 Preface of an introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. The following sheets were, as the notes 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 maze 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 unto 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, in so much that, in one branch or other of the pursuit, his researchers have nearly embraced the whole field of legislation. Several courses 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 piecemeal or to exhibit them somewhere where they could be referred to in the lump was found unavoidable. The former course would have occasioned repetitions to 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 have certainly have been realized. Cogents 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 all together in his power. In the course of so long an interval various incidents have introduced copies into various hands for some of which they have been transferred by debts and other accidents into others that were unknown to him. Detached but considerable extracts have been published without any dishonorable 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 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 mature views. It will then be observed how in some respects it fails of crediting 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 the 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 in 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 groundwork 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 a 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 several branch that matters more particularly applicable to the panel. 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 will be found relative to punishment. It ought to have exhibited a set of propositions which have since presented themselves to him as affording his standard for the operations performed by government in the creation and distribution of proprietary and other civil rights. He means certain axioms. Note. For example, it is worse to lose than simply not to gain. A loss falls to higher 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. And footnote. He means certain axioms 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 offenses and everything else that belongs to offenses ought besides to have preceded the consideration of punishment for the idea of punishment presupposes the idea of offense punishment as such not being inflicted but in consideration of offense. Lastly the analytical discussions relative to the classification of offenses would according to his present views be transferred to a separate tretis 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 is 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 imitation of its actual contents have been given by a title corresponding to the more limited design with which it was written, 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 avoidably 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 they are mentioned occupies no fewer than 104 closely printed quartal pages. The ten concluding ones are implored 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 tretis. In the preface to an anonymous tract footnote a fragment on government etc. reprinted 1822 and footnote 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 section 35 chapter 16 of the present publication may self 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 weeding through an analysis of such enormous length he would almost recommend the beginning with those ten concluding pages. One could at least may result from the present publication vis that the more he has trespassed on the patience of the reader on this occasion the less need he will have to do so on future ones. So that this may do to those, the offense which is done by books of pure mathematics, to books of mixed mathematics and natural philosophy. The narrower the circle of reader is within which the present work may be condemned to confine itself the less limited may 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 that 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 mature reviews it may perhaps contribute to the satisfaction of the reader to receive a short intimation of their nature. The radar 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 where 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 first, principles of legislation in matters of civil and more distinctively termed private distributive or for shortness distributive law. Part the second, principles of legislation in matters of penal law. Part the third, 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 fourth, principles of legislation in matters of reward. Part the fifth, principles of legislation in matters of public distributive more concisely as well as familiarly termed constitutional law. Part the sixth, principles of legislation in matters of political tactics or 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 seventh, principles of legislation in matters between nation and nation or to use a new though not in expressive appellation in matters of international law. Part the eight, principles of legislation in matters of finance. Part the nine, principles of legislation in matters of political economy. Part the tenth, 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 connection of the ideas expressed by the short list of terms. Footnote, such as obligation, right, power, possession, title, exemption, immunity, franchise, privilege, nullity, validity, and the like. And footnote, 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 terminus, 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 had 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 finish reasons for the several corresponding provisions contained in the body of law itself. The exact truths of the former can never be precisely ascertained, till the provisions to which they are distant to apply are themselves ascertained, and that in terminus. 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 terminus 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, but 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 role in like manner, account for several similar incongruities not worth particularizing. Illusion was made at the outset of this advertisement to some unspecified difficulties, at the causes of the original suspension and unfinished complexion of the present work. Ashamed of his defeat and unable to disassemble 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 the other branches of the law? To give a completed 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, what 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 anywhere. Common law, as it styled itself in England, judiciary law, as it might aptly be styled everywhere, 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 the fold of sensible matter fills up to measure of the universe, shreds and scraps of real law, stuck 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 the 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 than 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 obtuse of sciences. Yet more, a body of proposed law, how complete so ever, would be comparatively useless and uninstructive, unless explained and justified, and that in every title by a continued accompaniment, a perpetual commentary, of reasons. Footnote, to the aggregate of them a common denomination has since been allotted, the rationale. End footnote, which reasons that the comparative value of such as points in opposite directions may be estimated, and the conjunct force of such as points in the same direction may be felt, must be more short, and put on the subordination to such extensive and leading ones as a 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, preceded 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 erred as those which occupy the insuring pages would either appear useless or feel intolerable. He will repeat it birdly, 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 truth 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 a programme. They recoil from the tongue and the pen of the disclaimer. 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 apostolomy, a smoother one, for royal indolence. There is no king's road, no stathordos' gate, to legislative any more than to mathematical science. End of the Preface. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation by Jeremy Bentham. Chapter 1. Of the Principle of Utility. 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 recognizes this subjection and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which it is to rear the fabric of felicity, by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it deal in sound 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. 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 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. 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. 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 loss. 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, what is it? The sum of the interests of the several members who compose it. It is vain to talk of the interest of the community without understanding what is the interest of the individual. A thing is said to promote the interest, or to be for the interest of an individual, when it tends to add to the sum total of his pleasures, or what comes to the same thing, to diminish the total sum of his pains. 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. 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. 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 a law or dictate. 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. 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, or 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, 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 a proof is as impossible as it is needless. Not that there is ever or has ever been the 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. When a man attempts to combat the principle of utility, it is with reasons drawn, without his being aware of it, from that very principle itself. His arguments, if they prove anything, prove not that the principle is wrong, but that according to the applications he supposes to be made of it, it is misapplied. Is it possible for a man to move the earth? Yes, but he must first find out another earth to stand upon. To disprove of the propriety of it by argument 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 himself, whether he would wish to discard the 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 oeuvrement 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. 5. 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 the 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 today, may not, without the least change in its nature, be wrong tomorrow, and whether the same thing is not right and wrong in the same place and 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 the 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. 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 connection 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. The word principle is derived from the Latin Principium which seems to be compounded of the two words primus first or chief andcipium, a termination which seems to be derived from capio to take as in mancipium municipium to which are analogous, aseps, forceps and others. It is a term of very vague and very extensive signification. It is applied to anything 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. Interest is one of those words which not having any superior genius cannot in the ordinary way be defined. 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 is not constant 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 of Government, Anno 1776, in which 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 Witterburn, 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 Logeberg 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 to be supposed to be so. His disquisitions had not been as yet applied with anything 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 favored 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 purpose-queous and instructive manner, may as above be designated by the name of the greatest happiness principle. That principle, says Wetterburn, 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 share in the concern of 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 Wetterburn might have been Attorney General and then Chancellor, but he would not have been Attorney General with fifteen thousand pounds a year, nor Chancellor with a peerage with veto upon all justice with twenty-five thousand pounds a year and with five under sinecures at his disposal under the name of ecclesiastical benefits besides etc. End of Chapter 1 If the principle of utility be a right principle to be governed by and that in all cases, it flows 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. A principle may be different from that of utility in two ways, one by being constantly opposed to it, this is the case with a principle which may be termed the principle of asceticism. Footnote 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 anybody 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 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. End footnote. Two, 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. 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 is happiness, disapproving of them in as far as they tend to augment it. It is evident that anyone who reprobates any of the least particle of pleasure as such from whatever source derived is pro tanto a partisan of the principle of asceticism. It is only upon that principle, and not from the principle of utility, that the most abominable pleasure with the vilest of malfactors 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. 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 element 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 his planetary 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. 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 another name of pleasure, to cleanse itself from the sorts of its impure original, it was necessary it should change its name. The honorable, the glorious, the reputable, the becoming, the unestim, the decorum it was to be called, in short, anything but pleasure. 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 in so much that a man would not always know by which of them he was most influenced and they would often serve to corroborate and enliven one another. It was this conformity that made a kind of alliance between parties of a complexion otherwise so dissimilar and disposed them to unite upon various occasions against the common enemy, the partisan of the principle of utility whom they joined in branding with the odious name of Epicurean. The principle of asceticism, however, would whatever warmth it may have been embraced by its partisans 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, witnessed the Spartan Regiment. Though then perhaps it may be considered as having been a measure of security and an application though a precipitated 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, Dumplas, Moravians and other religionists have been free societies whose regimen no man has been restricted 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 lesser 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 and 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 blamable in the eyes even of these religionists as in those of a partisan of the principle of utility. For a man to give himself a certain number of stripes was indeed 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 the 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 placement, 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 set the sources of national wealth by cramping commas 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 a 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 their 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 riggerists, who, dupes to the ambitious and deep-legged policy of their rulers, first laid themselves under that idle obligation by a vow. 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 a long run, been attended with pains more than equivalent to them, took occasion to crawl with everything that offered itself under the name of pleasure. Having then got thus far, and having forgotten 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. 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 a 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 turn it into a hell. 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. Footnote. 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 letter case it may more oppositely be characterised by the name of the fantastic 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 Koch 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 what ingenious grammarian invented the proposition delegatus non potes 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 be a folder of affairs of a traveller whom an unforeseen accident has deprived of the object of his choice. It was the incongruity of giving the same law to objects so contrastous as active and passive are, was not to be surmounted and that artus chimes as well as it contrasts with are. When that inexorable maxim of which the Romanian 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 jedicature by the thunders of ex post facto justice it was not surely that the prospect of a blameless majesty, perishing and prison afforded any enjoyment to the unaffended 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. Footnote in footnote Additional note by the author July 1822 Add and that the bad system of Mohammedan and other native law was to be put down at all events took 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 8000 pounds a year contrary to law in addition to the 8000 pounds a year lavished upon him with a customary profusion by the hand of law see the account of the transaction in Mills 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 worshiped by us to this statue of the arch malefactor should be added for a companion that of the long roped accomplice the one lodging the bribe in the hand of the other the hundred millions of plundered oppressed Hindus and Mohammedans pay for the one a Westminster Hall subscription might pay for the other what they have done for Ireland with our 7 millions of souls the authorized deniers and pervertors of justice have done for Hindustan with our hundred millions and this there is nothing wonderful no 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 made law they are compelled to commit and the miseries they are thus compelled to produce deprive of health and rest witnessed the letter of an English Hindustan judge September 1st 1819 which lies before me I will not make so cruel or acquittal for as honesty as to put his name in print indeed the House of Commons documents already published leave little need of it and a footnote in footnote Fiat Justizia Rouat Cologne 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 with 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 is Servitus Servitus non dator 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 adduce prudential ear sound little less melodious than 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 here reasons appointed harbinger neither with 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 potas delegar and servitus servitus dator provisions already included another 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 where 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 panagyrists 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 scepter 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 men seem to have observed with what imperious sway they have governed her mature age in English jurisprudence in particular the connection 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 everything yields to harmony volumes might be filled shelves loaded with the sacrifices that are made to this insatiate power expertives, her ministers in grecian poetry are not less busy though in different shape and bulk in English legislation in the former there are monosyllables in the latter there 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 founded inseparably involved in the penal but when we come to the former branch we shall see the fantastic principle making at least as great a figure there as the principle of sympathy and antipathy in the letter in the days of lord coke the light of utility can scarcely be set to have as yet shun upon the face of common law if a faint ray of it under the name of the argumentum of inconvenient is to be found in a list of about 20 topics exhibited by that great lawyer as the coordinate leaders of that all perfect system the admission so circumstance is as sure a proof of neglect as to the statues of brutus and caches exclusion was a cause of notice it stands neither in the front nor in the rear nor in any post of honor but hurled in towards the middle without the smallest mark of preference nor is this letter 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 perverse a mischief to an inconvenience as 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 the utility and the operations of the common law such constancy we've seen to be too much even for aesthetic 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 seized being warped by the silent attraction of the rational principle though it should have been as a needle is by the magnet without the privity of conscience and footnote 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 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 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 in looking over the catalogue of human actions it says a partisan of this principle in order to determine which of them are to be marked with the seal of disapprobation you need but 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 meat 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 meat 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 over born terrorised by the harsh and rugged dictates of political utility 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 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 the phrase is different but the principle the same footnote 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 part of the self-sufficiency one man says he has a thing made on purpose to tell him what is right and what is wrong 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 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 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 is not worth taking this contrivance does better than the other for a moral sense being a new thing a man may feel about him a good while without being able to find it out but common sense is as old as the creation and there is no man but would be ashamed to be thought not to have as much of it as his neighbors it has another great advantage by 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 sick volosic yubio but by a valetus yubiatis 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 of right and wrong it tells him so and so all good and wise man understand as he does if other man'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 another man says that there is an eternal and immutable rule of right 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 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 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 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 letter is most used in politics the three last are much more tolerable than the others because they do not very explicitly claim to be anything more than phrases they insist but feebly upon 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 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 anything 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 the fairest and openest 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 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 anything means infrequent 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 of me but whether it does or no is a question which to be answered rightly can only be answered upon the principle of utility unnatural it has 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 practice it it is therefore repugnant to what ought to be the nature of everybody 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 cloak and pretence and element 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 irresolable 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 a 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 even 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 only to any notions I have of it's being a useful one to the community I do not pretend to know whether it be a useful one or not it may be for all time I know a mischievous one but is it then says I a mischievous one examine and if you can make yourself sensible that it is so then if duty means anything that is moral duty is your duty at least abstain from it and more than that if it is what lies in your power and can be done without too great a sacrifice to endeavor to prevent it 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 you again a disposition to detest such or such an action in a moral view but this is not only to any notions I have of it's 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 and may be for all I know a useful one may it indeed says I a useful one but let me tell you then that unless duty and right and wrong it is not just what you please to make them it would 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 to test it within yourself as much as you please that may be a very good reason unless it be also a useful one for you are 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 chuckle to it and footnote it is manifest that the dictate of this principle were 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 exposed 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 to stop the cause of his sufferings to the injustice of some neighbor who has eluded the payment of an old one 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 this is one of the circumstances by which the human race is distinguished not much indeed to its advantage from the brewed creation footnote King James I of England had conceived a violent antipathy against Aryans two of whom he burned this gratification he procured himself without much difficulty the notions of the times were favorable to it he wrote a furious book against forces for being what was called an Arminian for forces was at a distance he also wrote a furious book called a counterblast to tobacco against the use of that drug which so Walter Raleigh had then lately introduced had the notions of the times co-operated with him he would have burned 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 bickering at Paris one of the parties would not have been sorry says Monsieur d'Alembert to have brought government into the quarrel pretenses 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 Indians and the little Indians in the fable was not more frivolous than many a one which has laid empires desolate in Russia it is said there was a time when some thousands of persons lost their lives in a quarrel in which the government had taken part about the number of fingers to be used in making the sign of the cross this was in days of yore the ministers of Catherine II are better instructed than to take any other part in such disputes than that of preventing the parties concerned from doing one another a mischief and footnote it is not however by any means an example 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 improve this will occur in numbers in the course of the work it would be breaking in upon the order of it from here 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 anything more or less than one or other of the three before mentioned principles presenting itself under another shape the will of God here meant cannot be his revealed will as contained in the sacred writings for that is a system which nobody ever thinks of recurring to at this time of day for the details of political administration and even before it can be applied to the details of private conduct it is universally allowed by the most eminent divines of all persuasions to stand the 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 anything 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 whether it be conformable to the will of God footnote the principle of theology refers everything 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 mentioned 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 a stamp 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 as the partisan of the principle of utility because the commission of it is attended with a gross and sensual or at least with a trifling and transient satisfaction says the partisan of the principle of asceticism because I detest the thoughts of it and I cannot, neither ought I to be called upon to tell why says he who proceeds upon the principle of antipathy in the words of one or other of these must that person necessarily answer revelation apart who professes to take for his standard God and footnote 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 warns 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 haven't observed that the same motive may frequently be productive in other instances of the like effect we are apt to transfer our approbation to the motive itself and to assume as a 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 attendant with good effects but this does not make it a right ground of action in that case any more than in any other still further 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 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 the right principle of actions 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 the 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 end of chapter 2 Chapter 3 of an introduction to the principles of morals and legislation this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Ruth Golding an introduction to the principles of morals and legislation by Jeremy Bentham Chapter 3 of the four sanctions or sources of pain and pleasure 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 soul end which the legislator ought to have in view the soul 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 whether pain or pleasure having taken a general view of these two grand objects vis 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 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 in as much 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 be termed sanctions 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 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 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 not according to any settled or concerted rule it may be said to issue from the moral or popular sanction 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 pleasures or pains which may be expected to issue from the physical, political or moral sanctions 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 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 of 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 withholding a punishment issuing from the moral sanction if through the immediate interposition of a particular providence a punishment issuing from the religious sanction 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 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 a kind 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 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 to our observation is what we can have no idea of the best ideas we can obtain of such pains and pleasures are all together unliquidated in point of quality in what other respects our ideas of them may be liquidated will be considered in another place of these four sanctions the physical is altogether we may observe the groundwork 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 operate of themselves but neither the magistrate nor men at large can operate nor is God in the case in questions of post to operate but through the powers of nature 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 much 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 circle 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 end of chapter three chapter four of an introduction to the principles of morals and legislation this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org an introduction to the principles of morals and legislation by Jeremy Bentham chapter four value of a lot of pleasure or pain how to be measured one pleasures then and the avoidance of pains are the ends that the legislator has in view it behoves him therefore to understand their force which is again in other words their value two 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 footnote these circumstances have since been denominated by the person 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 memoria 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 beautiful 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 end of footnote one its intensity three its certainty or uncertainty four its propunuity or remoteness three these are the circumstances which are to be considered an estimate in 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 five 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 six 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 a 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 four 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 this one its intensity two its duration three its certainty or uncertainty four its propunuity or remoteness five its fecundity six its purity and one other to wit seven its extent that is the number of persons to whom it extends or in other words who are affected by it five an exact account then of the general tendency of any act by which the interest of the 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 one of the value of each distinguishable pleasure which appears to be produced by it in the first instance two of the value of each pain which appears to be produced by it in the first instance three 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 four 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 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 of community of individuals concerned. If on the side of pain, the general evil tendency, with respect to the same community. 6. 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. 7. 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 of 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. 8. 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, where, so ever, they have a clear view of their own interest, is perfectly conformable to. An article of property, an estate and land, for instance, is valuable on what account? On account of the pleasures of all kinds, which enables a man to produce, and what comes to the same thing, the pains of all kinds which 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 conceive the several particular kinds of pain and pleasure. End of Chapter 4