(1748-1832)
entham, whose name rightly stands sponsor for the utilitarian theory of morals in legislation, though not its originator, was a mighty and unique figure in many ways. His childhood reminds us of that of his disciple John Stuart Mill in its precocity; but fortunately for him, life had more juice in it for young Bentham than it had for Mill. In his maturity and old age he was widely recognized as a commanding authority, notwithstanding some startling absurdities.
Jeremy Bentham.
He was born in London, February 15th, 1747-8; the child of an attorney of ample means, who was proud of the youth, and did not hesitate to show him off. In his fourth year he began the study of Latin, and a year later was known in his father's circle as "the philosopher." At six or seven he began the study of French. He was then sent to Westminster school, where he must have had a rather uncomfortable time; for he was small in body, sensitive and delicate, and not fond of boyish sports. He had a much happier life at the houses of his grandmothers at Barking and at Browning Hill, where much of his childhood was spent. His reminiscences of these days, as related to his biographer, are full of charm. He was a great reader and a great student; and going to Oxford early, was only sixteen when he took his degree.
It must be confessed that he did not bear away with him a high appreciation of the benefits which he owed to his alma mater. "Mendacity and insincerity--- in these I found the effects, the sure and only sure effects, of an English university education." He wrote a Latin ode on the death of George II., which was much praised. In later years he himself said of it, "It was a mediocre performance on a trumpery subject, written by a miserable child."
On taking his degree he entered at Lincoln's Inn, but he never made a success in the practice of the law. He hated litigation, and his mind became immediately absorbed in the study and development of the principles of legislation and jurisprudence, and this became the business of his life. He had an intense antipathy to Blackstone, under whom he had sat at Oxford; and in 1776 he published anonymously a severe criticism of his work, under the title 'Fragments on Government, or a Commentary on the Commentaries,' which was at first attributed to Lord Mansfield, Lord Camden, and others. His identification as the author of the 'Fragments' brought him into relations with Lord Shelburne, who invited him to Bowood, where he made a long and happy visit, of which bright and gossipy letters tell the story. Here he worked on his 'Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation,' in which he developed his utilitarian theory, and here he fell in love with a young lady who failed to respond to his wishes. Writing in 1827, he says:--
"I am alive, more than two months advanced in my eightieth year, more lively than when you presented me in ceremony with a flower in Green Lane. Since that day not a single one has passed, not to speak of nights, in which you have not engrossed more of my thoughts than I could have wished.... Embrace----; though it is for me, as it is by you, she will not be severe, nor refuse her lips to me as she did her hand, at a time perhaps not yet forgotten by her, any more than by me."
Bentham wrote voluminously on morals, on rewards and punishments, on the poor laws, on education, on law reform, on the codification of laws, on special legislative measures, on a vast variety of subjects. His style, at first simple and direct, became turgid, involved, and obscure. He was in the habit of beginning the same work independently many times, and usually drove several horses abreast. He was very severe in his strictures upon persons in authority, and upon current notions; and was constantly being warned that if he should publish such or such a work he would surely be prosecuted. Numerous books were therefore not published until many years after they were written. His literary style became so prolix and unintelligible that his disciples--Dumont, Mill, and others--came to his rescue, and disentangled and prepared for the press his innumerable pamphlets, full of suggestiveness and teeming with projects of reform more or less completely realized since. His publications include more than seventy titles, and he left a vast accumulation of manuscript, much of which has never been read.
He had a wide circle of acquaintances, by whom he was held in high honor, and his correspondence with the leading men of his time was constant and important. In his later years he was a pugnacious writer, but he was on intimate and jovial terms with his friends. In 1814 he removed to Ford Abbey, near Chard, and there wrote 'Chrestomathea,' a collection of papers on the principles of education, in which he laid stress upon the value of instruction in science, as against the excessive predominance of Greek and Latin. In 1823, in conjunction with James Mill and others, he established the Westminster Review, but he did not himself contribute largely to it. He continued, however, to the end of his life to write on his favorite topics.
Robert Dale Owen, in his autobiography, gives the following description of a visit to Bentham during the philosopher's later years:--
"I preserve a most agreeable recollection of that grand old face, beaming with benignity and intelligence, and occasionally with a touch of humor which I did not expect.... I do not remember to have met any one of his age [seventy-eight] who seemed to have more complete possession of his faculties, bodily and mental; and this surprised me the more because I knew that in his childhood he had been a feeble-limbed, frail boy.... I found him, having overpassed by nearly a decade the allotted threescore years and ten, with step as active and eye as bright and conversation as vivacious as one expects in a hale man of fifty....
"I shall never forget my surprise when we were ushered by the venerable philosopher into his dining-room. An apartment of good size, it was occupied by a platform about two feet high, and which filled the whole room, except a passageway some three or four feet wide, which had been left so that one could pass all round it. Upon this platform stood the dinner-table and chairs, with room enough for the servants to wait upon us. Around the head of the table was a huge screen, to protect the old man, I suppose, against the draught from the doors....
"When another half-hour had passed, he touched the bell again. This time his order to the servant startled me:--
"'John, my night-cap!'
"I rose to go, and one or two others did the same; Neal sat still. 'Ah!' said Bentham, as he drew a black silk night-cap over his spare gray hair, 'you think that's a hint to go. Not a bit of it. Sit down! I'll tell you when I am tired. I'm going to vibrate a little; that assists digestion, too.'
"And with that he descended into the trench-like passage, of which I have spoken, and commenced walking briskly back and forth, his head nearly on a level with ours, as we sat. Of course we all turned toward him. For full half an hour, as he walked, did he continue to pour forth such a witty and eloquent invective against kings, priests, and their retainers, as I have seldom listened to. Then he returned to the head of the table and kept up the conversation, without flagging, till midnight ere he dismissed us.
"His parting words to me were characteristic:--'God bless you,--if there be such a being; and at all events, my young friend, take care of yourself.'"
His weak childhood had been followed by a healthy and robust old age. But he wore out at last, and died June 6, 1832, characteristically leaving his body to be dissected for the benefit of science. The greater part of his published writings were collected by Sir John Browning, his executor, and issued in nine large volumes in 1843.
OF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY
From 'An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation'
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 is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.
But enough of metaphor and declamation: it is not by such means that moral science is to be improved.
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 which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question; or, what is the same thing in other words, to promote or to oppose that happiness. I say of every action whatsoever; and therefore not only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure of government.
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 lost. When it has a meaning, it is this: The community is a fictitious body, composed of the individual persons who are considered as constituting, as it were, its members. The interest of the community, then, is what? 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 sum total 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 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, 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.
REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD
During my visits to Barking, I used to be my grandmother's bedfellow. The dinner hour being as early as two o'clock, she had a regular supper, which was served up in her own sleeping-room; and immediately after finishing it, she went to bed. Of her supper I was not permitted to partake, nor was the privation a matter of much regret. I had what I preferred--a portion of gooseberry pie; hers was a scrag of mutton, boiled with parsley and butter. I do not remember any variety.
My amusements consisted in building houses with old cards, and sometimes playing at 'Beat the knave out of doors' with my grandmother. My time of going to bed was perhaps an hour before hers; but by way of preparation, I never failed to receive her blessing. Previous to the ceremony, I underwent a catechetical examination, of which one of the questions was, "Who were the children that were saved in the fiery furnace?" Answer, "Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego." But as the examination frequently got no farther, the word Abednego got associated in my mind with very agreeable ideas, and it ran through my ears like "Shadrach, Meshach, and To-bed-we-go," in a sort of pleasant confusion, which is not yet removed. As I grew in years, I became a fit receptacle for some of my grandmother's communications, among which the state of her family and the days of her youth were most prominent.
There hung on the wall, perpetually in view, a sampler, the produce of the industry and ingenuity of her mother or her grandmother, of which the subject-matter was the most important of all theologico-human incidents, the fall of man in Paradise. There was Adam--there was Eve--and there was the serpent. In these there was much to interest and amuse me. One thing alone puzzled me; it was the forbidden fruit. The size was enormous. It was larger than that species of the genus Orangeum which goes by the name of "the forbidden fruit" in some of our West India settlements. Its size was not less than that of the outer shell of a cocoanut. All the rest of the objects were as usual in plano; this was in alto, indeed in altissimo rilievo. What to make of it, at a time when my mind was unable to distinguish fictions from realities, I knew not. The recollection is strong in me of the mystery it seemed to be. My grandmother promised me the sampler after her death as a legacy, and the promise was no small gratification; but the promise, with many other promises of jewels and gold coins, was productive of nothing but disappointment. Her death took place when I was at Oxford. My father went down; and without consulting me, or giving the slightest intimation of his intention, let the house, and sold to the tenant almost everything that was in it. It was doing as he was wont to do, notwithstanding his undoubted affection for me. In the same way he sold the estate he had given to me as a provision on the occasion of his second marriage. In the mass went some music-books which I had borrowed of Mrs. Browne. Not long after, she desired them to be returned. I stood before her like a defenseless culprit, conscious of my inability to make restitution; and at the same time, such was my state of mental weakness that I knew not what to say for apology or defense.
My grandmother's mother was a matron, I was told, of high respectability and corresponding piety; well-informed and strong-minded. She was distinguished, however; for while other matrons of her age and quality had seen many a ghost, she had seen but one. She was in this particular on a level with the learned lecturer, afterwards judge, the commentator Blackstone. But she was heretical, and her belief bordered on Unitarianism. And by the way, this subject of ghosts has been among the torments of my life. Even now, when sixty or seventy years have passed over my head since my boyhood received the impression which my grandmother gave it, though my judgment is wholly free, my imagination is not wholly so. My infirmity was not unknown to the servants. It was a permanent source of amusement to ply me with horrible phantoms in all imaginable shapes. Under the pagan dispensation, every object a man could set his eyes on had been the seat of some pleasant adventure. At Barking, in the almost solitude of which so large a portion of my life was passed, every spot that could be made by any means to answer the purpose was the abode of some spectre or group of spectres. So dexterous was the invention of those who worked upon my apprehensions, that they managed to transform a real into a fictitious being. His name was Palethorp; and Palethorp, in my vocabulary, was synonymous with hobgoblin. The origin of these horrors was this:--
My father's house was a short half-mile distant from the principal part of the town, from that part where was situated the mansion of the lord of the manor, Sir Crisp Gascoigne. One morning the coachman and the footman took a conjunct walk to a public-house kept by a man of the name Palethorp; they took me with them: it was before I was breeched. They called for a pot of beer; took each of them a sip, and handed the pot to me. On their requisition, I took another; and when about to depart, the amount was called for. The two servants paid their quota, and I was called on for mine. Nemo dat quod non habet--this maxim, to my no small vexation, I was compelled to exemplify. Mr. Palethorp, the landlord, had a visage harsh and ill-favored, and he insisted on my discharging my debt. At this very early age, without having put in for my share of the gifts of fortune, I found myself in the state of an insolvent debtor. The demand harassed me so mercilessly that I could hold out no longer: the door being open, I took to my heels; and as the way was too plain to be missed, I ran home as fast as they could carry me. The scene of the terrors of Mr. Palethorp's name and visitation, in pursuit of me, was the country-house at Barking; but neither was the town-house free from them; for in those terrors, the servants possessed an instrument by which it was in their power at any time to get rid of my presence. Level with the kitchen--level with the landing-place in which the staircase took its commencement--were the usual offices. When my company became troublesome, a sure and continually repeated means of exonerating themselves from it was for the footman to repair to the adjoining subterraneous apartments, invest his shoulders with some strong covering, and concealing his countenance, stalk in with a hollow, menacing, and inarticulate tone. Lest that should not be sufficient, the servants had, stuck by the fireplace, the portraiture of a hobgoblin, to which they had given the name of Palethorp. For some years I was in the condition of poor Dr. Priestley, on whose bodily frame another name, too awful to be mentioned, used to produce a sensation more than mental.
LETTER FROM BOWOOD TO GEORGE WILSON (1781)
SUNDAY, 12 o'clock.
Where shall I begin?--Let me see--The first place, by common right, to the ladies. The ideas I brought with me respecting the female part of this family are turned quite topsy-turvy, and unfortunately they are not yet cleared up. I had expected to find in Lady Shelburne a Lady Louisa Fitzpatrick, sister of an Earl of Ossory, whom I remember at school; instead of her, I find a lady who has for her sister a Miss Caroline V-----: is not this the maid of honor, the sister to Lady G-----? the lady who was fond of Lord C------, and of whom he was fond? and whom he quitted for an heiress and a pair of horns? Be they who they may, the one is loveliest of matrons, the other of virgins: they have both of them more than I could wish of reserve, but it is a reserve of modesty rather than of pride.
The quadrupeds, whom you know I love next, consist of a child of a year old, a tiger, a spaniel formerly attached to Lady Shelburne--at present to my Lord--besides four plebeian cats who are taken no notice of, horses, etc., and a wild boar who is sent off on a matrimonial expedition to the farm. The four first I have commenced a friendship with, especially the first of all, to whom I am body-coachman extraordinary en titre d'office: Henry, (for that is his name) [the present Lord Lansdowne] for such an animal, has the most thinking countenance I ever saw; being very clean, I can keep him without disgust and even with pleasure, especially after having been rewarded, as I have just now, for my attention to him, by a pair of the sweetest smiles imaginable from his mamma and aunt. As Providence hath ordered it, they both play on the harpsichord and at chess. I am flattered with the hopes of engaging with them, before long, either in war or harmony: not to-day--because, whether you know it or not, it is Sunday; I know it, having been paying my devotions--our church, the hall--our minister, a sleek young parson, the curate of the parish--our saints, a naked Mercury, an Apollo in the same dress, and a Venus de' Medicis--our congregation, the two ladies, Captain Blankett, and your humble servant, upon the carpet by the minister--below, the domestics, superioris et inferioris ordinis. Among the former I was concerned to see poor Mathews, the librarian, who, I could not help thinking, had as good a title to be upon the carpet as myself.
Of Lord Fitzmaurice I know nothing, but from his bust and letters: the first bespeaks him a handsome youth, the latter an ingenious one. He is not sixteen, and already he writes better than his father. He is under the care of a Mr. Jervis, a dissenting minister, who has had charge of him since he was six years old. He has never been at any public school of education. He has now for a considerable time been traveling about the kingdom, that he may know something of his own country before he goes to others, and be out of the way of adulation.
I am interrupted--adieu! le reste à l'ordinaire prochain.
FRAGMENT OF A LETTER TO LORD LANSDOWNE (1790)
It was using me very ill, that it was, to get upon stilts as you did, and resolve not to be angry with me, after all the pains I had taken to make you so. You have been angry, let me tell you, with people as little worth it before now; and your being so niggardly of it in my instance, may be added to the account of your injustice. I see you go upon the old Christian principle of heaping coals of fire upon people's heads, which is the highest refinement upon vengeance. I see, moreover, that according to your system of cosmogony, the difference is but accidental between the race of kings and that of the first Baron of Lixmore: that ex-lawyers come like other men from Adam, and ex-ministers from somebody who started up out of the ground before him, in some more elevated part of the country.
To lower these pretensions, it would be serving you right, if I were to tell you that I was not half so angry as I appeared to be; that, therefore, according to the countryman's rule, you have not so much the advantage over me as you may think you have: that the real object of what anger I really felt was rather the situation in which I found myself than you or anybody; but that, as none but a madman would go to quarrel with a nonentity called a situation, it was necessary for me to look out for somebody who, somehow or other, was connected with it.