases they have brought forward,
in order conceal from the world and, if possible, from themselves this
very 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 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 any thing that comes uppermost: and these sentiments
(you are to take for granted) are so many branches of the eternal rule
of right.
5. Another man, or perhaps the same man (it's no matter) says, that
there are certain practices conformable, and others repugnant, to the fitness
of things; and then he tells you, at his leisure, what practices are conformable
and what repugnant: just as he happens to like a practice or dislike it.
6. A great multitude of people we continually talking of the Law of
Nature; and then they go on giving you their sentiments about what is right
and what is wrong: and these sentiments, you are to understand, are so
many chapters and sections of the Law of Nature.
7. Instead of the phrase, Law of Nature, you have sometimes, Law of
Reason, Right Reason, Natural Justice, Natural Equity, Good Order. Any
of them will do equally well. this latter is most used in politics. The
three last are much more tolerable than the others, because they do not
very explicitly claim to be any thing more than phrases: they insist but
feebly upon the being looked upon as so many positive standards of themselves,
and seem content to be taken, upon occasion, for phrases expressive of
the conformity of the thing in question to the proper standard, whatever
that may be. On most occasions, however, it will be better to say utility:
utility is clearer, as referring more explicitly to pain and pleasure.
8. We have one philosopher, who says, there is no harm in any thing
in the world but in telling a lie: and that if, for example, you were to
murder your own father, this would not 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 s 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 practising
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.
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 practise it: and, consequently,
do not practise it. It is therefore repugnant to what ought to be the nature
of every body else.
The mischief 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 their serving as a cloke, and pretence, and
aliment, to despotism: if not a despotism in practice, a despotism however
in disposition: which is but too apt, when pretence and power offer, to
show itself in practice. The consequence is, that with intentions very
commonly of the purest kind, a man becomes a torment either to himself
or his fellow-creatures. If he be of the melancholy cast, he sits in silent
grief, bewailing their blindness and depravity: if of the irascible, he
declaims with fury and virulence against all who differ from him; blowing
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 pretence for deciding any question in the manner that best pleases
him, without the trouble of inquiry. If a man is an infallible judge of
what is right and wrong in the actions of private individuals, why not
in the measures to be observed by public men in the direction of those
actions? accordingly (not to mention other chimeras) I have more than once
known to 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 conceive 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, it is your duty at least to abstain from it:
and more than that, if it is what lies in your power, and can be done without
too great a sacrifice, to 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 any body has a mind to do it, it is no duty of yours,
but, on the contrary, it would be very wrong in you, to take upon you to
prevent him: detest it within yourself as much as you please; that may
be a very good reason (unless it be also a useful one) for your not doing
it yourself: but if you go about, by word or deed, to do any thing to hinder
him, or make him suffer for it, it is you, and not he, that have done wrong:
it is not 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 e 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.'
9King James the First of England had conceived a violent
antipathy against Arians: two of whom he burnt (Hume's Hist. Vol. 6). 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 Anbaptist 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 France and Italian
music have occasioned very serious bickerings at Paris. One of the parties
would not have been sorry (say Mr. D'Alembert [Melanges Essai sur la Liberte
de la Musique.]) 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 unfrequent. The ground
of quarrel between the Big-endians and 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
(Instruct. art. 474. 475, 476) than to take any other part in such disputes,
than that of preventing the parties concerned from doing one another a
mischief.
10The 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 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 principles of
antipathy. In the words of one or other of these must that persons necessarily
answer (revelation apart) who professes to take for his standard the will
of God.
11Sanctio, in Latin, was used to signify the act of binding,
and, by a common grammatical transition, any thing which serves to bind
a man: to wit, to the observance of such or such a mode of conduct.
According to a Latin grammarian (Servius. See Ainsworth's Dict. ad verbum
Sanctio.),
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].
12Better 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.
13A 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 thereupon taken, by the Deity.
14See ch. xii. [Cases unmeet] par. 2. note.
15These circumstances have since been dominated elements
or dimensions of value in a pleasure or a pain.
Nor 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.
