Things thus present themselves to Bentham's mind as already prepared to fit into pigeon-holes. This is a characteristic point, and it appears in what we must call his metaphysical system. 'Metaphysics,' indeed, according to him, is simply 'a sprig,' and that a small one, of the 'branch termed Logic.'[374] It is merely the explanation of certain general terms such as 'existence,' 'necessity,' and so forth.[375] Under this would apparently fall the explanation of 'reality' which leads to a doctrine upon which he often insists, and which is most implicitly given in the fragment called Ontology. He there distinguishes 'real' from 'fictitious entities,' a distinction which, as he tells us,[376] he first learned from d'Alembert's phrase Êtres fictifs and which he applies in his Morals and Legislation. 'Real entities,' according to him,[377] are 'individual perceptions,' 'impressions,' and 'ideas.' In this, of course, he is following Hume, though he applies the Johnsonian argument to Berkeley's immaterialism.[378] A 'fictitious entity' is a name which does note 'raise up in the mind any correspondent images.'[379] Such names owe their existence to the necessities of language. Without employing such fictions, however, 'the language of man could not have risen above the language of brutes';[380] and he emphatically distinguishes them from 'unreal' or 'fabulous entities.' A 'fictitious entity' is not a 'nonentity.'[381] He includes among such entities all Aristotle's 'predicaments' except the first: 'substance.'[382] Quantity, quality, relation, time, place are all 'physical fictitious entities.' This is apparently equivalent to saying that the only 'physical entities' are concrete things—sticks, stones, bodies, and so forth—the 'reality' of which he takes for granted in the ordinary common sense meaning. It is also perfectly true that things are really related, have quantity and quality, and are in time and space. But we cannot really conceive the quality or relation apart from the concrete things so qualified and related. We are forced by language to use substantives which in their nature have only the sense of adjectives. He does not suppose that a body is not really square or round; but he thinks it a fiction to speak of squareness or roundness or space in general as something existing apart from matter and, in some sense, alongside of matter.
This doctrine, which brings us within sight of metaphysical problems beyond our immediate purpose, becomes important to his moral speculation. His special example of a 'fictitious entity' in politics is 'obligation.'[383] Obligations, rights, and similar words are 'fictitious entities.' Obligation in particular implies a metaphor. The statement that a man is 'obliged' to perform an act means simply that he will suffer pain if he does not perform it. The use of the word obligation, as a noun substantive, introduces the 'fictitious entity' which represents nothing really separable from the pain or pleasure. Here, therefore, we have the ground of the doctrine already noticed. 'Pains and pleasures' are real.[384] 'Their existence,' he says,[385] 'is matter of universal and constant experience.' But other various names referring to these: emotion, inclination, vice, virtue, etc., are only 'psychological entities.' 'Take away pleasures and pains, not only happiness but justice and duty and obligation and virtue—all of which have been so elaborately held up to view as independent of them—are so many empty sounds.'[386] The ultimate facts, then, are pains and pleasures. They are the substantives of which these other words are properly the adjectives. A pain or a pleasure may exist by itself, that is without being virtuous or vicious: but virtue and vice can only exist in so far as pain and pleasure exists.
This analysis of 'obligation' is a characteristic doctrine of the Utilitarian school. We are under an 'obligation' so far as we are affected by a 'sanction.' It appeared to Bentham so obvious as to need no demonstration, only an exposition of the emptiness of any verbal contradiction. Such metaphysical basis as he needed is simply the attempt to express the corresponding conception of reality which, in his opinion, only requires to be expressed to carry conviction.
NOTES:
[355] See note under Bentham's life, ante, p. 178.
[356] Preface to Morals and Legislation.
[357] Works, i. ('Morals and Legislation'), ii. n.
[358] Essay, bk. ii. ch. xxi. § 39-§ 44. The will, says Locke, is determined by the 'uneasiness of desire.' What moves desire? Happiness, and that alone. Happiness is pleasure, and misery pain. What produces pleasure we call good; and what produces pain we call evil. Locke, however, was not a consistent Utilitarian.
[359] Epistle iv., opening lines.
[360] Works, vii. 82.