That was all; but it was enough, for it told me that this radiant daughter of a golden age had bestowed upon me not alone her pity, but her love. And now I first knew what was perhaps the strangest feature of my strange experience: Edith was the great grand-daughter of no other than my lost love Edith Bartlett.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Principles of Morals and Legislation
Jeremy Bentham, the son and grandson of attorneys, was born in London on February 15, 1748. He was called to the Bar, but did not practise. His fame rests on his work in the fields of jurisprudence, political science, and ethics. He is accounted the founder of the "utilitarian" school of philosophy, of which the theory is that the production of the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" is the criterion of morals and the aim of politics. Dying on June 6, 1832, his body, in accordance with his own wishes, was dissected, and his skeleton dressed in his customary garb and preserved in the University College, London. Bentham's failure at the Bar caused him no small disappointment, and it was not until the publication of a "Fragment on Government" in 1776 that he felt himself redeemed with public opinion. The "Principles of Morals and Legislation" was first published in 1789, but was actually in print nine years earlier. It was primarily intended as the introductory volume of a complete work designed to cover the whole field of the principles of legislation—principles which, as we have seen, were based on that doctrine of utility which the author regarded as equally the basis of ethics.
I.—Calculation of Pleasures and Pains
Mankind is governed by pain and pleasure. Utility is that property in anything which tends to produce happiness in the party concerned, whether an individual or a community. The principle of utility makes utility the criterion for approval or disapproval of every kind of action. An act which conforms to this principle is one which ought to be done, or is not one which ought not to be done; is right, or, at least, not wrong. There is no other criterion possible which cannot ultimately be reduced to the personal sentiment of the individual.
The sources or sanctions of pleasure and pain are four—the physical, in the ordinary course of nature; political, officially imposed; moral or popular, imposed by public opinion; and religion. Pains under the first head are calamities; under the other three are punishments. Under the first three heads, they concern the present life only. The second, third, and the fourth, as concerns this life, operate through the first; but the first operates independently of the others.
Pleasures and pains, then, are the instruments with which the legislator has to work; he must, therefore, be able to gauge their relative values. These depend primarily and simply on four things—intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, propinquity or remoteness. Secondarily, on fecundity, the consequent probable multiplication of the like sensations; and purity, the improbability of consequent contrary sensations. Finally, on extent—the number of persons pleasurably or painfully affected. All these being weighed together, if the pleasurable tendency predominates, the act is good; if the painful, bad.