"In strictness, any condition may be denominated happy, in which the amount or aggregate of pleasure exceeds that of pain; and the degree of happiness depends upon the quantity of this excess. And the greatest quantity of it ordinarily attainable in human life, is what we mean by happiness, when we inquire or pronounce what human happiness consists in. In which inquiry I will omit much usual declamation on the dignity and capacity of our nature; the superiority of the soul to the body, of the rational to the animal part of our constitution; upon the worthiness, refinement, and delicacy of some satisfactions, or the meanness, grossness, and sensuality of others; because I hold that pleasures differ in nothing, but in continuance and intensity: from a just computation of which, confirmed by what we observe of the apparent cheerfulness, tranquillity, and contentment, of men of different tastes, tempers, stations, and pursuits, every question concerning human happiness must receive its decision."[78]
Bentham, it need hardly be said, adopted the same idea as the basis of his ethical and legislative theories. In his uncompromising style he tells us[79] that
"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 recognises this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light."
Elsewhere Bentham proceeds to show how we may estimate the values of pleasures and pains, meaning obviously by values the quantities or forces. As these feelings are both the ends and the instruments of the moralist and legislator, it especially behoves us to learn how to estimate these values aright, and Bentham tells us most distinctly.[80]
To a person, he says, considered by himself, the value of a pleasure or pain considered by itself, will be greater or less, according to the four following circumstances. 1. Its intensity. 2. Its duration. 3. Its certainty or uncertainty. 4. Its propinquity or remoteness. But when the value of any pleasure or pain is to be considered for the purpose of estimating the general tendency of the act, we have to take into account also, 5. The fecundity, or the chance it has of being followed by sensations of the same kind, that is, pleasures, if it be a pleasure; pains, if it be a pain. 6. Its purity, or the chance it has of not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind: that is, pains, if it be a pleasure; pleasures, if it be a pain. Finally, when we consider the interests of a number of persons, we must also estimate a pleasure or pain with reference to, 7. Its extent; that is the number of persons to whom it extends, or who are affected by it.
Thus did Bentham clearly and explicitly lay the foundations of the moral and political sciences, and to impress these fundamental propositions on the memory he framed the following curious mnemonic lines, which may be quoted for the sake of their quaintness:—
"Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, 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."
In all that Bentham says about pleasure and pain, there is not a word about the intrinsic superiority of one pleasure to another. He advocates our seeking pure pleasures; but with him a pure pleasure was clearly defined as one not likely to be followed by feelings of the opposite kind; the pleasure of opium-eating, for instance, would be called impure, simply because it is likely to lead to bad health and consequent pain; if not so followed by evil consequences, the pleasure would be as pure as any other pleasure. With Bentham morality became, as it were, a question of the ledger and the balance-sheet; all feelings were reduced to the same denomination of value, and whenever we indulge in a little enjoyment, or endure a pain, the consequences in regard to subsequent enjoyment or suffering are to be inexorably scored for or against us, as the case may be. Our conduct must be judged wise or foolish according as, in the long-run, we find a favourable "hedonic" balance-sheet.
What Mill in his earlier life thought about these foundations of the utilitarian doctrine, and the elaborate structure reared therefrom by Bentham, he has told us in his Autobiography, pp. 64 to 70. Subsequently Mill revolted, as we all know, against the narrowness of the Benthamist creed. While wishing to retain[81] the precision of expression, the definiteness of meaning, the contempt of declamatory phrases and vague generalities, which were so honourably characteristic both of Bentham and of his own father, James Mill, John Stuart decided to give a wider basis and a more free and "genial" character to the utilitarian speculations.
Let us consider how Mill proceeded to give this "genial" character to the utilitarian philosophy. It must be admitted, he says,[82] that utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, &c., of the former—that is, in their circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. As regards Bentham, at least, Mill might have omitted the word chiefly. But according to Mill, there is no need why they should have taken such a ground.