science; and the absence of which made those departments of
inquiry, as physics had been before Bacon, a field of
interminable discussion, leading to no result. It was not his
opinions, in short, but his method, that constituted the novelty
and the value of what he did; a value beyond all price, even
though we should reject the whole, as we unquestionably must a
large part, of the opinions themselves.
Bentham’s method may be shortly described as the method of
detail; of treating wholes by separating them into their parts,
abstractions by resolving them into Things, classes and
generalities by distinguishing them into the individuals of which
they are made up; and breaking every question into pieces before
attempting to solve it. The precise amount of originality of this
process, considered as a logical conception — its degree of
connexion with the methods of physical science, or with the
previous labours of Bacon, Hobbes or Locke — is not an essential
consideration in this pace. Whatever originality there was in the
method — in the subjects he applied it to, and in the rigidity
with which he adhered to it, there was the greatest. Hence his
interminable classifications. Hence his elaborate demonstrations
of the most acknowledged truths. That murder, incendiarism,
robbery, are mischievous actions, he will not take for granted
without proof; let the thing appear ever so self-evident, he will
know the why and the how of it with the last degree of precision;
he will distinguish all the different mischiefs of a crime,
whether of the first, the second or the third order, namely, 1.
the evil to the sufferer, and to his personal connexions; 2. the
danger from example, and the alarm or painful feeling of
insecurity; and 3. the discouragement to industry and useful
pursuits arising from the alarm, and the trouble and resources
which must be expended in warding off the danger. After this
enumeration, he will prove from the laws of human feeling, that
even the first of these evils, the sufferings of the immediate
victim, will on the average greatly outweigh the pleasure reaped
by the offender; much more when all the other evils are taken
into account. Unless this could be proved, he would account the
infliction of punishment unwarrantable; and for taking the
trouble to prove it formally, his defence is, ‘there are truths
which it is necessary to prove, not for their own sakes, because
they are acknowledged, but that an opening may be made for the
reception of other truths which depend upon them. It is in this
manner we provide for the reception of first principles, which,
once received, prepare the way for admission of all other
truths.’ To which may be added, that in this manner also we
discipline the mind for practising the same sort of dissection
upon questions more complicated and of more doubtful issue.
It is a sound maxim, and one which all close thinkers have
felt, but which no one before Bentham ever so consistently
applied, that error lurks in generalities: that the human mind is
not capable of embracing a complex whole, until it has surveyed
and catalogued the parts of which that whole is made up; that
abstractions are not realities per se, but an abridged mode of
expressing facts, and that the only practical mode of dealing
with them is to trace them back to the facts (whether of
experience or of consciousness) of which they are the expression.
Proceeding on this principle, Bentham makes short work with the
ordinary modes of moral and political reasoning. These, it
appeared to him, when hunted to their source, for the most part
terminated in phrases. In politics, liberty, social order,
constitution, law of nature, social compact, etc., were the
catchwords: ethics had its analogous ones. Such were the
arguments on which the gravest questions of morality and policy
were made to turn; not reasons, but allusions to reasons;
sacramental expressions, by which a summary appeal was made to
some general sentiment of mankind, or to some maxim in familiar
use, which might be true or not, but the limitations of which no
one had ever critically examined. And this satisfied other
people; but not Bentham. He required something more than opinion
as a reason for opinion. Whenever he found a phrase used as an
argument for or against anything, he insisted upon knowing what
it meant; whether it appealed to any standard, or gave intimation
of any matter of fact relevant to the question; and if he could
not find that it did either, he treated it as an attempt on the
part of the disputant to impose his own individual sentiment on
other people, without giving them a reason for it; a ‘
contrivance for avoiding the obligation of appealing to any
external standard, and for prevailing upon the reader to accept
of the author’s sentiment and opinion as a reason, and that a
sufficient one, for itself. Bentham shall speak for himself on
this subject: the passage is from his first systematic work,
‘Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation’, and
we could scarcely quote anything more strongly exemplifying both
the strength and weakness of his mode of philosophizing.
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 pardonable
self-sufficiency.
1. One man says, he has a thing made on purpose to tell him
what is right and what is wrong; and that 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.’
2. 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 tells 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, which, he says, is possessed by all
mankind: the sense of those whose sense is not the same as the
author’s being struck out as 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 neighbours. 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 sic volo sic jubeo, but by a velitis
jubeatis.
3. 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, is the standard of right and wrong: it
tells him so and so. All good and wise men understand as he does:
if other men’s understandings differ in any part from his, so
much the worse for them: it is a sure sign they are either
defective or corrupt.
4. Another man says, that there is an eternal and immutable
Rule of Right: that the 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.
5. Another man, or perhaps the same man (it is 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.
6. 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.
7. 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 latter 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 their 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 standards,
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.
8. 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 be
done.
9. 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 practising 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.
Few will contend that this is a perfectly fair representation
of the animus of those who employ the various phrases so
amusingly animadverted on; but that the phrases contain no
argument, save what is grounded on the very feelings they are
adduced to justify, is a truth which Bentham had the eminent
merit of first pointing out.
It is the introduction into the philosophy of human conduct,
of this method of detail — of this practice of never reasoning
about wholes until they have been resolved into their parts, nor
about abstractions until they have been translated into realities
– that constitutes the originality of Bentham in philosophy, and
makes him the great reformer of the moral and political branch of
it. To what he terms the ‘exhaustive method of classification’,
which is but one branch of this more general method, he himself
ascribes everything original in the systematic and elaborate work
from which we have quoted. The generalities of his philosophy
itself have little or no novelty: to ascribe any to the doctrine
that general utility is the foundation of morality, would imply
great ignorance of the history of philosophy, of general
literature, and of Bentham’s own writings. He derived the idea,
as he says himself, from Helvetius; and it was the doctrine no
less, of the religious philosophers of that age, prior to Reid
and Beattie. We never saw an abler defence of the doctrine of
utility than in a book written in refutation of Shaftesbury, and
now little read — Brown’s ‘Essays on the Characteristics’; and
in Johnson’s celebrated review of Soame Jenyns, the same doctrine
is set forth as that both of the author and of the reviewer. In
all ages of philosophy one of its schools has been utilitarian –
not only from the time of Epicurus, but long before. It was by
mere accident that this opinion became connected in Bentham with
his peculiar method. The utilitarian philosophers antecedent to
him had no more claims to the method than their antagonists. To
refer, for instance, to the Epicurean philosophy, according to
the most complete view we have of the moral part of it, by the
most accomplished scholar of antiquity, Cicero; we ask any one
who has read his philosophical writings, the ‘De Finibus’ for
instance, whether the arguments of the Epicureans do not, just as
much as those of the Stoics or Platonists, consist of mere
rhetorical appeals to common notions, to eikita and simeia
instead of tekmiria, notions picked up as it were casually, and
when true at all, never so narrowly looked into as to ascertain
in what sense and under what limitations they are true. The
application of a real inductive philosophy to the problems of
ethics, is as unknown to the Epicurean moralists as to any of the
other schools; they never take a question to pieces, and join
issue on a definite point. Bentham certainly did not learn his
sifting and anatomizing method from them.
This method Bentham has finally installed in philosophy; has
made it henceforth imperative on philosophers of all schools. By
it he has formed the intellects of many thinkers, who either
never adopted, or have abandoned, many of his peculiar opinions.
He has taught the method to men of the most opposite schools to
his; he has made them perceive that if they do not test their
doctrines by the method of detail, their adversaries will. He has
thus, it is not too much to say, for the first time introduced
precision of thought into moral and political philosophy. Instead
of taking up their opinions by intuition, or by ratiocination
from premises adopted on a mere rough view, and couched in
language so vague that it is impossible to say exactly whether
they are true or false, philosophers are now forced to understand
one another, to break down the generality of their propositions,
and join a precise issue in every dispute. This is nothing less
than a revolution in philosophy. Its effect is gradually becoming
evident in the writings of English thinkers of every variety of
opinion, and will be felt more and more in proportion as
Bentham’s writings are diffused, and as the number of minds to
whose formation they contribute is multiplied.
It will naturally be presumed that of the fruits of this
great philosophical improvement some portion at least will have
been reaped by its author. Armed with such a potent instrument,
and wielding it with such singleness of aim; cultivating the
field of practical philosophy with such unwearied and such
consistent use of a method right in itself, and not adopted by
his predecessors; it cannot he but that Bentham by his own
inquiries must have accomplished something considerable. And so,
it will be found, he has; something not only considerable, but
extraordinary; though but little compared with what he has left
undone, and far short of what his sanguine and almost boyish
fancy made him flatter himself that he had accomplished. His
peculiar method, admirably calculated to make clear thinkers, and
sure ones to the extent of their materials, has not equal
efficacy for making those materials complete. It is a security
for accuracy, but not for comprehensiveness; or rather, it is a
security for one sort of comprehensiveness, but not for another.
Bentham’s method of laying out his subject is admirable as a
preservative against one kind of narrow and partial views. He
begins by placing before himself the whole of the field of
inquiry to which the particular question belongs, and divides
down till he arrives at the thing he is in search of; and thus by
successively rejecting all which is not the thing, he gradually
works out a definition of what it is. This, which he calls the
exhaustive method, is as old as philosophy itself. Plato owes
everything to it, and does everything by it; and the use made of
it by that great man in his Dialogues, Bacon, in one of those
pregnant logical hints scattered through his writings, and so
much neglected by most of his pretended followers, pronounces to
be the nearest approach to a true inductive method in the ancient
philosophy. Bentham was probably not aware that Plato had
anticipated him in the process to which he too declared that he
owed everything. By the practice of it, his speculations are
rendered eminently systematic and consistent; no question, with
him, is ever an insulated one; he sees every subject in connexion
with all the other subjects with which in his view it is related,
and from which it requires to be distinguished; and as all that
he knows, in the least degree allied to the subject, has been